Skin Tight (41 page)

“Really?”

“To Costa Rica. The climate is ideal for your recovery.”

“For how long?”

Rudy said, “A month or two, maybe longer. As long as it takes, darling.”

“But I'm supposed to do a
Password
with Betty White.”

“Out of the question,” said Rudy. “You're in no condition for that type of stress. Now get some sleep.”

“What's that noise?” she asked, lifting her head.

“The doorbell, sweetheart. Lie still now.”

“Costa Rica,” Heather murmured. “Where's that, anyhow?”

Rudy kissed her on the forehead and told her he loved her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

Whoever was at the door was punching the button like it was a jukebox. Rudy hurried down the stairs and checked through the glass peephole.

Chemo signaled mirthlessly back at him.

“Shit.” Rudy sighed, thought of his Jaguar, and opened the door.

“Why did you destroy my car?”

“Teach you some manners,” Chemo said. Another bandaged woman stood at his side.

“Maggie?” Rudy Graveline said. “Is that you?”

Chemo led her by the hand into the big house. He found the living room and made himself comfortable in an antique rocking chair. Maggie Gonzalez sat on a white leather sofa. Her eyes, which were Rudy's only clue to her mood, seemed cold and hostile.

Chemo said, “Getting jerked around is not my favorite thing. I ought to just kill you.”

“What good would that do?” Rudy said. He stepped closer to Maggie and asked, “Who did your face?”

“Leaper,” she said.

“Leonard Leaper? Up in New York? I heard he's good—mind if I look?”

“Yes,” she said, recoiling. “Rogelio, make him get away!”

“Rogelio?” Rudy looked quizzically at Chemo.

“It's your fucking fault,” he said. “That's the name you put on the tickets. Now leave her alone.” Chemo stopped rocking. He eyed Rudy Graveline as if he were a palmetto bug.

The surgeon sat near Maggie on the white leather sofa and said to Chemo, “So how're the dermabrasions healing?”

Self-consciously the killer's hand went to his chin. “All of a sudden you're concerned about my face. Now that you're afraid.”

“Well, you look good,” Rudy persisted. “Really, it's a thousand percent improvement.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

Irritably Maggie said, “Let's get to the point, okay? I want to get out of here.”

“The money,” Chemo said to the doctor. “We decided on one million, even.”

“For what!” Rudy was trying to stay cool, but his tone was trenchant.

Chemo started rocking again. “For everything,” he said. “For Maggie's videotape. For Stranahan. For stopping that TV show about the dead girl. That's worth a million dollars. In fact, the more I think about it, I'd say it's worth two.”

Rudy folded his arms and said, “You do everything you just said, and I'll gladly give you a million dollars. As of now, you get nothing but expenses because you haven't done a damn thing but stir up trouble.”

“That's not true,” Maggie snapped.

“We've been busy,” Chemo added. “We got a big surprise.”

Rudy said, “I've got a big surprise, too. A malpractice suit. And guess whose name is on the witness list?”

He jerked an accusing thumb at Maggie, who said, “That's news to me.”

Rudy went on, “Some fellow named Nordstrom. Lost his eye in some freak accident and now it's all my fault.”

Maggie said, “I never heard of a Nordstrom.”

“Well, your name is right there in the file. Witness for the plain-tiff. Why should I pay you people a dime?”

“All the more reason,” Chemo said. “I believe it's called hush money.”

“No,” said the doctor, “that's not the way it goes.”

Chemo stood up from the rocker. He took two large steps across the living room and punched Rudy Graveline solidly in the gut. The doctor collapsed in a gagging heap on the Persian carpet. Chemo turned him over with one foot. Then he cranked up the Weed Whacker.

“Oh God,” cried Rudy, raising his hands to shield his eyes. Quickly Maggie moved out of the way, her facial bandages crinkled in trepidation.

“I got a new battery,” Chemo said. “A Die-Hard. Watch this.”

