“You look frightened,” the surgeon said.
“I am.”
“And a little bouncy in the bottom.”
“I eat when I’m frightened,” Maggie said, keeping her cool.
“So what is it?” Rudy asked.
“Vicky Barletta,” she said. “Somebody’s making a fuss.”
“Oh.” Rudy Graveline appeared calm. “Who?”
“One of the investigators. A man named Stranahan.”
“I don’t remember him,” Rudy said.
“I do. He’s scary.”
“Did he speak to you?”
Maggie shook her head. “Worse than that,” she said. “Some TV people came to my place. They’re doing a special on missing persons.”
“Christ, don’t tell me.”
“Stranahan’s going to talk.”
Rudy said, “But what does he know?”
Maggie blinked. “I’m worried, Dr. Graveline. It’s going to break open all over again.”
“No way.”
Maggie’s notion was to get Stranahan out of the way. Whether Dr. Graveline bribed him, terrorized him, or worse was immaterial; Rudy could get to anybody. Those who stood in his way either got with the program or got run over. One time another surgeon had done a corrective rhinoplasty on one of Rudy’s botched-up patients, then badmouthed Rudy at a medical society cocktail party. Rudy got so furious that he paid two goons to trash the other doctor’s office, but not before stealing his medical files. Soon, the other doctor’s surgical patients received personal letters thanking them for being so understanding while he battled that terrible heroin addiction, which now seemed to be under control. Well, almost … By the end of the month, the other doctor had closed what was left of his practice and moved to British Columbia.
Maggie Gonzalez was counting on Rudy Graveline to overreact again; she wanted him worried about Stranahan to the exclusion of all others. By the time the doctor turned on the tube and discovered who was the real threat, Maggie would be long gone. And out of reach.
She went on: “They won’t leave me alone, these TV people. They said the case is going to a grand jury. They said Stranahan’s going to testify.” She fished in her purse for a tissue. “I thought you ought to know.”
Rudy Graveline thanked her for coming. He told her not to worry, everything was going to be fine. He suggested she get out of town for a few weeks, and she said that was probably a good idea. He asked if there was anywhere in particular she wanted to go, and she said New York. The doctor said New York is a swell place to visit around Christmas time, and he wrote out a personal check for twenty-five hundred dollars. He recommended that Maggie stay gone for at least a month, and said to call if she needed more money.
When, Maggie said. Not if she needed more money, but when.
Later that same afternoon, Dr. Rudy Graveline had locked his office door and made a telephone call to a seafood restaurant in New Jersey. He talked to a man who probably had curly eyebrows, a man who promised to send somebody down around the first of the year.
On the day that Tony Traviola, the first hit man, arrived to kill Mick Stranahan, Maggie Gonzalez was in a tenth-floor room at the Essex House hotel. The room had a view of Central Park, where Maggie was taking skating lessons at Donald Trump’s ice rink. She planned to lie low for a few more weeks, maybe stop in for a chat at 20/20, A little competition never hurt. Maybe Reynaldo Flemm would get worried enough to jack up his offer. Five grand sucked, it really did.
Dr. Rudy Graveline made an appointment with the second killer for January tenth at three in the afternoon. The man arrived at Whispering Palms a half-hour early and sat quietly in the waiting room, scaring the hell out of the other patients.
Rudy knew him only as Chemo, a cruel but descriptive nickname, for he truly did appear to be in the final grim stages of chemotherapy. Black hair sprouted in random wisps from a blue-veined scalp. His lips were thin and papery, the color of wet cement. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at gawkers with a dull and chilling indifference; the hooded lids blinked slowly, pellucid as a salamander’s. And the skin—the skin is what made people gasp, what emptied the waiting room at Whispering Palms. Chemo’s skin looked like breakfast cereal, like somebody had glued Rice Krispies to every square centimeter of his face.