Skin Tight

by Carl Hiaasen

  “Who are you?” Maggie said thickly. “Who sent you?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “Please, I don’t feel very well.”

  Chemo took the Colt from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at the bandaged tip of her new nose. “Your name’s Maggie Gonzalez, isn’t it?”

  At the sight of the pistol, she leaned forward and vomited all over Chemo’s rubber-soled winter shoes.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” He moaned and bolted for the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie called after him. “You scared me, that’s all.”

  When Chemo came back, the shoes were off his feet and the gun was back in his pants. He was wiping his mouth with the corner of the towel.

  “I’m really sorry,” Maggie said again.

  Chemo shook his head disgustedly. He sat down on the corner of the bed. To Maggie his legs seemed as long as circus stilts.

  “You’re supposed to kill me?”

  “Yep,” Chemo said. With the towel he wiped a fleck of puke off her nightgown.

  Blearily she studied him and said, “You’ve had some dermabrasion.”

  “So?”

  “So how come just little patches—why not more?”

  “My doctor said that would be risky.”

  “Your doctor’s full of it,” Maggie said.

  “And I guess you’re an expert or something.”

  “I’m a nurse, but you probably know that.”

  Chemo said, “No, I didn’t.” Dr. Graveline hadn’t told him a thing.

  Maggie went on, “I used to work for a plastic surgeon in Miami. A butcher with a capital B.”

  Subconsciously Chemo’s fingers felt for the tender spots on his chin. He was almost afraid to ask.

  “This surgeon,” he said to Maggie, “what was his name?”

  “Graveline,” she said. “Rudy Graveline. Personally, I wouldn’t let him trim a hangnail.”

  Lugubriously Chemo closed his bulbous red eyes. Through the codeine, Maggie thought he resembled a giant nuclear-radiated salamander, straight from a monster movie.

  “How about this,” he said. “I’ll tell you what happened to my face if you tell me what happened to yours.”

  IT was Chemo’s idea to have breakfast in Central Park. He figured there’d be so many other freaks that no one would notice them. As it turned out, Maggie’s Tut-like facial shell drew more than a few stares. Chemo tugged his hat down tightly and said, “You should’ve worn a scarf.”

  They were sitting near Columbus Circle on a bench. Chemo had bought a box of raisin bagels with cream cheese. Maggie said her stomach felt much better but, because of the surgical tape, she was able to fit only small pieces of bagel into her mouth. It was a sloppy process, but two fat squirrels showed up to claim the crumbs.

  Chemo was saying, “Your nose, your chin, your eyelids—Christ, no wonder you hurt.” He took out her picture and looked at it appraisingly. “Too bad,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, you were a pretty lady.”

  “Maybe I still am,” Maggie said. “Maybe prettier.”

  Chemo put the photograph back in his coat. “Maybe,” he said.

  “You’re going to make me cry and then everything’ll sting.”

  He said, “Knock it off.”

  “Don’t you think I feel bad enough?” Maggie said. “I get a whole new face—and for what! A month from now and you’d never have recognized me. I could’ve sat in your lap on the subway and you wouldn’t know who I was.”

  Chemo thought he heard sniffling behind the bandages. “Don’t fucking cry,” he said. “Don’t be a baby.”

  “I don’t understand why Rudy sent you,” Maggie whined.

  “To kill you, what else?”

  “But why now? Nothing’s happened yet.”

  Chemo frowned and said, “Keep it down.” The pink patches on his chin tingled in the cold air and made him think about Rudy Graveline. Butcher with a capital B, Maggie had said. Chemo wanted to know more.

  A thin young Moonie in worn corduroys came up to the park bench and held out a bundle of red and white carnations. “Be happy,” the kid said to Maggie. “Five dollars.”

  “Get lost,” Chemo said.

  “Four dollars,” said the Moonie. “Be happy.”

  Chemo pulled the calfskin cover off his Weed Whacker and flicked the underarm toggle for the battery pack. The Moonie gaped as Chemo calmly chopped the bright carnations to confetti.

