by Carl Hiaasen
“Yes?”
“You won’t mind some friendly professional advice?”
“Of course not.” The woman’s voice held an edge of concern.
“Well, I couldn’t help but notice,” Dr. Graveline said, “when we were making love . . .”
“Yes?”
Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached down and patted her hip. “You could use a little suction around the saddle-bags.”
The football player’s wife turned away and blinked.
“Please don’t be embarrassed,” the doctor said. “This is my specialty, after all. Believe me, darling. I’ve got an eye for perfection, and you’re only an inch or two away.”
She took a little breath and said, “Around the thighs?”
“That’s all.”
“How much would it cost?” she asked with a trace of a sniffle.
Rudy Graveline smiled warmly and passed her a monogrammed handkerchief. “Less than you think,” he said.
THE cabin cruiser with the camera crew came back again, anchored in the same place. Stranahan sighed and spit hard into the tide. He was in no mood for this.
He was standing on the dock with a spinning rod in his hands, catching pinfish from around the pilings of the stilt house. Suspended motionless in the gin-clear water below was a dark blue log, or so it would have appeared to the average tourist. The log measured about five feet long and, when properly motivated, could streak through the water at about sixty knots to make a kill. Teeth were the trademark of the Great Barracuda, and the monster specimen that Mick Stranahan called Liza had once left thirteen needle-sharp incisors in a large plastic mullet that some moron had trolled through the Biscayne Channel. Since that episode the barracuda had more or less camped beneath Stranahan’s place. Every afternoon he went out and caught for its supper a few dollar-sized pinfish, which he tossed off the dock, and which the barracuda devoured in lightning flashes that churned the water and sent the mangrove snappers diving for cover. Liza’s teeth had long since grown back.
Because of his preoccupation with the camera boat, Mick Stranahan allowed the last pinfish to stay on the line longer than he should have. It tugged back and forth, sparkling just below the surface until the barracuda ran out of patience. Before Stranahan could react, the big fish rocketed from under the stilt house and severed the majority of the pinfish as cleanly as a scalpel; a quivering pair of fish lips was all that remained on Stranahan’s hook.
“Nice shot,” he mumbled and stored the rod away.
He climbed into the skiff and motored off the flat, toward the cabin cruiser. The photographer immediately put down the video camera; Stranahan could see him conferring with the rest of the crew. There was a brief and clumsy attempt to raise the anchor, followed by the sound of the boat’s engine whining impotently in the way that cold inboards do. Finally the crew gave up and just waited for the big man in the skiff, who by now was within hailing distance.
A stocky man with a lacquered helmet of black hair and a stiff bottlebrush mustache stood on the transom of the boat and shouted, “Ahoy there!”
Stranahan cut the motor and let the skiff coast up to the cabin cruiser. He tied off on a deck cleat, stood up, and said, “Did I hear you right? Did you actually say ahoy?”
The man with the mustache nodded uneasily.
“Where did you learn that, watching pirate movies? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you said that. Ahoy there! Give me a break.” Stranahan was really aggravated. He jumped into the bigger boat and said, “Which one of you assholes is Reynaldo Flemm? Let me guess; it’s Captain Blood here.”
The stocky man with the mustache puffed out his chest and said, “Watch it, pal!”—which took a certain amount of courage, since Mick Stranahan was holding a stainless-steel tarpon gaff in his right hand. Flemm’s crew—an overweight cameraman and an athletic young woman in blue jeans—kept one eye on their precious equipment and the other on the stranger with the steel hook.
Stranahan said, “Why have you been taking my picture?”
“For a story,” Flemm said. “For television.”
“What’s the story?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Stranahan frowned. “What’s it got to do with Vicky Barletta?”
Reynaldo Flemm shook his head. “In due time, Mr. Stranahan. When we’re ready to do the interview.”
Stranahan said, “I’m ready to do the interview now.”
Flemm smiled in a superior way. “Sorry.”
