Skin Tight (48 page)

Willie's friend said, “This is too fucking weird. Even for Miami.”

“Best part is, now I gotta call New York and break the news.”

“Oh, man.”

Willie said, “Maybe I'll ship the tape first.”

“Might as well,” agreed the producer. “What about Ray? Think he's all right?”

“No,” said Willie. “You want the truth, I'd be fucking amazed if he was all right.”

 

 

THE
nurses had wanted to call 911, but Rudy Graveline had said no, there wasn't time. I'll take him myself, Rudy had said. He had run to the parking lot (stopping only at the front desk to pick up Reynaldo's $15,000), got the Jag and pulled up at the staff entrance.

Back in the operating suite, the anesthetist had said: “Everything's going flat.”

“Then hurry, goddammit!”

They had gotten Reynaldo on a gurney and wheeled him to Rudy's car and bundled him in the passenger seat. The scrub nurse even tried to hook up the safety belt.

“Oh, forget it,” Rudy had said.

“But it's a law.”

“Go back to work!” Rudy had commanded. The Jaguar had peeled rubber on its way out.

Naturally he had no intention of driving to Mount Sinai Hospital. What was the point? Rudy glanced at the man in the passenger seat and still did not recognize him from television. True, Reynaldo Flemm was not at his telegenic best. His eyes were half-closed, his mouth was half-open, and his skin was the color of bad veal.

He was also exsanguinating all over Rudy's fine leather seats and burled walnut door panels. “Great,” Rudy muttered. “What else.” As the surgeon sped south on Alton Road, he took out the portable telephone and called his brother's tree company.

“George Graveline, please. It's an emergency.”

“Uh, he's not here.”

“This is his brother. Where's he working today?”

The line clicked. Rudy thought he had been cut off. Then a lady from an answering service came on and asked him to leave his number. Rudy hollered, but she wouldn't budge. Finally he surrendered the number and hung up.

He thought: I must find George and his wood-chipping machine. This is very dicey, driving around Miami Beach in a $47,000 sedan with a dead TV star in the front seat.
Bleeding
on the front seat.

The car phone beeped and Rudy grabbed at it in frantic optimism. “George!”

“No, Dr. Graveline.”

“Who's this?”

“Sergeant García, Metro Homicide. You probably don't remember, but we met that night the mysterious midget Haitian blew up your car.”

Rudy's heart was pounding. Should he hang up? Did the cops know about Flemm already? But how—the nurses? Maybe that moron with the minicam!

Al García said: “I got some bad news about your brother George.”

Rudy's mind was racing. The detective's words didn't register. “What—could you give me that again?”

“I said I got bad news about George. He's dead.”

Rudy's foot came off the accelerator. He was coasting now, trying to think. Which way? Where?

García went on: “He tried to kill a man and I had to shoot him. Internal Review has the full report, so I suggest you talk to them.”

Nothing.

“Doctor? You there?”

“Yuh.”

No questions, nothing.

“The way it went down, I had no choice.”

Rudy said dully, “I understand.” He was thinking: It's awful about George, yes, but what am I going to do with this dead person in my Jaguar?

García could sense that something strange was going on at the end of the line. He said, “Look, I know it's a bad time, but we've got to talk about a homicide. A homicide that may involve you and your brother. I'd like to come over to the clinic as soon as possible.”

“Make it tomorrow,” Rudy said.

“It's about Victoria Barletta.”

“I'm eager to help in any way I can. Come see me tomorrow.” The surgeon sounded like a zombie. A heavily sedated zombie. If there was a realm beyond sheer panic, Rudy Graveline had entered it.

“Doctor, it really can't wait—”

“For heaven's sake, Sergeant, give me some time. I just found out my brother's dead, I need to make the arrangements.”

“To be blunt,” García said, “as far as George goes, there's not a whole lot left to arrange.”

“Call me tomorrow,” Rudy Graveline said curtly. Then he threw the car phone out the window.

 

 

WHEN
the phone rang again in the Bonneville, Chemo gloated at Maggie Gonzalez. “I told you this would come in handy.”

