Skin Tight (14 page)

Tina thought it was the most breathtaking thing she had ever seen, even better than Old Faithful. In the glow from the blaze she looked up at Stranahan's face and saw concern.

“Somebody living there?” she said.

“No.” Stranahan watched Old Man Chitworth's windmill fall, the flaming blades spinning faster in descent. It hit the water with a sizzle and hiss.

“What started the fire?” Tina asked.

“Arson,” Stranahan said matter-of-factly, “I heard a boat.”

“Maybe it was an accident,” she suggested. “Maybe somebody tossed a cigarette.”

“Gasoline,” Stranahan said. “I smelled it.”

“Wow. Whoever owns that place has some serious enemies, I guess.”

“The man who owns that place just turned eighty-three,” Stranahan said. “He's on tubes in a nursing home, all flaked out. Thinks he's Eddie Rickenbacker.”

A gust of wind prompted Tina to rearrange her sheet. She got a shiver and edged closer to Mick. She said, “Some harmless old geezer. Then I don't get it.”

Stranahan said, “Wrong house, that's all.” He hopped off the rail. “Somebody fucked up.” So much for paradise, he thought; so much for peace and tranquility.

Across the bay, from Dinner Key, came the whine of toy-like sirens.

Stranahan didn't need binoculars to see the flashing blue dots from the advancing police boats.

Tina clutched his hand. She couldn't take her eyes off the fire. “Mick, have you got enemies like that?”

“Hell, I've got
friends
like that.”

 

 

BY
midmorning the Chitworth house had burned to the waterline, and the flames died. All that remained sticking out were charred tips of the wood pilings, some still smoldering.

Tina was reading on a deck chair and Stranahan was doing push-ups when the marine patrol boat drove up and stopped. It was Luis Córdova and another man whom Stranahan did not expect.

“Now, there's something you don't see every day,” Stranahan announced, plenty loud. “Two Cubans in a boat, and no beer.”

Luis Córdova grinned. The other man climbed noisily up on the dock and said, “And here's something else you don't see every day: An Irishman up before noon, and still sober.”

The man's name was Al García, a homicide detective for the Metro-Dade police. His JCPenney coat jacket was slung over one arm, and his shiny necktie was loosened halfway down his chest. García was not wild about boat rides, so he was in a gruff and unsettled mood. Also, there was the matter of the dead body.

“What dead body?” Mick Stranahan said.

Badger-like, García shuffled up the stairs to the house, with Stranahan and Luis Córdova following single file. García gave the place the once-over and waved courteously to Tina on her lounge chair. The detective half-turned to Stranahan and in a low voice said, “What, you opened a halfway house for bimbos! Mick, you're a freaking saint, I swear.”

They went inside the stilt house and closed the door. “Tell me about the dead body,” Stranahan said.

“Sit down. Hey, Luis, I could use some coffee.”

“A minute ago you were seasick,” Luis Córdova said.

“I'm feeling much better, okay?” García scowled theatrically as the young marine patrol officer went to the kitchen. “Interdepartmental cooperation, that's the buzzword these days. Coffee's a damn good place to start.”

“Easy, man, Luis is a sharp kid.”

“He sure is. I wish he was ours.”

Stranahan said, “Now about the body . . .”

García waved a meaty brown hand in the air, as if shooing an invisible horsefly. “Mick, what are you doing way the fuck out here? Somehow I don't see you as Robinson Crusoe, sucking the milk out of raw coconuts.”

“It's real quiet out here.”

Luis Córdova brought three cups of hot coffee.

Al García smacked his lips as he drank. “Quiet—is that what you said? Jeez, you got dead gangsters floating around, not to mention burning houses—”

“Is this about Tony the Eel?”

“No,” Luis said seriously.

García put down his coffee cup and looked straight at Stranahan. “When's the last time you saw Chloe?”

Suddenly Mick Stranahan did not feel so well.

“A couple months back,” he said. “She was on a boat with some guy. I assumed it was her new husband. Why?”

“You mooned her.”

“Can you blame me?”

“We heard about it from the mister this morning.”

Stranahan braced to hear the whole story. Luis Córdova opened a spiral notebook but didn't write much. Stranahan listened somberly and occasionally looked out the window toward the channel where Al García said it had happened.

“A rusty anchor?” Stranahan said in disbelief.

“It got tangled in this silky thing she was wearing,” the detective explained. “She went down like a sack of cement.” Sensitivity was not García's strong suit.

“The rope is what gave it away,” added Luis Córdova. “One of the guys coming out to the fire saw the rope drifting up out of the current.”

“Hauled her right in,” García said, “like a lobster pot.”

García said, “Fact is, we really shouldn't be telling you all this.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're the prime suspect.”

“That's very funny.” Stranahan looked at Luis Córdova. “Is he kidding?”

The young marine patrolman shook his head.

García said, “Mick, your track record is not so hot. I mean, you already got a few notches on your belt.”

“Not murder.”

“Chloe hated your guts,” Al García said, in the tone of a reminder.

“That's my motive? She hated my guts?”

“Then there's the dough.”

“You think I'd kill her over a crummy one-hundred fifty dollars a month?”

“The principle,” Al García said, unwrapping a cigar. “I think you just might do it over the principle of the thing.”

Stranahan leaned back with a tired sigh. He felt bad about Chloe's death, but mostly he felt curious. What the hell was she doing out here at night?

“I always heard good things about you,” Al García said, “mainly from Timmy Gavigan.”

“Yeah, he said the same for you.”

“And the way Eckert dumped you from the State Attorney's, that was low.”

Stranahan shrugged. “They don't forget it when you shoot a judge. It's bound to make people nervous.”

García made a great ceremony of lighting the cigar. Afterward, he blew two rings of smoke and said, “For what it's worth, Luis here doesn't think you did it.”