Stranahan slipped the tarpon gaff between Reynaldo Flemm’s legs and gave a little jerk. The tip of the blade not only poked through Reynaldo Flemm’s Banana Republic trousers, but also through his thirty-dollar thong underpants (flamenco red), which he had purchased at a boutique in Coconut Grove. The cold point of the gaff came to rest on Reynaldo Flemm’s scrotum, and at this frightful instant the air rushed from his intestinal tract with a sharp noise that seemed to punctuate Mick Stranahan’s request.
“The interview,” he said again to Flemm, who nodded energetically.
But words escaped the television celebrity. Try as he might, Flemm could only burble in clipped phrases. Fear, and the absence of cue cards, had robbed him of cogent conversation.
The young woman in blue jeans stepped forward from the cabin of the boat and said, “Please, Mr. Stranahan, we didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Of course you did.”
“My name is Christina Marks. I’m the producer of this segment.”
“Segment of what?” Stranahan asked.
“Of the Reynaldo Flemm show. In Your Face. You must have seen it.”
“Never.”
For Reynaldo, Stranahan knew, this was worse than a gaff in the balls.
“Come on,” Christina Marks said.
“Honest,” Stranahan said. “You see a TV dish over on my house?”
“Well, no.”
“There you go. Now, what’s this all about? And hurry it up, your man here looks like his legs are cramping.”
Indeed, Reynaldo Flemm was shaking on his tiptoes. Stranahan eased the gaff down just a notch or two.
Christina Marks said: “Do you know a nurse named Maggie Gonzalez?”
“Nope,” Stranahan said.
“Are you sure?”
“Give me a hint.”
“She worked at the Durkos Medical Center.”
“Okay, now I remember.” He had taken her statement the day after Victoria Barletta had vanished. Timmy Gavigan had done the doctor, while Stranahan had taken the nurse. He had scanned the affidavits in the State Attorney’s file that morning.
“You sure about the last name?” Stranahan asked.
“Sorry—Gonzalez is her married name. Back then it was Orestes.”
“So let’s have the rest.”
“About a month ago, in New York, she came to us.”
“To me,” croaked Reynaldo Flemm.
“Shut up,” said Stranahan.
Christina Marks went on: “She said she had some important information about the Barletta case. She indicated she was willing to talk on camera.”
“To me,” Flemm said, before Stranahan tweaked him once more with the tarpon gaff.
“But first,” Christina Marks said, “she said she had to speak to you, Mr. Stranahan.”
“About what?”
“All she said was that she needed to talk to you first, because you could do something about it. And don’t ask me about what, because I don’t know. We gave her six hundred bucks, put her on a plane to Florida, and never saw her again. She was supposed to be back two weeks ago last Monday.” Christina Marks put her hands in her pockets. “That’s all there is. We came down here to look for Maggie Gonzalez, and you’re the best lead we had.”
Stranahan removed the gaff from Reynaldo Flemm’s crotch and tossed it into the bow of his skiff. Almost instantly, Flemm leapt from the stern and bolted for the cabin. “Get tape of that fucker,” he cried at the cameraman, “so we can prosecute h
is fat ass!”
“Ray, knock it off,” said Christina Marks.
Stranahan liked the way she talked down to the big star. “Tell him,” he said, “that if he points that goddamn camera at me again, he’ll be auditioning for the Elephant Man on Broadway. That’s how seriously I’ll mess up his face.”
“Ray,” she said, “did you hear that?”
“Roll tape! Roll tape!” Flemm was all over the cameraman.
Wearily, Stranahan got back into his skiff and said, “Miss Marks, the interview is over.”
Now it was her turn to be angry. She hopped up on the transom, tennis shoes squeaking on the teak. “Wait a minute, that’s it?”
Stranahan looked up from his little boat. “I haven’t seen Maggie Gonzalez since the day after the Barletta girl disappeared. That’s the truth. I don’t know whether she took your money and went south or what, but I haven’t heard from her.”
“He’s lying,” sneered Reynaldo Flemm, and he stormed into the cabin to sulk. A gust of wind had made a comical nest of his hair.