“Quit picking at your face.”

“It itches like hell.”

“Leave it be!” Maggie scolded. “You want it to get infected? Do you?”

On the other end of the phone was Rudy Graveline. He sounded worse than suicidal.

Chemo said, “Hey, Doc, you in your car? I'm in mine.”

He felt like the king of the universe.

“No, I'm home,” Rudy said. “We have a major problem.”

“What's this
we
stuff? I don't have a problem. I got a hundred-twenty-odd grand, a brand-new face, a brand-new car phone. Life's looking better every day.”

Rudy said, “I'm delighted for you, I really am.”

“You don't sound too damn delighted.”

“He got Heather.” The doctor choked out the words.

“Who's Heather?” Chemo said.

“My . . . I can't believe . . . when I got home, she was gone. He took her away.”

Maggie asked who was on the line and Chemo whispered the doctor's name. “All right,” he said to Rudy, “you better tell me what's up.”

Suddenly Rudy Graveline remembered what Curly Eyebrows had warned him about cellular phones, about how private conversations sometimes could be picked up on outside frequencies. In his quickening state of emotional deterioration, Rudy clearly envisioned—as if it were real—some nosy Coral Gables housewife overhearing his felonious litany on her Amana toaster oven.

“Come to my house,” he instructed Chemo.

“I can't, I'm waiting on a call.”

“This is it.”

“What? You mean this is the phone call he—”

“Yes,” Rudy said. “Get out here as fast as you can. We're going on a boat ride.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

MAGGIE
and Chemo left Christina Marks tied up in the trunk of the Bonneville, which was parked in Rudy Graveline's flagstone driveway. Miserable as she was, Christina didn't worry about suffocating inside the car; there were so many rust holes, she could actually feel a breeze.

For an hour Maggie and Chemo sat on the white leather sofa in Rudy's living room and listened to the doleful story of how he had come home to find his lover, his baby doll, his sweetie pie, his Venus, his sugar bunny, his punkin, his blond California sunbeam missing from the bedroom.

They took turns studying the kidnap note, which said:

“Ahoy! You're Invited to a Party!”

On the front of the note was a cartoon pelican in a sailor's cap. On the inside was a hand-drawn chart of Stiltsville. Chemo and Rudy grimly agreed that something had to be done permanently about Mick Stranahan.

Chemo asked about the fresh dark drops on the foyer, and Rudy said that it wasn't Heather's blood but someone else's. In chokes and sighs he told them about the mishap at the clinic with Reynaldo Flemm. Maggie Gonzalez listened to the gruesome account with amazement; she had never dreamed her modest extortion scheme would come to this.

“So, where is he?” she asked.

“In there,” Rudy replied. “The Sub-Zero.”

Chemo said, “The what? What're you talking about?”

Rudy led them to the kitchen and pointed at the cabinet-sized refrigerator. “The Sub-Zero,” he said.

Maggie noticed that the aluminum freezer trays had been stacked on the counter, along with a half dozen Lean Cuisines and three pints of chocolate Häagen-Dazs.

Chemo said, “That's a big fridge, all right.” He opened the door and there was Reynaldo Flemm, upright and frosty as a Jell-O pop.

“It was the only way he could fit,” explained Rudy. “See, I had to tear out the damn ice maker.”

Chemo said, “He sure looks different on TV.” Chemo propped open the refrigerator door with one knee; the cold air made his face feel better.

Maggie said nothing. This wasn't part of the plan. She was trying to think of a way to sneak out of Rudy's house and run. Go back to the motel room, grab the black Samsonite, and disappear for about five years.

Chemo closed the freezer door. He pointed to more brownish spots on the bone-colored tile and said, “If you got a mop, she can clean that up.”

“Wait a second,” Maggie said. “Do I look like a maid?”

“You're gonna look like a cabbage if you don't do what I say.” Balefully Chemo brandished the Weed Whacker.

Maggie recalled the savage thrashing of Rudy Graveline and said, “All right, put that stupid thing away.”

