The other car disappeared somewhere on Alton Road, and Rudy didn’t think about it again until he and the actress walked out of Whispering Palms; Rudy with a friendly hand on her elbow, she with a fistful of glossy surgery brochures. The Imperial was parked right across from Rudy’s special reserved slot. The same big man was behind the wheel. The actress didn’t know anything was wrong until the man got out of the Chrysler and whistled at a Yellow Cab, which was conveniently parked under a big ficus tree at the north end of the lot. When the taxi pulled up, the man from the Imperial opened the back door and told the actress to get in. He said the cabbie would take her straight to the hotel. She said she wasn’t staying in any hotel, that she’d rented a villa in Golden Beach where Eric Clapton once lived; the big man said fine, the cabbie knew the way.
Finally the actress got in, the taxi drove off, and it was just the stranger and Rudy Graveline alone in the parking lot. When the man introduced himself, Rudy tried very hard not to act terrified. Mick Stranahan said that he wasn’t yet certain why Dr. Graveline was trying to have him killed, but that it was a very bad idea, overall. Dr. Graveline replied that he didn’t know what on earth the man was talking about. Then Mick Stranahan walked across the parking lot, got in his Chrysler, turned on the ignition, placed a coconut on the accelerator, got out of the car, reached through the driver’s window and slipped it into Drive. Then he jumped out of the way and watched the Imperial plow directly into the rear of Dr. Rudy Graveline’s black Jaguar sedan. The impact, plus the three jugs of gasoline that Mick Stranahan had strategically positioned in the Jaguar’s trunk, caused the automobile to explode in a most spectacular way.
When Rudy Graveline recounted this story to Detective Sergeant Al Garcia, he left out two details—the name of the man who did it, and the reason.
“He never said why?” said Al Garcia, all eyebrows.
“Not a word,” lied Dr. Graveline. “He just destroyed my car and walked away. The man was obviously deranged.”
Garcia grunted and folded his arms. Smoke was still rising from the Jag, which was covered with foam from the firetrucks. Rudy acted forlorn about the car, but Garcia knew the truth. The only reason the asshole even bothered with the police was for the insurance company.
The detective said, “You don’t know the guy who did this?”
“Never saw him before.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Rudy said, “Sergeant, I don’t know what you mean.”
Garcia was tempted to come out and ask the surgeon if it were true that he was trying to bump off Mick Stranahan, like Stranahan had said. That was a fun question, the kind Garcia loved to ask, but the timing wasn’t right. For now, he wanted Rudy Graveline to think of a him as a big, dumb cop, not a threat.
“A purely random attack,” Garcia mused.
“It would appear so,” Rudy said.
“And you say the man was short and wiry?”
“Yes,” Rudy said.
“How short?”
“Maybe five one,” Rudy said. “And he was black.”
“How black?”
“Very black,” the doctor said. “Black as my tires.”
Al Garcia dropped to a crouch and shone his flashlight on the front hub of the molten Jag. “Michelins,” he noted. “The man was as black as Michelins.”
“Yes, and he spoke no English.”
“Really. What language was it?”
“Creole,” Rudy Graveline said. “I’m pretty sure.”
Garcia rubbed his chin. “So what we’ve got in the way of an arsonist,” he said, “is a malnourished Haitian midget.”
Rudy frowned. “No,” he said seriously, “he was taller than that.”
Garcia said the man apparently had picked the trunk lock in order to put the containers of gasoline inside the doctor’s car. “That shows some thinking,” the detective said.
“Could still be crazy,” Rudy said. “Crazy people can surprise you.”
One tow truck driver put the hooks on what was left of Rudy’s black Jaguar. Another contemplated the remains of the Chrysler Imperial, which Garcia kept referring to as “that ugly piece of elephant shit.” His hatred for Chryslers went back to his patrol days.