Skin Tight (9 page)

“Right.”

“You sure drive a hard bargain,” Rudy said.

Chemo grinned triumphantly. “So when can you start on my face?”

“Soon as this chore is done.”

Chemo stood up. “I suppose you'll want proof.”

Rudy Graveline hadn't really thought about it. He said, “A newspaper clipping would do.”

“Sure you don't want me to bring you something?”

“Like what?”

“A finger,” Chemo said, “maybe one of his nuts.”

“That won't be necessary,” said Dr. Graveline, “really it won't.”

STRANAHAN
got Maggie Orestes Gonzalez's home address from a friend of his who worked for the state nursing board in Jacksonville. Although Maggie's license was paid up to date, no current place of employment was listed on the file.

The address was a duplex apartment in a quiet old neighborhood off Coral Way, in the Little Havana section of Miami. There was a chain-link fence around a sparse brown yard, a ceramic statue of Santa Barbara in the flower bed, and the customary burglar bars on every window. Stranahan propped open the screen door and knocked three times on the heavy pine frame. He wasn't surprised that no one was home.

To break into Maggie Gonzalez's apartment, Stranahan used a three-inch stainless-steel lockpick that he had confiscated from the mouth of an infamous condominium burglar named Wet Willie Jeeter. Wet Willie got his nickname because he only worked on rainy days; on sunny days he was a golf caddy at the Doral Country Club. When they went through Wet Willie's place after the arrest, the cops found seventeen personally autographed photos of Jack Nicklaus, going back to the 1967 Masters. What the cops did not find was any of Wet Willie's burglar tools, due to the fact that Wet Willie kept them well hidden beneath his tongue.

Stranahan found them when he visited Wet Willie in the Dade County Jail, two weeks before the trial. The purpose of the visit was to make Wet Willie realize the wisdom of pleading guilty and saving the taxpayers the expense of trial. Unspoken was the fact that the State Attorney's Office had a miserably weak case and was desperate for a deal. Wet Willie told Stranahan thanks anyway, but he'd just as soon take his chances with a jury. Stranahan said fine and offered Wet Willie a stick of Dentyne, which the burglar popped into his mouth without thinking. The chewing dislodged the steel lockpicks, which immediately stuck fast in the Dentyne; the whole mess eventually lodged itself in Wet Willie's throat. For a few hectic minutes Stranahan thought he might have to perform an amateur tracheotomy, but miraculously the burglar coughed up the tiny tools and also a complete confession. Stranahan kept one of Wet Willie's lockpicks as a souvenir.

The lock on Maggie's door was a breeze.

Stranahan slipped inside and noticed how neat the place looked. Someone, probably a neighbor or a relative, had carefully stacked the unopened mail on a table near the front door. On the kitchen counter was a Princess-model telephone attached to an answering machine. Stranahan pressed the Rewind button, then Play, and listened to Maggie's voice say: “Hi, I'm not home right now so you're listening to another one of those dumb answering machines. Please leave a brief message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Bye now!”

Stranahan played the rest of the tape, which was blank. Either Maggie Gonzalez wasn't getting any calls, or someone was taking them for her, or she was phoning in for her own messages with one of those remote pocket beepers. Whatever the circumstances, it was a sign that she probably wasn't all that dead.

Other clues in the apartment pointed to travel. There was no luggage in the closets, no bras or underwear in the bedroom drawers, no makeup on the bathroom sink. The most interesting thing Stranahan found was crumpled in a wastebasket in a corner of the living room: a bank deposit slip for twenty-five hundred dollars, dated the twenty-seventh of December.

Have a nice trip, Stranahan thought.

He let himself out, carefully locking the door behind him. Then he drove three blocks to a pay phone at a 7-Eleven, where he dialed Maggie's phone number and left a very important message on her machine.

