Skin Tight (6 page)

“So Gerry's hit the big time,” Stranahan said.

“Yep,” the clerk said.

“What did he say about this case?”

“Mr. Eckert?”

“Yeah, what did he tell this TV guy?”

The clerk said, “Well, I wasn't there for the taping. But from what I heard, Mr. Eckert said the whole thing is still a mystery.”

“Well, that's true enough.”

“And Mr. Eckert told Mr. Flemm that he wouldn't be one bit surprised if someday it turns out that Victoria Barletta ran away. Just took one look at her face and ran away. Otherwise, why haven't they found a body?”

Stranahan thought: Eckert hasn't changed a bit, still dumb as a bull gator.

“I can't wait to see the show,” Stranahan remarked.

“It's scheduled to be on March twelfth at nine P.M.” The clerk held up a piece of paper. “We got a memo from Mr. Eckert today.”

THE
man from New Jersey did not call Dr. Rudy Graveline again for four days. Then, on the afternoon of January eighth, Rudy got a message on his beeper. The beeper went off at a bad moment, when Rudy happened to be screwing the young wife of a Miami Dolphins wide receiver. The woman had come to Whispering Palms for a simple consult—a tiny pink scar along her jawline, could it be fixed?—and the next thing she knew, the doctor had her talking about all kinds of personal things, including how lonely it got at home during the football season when Jake's mind was on the game and nothing else. Well, the next thing she knew, the doctor was taking her to lunch in his black Jaguar sedan with the great Dolby sound system, and the football player's wife found herself thinking how the rich smell of leather upholstery made her hot, really hot, and then—as if he could read her mind—the doctor suddenly pulled off the Julia Tuttle Causeway, parked the Jag in some pepper trees, and started to gnaw her panties off. He even made cute little squirrel noises as he nuzzled between her legs.

Before long the doctor was merrily pounding away while the football player's wife gazed up at him through the spokes of the walnut steering wheel, under which her head had become uncomfortably wedged.

When the beeper went off on Dr. Graveline's belt, he scarcely missed a beat. He glanced down at the phone number (glowing in bright green numerals) and snatched the car phone from its cradle in the glove box. With one hand he managed to dial the long-distance number even as he finished with the football player's wife, who by this time was silently counting down, hoping he'd hurry it up. She'd had about all she could take of the smell of new leather.

Dr. Graveline pulled away just as the phone started ringing somewhere in New Jersey.

The man answered on the fourth ring. “Yeah, what?”

“It's me. Rudy.”

“You been jogging or what?”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds like you're gonna have a fuckin' heart attack.”

Dr. Graveline said: “Give me a second to catch my breath.”

The football player's wife was squirming back into her slacks. The look on her face suggested disappointment at her partner's performance, but Rudy Graveline did not notice.

“About the deal,” he said. “I don't think so.”

Curly Eyebrows in New Jersey said: “Your problem musta gone away.”

“Not really.”

“Then what?”

“I'm going to get somebody local.”

The man in New Jersey started to laugh. He laughed and laughed until he began to wheeze.

“Doc, this is a big mistake. Local is no good.”

“I've got a guy in mind,” Dr. Graveline said.

“A Cuban, right? Crazy fuckin' Cuban, I knew it.”

“No, he's not a Cuban.”

“One of my people?”

“No,” Rudy said. “He's by himself.”

Again Curly Eyebrows laughed. “Nobody is by himself, Doc. Nobody in this business.”

“This one is different,” Rudy said. Different wasn't the word for it. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, so you wouldn't send anybody else.”

“Suit yourself.”

“And I'm sorry about the other fellow.”

“Don't bring up that shit, hear? You're on one of those cellular phones, I can tell. I hate them things, Doc, they ain't safe. They give off all kinds of fucked-up microwaves, anybody can listen in.”

Dr. Graveline said, “I don't think so.”

“Yeah, well, I read where people can listen on their blenders and hair dryers and shit. Pick up everything you say.”

The football player's wife was brushing on fresh makeup, using the vanity mirror on the back of the sun visor.

The man in Jersey said: “Your luck, some broad's pickin' us up on her electric dildo. Every word.”

“Talk to you later,” Rudy said.

“One piece of advice,” said Curly Eyebrows. “This guy you lined up for the job, don't tell him your life story. I mean it, Doc. Give him the name, the address, the dough, and that's it.”

“Oh, I can trust him,” Dr. Graveline said.

“Like hell,” laughed the man in New Jersey, and hung up.

The football player's wife flipped the sun visor up, closed her compact, and said, “Business?”

“Yes, I dabble in real estate.” Rudy zipped up his pants. “I've decided to go with a Miami broker.”

The woman shrugged. She noticed her pink bikini panties on the floormat, and quickly put them in her purse. They were ruined; the doctor had chewed a hole in them.

“Can I drive your car back to the office?” she asked.

“No,” said Rudy Graveline. He got out and walked around to the driver's side. The football player's wife slid across the seat, and Rudy got in.

“I almost forgot,” the woman said, fingering the place on her jaw, “about my scar.”

“A cinch,” the doctor said. “We can do it under local anesthetic, make it smooth as silk.”

The football player's wife smiled. “Really?”

“Oh sure, it's easy,” Rudy said, steering the Jaguar back on the highway. “But I was wondering about something else. . . .”

“Yes?”

“You won't mind some friendly professional advice?”

“Of course not.” The woman's voice held an edge of concern.

“Well, I couldn't help but notice,” Dr. Graveline said, “when we were making love . . .”

“Yes?”

Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached down and patted her hip. “You could use a little suction around the saddle-bags.”

The football player's wife turned away and blinked.

“Please don't be embarrassed,” the doctor said. “This is my specialty, after all. Believe me, darling. I've got an eye for perfection, and you're only an inch or two away.”

She took a little breath and said, “Around the thighs?”

“That's all.”

“How much would it cost?” she asked with a trace of a sniffle.

Rudy Graveline smiled warmly and passed her a monogrammed handkerchief. “Less than you think,” he said.

 

 

THE
cabin cruiser with the camera crew came back again, anchored in the same place. Stranahan sighed and spit hard into the tide. He was in no mood for this.

He was standing on the dock with a spinning rod in his hands, catching pinfish from around the pilings of the stilt house. Suspended motionless in the gin-clear water below was a dark blue log, or so it would have appeared to the average tourist. The log measured about five feet long and, when properly motivated, could streak through the water at about sixty knots to make a kill. Teeth were the trademark of the Great Barracuda, and the monster specimen that Mick Stranahan called Liza had once left thirteen needle-sharp incisors in a large plastic mullet that some moron had trolled through the Biscayne Channel. Since that episode the barracuda had more or less camped beneath Stranahan's place. Every afternoon he went out and caught for its supper a few dollar-sized pinfish, which he tossed off the dock, and which the barracuda devoured in lightning flashes that churned the water and sent the mangrove snappers diving for cover. Liza's teeth had long since grown back.

Because of his preoccupation with the camera boat, Mick Stranahan allowed the last pinfish to stay on the line longer than he should have. It tugged back and forth, sparkling just below the surface until the barracuda ran out of patience. Before Stranahan could react, the big fish rocketed from under the stilt house and severed the majority of the pinfish as cleanly as a scalpel; a quivering pair of fish lips was all that remained on Stranahan's hook.

“Nice shot,” he mumbled and stored the rod away.

He climbed into the skiff and motored off the flat, toward the cabin cruiser. The photographer immediately put down the video camera; Stranahan could see him conferring with the rest of the crew. There was a brief and clumsy attempt to raise the anchor, followed by the sound of the boat's engine whining impotently in the way that cold inboards do. Finally the crew gave up and just waited for the big man in the skiff, who by now was within hailing distance.

A stocky man with a lacquered helmet of black hair and a stiff bottlebrush mustache stood on the transom of the boat and shouted, “Ahoy there!”

Stranahan cut the motor and let the skiff coast up to the cabin cruiser. He tied off on a deck cleat, stood up, and said, “Did I hear you right? Did you actually say
ahoy
?”

The man with the mustache nodded uneasily.

“Where did you learn that, watching pirate movies? Jesus Christ, I can't believe you said that.
Ahoy there!
Give me a break.” Stranahan was really aggravated. He jumped into the bigger boat and said, “Which one of you assholes is Reynaldo Flemm? Let me guess; it's Captain Blood here.”

The stocky man with the mustache puffed out his chest and said, “Watch it, pal!”—which took a certain amount of courage, since Mick Stranahan was holding a stainless-steel tarpon gaff in his right hand. Flemm's crew—an overweight cameraman and an athletic young woman in blue jeans—kept one eye on their precious equipment and the other on the stranger with the steel hook.

Stranahan said, “Why have you been taking my picture?”

“For a story,” Flemm said. “For television.”

“What's the story?”

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

Stranahan frowned. “What's it got to do with Vicky Barletta?”

Reynaldo Flemm shook his head. “In due time, Mr. Stranahan. When we're ready to do the interview.”

Stranahan said, “I'm ready to do the interview now.”

Flemm smiled in a superior way. “Sorry.”

Stranahan slipped the tarpon gaff between Reynaldo Flemm's legs and gave a little jerk. The tip of the blade not only poked through Reynaldo Flemm's Banana Republic trousers, but also through his thirty-dollar thong underpants (flamenco red), which he had purchased at a boutique in Coconut Grove. The cold point of the gaff came to rest on Reynaldo Flemm's scrotum, and at this frightful instant the air rushed from his intestinal tract with a sharp noise that seemed to punctuate Mick Stranahan's request.

“The interview,” he said again to Flemm, who nodded energetically.

But words escaped the television celebrity. Try as he might, Flemm could only burble in clipped phrases. Fear, and the absence of cue cards, had robbed him of cogent conversation.

The young woman in blue jeans stepped forward from the cabin of the boat and said, “Please, Mr. Stranahan, we didn't mean to intrude.”

“Of course you did.”

“My name is Christina Marks. I'm the producer of this segment.”

“Segment of what?” Stranahan asked.

“Of the Reynaldo Flemm show.
In Your Face.
You must have seen it.”

“Never.”

For Reynaldo, Stranahan knew, this was worse than a gaff in the balls.

“Come on,” Christina Marks said.

“Honest,” Stranahan said. “You see a TV dish over on my house?”

“Well, no.”

“There you go. Now, what's this all about? And hurry it up, your man here looks like his legs are cramping.”

Indeed, Reynaldo Flemm was shaking on his tiptoes. Stranahan eased the gaff down just a notch or two.

Christina Marks said: “Do you know a nurse named Maggie Gonzalez?”

“Nope,” Stranahan said.

“Are you sure?”

“Give me a hint.”

“She worked at the Durkos Medical Center.”

“Okay, now I remember.” He had taken her statement the day after Victoria Barletta had vanished. Timmy Gavigan had done the doctor, while Stranahan had taken the nurse. He had scanned the affidavits in the State Attorney's file that morning.