Skin Tight (28 page)

“Uh,” she said.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Chemo, shoving her back in the room, kicking the door shut behind him, savagely cursing his own rotten luck. The woman was wrapped from forehead to throat in white surgical tape—a fucking mummy! He took the photograph from his overcoat and handed it to Maggie Gonzalez.

“Is that you?” he demanded.

“No.” The answer came from parchment lips, whispering through a slit in the bandages. “No, it's not me.”

Chemo could tell that the woman was woozy. He told her to sit down before she fell down.

“It's you, isn't it? You're Maggie Gonzalez.”

She said, “You're making a big mistake.”

“Shut up.” He took off his broad-brimmed hat and threw it on the bed. Through the peepholes in the bandage, Maggie was able to get a good look at the man's remarkable face.

She said, “My God, what happened to you?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Chemo unbuttoned his overcoat, heaved it over a chair, and paced. The trip was turning into a debacle. First the man in Queens had sold him a rusty Colt .38 with only two bullets. Later, on the subway, he had been forced to flee a group of elderly Amish in the fear that they might recognize him from his previous life. And now this—confusion. While Chemo was reasonably sure that the bandaged woman was Maggie Gonzalez, he didn't want to screw up and kill the wrong person. Dr. Graveline would never understand.

“Who are you?” Maggie said thickly. “Who sent you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“Please, I don't feel very well.”

Chemo took the Colt from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at the bandaged tip of her new nose. “Your name's Maggie Gonzalez, isn't it?”

At the sight of the pistol, she leaned forward and vomited all over Chemo's rubber-soled winter shoes.

“Jesus H. Christ.” He moaned and bolted for the bathroom.

“I'm sorry,” Maggie called after him. “You scared me, that's all.”

When Chemo came back, the shoes were off his feet and the gun was back in his pants. He was wiping his mouth with the corner of the towel.

“I'm really sorry,” Maggie said again.

Chemo shook his head disgustedly. He sat down on the corner of the bed. To Maggie his legs seemed as long as circus stilts.

“You're supposed to kill me?”

“Yep,” Chemo said. With the towel he wiped a fleck of puke off her nightgown.

Blearily she studied him and said, “You've had some dermabrasion.”

“So?”

“So how come just little patches—why not more?”

“My doctor said that would be risky.”

“Your doctor's full of it,” Maggie said.

“And I guess you're an expert or something.”

“I'm a nurse, but you probably know that.”

Chemo said, “No, I didn't.” Dr. Graveline hadn't told him a thing.

Maggie went on, “I used to work for a plastic surgeon in Miami. A butcher with a capital B.”

Subconsciously Chemo's fingers felt for the tender spots on his chin. He was almost afraid to ask.

“This surgeon,” he said to Maggie, “what was his name?”

“Graveline,” she said. “Rudy Graveline. Personally, I wouldn't let him trim a hangnail.”

Lugubriously Chemo closed his bulbous red eyes. Through the codeine, Maggie thought he resembled a giant nuclear-radiated salamander, straight from a monster movie.

“How about this,” he said. “I'll tell you what happened to my face if you tell me what happened to yours.”

 

 

IT
was Chemo's idea to have breakfast in Central Park. He figured there'd be so many other freaks that no one would notice them. As it turned out, Maggie's Tut-like facial shell drew more than a few stares. Chemo tugged his hat down tightly and said, “You should've worn a scarf.”

They were sitting near Columbus Circle on a bench. Chemo had bought a box of raisin bagels with cream cheese. Maggie said her stomach felt much better but, because of the surgical tape, she was able to fit only small pieces of bagel into her mouth. It was a sloppy process, but two fat squirrels showed up to claim the crumbs.

Chemo was saying, “Your nose, your chin, your eyelids—Christ, no wonder you hurt.” He took out her picture and looked at it appraisingly. “Too bad,” he said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you were a pretty lady.”

“Maybe I still am,” Maggie said. “Maybe prettier.”

Chemo put the photograph back in his coat. “Maybe,” he said.

“You're going to make me cry and then everything'll sting.”

He said, “Knock it off.”

“Don't you think I feel bad enough?” Maggie said. “I get a whole new face—and for what! A month from now and you'd never have recognized me. I could've sat in your lap on the subway and you wouldn't know who I was.”

Chemo thought he heard sniffling behind the bandages. “Don't fucking cry,” he said. “Don't be a baby.”

“I don't understand why Rudy sent you,” Maggie whined.

“To kill you, what else?”

“But why now? Nothing's happened yet.”

Chemo frowned and said, “Keep it down.” The pink patches on his chin tingled in the cold air and made him think about Rudy Graveline. Butcher with a capital B, Maggie had said. Chemo wanted to know more.

A thin young Moonie in worn corduroys came up to the park bench and held out a bundle of red and white carnations. “Be happy,” the kid said to Maggie. “Five dollars.”

“Get lost,” Chemo said.

“Four dollars,” said the Moonie. “Be happy.”

Chemo pulled the calfskin cover off his Weed Whacker and flicked the underarm toggle for the battery pack. The Moonie gaped as Chemo calmly chopped the bright carnations to confetti.

“Be gone, Hop-sing,” Chemo said, and the Moonie ran away. Chemo recloaked the Weed Whacker and turned to Maggie. “Tell me why the doctor wants you dead.”

It took her several moments to recover from what she had seen. Finally she said, “Well, it's a long story.”