  “Be gone, Hop-sing,” Chemo said, and the Moonie ran away. Chemo recloaked the Weed Whacker and turned to Maggie. “Tell me why the doctor wants you dead.”

  It took her several moments to recover from what she had seen. Finally she said, “Well, it’s a long story.”

  “I got all day,” Chemo said. “Unless you got tickets to Phantom or something.”

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  “No,” Chemo said sharply. “Remember?” He had thrown his vomit-covered shoes and socks out the ninth-floor window of Maggie’s room at the Plaza. Now he was sitting in bare feet in Central Park on a forty-degree February morning. He wiggled his long bluish toes and said to Maggie Gonzalez: “So talk.”

  She did. She told Chemo all about the death of Victoria Barletta. It was a slightly shorter recital than she’d put on the videotape, but it was no less shocking.

  “You’re making this up,” Chemo said.

  “I’m not either.”

  “He killed this girl with a nose job?”

  Maggie nodded. “I was there.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “That’s even worse,” Chemo said. He tore off his hat and threw it on the sidewalk, spooking the squirrels. “This is the same maniac who’s working on my face. I can’t fucking stand it!”

  By way of consolation, Maggie said: “Dermabrasion is a much simpler procedure.”

  “Yeah, tell me about simple procedures.” Chemo couldn’t believe the lousy luck he had with doctors. He said, “So what does all this have to do with him wanting you dead?”

  Maggie told Chemo about Reynaldo Flemm’s TV investigation (without mentioning that she had been the tipster), told how she had warned Rudy about Mick Stranahan, the investigator. She was careful to make it sound as if Stranahan was the whistle-blower.

  “Now it’s starting to make sense,” Chemo said. “Graveline wants me to kill him, too.” He held up the arm-mounted Weed Whacker. “He’s the prick that cost me this hand.”

  “Rudy can’t afford any witnesses,” Maggie explained, “or any publicity. Not only would they yank his medical license, he’d go to jail. Now do you understand?”

  Do I ever, thought Chemo.

  The white mask that was Maggie’s face asked: “Are you still going to kill me?”

  “We’ll see,” Chemo replied. “I’m sorting things out.”

  “How much is that cheap bastard paying you?”

  Chemo plucked his rumpled hat off the sidewalk. “I’d rather not say,” he muttered, clearly embarrassed. No way would he let that butcher fuck with his ears. Not now.

  CHRISTINA Marks and Mick Stranahan got to the Plaza Hotel shortly before ten. From the lobby Stranahan called Maggie’s room and got no answer. Christina followed him into the elevator and, as they rode to the ninth floor, she watched him remove a small serrated blade from his wallet.

  “Master key,” he said.

  “Mick, no. I could get fired.”

  “Then wait downstairs.”

  But she didn’t. She watched him pick the lock on Maggie’s door, then slipped into the room behind him. She said nothing and scarcely moved while he checked the bathroom and the closets to see if they were alone.

  “Mick, come here.”

  On the bedstand were two prescription bottles, a plastic bed-pan, and a pink-splotched surgical compress. Stranahan glanced at the pills: Tylenol No. 3 and Darvocet. The bottle of Darvocets had not yet bee
n opened. A professional business card lay next to the telephone on Maggie’s nightstand. Stranahan chuckled drily when he read what was on the card:LEONARD R. LEAPER, M.D.

  Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery

  Office: 555-6600 Nights and Emergencies: 555-6677

  “How nice,” Christina remarked. “She took our money and got a face-lift.”

  Stranahan said, “Something’s not right. She ought to be in bed.”

  “Maybe she went for brunch at the Four Seasons.”

  He shook his head. “These scrips are only two days old, so that’s when she had the surgery. She’s still got to be swollen up like a mango. Would you go out in public looking like that?”

  “Depends on how much dope I ate.”

  “No,” Stranahan said, scanning the room, “Something’s not right. She ought to be here.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Stranahan said they should go downstairs and wait in the lobby; in her condition, Maggie shouldn’t be hard to spot. “But first,” he said, “let’s really go through this place.”

