But the Stranahan move had backfired, and nearly made a news-industry martyr of Christina Marks. Fine, thought Reynaldo, go ahead and have your fling. Meanwhile Willie and I will be kicking some serious quack ass.
Every time Dr. Rudy Graveline got a phone call from New York or New Jersey, he assumed it was the mob. The mob had generously put him through Harvard Medical School, and in return Rudy occasionally extended his professional courtesies to mob guys, their friends or family. It was Rudy himself who had redone the face of Tony (The Eel) Traviola, the hit man who later washed up dead on Cape Florida beach with a marlin hole through his sternum. Fortunately for Rudy, most mob fugitives were squeamish about surgery, so he wound up doing mainly their wives, daughters, and mistresses. Noses, mostly, with the occasional face-lift.
That’s the kind of call Rudy expected when his secretary told him that New York was on the line.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Doctor Graveline.”
The voice did not belong to Curly Eyebrows or any of his cousins.
“Who is this?”
“Johnny LeTigre, remember me?”
“Of course.” The hinky male stripper. Rudy said, “What are you doing in New York?”
“I had a gig in the Village, but I’m on my way back to Miami.” This was Reynaldo Flemm’s idea of being fast on his feet. He said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said that day at the clinic.”
Rudy Graveline could not remember exactly what he had said. “Yes?”
“About my nose and my abdomen.”
Then it came back to Rudy. “Your nose and abdomen, yes, I remember.”
“You were right,” Reynaldo went on. “We don’t always see ourselves the way other people do.”
Rudy was thinking: Get to the damn point.
“I’d like for you to do my nose,” Reynaldo declared.
“All right.”
“And my middle—what’s that operation called?”
“Suction-assisted lipectomy,” Rudy said.
“Yeah, that’s it. How much’d that set me back?”
Rudy recalled that this was a man who offered ten grand to have a mole removed from his buttocks.
“Fifteen thousand,” Rudy said.
“Geez!” said the voice from New York.
“But that’s if I perform the procedures myself,” Rudy explained. “Keep in mind, I’ve got several very competent associates who could handle your case for, oh, half as much.”
The way that Rudy backed off on the word competent was no accident, but Reynaldo Flemm didn’t need a sell job. Quickly he said, “No, I definitely want you. Fifteen it is. But I need the work done this week.”
“Out of the question.” Rudy would be immersed in preparation for the Heather Chappell marathon.
“Next week at the latest,” Reynaldo pressed.
“Let me see what I can do. By the way, Mr. LeTigre, what is the status of your mole?”
Reynaldo had almost forgotten about the ruse that originally had gained his entry to Whispering Palms. Again he had to wing it. “You won’t believe this,” he said to Dr. Rudy Graveline, “but the damn thing fell off.”
“Are you certain?”
“Swear to God, one morning I ‘m standing in the shower and I turn around and it’s gone. Gone! I found it lying there in the bed. Just fell off, like an acorn or something.”
“Hmmm,” Rudy said. The guy was a flake, but who cared.
“I threw it away, is that okay?”
“The mole?”
“Yeah, I thought about saving it in the freezer, maybe having some tests run. But then I figured what the hell and I tossed it in the trash.”
“It was probably quite harmless,” Rudy Graveline said, dying to hang up.
“So I’ll call you when I get back to Miami.”
“Fine,” said the doctor. “Have a safe trip, Mr. LeTigre.”
Reynaldo Flemm was beaming when he put down the phone. This would be something. Maybe even better than getting shot on the air.
20
Maggie Gonzalez said: “Tell me about your hand.”
“Shut up,” Chemo grumbled. He was driving around Queens, trying to find the sonofabitch who had sold him the bad bullets.
“Please,” Maggie said. “I am a nurse.”
“Too bad you’re not a magician, because that’s what it’s gonna take to make my hand come back. A fish got it.”