“I’ll prove it,” he said, thinking: I can’t believe I’m doing this.
He went to the pantry and rummaged noisily until he found what he was searching for, a carpenter’s level.
Tina eyed it and said, “I’ve seen one of those.”
“Hold still,” Stranahan said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Just watch the bubble.”
The level was a galvanized steel ruler with a clear cylinder of amber liquid fixed in the middle. Inside the cylinder was a bubble of air, which moved in the liquid according to the angle being measured. If the surface was dead level, the bubble sat at the midway point of the cylinder.
Stranahan placed the tool across Tina’s chest, so that each end rested lightly on a nipple.
“Now look down slowly, Tina.”
“ ’Kay.”
“Where’s the bubble?” he said.
“Smack dab in the center.”
“Right,” Stranahan said. “See—they’re lined up perfectly.”
He lifted the ruler off her chest and set it on the bar. Tina beamed and gave herself a little squeeze, which caused her to bounce in a truly wonderful way. Stranahan decided to clean the shotgun one more time.
“Well, back to the sunshine.” Tina laughed, sprinting bare-assed out the door.
“Back to the sunshine,” Mick Stranahan said, thinking that there was no sight in the world like a young lady completely at ease with herself, even if it cost three grand to get that way.
AT four-thirty, the red Formula full of husky boyfriends roared up. Stranahan was reading on the sun deck, paying little attention to the naked women. The water was way too shallow for the ski boat, so the boyfriends idled it about fifty yards from the stilt house. After a manly huddle, one of them hopped to the bow and shouted at Mick Stranahan.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?”
Stranahan glanced up from the newspaper and said nothing. Tina called out to the boat, “It’s okay. He lives here.”
“Put your clothes on!” hollered one of the guys in the boat, probably Tina’s boyfriend.
Tina wiggled into a T-shirt. All the boyfriends appeared to be fairly agitated by Stranahan’s presence among the nude women. Stranahan stood up and told the girls the water was too low for the ski boat.
“I’ll run you out there in the skiff,” he said.
“You better not, Richie’s real upset,” Tina said.
“Richie should have more faith in his fellow man.”
The three young women gathered their towels and suntan oils and clambered awkwardly into Stranahan’s skiff. He jacked the outboard up a couple notches, so the prop wouldn’t hit bottom, and steered out toward the red Formula in the channel. Once alongside the ski boat, he helped the girls climb up one at a time. Tina even gave him a peck on the cheek as she left.
The boyfriends were every bit as dumb and full of themselves as Stranahan figured. Each one wore a gold chain on his chest, which said it all.
“What was that about?” snarled the boyfriend called Richie, after witnessing Tina’s good-bye peck.
“Nothing,” Tina said. “He’s an all-right guy.”
Stranahan had already let go, and the skiff had drifted a few yards beyond the ski boat, when Richie slapped Tina for being such a slut. Then he pointed out at Stranahan and yelled something extremely rude.
The boyfriends were quite surprised to see the aluminum skiff coming back at them, fast. They were equally amazed at the nimbleness with which the big stranger hopped onto the bow of their boat.
Richie took an impressive roundhouse swing at the guy, but the next thing the other boyfriends knew, Richie was flat on his back with the ski rope tied around both feet. Suddenly he was in the water, and the boat was moving, and Richie was dragging in the salt spray and yowling at the top of his lungs. The other boyfriends tried to seize the throttle, but the stranger knocked them down quickly and with a minimum of effort.
After about three-quarters of a mile, Tina and the other women asked Stranahan to please stop the speedboat, and he did. He grabbed the ski rope and hauled Richie back in, and they all watched him vomit up seawater for ten minutes straight.
“You’re a stupid young man,” Stranahan counseled. “Don’t ever come out here again.”
Then Stranahan got in the skiff and went back to the stilt house, and the Formula sped away. Stranahan fixed himself a drink and stretched out on the sun deck. He was troubled by what was happening to the bay, when boatloads of idiots could spoil the whole afternoon. It was becoming a regular annoyance, and Stranahan could foresee a time when he might have to move away.
