Skin Tight

by Carl Hiaasen

  “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.r />
  “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.

  Stranahan lowered the gun and said, “Here, I think this belongs to you.”

  He took something out of his jacket and held it up, so the gold and silver links caught the flush of the lantern lights. Chemo’s knees went to rubber when he saw what it was.

  The Swiss diving watch. The one he lost to the barracuda.

  “Still ticking,” said Mick Stranahan.

  CHAPTER 34

  AT dawn the cold front arrived under a foggy purple brow, and the wind swung dramatically to the north. The waves off the Atlantic turned swollen and foamy, nudging the boat even farther from the shore of Cape Florida. The tide was still creeping out.

  The women were weary of shouting and waving for help, but they tried once more when a red needlenose speedboat rounded the point of the island. The driver of the speedboat noticed the commotion and cautiously slowed to approach the other craft. A young woman in a lemon cotton pullover sat beside him.

  She stood up and called out: “What’s the matter?”

  Christina Marks waved back. “Engine trouble! We need a tow to the marina.”

  The driver, a young muscular Latin, edged the speedboat closer. He offered to come aboard and take a look at the motor.

  “Don’t bother,” said Christina. “The gas line is cut.”

  “How’d that happen?” The young man couldn’t imagine.

  It was a strange scene so early on a cold morning: Three women alone on rough water. The one, a slender brunette, looked pissed off about something. The blonde in a sweatsuit was unsteady, maybe seasick. Then there was a Cuban woman, attractive except for an angry-looking bald patch on the crown of her head.

  “You all right?” the young man asked.

  The Cuban woman nodded brusquely. “How about giving us a lift?”

  The young man in the speedboat turned to his companion and quietly said, “Tina, I don’t know. Something’s fucked up here.”

  “We’ve got to help,” the young woman said. “I mean, we can’t just leave them.”

  “There’ll be other boats.”

  Christina Marks said, “At least can we borrow your radio? Something happened out there.” She motioned toward the distant stilt houses.

  “What was it?” said Tina, alarmed.

  Maggie Gonzalez, who had prison to consider, said firmly: “Nothing happened. She’s drunk out of her mind.”

  And Heather Chappell, who had her career to consider, said: “We were s’posed to meet some guys for a party. The boat broke down, that’s all.”

  Christina’s eyes went from Heather to Maggie. She felt like crying, and then she felt like laughing. She was as helpless and amused as she could be. So much for sisterhood.

  “I know how that goes,” Tina was saying, “with parties.”

  Heather said, “Please, I don’t feel so hot. We’ve been drifting for hours.” Her face looked familiar, but Tina wasn’t sure.

  The Cuban woman with the bald patch said, “Do you have an extra soda?”

  “Sure,” said Tina. “Richie, throw them a rope.”

  SERGEANT Al García bent over the rail and got rid of his breakfast muffins.

  “I thought you were a big fisherman,” needled Luis Córdova. “Who was it told me you won some fishing tournament.”

  “That was different.” García wiped his mustache with the sleeve of the Windbreaker. “That was on a goddamn lake.”

  The journey out to Stiltsville had been murderously rough. That was García’s excuse for getting sick—the boat ride, not what they had found inside the house.

  Luis Córdova chucked him on the arm. “Anyway, you feel better now.”

  The detective nodded. He was still smoldering about the patrol boat, about how it had taken three hours to get a new pin for the prop. Three crucial hours, it turned out.

  “Where’s Wilt?” García asked.

  “Inside. Pouting.”

  The man known as Chemo was standing up, his right arm suspended over his head. Luis Córdova had handcuffed him to the overhead water pipes in the kitchen. As a security precaution, the Weed Whacker had been unstrapped from the stump of Chemo’s left arm. Trailing black and red cables, the yard clipper lay on the kitchen bar.

  Luis Córdov
a pointed at the monofilament coil on the rotor. “See that—human hair,” he said to Al García. “Long hair, too; a brunette. Probably a woman’s.”

  García turned to the killer. “Hey, Wilt, you a barber?”

  “Fuck you.” Chemo blinked neutrally.

  “He says that a lot,” said Luis Córdova. “It’s one of his favorite things. All during the Miranda, he kept saying it.”

  Al García walked over to Chemo and said, “You’re aware that there’s a dead doctor in the bedroom?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “See,” said Luis Córdova. “That’s all he knows.”

  “Well, at least he knows something.” García groped in his pocket and came out with a wrinkled handkerchief. He put the handkerchief to his face and returned to the scene in the bedroom. He came out a few minutes later and said, “That’s very unpleasant.”

  “Sure is,” agreed Luis Córdova.

  “Mr. Tatum, since you’re not talking, you might as well listen.” García arranged himself on one of the wicker barstools and stuck a cigar in his mouth. He didn’t light it.

  He said, “Here’s what’s happened. You and the doctor have a serious business disagreement. You lure the dumb bastard out here and try to torture some dough out of him. But somehow you screw it up—you kill him.”

  Chemo reddened. “Horse shit,” he said.

  Luis Córdova looked pleased. “Progress,” he said to García. “We’re making progress.”

  Chemo clenched his fist, causing the handcuff to rattle against the rusty pipe. He said, “You know damn well who it was.”

  “Who?” García raised the palms of his hands. “Where is this mystery man?”

  “Fuck you,” Chemo said.

  “What I can’t figure out,” said the detective, “is why you didn’t take off. After all this mess, why’d you stay on the house? Hell, chico, all you had to do was jump.”

  Chemo lowered his head. His cheeks felt hot and prickly; a sign of healing, he hoped.

  “Maybe he can’t swim,” suggested Luis Córdova.

  “Maybe he’s scared,” García said.