The very next day Maggie Gonzalez took a cab to the office of Dr. Leonard Leaper on the corner of 50th Street and Lexington. Dr. Leaper was a nationally renowned and internationally published plastic surgeon; Maggie had read up on him in the journals. “You have a decent reputation,” she told Dr. Leaper. “I hope it’s not just hype.” Her experiences in Dr. Rudy Graveline’s surgical suite had taught her to be exceedingly careful when choosing a physician.
Neutrally Dr. Leaper said, “What can I do for you, young lady?”
“The works,” Maggie replied.
“The works?”
“I want a bleph, a lift, and I want the hump taken out of this nose. Also, I want you to trim the septum so it looks like this.” With a finger she repositioned the tip of her nose at a perky, Sandy Duncan-type angle. “See?”
Dr. Leaper nodded.
“I’m a nurse,” Maggie.said. “I used to work for a plastic surgeon.”
“I figured something like that,” Dr. Leaper said. “Why do you want these operations?”
“None of your business.”
Dr. Leaper said, “Miss Gonzalez, if indeed you worked for a surgeon then you understand I’ve got to ask some personal questions. There are good reasons for elective cosmetic surgery and bad reasons, good candidates and poor candidates. Some patients believe it will solve all their problems, and of course it won’t-”
“Cut the crap,” Maggie said, “and take my word: Surgery will definitely solve my problem.”
“W hich is?”
“None of your business.”
Dr. Leaper stood up. “Then I’m afraid I can’t help.”
“You guys are all alike,” Maggie complained.
“No, we’re not,” Dr. Leaper said. “That’s why you’re here. You wanted somebody good.”
His composure was maddening. Maggie said, “All right-will you do the surgery if I tell you the reason?”
“If it’s a good one,” the doctor replied.
She said, “I need a new face.”
“Why?”
“Because I am about to… testily against someone.”
Dr. Leaper said, “Can you tell me more?”
“It’s a serious matter, and I expect he’ll send someone to find me before it’s over. I don’t want to be found.”
Dr. Leaper said, “But surgery can only do so much-”
“Look, I’ve seen hundreds of cases, and I know good results from bad results. I also know the limitations of the procedures. You just do the nose, the neck, the eyes, maybe a plastic implant in the chin… and let me and Lady Clairol do the rest. I guarantee the bastard won’t recognize me.”
Dr. Leaper locked his hands. In a grave voice he said, “Let me understand: You’re a witness in a criminal matter?”
“Undoubtedly,” Maggie said. “A homicide, to be exact.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And I must testify, Doctor.” The word testify was a stretch, but it wasn’t far from the truth. “It’s the right thing for me to do,” Maggie asserted.
“Yes,” said Dr. Leaper, without conviction.
“So, you see why I need your help.”
The surgeon sighed. “Why should I believe you?”
Maggie said, “Why should I lie? If it weren’t an emergency, don’t you think I would have had this done a long time ago, when I could’ve got a deal on the fees?”
“I suppose so.”
“Please, Doctor. It’s not vanity, it’s survival. Do my face, you’ll be saving a life.”
Dr. Leaper opened his schedule book. “I’ve got a lipo tomorrow at two, but I’m going to bump him for you. Don’t eat or drink anything after midnight-”
“I know the routine,” Maggie Gonzalez said ebulliently. “Thank you very much.”
“It’s all right.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?” said Dr. Leaper, cocking one gray eyebrow.
“I was wondering if there’s any chance of a professional discount? I mean, since I am nurse.”
Mick Stranahan stood on the curb outside LaGuardia Airport and watched Reynaldo Flemm climb into a long black limousine. The limo driver, holding the door, eyed Reynaldo’s new hair and looked to Christina Marks for a clue. She said something quietly to the driver, then waved good-bye to Reynaldo in the backseat. Through the smoked gray window Stranahan thought he saw Flemm shoot him a bitter look as the limo pulled away.
“I don’t like this place,” Stranahan muttered, his breath frosty.
“What places do you like?” Christina asked.
“Old Rhodes Key. That’s one place you won’t see frozen spit on the sidewalk. Fact, you won’t even see a sidewalk.”
“You old curmudgeon.” Christina said it much too sarcastically for Stranahan. “Come on, let’s get a cab.”
Her apartment was off 72nd Street on the Upper East Side. Third floor, one bedroom with a small kitchen and a garden patio scarcely big enough for a Norway rat. The furniture was low and modern: glass, chrome, and sharp angles. One of those sofas you put together like a jigsaw puzzle. Potted plants occupied three of the four corners in the living room. On the main wall hung a vast and frenetic abstract painting.
Stranahan took a step back and studied it. “Boy, I don’t know,” he said.
From the bedroom came Christina’s voice. “You like it?”
“Not really,” Stranahan said.
When Christina walked out, he saw that she had changed to blue jeans and a navy pullover sweater. She stood next to him in front of the painting and said, “It’s supposed to be springtime. Spring in the city.”
“Looks like an Amoco station on fire.”
“Thank you,” Christina said. “Such a sensitive man.”
Stranahan shrugged. “Let’s go. I gotta check in.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” She gave it a beat. “On the sectional.”
“The sectional? I don’t think so.”
“It’s safer than a hotel, Mick.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Christina said, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“It’s not me I was thinking of. Believe it or not.”
“Sorry. Please stay.”
“The Great Reynaldo will not be pleased.”
“All the more reason,” Christina said.
They ate a late lunch at a small Italian restaurant three blocks from Christina’s apartment. She ordered a pasta salad and Perrier, while Stranahan had spaghetti and meatballs and two beers. Then they took a taxi to the Plaza Hotel.
“She’s here?” Christina asked, once in the lobby and again in the elevator.
Stranahan knocked repeatedly on the door to Maggie Gonzalez’s room, but no one answered. Maggie was in bed, coasting through a codeine dreamland with a brand-new face that she had not yet seen. The sound of Mick Stranahan’s knocking was but a muffled drumbeat in her delicious pharmaceutical fog, and Maggie paid it no attention. It would be hours before the drumming returned, and by then she would be conscious enough to stumble toward the door.
Her big mistake had been to call Dr. Rudy Graveline four days earlier when she had gotten the message on her machine in Miami. Curiosity had triumphed over common sense; Maggie had been dying for an update on the Stranahan situation. She needed to stay close to Rudy, but not too close. It was a dicey act. She wanted the doctor to believe that they were on the same side, his side. She also wanted to keep the expense money coming.
The phone call, though, had been peculiar. At first Dr. Graveline had seemed relieved to hear her voice. But the more questions Maggie had asked-about Stranahan, the TV people, the money situation-the more remote the doctor had become, his voice getting tighter and colder on the other end. Finally Rudy had said that something had come up in the office, could he call her right back? Certainly, Maggie had said and-stupidly, it turned out-had given Rudy the phone number at the hotel. Days later the doctor still had not called back, and Maggie wondered why in the hell he had tried to reach her in the first place.
The answer was simple.
On the thirteenth of February, the man known as Chemo got off a Pan Am flight from Miami to New York. He wore a dusty broad-brimmed hat pulled down tightly to shadow his igneous face, a calfskin golf-bag cover snapped over his left arm to conceal the prosthesis, a pea-green woolen overcoat to protect against the winter wind, and heavy rubber-soled shoes to combat the famous New York City slush. He also had in his possession a Rapala fishing knife, the phone number of a man in Queens who would sell him a gun, and a slip of prescription paper on which were written these words in Dr. Rudy Graveline’s spastic scrawclass="underline" “Plaza Hotel, Rm. 966.”