added his invitation. “I think you should join us. Josie was asking about you this morning. She read an article in some magazine and was impressed with your credentials. I might be jealous,” he warned.
“Right,” Michael said wryly. He had nothing better to do that evening. The idea of confronting the haughty Wainwright daughter appealed to him. “What time’s dinner?”
“Come at six for cocktails,” Matt immediately said. “I’ll tell Rose to expect you.”
Michael made a mental note of the time and nodded.
“Hey,” Tyler said sotto voce. “There’s Carmine Mercado. The goon who shot Carl Bridges supposedly works for him. I understand he denies all knowledge of the man.”
Michael did a quick once-over of the mob boss as the man left the temporary structure housing the Men’s Grill, a cigar clamped between his teeth.
The doctor in him noted the pasty grayness about the mouth and bags under the Mafia don’s eyes. He knew Mercado was in his sixties. At one time, the older man would have been described as portly. Nowadays he would be termed overweight and out of shape. He certainly ought to lay off the smoking, Michael observed, listening to the hacking cough as the man and his crony headed for the door.
Abruptly Mercado stopped.
Michael had the uncomfortable feeling Mercado was staring at him. He glanced at Flynt. His friend raised his eyebrows as if to say he hadn’t a clue what the older man was looking at.
Mercado entered the café and threaded his way between the tables, garnering irritated glances as he puffed on the stogie. Daisy, the waitress, stopped him.
“No cigars allowed in here, sir,” she said politely but with an edge to her voice.
There was a brief pause in the general conversation, then it resumed as if the diners remembered some fascinating tidbit they had to share at that moment.
“Wow,” Tyler murmured. “The kid’s got brass.”
The mob boss narrowed his eyes at the blond waitress, then he dropped the cigar into a glass of water on the table nearest him. Fortunately the diners had left only moments before, so no one was offended by the action.
“Thank you, sir,” Daisy said in her heavy drawl and went on her way.
“Arrogant son of a bitch,” Flynt said, a steely gleam in his eyes as he watched the little scene.
The rest of the diners let out a collective sigh of relief. Michael felt the tension drop about ten levels in the café.
To his surprise, the older man came to their table. He nodded to Flynt, Matt and Tyler, then looked at him. “You’re the heart doctor, right?”
Although Michael was pretty sure the man had been born in the U.S., there was a definite trace of an Italian accent in his guttural tone.
“Michael O’Day, yes.”
Mercado stuck out his hand. Michael had no choice but to shake it. He did so, then gave the don a level stare, refusing to be intimidated by the perusal he was getting.
“My doc told me I needed a new heart.”
Michael digested this news, which tied in with the pastiness of the man’s skin and the quick, shallow breaths he took. “You need to give up smoking,” he stated.
The bushy eyebrows, still black although the man’s hair was mostly gray, rose as if questioning Michael’s sanity to speak to him this way. “I read about you,” Mercado continued. “I want you to do the operation.”
“I work out of Houston.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Mercado waved this little inconvenience aside. “I’ll come there.”
“I take cases only upon referral from other medical professionals,” Michael coolly informed the man.
“My doc will refer me.”
This was said in such a way that Michael knew there would be no question about it. He suppressed a smile. There was something of a farce in the scene, as if they were all playing parts in a bad movie.
“Good.” He pulled out a business card. “Here’s my office number. Have your doctor call.”
The bushy eyebrows wagged up, then down. He handed the card to the man behind him. “Here, Frank, hold on to this for me. I’ll be in touch,” he said to Michael, and walked off.
Silence followed his path to the door.
“Damn,” Tyler muttered as everyone relaxed again, “I’d hate to have him for a patient. One mistake and you’re out of this world. Literally. What will you do if he shows up?”
Michael shrugged. “A patient is a sick person. I don’t judge a sick person’s personal life.” He grinned. “But I sure hope his doctor suggests someone else.”
While his friends chuckled, he made a connection between the don and the recent murder of Carl Bridges.
“Wasn’t Carl the one who defended you guys when you were accused of negligent homicide in the death of Mercado’s niece?” he asked Flynt and Tyler.
Flynt nodded. “Spence and Luke were also involved. We were having a big reunion celebration out at Luke’s place, all of us having survived the Gulf War and made it home in one piece. Naturally the beer was flowing pretty freely. For some stupid reason, the four of us and Haley went for a boat ride. The boat overturned, and Haley drowned. Her family used its influence to have us tried for manslaughter. Carl saved our bacon. It was a bad time for everyone.”
Michael dealt with pain on a daily basis, both physical and mental, in his patients and in the relatives who worried about them. He recognized it in his friend and was sorry to have reminded him of the past.
“I was half in love with Haley,” Flynt continued softly, sadly. “I guess we all were. She was beautiful, with thick dark hair and flirty eyes and a smile to melt your heart. She was also smart. And funny. She could imitate almost anyone after hearing them once.”
“Could Carl’s death have been some kind of revenge thing from the Mercado family?” Michael asked.
Tyler spoke up. “Not for something that happened years ago. They’d have offed him, and probably us, as soon as the trial was over and we walked out of the courthouse. Haley’s brother, Ricky, was a friend. He might have intervened with his uncle for us. Who knows?”
Daisy Parker, aka Haley Mercado, slipped into the lady’s lounge, thankful that it was empty at the moment, and slid into a chair.
She crossed her arms over her chest, holding in the need to cry and rant against fate. It had been terrifying to face Carmine Mercado and his henchman, Frank Del Brio, in the café, not that either man suspected who she really was.
When the Mafia boss had approached Flynt Carson’s table, she’d wanted desperately to listen in.
Perhaps it had been foolish to return to Mission Creek, which held so many bad memories for her. But along with the
