Skin Tight

  In truth, it was the shock of the intruder’s appearance that had caused Stranahan to hesitate—the sight of this gaunt, pellucid, frizzle-haired freak with a moonscape face that could stop a freight train.

  So Stranahan had stared for a nanosecond when he should have squeezed the trigger. For someone who looked so sickly, Chemo moved deceptively fast. As he dove out of the doorway, the first blast from the Remington sprinkled its rain of birdshot into the bay.

  “Shit,” Stranahan said, struggling to his feet. On his way toward the door he slipped on his own blood and went down again, his right cheek slamming hard on the floor; this, just as Chemo craned around the corner and fired a messy burst from the Ingram. Rolling in a sticky mess, Stranahan shot back.

  Chemo slammed the door from the outside, plunging the house into darkness once more.

  Stranahan heard the man running on the outside deck, following the apron around the house. Stranahan took aim through the walls. He imagined that the man was a rising quail, and he led accordingly. The first blast tore a softball-sized hole in the wall of the living room. The second punched out the shutter in the kitchen. The third and final shot was followed by a grunt and a splash outside.

  “Christina!” Stranahan shouted. “Quick, help me up.”

  But when she got there, biting back tears, crawling on bare knees, he had already passed out.

  CHEMO landed on his back in the water. He kicked his legs just to make sure he wasn’t paralyzed; other than a few splinters in his scalp, he seemed to be fine. He figured that the birdshot must have missed him, that the concussion so close to his head was what threw him off balance.

  Instinctively he held the Ingram high out of the water with his right hand, and paddled furiously with his left. He knew he had to make it under cover of the house before Stranahan came out; otherwise he’d be a sitting duck. Chemo saw that the machine gun was dripping, so he figured it must have gotten dunked in the fall. Would it still fire? And how many rounds were left? He had lost count.

  These were his concerns as he made for the pilings beneath the stilt house. Progress was maddeningly slow; by paddling with only one hand, Chemo tended to move himself in a frothy circle. In frustration he paddled more frenetically, a tactic that decreased the perimeter of his route but brought him no closer to safety. He expected at any second to see Stranahan burst onto the deck with the shotgun.

  Beneath Chemo there appeared in the water a long gray-blue shadow, which hung there as if frozen in glass. It was Stranahan’s silent companion, Liza, awakened from its afternoon siesta by the wild commotion.

  A barracuda this age is a creature of sublime instinct and flawless precision, an eating machine more calculating and efficient than any shark in the ocean. Over time the great barracuda had come to associate human activity with feeding; its impulses had been tuned by Stranahan’s evening pinfish ritual. As Chemo struggled in the shadows, the barracuda was on full alert, its cold eyes trained upward in anticipation. The blue-veined legs that kicked impotently at its head, the spastic thrashing—these posed no threat.

  Something else had caught its attention: the familiar rhythmic glint of stunned prey on the water’s surface. The barracuda struck with primitive abandon, streaking up from the deep, slashing, then boring back toward the pilings.

  There, beneath the house, the great fish flared its crimson gills in a darkening sulk. What it had mistaken for an easy meal of silver pinfish turned out to be no such thing, and the barracuda spit ignominiously through its fangs.

  It was a testimony to sturdy Swiss craftsmanship that the Heuer diving watch was still ticking when it came to rest on the bottom. Its stainless silver and gold links glistened against Chemo’s pale severed hand, which reached up from the turtle grass like some lost piece of mannequin.

  CHAPTER 14

  ON Washington Avenue there was a small shop that sold artificial limbs. Dr. Rudy Graveline went there on his lunch hour and purchased four different models of prosthetic hands. He paid cash and made sure to get a receipt.

  Later, back at Whispering Palms, he arranged the artificial hands in an attractive row on the top of his onyx desk.

  “What about this one?” he asked Chemo.

  “It’s a beaut,” Chemo said trenchantly, “except I’ve already got one on that arm.”

  “Sorry.” Rudy Graveline picked up another. “Then look here—state-of-the-art technology. Four weeks of therapy, you can deal blackjack with this baby.”