  Christina went to the dresser. Under a pile of Maggie’s bras and panties she found three new flowered bikinis, the price tags from the Plaza Shops still attached. Maggie was definitely getting ready for Maui.

  “Oh, Miss Marks,” Stranahan sang out. “Lookie here.”

  It was a videocassette in a brown plastic sleeve. The sleeve was marked with a sticker from Midtown Studio Productions.

  Stranahan tossed Christina the tape. She tossed it back.

  “We can’t take that, it’s larceny.”

  He said, “It’s not larceny to take something you already own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If this is what I think it is, you’ve paid for it already. The Barletta story, remember?”

  “We don’t know that. Could be anything—home movies, maybe.”

  Stranahan smiled and stuffed the cassette into his coat. “Only one way to find out.”

  “No,” Christina said.

  “Look, you got a VCR at your place. Let’s go watch the tape. If I’m wrong, then I’ll bring it back myself.”

  “Oh, I see. Just sneak in, put it back where you got it, tidy up the place.”

  “Yeah, if I’m wrong. If it turns out to be Jane Fonda or something. But I don’t -ºthink so.”

  Christina Marks knew better; it was madness, of course. She could lose her job, blow a perfectly good career if they were caught. But, then again, this hadn’t turned out to be the typical Reynaldo Flemm exposé. She had damn near gotten machine-gunned over this one, so what the hell.

  Grudgingly she said, “Is it Beta or VHS?”

  Stranahan gave her a hug.

  Then they heard the key in the door.

  THE two couples said nothing for the first few seconds, just stared. Mick Stranahan and Christina Marks had the most to contemplate: a woman wrapped in tape, and a beanpole assassin with one arm down to his knees.

  Maggie Gonzalez was the first to speak: “It’s him.”

  “Who?” Chemo asked. He had never seen Stranahan up close, not even at the stilt house.

  “Him.” Maggie repeated through the bandages. “What’re you doing in my room?”

  “Hello, Maggie,” Stranahan said, “assuming it’s you under there. It’s sure been a long time.”

  “And you!” Maggie grunted, pointing at Christina Marks.

  “Hi, again,” said Christina. “I thought you’d be in Hawaii by now.”

  Chemo said, “I guess everybody’s old pals except me.” He pulled the .38 out of his overcoat. “Nobody move.”

  “Another one who watches too much TV,” Stranahan whispered to Christina.

  Chemo blinked angrily. “I don’t like you one bit.”

  “I assumed as much from the fact you keep trying to kill me.” Stranahan had seen some bizarros in his day, but this one took the cake. He looked like Fred Munster with bulimia. One eye on the gun, Stranahan asked, “Do you have a name?”

  “No,” Chemo said.

  “Good. Makes for a cheaper tombstone.”

  Chemo told Maggie to close the door, but Maggie didn’t move. The sight of the pistol had made her nauseated all over again, and she was desperately trying to keep down her breakfast bagels.

  “What’s the matter now?” Chemo snapped.

  “She doesn’t look so hot,” Christina said.

  “And who the fuck are you, Florence Nightingale?”

  “What happened to your arm?” Christina asked him. A cool customer she was; Stranahan admired her poise.

  Chemo got the impression that he was losing control, which made no sense, since he was the one with the pistol. “Shut up, all of you,” he said, “while I kill Mr. Stranahan here. Finally.”

  At these words, Maggie Gonzalez upchucked gloriously all over Chemo’s gun arm. Given his general translucence, it was impossible to tell if Chemo blanched. He did, however, wobble perceptibly.

  Mick Stranahan stepped forward and punched him ferociously in the Adam’s apple. The man went down like a seven-foot Tinker-toy, but did not release his grip on the gun. Maggie backed up and screamed, a primal wail that poured from the hole in her bandage and filled the hallway. Stranahan decided there was no time to finish the job. He pushed Christina Marks through the doorway and told her to go for the elevator. Gagging and spitting blood, Chemo rolled out of his fetal curl and took a wild shot at Christina as she ran down the hall. The bullet twanged impotently off a fire extinguisher and was ultimately stopped by the opulent Plaza wallpaper.

