“Oh.” Rudy Graveline appeared calm. “Who?”
“One of the investigators. A man named Stranahan.”
“I don’t remember him,” Rudy said.
“Ido. He’s scary.”
“Did he speak to you?”
Maggie shook her head. “Worse than that,” she said. “Some TV people came to my place. They’re doing a special on missing persons.”
“Christ, don’t tell me.”
“Stranahan’s going to talk.”
Rudy said, “But what does he know?”
Maggie blinked. “I’m worried, Dr. Graveline. It’s going to break open all over again.”
“No way.”
Maggie’s notion was to get Stranahan out of the way. Whether Dr. Graveline bribed him, terrorized him, or worse was immaterial; Rudy could get to anybody. Those who stood in his way either got with the program or got run over. One time another surgeon had done a corrective rhinoplasty on one of Rudy’s botched-up patients, then badmouthed Rudy at a medical society cocktail party. Rudy got so furious that he paid two goons to trash the other doctor’s office, but not before stealing his medical files. Soon, the other doctor’s surgical patients received personal letters thanking them for being so understanding while he battled that terrible heroin addiction, which now seemed to be under control. Well, almost… By the end of the month, the other doctor had closed what was left of his practice and moved to British Columbia.
Maggie Gonzalez was counting on Rudy Graveline to overreact again; she wanted him worried about Stranahan to the exclusion of all others. By the time the doctor turned on the tube and discovered who was the real threat, Maggie would be long gone. And out of reach.
She went on: “They won’t leave me alone, these TV people. They said the case is going to a grand jury. They said Stranahan’s going to testify.” She fished in her purse for a tissue. “I thought you ought to know.”
Rudy Graveline thanked her for coming. He told her not to worry, everything was going to be fine. He suggested she get out of town for a few weeks, and she said that was probably a good idea. He asked if there was anywhere in particular she wanted to go, and she said New York. The doctor said New York is a swell place to visit around Christmas time, and he wrote out a personal check for twenty-five hundred dollars. He recommended that Maggie stay gone for at least a month, and said to call if she needed more money.
When, Maggie said. Not if she needed more money, but when.
Later that same afternoon, Dr. Rudy Graveline had locked his office door and made a telephone call to a seafood restaurant in New Jersey. He talked to a man who probably had curly eyebrows, aman who promised to send somebody down around the first of the year.
On the day that Tony Traviola, the first hit man, arrived to kill Mick Stranahan, Maggie Gonzalez was in a tenth-floor room at the Essex House hotel. The room had a view of Central Park, where Maggie was taking skating lessons at Donald Trump’s ice rink. She planned to lie low for a few more weeks, maybe stop in for a chat at 20/20, A little competition never hurt. Maybe Reynaldo Flemm would get worried enough to jack up his offer. Five grand sucked, it really did.
Dr. Rudy Graveline made an appointment with the second killer for January tenth at three in the afternoon. The man arrived at Whispering Palms a half-hour early and sat quietly in the waiting room, scaring the hell out of the other patients.
Rudy knew him only as Chemo, a cruel but descriptive nickname, for he truly did appear to be in the final grim stages of chemotherapy. Black hair sprouted in random wisps from a blue-veined scalp. His lips were thin and papery, the color of wet cement. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at gawkers with a dull and chilling indifference; the hooded lids blinked slowly, pellucid as a salamander’s. And the skin-the skin is what made people gasp, what emptied the waiting room at Whispering Palms. Chemo’s skin looked like breakfast cereal, like somebody had glued Rice Krispies to every square centimeter of his face.
This, and the fact that he stood six foot nine, made Chemo a memorable sight.
Dr. Graveline was not alarmed, because he knew how Chemo had come to look this way: It was not melanoma, but a freak electrolysis accident in Scranton, many years before. While burning two ingrown hair follicles off the tip of Chemo’s nose, an elderly dermatologist had suffered a crippling stroke and lost all hand-eye coordination. Valiantly the old doctor had tried to complete the procedure, but in so doing managed to incinerate every normal pore within range of the electrified needle. Since Chemo had eaten five Valiums for breakfast, he was fast asleep on the table when the tragedy occurred. When he awoke to find his whole face blistered up like a lobster, he immediately garroted the dermatologist and fled the State of Pennsylvania forever.
Chemo had spent the better part of five years on the lam, seeking medical relief; ointments proved futile, and in fact a faulty prescription had caused the startling Rice Krispie effect. Eventually Chemo came to believe that the only hope was cosmetic surgery, and his quest for a miracle brought him naturally to Florida and naturally into the care of Dr. Rudy Graveline.
At three sharp, Rudy motioned Chemo into the consultation room. Chemo ducked as he entered and shut the door behind him. He sat in an overstaffed chair and blinked moistly at Dr. Graveline.
Rudy said: “And how are we doing today?”
Chemo grunted. “How do you think?”
“When you were here a few weeks ago, we discussed a treatment plan. You remember?”
“Yep,” Chemo said.
“A nd a payment plan, too.”
“How could I forget?” Chemo said.
Dr. Graveline ignored the sarcasm; the man had every right to be bitter.
“Dermabrasion is expensive,” Rudy said.
“I don’t know why,” Chemo said. “You just stick my face in a belt sander, right?”
The doctor smiled patiently. “It’s a bit more sophisticated than that-”
“But the principle’s the same.”
Rudy nodded. “Roughly speaking.”
“So how can it be two hundred bucks a pop?”
“Two hundred and ten,” Rudy corrected. “Because it requires uncommonly steady hands. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”
Chemo smiled at the remark. Rudy wished he hadn’t; the smile was harrowing, a deadly weapon all by itself. Chemo looked like he’d been teething on cinderblocks.
“I did get a job,” he said.
Dr. Graveline agreed that was a start.
“At the Gay Bidet,” Chemo said. “It’s a punk club down on South Beach. I’m a greeter.” Again with the smile.
“A greeter,” said Rudy. “Well, well.”
“I keep out the scum,” Chemo explained.
Rudy asked about the pay. Chemo said he got six bucks an hour, not including tips.
“Not bad,” Rudy said, “but still… “He scribbled some figures on a pad, then took a calculator out of his desk and punched on it for a while. All very dramatic.
Chemo stretched his neck to look. “What’s the damage?”
“I figure twenty-four visits, that’s a minimum,” Rudy said. “Say we do one square inch every session.”
“Shit, just do it all at once.”
“Can’t,” Rudy lied, “not with dermabrasion. Say twenty-four visits at two ten each, that’s-”
“Five thousand and forty dollars,” Chemo muttered. “Jesus H. Christ.”
Dr. Graveline said: “I don’t need it all at once. Give me half to start.”
“J esusH. Christ.”
Rudy put the calculator away.
“I just started at the club a week ago,” Chemo said. “I gotta buy groceries.”
Rudy came around the desk and sat down on the edge. In a fatherly tone he asked: “You have Blue Cross?”
“The fuck, I’m a fugitive, remember?”
“Of course.”
Rudy shook his head and mused. It was all so sad, that a great country like ours couldn’t provide minimal health care to all its citizens.
“So I’m screwed,” Chemo said.
“Not necessarily,” Dr. Graveline rubbed his chin. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a job I need done.”
If Chemo had had eyebrows, they would have arched.