  “Wrong color,” Chemo remarked.

  Rudy glanced at the artificial hand and thought: Of course it’s the wrong color, they’re all the wrong damn color. “It’s a tough match,” the doctor said. “I looked for the palest one they had.”

  “I hate them all,” Chemo said. “Why does it have to be a hand, anyway?”

  “You didn’t like the mechanical hooks,” Rudy Graveline reminded him. “Talk about advanced, you could load a gun, even type with those things. But you said no.”

  “Damn right I said no.”

  Rudy put down the prosthesis and said: “I wish you wouldn’t take that tone with me. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Look, didn’t I advise you to see a specialist?”

  “And didn’t I advise you, you’re crazy? The cops’ll be hunting all over.”

  “All right,” Rudy said in a calming voice. “Let’s not argue.”

  It had been three weeks since Chemo had shown up behind Whispering Palms on a blood-streaked water scooter—a vision that Dr. Rudy Graveline would carry with him for the rest of his life. It had happened during an afternoon consult with Mrs. Carla Crumworthy, heiress to the Crumworthy panty-shield fortune. She had come to complain about the collagen injections that Rudy Graveline had administered to give her full, sensual lips, which is just what every rheumatoid seventy-one-year-old woman needs. Mrs. Crumworthy had lamented that the results were nothing like she had hoped, that she now resembled one of those Ubangi tribal women from the National Geographic, the ones with the ceramic platters in their mouths. And, in truth, Dr. Rudy Graveline was concerned about what had happened because Mrs. Crumworthy’s lips had indeed grown bulbous and unwieldy and hard as cobblestones. As he examined her (keeping his doubts to himself), Rudy wondered if maybe he had injected too much collagen, or not enough, or if maybe he’d zapped it into the wrong spots. Whatever the cause, the result was undeniable: Mrs. Carla Crumworthy looked like a duck wearing mauve lipstick. A malpractice jury could have a ball with this one.

  Dr. Graveline had been whisking through his trusty Rolodex, searching for a kindhearted colleague, when Mrs. Crumworthy suddenly rose to her feet and shrieked. Pointing out the picture window toward Biscayne Bay, the old woman had blubbered in terror, her huge misshapen lips slapping together in wet percussion. Rudy had no idea what she was trying to say.

  He spun around and looked out the window.

  The yellow Jet Ski lay on its side, adrift in the bay. Somehow Chemo had dragged himself, soaking wet and stark naked, over the ledge of the seawall behind the clinic. He didn’t look well enough to be dead. His gray shoulders shivered violently in the sunshine, and his eyes flickered vaguely through puffy purple slits. Chemo swung the bloody stump to show Dr. Graveline what had happened to his left hand. He pointed gamely at the elastic wrist tourniquet that he had fashioned from his Jockey shorts, and Rudy would later concede that it had probably saved his life.

  Mrs. Carla Crumworthy was quickly ushered to a private recovery suite and oversedated, while Rudy and two young assistant surgeons led Chemo to an operating room. The assistants argued that he belonged at a real trauma center in a real hospital, but Chemo adamantly refused. This left the doctors with no choice but to operate or let him bleed to death.

  Gently discouraged from participating in the surgery, Rudy had been content to let the young fellows work unimpeded. He spent the time making idle conversation with the woozy Chemo, who had rejected a general anesthetic in favor of an old-fashioned
intravenous jolt of Demerol.

  Since that evening, Chemo’s post-op recovery had progressed swiftly and in relative luxury, with the entire staff of Whispering Palms instructed to accommodate his every wish. Rudy Graveline himself was exceedingly attentive, as he needed Chemo’s loyalty now more than ever. He had hoped that the killer’s spirits would improve at the prospect of reconstructing his abbreviated left arm.

  “A new hand,” Rudy said, “would be a major step back to a normal life.”

  “I never had a normal life,” Chemo pointed out. Sure, he would miss the hand, but he was more pissed off about losing the expensive wristwatch.

  “What are my other options?” Chemo asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, besides these things.” He waved his stump contemptuously at the artificial hands.

