Karel laughed and slammed his hand on the bar at Luiggi's, causing him to wince in pain
from his shoulder wound. Any sudden movement in his upper body disturbed him mightily. I
refilled his champagne glass.
Karel was very lucky that the Linders' asshole security guy only nicked him with the
array of bullets he sent flying our way that night. We knew he was in the house, but Karel had to
take the security guy out in a way we hadn't considered. Barreling through the garage door was
our only chance and Karel did a hell of a job. We were not sure how Karel was shot - we
probably would never know. In any case, it was a divot taken out of his shoulder, so we were
keeping peroxide and Neosporin on it.
“I can't believe you cut that guy's finger off - that was really nasty. There are less bloody
ways to get somebody to talk, you know.”
“C'mon, focus here! We got to get Martin's guy to look at your shoulder, again.”
I thought I was too loud just then, causing me to look around the restaurant to see if
anyone was staring at us. Two men were talking with a woman and her teenage son, though none
of them was paying us any attention.
We had some homework to do on Dr. Nick Johnson. I wished our friends in charge had a
master directory for all drug trials and their projected date of completion, but they didn't. Ideally, we would know when the trial would end and make contact with the target doctor shortly before
that date. Since we didn't have that luxury with Dr. Linder we were now caught cleaning up some
loose ends. We were going to have to watch this Nick Johnson more closely.
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
61
We gave Dr. Linder too much time to come up with a plan, and he thought he could
outsmart us. He didn't, but he sure made everything messier than it had to be. I sure would have
liked to know where the doctor found that bodyguard.
Martin's guy was able to get the bullet out of Karel's shoulder and stitch him up, but the
wound was oozing something green. I knew that wasn't good. We had been trying Martin on the
cell for a few hours, because I didn't know how to reach his stitch up guy who had worked on
Karel in Martin's office in New York. We could not risk an ER visit. Even though they would
have no way of knowing that Karel's wound was from a bullet, the ER staff was sure to grow
suspicious over the less than quality stitching job provided by Martin's guy.
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
62
Friday, September 5th