Skin Tight (51 page)

Maggie Gonzalez was wearing a man's navy pea jacket. When Heather reached for the pockets, Maggie pushed her away.

There was a metallic clunking noise under the house: Stranahan, emerging from his sniper hole. Quickly he clambered out of the aluminum skiff, over the top of the water tank, pulling himself one-handed to the deck of the house. His visitors got a good long look at the Remington.

“Maggie, be a good girl,” Stranahan said. “Let's see what you've got.”

Christina took one side of the coat and Heather took the other. “Keys,” Christina announced, holding them up for Stranahan to see. One was a tiny silver luggage key, the other was from a room at the Holiday Inn.

Chemo blinked sullenly and patted at his pants. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “The bitch picked my pockets.”

He couldn't believe it: Maggie had lifted the keys while helping him out of the boat! She planned to sneak back to the motel and steal all the money.

“I know how you feel,” Stranahan said to Chemo. He reached into the boat and plucked the keys from Christina's hand. He put them in the front pocket of his jeans.

“What now?” Rudy whined, to anyone who might have a clue.

Chemo's right hand crept to his left armpit and found the toggle switch for the battery pack. The Weed Whacker buzzed, stalled once, then came to life.

Stranahan said, “I'm impressed, I admit it.” He aimed the Remington at Chemo's head and told him not to move.

Chemo paid no attention. He took two giraffe-like steps across the dock and, with a vengeful groan, dove into the stern of the boat after Maggie. They all went down in a noisy tangle—Chemo, Maggie, Heather and Christina—the boat listing precariously against the pilings.

Mick Stranahan and Rudy Graveline watched the melee from the lower deck of the stilt house. One woman's scream, piercing and feline, rose above the uproar.

“Do something!” the doctor cried.

“All right,” said Stranahan.

 

 

LATER,
Stranahan gathered all the lanterns and brought them inside. Rudy Graveline lay in his undershorts on the bed; he was handcuffed spread-eagle to the bedposts. Chemo was unconscious on the bare floor, folded into a corner. With the shutters latched, the lanterns made the bedroom as bright as a television studio.

Rudy said, “Are they gone?”

“They'll be fine. The tide's running out.”

“I'm not sure if Heather can swim.”

“The boat won't sink. They'll all be fine.”

Rudy noticed fresh blood on Stranahan's forehead, where he had been grazed by the Weed Whacker. “You want me to look at that?”

“No,” Stranahan said acidly. “No, I don't.” He left the bedroom and returned with the red Sears Craftsman toolbox.

“Look what I've got,” he said to Rudy.

Rudy craned to see. Stranahan opened the toolbox and began to unpack. “Recognize any of this stuff?”

“Yes, of course . . . what're you doing?”

“Before we get started, there's something I ought to tell you. The cops have Maggie's videotape, so they know about what you did to Vicky Barletta. Whether they can convict you is another matter. I mean, Maggie is not exactly a prize witness. In fact, she'd probably change her story again for about twenty-five cents.”

Rudy Graveline swallowed his panic. He was trying to figure out what Stranahan wanted and how to give it to him. Rudy could only assume that, deep down, Stranahan must be no different than the others: Maggie, Bobby Pepsical, or even Chemo. Surely Stranahan had a scam, an angle. Surely it involved money.

Stranahan went out again and returned with the folding card table. He placed it in the center of the room, covered with the oilskin cloth.

“What is it?” the doctor said. “What do you want?”

“I want you to show me what happened.”

“I don't understand.”

“To Vicky Barletta. Show me what went wrong.” He began placing items from the toolbox on the card table.

“You're insane,” said Rudy Graveline. It seemed the obvious conclusion.

“Well, if you don't help,” Stranahan said, “I'll just have to wing it.” He tore open a package of sterile gloves and put them on. Cheerily he flexed the latex fingers in front of Rudy's face.

The surgeon stared back, aghast.