  “Well,” Rudy said, “frankly, I’m out of ideas.” He gathered the prostheses from his desk and put them back in the box. “I told you this isn’t my field,” he said to Chemo.

  “You keep trying to dump me off on some other surgeon, but it won’t work. It’s you or nobody.”

  “I appreciate your confidence,” Rudy said. He leaned forward in his chair and put on his glasses. “Can I ask, what’s that on your face?”

  Chemo said, “It’s Wite-Out.”

  After a careful pause, Dr. Graveline said, “Can I ask—”

  “I might go out to the club later. I wanted to cover up these darn patches.”

  Out of pity Rudy had agreed to dermabrade several more one-inch squares along Chemo’s chin.

  “You covered them with Wite-Out?”

  Chemo said, “Your secretary loaned me a bottle. The color’s just right.”

  Rudy cleared his throat. “It’s not so good for your skin. Please, let me prescribe a mild cosmetic ointment.”

  “Forget it,” said Chemo. “This’ll do fine. Now what about a new thing for my arm?” With his right hand he gestured at the bandaged limb.

  Rudy folded his hands in his lap, a relaxed gesture that damn near exuded professional confidence. “As I said before, we’ve gone over most of the conventional options.”

  Chemo said, “I don’t like therapy. I want something easy to use, something practical.”

  “I see,” said Rudy Graveline.

  “And durable, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “Also, I don’t want people to stare.”

  Rudy thought: Beautiful. A seven-foot, one-handed geek with Wite-Out painted on his face, and he’s worried about people staring.

  “So what do you think?” Chemo pressed.

  “I think,” said Rudy Graveline, “we’ve got to use our imaginations.”

  DETECTIVE John Murdock bent his squat, porky frame over the rail of the hospital bed and said, “Wake up, fuckwad.”

  Which was pretty much his standard greeting.

  Mick Stranahan did not open his eyes.

  “Get out of here,” said Christina Marks.

  Detective Joe Salazar lit a Camel and said, “You don’t look like a nurse. Since when do nurses wear blue jeans?”

  “Good point,” said John Murdock. “I think you’re the one should get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” said Joe Salazar. “We got official business with this man.” Salazar was as short as his partner, only built like a stop sign. Fat, florid face stuck on a pipestem body.

  “Now I know who you are,” Christina said. “You must be Murdock and Salazar, the crooked cops.”

  Stranahan nearly busted out laughing, but he pressed his eyes closed, trying to look asleep.

  “I see what we got here,” said Murdock. “What we got here is some kinda Lily Tomlin.”

  “Sure,” said Joe Salazar, though he didn’t know who his partner was talking about. He assumed it was somebody they’d arrested together. “Sure,” he chimed in, “a regular Lily Thomas.”

  Christina Marks said, “The man’s asleep, so why don’t you come back another time?”

  “And why don’t you go change your tampon or something?” snapped John Murdock. “We’ve got business here.”

  “We got questions,” Joe Salazar added. When he took the Camel cigarette out of his mouth, Christina noticed, the end was all soggy and mulched.

  She said, “I was there when it happened, if you want to ask me about it.”

  Salazar had brought a Xerox of the marine patrol incident report. He took it out of his jacket, unfolded it, ran a sticky brown finger down the page until he came to the box marked Witnesses. “So you’re Initial C. Marks?”

  “Yes,” Christina said.

  “We’ve been looking all over Dade County for you. Two, three weeks we’ve been looking.”

  “I changed hotels,” she said. She had moved from Key Biscayne over to the Grove, to be closer to Mercy Hospital.

  John Murdock, the senior of the two detectives, took a chair from the corner, twirled it around, and sat down straddling it.

  “Just like in the movies,” Christina said. “You think better, sitting with your legs like that?”

  Murdock glowered. “What suppose we just throw your tight little ass in the women’s annex for a night or two, would you enjoy that? Just you and all the hookers, maybe a lesbo or two.”

  “Teach you some manners,” Joe Salazar said, “and that’s not all.”

