Marlee Jones scowled, exhibiting an impressive array of gold teeth: bribes, no doubt, from her tenants. She shuffled to a metal desk and opened a bottom drawer and got out a black ledger. “All right, smartass, what was that name?”
“Durkos.” Stranahan spelled it. “A medical group. They were here as of March twelfth, four years ago.”
“Well, as of April first, four years ago, they was gone.”
Marlee started to close the ledger, but Stranahan put his hand on the page. “MayI look?”
“It’s just numbers, mister.”
“A w, let me give it a whirl.” Stranahan took the ledger from Marlee Jones and ran down the columns with his forefinger. The Durkos Medical Trust, Inc., had been sole tenant of the building for two years, but had vacated within weeks after Victoria Barletta’s disappearance. The ledger showed that the company had paid its lease and security deposits through May. Stranahan thought it was peculiar that, after moving out, the medical group never got a refund.
“Maybe they didn’t ask,” Marlee Jones said.
“Doctors are the cheapest human beings alive,” Stranahan said. “For fifteen grand they don’t just ask, they hire lawyers.”
Again Marlee Jones shrugged. “Some people be in a big damn hurry.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Who says I was here?”
“This handwriting in the ledger book-it’s the same as on these receipts.” Stranahan tapped a finger on a pile of rental coupons.
Marlee Jones appeared to be having a spell of high blood pressure.
Stranahan asked again: “So what do you remember?”
With a groan Marlee Jones heaved her bottom into the chair behind the desk. She said, “One night they cleared out. Must’ve backed up a trailer truck, who knows. I came in, the place was empty, except for a bunch of cheapo paintings on the walls. Cats with big eyes, that sorta shit.”
“Were they all surgeons?”
“Seemed like it. But they wasn’t partners.”
“Durkos the main man?”
“Was no Durkos that I heard of. Big man was a Doctor Graveyard, something like that. The other four guys worked for him. How come I know this is, the day after all the stuff is gone, a couple of the other doctors showed up dressed for work. They couldn’t believe their office was emptied.”
Graveline was the name of the surgeon who had operated on Vicky Barletta. There was no point to correcting Marlee Jones on the name. Stranahan said, “This Dr. Graveyard, he didn’t even tell the other doctors about the move?”
“This is Miami, lots of people in a big-time hurry.”
“Yeah, but not many pay in advance.”
Marlee Jones finally laughed. “You right about that.”
“Did anybody leave a forwarding address?”
“Nope.”
Stranahan handed Marlee Jones the ledger book.
“You be through with me?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For good?”
“Most likely.”
“Then can I ask who is it you’re workin’ for?”
“Myself,” said Mick Stranahan.
Since the day that the Durkos Medical Center had ceased to exist, the life of Nurse Maggie Orestes had gotten complicated. She had gone to work in the emergency room at Jackson Hospital, where one night she had met a man named Ricky Gonzalez. The reason for Ricky Gonzalez’s visit to the emergency room was that he had accidentally been run over by a turbo-charged Ferrari during the annual running of the Miami Grand Prix. Ricky was a race-car promoter, and he had been posing for pictures with Lorenzo Lamas in pit row, not paying close attention when the Ferrari had roared in and run over both his feet. Ricky broke a total of fourteen bones, while Lorenzo Lamas escaped without a scratch.
Nurse Maggie Orestes attended to Ricky Gonzalez in the emergency room before they put him under for surgery. He was young, dashing, full of promises-and so cheerful, considering what had happened.
A month later they were married at a Catholic church in Hialeah. Ricky persuaded Maggie to quit nursing and be a full-time hostess for the many important social functions that race-car promoters must necessarily conduct. Maggie had hoped she would come to enjoy car racing and the people involved in it, but she didn’t. It was noisy and stupid and boring, and the people were worse. Maggie and Ricky had some fierce arguments, and she was on the verge of walking out of the marriage when the second pit-row accident happened.
This time it was a Porsche, and Ricky wasn’t so lucky. After the service they cremated him in his complimentary silver Purolator racing jacket, which turned out to be fireproof, so they had to cremate that portion twice. Lorenzo Lamas sent a wreath all the way from Malibu, California. At the wake Ricky’s lawyer came up to Maggie Gonzalez and told her the bad news: First, her husband had no life insurance; second, he had emptied their joint bank accounts to pay for his cocaine habit. Maggie had known nothing about the drug problem, but in retrospect it explained her late husband’s irrepressible high spirits and also his lack of caution around the race track.
A widowhood of destitution did not appeal to Maggie Gonzalez. She went back to being a nurse with a plan to nail herself a rich doctor or at least his money. In eighteen months she had been through three of them, all disasters-a married pediatrician, a divorced radiologist, and a urologist who wore women’s underwear and who wound up giving Maggie a stubborn venereal disease. When she dumped the urologist, he got her fired from the hospital and filed a phony complaint with the state nursing board.
All this left Maggie Gonzalez with a molten hatred of men and a mind for vengeance.
Money is what pushed her to the brink. With the mortgage payment on her duplex coming due, and only eighty-eight bucks in the checking account, Maggie decided to go ahead and do it. Part of the motive was financial desperation, true, but there was also a delicious hint of excitement-payback, to the sonofabitch who’d started it all.
First Maggie used her Visa card to buy a plane ticket to New York, where she caught a cab to the midtown offices of Reynaldo Flemm, the famous television journalist. There she told producer Christina Marks the story of Victoria Barletta, and cut a deal.
Five thousand dollars to repeat it on camera-that’s as high as Reynaldo’s people would go. Maggie Gonzalez was disappointed; it was, after all, one hell of a story.
That night Christina Marks got Maggie a room at the Goreham Hotel, and she lay there watching Robin Leach on TV and worrying about the risks she was taking. She remembered the State Attorney’s investigator who had questioned her nearly four years ago, and how she had lied to him. God, what was she thinking of now? Flemm’s people would fly straight to Miami and interview the investigator-Stranahan was his name-and he’d tell them she’d never said a word about all this when it happened. Her credibility would be shot, and so would the five grand. Out the window.
Maggie realized she had to do something about Stranahan.
And also about Dr. Rudy Graveline.
Graveline was a dangerous creep. To rat on Rudy-well, he had warned her. And rewarded her, in a sense. A decent severance, glowing references for a new job. That was after he closed down the Durkos Center.
Lying there, Maggie got another idea. It was wild, but it just might work. The next morning she went back to Christina Marks and made up a vague story about how she had to go see Investigator Stranahan right away, otherwise no TV show. Reluctantly the producer gave her a plane ticket and six hundred in expenses.
Of course, Maggie had no intention of visiting Mick Stranahan. When she got back to Florida, she drove directly to the Whispering Palms Spa and Surgery Center in beautiful Bal Harbour. Dr. Rudy Graveline was very surprised to see her. He led her into a private office and closed the door.
“You look frightened,” the surgeon said.
“I am.”
“And a little bouncy in the bottom.”
“I eat when I’m frightened,” Maggie said, keeping her cool.
“So what is it?” Rudy asked.
“Vicky Barletta,” she said. “Somebody’s making a fuss.”