 

 

AT
the end of the day, Christina Marks dropped her rented Ford Escort with the hotel valet, bought a copy of the
New York Times
at the shop in the lobby, and took the elevator up to her room. Before she could get the key out of the door, Mick Stranahan opened it from the other side.

“Come on in,” he said.

“Nice of you,” Christina said, “considering it's my room.”

Stranahan noticed she had one of those trendy leather briefcase satchels that you wear over your shoulder. A couple of legal pads stuck out the top.

“You've been busy.”

“You want a drink?”

“Gin and tonic, thanks,” Stranahan said. After a pause: “I was afraid the great Reynaldo might see me if I waited in the lobby.”

“So you got a key to my room?”

“Not exactly.”

Christina Marks handed him the drink. Then she poured herself a beer, and sat down in a rattan chair with garish floral pillows that were supposed to look tropical.

“I went to see Maggie's family today,” she said.

“Any luck?”

“No. Unfortunately, they don't speak English.”

Stranahan smiled and shook his head.

“What's so funny?” Christina said. “Just because I don't speak Spanish?”

Stranahan said, “Except for probably her grandmother, all Maggie's family speaks perfect English. Perfect.”

“What?”

“Her father teaches physics at Palmetto High School. Her mother is an operator for Southern Bell. Her sister Consuelo is a legal secretary, and her brother, whats-his-name . . .”

“Tomás.”

“Tommy, yeah,” Stranahan said. “He's a senior account executive at Merrill Lynch.”

Christina Marks put down her beer so decisively that it nearly broke the glass coffee table. “I sat in the living room, talking to these people, and they just stared at me and said—”

“
No hablo
English,
señora.
”

“Exactly.”

“Oldest trick in Miami,” Stranahan said. “They just didn't want to talk. Don't feel bad, they tried the same thing with me.”

“And I suppose you know Spanish.”

“Enough to make them think I knew more. They're worried about Maggie, actually. Been worried for some time. She's had some personal problems, Maggie has. Money problems, too—that much I found out before her old lady started having chest pains.”

“You're kidding.”

“Second-oldest trick,” Stranahan said, smiling, “but I was done anyway. I honestly don't think they know where she is.”

Christina Marks finished her beer and got another from the small hotel refrigerator. When she sat down again, she kicked off her shoes.

“So,” she said, “you're ahead of us.”

“You and Reynaldo?”

“The crew,” Christina said, looking stung.

“No, I'm not ahead of you,” Stranahan said. “Tell me what Maggie Gonzalez knows about Vicky Barletta.”

Christina said, “I can't do that.”

“How much did you promise to pay?”

Again Christina shook her head.

“Know what I think?” Stranahan said. “I think you and Ray are getting the hum job of your lives.”

“Pardon?”

“I think Maggie is sucking you off, big-time.”

Christina heard herself saying, “You might be right.”

Stranahan softened his tone. “Let me give you a hypothetical,” he said. “This Maggie Gonzalez, whom you've never seen before, shows up in New York one day and offers to tell you a sensational story about a missing college coed. The way she tells it, the girl came to a terrible and ghastly end. And, conveniently, the way she tells it can't ever be proven or disproven. Why? Because it happened a long time ago. And the odds are, Christina, that Victoria Barletta is dead. And the odds are, whoever did it isn't about to come forward to say that Reynaldo Flemm got it all wrong when he told the story on national TV.”

Christina Marks leaned forward. “Fine. All fine, except for one thing. She names names.”

“Maggie does?”

“Yes. She describes exactly how it happened and who did it.”

“And these people—”

“Person, singular.”

“He? She?”

“He,” Christina said.

“He's still alive?”

“Sure is.”

“Here in town?”

“That's right.”

“Jesus,” Stranahan said. He got up and fixed himself another gin. He dropped a couple of ice cubes, his hands were shaking so much. This was not good, he told himself, getting so excited was definitely not good.

He carried his drink back to the living room and said, “Is it the doctor?”

