He did not often see his wealthy brother, but that was all right. Dr. Rudy was a busy man, and for that matter so was George. In Miami a good tree trimmer always had his hands fulclass="underline" year-round growth, no real seasons, no time for rest. Mainly you had your black olives and your common ficus tree, but the big problem there wasn’t the branches so much as the roots. A twenty-year-old ficus had a root system could swallow the New York subway. Digging out a big ficus was a bitch. Then you had your exotics: the Australian pines, the melaleucas, and those God-forsaken Brazilian pepper trees, which most people mistakenly called a holly. Things grew like fungus, but George loved them because the roots weren’t so bad and a couple good men could rip one out of the ground, no sweat. His favorite, though, was when people wanted their Brazilian pepper trees trimmed. Invariably these were customers new to Florida, novice suburbanites who didn’t have the heart or the brains to actually kill a living tree. So they’d ask George Graveline to please just trim it back a little, and George would say sure, no problem, knowing that in three months it’d shoot out even bushier than before and strangle their precious hibiscus as sure as a coat-hanger. No denying there was damn good money in the pepper-tree racket.
On the morning of February tenth, George Graveline and his crew were chopping a row of Australian pines off Krome Avenue to make room for a new medium-security federal prison. George and his men were not exactly busting their humps, since it was a government contract and nobody ever came by to check. George was parked in the shade, as usual, eating a roast-beef hoagie and drinking a tall Budweiser. The driver’s door of the truck was open and the radio was on a country-music station, though the only time you could hear the tunes was between the grinding roars of the wood chipper, which was hooked to the bumper of George Graveline’s truck. The intermittent screech of the machine didn’t disturb George at all; he had grown accustomed to hearing only fragments of Merle Haggard on the radio and to letting his imagination fill in the musical gaps.
Just as he finished the sandwich, George glanced in the rear-view and noticed a big blond man with one arm in a sling. The man wore blue jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt with the left sleeve cut away. He was standing next to the wood chipper, watching George’s crew chief toss pine stumps into the steel maw.
George swung out of the truck and said, “Hey, not so close.”
The man obligingly took a step backward. “That’s some machine. “ He gestured at the wood chipper. “Looks brand new.”
“Had her a couple years,” George Graveline said. “You looking for work?”
“ Naw,” the man said, “not with this bum wing. Actually I was looking for the boss. George Graveline.”
George wiped the hoagie juice off his hands. “That’s me,” he said.
The crew chief heaved another pine limb into the chipper. The visitor waited for the buzzing to stop, then he said, “George, my name is Mick Stranahan.”
“Howdy, Mick.” George stuck out his right hand. Stranahan shook it.
“George, we don’t know each other, but I feel like I can talk to you. Man to man.”
“Sure.”
“It’s about your little brother.”
“Rudolph?” Warily George folded his big arms.
“Yes, George,” Stranahan said. “See, Rudy’s been trying to killme lately.”
“Huh?”
“Can you believe it? First he hires some mobster to do the hit, now he’s got the world’s tallest white man with the world’s worst case of acne. I don’t know what to tell you, but frankly it’s got me a little pissed off.” Stranahan looked down at his sling. “This is from a.45-caliber machine gun. Honestly, George, wouldn’t you be upset, too?”
George Graveline rolled the tip of his tongue around the in-sides of his cheeks, like he was probing for a lost wad of Red Man. The crew chief automatically kept loading hunks of pine into the wood chipper, which spit them out the chute as splinters and sawdust. Stranahan motioned to George that they should go sit in the truck and talk privately, where it was more quiet.
Stranahan settled in on the passenger side and turned down the country music. George said, “Look, mister, I don’t know who you are but-”
“I told you who I am.”
“Your name is all you said.”
“I’m a private investigator, George, if that helps. A few years back I worked for the State Attorney. On murder cases, mostly.”
George didn’t blink, just stared like a toad. Stranahan got a feeling that the man was about to punch him.
“Before you do anything incredibly stupid, George, listen for a second.”
George leaned out the door of the truck and hollered for the crew chief to take lunch. The whine of the wood chipper died, and suddenly the two men were drenched in silence.
“Thank you,” Stranahan said.
“So talk.”
“On March 12, 1986, your brother performed an operation on a young woman named Victoria Barletta. Something terrible happened, George, and she died on the operating table.”
“No way.”
“Your brother Rudy panicked. He’d already been in a shitload of trouble over his state medical license-and killing a patient, well, that’s totally unacceptable. Even in Florida. I think Rudy was just plain scared.”
George Graveline said, “You’re full of it.”
“The case came through my office as an abduction-possible-homicide. Everybody assumed the girl was snatched from a bus bench in front of your brother’s clinic because that’s what he told us. But now, George, new information has come to light.”
“What kind of information?”
“The most damaging kind,” Mick Stranahan said. “And for some reason, your brother thinks that I am the one who’s got it. But I’m not, George.”
“So I’ll tell him to leave you alone.”
“That’s very considerate, George, but I’m afraid it’s not so simple. Things have gotten out of hand. I mean, look at my damn shoulder.”
“ Mmmm,” said George Graveline.
Stranahan said, “Getting back to the young woman. Her body was never found, not a trace. That’s highly unusual.”
“It is?”
“Yes, itis.”
“So?”
“So, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about what happened, would you?”
George said, “You got some nerve.”
“Yes, I suppose I do. But how about answering the question?”
“How about this,” said George Graveline, reaching for Mick Stranahan’s throat.
With his good arm Stranahan intercepted George’s toad-eyed lunge. He seized one of the tree-trimmer’s stubby thumbs and twisted it clean out of the socket. It made a faintly audible pop, like a bottle of flat champagne. George merely squeaked as the color flooded from his face. Stranahan let go of the limp purple thumb, and George pinched it between his knees, trying to squeeze away the pain.
“Boy, I’m really sorry,” Stranahan said.
George grabbed at himself and gasped, “You get out of here!”
“Don’t you want to hear the rest of my theory, the one I’m going to tell the cops? About how you tossed that poor girl’s body into the wood chipper just to save your brother’s butt?”
“Go on,” George Graveline cried, “before I shoot you myself.”
Mick Stranahan got out of George’s truck, shut the door and leaned in through the open window. “I think you’re over-reacting,” he said to the tree trimmer. “I really do.”
“Eat shit,” George replied, wheezing.
“Fine,” Stranahan said. “I just hope you’re not this rude to the police.”
Christina Marks was dreading her reunion with Reynaldo Flemm. They met at twelve-thirty in the lobby of the Sonesta. She said, “You’ve done something to your hair.”
“I let it grow,” Flemm said self-consciously. “Where’ve you been, anyway? What’s the big secret?”
Christina couldn’t get over the way he looked. She circled him twice, staring.
“Ray, nobody’s hair grows that fast.”
“It’s been a couple weeks.”
“But it’s all the way to your shoulders.”
“So what?”
“And it’s so yellow.”
“Blond, goddammit.”
“And so… kinky.”
Stiffly, Reynaldo Flemm said, “It was time for a new look.”