“Sir, we have no more appointments open for today,” the woman behind the desk told me
as I walked through the waiting area.
How did she know that I didn't already have an appointment? Did she know all the
patients that well to know a stranger when she saw one? Dr. Johnson's practice was a lot smaller
than I had thought.
The apple cinnamon smell from the scented candle on her desk was mixing curiously
with the odor of medical cleansers.
“I'm sorry, but I need a few minutes of Dr. Johnson's time,” I told her. “My name is
Oleg…he'll want to see me.” I left Karel in the car – two men wanting to see Dr. Johnson would
be too weird.
The woman looked at me as if to tell me, “Good luck with that!” She got up from her
desk and walked down the hallway. Not thirty seconds later, she came back.
“Dr. Johnson will see you now.” The woman looked to be in shock. “His office is the last
room down the hallway on the left.”
I walked down the hallway catching the sight of a really heavy man with his shirt off in
the exam room. Man boobs. Being a doctor must suck.
My knuckles rapped on the door. “Knock, knock, Dr. Johnson.” I walked into the office
and closed the door. It was a heavy wood door, good to keep sounds inside the room and away
from listening office staff ears. I could just see that patient check-in lady running down the
hallway to hear what we were saying.
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The doctor looked like he'd been kicked in the stomach. “Where's your partner?”
“I left him in the car,” I said.
“Well, can you have him check the building's garage?” he asked. “Some guy threatened
me last night demanding the same information that you want, telling me that you guys were
dead.”
The doctor looked right into my eyes.
“Did you get a good look at him?” I asked him. I don't know why I asked this, because I
damn well knew who he talked to and that guy was a whole more dead than I was.
“He looked kinda portly, 5'10-ish, shaved head” the doctor told me. “How did this guy
find me? Am I in the „friggin yellow pages or something?”
I couldn't tell if Mihail was trying to throw me off by mentioning the Viola family. He
was way over his head if he was stupid enough to bring them into the picture. Still, if he had done
that, Fred's days were numbered, and whoever was providing the big money here was about to
get wacked - if they hadn't gotten already. Lenny, who called last week to warn us about Jim
Lick's plans, told me that Jim Lick was back working with the Violas, which I had a hard time
believing. Karel and I both agreed last night to expect to see more guys from Florida within a
week to challenge us even if the Violas were involved.
“We have it under control, doctor,” I said. “How's the Zyptorin trial going?” I decided
not to let our doctor know about our killing of the two guys last night. It might have sent him over the edge, and we needed Dr. Johnson to be clear headed about everything.
Dr. Johnson sat back down in his chair. “It looks like it's going to wrap up in late March
or early April.”
“Did this guy ask about the trial?” I asked.
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“Yes, I told him what I know about the timing of the information flow from the trial,” Dr.
Johnson replied. He cleared his throat.
I walked a little closer to the doctor. “Well, if you get harassed again by some people, just
tell them you will cooperate, okay.”
“Alright, but I thought you said you had it under control. Is the bald portly guy coming
back?”
“When is your next meeting?”
“February 5th, but he didn't ask me about that.”
I had been holding off from talking with Fred because he couldn't help us and may have
decided to pull the plug on everything way too early. Jim Lick and the Viola clan were too big a
match for Fred and his money guy, but that's assuming Jim and the Violas could find these two
guys. We were easy to find because Mihail knew who we were and where we were going to be.
Fred and the money guy were a lot more behind the scenes. Like us, Mihail never met either of
them in person. Maybe Fred and the money guy weren't that close to getting whacked after all.
One thing was for sure, if we were going to sit in our cars watching the good doctor each
day from the parking lot, we were going to have to be very careful. I thought I'd give Lenny a call
again - see what's up. Oh, and we needed to find Mihail to take him out, hopefully before the
Calvary arrived from Florida. What a mess! That Jim Lick was still alive was a huge mistake on
our part and it was definitely coming back to bite us in the ass.
“Well, you keep doing business as usual and this will all be over before you know it,” I
replied.
Dr. Johnson looked at the clock above his desk. The office was sparkly clean and orderly.
