Skin Tight (37 page)

MICK
Stranahan and Christina Marks were waiting when Luis Córdova pulled up to the dock at nine sharp the next morning.

“Where to?” he asked Stranahan.

“I'd like to go back to my house, Luis.”

“Not me,” said Christina Marks. “Take me to Key Biscayne. The marina is fine.”

Stranahan said, “I guess that means you still don't want to marry me.”

“Not in a million years,” Christina said. “Not in your wildest dreams.”

Stranahan turned to Luis Córdova. “She didn't get much sleep. The accommodations were a bit too . . . rustic.”

“I understand,” said the marine patrolman. “But, otherwise, a quiet night?”

“Fairly quiet,” Stranahan said.

The morning was sunny and cool. The bay had a light washboard ripple that made the patrol boat seem to fly. As they passed the Ragged Keys, Stranahan nudged Luis Córdova and pointed to the white-blue sky. “Choppers!” he shouted over the engine noise. Christina Marks saw them, too: three Coast Guard rescue helicopters, chugging south at a thousand feet.

Without glancing from the wheel, Luis Córdova said, “There's a boat overdue from Crandon. Two cops.”

“No shit?”

“They found a body this morning floating off Broad Creek. Homicide man named Salazar.”

“What happened?”

“Drowned,” yelled Luis Córdova. “Who knows how.”

Christina Marks listened to the two men going back and forth. She wasn't sure how much Luis Córdova knew, but it was more than Stranahan would ever tell her. She felt angry and insulted and left out.

When they arrived at the stilt house, Stranahan took out the Smith .38 and returned it to Luis. The marine patrolman was relieved to see that it had not been fired.

Stranahan hoisted two of the duffel bags and hopped off the patrol boat.

From the dock he said, “Take care, Chris.” He wanted to say more, but it was the wrong time. She was still fuming about last night, furious because he wouldn't tell her what had happened. She had kicked the coconut head off the scarecrow, that's how mad she had gotten. It was at that moment he'd asked her to marry him. Her reply had been succinct, to say the least.

Now she turned away coldly and said to Luis Córdova: “Can we get going, please.”

Stranahan waved them off and trudged up the steps to inspect the looted house. The first thing he saw on the floor was the big marlin head; the tape on the fractured bill had been torn off in the fall. Stranahan stepped over the stuffed fish and went to the bedroom to check for the shotgun. It was still wedged up in the box spring where he had hidden it.

The whole place was a mess all right, depressing but not irreparable. Stranahan was glad, in a way, to have such a large chore ahead of him. Take his mind off Murdock and Salazar and Old Rhodes Key. And Christina Marks, too.

She was the first woman he had loved who had ever said no to marriage. It was quite a feeling.

 

 

LUIS
Córdova came back to the stilt house as Mick Stranahan was finishing lunch. There was a burly new passenger on the boat: Sergeant Al García.

Stranahan greeted them at the door and said, “Two Cubans with guns is never good news.”

Luis Córdova said, “Al is working the dead cops.”

“Cops plural?” Stranahan's eyebrows arched.

García sat down heavily on one of the barstools. “Yeah, we found Johnny Murdock inside the boat. The boat was up in a frigging tree.”

“Where?” Stranahan asked impassively.

“Not far from where you and your lady friend went camping last night.” García patted his pockets and cursed. He was out of cigars. He took out a pack of Camels and lit one halfheartedly. He glanced up at the beakless marlin hanging from a new nail on the wall.

Luis Córdova said, “I told Al about how I gave you a lift down to the island after your house got trashed.”

Stranahan wasn't upset. If asked, Luis would tell the truth about what he saw, what he knew for a fact. Most likely he had already told García about loaning the two detectives a map of the bay. Nothing strange about that.

“You hear anything funny last night?” Al García asked. “By the way, where's the girl?”

“I don't know,” Stranahan said.

“What about last night?”

“A boat went by about eleven. Maybe a little later. Sounded like an outboard. What the hell happened, Al—somebody do these guys?”

