Skin Tight (40 page)

Curly Eyebrows said, “Sure. That doctor. The one was giving you a hard time.”

The man in New Jersey didn't remember the name of the dead doctor, but Rudy Graveline certainly did. It was Kenneth Greer, one of his former partners at the Durkos Center. The one who figured out what had happened to Victoria Barletta. The one who was trying to blackmail him.

“That was a cinch,” said Curly Eyebrows. “I wish they all could be hunters. Every deer season we could clean up the Gambinos that way. Hunting accidents.”

The man in New Jersey had an itch—on the line Rudy Graveline heard the disgusting sound of fat fingers scratching hairy flesh. He tried not to think about it.

“Somebody new is giving me a hard time,” the doctor said. “I don't know if you can help, but I thought I'd give it a shot.”

“I'm listening.”

“It's the Dade County Commission,” Rudy said. “I need somebody to kill them. Can you arrange it?”

“Wait a minute—”

“All of them,” Rudy said, evenly.

“Excuse me, Doc, but you're fucking crazy. Don't call me no more.”

“Please,” Rudy said. “Five of them are shaking me down for twenty five grand each. The trouble is, I don't know which five. So my idea is to kill all nine.”

Curly Eyebrows grunted. “You got me confused.”

Patiently Rudy explained how the bribe system worked, how each commissioner arranged for four crooked colleagues to go along on each controversial vote. Rudy told the man in New Jersey about the Old Cypress Towers project, about how the commissioners were trying to pinch him for the zoning decision he no longer needed.

“Hey, a deal is a deal,” Curly Eyebrows said unsympathetically. “Seems to me you got yourself in a tight situation.” Now it sounded like he was picking his teeth with a comb.

Rudy said, “You won't help?”

“Won't. Can't. Wouldn't.” The man coughed violently, then spit. “Much as the idea appeals to me personally—killing off an entire county commission—it'd be bad for business.”

“It was just an idea,” Rudy said. “I'm sorry I bothered you.”

“Want some free advice?”

“Why not.”

Curly Eyebrows said, “Who's the point man in this deal? You gotta know his name, at least.”

“I do.”

“Good. I suggest something happens to the bastard. Something awful bad. This could be a lesson to the other eight pricks, you understand?”

Rudy Graveline said yes, he understood.

“Trust me,” said the man in New Jersey. “I been in this end of it for a long time. Sort of thing makes an impression, especially dealing with your mayors and aldermen and those types. These are not exactly tough guys.”

“I suppose not.” Rudy cleared his throat. “Listen, that's a very good idea. Just do one of them.”

“That's my advice,” said the man in New Jersey.

“Could you arrange it?”

“Shit, I ain't risking my boys on some lowlife county pol. No way. Talent's too hard to come by these days—you found that out yourself.”

Rudy recalled the newspaper story about Tony the Eel, washed up dead on the Cape Florida beach. “I still feel bad about that fellow last month,” the doctor said.

“Hey, it happens.”

“But still,” said Rudy morosely.

“You ought to get out of Florida,” advised Curly Eyebrows. “I been telling all my friends, it's not like the old days. Fuck the pretty beaches, Doc, them Cubans are crazy. They're not like you and me. And then there's the Jews and the Haitians, Christ!”

“Times change,” said Rudy.

“I was reading up on it, some article about stress. Florida is like the worst fucking place in America for stressing out, besides Vegas. I'm not making this up.”

Dispiritedly, Rudy Graveline said, “It seems like everybody wants a piece of my hide.”

“Ain't it the fucking truth.”

“I swear, I'm not a violent person by nature.”

“Costa Rica,” said the man in New Jersey. “Think about it.”

 

 

COMMISSIONER
Roberto Pepsical got to the church fifteen minutes early and scouted the aisles: a bag lady snoozing on the third pew, but that was it. To kill time Roberto lit a whole row of devotional candles. Afterward he fished through his pocket change and dropped a Canadian dime in the coin box.

