Skin Tight (30 page)

“Ancient history,” Reynaldo Flemm said defensively.

Unspoken was the fact that no such embarrassments had happened since Christina Marks had been hired. Every show had been finished on time, on budget. Reynaldo did not appreciate the connection, but Mr. Dover did.

“You understand my concern,” he said. “How much longer do you anticipate being down in Miami?”

“Two weeks. We'll be editing.” Sounded good, anyway.

“So, shall we say, one more trip?”

“That ought to do it,” Reynaldo agreed.

“Excellent.” Mr. Dover straightened the stack of Reynaldo's expense receipts, lining up all the little corners in perfect angles. “By the way, Miss Marks wasn't harmed, was she?”

“No, just scared shitless. She's not used to getting shot at.” As if he was.

“Did they catch this person?”

“Nope,” Reynaldo said, hard-bitten, like he wasn't too surprised.

“My,” said Mr. Dover. He hoped that Christina Marks was paid up on her medical plan and death benefits.

“I told you it was heavy,” Reynaldo said, rising. “But it'll be worth it, I promise.”

“Good,” said Mr. Dover. “I can't wait.”

Reynaldo was three steps toward the door when Mr. Dover said, “Ray?”

“Yeah.”

“Forgive me, but I was just noticing.”

“That's all right.” He'd been wondering how long it would take the twerp to mention something about the hair.

But from behind the desk Mr. Dover smiled wickedly and patted his midsection. “You've put on a pound or three, haven't you, Ray?”

 

 

IN
the elevator Reynaldo angrily tore off his seven-hundred-dollar wig and hurled it into a corner, where it lay like a dead Pekingese. He took the limo back to his apartment, stripped off his clothes, and stood naked for a long time in front of the bedroom mirror.

Reynaldo decided that Dr. Graveline was right: His nose was too large. And his belly had thickened.

He pivoted to the left, then to the right, then back to the left. He sucked in his breath. He flexed. He locked his knuckles behind his head and tightened his stomach muscles, but his belly did not disappear.

In the mirror Reynaldo saw a body that was neither flabby nor lean: an average body for an average forty-year-old man. He saw a face that was neither dashing nor weak: small darting eyes balanced by a strong, heavy jaw, with a nose to match. He concluded that his instincts about preserving the mustache were sound. When Reynaldo covered his hairy upper lip with a bare finger, his nose assumed even greater prominence.

Of course, something radical had to be done. Confidence was the essence of Reynaldo's camera presence, the core of his masculine appeal. If he were unhappy with himself or insecure about his appearance, it would show up on his face like a bad rash. The whole country would see it.

Standing alone at the mirror, Reynaldo hatched a plan that would solve his personal dilemma and wrap up the Barletta story simultaneously. It was a bold plan because it would not include Christina Marks. Reynaldo Flemm would serve as his own producer and would tell Christina nothing, just as she had told him nothing for two entire weeks after the shooting in Stiltsville.

The shooting. Still it galled him, the sour irony that
she
would be the one to get the glory—after all his years on the streets. To have his producer nearly assassinated while he dozed on the massage table at the Sonesta was the lowest moment in Reynaldo's professional career. He had to atone.

In the past he had always counted on Christina to worry about the actual nuts-and-bolts journalism of the program. It was Christina who did the reporting, blocked out the interviews, arranged for the climactic confrontations—she even wrote the scripts. Reynaldo Flemm was hopelessly bored by detail, research, and the rigors of fact checking. He was an action guy, and he saved his energy for when the tape was rolling. Whereas Christina had filled three legal pads with notes, ideas, and questions about Victoria Barletta's death, Reynaldo cared about one thing only: Who could they get on tape? Rudy Graveline was the big enchilada, and certainly Victoria's still-grieving mother was a solid bet. Mick Stranahan had been another obvious choice—the embarrassed investigator, admitting four years later that he had overlooked the prime suspect, the doctor himself.

But the Stranahan move had backfired, and nearly made a news-industry martyr of Christina Marks. Fine, thought Reynaldo, go ahead and have your fling. Meanwhile Willie and I will be kicking some serious quack ass.

