Skin Tight (29 page)

“Hello, Maggie,” Stranahan said, “assuming it's you under there. It's sure been a long time.”

“And you!” Maggie grunted, pointing at Christina Marks.

“Hi, again,” said Christina. “I thought you'd be in Hawaii by now.”

Chemo said, “I guess everybody's old pals except me.” He pulled the .38 out of his overcoat. “Nobody move.”

“Another one who watches too much TV,” Stranahan whispered to Christina.

Chemo blinked angrily. “I don't like you one bit.”

“I assumed as much from the fact you keep trying to kill me.” Stranahan had seen some bizarros in his day, but this one took the cake. He looked like Fred Munster with bulimia. One eye on the gun, Stranahan asked, “Do you have a name?”

“No,” Chemo said.

“Good. Makes for a cheaper tombstone.”

Chemo told Maggie to close the door, but Maggie didn't move. The sight of the pistol had made her nauseated all over again, and she was desperately trying to keep down her breakfast bagels.

“What's the matter now?” Chemo snapped.

“She doesn't look so hot,” Christina said.

“And who the fuck are you, Florence Nightingale?”

“What happened to your arm?” Christina asked him. A cool customer she was; Stranahan admired her poise.

Chemo got the impression that he was losing control, which made no sense, since he was the one with the pistol. “Shut up, all of you,” he said, “while I kill Mr. Stranahan here.
Finally.
”

At these words, Maggie Gonzalez upchucked gloriously all over Chemo's gun arm. Given his general translucence, it was impossible to tell if Chemo blanched. He did, however, wobble perceptibly.

Mick Stranahan stepped forward and punched him ferociously in the Adam's apple. The man went down like a seven-foot Tinker-toy, but did not release his grip on the gun. Maggie backed up and screamed, a primal wail that poured from the hole in her bandage and filled the hallway. Stranahan decided there was no time to finish the job. He pushed Christina Marks through the doorway and told her to go for the elevator. Gagging and spitting blood, Chemo rolled out of his fetal curl and took a wild shot at Christina as she ran down the hall. The bullet twanged impotently off a fire extinguisher and was ultimately stopped by the opulent Plaza wallpaper.

Before Chemo could fire again, Stranahan stomped on his wrist, still slippery from Maggie's used bagels. Chemo would not let go of the gun. With a growl he swung his refurbished left arm like a fungo bat across his body. It caught Stranahan in the soft crease behind the knee and brought him down. The two men wrestled for the pistol while Maggie howled and clawed chimp-like at her swaddled head.

It was a clumsy fight. Tangled in the killer's gangliness, Stranahan could not shield himself from a clubbing by Chemo's over-sized left arm. Whatever it was—and it wasn't a human fist—it hurt like hell. His skull chiming, Stranahan tried to break free.

Suddenly he felt the dull barrel of the .38 against his throat. He flinched when he heard the click, but nothing else followed. No flash, no explosion, no smell. The bullet, Chemo's second and only remaining round, was a dud. Chemo couldn't believe it—that asshole in Queens had screwed him royal.

Stranahan squirmed loose, stood up, and saw that they had attracted an audience. All along the corridor, doors were cracked open, some more than others. Under Maggie's keening he could hear excited voices. Somebody was calling the police.

Stranahan groped at his coat to make sure that the videotape was still in his pocket, kicked Chemo once in the groin (or where he estimated that the giant's groin might be), then jogged down the hallway.

Christina Marks was considerate enough to hold the elevator.

DR.
Rudy Graveline was a fellow who distrusted chance and prided himself on preparation, but he had not planned a love affair with a Hollywood star. Heather Chappell was a distraction—a fragrant, gorgeous, elusive, spoiled, sulky bitch of a distraction. He couldn't get enough of her. Rudy had come to crave the tunnel of clear thinking that enveloped him while making love to Heather; it was like a sharp cool drug. She screwed him absolutely numb, left him aching and drained and utterly in focus with his predicament.

