by Carl Hiaasen
“Were they all surgeons?”
“Seemed like it. But they wasn’t partners.”
“Durkos the main man?”
“Was no Durkos that I heard of. Big man was a Dr. Graveyard, something like that. The other four guys worked for him. How come I know this is, the day after all the stuff is gone, a couple of the other doctors showed up dressed for work. They couldn’t believe their office was emptied.”
Graveline was the name of the surgeon who had operated on Vicky Barletta. There was no point to correcting Marlee Jones on the name. Stranahan said, “This Dr. Graveyard, he didn’t even tell the other doctors about the move?”
“This is Miami, lots of folks in a big-time hurry.”
“Yeah, but not many pay in advance.”
Marlee Jones finally laughed. “You right about that.”
“Did anybody leave a forwarding address?”
“Nope.”
Stranahan handed Marlee Jones the ledger book.
“You be through with me?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For good?”
“Most likely.”
“Then can I ask who is it you’re workin’ for?”
“Myself,” said Mick Stranahan.
SINCE the day that the Durkos Medical Center had ceased to exist, the life of Nurse Maggie Orestes had gotten complicated. She had gone to work in the emergency room at Jackson Hospital, where one night she had met a man named Ricky Gonzalez. The reason for Ricky Gonzalez’s visit to the emergency room was that he had accidentally been run over by a turbo-charged Ferrari during the annual running of the Miami Grand Prix. Ricky was a race-car promoter, and he had been posing for pictures with Lorenzo Lamas in pit row, not paying close attention, when the Ferrari had roared in and run over both his feet. Ricky broke a total of fourteen bones, while Lorenzo Lamas escaped without a scratch.
Nurse Maggie Orestes attended to Ricky Gonzalez in the emergency room before they put him under for surgery. He was young, dashing, full of promises—and so cheerful, considering what had happened.
A month later they were married at a Catholic church in Hialeah. Ricky persuaded Maggie to quit nursing and be a full-time hostess for the many important social functions that race-car promoters must necessarily conduct. Maggie had hoped she would come to enjoy car racing and the people involved in it, but she didn’t. It was noisy and stupid and boring, and the people were worse. Maggie and Ricky had some fierce arguments, and she was on the verge of walking out of the marriage when the second pit-row accident happened.
This time it was a Porsche, and Ricky wasn’t so lucky. After the service they cremated him in his complimentary silver Purolator racing jacket, which turned out to be fireproof, so they had to cremate that portion twice. Lorenzo Lamas sent a wreath all the way from Malibu, California. At the wake Ricky’s lawyer came up to Maggie Gonzalez and told her the bad news: First, her husband had no life insurance; second, he had emptied their joint bank accounts to pay for his cocaine habit. Maggie had known nothing about the drug problem, but in retrospect it explained her late husband’s irrepressible high spirits and also his lack of caution around the race track.
A widowhood of destitution did not appeal to Maggie Gonzalez. She went back to being a nurse with a plan to nail herself a rich doctor or at least his money. In eighteen months she had been through three of them, all disasters—a married pediatrician, a divorced radiologist and a urologist who wore women’s underwear and who wound up giving Maggie a stubborn venereal disease. When she dumped the urologist, he got her fired from the hospital and filed a phony complaint with the state nursing board.
All this left Maggie Gonzalez with a molten hatred of men and a mind for vengeance.
Money is what pushed her to the brink. With the mortgage payment on her duplex coming due, and only eighty-eight bucks in the checking account, Maggie decided to go ahead and do it. Part of the motive was financial desperation, true, but there was also a delicious hint of excitement—payback, to the sonofabitch who’d started it all.
First Maggie used her Visa card to buy a plane ticket to New York, where she caught a cab to the midtown offices of Reynaldo Flemm, the famous television journalist. There she told producer Christina Marks the story of Victoria Barletta, and cut a deal.
Five thousand dollars to repeat it on camera—that’s as high as Reynaldo’s people would go. Maggie Gonzalez was disappointed; it was, after all, one hell of a story.
That night Christina Marks got Maggie a room at the Gore-ham Hotel, and she lay there watching Robin Leach on TV and worrying about the risks she was taking. She remembered the State Attorney’s investigator who had questioned her nearly four years ago, and how she had lied to him. God, what was she thinking of now? Flemm’s people would fly straight to Miami and interview the investigator—Stranahan was his name—and he’d tell them she’d never said a word about all this when it happened. Her credibility would be shot, and so would the five grand. Out the window.
Maggie realized she had to do something about Stranahan.
And also about Dr. Rudy Graveline.
