Green-Eyed Monster

Wiseguy:

- The Harder They Fall -

Gr">Green-Eyed Monster

1991

The weight of Vinnie&#s sis six-foot-three, two hundred and thirty pound frame dropping into my arms, in combination with the realization that there’re more bullets where that one came from, send me pitching forward onto the porch floor with him. Swearing, praying, I roll off Vince, catching him under the arms, and drag him inside, slamming the door on the nightmare that’s just erupted outside. A second shot smashes the window that makes up the top third of the front door, and I shield Vince’s face from the shattering glass, feeling it slide off the back of my leather jacket, tinkling onto the floor with a surreal musical quality. There’s blood everywhere. Goddammit, goddammit, godDAMMit!

"Vince!" I hiss, staring into his open and glazing eyes. "Don’t you dare die on me, you goddamned motherfucker!" Blood wells out of his mouth, and only the faint throb of a pulse along the side of his neck tells me he’s still alive. A third shot echoes mutedly outside, and reflex sends me dropping to the floor alongside my lover as the wood in the center panel of the front door splinters inward. I hear the dull thud of the bullet lodging in the plaster-lath wall behind me, and I raise my head to peer around for the nearest phone. It’s on the end table next to the couch in the little livingroom. and I scuttle crab-wise across the floor to seize the receiver, then dial Lifeguard’s number from memory. "Vinnie’s been shot," I snarl, two words into his greeting. "Get McPike and an ambulance to his house, now!" And I slam the phone back into the cradle and slide across the floor back to where he lies, chest barely moving with the shallow breaths he draws. A fourth shot, different than the other three, rings out over this middleclass Brooklyn neighborhood with a reverberation like a church bell, and I recognize it as a handgun, as opposed to the rifle shots that started the whole thing. I spare about a third of a second to wonder why the shooter… Tess… switched guns before Vinnie’s condition grabs all my attention.

Medicine is most emphatically not my field, but any idiot could see this is probably a fatal wound. The blood smeared on the floor along the path I dragged him confirms that the bullet went right through his side, back to front, the exit wound under his right front ribcage big and bloody. Chunks and gobbets of things I have no desire to name clot toundound itself as well as the perimeter, and blood continues to flow slowly from it, spreading in a grizzly red tide over his chest and side, soaking into the waistband of his sweats. I look down at my hands, stained with his life’s blood, and realize I’m covered in it, my own waist crimson from ribs to navel. It’s not until I pull my shirt away from the skin and see the ragged tear through the fabric that I figure out some of it is mine. The bullet that hit Vince is lodged somewhere in my guts, and my own blood oozes out to mingle with his. That’s when the pain starts. It amazes me, in a detached and analytical way, red-hot daggers lancing along the nerves in my belly. In the distance, I hear sirens, and the thought that flickers through my brain as I slump cross-legged to the floor next to Vinnie is ‘thank god for the neighborhood watch’. I gather Vince’s dark head into my lap, trying hard to keep my vision focused, to block out the accompanying realization that the kiss he was a split second from laying on me had probably been witnessed by every old biddy for two blocks. So wasn’t that what you wanted, Lococco? I ask myself. Yeah, but it wasn’t supposed to end like this, with both of us bleeding to death on the floor of Vinnie’s little house, god-fucking-dammit! It was supposed to end in bed, with his naked body warm against mine, while I formalized my apology for being such a raging prick the night before by being a raging prick in bed.

Pain thrums through me, the physical blurring into the mental and emotional agony of the fear that I am seconds from losing the one human being on the planet I can unequivocally say I love. I run my hands through Vinnie’s hair, the dark silk of it sticking to my bloody fingers. Stay with me, I plead with him in a silent scream. "Vince, hold on. McPike is on the way," I reassure him, not even sure if he can hear me at this point. There’s no answering flicker in his darkening eyes, and I can see he’s going into shock. So am I, if the shivers that tremor my muscles are any clue, and I grit my teeth against their chattering as I wait helplessly for the cavalry to ride into range.

I can hear McPike’s worry in his voice, his low tones not doing anything to disguise it, and I groan, trying to pry my eyes open against the weight of my eyelids, a nearly impossible task.

"Roger?" Frank queries, clearly not sure if I’m conscious or not. Neither am I, actually. My thinking is fuzzy to say the least. My brain feels like the synapses are immersed in syrup, every thought oozing along neural pathways like crude oil in January.

I still can’t get my eyes open, so I opt for trying a grunt in response.