For a while he kept cooking up lame excuses for postponing Heather's elaborate cosmetic surgery—knowing it would put her out of action for weeks. Sex with Heather had become a crucial component of Rudy Graveline's daily regimen; like a long-distance runner, he had fallen into a physical rhythm that he could not afford to break. TV people were after him, his medical career was in jeopardy, a homicide rap was on the horizon—and salvation depended on a crooked halfwit politician and a one-armed, seven-foot hit man. Rudy needed to stay razor-sharp until the crisis was over, and Heather had become vital to his clarity.

He treated her like a queen and it seemed to work. Heather's initial urgency to schedule the surgery had subsided during the day-long shopping sprees, the four-star meals, the midnight yacht cruises up and down the Intracoastal. In recent days, though, she again had begun to press Rudy not only about the date for the operations, but the cost. She was dropping broad hints to the effect that for all her bedroom labors she deserved a special discount, and Rudy found himself weakening on the subject. Finally, one night, she waited until he was inside her to bring up the money again, and Rudy breathlessly agreed to knock forty percent off the usual fee. Afterward he was furious at himself, and blamed his moment of weakness on stress and mental fatigue.

Deep down, the doctor knew better: He was trapped. While he dreaded the prospect of Heather Chappell's surgery, he feared that she would leave him if he didn't agree to do it. He probably would have done it for free. He had become addicted to her body—a radiantly perfect body that she now wanted him to
improve.
The task would have posed a career challenge for the most skillful of plastic surgeons; for a hack like Rudy Graveline, it was flat-out impossible. Naturally he planned to let his assistants do it.

Until Heather dropped another surprise.

“My agent says I should tape the operation, love.”

Rudy said, “You're kidding.”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

“What, you don't trust me?”

“Sure I do,” Heather said. “It's my damn agent, is all. She says since my looks are everything, my whole career, I should be careful, legal-wise. I guess she wants to make sure nothing goes wrong—”

Rudy sprung out of bed, hands on his hips. “Look, I told you these operations are not necessary at all.”

“And I told you, I'm sick of doing sitcoms and
Hollywood Squares.
I need to get back in the movies, hon, and that means I need a new look. That's why I came down here.”

Rudy Graveline had never tried to talk anyone out of surgery before, so he was forced to improvise. By and large it was not such a terrible speech. He said, “God was very good to you, Heather. I have patients who'd give fifty grand to look half as beautiful as you look: teenagers who'd kill for that nose you want me to chisel, housewives who'd trade their firstborn child for tits like yours—”

“Rudolph,” Heather said, “save it.”

He tried to pull up his underwear but the elastic snagged on heavily bandaged kneecaps, the product of the disco tryst in the fireplace.

“I am appalled,” Rudy was huffing, “at the idea of videotaping in my surgical suite.” In truth he wasn't appalled so much as afraid: A video camera meant he couldn't hand off to the other surgeons and duck out to the golf course. He'd have to perform every procedure himself, just as Heather had demanded. You couldn't drug a damn camera; it wouldn't miss a stitch.

“This just isn't done,” Rudy protested.

“Oh, it is, too,” Heather said. “I see stuff like that on PBS all the time. Once I saw them put a baboon heart inside a human baby. They showed the whole thing.”

“It isn't done
here,
” Rudy said.

Heather sat up, making sure that the bedsheets slipped off the slope of her breasts. “Fine, Rudolph,” she said. “If that's the way you want it, I'll fly back to California tonight. There's only about a dozen first-rate surgeons in Beverly Hills that would give anything to do me.”

The ice in her voice surprised him, though it shouldn't have. “All right,” he said, pulling on his robe, “we'll video the surgery. Maybe Robin Leach can use a clip on his show.”

Heather let the wisecrack pass; she was focused on business. She asked Rudy Graveline for a date they could begin.

“A week,” he said. He had to clear his mind a few more times. In another week he also would have heard something definite from Chemo, or maybe Roberto Pepsical.

“And we're not doing all this at once,” he added. “You've got the liposuction, the breast augmentation, the rhinoplasty, the eyelids, and the rhytidectomy—that's a lot of surgery, Heather.”