García was puffing hard on the cigarette, and blowing circles of smoke, like he did with his stogies. “Way it looks,” he said, “they were going wide open. Missed the channel completely.”

“You said the boat was in a tree.”

“That's how fast the bozos were going. Way it looks, Salazar got thrown, hit his head. He drowned right away but the tide took him south.”

“Broad Creek,” Luis Córdova said. “A mullet man found the body.”

García went on: “Murdock stayed in the boat, but it didn't save him. We're talking major head trauma. The medical examiner thinks a mangrove branch or something snapped his neck. Same with Salazar. Figures it happened when they hit the trees.

“Wide open?”

Luis Córdova said, “The throttle was all the way down. You got to be nuts to run that creek wide open at night.”

“Or amazingly stupid,” Stranahan said. “Let me guess who they were looking for.”

García nodded. “You're on some roll, Mick. A regular archangel of death, you are. First your ex, now Murdock and Salazar. I'm noticing that bad things happen to people who fuck with you. Seems to be a pattern going way back.”

Stranahan said, “I can't help it these jerks don't know how to drive a boat.”

Luis Córdova said, “It was an accident, that's all.”

“I just find it interesting,” said Al García. “Maybe the word is ironic, I don't know. Anyway, you're right, Mick. The two boys were coming to pay you a visit. They kept it real quiet around the shop, too. I can only guess why.” He reached in his jacket and took out a soggy white piece of paper. The paper was folded three times, pamphlet sized.

García showed it to Stranahan. “We found this in Salazar's back pocket.”

Stranahan knew what it was. He'd seen a thousand just like it. The word
warrant
was still legible in the standard judicial calligraphy. As he handed it back to García, Stranahan wondered whether he was about to be arrested.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Garbage,” García replied. He crumpled the sodden document in his right hand and lobbed it out a window into the water.

Stranahan smiled. “You liked the videotape.”

“Obviously,” said the detective.

 

 

AT
the Holiday Inn where they got a room, Maggie Gonzalez was going through the yellow pages column by column, telling Chemo which plastic surgeons were good enough to finish the dermabrasion treatments on his face; some of the names were new to her, but others she remembered from her nursing days. Chemo was stooped in front of the bathroom mirror, picking laconically at the patches left on his chin by Dr. Rudy Graveline.

Out of the side of his mouth, Chemo said, “Fucker's not returning my calls.”

“It's early,” Maggie said. “Rudy sleeps late on his day off.”

“I want to see some cash. Today.”

“Don't worry.”

“The sooner I get the money, the sooner I can take care of this.” Meaning his skin. In the mirror, Chemo could see Maggie's expression—at least, as much of it as the bandages revealed—and something that resembled genuine sympathy in her eyes. Not pity, sympathy.

She was the first woman who had ever looked at him that way. Certainly she seemed sincere about helping him find a new plastic surgeon. Chemo thought: She's either a truly devoted nurse or a sneaky little actress.

Maggie ripped a page of physicians from the phone book and said offhandedly, “How much are we hitting him for?”

“A million dollars,” Chemo said. His sluglike lips quivered into a smile. “You said he's loaded.”

“Yeah, he's also cheap.”

“A minute ago you said don't worry.”

“Oh, he'll pay. Rudy's cheap, but he's also a coward. All I'm saying is, he'll try to play coy at first. That's his style.”

“Coy?” Chemo thought: What in the fuck is she talking about? “I wouldn't know about coy,” he said. “I got a Weed Whacker strapped to my arm.”

Maggie said, “Hey, I'm on your side. I'm just telling you, he can be stubborn when he wants.”

“You know what I think? I think you're in this for more than the money. I think you want to see a show.”

Maggie's brown eyes narrowed above the gauze. “Don't be ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Chemo said, “I think you'd enjoy it if the boys got nasty with each other. I think you've got your heart set on blood.”

He was beaming as if he had just discovered the secret of the universe.