“I got all day,” Chemo said. “Unless you got tickets to
Phantom
or something.”

“Can we go for a walk?”

“No,” Chemo said sharply. “Remember?” He had thrown his vomit-covered shoes and socks out the ninth-floor window of Maggie's room at the Plaza. Now he was sitting in bare feet in Central Park on a forty-degree February morning. He wiggled his long bluish toes and said to Maggie Gonzalez: “So talk.”

She did. She told Chemo all about the death of Victoria Barletta. It was a slightly shorter recital than she'd put on the videotape, but it was no less shocking.

“You're making this up,” Chemo said.

“I'm not either.”

“He killed this girl with a nose job?”

Maggie nodded. “I was there.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“It was an accident.”

“That's even worse,” Chemo said. He tore off his hat and threw it on the sidewalk, spooking the squirrels. “This is the same maniac who's working on my face. I can't fucking stand it!”

By way of consolation, Maggie said: “Dermabrasion is a much simpler procedure.”

“Yeah, tell me about simple procedures.” Chemo couldn't believe the lousy luck he had with doctors. He said, “So what does all this have to do with him wanting you dead?”

Maggie told Chemo about Reynaldo Flemm's TV investigation (without mentioning that she had been the tipster), told how she had warned Rudy about Mick Stranahan, the investigator. She was careful to make it sound as if Stranahan was the whistle-blower.

“Now it's starting to make sense,” Chemo said. “Graveline wants me to kill
him,
too.” He held up the arm-mounted Weed Whacker. “He's the prick that cost me this hand.”

“Rudy can't afford any witnesses,” Maggie explained, “or any publicity. Not only would they yank his medical license, he'd go to jail. Now do you understand?”

Do I ever, thought Chemo.

The white mask that was Maggie's face asked: “Are you still going to kill me?”

“We'll see,” Chemo replied. “I'm sorting things out.”

“How much is that cheap bastard paying you?”

Chemo plucked his rumpled hat off the sidewalk. “I'd rather not say,” he muttered, clearly embarrassed. No way would he let that butcher fuck with his ears. Not now.

 

 

CHRISTINA
Marks and Mick Stranahan got to the Plaza Hotel shortly before ten. From the lobby Stranahan called Maggie's room and got no answer. Christina followed him into the elevator and, as they rode to the ninth floor, she watched him remove a small serrated blade from his wallet.

“Master key,” he said.

“Mick, no. I could get fired.”

“Then wait downstairs.”

But she didn't. She watched him pick the lock on Maggie's door, then slipped into the room behind him. She said nothing and scarcely moved while he checked the bathroom and the closets to see if they were alone.

“Mick, come here.”

On the bedstand were two prescription bottles, a plastic bed-pan, and a pink-splotched surgical compress. Stranahan glanced at the pills: Tylenol No. 3 and Darvocet. The bottle of Darvocets had not yet been opened. A professional business card lay next to the telephone on Maggie's nightstand. Stranahan chuckled drily when he read what was on the card:

“How nice,” Christina remarked. “She took our money and got a face-lift.”

Stranahan said, “Something's not right. She ought to be in bed.”

“Maybe she went for brunch at the Four Seasons.”

He shook his head. “These scrips are only two days old, so that's when she had the surgery. She's still got to be swollen up like a mango. Would you go out in public looking like that?”

“Depends on how much dope I ate.”

“No,” Stranahan said, scanning the room, “Something's not right. She ought to be here.”

“What do you want to do?”

Stranahan said they should go downstairs and wait in the lobby; in her condition, Maggie shouldn't be hard to spot. “But first,” he said, “let's really go through this place.”

Christina went to the dresser. Under a pile of Maggie's bras and panties she found three new flowered bikinis, the price tags from the Plaza Shops still attached. Maggie was definitely getting ready for Maui.

“Oh, Miss Marks,” Stranahan sang out. “Lookie here.”

It was a videocassette in a brown plastic sleeve. The sleeve was marked with a sticker from Midtown Studio Productions.

Stranahan tossed Christina the tape. She tossed it back.

“We can't take that, it's larceny.”

He said, “It's not larceny to take something you already own.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this is what I think it is, you've paid for it already. The Barletta story, remember?”

“We don't know that. Could be anything—home movies, maybe.”

Stranahan smiled and stuffed the cassette into his coat. “Only one way to find out.”

“No,” Christina said.

“Look, you got a VCR at your place. Let's go watch the tape. If I'm wrong, then I'll bring it back myself.”

“Oh, I see. Just sneak in, put it back where you got it, tidy up the place.”

“Yeah, if I'm wrong. If it turns out to be Jane Fonda or something. But I don't -ºthink so.”

Christina Marks knew better; it was madness, of course. She could lose her job, blow a perfectly good career if they were caught. But, then again, this hadn't turned out to be the typical Reynaldo Flemm exposé. She had damn near gotten machine-gunned over this one, so what the hell.

Grudgingly she said, “Is it Beta or VHS?”

Stranahan gave her a hug.

Then they heard the key in the door.

THE
two couples said nothing for the first few seconds, just stared. Mick Stranahan and Christina Marks had the most to contemplate: a woman wrapped in tape, and a beanpole assassin with one arm down to his knees.

Maggie Gonzalez was the first to speak: “It's him.”

“Who?” Chemo asked. He had never seen Stranahan up close, not even at the stilt house.

“Him.” Maggie repeated through the bandages. “What're you doing in my room?”