By late afternoon most of the other boats had cleared out of Stiltsville, except for a cabin cruiser that anchored on the south side of the radio towers in about four feet of water. A very odd location, Stranahan thought. On this boat he counted three people; one seemed to be pointing something big and black in the direction of Stranahan’s house.
Stranahan went inside and came back with the shotgun, utterly useless at five hundred yards, and the binoculars, which were not. Quickly he got the cabin cruiser into focus and determined that what was being aimed at him was not a big gun, but a portable television camera.
The people in the cabin cruiser were taking his picture.
This was the capper. First the Mafia hit man, then the nude sunbathers and their troglodyte boyfriends, now a bloody TV crew. Stranahan turned his back to the cabin cruiser and kicked off his trousers. This would give them something to think about: moon over Miami. He was in such sour spirits that he didn’t even peek over his shoulder to see their reaction when he bent over.
Watching the sun slide low, Mick Stranahan perceived the syncopation of these events as providential; things had changed on the water, all was no longer calm. The emotion that accompanied this realization was not fear, or even anxiety, but disappointment. All these days the tranquility of the bay, its bright and relentless beauty, had lulled him into thinking the world was not so rotten after all.
The minicam on the cabin cruiser reminded him otherwise. Mick Stranahan had no idea what the bastards wanted, but he was sorely tempted to hop in the skiff and go find out. In the end, he simply finished his gin and tonic and went back inside the stilt house. At dusk, when the light was gone, the boat pulled anchor and motored away.
CHAPTER 4
AFTER quitting the State Attorney’s Office, Stranahan had kept his gold investigator’s badge to remind people that he used to work there, in case he needed to get back inside. Like now.
A young assistant state attorney, whose name was Dreeson, took Stranahan to an interview room and handed him the Barletta file, which must have weighed four pounds. In an officious voice, the young prosecutor said:
“You can sit here and make notes, Mr. Stranahan. But it’s still an open case, so don’t take anything out.”
“You mean I can’t blow my nose on the affidavits?”
Dreeson made a face and shut the door, hard.
Stranahan opened the jacket, and the first thing to fall out was a photograph of Victoria Barletta. Class picture, clipped from the 1985 University of Miami student yearbook. Long dark hair, brushed to a shine; big dark eyes; a long sharp nose, probably her old man’s; gorgeous Italian smile, warm and laughing and honest.
Stranahan set the picture aside. He had never met the girl, never would.
He skimmed the statements taken so long ago by himself and Timmy Gavigan: the parents, the boyfriend, the sorority sisters. The details of the case came back to him quickly in a cold flood.
On March 12, 1986, Victoria Barletta had gotten up early, jogged three miles around the campus, showered, attended a 9 A.M. class in advanced public relations, met her boyfriend at a breakfast shop near Mark Light Field, then bicycled to an 11 A.M. seminar on the history of television news. Afterward, Vicky went back to the Alpha Chi Omega house, changed into jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, and asked a sorority sister to give her a lift to a docto
r’s appointment in South Miami, only three miles from the university.
The appointment was scheduled for 1:30 P.M. at a medical building called the Durkos Center. As Vicky got out of the car, she instructed her friend to come back at about 5 P.M. and pick her up. Then she went inside and got a nose job and was never seen again.
According to a doctor and a nurse at the clinic, Vicky Barletta left the office at about 4:50 P.M. to wait on the bus bench out front for her ride back to campus. Her face was splotched, her eyes swollen to slits, and her nose heavily bandaged—not exactly a tempting sight for your average trolling rapist, Timmy Gavigan had pointed out.
Still, they both knew better than to rule it out. One minute the girl was on the bench, the next she was gone.
Three county buses had stopped there between 4:50 and 5:14 P.M., when Vicky’s friend finally arrived at the clinic. None of the bus drivers remembered seeing a woman with a busted-up face get on board.
So the cops were left to assume that somebody snatched Victoria Barletta off the bus bench moments after she emerged from the Durkos Center.