 

 

EVERY
time Dr. Rudy Graveline got a phone call from New York or New Jersey, he assumed it was the mob. The mob had generously put him through Harvard Medical School, and in return Rudy occasionally extended his professional courtesies to mob guys, their friends or family. It was Rudy himself who had redone the face of Tony (The Eel) Traviola, the hit man who later washed up dead on Cape Florida beach with a marlin hole through his sternum. Fortunately for Rudy, most mob fugitives were squeamish about surgery, so he wound up doing mainly their wives, daughters, and mistresses. Noses, mostly, with the occasional face-lift.

That's the kind of call Rudy expected when his secretary told him that New York was on the line.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Dr. Graveline.”

The voice did not belong to Curly Eyebrows or any of his cousins.

“Who is this?”

“Johnny LeTigre, remember me?”

“Of course.” The hinky male stripper. Rudy said, “What are you doing in New York?”

“I had a gig in the Village, but I'm on my way back to Miami.” This was Reynaldo Flemm's idea of being fast on his feet. He said, “Look, I've been thinking about what you said that day at the clinic.”

Rudy Graveline could not remember exactly what he had said. “Yes?”

“About my nose and my abdomen.”

Then it came back to Rudy. “Your nose and abdomen, yes, I remember.”

“You were right,” Reynaldo went on. “We don't always see ourselves the way other people do.”

Rudy was thinking: Get to the damn point.

“I'd like for you to do my nose,” Reynaldo declared.

“All right.”

“And my middle—what's that operation called?”

“Suction-assisted lipectomy,” Rudy said.

“Yeah, that's it. How much'd that set me back?”

Rudy recalled that this was a man who offered ten grand to have a mole removed from his buttocks.

“Fifteen thousand,” Rudy said.

“Geez!” said the voice from New York.

“But that's if I perform the procedures myself,” Rudy explained. “Keep in mind, I've got several very competent associates who could handle your case for, oh, half as much.”

The way that Rudy backed off on the word
competent
was no accident, but Reynaldo Flemm didn't need a sell job. Quickly he said, “No, I definitely want you. Fifteen it is. But I need the work done this week.”

“Out of the question.” Rudy would be immersed in preparation for the Heather Chappell marathon.

“Next week at the latest,” Reynaldo pressed.

“Let me see what I can do. By the way, Mr. LeTigre, what is the status of your mole?”

Reynaldo had almost forgotten about the ruse that originally had gained his entry to Whispering Palms. Again he had to wing it. “You won't believe this,” he said to Dr. Rudy Graveline, “but the damn thing fell off.”

“Are you certain?”

“Swear to God, one morning I'm standing in the shower and I turn around and it's gone. Gone! I found it lying there in the bed. Just fell off, like an acorn or something.”

“Hmmm,” Rudy said. The guy was a flake, but who cared.

“I threw it away, is that okay?”

“The mole?”

“Yeah, I thought about saving it in the freezer, maybe having some tests run. But then I figured what the hell and I tossed it in the trash.”

“It was probably quite harmless,” Rudy Graveline said, dying to hang up.

“So I'll call you when I get back to Miami.”

“Fine,” said the doctor. “Have a safe trip, Mr. LeTigre.”

Reynaldo Flemm was beaming when he put down the phone. This would be something. Maybe even better than getting shot on the air.

MAGGIE
Gonzalez said: “Tell me about your hand.”

“Shut up,” Chemo grumbled. He was driving around Queens, trying to find the sonofabitch who had sold him the bad bullets.

“Please,” Maggie said. “I am a nurse.”

“Too bad you're not a magician, because that's what it's gonna take to make my hand come back. A fish got it.”

At a stoplight he rolled down the window and called to a group of black teenagers. He asked where he could locate a man named Donnie Blue, and the teenagers told Chemo to go blow himself. “Shit,” he said, stomping on the accelerator.

Maggie asked, “Was it a shark that did it?”