Stranahan hand-cranked the outboard and slipped it into gear.
“I’m at the Sonesta,” Christina Marks said to him, “if Maggie Gonzalez should call.”
Not likely, Stranahan thought. Not very likely at all.
“How the hell did you find me, anyway?” he called out to the young TV producer.
“Your ex-wife,” Christina Marks called back from the cabin cruiser.
“Which one?”
“Number four.”
That would be Chloe, Stranahan thought. Naturally.
“How much did it cost you?” he shouted.
Sheepishly, Christina Marks held up five fingers.
“You got off light,” Mick Stranahan said, and turned the skiff homeward.
CHAPTER 5
CHRISTINA Marks was in bed, reading an old New Yorker, when somebody rapped on the door of the hotel room. She was hoping it might be Mick Stranahan, but it wasn’t.
“Hello, Ray.”
As Reynaldo Flemm breezed in, he patted her on the rump.
“Cute,” Christina said, closing the door. “I was getting ready to turn in.”
“I brought some wine.”
“No, thanks.”
Reynaldo Flemm turned on the television and made himself at home. He was wearing another pair of khaki Banana Republic trousers and a baggy denim shirt. He smelled like a bucket of Brut. In a single motion he scissored his legs and propped his white high-top Air Jordans on the coffee table.
Christina Marks tightened the sash on her bathrobe and sat down at the other end of the sofa. “I’m tired, Ray,” she said.
He acted like he didn’t hear it. “This Stranahan guy, he’s the key to it,” Flemm said. “I think we should follow him tomorrow.”
“Oh, please.”
“Rent a van. A van with smoked window panels. We set the camera on a tripod in back. I’ll be driving, so Willie gets the angle over my . . . let’s see, it’d be my right shoulder. Great shot, through the windshield as we follow this big prick—”
“Willie gets carsick,” Christina Marks said.
Reynaldo Flemm cackled scornfully.
“It’s a lousy idea,” Christina said. She wanted him to go away, now.
“What, you trust that Stranahan?”
“No,” she said, but in a way she did trust him. At least more than she trusted Maggie Gonzalez; there was something squirrelly about the woman’s sudden need to fly to Miami. Why had she said she wanted to see Stranahan? Where had she really gone?
Reynaldo Flemm wasn’t remotely concerned about Maggie’s motives—good video was good video—but Christina Marks wanted to know more about the woman. She had better things to do than sit in a steaming van, tailing a guy who, if he caught them, would probably destroy every piece of electronics in their possession.
“So, what other leads we got?” Reynaldo Flemm demanded. “Tell me that.”
“Maggie’s probably got family here,” Christina said, “and friends.”
“Dull, dull, dull.”
“Hard work is dull sometimes,” Christina said sharply, “But how would you know?”
Flemm sat up straight and flared his upper lip like a Chihuahua. “You can’t talk to me like that! You just remember who’s the star.”
“And you just remember who writes all your lines. And who does all your dull, dull research. Remember who tells you what questions to ask. And who edits these pieces so you don’t come off looking like a pompous airhead.” Except that’s exactly how Reynaldo came off, most of the time. There was no way around it, no postproduction wizardry that could disguise the man’s true personality on tape.
Reynaldo Flemm shrugged. His attention had been stolen by something on the television: Mike Wallace of CBS was a guest on the Letterman show. Flemm punched up the volume and inched to the edge of the sofa.
“You know how old that geezer is?” he said, pointing at Wallace. “I’m half his age.”
Christina Marks held her tongue.
Reynaldo said, “I bet his producer sleeps with him anytime he wants.” He glanced sideways at Christina.
She got up, went to the door, and held it open. “Go back to your room, Ray.”
“Aw, come on, I was kidding.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“All right, I wasn’t. Come on, Chris, close the door. Let’s open the wine.”
“Good night, Ray.”
He got up and turned off the TV. He was sulking.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You sure are.”