The case was treated like a kidnapping, though Gavigan and Stranahan suspected otherwise. The Barlettas had no money and no access to any; Vicky’s father was half-owner of a car wash in Evanston, Illinois. Aside from a couple of cranks, there were no ransom calls made to the family, or to the police. The girl was just plain gone, and undoubtedly dead.
Rereading the file four years later, Mick Stranahan began to feel frustrated all over again. It was the damnedest thing: Vicky had told no one—not her parents, her boyfriend, nobody—about the cosmetic surgery; apparently it was meant to be a surprise.
Stranahan and Timmy Gavigan had spent a total of fifteen hours interviewing Vicky’s boyfriend and wound up believing him. The kid had cried pathetically; he used to tease Vicky about her shnoz. “My little anteater,” he used to call her. The boyfriend had been shattered by what happened, and blamed himself. His birthday was March twentieth. Obviously, he sobbed, the new nose was Vicky’s present to him.
From a homicide investigator’s point of view, the secrecy with which Victoria Barletta planned her doctor’s visit meant something else: It limited the suspects to somebody who just happened to be passing by, a random psychopath.
A killer who was never caught.
A victim who was never found.
That was how Mick Stranahan remembered it. He scribbled a few names and numbers on a pad, stuffed everything into the file, then carried it back to a pock-faced clerk.
“Tell me something,” Stranahan said, “how’d you happen to have this one downtown?”
The clerk said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, this place didn’t used to be so efficient. Used to take two weeks to dig out an old case like this.”
“You just got lucky,” the clerk said. “We pulled the file from the warehouse a week ago.”
“This file here?” Stranahan tapped the green folder. “Same one?”
“Mr. Eckert wanted to see it.”
Gerry Eckert was the State Attorney. He hadn’t personally gone to court in at least sixteen years, so Stranahan doubted if he even remembered how to read a file.
“So how’s old Gerry doing?”
“Just dandy,” said the clerk, as if Eckert were his closest, dearest pal in the world. “He’s doing real good.”
“Don’t tell me he’s finally gonna pop somebody in this case.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Stranahan. He just wanted to refresh his memory before he went on TV. The Reynaldo Flemm show.”
Stranahan whistled. Reynaldo Flemm was a television journalist who specialized in sensational crime cases. He was nationally famous for getting beaten up on camera, usually by the very hoodlums he was trying to interview. No matter what kind of elaborate disguise Reynaldo Flemm would devise, he was always too vain to cover his face. Naturally the crooks would recognize him instantly and bash the living shit out of him. For pure action footage, it was hard to beat; Reynaldo Flemm’s specials were among the highest-rated programs on television.
“So Gerry’s hit the big time,” Stranahan said.
“Yep,” the clerk said.
“What did he say about this case?”
“Mr. Eckert?”
“Yeah, what did he tell this TV guy?”
The clerk said, “Well, I wasn’t there for the taping. But from what I heard, Mr. Eckert said the whole thing is still a mystery.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
“And Mr. Eckert told Mr. Flemm that he wouldn’t be one bit surprised if someday it turns out that Victoria Barletta ran away. Just took one look at her face and ran away. Otherwise, why haven’t they found a body?”
Stranahan thought: Eckert hasn’t changed a bit, still dumb as a bull gator.
“I can’t wait to see the show,” Stranahan remarked.
“It’s scheduled to be on March twelfth at nine P.M.” The clerk held up a piece of paper. “We got a memo from Mr. Eckert today.”
THE man from New Jersey did not call Dr. Rudy Graveline again for four days. Then, on the afternoon of January eighth, Rudy got a message on his beeper. The beeper went off at a bad moment, when Rudy happened to be screwing the young wife of a Miami Dolphins wide receiver. The woman had come to Whispering Palms for a simple consult—a tiny pink scar along her jawline, could it be fixed?—and the next thing she knew, the doctor had her talking about all kinds of personal things, including how lonely it got at home during the football season when Jake’s mind was on the game and nothing else. Well, the next thing she knew, the doctor was taking her to lunch in his black Jaguar sedan with the great Dolby sound system, and the football player’s wife found herself thinking how the rich smell of leather upholstery made her hot, really hot, and then—as if he could read her mind—the doctor suddenly pulled off the Julia Tuttle Causeway, parked the Jag in some pepper trees, and started to gnaw her panties off. He even made cute little squirrel noises as he nuzzled between her legs.