While Maggie mopped, Rudy moped. He seemed shattered, listless, inconsolable. He needed to think; he needed the soothing rhythm of athletic copulation, the sweet crystal tunnel of clarity that only Heather's loins could give him.

The day had begun with such promise!

Up before dawn to pack their bags. And the airline tickets—he had placed them in Heather's purse while she slept. He would drive to the clinic, perform the operation on the male go-go dancer, collect the fifteen grand, and come home for Heather. Then it was off to the airport! Fifteen thousand was plenty for starters—a month or two in Costa Rica in a nice apartment. Time enough for Rudy's Panamanian lawyer to liquidate the offshore trusts. After that, Rudy and Heather could breathe again. Get themselves some land up in the mountains. Split-level ranch house on the side of a hill. A stable, too; she loved to ride. Rudy envisioned himself opening a new surgery clinic; he had even packed his laminated Harvard diploma, pillowing it tenderly in the suitcase among his silk socks and designer underwear. San José was crawling with wealthy expatriates and aspiring international jet-setters. An American plastic surgeon would be welcomed vivaciously.

Now, disaster. Heather—fair, nubile, perfectly apportioned Heather—had been snatched from her sickbed.

“We need a boat,” Rudy Graveline croaked. “For tonight.”

Chemo said, “Yeah, a big one. If I'm going back to that damn house I want to stay dry. See if you can find us a Scarab thirty-eight.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Just like they had on
Miami Vice.
”

“You
are
nuts. Who's going to drive it?” Rudy stared pointedly at the unwieldy garden tool attached to Chemo's left arm. “You?”

“Yeah, me. Just get on the phone, see what you can do. We've gotta move before the cops show up.”

Rudy looked stricken by the mention of police.

“Well, Jesus,” Chemo said, “you got a dead man in your fridge. This is a problem.”

Maggie was rinsing the mop in the kitchen sink. She said, “I've got an idea about that. You might not like it, but it's worth a try.”

Rudy shrugged wearily. “Let's hear it.”

“I used to work for a surgeon who knew this guy . . . this guy who would buy certain things.”

“Surely you're not suggesting—”

“It's up to you,” Maggie said. “I mean, Dr. Graveline, you've got yourself a situation here.”

“Yeah,” said Chemo. “Your ice cream is melting.”

 

 

THE
man's name was Kimbler, and his office was in Miami's hospital district; a storefront operation on 12th Street, a purse-snatcher's jog from Jackson Hospital or the Medical Examiner's Office. The magnetic sign on the door of the office said: “International BioMedical Exports, Inc.” The storefront window was tinted dark blue and was obscured by galvanized burglar mesh.

Kimbler was waiting for them when they arrived—Rudy, Chemo, Maggie, and Christina. Chemo had the Colt .38 in his pants pocket, pointed at Christina the whole time. He had wanted to leave her in the trunk of the Pontiac, but there was not enough room.

Kimbler was a rangy thin-haired man with tortoise-shell glasses and a buzzard's-beak nose. The office was lighted like a stock-room, with cheap egg-carton overheads. Rows of gray steel shelves covered both walls. The shelves were lined with old-fashioned Mason jars, and preserved in the Mason jars were assorted human body parts: ears, eyeballs, feet, hands, fingers, toes, small organs, large organs.

Chemo looked around and, under his breath, said, “What the fuck.”

Kimbler gazed with equal wonderment at Chemo, who was truly a sight—his freshly sanded face glistening with Neosporin ointment, his extenuated left arm cloaked with its calfskin golf-bag cover, his radish-patch scalp, his handsome Jim Fowler safari jacket. Kimbler examined Chemo as if he were a prized future specimen.

“This is some hobby you got,” Chemo said, picking up a jar of gall bladders. “This is better than baseball cards.”

Kimbler said, “I've got the proper permits, I assure you.”

Maggie explained that Kimbler sold human tissue to foreign medical schools. She said it was perfectly legal.

“The items come from legitimate sources,” Kimbler added. “Hospitals. Pathology labs.”

Items.
Christina was nauseated at the concept. Or maybe it was just the sweet dead smell of the place.