Read Online Smoke by Elizabeth Ruth - Free Book Online Page A

gun and because Raymond had both his eyes closed, something he would never do again, not even when it was time to sleep, he didn’t mark the danger that was coming. That’s when Ruthless Eddie made his move.”
    The doctor lifts his shoulders and stretches his neck. “See, Eddie was the third one in the room. He’d been watching and trying to decide whether he was better off to stay or make a fast exit when the attacker went after Ray. Acting on fighter’s instinct, he leapt from his place on the bench and grabbed the murderer’s wrist before he had a chance to do any real damage. Eddie’s physical strength was indisputable and the Licavoli chap couldn’t resist. Eddie squeezed the thug’s arm until his hand opened and the gun, hot as a branding iron, dropped onto the floor. Then Ruthless Eddie, taking every bit of rage he had bottled up inside him since that lousy night at the boxing ring, turned muscle into grace and gangster mayhem. He broke the fellow’s arm in two parts and tossed him at Raymond Bernstein’s feet. ‘He’s all yours,’ said Eddie, barely realizing what he’d done.”
    â€œWhy would he help Raymond?”
    â€œHe was helping himself, Buster. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Ruthless Eddie heard opportunity calling and he answered it quick. Paid off, too. Next thing he knew he was Raymond Bernstein’s personal bodyguard.”
    â€œUnreal. Are you sure?”
    â€œSure as a shadow.” Doc John leans back in his chair, drops his feet and casts one warm brown eye towards the kitchen window to judge if his wife might be listening.
    â€œSo what happened after that?”
    â€œOh, that, son, is a story for another time.”
    â€œAaw, you can’t leave me hanging. Let’s hear the rest.”
    Doc John chuckles, rises from his chair, knees cracking. He stretches his arms above his head to yawn and waves Buster inside.
    â€œC’mon. I’ve got something here might interest you.”
    B USTER FOLLOWS HIM inside the large office with its high ceilings, where it smells of rubbing alcohol and lemon oil. Pushed up against one wall sits a Mission oak desk and a captain’s chair. On the desk is a calendar with the date, September eighth, circled and next to it a rotary dial telephone, a stethoscope, a blood pressure belt, a jar of tongue depressors, a small pad of paper and a ballpoint pen. Standing at attention beside the desk is a hat tree. Across the room is a scale with weights, a wooden examination table, a locked cabinet with glass doors. Through them he notices amber, cobalt and clear glass bottles, tins filled with cotton batting, gauze strips and rubbing alcohol. Beside the cabinet there is a new refrigerator cooling vials marked with insulin and penicillin and two trays with sterilized instruments and syringes. The walls on either side of the entrance have built-in bookshelves holding medical texts, journal clippings, a copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a cherished Frank Merriwell book and row upon row of paperback novels. There is a small window above the desk but the room is otherwise lit by three lamps, each fixed to the wall inside a triangular sconce. All told, the old furnishings give the comforting impression that Buster is in practised hands.
    Even though he is up to date on the latest medical discoveries and treatments, everyone understands that Doc John is a traditionalist. It’s one reason they respect him. He is even rumoured to have declined work in Brantford, in the Big Hospital. And, as Buster knows all too well, he favours house calls.
    One door inside the office leads into the living room of the home and the other, smaller, into a tiny washroom where patients disrobe in private or pass urine into jars for tests, leaving them on the counter of the vanity to be collected modestly. Doc John keeps a fresh change of clothes for himself hanging on the hook