Before long the doctor was merrily pounding away while the football player’s wife gazed up at him through the spokes of the walnut steering wheel, under which her head had become uncomfortably wedged.
When the beeper went off on Dr. Graveline’s belt, he scarcely missed a beat. He glanced down at the phone number (glowing in bright green numerals) and snatched the car phone from its cradle in the glove box. With one hand he managed to dial the long-distance number even as he finished with the football player’s wife, who by this time was silently counting down, hoping he’d hurry it up. She’d had about all she could take of the smell of new leather.
Dr. Graveline pulled away just as the phone started ringing somewhere in New Jersey.
The man answered on the fourth ring. “Yeah, what?”
“It’s me. Rudy.”
“You been jogging or what?”
“Something like that.”
“Sounds like you’re gonna have a fuckin’ heart attack.”
Dr. Graveline said: “Give me a second to catch my breath.”
The football player’s wife was squirming back into her slacks. The look on her face suggested disappointment at her partner’s performance, but Rudy Graveline did not notice.
“About the deal,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
Curly Eyebrows in New Jersey said: “Your problem musta gone away.”
“Not really.”
“Then what?”
“I’m going to get somebody local.”
The man in New Jersey started to laugh. He laughed and laughed until he began to wheeze.
“Doc, this is a big mistake. Local is no good.”
“I’ve got a guy in mind,” Dr. Graveline said.
“A Cuban, right? Crazy fuckin’ Cuban, I knew it.”
“No, he’s not a Cuban.”
“One of my people?”
“No,” Rudy said. “He’s by himself.”
Again Curly Eyebrows laughed. “Nobody is by himself, Doc
. Nobody in this business.”
“This one is different,” Rudy said. Different wasn’t the word for it. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, so you wouldn’t send anybody else.”
“Suit yourself.”
“And I’m sorry about the other fellow.”
“Don’t bring up that shit, hear? You’re on one of those cellular phones, I can tell. I hate them things, Doc, they ain’t safe. They give off all kinds of fucked-up microwaves, anybody can listen in.”
Dr. Graveline said, “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, well, I read where people can listen on their blenders and hair dryers and shit. Pick up everything you say.”
The football player’s wife was brushing on fresh makeup, using the vanity mirror on the back of the sun visor.
The man in Jersey said: “Your luck, some broad’s pickin’ us up on her electric dildo. Every word.”
“Talk to you later,” Rudy said.
“One piece of advice,” said Curly Eyebrows. “This guy you lined up for the job, don’t tell him your life story. I mean it, Doc. Give him the name, the address, the dough, and that’s it.”
“Oh, I can trust him,” Dr. Graveline said.
“Like hell,” laughed the man in New Jersey, and hung up.
The football player’s wife flipped the sun visor up, closed her compact, and said, “Business?”
“Yes, I dabble in real estate.” Rudy zipped up his pants. “I’ve decided to go with a Miami broker.”
The woman shrugged. She noticed her pink bikini panties on the floormat, and quickly put them in her purse. They were ruined; the doctor had chewed a hole in them.
“Can I drive your car back to the office?” she asked.
“No,” said Rudy Graveline. He got out and walked around to the driver’s side. The football player’s wife slid across the seat, and Rudy got in.
“I almost forgot,” the woman said, fingering the place on her jaw, “about my scar.”
“A cinch,” the doctor said. “We can do it under local anesthetic, make it smooth as silk.”
The football player’s wife smiled. “Really?”
“Oh sure, it’s easy,” Rudy said, steering the Jaguar back on the highway. “But I was wondering about something else. . . .”