“Yes, Rudolph.” She had won and she knew it.

“I think we'll start with the nose and see how you do.”

“Or how
you
do,” Heather said.

Rudy had a queasy feeling that she wasn't kidding.

 

 

THE
executive producer of
In Your Face
was a man known to Reynaldo Flemm only as Mr. Dover. Mr. Dover was in charge of the budget. Upon Reynaldo's return to New York, he found a message taped to his office door. Mr. Dover wanted to see him right away.

Immediately Reynaldo called the apartment of Christina Marks, but hung up when Mick Stranahan answered the phone. Reynaldo was fiercely jealous; beyond that, he didn't think it was fair that he should have to face Mr. Dover alone. Christina was the producer, she knew where all the money went. Reynaldo was merely the talent, and the talent never knew anything.

When he arrived at Mr. Dover's office, the secretary did not recognize him. “The music division is on the third floor,” she said, scarcely making eye contact.

Reynaldo riffled his new hair and said, “It's me.”

“Oh, hi, Ray.”

“What do you think?”

The secretary said, “It's a dynamite disguise.”

“It's not a disguise.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted a new look,” he explained.

“Why?” asked the secretary.

Reynaldo couldn't tell her the truth—that a rude plastic surgeon told him he had a fat waist and a big honker—so he said: “Demographics.”

The secretary looked at him blankly.

“Market surveys,” he went on. “We're going for some younger viewers.”

“Oh, I see,” the secretary said.

“Long hair is making quite a comeback.”

“I didn't know,” she said, trying to be polite. “Is that real, Ray?”

“Well, no. Not yet.”

“I'll tell Mr. Dover you're here.”

Mr. Dover was a short man with an accountant's pinched demeanor, a fishbelly complexion, tiny black eyes, and the slick, sloping forehead of a killer whale. Mr. Dover wore expensive dark suits and yuppie suspenders that, Reynaldo suspected, needed adjustment.

“Ray, what can you tell me about this Florida project?” Mr. Dover never wasted time with small talk.

“It's heavy,” Reynaldo replied.

“Heavy.”

“Very heavy.” Reynaldo noticed his expense vouchers stacked in a neat pile on the corner of Mr. Dover's desk. This worried him, so he said, “My producer was almost murdered.”

“I see.”

“With a machine gun,” Reynaldo added.

Mr. Dover pursed his lips. “Why?”

“Because we're getting close to cracking this story.”

“You're getting close to cracking my budget, Ray.”

“This is an important project.”

Mr. Dover said, “A network wouldn't blink twice, Ray, but we're not one of the networks. My job is to watch the bottom line.”

Indignantly Reynaldo thought:
I eat twits like you for breakfast.
He was good at thinking tough thoughts.

“Investigations cost money,” he said tersely.

With shiny pink fingernails Mr. Dover leafed through the receipts on his desk until he found the one he wanted. “Jambala's House of Hair,” he said. “Seven hundred and seventeen dollars.”

Reynaldo blushed and ground his caps. Christina should be here for this; she'd know how to handle this jerk.

Mr. Dover continued: “I don't intend to interfere, nor do I intend to let these extravagances go on forever. As I understand it, the program is due to air next month.”

“All the spots have been sold,” Reynaldo said. “They've been sold for six months.” He couldn't resist.

“Yes, well I suggest you try not to spend all that advertising revenue before the broadcast date—just in case it doesn't work out.”

“And when hasn't it worked out?”

Reynaldo regretted his words almost instantly, for Mr. Dover was only too happy to refresh his memory. There was the time Flemm claimed to have discovered the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's airplane (it turned out to be a crop duster in New Zealand); the time he claimed to have an exclusive interview with the second gunman from Dealey Plaza (who, it later turned out, was barely seven years old on the day of the Kennedy assassination); the time he uncovered a Congressional call-girl ring (only to be caught boffing two of the ladies in a mop closet at the Rayburn Building). These fiascos each resulted in a canceled broadcast, snide blurbs in the press, and great sums of lost revenue, which Mr. Dover could recall to the penny.