“It's the anchor business,” Luis Córdova explained, “very strange.” He was trying to sound all business, as if the friendship meant nothing.

Stranahan said, “The murder's got to be connected to the fire.”

“The fire was an arson,” Luis said. “Boat gas and a match. These houses are nothing but tinder.” To make his point, he tapped the rubber heel of his shoe on the pine floor.

Stranahan said, “I think you both ought to know: Somebody wants to kill me.”

García's eyebrows shot up and he rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Who is it,
chico
? Please, make my job easier.”

“I think it's a doctor. His name is Rudy Graveline. Write this down, Luis, please.”

“And why would this doctor want you dead?”

“I'm not sure, Al.”

“But you want me to roust him on a hunch.”

“No, I just want his name in a file somewhere. I want you to know who he is, just in case.”

García turned to Luis Córdova. “Don't you love the fucking sound of that?
Just in case.
Luis, I think this is where we're supposed to give Mr. Stranahan a lecture about taking the law into his own hands.”

Luis said, “Don't take the law into your own hands, Mick.”

“Thank you, Luis.”

Al García flicked a stubby thumb through his black mustache. “Just for the record, you didn't invite the lovely Chloe Simpkins Stranahan out here for a romantic reconciliation over fresh fish and wine?”

“No,” Stranahan said. Fish and wine—that fucking García must have scoped out the dirty dinner dishes.

“And the two of you didn't go for a boat ride?”

“No, Al.”

“And you didn't get in a sloppy drunken fight?”

“No.”

“And you didn't hook her to the anchor and drop her overboard?”

“Nope.”

“Luis, you get all that?”

Luis Córdova nodded as he jotted in the notebook. Shorthand, too; Stranahan was impressed.

García got up and went knocking around the house, making Stranahan very nervous. When the detective finally stopped prowling, he stood directly under the stuffed blue marlin. “Mick, I don't have to tell you there's some guys in Homicide think you aced old Judge Goomer without provocation.”

“I know that, Al. There's some guys in Homicide used to be in business with Judge Goomer.”

“And I know
that.
Point is, they'll be looking at this Chloe thing real hard. Harder than normal.”

Stranahan said, “There's no chance it was an accident?”

“No,” Luis Córdova interjected. “No chance.”

“So,” said Al García, “you see the position I'm in. Until we get another suspect, you're it. The good news is, we've got no physical evidence connecting you. The bad news is, we've got Chloe's manicurist.”

Stranahan groaned. “Jesus, let's hear it.”

García ambled to a window, stuck his arm out and tapped cigar ash into the water.

“Chloe had her toenails done yesterday morning,” the detective said. “Told the girl she was coming out here to clean your clock.”

“Lovely,” said Mick Stranahan.

There was a small rap on the door and Tina came in, fiddling with the strap on the top piece of her swimsuit. Al García beamed like he'd just won the lottery; a dreary day suddenly had been brightened.

Stranahan stood up. “Tina, I want you to meet Sergeant García and Officer Córdova. They're here on police business. Al, Luis, I'd like you to meet my alibi.”

“How do you do,” said Luis Córdova, shaking Tina's hand in a commendably official way.

García gave Stranahan another sideways look. “I love it,” said the detective. “I absolutely love this job.”

 

 

CHRISTINA
Marks heard about the death of Chloe Simpkins Stranahan on the six o'clock news. The only thing she could think was that Mick had done it to pay Chloe back for siccing the TV crew on him. It was painful to believe, but the only other possibility was too far-fetched—that Chloe's murder was a coincidence of timing and had nothing to do with Mick or Victoria Barletta. This Christina Marks could not accept; she had to plan for the worst.

If Mick was the killer, that would be a problem.

If Chloe had blabbed about getting five hundred in tipster money from the Reynaldo Flemm show, that would be a problem too. The police would want to know everything, then the papers would get hold of it and the Barletta story would blow up prematurely.

Then there was the substantial problem of Reynaldo himself; Christina could just hear him hyping the hell out of Chloe's murder in the intro: “The story you are about to see is so explosive that a confidential informant who provided us with key information was brutally murdered only days later . . .”
Brutally murdered
was one of Reynaldo's favorite on-camera redundancies. Once Christina had drolly asked Reynaldo if he'd ever heard of anyone being
gently
murdered, but he missed the point.

Sometimes, when he got particularly excited about a story, Reynaldo Flemm would actually try to write out the script himself, with comic results. The murder of Stranahan's ex-wife was just the sort of bombshell to inspire Reynaldo's muse, so Christina decided on a preemptive attack. She was reaching across the bed for the telephone when it rang.

It was Maggie Gonzalez, calling collect from somewhere in Manhattan.

“Miss Marks, I got a little problem.”

Christina said: “We've been looking all over for you. What happened to your trip to Miami?”

“I went, I came back,” Maggie said. “I told you, there's a problem down there.”

“So what've you been doing the last few weeks,” Christina said, “besides spending our money?” Christina had just about had it with this ditz; she was beginning to think Mick was right, the girl was ripping them off.

Maggie said, “Hey, I'm sorry I didn't call sooner. I was scared. Scared out of my mind.”

“We thought you might be dead.”

“No,” said Maggie, barely audible. A long pause suggested that she was fretting over the grim possibility.

“Don't you even want to know how the story is going?” Christina asked warily.

“That's the problem,” Maggie replied. “That's what I want to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

Then, almost as an afterthought, Maggie asked, “Who've you interviewed so far?”

“Nobody,” Christina said. “We've got a lot of legwork to do first.”

“I can't believe you haven't interviewed anybody!”

Maggie was trolling for something, Christina could tell. “We're taking it slow,” Christina said. “This is a sensitive piece.”

“No joke,” Maggie said. “Real sensitive.”