Christina Marks leaned forward. “Fine. All fine, except for one thing. She names names.”
“Maggie does?”
“Yes. She describes exactly how it happened and who did it.”
“And these people—”
“Person, singular.”
“He? She?”
“He,” Christina said.
“He’s still alive?”
“Sure is.”
“Here in town?” “That’s right.”
“Jesus,” Stranahan said. He got up and fixed himself another gin. He dropped a couple of ice cubes, his hands were shaking so much. This was not good, he told himself, getting so excited was definitely not good.
He carried his drink back to the living room and said, “Is it the doctor?”
“I can’t say.” It would violate a confidence, Christina Marks explained. Journalists have to protect their sources. Stranahan finished half his drink before he spoke again. “Are you any good?”
Christina looked at him curiously.
“At what you do,” he said irritably, “are you any damn good?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Can you keep the great Reynaldo out of my hair?”
“I’ll try. Why?”
“Because,” Stranahan said, “it would be to our mutual benefit, to meet once in a while, just you and me.”
“Compare notes?”
“Something like that. I don’t know why, but I think I can trust you.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not saying I do, just that it’s possible.”
He put down the glass and stood up.
“What’s your stake in this?” Christina Marks asked.
“Truth, justice, whatever.”
“No, it’s bigger than that.”
She was pretty sharp, he had to admit. But he wasn’t ready to tell her about Tony the Eel and the marlin head.
As she walked Stranahan to the door, Christina said, “I spent some time at the newspaper today.”
“Reading up, I suppose.”
“You’ve got quite a clip file,” she said. “I suppose I ought to be scared of you.”
“You don’t believe everything you read?”
“Of course not.” Christina Marks opened the door. “Just tell me, how much of it was true?”
“All of it,” Mick Stranahan said, “unfortunately.”
Of Stranahan’s five ex-wives, only one had chosen to keep his last name: ex-wife number four, Chloe Simpkins Stranahan. Even after she remarried, Chloe hung on to his name as an act of unalloyed spite. Naturally she was listed in the Miami phone book; Stranahan had begged her to please get a nonpublished number, but Chloe had said that would defeat the whole purpose. “This way, any girl who wants to call up and check on you, I can tell them the truth. That you’re a dangerous lunatic. That’s what I’ll tell them when they call up, Mick—honey, he was one dangerous lunatic.”
Christina Marks had gotten all the Stranahan numbers from directory assistance. When she had called Chloe from New York, Chloe assumed it was just one of Mick’s girlfriends, and had given a vitriolic and highly embellished account of their eight-month marriage and nine-month divorce. Finally Christina Marks had cut in and explained who she was and what she wanted, and Chloe Simpkins Stranahan had said: “That’ll cost you a grand.”
“Five hundred,” Christina countered.
“Bitch,” Chloe hissed. But when the cashier’s check arrived the next afternoon by Federal Express, Chloe faithfully picked up the phone and called Christina Marks (collect) in New York and told her where to locate her dangerous lunatic of an ex-husband.
“Give him a disease for me, will you?” Chloe had said and then had hung up.
The hit man known as Chemo was not nearly as resourceful as Christina Marks, but he did know enough to check the telephone book for Stranahans. There were five, and Chemo wrote them all down.
The day after his meeting with Dr. Rudy Graveline, Chemo went for a drive. His car was a royal blue 1980 Bonneville, with tinted windows. The tinted windows were essential to conceal Chemo’s face, the mere glimpse of which could cause a highspeed pileup at any intersection.
Louis K. Stranahan was the first on Chemo’s list. A Miamian would have recognized the address as being in the middle of Liberty City, but Chemo did not. It occurred to him upon entering the neighborhood that he should have asked Dr. Graveline whether the man he was supposed to kill was black or white, because it might have saved some time.