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A nurse poked her head into the office, before looking strangely at me. “Dr. Johnson, Mr.
Montane is ready to see you. He was looking like he has strep, so I'll get the swab ready just in
case.”
“I will be right in, Mary,” Dr. Johnson said.
He stood up and stretched out his right hand like he wanted to shake my hand. I just
stared at him for a second.
“We're not friends, Dr. Johnson,” I said coolly. What the hell was that? Was this guy
cracking up on me?
Dr. Johnson smiled strangely and quickly put his hand down. “Yeah, I suppose not.”
“But don't worry, Doctor, we're now watching your office from the parking lot,” I said.
“Maybe we can catch this guy stalking you.” I picked up a pen on his desk to examine it. It was
from a resort in Las Vegas.
I didn't know if the doctor believed we were already watching from the parking lot or
not, but I thought it wise to act like I didn't purposely let these bozos from Florida meet with him in the garage yesterday afternoon. Even worse, I didn't want the doctor to view us as failing to
notice the guy harassing him in the garage. So, we weren't there watching him yesterday, end of
story.
I put the pen down and left the doctor to see his patient. The woman behind the check in
desk raised her eyebrows at me as I walked by on the way out of the practice.
“Have a great weekend, Honey!” I yelled out to her.
“Next time, can you please call?” she shouted back.
Yeah, I'll be sure to do that.
I walked out into the lobby of the building and headed back to our car. It would have
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were parked too far away from the garage to keep a good watch on things. The lot was not even
half full, but it was late on a Friday. I hoped we could find a spot close to the garage starting
Monday morning. We knew the bozos from Florida were lurking around the garage yesterday
because we had gotten a heads up about them from Lenny. The next wave of heavies, though,
might have come without such a nice heads up. And we didn't want anybody harassing Dr.
Johnson without us controlling the situation.
“Bud, we need to find out where Mihail is staying,” I told Karel while climbing into the
passenger seat.
“I just heard he is in the city for the weekend.”
I lit up a cigarette. “Move us closer to the garage,” I said.
“What kind of guns do you have in the trunk?” I asked.
“Pretty much what we had in Philadelphia – haven't I been telling you we need an Uzi?”
“Man, you drive around with one of those and you are just begging for a cop to pull you
over and nail you for holding one of those suckers,” I told my fire power friendly partner. “We
didn't need big firepower to take out those two yahoos yesterday, but that axe sure was handy in
the storage unit.”
What we did need was a pair of binoculars to see better into that garage. If we were to be
surprised by a new crew the next week - that was a big if because I planned on avoiding being
surprised - they would probably hang out in the garage during the late afternoon waiting for Dr.
Johnson like that idiot did yesterday. We would have no way to tell someone apart if they walked
into the building, but if someone walked into that garage, we would be ready to rumble. Another
possible thing – we should have told Dr. Johnson this - was for the doctor to park out in the
parking lot and avoid the garage all together. The more I thought about it, that was probably what
he would do.
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Karel was smiling. “You know, I don't like the idea of us splitting up in unprotected cars.
Why can't we do that yellow page and foam thing with the right windows in one of the cars and
sit together?”
He was referring to bulletproofing the car by stuffing yellow pages in the side panels of
the car, filling the tires with insulation foam and replacing the glass windows with laminated
glass. We had done this a few times while working for the Violas when we needed to quickly
bulletproof a car. While the laminated glass is pricey, the other stuff isn't and this technique will let the car escape a spray of bullets with the passengers safe inside. I remembered one of the
cousins in the Viola family making two of us sit in the quickly bulletproofed car while he shot a
round of gunfire into the car. That was real fun.
“You know, buddy, I like that idea,” I said, slapping Karel on the back. I figured we
wouldn't need to do this if we got the same inside information from Miami that we got last week
for the next crew of guys coming after us. Still, this was good preparation in case we weren't able
to get advance warning next week. And anything was possible.
“I guess we have some shopping to do tomorrow,” Karel said.
“You bet.”
It occurred to me just then that the storage unit was a good place to do the work on one of
the cars. We got a double wide unit.
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Friday, January 10th
7:30pm