"Lococco, tell me what happened," he requests quietly. I know him well enough by now to hear the desperation in his voice.

I swallow, attempting to wet the the cotton fluff that coats the inside of my mouth, and try to make an articulate noise. "Tess," I manage, or hope I do.

"MacTavish was the shooter? You saw her?" he asks, confusion in his voice, now. That makes no sense to me in my current drugged state, and I struggle with it for a second, trying to make the piece of the puzzle fit what little I’m aware of. And in actuality, I don’t know it. Not for sure. It’s just the most li sce scenario, under the circumstances.

I grunt again. "Probably," I say. Tess, excuse me, Theresa MacTavish, seduced me in a St. Croix bar and took me to bed to fuck my brains loose enough to give her a twenty on Vince, which, moron that I am, I did. And then, just to make sure the shit really hit the fan, I went racing off to New York to make sure he was okay, leading her straight to him. Tess Maish ish is — probably — a CIA assassin, more or less like I was, once upon a time. Why, exactly, she’s after Vince is unclear, but there are at least three reasons I can think of, even in my current brain-dead state. Let’s just say there’s no love lost between the CIA and Vince Terranova, or me, either, for that matter. Both of us are probably on a termination list in that machiavellian brotherhood’s computers somewhere.

"So why did the PD find a nickel-and-dime hired gun dead on the roof of the mini mart across the street from Vinnie’s house?" he asks.

I’m hoping he doesn’t expect an answer, because I’m not exactly up to theorizing right now. I groan as I attempt to open my eyes again, and this time I’m successful, though all things being equal, I wish I hadn’t been, and I close them again against the overly bright lights of a hospital recovery room. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. In the solar plexus. It’s another minute or two before I remember why I’m in a hospital in the first place, not that it offers much comfort. Frank is maundering on, and I’m only catching about one word in three, most of my limited faculties tied up in wondering whether Vince is still alive. "Vince?" I mumble, hoping I can get the word in edgewise as I open my eyes again, trying to bring Frank into focus.

"Still in surgery," Is McPike’s grim answer. "They’re not very optimistic about his chances." There’s a pause as he decides whether to chew me out on the spot, or wait till I can defend myself. Not surprisingly, he starts in on me. "What were the two of you doing at Vince’s house? I thought I told you not to set foot outside the hotel unless you cleared it with me first." I can tell from the knots in his jaw and the tension in his voice he’s trying not to yell, but the acrimony comes through loud and clear.

"Argued," I give him the shorthand, not having the energy to go into detail.

"About what, goddammit?!" he glares at me. "I swear, Lococco, I don’t know what the hell Vinnie sees in you!"

That makes both of us, I think hazily. But whatever it is, please, god, let him go on seeing it. Because losing him now will kill me. I take a slow breath, trying to squelch the self-recrimination that percolates through my thoughts. Logically, I know what happened was probably at least as much about Vince as it was about me, but it doesn’t make it any easier, knowing that Tess-the-wonder-woman may very well have taken us both out of the picture permanently. "Lover’s quarrel," I tell McPike, honestly enough, as it happens. His sour expression says he thinks I’m being my usual sarcastic self, and I don’t disabuse him of the illusion. It does confirm for me that Vince hasn’t gotten around to telling his former boss and closest buddy that our… friendship… is a little more than that, now. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, and I’m not exactly sure what it means, as far as sex in general is concerned, but Vince and I started sleeping together when he recovered from his stay as a guest of a cadre of Salvadoran terrorists. I was the one who dragged him back from the jungles, and I’d be willing to bet there was a certain element of obligation in it, or there was at first, but that’s not what it is now. I can’t say exactly what it is now, because I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

In case there’s any question, I’m a dyed in the wool homophobe who suddenly finds himself with a male lover I can’t seem to get enough of. Go figure. It makes for a shaky self-image, let me tell you. That’s what we fought about, actually. I was busy having a crisis when I found out just how much I want something that’s scared the bejezus out of me since my days as a Marine, and I chickened out and told Vince to get lost. Damn if he didn’t do just that, and now I may lose him for real. Permanently. It’s one of those things I can’t bear thinking about, but I can’t pry my feeble brain away from the black hole the prospect of Vinnie’s death threatens to create in my soul. My thoughts orbit around that menace, trapped in its gravity well.

"Roger," Frank interrupts my brooding, and I get the impression from his tone that he’s on the third or fourth repetition of my name. He goes on when he realizes he has my attention again. "We still don’t have anything more on the MacTavish woman. What makes you so sure she’s the Mata Hari type?"