He started weed-whacking Rudy's fine clothes. First he shredded the shirt and tie, then he tried trimming the curly brown hair on Rudy's chest. The doctor yelped pitiably as nasty pink striations appeared beneath his nipples.

Chemo was working the machine toward Rudy's pubic zone when he spied something inside the tattered lining of the surgeon's tan coat. He turned off the Weed Whacker and leaned down for a closer look.

With his good hand Chemo reached into the silky entrails of Rudy's jacket and retrieved the severed corner of a one-hundred-dollar bill. Excitedly he probed around until he found more: handfuls, blessedly unshredded.

Chemo spread the money on the coffee table, beneath which Rudy thrashed and moaned impotently. The stricken surgeon observed the accounting firsthand, gazing up through the frosted glass. As the cash grew to cover the table, Rudy's face hardened into a mask of abject disbelief. On his way back from the church he had meant to stop at the clinic and return the money to the drop safe. Now it was too late.

“Count it,” Chemo said to Maggie.

Excitedly she riffled through the bills. “Nine thousand two hundred,” she reported. “The rest is all chopped up.”

Chemo dragged Dr. Graveline from under the coffee table. “Why you carrying this much cash?” he said. “Don't tell me the Jag dealer won't take credit cards.” His moist salamander eyes settled on the black Samsonite, which Rudy had stupidly left in the middle of the hallway.

Rudy sniffled miserably as he watched Chemo kick open the suitcase and crouch down to count the rest of the money. “Well, well,” said the killer.

“What are you going to do with it?” the doctor asked.

“Gee, I think we'll give it to the United Way. Or maybe Jerry's kids.” Chemo walked over to Rudy and poked his bare belly with the warm head of the Weed Whacker. “What the hell you think we're going to do with it? We're gonna spend it, and then we're gonna come back for more.”

After they had gone, Dr. Rudy Graveline sprawled on the rumpled Persian carpet for a long time, thinking: This is what a Harvard education has gotten me—extorted, beaten, stripped, scandalized, and chopped up like an artichoke. The doctor's fingers gingerly explored the tumescent stripes that crisscrossed his chest and abdomen. If it didn't sting so much, the sight would be almost comical.

It occurred to Rudy Graveline that Chemo and Maggie had forgotten to tell him their big secret, whatever it was they had done, whatever spectacular felony they had committed to earn this first garnishment.

And it occurred to Rudy that he wasn't all that curious. In fact, he was somewhat relieved not to know.

THE
man from the medical examiner's office took one look in the back of the tree truck and said: “Mmmm, lasagna.”

“That's very funny,” said Al García. “You oughta go on the Carson show. Do a whole routine on stiffs.”

The man from the medical examiner's office said, “Al, you gotta admit—”

“I told you what happened.”

“—but you gotta admit, there's a humorous aspect.”

Coroners made Al García jumpy; they always got so cheery when somebody came up with a fresh way to die.

The detective said, “If you think it's funny, fine. You're the one's gotta do the autopsy.”

“First I'll need a casserole dish.”

“Hilarious,” said García. “Absolutely hilarious.”

The man from the medical examiner's office told him to lighten up, said everybody needs a break in the monotony, no matter what line of work. “I get tired of gunshot wounds,” the coroner said. “It's like a damn assembly line down there. GSW head, GSW thorax, GSW neck—it gets old, Al.”

García said, “Listen, go ahead, make your jokes. But I need you to keep this one outta the papers.”

“Good luck.”

The detective knew it wouldn't be easy to keep the lid on George Graveline's death. Seven squad cars, an ambulance, and a body wagon—even in Miami, that'll draw a crowd. The gawkers were being held behind yellow police ribbons strung along Crandon Boulevard. Soon the minicams would arrive, and the minicams could zoom in for close-ups.

“I need a day or two,” García said. “No press, and no next of kin.”

The man from the medical examiner shrugged. “It'll take at least that long to make the I.D., considering what's left. I figure we'll have to go dental.”

“Whatever.”

“I'll need to impound the truck,” the coroner said. “And this fancy toothpick machine.”