Stranahan said, “Don't worry, I did some reading up on this. Look here, I got the Marcaine, plenty of cotton, skin hooks, a whole set of new blades.”

From the toolbox he selected a pair of doll-sized surgical scissors and began trimming the hairs in Rudy Graveline's nose.

“Aw no!” Rudy said, thrashing against the bedposts.

“Hold still.”

Next Stranahan scrubbed the surgeon's face thoroughly with Hibiclens soap.

Rudy's eyes began to water. “What about some anesthesia?” he bleated.

“Oh yeah,” said Stranahan. “I almost forgot.”

CHEMO
awoke and rolled over with a thonk, the Weed Whacker bouncing on the floor planks. He sat up slowly, groping under his shirt. The battery sling was gone; the Weed Whacker was dead.

“Ah!” said Mick Stranahan. “The lovely Nurse Tatum.”

A knot burned on the back of Chemo's head, where Stranahan had clubbed him with the butt of the Remington. Teetering to his feet, the first thing Chemo focused upon was Dr. Rudy Graveline—cuffed half-naked to the bed. His eyes were taped shut and a frayed old beach towel had been tucked around his neck. A menacing tong-like contraption lay poised near the surgeon's face: a speculum, designed for spreading the nostrils. It looked like something Moe would have used on Curly.

Stranahan stood at a small table cluttered with tubes and gauze and rows of sharp stainless-steel instruments. In one corner of the table was a heavy gray textbook, opened to the middle.

“What the fuck?” said Chemo. His voice was foggy and asthmatic.

Stranahan handed him a sterile glove. “I need your help,” he said.

“No, not him,” objected Rudy, from the bed.

“This is where we are,” Stranahan said to Chemo. “We've got his nose numb and packed. Got the eyes taped to keep out the blood. Got plenty of sponges—I'm sorry, you look confused.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Scraggles of hair rose on the nape of Chemo's scalp. His stomach heaved against his ribs. He wanted out—but where was the goddamn shotgun?

“Put the glove on,” Stranahan told him.

“What for?”

“The doctor doesn't want to talk about what happened to Victoria Barletta—she died during an operation exactly like this. I know it's been four years, and Dr. Graveline's had hundreds of patients since then. But my idea was that we might be able to refresh his memory by reenacting the Barletta case. Right here.”

Rudy fidgeted against the handcuffs.

Chemo said, “For Christ's sake, just tell him what he wants to hear.”

“There's nothing to tell,” said Rudy. By now he was fairly certain that Stranahan was bluffing. Already Stranahan had skipped several fundamental steps in the rhinoplasty. He had not attempted to file the bony dorsum, for example. Nor had he tried to make any incisions inside of Rudy's nostrils. This led Rudy to believe that Stranahan wasn't serious about doing a homemade nose job, that he was merely trying to frighten the doctor into a cheap confession.

To Chemo, of course, the makeshift surgical suite was a gulag of horrors. One glimpse of Rudy, blindfolded and splayed like a pullet on a bed, convinced Chemo that Mick Stranahan was monstrously deranged.

Stranahan was running a forefinger down a page of the surgical text. “Apparently this is the most critical part of the operation—fracturing the nasal bones on both sides of the septum. This is very, very delicate.” He handed Chemo a small steel mallet and said, “Don't worry, I've been reading up on this.”

Chemo tested the weight of the mallet in his hand. “This isn't funny,” he said.

“Is it supposed to be? We're talking about a young woman's death.”

“Probably it was an accident,” Chemo said. He gestured derisively at Rudy Graveline. “The guy's a putz, he probably just fucked up.”

“But you weren't there. You don't know.”

Chemo turned to Rudy. “Tell him, you asshole.”

Rudy shook his head. “I'm an excellent surgeon,” he insisted.

Stranahan foraged through the toolbox until he found the proper instrument.

“What's that, a chisel?” Chemo asked.