"Instinct," I answer hoarsely. "I’ve played the game a long time, Frank. I know talent when I see it." Of course the fact that I didn’t catch on until it was too late gives me an idea how good she is. Contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m not particularly stupid. My ability to spot trouble is generally reliable, even when I lead with my prick, the way I did with Tess. But she bluffed me completely. Maybe being in love has weakened my brain.

"That’s enough, Mr. McPike," comes an authoritarian voice from somewhere outside my limited field of vision. "Mr. Lococco needs rest, not an interrogation."

Frank’s scowl is eloquent, but he acquiesces, and reluctantly leaves the room. I close my eyes again, ignoring the rustle and bustle of the medical-type who’s fiddling with the monitors and IV lines. I’m asleep again before they finish, blackness washing over me like a tide, and I sink gratefully into that oblivion.

When I wake again, the pain radiating through my gut pulses and burns like a nuclear reactor. It’s been a long time since I’ve been shot up this bad, but it’s happened often enough in the course of my career, both as a Marine in Special Forces, and then as an agent for the CIA, that I can gauge the severity of the injury by the amount of pain I’m in. Part of me embraces it as a penance of the most basic variety for letting myself get sloppy with my advancing age. But most of me wishes it would fade to a dull roar so I could at least try to go back to sleep. I lie there in the dark behind my eyelids, wondering how Vince is doing, whether he’s made it through surgery, and I plan to bribe someone to make sure we end up in the same room, whatever it takes. Hell, thanks to Mel’s millions, I’ve grown a fortune big enough for me to buy the freaking hospital if I have to in order to get my way. It’s several minutes before I realize I’m not alone in my room, and I open my eyes to see Vinnie’s Lifeguard slouched in an uncomfortable-looking chair, one elbow on the armrest, head propped in his hand, dozing. I stir deliberately, wondering if it’ll wake him, then wish I hadn’t moved when pain stabs through me with new vengeance. It’s the groan that wakes him up, and he blinks at me, shifting in his chair to ease the pressure of his prostheses.

"Lococco?" He eyes me, straightening and running a hand through his mane. Dan Burroughs is another one of Vinnie’s fans, one of those people who fell under the Terranova spell early on and doesn’t seem to have found cause to regret it.

"Nugah," I groan, and swallow to wet my throat. "Vince?" I ask. The only subject either of us is interested in.

He looks away, a bad sign if ever there was one. "Not good," he tells me. "How ‘bout you?" he asks, looking back at me, and the genuine concern in his expression startles me. I hadn’t figured on inheriting Vinnie’s friends along with my friendship with him, but Dan doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

"Peachy," I snap. "What’s wrong with me?"

He shrugs. "I’m not a doctor," he states the obvious, "but what they told me was that the bullet that tore Vinnie open hit you coming, an, and ripped your intestines all to hell. You were in surgery for four hours while they patched you up. They think you’ll be fine, but you’re not going to be dining out at ‘le Cirque’ for a while. You’ll be lucky if they give you anything besides Jell-O for the next week or two."

"Oh, joy." I go silent for a minute while I decide whether I want to know how seriously off Vince is. "How bad is it?" I ask eventually, bracing myself. He knows I’ve switched subjects again.

Dan sighs. "They don’t know. He made it through the surgery, but he’s still not conscious. The Docs told us that he took six pints of blood, and that he’s lost part of his spleen, a chunk of his liver, and there’s damage to one of his kidneys, not to mention that he’ll be on the same diet you are if he wakes up any time soon."

Shit. "What are his odds?" I ask next.

"Crappy," Burroughs answers. "They don’t figure he’ll make it through the night. If he does, he still has to make it through another surgery to fix the kidney damage. They didn’t want to keep him on the table any longer, ‘cause he was reacting to the anesthesia, and they were afraid he wasn’t strong enough for them to do it all, right then."

If I wasn’t drugged to the eyeballs right now, I’d be fighting my way out of bed to try and find him. Dan can see it in my face, and he rests a hand on my shoulder, the weight enough to keep me pinned. "You’re not in much better shape, right now," he chastises me, and I snarl silently at him.

"I thought you said I was fine," I demand.

He looks at me for a second. "You feel fine?" he asks sarcastically, waiting for me to get a hold of myself.

"Put me in his room," I say in the voice I developed while I worked for Mel, the one people instinctively know means ‘don’t mess with me, just do it’. "I don’t care what it costs, or whose ass you have to kiss, but get me in with him," I reiterate.

