“Go do your business,” Chemo said. Then, to Maggie: “Stay with her.”
Christina said, “I can’t pee with somebody watching.”
“What?”
“She’s right,” Maggie said. “I’m the same way. I’ll just wait outside the door.”
“No, do what I told you,” Chemo said.
“There’s no window in there,” Christina said. “What’m I going to do, escape down the toilet?”
When she came out of the bathroom, Chemo was standing by the door. He led her back to the bed, made her lie down, then tied her again—another tedious chore, one-handed.
“No gag this time,” Christina requested. “I promise not to scream.”
“But you’ll talk,” said Chemo. “That’s even worse.”
Since the morning he had kidnapped her from the hotel on Key Bjscayne, Chemo had said practically nothing to Christina Marks. Nor had he menaced or abused her in any sense—it was as if he knew that the mere sight of him, close up, was daunting enough. Christina had spied the butt of a revolver in Chemo’s baggy pants pocket, but he had never pulled it; this was a big improvement over the two previous encounters, when he had nearly shot her.
She said, “I just want to know why you’re doing this, what exactly you want.”
He acted as if he never heard her. Maggie handed Christina a small cup of Pepsi.
“Don’t let her drink too much,” Chemo cautioned. “She’ll be going to the head all night.”
He turned on the television set and grimaced: pro basketball—the Lakers and the Pistons. Chemo hated basketball. At six foot nine, he had spent his entire adulthood explaining to rude strangers that no, he didn’t play pro basketball. Once a myopic Celtics fan had mistaken him for Kevin McHale and demanded an autograph; Chemo had savagely bitten the man on the shoulder, like a horse.
He began switching channels until he found an old Miami Vice. He turned up the volume and scooted his chair closer to the tube. He envied Don Johnson’s three-day stubble; it looked rugged and manly. Chemo himself had not shaved, for obvious reasons, since the electrolysis accident.
He turned to Maggie and asked, “Can they do hair plugs on your chin, too?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said, though in fact she had never heard of such a procedure.
Pinned to the bed like a butterfly, Christina said, “Before long, somebody’s going to be looking for me.”
Chemo snorted. “That’s the general idea.” Didn’t these women ever shut up? Didn’t they appreciate his potential for violence?
Maggie sat next to Christina and said, “We need to get a message to your boyfriend.”
“Who—Stranahan? He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Still, I doubt if he wants to see you get hurt.”
Christina appraised herself—strapped to a bed, squirming in her underwear—and imagined what Reynaldo Flemm would say if he came crashing through the door. For once she’d be happy to see the stupid sonofabitch, but she knew there was no possibility of such a rescue. If Mick couldn’t find her, Ray didn’t have a prayer.
“If it’s that videotape you’re after, I don’t know where it is—”
“But surely your boyfriend does,” said Maggie.
Chemo pointed at the television. “Hey, lookie there!” On the screen, Detective Sonny Crockett was chasing a drug smuggler through Stiltsville in a speedboat. This was the first time Christina had seen Chemo smile. It was a harrowing experience.
Maggie said, “So how do you get in touch with him?”
“Mick? I don’t know. There’s no phone out there. Anytime I wanted to see him, I rented a boat.”
A commercial came on the television, and Chemo turned to the women. “Jesus, I don’t want to go back to that house—enough of that shit. I want him to come see me. And he will, soon as he knows I’ve got you.”
In her most lovelorn voice, Christina said to Maggie, “I really don’t think Mick cares one way or the other.”
“You better hope he does,” said Chemo. He pressed the towel firmly into Christina’s mouth and turned back to watch the rest of the show.
On the morning of February eighteenth, the last day of Kipper Garth’s law career, he filed a motion with the Circuit Court of Dade County in the case of Nordstrom v. Graveline, Whispering Palms, et al.