  Before Chemo could fire again, Stranahan stomped on his wrist, still slippery from Maggie’s used bagels. Chemo would not let go of the gun. With a growl he swung his refurbished left arm like a fungo bat across his body. It caught Stranahan in the soft crease behind the knee and brought him down. The two men wrestled for the pistol while Maggie howled and clawed chimp-like at her swaddled head.

  It was a clumsy fight. Tangled in the killer’s gangliness, Stranahan could not shield himself from a clubbing by Chemo’s over-sized left arm. Whatever it was—and it wasn’t a human fist—it hurt like hell. His skull chiming, Stranahan tried to break free.

  Suddenly he felt the dull barrel of the .38 against his throat. He flinched when he heard the click, but nothing else followed. No flash, no explosion, no smell. The bullet, Chemo’s second and only remaining round, was a dud. Chemo couldn’t believe it—that asshole in Queens had screwed him royal.

  Stranahan squirmed loose, stood up, and saw that they had attracted an audience. All along the corridor, doors were cracked open, some more than others. Under Maggie’s keening he could hear excited voices. Somebody was calling the police.

  Stranahan groped at his coat to make sure that the videotape was still in his pocket, kicked Chemo once in the groin (or where he estimated that the giant’s groin might be), then jogged down the hallway.

  Christina Marks was considerate enough to hold the elevator.

  CHAPTER 19

  DR. Rudy Graveline was a fellow who distrusted chance and prided himself on preparation, but he had not planned a love affair with a Hollywood star. Heather Chappell was a distraction—a fragrant, gorgeous, elusive, spoiled, sulky bitch of a distraction. He couldn’t get enough of her. Rudy had come to crave the tunnel of clear thinking that enveloped him while making love to Heather; it was like a sharp cool drug. She screwed him absolutely numb, left him aching and drained and utterly in focus with his predicament.

  For a while he kept cooking up lame excuses for postponing Heather’s elaborate cosmetic surgery—knowing it would put her out of action for weeks. Sex with Heather had become a crucial component of Rudy Graveline’s daily regimen; like a long-distance runner, he had fallen into a physical rhythm that he could not afford to break. TV people were after him, his medical career was in jeopardy, a homicide rap was on the horizon—and salvation depended on a crooked halfwit politician and a one-armed, seven-foot hit man. Rudy needed to sta
y razor-sharp until the crisis was over, and Heather had become vital to his clarity.

  He treated her like a queen and it seemed to work. Heather’s initial urgency to schedule the surgery had subsided during the day-long shopping sprees, the four-star meals, the midnight yacht cruises up and down the Intracoastal. In recent days, though, she again had begun to press Rudy not only about the date for the operations, but the cost. She was dropping broad hints to the effect that for all her bedroom labors she deserved a special discount, and Rudy found himself weakening on the subject. Finally, one night, she waited until he was inside her to bring up the money again, and Rudy breathlessly agreed to knock forty percent off the usual fee. Afterward he was furious at himself, and blamed his moment of weakness on stress and mental fatigue.

  Deep down, the doctor knew better: He was trapped. While he dreaded the prospect of Heather Chappell’s surgery, he feared that she would leave him if he didn’t agree to do it. He probably would have done it for free. He had become addicted to her body—a radiantly perfect body that she now wanted him to improve. The task would have posed a career challenge for the most skillful of plastic surgeons; for a hack like Rudy Graveline, it was flat-out impossible. Naturally he planned to let his assistants do it.

  Until Heather dropped another surprise.

  “My agent says I should tape the operation, love.”

  Rudy said, “You’re kidding.”

  “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “What, you don’t trust me?”

  “Sure I do,” Heather said. “It’s my damn agent, is all. She says since my looks are everything, my whole career, I should be careful, legal-wise. I guess she wants to make sure nothing goes wrong—”

  Rudy sprung out of bed, hands on his hips. “Look, I told you these operations are not necessary at all.”