When the doctor arrived, Roberto waddled briskly to the back of the church. Rudy Graveline was wearing a tan sports jacket and dark, loose-fitting pants and a brown striped necktie. He looked about as calm as a rat in a snake hole. In his right hand was a black Samsonite suitcase. Wordlessly Roberto brushed past him and entered one of the dark confessionals. Rudy waited about three minutes, checked over both shoulders, opened the door, and went in.

“God,” he exclaimed.

“He's here somewhere.” The commissioner chuckled at his own joke.

Rudy had never been inside a confession booth before. It was smaller and gloomier than he had imagined; the only light was a tiny amber bulb plugged into a wall socket.

Roberto had planted his fat ass on the kneeling cushion with his back to the screen. Rudy checked to make sure there wasn't a priest on the other side, listening. Priests could be awful quiet when they wanted.

“Remember,” the commissioner said, raising a finger. “Whisper.”

Right, Rudy thought, like I was going to belt out a Gershwin tune. “Of all the screwy places to do this,” he said.

“It's quiet,” Roberto Pepsical said. “And very safe.”

“And very small,” Rudy added. “You had anchovies for dinner, didn't you?”

“There are no secrets here,” said Roberto.

With difficulty, Rudy wedged himself and the Samsonite next to the commissioner on the kneeling bench. Roberto's body heat bathed both of them in a warm acrid fog, and Rudy wondered how long the oxygen would hold out. He had never heard of anyone suffocating in confession; on the other hand, that was exactly the sort of incident the Catholics would cover up.

“You ready?” Roberto asked with a wink. “What's that in your pocket?”

“Unfortunately, that's a subpoena. Some creep got me on the way out of the clinic tonight.” Rudy had been in such a hurry that he hadn't even looked at the court papers; he was somewhat accustomed to getting sued.

Roberto said, “No wonder you're in such a lousy mood.”

“It's not that so much as what happened to my new car. It got vandalized—actually, scoured is the word for it.”

“The Jag? That's terrible.”

“Oh, it's been a splendid day,” Rudy said. “Absolutely splendid.”

“Getting back to the money . . .”

“I've got it right here.” The doctor opened the suitcase across both their laps, and the confessional was filled with the sharp scent of new money. Rudy Graveline was overwhelmed—it really did
smell.
Roberto picked up a brick of hundred-dollar bills. “I thought I said twenties.”

“Yeah, and I would've needed a bloody U-Haul.”

Roberto Pepsical snapped off the bank wrapper and counted out ten thousand dollars on the floor between his feet. Then he added up the other bundles in the suitcase to make sure the total came to one twenty-five.

Grinning, he held up one of the loose hundreds. “I don't see many of these. Whose picture is that—Eisenhower's?”

“No,” said Rudy, stonily.

“What'd the bank say? About you taking all these big bills.”

“Nothing,” Rudy said. “This is Miami, Bobby.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Ebulliently the commissioner restacked the cash bundles and packed them in the Samsonite. He scooped up the loose ten thousand dollars and shoved the thick wad into the pockets of his suit. “This was a smart thing you did.”

Rudy said, “I'm not so sure.”

“You know that plan I told you about . . . about licensing the medical clinics and all that? Me and The Others, we decided to drop the whole thing. We figure that doctors like you got enough rules and regulations as it is.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Rudy Graveline. He wished he had brought some Certs. Roberto could use a whole roll.

“How about a drink?” the commissioner asked. “We could stop at the Versailles, get a couple pitchers of sangría.”

“Yum.”

“Hey, it's my treat.”

“Thanks,” said the doctor, “but first you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to say a prayer. I'd like to thank the Lord that this problem with Cypress Towers is finally over.”

Roberto shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Is it all right, Bobby? I mean, since I'm not Catholic.”

“No problem.” The commissioner grunted to his feet, turned around in the booth and got to his knees. The cushion squeaked under his weight. “Do like this,” he said.

Rudy Graveline, who was slimmer, had an easier time with the turnaround maneuver. With the suitcase propped between them, the two men knelt side by side, facing the grated screen through which confessions were heard.