 

 

 

DR.
Rudy Graveline stared at the vaulted ceiling and contemplated his pitiable existence. Chemo had turned blackmailer. Maggie Gonzalez, the bitch, was still alive. So was Mick Stranahan. And somewhere out there a television crew was lurking, waiting to grill him about Victoria Barletta.

Aside from that, life was peachy.

When the phone rang, Rudy pulled the bedsheet up to his chin. He had a feeling it was more bad news.

“Answer it.” Heather Chappell's muffled command came from beneath a pillow. “Answer the damn thing.”

Rudy reached out from the covers and seized the receiver fiercely, as if it were the neck of a cobra. The grim gassy voice on the other end of the line belonged to Commissioner Roberto Pepsical.

“You see the news on TV?”

“No,” Rudy said. “But I got the paper here somewhere.”

“There's a story about two policemen who died.”

“Yeah, so?”

“In a boat accident,” Roberto said.

“Cut to the punch line, Bobby.”

“Those were the guys.”

“What guys?” asked Rudy. Next to him, Heather mumbled irritably and wrapped the pillow tightly around her ears.

“The guys I told you about.
My
guys.”

“Shit,” said Rudy.

Heather looked up raggedly and said: “Do you mind? I'm trying to sleep.”

Rudy told Roberto that he would call him right back from another phone. He put on a robe and hurried down the hall to his den, where he shut the door. Numbly he dialed Roberto's private number, the one reserved for bagmen and lobbyists.

“Let me make sure I understand,” Rudy said. “You were using police officers as hit men?”

“They promised it would be a cinch.”

“And now they're dead.” Rudy was well beyond the normal threshold of surprise. He had become conditioned to expect the worst. He said, “What about the money—can I get it back?”

Roberto Pepsical couldn't believe the nerve of this cheapskate. “No, you can't get it back. I paid them. They're dead. You want the money back, go ask their widows.”

The commissioner's tone had become impatient and firm. It made Rudy nervous; the fat pig should have been apologizing all over himself.

Rudy said, “All right, then, can you get somebody else to do it?”

“Do what?”

“Do Stranahan. The offer's still open.”

Roberto laughed scornfully on the other end; Rudy was baffled by this change of attitude.

“Listen to me,” the commissioner said. “The deal's off, forever. Two dead cops is major trouble, Doctor, and you just better hope nobody finds out what they were up to.”

Rudy Graveline wanted to drop the subject and crawl back to bed. “Fine, Bobby,” he said. “From now on, we never even met. Good-bye.”

“Not so fast.”

Oh brother, Rudy thought, here we go.

Roberto said, “I talked to The Others. They still want the original twenty-five.”

“That's absurd. Cypress Towers is history, Bobby. I'm through with it. Tell your pals they get zippo.”

“But you got your zoning.”

“I don't need the damn zoning,” Rudy protested. “They can have it back, understand? Peddle it to some other dupe.”

Roberto's voice carried no trace of understanding, no patience for a compromise. “Twenty-five was the price of each vote. You agreed. Now The Others want their money.”

“Don't you ever get sick of being an errand boy?”

“It's my money, too,” Roberto said soberly. “But yeah, I do get sick of being an errand boy. I get sick a dealing with cheap scuzzbuckets like you. When it comes to paying up, doctors are the fucking worst.”

“Hey,” Rudy said, “it doesn't grow on trees.”

“A deal is a deal.”

In a way, Roberto was glad that Dr. Graveline was being such a prick. It felt good to be the one to drop the hammer for a change. He said, “You got two business days to cover me and The Others.”

“What?” Rudy bleated.

“Two days, I'm calling my banker in the Caymans and having him read me the balance in my account. If it's not heavier by twenty-five, you're toast.”

Rudy thought: This can't be the same man, not the way he's talking to me.

Roberto Pepsical went on, detached, businesslike: “Me and The Others got this idea that we—meaning the county—should start certifying all private clinics. Have your own testing, license hearings, bi-monthly inspections, that sort of thing. It's our feeling that the general public needs to be protected.”