Christina Marks held all the cards. Reynaldo Flemm needed her far worse than she needed him. Not only was she very talented, but she knew things about Reynaldo Flemm that he did not wish the whole world of television to know. About the time she caught him beating himself up, for example. It happened at a Hyatt House in Atlanta. Flemm was supposed to be out interviewing street-gang members, but Christina found him in the bathroom of his hotel room, thwacking himself in the cheek with a sock full of parking tokens. Reynaldo’s idea was to give himself a nasty shiner, then go on camera and breathlessly report that an infamous gang leader named Rapper Otis had assaulted him.
Reynaldo Flemm had begged Christina Marks not to tell the executive producers about the sock incident, and she hadn’t; the weeping is what got to her. She couldn’t bear it.
For keeping this and other weird secrets, Christina felt secure in her job, certainly secure enough to tell Reynaldo Flemm to go pound salt every time he put the make on her.
On the way out the door, he said, “I still say we get up early and follow this Stranahan guy.”
“And I still say no.”
“But, Chris, he knows something.”
“Yeah, Ray, he knows how to hurt people.”
Christina couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a hungry spark in the eyes of Reynaldo Flemm.
THE next morning Stranahan left the skiff at the marina, got the Chrysler and drove back across the Rickenbacker Causeway to the mainland. Next to him on the front seat was his yellow notepad, open to the page where he had jotted the names and numbers from the Barletta file. The first place he went was the Durkos Medical Center, except it wasn’t there anymore. The building was now occupied entirely by dentists: nine of them, according to Stranahan’s count from the office directory. He went looking for the building manager.
Every door and hallway reverberated with the nerve-stabbing whine of high-speed dental drills; soon Stranahan’s molars started to throb, and he began to feel claustrophobic. He enlisted a friendly janitor to lead him to the superintendent, a mammoth olive-colored woman who introduced herself as Marlee Jones.
Stranahan handed Marlee Jones a card and told her what he wanted. She glanced at the card and shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you nothing,” she said, displaying the kind of public-spirited cooperation that Stranahan had come to appreciate among the Miami citizenry.
“No, you don’t have to
tell me nothing,” he said to Marlee, “but I can make it possible for a county code inspector to brighten your morning tomorrow, and the day after that, and every single day until you die of old age.” Stranahan picked up a broom and stabbed the wooden handle into the foam-tile ceiling. “Looks like pure asbestos to me,” he said. “Sure hate for the feds to find out.”
Marlee Jones scowled, exhibiting an impressive array of gold teeth: bribes, no doubt, from her tenants. She shuffled to a metal desk and opened a bottom drawer and got out a black ledger. “All right, smart-ass, what was that name?”
“Durkos.” Stranahan spelled it. “A medical group. They were here as of March twelfth, four years ago.”
“Well, as of April first, four years ago, they was gone.” Marlee started to close the ledger, but Stranahan put his hand on the page.
“May I look?”
“It’s just numbers, mister.”
“Aw, let me give it a whirl.” Stranahan took the ledger from Marlee Jones and ran down the columns with his forefinger. The Durkos Medical Trust, Inc., had been sole tenant of the building for two years, but had vacated within weeks after Victoria Barletta’s disappearance. The ledger showed that the company had paid its lease and security deposits through May. Stranahan thought it was peculiar that, after moving out, the medical group never got a refund.
“Maybe they didn’t ask,” Marlee Jones said.
“Doctors are the cheapest human beings alive,” Stranahan said. “For fifteen grand they don’t just ask, they hire lawyers.”
Again Marlee Jones shrugged. “Some people be in a big damn hurry.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Who says I was here?”
“This handwriting in the ledger book—it’s the same as on these receipts.” Stranahan tapped a finger on a pile of rental coupons. Marlee Jones appeared to be having a spell of high blood pressure.
Stranahan asked again: “So what do you remember?”
With a groan Marlee Jones heaved her bottom into the chair behind the desk. She said, “One night they cleared out. Must’ve backed up a trailer truck, who knows. I came in, the place was empty, except for a bunch of cheapo paintings on the walls. Cats with big eyes, that sorta shit.”
