Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

Felix returned to his table almost weightless with relief. He sat down and picked up his coffee cup and when he saw Barazo's table he nearly spilled it. There was nothing in front of Barazo.

Felix searched the other tables with his eyes and saw it. The bowl of calamares was in front of a middle-aged woman who was viewing it with some uncertainty. Oh my God, he thought, oh no.

In the next instant the maitre d' appeared at the table and grabbed the dish without so much as a beg-your-pardon and began berating a waiter loudly in the mother tongue. Idiota! Son los calamares del Señor Barazo!

The squid were set, with apologies befitting nobility, before Barazo, who began greedily to eat. He forked a tentacle and offered it to his girl, who made a face. Felix was sure that Barazo would have slugged her for that if they'd been alone. If they made it home tonight, probably he would. From this he deduced she was a new girl. Barazo ate without interruption. Felix remembered the old fisherman in Hemingway's story urging the great marlin to eat the bonito at the end of his line. When Barazo began to wipe the bowl with his bread, Felix got up and went to the phone. "Yellow Cab? I'm at Neon Leon's. Please send a taxi to pick me up." He went back to the table.

It happened suddenly. One minute Barazo was leaning back, smoking a cigarette, and the next he was bringing up squid with ballistic velocity, as if a poltergeist had performed the Heimlich maneuver on him. Truly, it was not a pretty sight.

Felix quickly made his way to the table, demanding in a loud voice, "What did this man have to eat?" The maitre d' had gone white. Waiters were rushing with towels, a new tablecloth, an empty salad bowl. The bodyguards, helpless in the face of having no one obvious to shoot, nevertheless directed their professional energies on the waiter with the salad bowl, punching him in the chest and sending him sprawling. The girl, whose person had received a copious share of Barazo's gastric ejecta, was screeching hysterically for towels. Barazo himself was pitched forward over the table making noises like a distressed sea lion.

"I'm a doctor," Felix shouted. "What did this man eat?"

"Squid," murmured the maitre d' almost inaudibly, "in its ink."

"SQUID? IN ITS INK?" Felix shouted back. "Exactly as I suspected. This man has food poisoning." The guard moved in on the maitre d'.

"No," he gasped miserably. "It's not possible. We use only the freshest…"

Felix was scribbling furiously on a notepad. He tore off the page and handed it to one of the bodyguards. "Call this number immediately. Tell them to send an ambulance. Tell them Dr. Allende is here at the scene." He turned to the maitre d'. "And a fortunate thing too!" The bodyguard roughly shoved his way through to the phone.

Felix located a dry area of Barazo's wrist, put his finger on it while looking at his watch and counted to ten. "Hm!" he said, shaking his head. "Hm."

The door burst open a remarkably efficient three minutes later as two heavyset men from the Emergency Medical Service rushed in with a collapsible gurney. Wincing only slightly, at the sight, they took Barazo's vital signs. Felix, somewhat caught up in the moment, kept barking orders at them; McNamara finally said, "We can handle it, Doctor, thanks."

They strapped Barazo onto the gurney and wheeled him out, bodyguards following. At the door Felix shouted back at the maitre d', "You better save the rest of those squid for the health inspectors!"

Bundy and McNamara pushed the collapsed gurney into the back of the ambulance. Bundy got in the driver's seat, Mac into the back. Felix climbed in. Then the bodyguard started in. Mac held up a hand. "Sorry, it's against reg-"

The bodyguard shoved him back brusquely, and when Mac renewed his complaint, pulled out a MAC 10 machine pistol and pointed it at him. "Drive," he said.

"All right," said Mac, "but that thing better be registered, because I'm going to report this when we get to the hospital, and there are always police at the Emergency entrance."

The prospect did not faze the bodyguard in the least: "Move it."

Bundy pulled out into the street with the siren going. Through the rear windows, Felix saw the other two bodyguards get into their car and pull out behind them. He was looking for Charley and Rostow's car when the bodyguard said, "Where we going?"

"Mercy," said Felix, putting a stethoscope to Barazo's chest.

"How come not South Miami? It's right there, four blocks."

Felix yelled, "Look at him-he's been infected with a, a staphylococcal enterotoxin." This much was true, a scruple (1.296 grams) easily filched from a microbiology lab in Stony Brook, New York. Felix said angrily, "Can't you see that he needs to be destaph, destaphylococcalized? They don't have the facilities for that at South Miami."

The bodyguard stared suspiciously. Felix shouted, "Do you want him to die?"

"Okay, but fast."

Bundy was doing seventy on the South Dixie Highway, northbound, siren screaming. Mac caught Felix's eye: move back, give me a clear shot. As Felix did, Bundy swerved to avoid hitting a car. Felix fell toward the bodyguard, who felt the bulge under Felix's arm. He reacted instantly. He dove into Felix like a linebacker, breaking three of his ribs and shoving him back into Mac.

His first shot went through the forward bulkhead, missing Bundy by a few inches. The second went into Mac's thigh. Felix grabbed the man's arm. The third shot went through the ambulance's rear window, shattering it. "Shoot him," Mac grunted. "Will you please shoot him?" Mac was pinned against the forward bulkhead by Felix. Felix, occupied by the intense pain in his chest and the bodyguard's 9mm, had no hand available at the moment to reach his own weapon. A second later Barazo's chase car slammed into the back of the ambulance. Felix heard another rib crack.

When he opened his eyes he saw the bodyguard's face, livid with rage, pressed up against his own, mouth open. He could see the fillings. He is trying to bite off my nose. Mac had reached around Felix and managed to get a hold of both the man's hands. Felix couldn't reach his gun, but flailing with his left he felt something come into his grip. It was the sphygmomanometer. He got it around the twenty-one-inch neck and Velcroed it shut. The bulb was hanging down the bodyguard's back. He had to reach to get it in his hand, putting his nose in dangerous proximity to the snapping teeth. He butted the man's nose hard with his forehead, causing himself extreme pain. Bulb in hand, he began to pump.

The blood-pressure cuff began to inflate. The bodyguard, realizing what was happening, struggled, but Mac held him tightly. Felix pumped and pumped and the bodyguard's face went red, then purplish. He made a sound like the person in the next stall in the public men's room usually makes. Finally he went limp. Felix and Mac pitched forward on top of him. Felix saw the pressure meter on the blood-pressure cuff: 300 over… nothing.

Mac tied a tourniquet above the two holes in his thigh. "Look at that," he said, pointing to his jeans. "I bought those new last week." Felix held his stomach and groaned.

Up front, they heard Bundy shouting into his radio, "Crossing Southwest Seventeenth Avenue."

"Where the fuck are they?" Mac said.

The plan called for Charley and Rostow to cut off any chase vehicle. "They pulled in front of them and the fuckers just kept on going. Drove right through them. They had to jack the wheel clear."

"Great," said Mac, staring at his seeping leg wound. "Can you move?" he said to Felix. Felix nodded. "Take this." He handed Felix a length of surgical tubing. "Unlatch those doors, tie this to them loose, so it'll give."

Mac said to Barazo, "Excuse me, but I need this," and undid his straps and pitched him roughly onto the floor. Barazo moaned. "Okay," said Mac, "let's get this one onto it." The bodyguard was heavy. The ambulance kept swerving and being slammed from behind by the chase car.