“Do I look like Jacques Cousteau? I don't know what the hell it was—some big fish. The subject is closed.”

By now Maggie was reasonably confident that he wasn't going to kill her. He would have done it already, most conveniently during the scuffle back at the Plaza. Instead he had grabbed her waist and hustled her down the fire exit, taking four steps at a time. Considering the mayhem on the ninth floor, it was a miracle they got out of the place without being stopped. The lobby was full of uniformed cops waiting for elevators, but nobody looked twice at the Fun Couple of the Year.

As Chemo drove, Maggie said, “What about your face?”

“Look who's talking.”

“Really, what happened?”

Chemo said, “You always this shy with strangers? Jesus H. Christ.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Professional curiosity, I guess. Besides, you promised to tell me.”

“Do the words
none of your fucking business
mean anything?”

From behind the bandages a chilly voice said, “You don't have to be crude. Swearing doesn't impress me.”

Chemo found the street corner where he had purchased the rusty Colt .38 and the dead bullets, but there was no sign of Donnie Blue. Every inquiry was met by open derision, and Chemo's hopes for a refund began to fade.

As he circled the neighborhood Maggie said, “You're so quiet.”

“I'm thinking.”

“Me, too.”

“I'm thinking I was seriously gypped by your doctor pal.” Chemo didn't want to admit that he had agreed to murder two people in exchange for a discount on minor plastic surgery.

“If I had known about this dead girl—”

“Vicky Barletta.”

“Right,” Chemo said. “If I had known that, I would have jacked my price. Jacked it way the hell up.”

“And who could blame you,” Maggie said.

“Graveline never told me he killed a girl.”

They were heading out the highway toward La Guardia. Maggie assumed there were travel plans.

She said, “Rudy's a very wealthy man.”

“Sure, he's a doctor.”

“I can ruin him. That's why he wanted me dead.”

“Sure, you're a witness,” Chemo said.

Something dismissive in his tone alarmed her once again. She said, “Killing me won't solve anything now.”

Chemo's forehead crinkled where an eyebrow should have been. “It won't?”

Maggie shook her head from side to side for dramatic emphasis. “I made my own tape. A videotape, at a place in Manhattan. Everything's on it, everything I saw that day.”

Chemo wasn't as rattled as she thought he might be; in fact, his mouth curled into a dry smile. His lips looked like two pink snails crawling up a sidewalk.

“A video,” he mused.

Maggie teased it along. “You have any idea what that bastard would pay for it?”

“Yes,” Chemo said. “Yes, I think I do.”

At the airport, Maggie told Chemo she had to make a phone call. To eavesdrop he squeezed inside the same booth, his chin digging into the top of her head. She dialed the number of Dr. Leonard Leaper and informed the service that she had to leave town for a while, but that the doctor should not be concerned.

“I already told him I was a witness in a murder,” Maggie explained to Chemo. “If what happened at the hotel turns up in the newspapers, he'll think I was kidnapped.”

“But you were,” Chemo pointed out.

“Oh, not really.”

“Yes,
really.
” Chemo didn't care for her casual attitude; just who did she take him for?

Maggie said, “Know what I think? I think we could be partners.”

They got on line at the Delta counter, surrounded by a typical Miami-bound contingent—old geezers with tubas for sinuses; shiny young hustlers in thin gold chains; huge hollow-eyed families that looked like they'd staggered out of a Sally Struthers telethon. Chemo and Maggie fit right in.

He told her, “I only got one plane ticket.”

She smiled and stroked her handbag, which had not left her arm since their breakfast in Central Park. “I've got a Visa card,” she said brightly. “Where we headed?”

“Me, I'm going back to Florida.”

“Not like that, you're not. They've got rules against bare feet, I'm sure.”

“Hell,” Chemo said, and loped off to locate some cheap shoes. He came back wearing fuzzy brown bathroom slippers, size 14, purchased at one of the airport gift shops. Maggie was saving him a spot at the ticket counter. She had already arranged for him to get an aisle seat (because of his long legs), and she would be next to him.