“One more thing,” Dr. Rudy Graveline said.
“How about another beer?” asked Roberta Pepsical, eyeing his empty sweaty glass. “You don’t mind if I get one.”
“Go ahead,” Rudy said, biting back his disgust.
“Crab?” The commissioner brandished another buttery leg.
“No thanks.” Rudy waited for him to wedge it in his mouth, then said: “Bobby, I also need you to keep your ears open.”
“For what?”
“Somebody who used to work for me is threatening to go to the cops, trying to bust my balls. They’re making up stuff about some old surgical case.”
Roberto nodded and chewed in synchronization, like a mechanical dashboard ornament. Rudy found it very distracting.
He said, “The whole thing’s bullshit, honestly. A disgruntled employee.”
Roberto said, “Boy, I know how it is.”
“But for a doctor, Bobby, it could be a disaster. My reputation, my livelihood, surely you can understand. That’s why I need to know if the cops ever go for it.”
Roberto Pepsical said, “I’ll talk to the chief myself.”
“Only if you hear something.”
Roberto winked. “I’ll poke around
“I’d sure appreciate it,” Dr. Graveline said. “I can’t afford a scandal, Bobby. Something like that, I’d probably have to leave town.”
The commissioner’s brow furrowed as he contemplated his twenty-five large on the wing. “Don’t sweat it,” he said confidently to the doctor. “Here, have a conch fritter.”
Chemo was in the waiting room when Rudy Graveline got back to Whispering Palms.
“I did it,” he announced.
Rudy quickly led him into the office.
“You got Stranahan?”
“Last night,” Chemo said matter-of-factly. “So when can we get started on my face?”
Unbelievable, Rudy thought. Very scary, this guy.
“You mean the dermabrasion treatments.”
“Fucking A,” Chemo said. “We had a deal.”
Rudy buzzed his secretary and asked her to bring him the morning Herald. After she went out again, Chemo said, “It happened so late, probably didn’t make the paper.”
“Hmmmm,” said Rudy Graveline, scanning the local news page. “Maybe that’s it—must have happened too late. Tell me about it, please.”
Chemo wet his dead-looking lips. “I torched his house.” No expression at all. “He was asleep.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“I watched it go up,” Chemo said. “Nobody got out.” He crossed his long legs and stared dully at the doctor. The droopy lids made him look like he was about to doze off.
Rudy folded up the newspaper. “I believe you,” he said to Chemo, “but I’d like to be sure. By tomorrow it ought to be in the papers.”
Chemo rubbed the palm of one hand along his cheeks, making sandpaper sounds. Rudy Graveline wished he would knock it off.
“What about the TV?” Chemo asked. “Does that count, if it makes the TV?”
“Of course.”
“Radio, too?”
“Certainly,” Rudy said. “I told you before, no big deal. I don’t need to see the actual corpse, okay, but we do need to be sure. It’s very important, because this is a dangerous man.”
“Was,” Chemo said pointedly.
“Right. This was a dangerous man.” Rudy didn’t mention Stranahan’s ominous phone call on Maggie Gonzalez’s answering machine. Better to limit the cast of characters, for Chemo’s sake. Keep him focused.
“Maybe it’s already on the radio,” Chemo said hopefully.
Rudy didn’t want to put the guy in a mood. “Tell you what,” he said in a generous tone. “We’ll go ahead and do the first treatment this afternoon.”
Chemo straightened up excitedly. “No shit?”
“Why not?” the doctor said, standing. “We’ll try a little patch on your chin.”
“How about the nose?” Chemo said, touching himself there.
Rudy slipped on his glasses and came around the desk to where Chemo was sitting. Because of Chemo’s height, even in the chair, the surgeon didn’t have to lean over far to get a close-up look at the corrugated, cheesy mass that passed for Chemo’s nose.
“Pretty rough terrain,” Rudy Graveline said, peering intently. “Better to start slow and easy.”
“Fast and rough is fine with me.”
Rudy took off his glasses and struck an avuncular pose, a regular Marcus Welby. “I want to be very careful,” he told Chemo. “Yours is an extreme case.”
“You noticed.”
“The machine we use is a Stryker dermabrader—”