“I assumed they told you—there’s been a change of plans. I’ve decided to do the lipectomy first, then the rhinoplasty. It’ll be easier that way.”
No no no, you gotta do the nose first. Do the fucking nose.
“You should try to relax, John. Here, hold still, we’re going to give you another injection.”
No no no no no no no.
“That didn’t hurt a bit, did it? “
I wanna ask I gotta ask right now …
“Go ahead, push the Sublimaze.”
Did you kill … ?
“What did he say?”
Is it true you killed … ?
“This guy looks sort of familiar.”
Did you … kill Victoria … Principal?
“Victoria Principal! Boy, is he whacked out.”
Well did you?
“Where’s the mask? Start the Forane. Give him the mask.”
Willie hadn’t slept much, fretting about Reynaldo’s big plan. He had tried to call Christina Marks in New York, but the office said she was in Miami. But where? Reynaldo’s plan was the craziest thing Willie had ever heard, starting with the signal. Willie needed a signal to know when to come crashing into the operating room with the camera. The best that Reynaldo could come up with was a scream. Willie would be in the waiting room, Reynaldo would scream.
“What exactly will you scream?” Willie had asked.
“I’ll scream: WILLIE!”
Willie thought Reynaldo was joking. He wasn’t.
“What about the other patients in the waiting room? I mean, here I am with a TV camera and a sound pack—what do I tell these people?”
“Tell ‘em you’re from PBS,” Reynaldo had said. “Nobody hassles PBS.”
The shot that Reynaldo Flemm most fervently wanted was this: Himself prone, prepped, cloaked in blue, preferably in the early stages of rhinoplasty and preferably bloody. That was the good thing about a nose job, you could ask for a local. Most plastic surgeons want their rhinoplasty patients to be all the way zonked, but you could get it done with a local and a mild I.V. if you could stand a little pain. Reynaldo Flemm had no doubt he could stand it.
Willie would burst like a fullback into the operating room, tape rolling, toss the baton mike to Reynaldo on the table, Reynaldo would poke it in Rudy Graveline’s face and pop the questions. Bam bam bam. The nurses and scrub techs would drop whatever they were doing and run, leaving the hapless surgeon to dissolve, alone, before the camera’s eye.
Wait’ll he realizes who I am, Reynaldo had chortled. Be sure you go extra tight on his face.
Willie had said he needed a soundman, but Reynaldo said no, out of the question; this was to be a streamlined attack.
Willie had said all right, then we need a better signal. Just screaming isn’t good enough, he had said. What if somebody else starts screaming first, some other patient?
“Who else would scream your name?” Reynaldo had asked in a caustic tone. “Listen to what I’m saying.”
The plan was bold and outrageous, Willie had to admit. No doubt it would cause a national sensation, stir up all the TV critics, not to mention Johnny Carson’s gag writers. There would be a large amount of cynical speculation among Ray’s colleagues that what he really wanted out of this caper was a free nose job—a theory that occurred even to Willie as he listened to Reynaldo map out the big ambush. The possibility of coast-to-coast media ridicule was no deterrent; the man seemed to relish being maligned as a hack and a clown and a shameless egomaniac. He said they were jealous, that’s what they were. What other broadcast journalist in America had the guts to go under the knife just to get an interview? Mike Wallace? Not in a million years, the arrogant old prune. Bill Moyers? That liberal pussy would faint if he got a hangnail!
Yeah, Willie had said, it’s quite a plan.
Brilliant, Reynaldo had crowed. Try brilliant.
However inspired, the plan’s success depended on several crucial factors, not the least of which was the premise that Reynaldo Flemm would be conscious for the interview.
Although the surgical procedure known as liposuction, or fat sucking, was developed in France, it has achieved its greatest mass-market popularity in the United States. It is now the most common cosmetic procedure performed by plastic surgeons in this country, with more than 100,000 operations a year. The mortality rate for suction-assisted lipectomy is relatively low, about one death for every 10,000 patients. The odds of complications—which include blood clots, fat embolisms, chronic numbness, and severe bruising—increase considerably if the surgeon performing the liposuction has had little or no training in the procedure. Rudy Graveline fell decisively into this category—a doctor who had taken up liposuction for the simple reason that it was exceedingly lucrative. No state law or licensing board or medical review committee required Rudy to study liposuction first, or become proficient, or even be tested on his surgical competence before trying it. The same libertarian standards applied to rhinoplasties or hemorrhoidectomies or even brain surgery: Rudy Graveline was a licensed physician, and legally that meant he could try any damn thing he wanted.