“I can't say.” It would violate a confidence, Christina Marks explained. Journalists have to protect their sources. Stranahan finished half his drink before he spoke again. “Are you any good?”

Christina looked at him curiously.

“At what you do,” he said irritably, “are you any damn good?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Can you keep the great Reynaldo out of my hair?”

“I'll try. Why?”

“Because,” Stranahan said, “it would be to our mutual benefit to meet once in a while, just you and me.”

“Compare notes?”

“Something like that. I don't know why, but I think I can trust you.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm not saying I do, just that it's possible.”

He put down the glass and stood up.

“What's your stake in this?” Christina Marks asked.

“Truth, justice, whatever.”

“No, it's bigger than that.”

She was pretty sharp, he had to admit. But he wasn't ready to tell her about Tony the Eel and the marlin head.

As she walked Stranahan to the door, Christina said, “I spent some time at the newspaper today.”

“Reading up, I suppose.”

“You've got quite a clip file,” she said. “I suppose I ought to be scared of you.”

“You don't believe everything you read?”

“Of course not.” Christina Marks opened the door. “Just tell me, how much of it was true?”

“All of it,” Mick Stranahan said, “unfortunately.”

 

 

OF
Stranahan's five ex-wives, only one had chosen to keep his last name: ex-wife number four, Chloe Simpkins Stranahan. Even after she remarried, Chloe hung on to his name as an act of unalloyed spite. Naturally she was listed in the Miami phone book; Stranahan had begged her to please get a nonpublished number, but Chloe had said that would defeat the whole purpose. “This way, any girl who wants to call up and check on you, I can tell them the truth. That you're a dangerous lunatic. That's what I'll tell them when they call up, Mick—
honey, he was one dangerous lunatic.
”

Christina Marks had gotten all the Stranahan numbers from directory assistance. When she had called Chloe from New York, Chloe assumed it was just one of Mick's girlfriends, and had given a vitriolic and highly embellished account of their eight-month marriage and nine-month divorce. Finally Christina Marks had cut in and explained who she was and what she wanted, and Chloe Simpkins Stranahan had said: “That'll cost you a grand.”

“Five hundred,” Christina countered.

“Bitch,” Chloe hissed. But when the cashier's check arrived the next afternoon by Federal Express, Chloe faithfully picked up the phone and called Christina Marks (collect) in New York and told her where to locate her dangerous lunatic of an ex-husband.

“Give him a disease for me, will you?” Chloe had said and then had hung up.

The hit man known as Chemo was not nearly as resourceful as Christina Marks, but he did know enough to check the telephone book for Stranahans. There were five, and Chemo wrote them all down.

The day after his meeting with Dr. Rudy Graveline, Chemo went for a drive. His car was a royal blue 1980 Bonneville, with tinted windows. The tinted windows were essential to conceal Chemo's face, the mere glimpse of which could cause a high-speed pileup at any intersection.

Louis K. Stranahan was the first on Chemo's list. A Miamian would have recognized the address as being in the middle of Liberty City, but Chemo did not. It occurred to him upon entering the neighborhood that he should have asked Dr. Graveline whether the man he was supposed to kill was black or white, because it might have saved some time.

The address was in the James Scott housing project, a bleak and tragic warren where few outsiders of any color dared to go. Even on a bright winter day, the project gave off a dark and ominous heat. Chemo was oblivious; he saw no danger here, just work. He parked the Bonneville next to a fenced-in basketball court and got out. Almost instantly the kids on the court stopped playing. The basketball hit the rim and bounced lazily out of bounds, but no one ran to pick it up. They were all staring at Chemo. The only sound was the dental-drill rap of Run-D.M.C. from a distant quadrophonic blaster.

“Hello, there,” Chemo said.

The kids from the project glanced at one another, trying to guess how they should play it; this was one of the tallest white motherfuckers they'd ever seen this side of the Interstate. Also, one of the ugliest.

“Game's full,” the biggest kid declared with a forced authority.