Graveline was a dangerous creep. To rat on Rudy—well, he had warned her. And rewarded her, in a sense. A decent severance, glowing references for a new job. That was after he closed down the Durkos Center.
Lying there, Maggie got another idea. It was wild, but it just might work. The next morning she went back to Christina Marks and made up a vague story about how she had to go see Investigator Stranahan right away, otherwise no TV show. Reluctantly the producer gave her a plane ticket and six hundred in expenses.
Of course, Maggie had no intention of visiting Mick Stranahan. When she got back to Florida, she drove directly to the Whispering Palms Spa and Surgery Center in beautiful Bal Harbour. Dr. Rudy Graveline was very surprised to see her. He led her into a private office and closed the door.
“You look frightened,” the surgeon said.
“I am.”
“And a little bouncy in the bottom.”
“I eat when I’m frightened,” Maggie said, keeping her cool.
“So what is it?” Rudy asked.
“Vicky Barletta,” she said. “Somebody’s making a fuss.”
“Oh.” Rudy Graveline appeared calm. “Who?”
“One of the investigators. A man named Stranahan.”
“I don’t remember him,” Rudy said.
“I do. He’s scary.”
“Did he speak to you?”
Maggie shook her head. “Worse than that,” she said. “Some TV people came to my place. They’re doing a special on missing persons.”
“Christ, don’t tell me.”
“Stranahan’s going to talk.”
Rudy said, “But what does he know?”
Maggie blinked. “I’m worried, Dr. Graveline. It’s going to break open all over again.”
“No way.”
Maggie’s notion was to get Stranahan out of the way. Whether Dr. Graveline bribed him, terrorized him, or worse was immaterial; Rudy could get to anybody. Those who stood in his way either got with the program or got run over. One time another surgeon had done a corrective rhinoplasty on one of Rudy’s botched-up patients, then bad-mouthed Rudy at a medical society cocktail party. Rudy got so furious that he paid two goons to trash the other doctor’s office, but not before stealing his medical files. Soon, the other doctor’s surgical patients received personal letters thanking them for being so understanding while he battled that terrible heroin addiction, which now seemed to be under control. Well, almost . . . By the end of the month, the other doctor had closed what was left of his practice and moved to British Columbia.
Maggie Gonzalez was counting on Rudy Graveline to overreact again; she wanted him worried about Stranahan to the exclusion of all others. By the time the doctor turned on the tube and discovered who was the real threat, Maggie would be long gone. And out of reach.
She went on: “They won’t leave me alone, these TV people. They said the ca
se is going to a grand jury. They said Stranahan’s going to testify.” She fished in her purse for a tissue. “I thought you ought to know.”
Rudy Graveline thanked her for coming. He told her not to worry, everything was going to be fine. He suggested she get out of town for a few weeks, and she said that was probably a good idea. He asked if there was anywhere in particular she wanted to go, and she said New York. The doctor said New York is a swell place to visit around Christmastime, and he wrote out a personal check for twenty-five hundred dollars. He recommended that Maggie stay gone for at least a month, and said to call if she needed more money. When, Maggie said. Not if she needed more money, but when.
Later that same afternoon, Dr. Rudy Graveline had locked his office door and made a telephone call to a seafood restaurant in New Jersey. He talked to a man who probably had curly eyebrows, a man who promised to send somebody down around the first of the year.
On the day that Tony Traviola, the first hit man, arrived to kill Mick Stranahan, Maggie Gonzalez was in a tenth-floor room at the Essex House hotel. The room had a view of Central Park, where Maggie was taking skating lessons at Donald Trump’s ice rink. She planned to lie low for a few more weeks, maybe stop in for a chat at 20/20. A little competition never hurt. Maybe Reynaldo Flemm would get worried enough to jack up his offer. Five grand sucked, it really did.
DR. Rudy Graveline made an appointment with the second killer for January tenth at three in the afternoon. The man arrived at Whispering Palms a half hour early and sat quietly in the waiting room, scaring the hell out of the other patients.
Rudy knew him only as Chemo, a cruel but descriptive nickname, for he truly did appear to be in the final grim stages of chemotherapy. Black hair sprouted in random wisps from a blue-veined scalp. His lips were thin and papery, the color of wet cement. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at gawkers with a dull and chilling indifference; the hooded lids blinked slowly, pellucid as a salamander’s. And the skin—the skin is what made people gasp, what emptied the waiting room at Whispering Palms. Chemo’s skin looked like breakfast cereal, like somebody had glued Rice Krispies to every square centimeter of his face.
This, and the fact that he stood six foot nine, made Chemo a memorable sight.