García said he would have them both towed downtown.

The coroner stuck his head into the maw of the wood chipper and examined the blood-smeared blades. “There ought to be bullet fragments,” he said, “somewhere in this mess.”

García said, “Hey, Sherlock, I told you what happened. I shot the asshole, okay? My gun, my bullets.”

“Al, don't take all the fun out of it.” The man from the medical examiner reached into the blades of the wood chipper and carefully plucked out an item that the untrained eye would have misidentified as a common black woolly-bear caterpillar.

The coroner held it up for Al García to see.

The detective frowned. “What, do I get a prize or something? It's a sideburn, for Chrissakes.”

“Very good,” said the coroner.

García flicked the soggy nub of his cigar into the bushes and went looking for George Graveline's crew of tree trimmers. There were three of them sitting somberly in the backseat of a county patrol car. Al García got in front, on the passenger side. He turned around and spoke to them through the cage. The men's clothes smelled like pot. García asked if any of them had seen what had happened, and to a one they answered no, they'd been on their lunch break. The officers from Internal Review had asked the same thing.

“If you didn't see anything,” García said, “then you don't have much to tell the reporters, right?”

In unison the tree trimmers shook their heads.

“Including the name of the alleged victim, right?”

The tree trimmers agreed.

“This is damned serious,” said García. “I don't believe you boys would purposely obstruct a homicide investigation, would you?”

The tree trimmers promised not to say a word to the media. Al García asked a uniformed cop to give the men a lift home, so they wouldn't have to walk past the minicams on their way to the bus stop.

By this time, the ambulance was backing out, empty. García knocked on the driver's window. “Where's the guy you were working on?”

“Blunt head wound?”

“Right. Big blond guy.”

“Took off,” said the ambulance driver. “Gobbled three Darvocets and said so long. Wouldn't even let us wrap him.”

García cursed and bearishly swatted at a fresh-cut buttonwood branch.

The ambulance driver said, “You see him, be sure and tell him he oughta go get a skull X-ray.”

“You know what you'd find?” García said. “Shit for brains, that's what.”

 

 

REYNALDO
Flemm picked up an attractive young woman at a nightclub called Biscayne Baby in Coconut Grove. He took her to his room at the Grand Bay Hotel and asked her to wait while he ran the water in the Roman tub. Still insecure about his impugned physique, Reynaldo didn't want the young woman to see him naked in the bright light. He lowered himself into the bath, covered the vital areas with suds, double-checked himself in the mirrors, then called for the young woman to join him. She came in the bathroom, stripped, and climbed casually into the deep tub. When Reynaldo tickled her armpits with his toes, the young woman politely pushed his legs away.

“So, what do you do?” he asked.

“I told you, I'm a legal secretary.”

“Oh, yeah.” When Reynaldo got semi-blitzed on screwdrivers, his short-term memory tended to vapor-lock. “You probably recognize me,” he said to the young woman.

“I told you already—no.”

Reynaldo said, “Normally my hair's black. I colored it this way for a reason.”

He had revived the Johnny LeTigre go-go dancer disguise for his confrontation with Dr. Rudy Graveline. He had dyed his hair brown and slicked it straight back with a wet comb. He looked like a Mediterranean sponge diver.

“Imagine me with black hair,” he said to the legal secretary, who flicked a soap bubble off her nose and said no, she still wouldn't recognize him.

He said, “You get TV, right? I'm Reynaldo Flemm.”

“Yeah?”

“From
In Your Face.
”

“Oh, sure.”

“Ever seen it?”

“No,” said the secretary, “but I don't watch all that much television.” She was trying to be nice. “I think I've seen your commercials,” she said.

Flemm shrunk lower in the tub.

“Is it, like, a game show?” the woman asked.

“No, it's a news show. I'm an investigative reporter.”

“Like that guy on
60 Minutes
?”

Reynaldo bowed his head. Feeling guilty, the secretary slid across the tub and climbed on his lap. She said, “Hey, I believe you.”