  Christina smiled coolly. “And here I thought you boys wanted a friendly chat. Maybe I’ll just call hospital security and tell them what’s going on up here. After that, maybe I’ll call the newspapers.”

  Mick Stranahan was thinking: She’d better be careful. These guys aren’t nearly as dumb as they look.

  Murdock said, “One time we booked a big lesbo looked just like Kris Kristofferson. I’m not kidding, we’re talking major facial hair. And mean as a bobcat.”

  “Resisting with violence, two counts,” Salazar recalled. “On top of the murder.”

  “Manslaughter,” John Murdock cut in. “Actually, woman-slaughter, if there is such a thing. Jesus, what a mess. I can’t even think about it, so close to lunch.”

  “Involved a fire hose,” Salazar said.

  “I said enough,” Murdock protested. “Anyhow, I think she’s still in the annex. The one who looks like Kristofferson. I think she runs the drama group.”

  Salazar said, “You like the theater, Miss Marks?”

  “Sure,” Christina said, “but mainly I like television. You guys ever been on TV? Maybe you’ve heard of the Reynaldo Flemm show.”

  “Yeah,” Joe Salazar said, excitedly. “One time I saw him get his ass pounded by a bunch of Teamsters. In slow motion, too.”

  “That asshole,” Murdock muttered.

  “We finally agree,” Christina said. “Unfortunately, he happens to be my boss. We’re in town taping a big story.”

  The two detectives glanced at one another, trying to decide on a plan without saying it. Salazar stalled by lighting up another Camel.

  Lying in bed listening, Mick Stranahan figured they’d back off now, just to be safe. Neither of these jokers wanted to see his own face on prime-time TV.

  Murdock said, “So tell us what happened.” Salazar stood in the empty corner, resting his fat head against the wall.

  Christina said, “You’ve got photographic memories, or maybe you’d prefer to take some notes?” Murdock motioned to his partner, who angrily stubbed out his cigarette and dug a worn spiral notebook from his jacket.

  She began with what she had seen from the wheelhouse of Joey’s shrimp boat—the tall man toting a machine gun on the jet scooter. She told the detectives about how Stranahan had battened down the stilt house, and how the man had started shooting into the corners. She told them how Stranahan had been wounded in the shoulder, and how he had fired back with a shotgun until he passed out. She told them she had heard a splash outside, then a terrible cry; ten, maybe fifteen minutes later she’d heard somebody rev up the Jet Ski, but she was too scared to go to a window. Only when the engine was a faint w
hine in the distance did she peer through the bullet holes in the front door to see if the gunman had gone. She told the detectives how she had half-carried Stranahan down the stairs to where his skiff was docked, and how she had hand-cranked the outboard by herself. She told them how he had groggily pointed across the bay and said there was a big hospital on the mainland, and by the time they got to Mercy there was so much blood in the bottom of the skiff that she was bailing with a coffee mug.

  After Christina had finished, Detective John Murdock said, “That’s quite a story. I bet Argosy magazine would go for a story like that.”

  Joe Salazar leafed through his notebook and said, “I think I missed something, lady. I think I missed the part where you explained why you’re at Stranahan’s house in the first place. Maybe you could repeat it.”

  Murdock said, “Yeah, I missed that, too.”

  “I’d be happy to tell you why I was there,” Christina said. “Mr. Flemm wanted Mr. Stranahan to be interviewed for an upcoming broadcast, but Mr. Stranahan declined. I went to his house in the hopes of changing his mind.”

  “I’ll bet,” Salazar said.

  “Joe, be nice,” said his partner. “Tell me, Miss Marks, why’d you want to interview some dweeb P.I.? I mean, he’s nobody. Hasn’t been with the State Attorney for years.”

  From his phony coma Stranahan wondered how far Christina Marks would go. Not too far, he hoped.

  “The interview involved a story we were working on, and that’s all I can say.”

  Murdock said, “Gee, I hope it didn’t concern a murder.”

  “I really can’t—”

  “Because murder is our main concern. Me and Joe.”

  Christina Marks said, “I’ve cooperated as much as I can.”