Dr. Graveline was not alarmed, because he knew how Chemo had come to look this way. It was not melanoma, but a freak electrolysis accident in Scranton, many years before. While burning two ingrown hair follicles off the tip of Chemo’s nose, an elderly dermatologist had suffered a crippling stroke and lost all hand-eye coordination. Valiantly the old doctor had tried to complete the procedure, but in so doing managed to incinerate every normal pore within range of the electrified needle. Since Chemo had eaten five Valiums for breakfast, he was fast asleep on the table when the tragedy occurred. When he awoke to find his whole face blistered up like a lobster, he immediately garroted the dermatologist and fled the state of Pennsylvania forever.
Chemo had spent the better part of five years on the lam, seeking medical relief; ointments proved futile, and in fact a faulty prescription had caused the startling Rice Krispies effect. Eventually Chemo came to believe that the only hope was cosmetic surgery, and his quest for a miracle brought him naturally to Florida and naturally into the care of Dr. Rudy Graveline.
At three sharp, Rudy motioned Chemo into the consultation room. Chemo ducked as he entered and shut the door behind him. He sat in an overstuffed chair and blinked moistly at Dr. Graveline.
Rudy said: “And how are we doing today?”
Chemo grunted. “How do you think?”
“When you were here a few weeks ago, we discussed a treatment plan. You remember?”
“Yep,” Chemo said.
“And a payment plan, too.”
“How could I forget?” Chemo said.
Dr. Graveline ignored the sarcasm; the man had every right to be bitter.
“Dermabrasion is expensive,” Rudy said.
“I don’t know why,” Chemo said. “You just stick my face in a belt sander, right?”
The doctor smiled patiently. “It’s a bit more sophisticated than that—”
“But the principle’s the same.”
Rudy nodded. “Roughly speaking.”
“So how can it be two hundred bucks a pop?”
“Two hundred and ten,” Rudy corrected. “Because it requires uncommonly steady hands. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”
Chemo smiled at the remark. Rudy wished he hadn’t; the smile was harrowing, a deadly weapon all by itself. Chemo looked like he’d been teething on cinder blocks.
“I did get a job,” he said.
Dr. Graveline agreed that was a start.
“At the Gay Bidet,” Chemo said. “It’s a punk club down on South Beach. I’m a greeter.” Again with the smile.
“A greeter,” said Rudy. “Well, well.”
“I keep out the scum,” Chemo explained.
Rudy asked about the pay. Chemo said he got six bucks an hour, not including tips.
“Not bad,” Rudy said, “but still . . .” He scribbled some figures on a pad, then took a calculator out of his desk and punched on it for a while. All very dramatic.
Chemo stretched his neck to look. “What’s the damage?”
“I figure twenty-four visits, that’s a minimum,” Rudy said. “Say we do one square inch every session.”
“Shit, just do it all at once.”
“Can’t,” Rudy lied, “not with dermabrasion. Say twenty-four visits at two ten each, that’s—”
“Five thousand and forty dollars,” Chemo muttered. “Jesus H. Christ.”
Dr. Graveline said: “I don’t need it all at once. Give me half to start.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
Rudy put the calculator away.
“I just started at the club a week ago,” Chemo said. “I gotta buy groceries.”
Rudy came around the desk and sat down on the edge. In a fatherly tone he asked: “You have Blue Cross?”
“The fuck, I’m a fugitive, remember?”
“Of course.”
Rudy shook his head and mused. It was all so sad, that a great country like ours couldn’t provide minimal health care to all its citizens.
“So I’m screwed,” Chemo said.
“Not necessarily,” Dr. Graveline rubbed his chin. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a job I need done.”
If Chemo had had eyebrows, they would have arched.
“If you could do this job,” Rudy went on, “I think we could work a deal.”
“A discount?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Idly, Chemo fingered the scales on his cheeks. “What’s the job?”
“I need you to kill somebody,” Rudy said.
“Who?”
“A man that could cause me some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Could shut down Whispering Palms. Take away my medical license. And that’s for starters.”
Chemo ran a bloodless tongue across his lips. “Who is this man?”
“His name is Mick Stranahan.”
“Where do I find him?”
“I’m not sure,” Rudy said. “He’s here in Miami somewhere.”
Chemo said that wasn’t much of a lead. “I figure a murder is worth at least five grand,” he said.
“Come on, he’s not a cop or anything. He’s just a regular guy. Three thousand, tops.” Rudy was a bear when it got down to money.
Chemo folded his huge bony hands. “Twenty treatments, that’s my final offer.”
Rudy worked it out in his head. “That’s forty-two hundred dollars!”
“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 real
ly 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.”
CHAPTER 6
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.