“So pray,” Roberto Pepsical said. “I'll wait till you're done. Fact, I might even do a couple Hail Marys myself, long as I'm here.”

Rudy shut his eyes, bowed his head, and pretended to say a prayer.

Roberto nudged him. “I don't mean to tell you what to do,” he said, “but in here it's not proper to pray with your hands in your pockets.”

“Of course,” said Rudy, “I'm sorry.”

He took his right hand from his pants and placed it on Roberto's doughy shoulder. It was too dark for the commissioner to see the hypodermic syringe.

“Hail Mary,” Roberto said, “full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed ar—ow!”

The commissioner pawed helplessly at the needle sticking from his jacket at the crook of the elbow. Considering Rudy's general clumsiness with injections, it was a minor miracle that he hit the commissioner's antecubital vein on the first try. Roberto Pepsical hugged the doctor desperately, a panting bear, but already the deadly potassium was streaming toward the valves of his fat clotty heart.

Within a minute the seizure killed him, mimicking the symptoms of a routine infarction so perfectly that the commissioner's relatives would never challenge the autopsy.

Rudy removed the spent syringe, retrieved the loose cash from Roberto's pocket, picked up the black suitcase, and slipped out of the stuffy confessional. The air in the church seemed positively alpine, and he paused to breathe it deeply.

In the back row, an elderly Cuban couple turned at the sound of his footsteps on the terrazzo. Rudy nodded solemnly. He hoped they didn't notice how badly his legs were shaking. He faced the altar and tried to smile like a man whose soul had been cleansed of all sin.

The old Cuban woman raised a bent finger to her forehead, and made the sign of the cross. Rudy worried about Catholic protocol and wondered if he was expected to reply. He didn't know how to make the sign of the cross, but he put down the suitcase and gave it a gallant try. With a forefinger he touched his brow, his breast, his right shoulder, his left shoulder, his navel, then his brow again.

“Live long and prosper,” he said to the old woman and walked out the doors of the church.

 

 

WHEN
he got home, Rudy Graveline went upstairs to see Heather Chappell. He sat next to the bed and took her hand. She blinked moistly over the edge of the bandages.

Rudy kissed her knuckles and said, “How are you feeling?”

“I don't know about you,” Heather said, “but I'm feeling a hundred years old.”

“That's to be expected. You had quite a day.”

“You sure it went okay?”

“Beautifully,” Rudy said.

“The nose, too?”

“A masterpiece.”

“But I don't remember a thing.”

Heather couldn't remember the surgery because there had been no surgery. Rudy had drugged her copiously the night before and kept her drugged the whole day. Heather had lain unconscious for seven hours, whacked out on world-class pharmaceutical narcotics. By the time she awoke, she felt like she'd been sleeping for a month. Her hips, her breasts, her neck, and her nose were all snugly and expertly bandaged, but no scalpel had touched her fine California flesh. Rudy hoped to persuade Heather that the surgery was a glowing success; the absence of scars, a testament to his wizardry. Obviously he had weeks of bogus post-operative counseling ahead of him.

“Can I see the video?” she asked from the bed.

“Later,” Rudy promised. “When you're up to snuff.”

He had ordered (by FedEx) a series of surgical training cassettes from a medical school in California. Now it was simply a matter of editing the tapes into a plausible sequence. Gowned, masked, and anesthetized on the operating table, all patients looked pretty much alike to a camera. Meanwhile, all you ever saw of the surgeon was his gloved hands; Heather would never know that the doctor on the videotape was not her lover.

She said, “It's incredible, Rudolph, but I don't feel any pain.”

“It's the medication,” he said. “The first few days, we keep you pretty high.”

Heather giggled. “Eight miles high?”

“Nine,” said Rudy Graveline, “at least.”

He tucked her hand beneath the sheets and picked up something from the bedstand. “Look what I've got.”

She squinted through the fuzz of the drugs. “Red and blue and white,” she said dreamily.

“Plane tickets,” Rudy said. “I'm taking you on a trip.”