His coppery hair had fallen out in thickets, revealing patches of pale freckled scalp. His face, once round and florid, looked like somebody had let the air out.
From his hospital bed Timmy Gavigan said, “Mick, can you believe this fucking food?” He picked up a chunk of gray meat off the tray and held it up with two fingers, like an important piece of evidence. “This is your government in action, Mick. Same fuckers that want to put lasers in outer space can’t fry a Salisbury steak.”
Stranahan said, “I’ll go get us some take-out.”
“Forget it.”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I got about five gallons of poison in my bloodstream, Mick. Some new formula, experimental super juice. I told ‘em to go ahead, why the hell not? If it kills just one of those goddamn cells, then I’m for it.”
Stranahan smiled and sat down.
“A man came out to see me the other day. He was using your name, Tim.”
Gavigan’s laugh rattled. “Not too bright. Didn’t he know we was friends?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. He was telling people he was you, trying to find out where my house was.”
“But he didn’t tell you he was me?”
“No,” Stranahan said.
Gavigan’s blue eyes seemed to light up. “Did he find your place?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And?”
Stranahan thought about how to handle it.
“Hey, Mick, I haven’t got loads of time, okay? I mean, I could check out of this life any second now, so don’t make me choke the goddamn story out of you.”
Stranahan said, “It turns out he was a bad guy from back East. Killer for the mob.”
“Was?” Gavigan grinned. “So that’s it. And here I thought you’d come by just to see how your old pal was hanging in.”
“That, too,” Stranahan said.
“But first you want me to help you figure it out, how this pasta-breath tied us together.”
“I don’t like the fact he was using your name.”
“How d’you think I feel?” Gavigan handed Stranahan the dinner tray and told him to set it on the floor. He folded his papery hands on his lap, over the thin woolen blanket. “How would he know we was friends, Mick? You never call, never send candy. Missed my birthday three years in a row.”
“That’s not true, Timmy. Two years ago I sent a strip-o-gram.”
“You sent that broad? I thought she just showed up lonely at the station and picked out the handsomest cop. Hell, Mick, I took her to Grand Bahama for a week, damn near married her.”
Stranahan was feeling better; Timmy knew something. Stranahan could tell from the eyes. It had come back to him.
Gavigan said, “Mick, that girl had the finest nipples I ever saw. I meant to thank you.”
“Anytime.”
“Like Susan B. Anthony dollars, that’s how big they were. Same shape, too. Octagonal.” Gavigan winked. “You remember the Barletta thing?”
“Sure.” A missing-person’s case that had turned into a possible kidnap. The victim was a twenty-two-year-old University of Miami student. Victoria Barletta: brown eyes, black hair, five eight, one hundred and thirty pounds. Disappeared on a rainy March afternoon.
Still unsolved.
“We had our names in the paper,” Gavigan said. “I still got the clipping.”
Stranahan remembered. There was a press conference. Victoria’s parents offered a $10,000 reward. Timmy was there from Homicide, Stranahan from the State Attorney’s Office. Both of them were quoted in the story, which ran on the front pages of the Herald and the Miami News.
Gavigan coughed in a way that startled Mick Stranahan. It sounded like Timmy’s lungs had turned to custard.
“Hand me that cup,” Gavigan said. “Know what? That was the only time we made the papers together.”
“Timmy, we got in the papers all the time.”
“Yeah, but not together.” He slurped down some ginger ale and pointed a pale bony finger at Stranahan. “Not together, bucko, trust me. I save all the clippings for my scrapbook. Don’t you?”
Stranahan said no.
“You wouldn’t.” Gavigan hacked out a laugh.
“S o you think this Mafia guy got it out of the papers?”
“Not the Mafia guy,” Gavigan said, “but the guy who hired him. It’s a good possibility.”
“The Barletta thing was four years ago, Timmy.”
“Hey, I ain’t the only one who keeps scrapbooks.”
He yawned. “Think hard on this, Mick, it’s probably important.”
Stranahan stood up and said, “You get some rest, buddy.”
“I’m glad you took care of that prick who was using my name.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do.” Gavigan smiled. “Anyway, I’m glad you took care of him. He had no business lying like that, using my name.”
Stranahan pulled the blanket up to his friend’s neck.
“Good night, Timmy.”
“Be careful, Mick,” the old cop said. “Hey, and when I croak, you save the newspaper clipping, okay? Glue it on the last page of my scrapbook.”
“It’s a promise.”
“Unless it don’t make the papers.”
“It’ll makethedamn papers,” Stranahan said. “Buriedback in the truss ads, where you belong.”
Timmy Gavigan laughed so hard, he had to ring the nurse for oxygen.
3
Four days after the Mafia man came to murder him, Mick Stranahan got up early and took the skiff to the marina. There he jump-started his old Chrysler Imperial and drove down to Gables-by-the-sea, a ritzy but misnomered neighborhood where his sister Kate lived with her degenerate lawyer husband and three teenaged daughters from two previous marriages (his, not hers). The subdivision was nowhere near the ocean but fronted a series of man-made canals that emptied into Biscayne Bay. No one complained about this marketing deception, as it was understood by buyers and sellers alike that Gables-by-the-sea sounded much more toney than Gables-on-the-Canal. The price of the real estate duly reflected this exaggeration.
Stranahan’s sister lived in a big split-level house with five bedrooms, a swimming pool, a sauna, and a putting green in the yard. Her lawyer husband even bought a thirty-foot sailboat to go with the dock out back, although he couldn’t tell his fore from his aft. The sight of the sparkling white mast poking over the top of the big house made Stranahan shake his head as he pulled into the driveway-Kate’s husband was positively born for South Florida.
When Stranahan’s sister came to the door, she said, “Well, look who’s here.”
Stranahan kissed her and said, “Is Jocko home?”
“His name’s not Jocko.”
“He’s a circus ape, Katie, that’s a fact.”
“His name’s not Jocko, so lay off.”
“ Where’s the blue Beemer?”
“W e traded it.”
Stranahan followed his sister into the living room, where one of the girls was watching MTV and never looked up.
“Traded for what?”
“A Maserati,” Kate said, adding: “The sedan, not the sporty one.”
“Perfect,” Stranahan said.
Kate made a sad face, and Stranahan gave her a little hug; it killed him to think his little sister had married a sleazeball ambulance chaser. Kipper Garth’s face was on highway billboards up and down the Gold Coast-”If you’ve had an accident, somebody somewhere owes you money!!! Dial 555-TORT.” Kipper Garth’s firm was called The Friendly Solicitors, and it proved to be a marvelously lucrative racket. Kipper Garth culled through thousands of greedy complainants, dumping the losers and farming out the good cases to legitimate personal-injury lawyers, with whom he would split the fees fifty-fifty. In this way Kipper Garth made hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever setting his Bally loafers on a courtroom floor, which (given his general ignorance of the law) was a blessing for his clients.
“He’s playing tennis,” Kate said.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” Stranahan told her. “You know how I feel.”
“I wish you’d give him a chance, Mick. He’s got some fine qualities.”
If you like tapeworms, Stranahan thought. He could scarcely hear Kate over the Def Leppard video on the television, so he motioned her to the kitchen.