“Very good,” Stranahan said. “Actually, it's called an osteotome. A Storz number four. But basically, yeah, it's just a chisel. Look here.”

He leaned over the bed and pinched the bridge of Rudy Graveline's nose. With the other hand he gingerly slipped the osteotome into the surgeon's right nostril, aligning the instrument lengthwise along the septum. “Now, Mr. Tatum, I'll hold this steady while you give it a slight tap—”

“Nuggghhh,” Rudy protested. The dull pressure of the chisel reawakened the fear that Stranahan was really going to do it.

“Did you say something?” Stranahan asked.

“You were right,” the surgeon said. His voice came out in a wheeze. “About the Barletta girl.”

“You killed her?”

“I didn't mean to, I swear to God.” Between the pinch of Stranahan's fingers and the poke of the osteotome, Rudy Graveline talked like he had a terrible cold.

He said, “What happened was, I let go of her nose. It was . . . terrible luck. I let go just when the nurse hit the chisel, so—”

“So it went all the way up.”

“Yes. The radio was on, I lost my concentration. The Lakers and the Sonics. I didn't do it on purpose.”

Stranahan said, “And afterward you got your brother to destroy the body.”

“Uh-huh.” Rudy couldn't nod very well with the Number 4 osteotome up his nostril.

“And what about my assistant?” Stranahan glanced over at Chemo. “You hired him to kill me, right?”

Rudy's Adam's apple hopped up and down like a scalded toad. Sightless, he imagined the scene by what he could hear: The plink of the instruments, the two men breathing, the wind and the waves shaking the house, or so it seemed.

Stranahan said, “Look, I know it's true. I'd just like to hear the terms of the deal.”

Rudy felt the chisel nudge the bony plate between the eye sockets, deep in his face. He was, understandably, reluctant to give Mick Stranahan the full truth—that the price on his head was to be paid in discount dermatological treatments.

Rudy said, “It was sort of a trade.”

“This I gotta hear.”

“Tell him,” Rudy said blindly to Chemo. “Tell him the arrangement with the dermabrasion, tell—”

Chemo reacted partly out of fear of incrimination and partly out of embarrassment. He let out a feral grunt and swung the mallet with all his strength. It was a clean blow to the butt of the osteotome, precisely the right spot.

Only much too hard. So hard that it knocked the chisel out of Stranahan's hand.

So hard the instrument disappeared entirely, as if inhaled by Rudy Graveline's nose.

So hard that the point of the chisel punched through the brittle plate of the ethmoid bone and penetrated Rudy Graveline's brain.

The hapless surgeon shuddered, kicked his left leg, and went limp. “Damn,” said Stranahan, jerking his hand away from the blood.

This he hadn't planned. Stranahan had anticipated having to kill Chemo, at some point, because of the man's stubborn disposition to violence. He had figured that Chemo would grab for the shotgun or maybe a kitchen knife, something dumb and obvious; then it would be over. But the doctor, alive and indictable, Stranahan had promised to Al García.

He looked up from the body and glared at Chemo. “You happy now?”

Chemo was already moving for the door, wielding the mallet and neutered Weed Whacker as twin bludgeons, warning Stranahan not to follow. Stranahan could hear the seven-foot killer clomping through the darkened house, then out on the wooden deck, then down the stairs toward the water.

When Stranahan heard the man coming back, he retrieved the Remington from under the bed and waited.

Chemo was panting as he ducked through the doorway. “The fuck did you do to your boat?”

“I shot a hole in it,” Stranahan said.

“Then how do we get off this goddamn place?”

“Swim.”

Chemo's lips curled. He glowered at the bulky lawn appliance strapped to the stump of his arm. He could unfasten it, certainly, but how far would he get? Paddling with one arm at night, in these treacherous waters! And what about his face—it would be excruciating, the stringent salt water scouring his fresh abrasions. Yet there was no other way out. It would be lunacy to stay.