He watches me for a second, obviously wondering how serious I am.

"I mean it, Dan. I don’t care if I have to spend every dime I have to build this place a new wing, or if I have to buy the damned place outright, just get me in to him!" I glare at him. "Now!"

Naturally nothing is simple. Vince is still in recovery, but eventually, Dan finds the right palms to cross with silver, and I’m promised that when they move him to intensive care, they’ll put him in with me. By this time, exhaustion is making my head swim, or maybe it’s the morphine, and I’m fading in and out of consciousness while my doctor, Burroughs and a hand-wringing hospital bureaucrat carry on a hushed conference in a corner of my room.

The end result is that I am suddenly treated a lot differently than I was before the revelation of the fact that I’m obscenely wealthy. They move me into a plush private room big enough for a family of five, and assure me that Vince will be joining me when he recovers from the anesthesia. If he recovers.

I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, and I drift back into the featureless darkness of unconsciousness.

The next time I wake up, sunlight is streaming in the big plate glass windows of my hospital room and some of the fire in my insides has been banked. At least as long as I stay still, I realize, when I try to sit up. Bad decision. I lie there panting and staring at the ceiling for a good ten minutes before the idea of turning my head doesn’t make me nauseous. It’s not until the roaring in my ears dies down that I hear the quiet beep of a monitor that doesn’t match the rhythm of my heartbeat. Vince. Please god, let it be Vince, I think as I turn my head slowly on the pillow and catch sight of my friend and lover lying on a hospital be six feet from me.

I can barely see him under the oxygen mask and the tubing that festoons his bedside, hooking him up to a frightening array of equipment. But what I can see is not in any way reassuring. He looks corpse-like, lying there, his skin colorless and pasty, and his breathing rattles in his chest, what I can hear of irougrough the susurration of the oxygen pumps. He looks as though he’s already vacated the tattered premises of his body. It may be one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like stumbling into some scene from a horror movie, and I can hear the beep of my own heart monitor accelerate as adrenaline hits my bloodstream.

Everything in me wants to touch him, to hold him, and I clench my teeth and force myself into an upright position. For all the good it does me. Blood rushes out of my head and I topple sideways off my bed, tearing the IV free of my arm, and wrenching lose the Foley catheter threaded up my prick like a knitting needle as I land on the floor. Scarlet trickles down my forearm and I figure, what’s a little more blood, at this point? I grip the IV puncture site with my other hand and wait till the bleeding stops, then peel off the heart monitors’ sensor pads, ignoring the shrieking alarms, and stagger first to my knees, then to my feet. I’m at Vinnie’s bedside by the time the nurse comes pelting in, in response to the sudden ruckus from my monitors.

"Mr. Lococco! What the hell do you think you’re doing?" he demands, grabbing me by a shoulder and trying to frog march me back to bed. My grip on Vinnie’s bed rail steadies me, and he’s leery of using the physical force necessary to move me, since I am admittedly fragile at the moment.

"Move my bed closer to his," I demand, beyond the point of being rational, much less polite.

"Mr Lococco, there has to be room to place equipment around your beds," he protests with audible frustration.

I glare at him, and he glares back, then exits the room, presumably for reinforcements.

It takes an hour and a shouting match between Frank McPike and one of the hospital administrators, but I get my way. I’m back in my bed, now at right angles to Vinnie’s, our heads a few feet from each other. The local anesthesia they used on me to reinsert the catheter up my dick has worn off, and that little misery adds itself to the general pain that pulses along my nerves with a beat like a mariachi band. The morphine drip they stuck back in my arm, the other one, this time, since I blew the vein big time, isn’t making much of a dent in it. I can’t say I’m sorry, either. Stupidity should hurt. Particularly when it may cost me a life a whole lot dearer to me than my own.

I roll onto my uninjured side to face Vinnie’s bed, just watching him, counting every breath he takes as a small victory. I reach across the gap that separates us and stroke his hair away from his forehead, memorizing the texture of it, its thick darkness so unlike my own unruly not-quite-red waves. Vince has been trying to convince me to grow mine longer, claiming to like its coarseness. I think he just likes the fact that it tends to make me look like a kid. "Vinnie, sweet thing, I’m not going to let you leave me alone in this place," I warn him. I go on talking to him, not caring if he can hear me or not, needing to hear the sound of a voice, even my own. It’s a long time before enough morphine accumulates in my system to put me to sleep.

****