She smiled and stroked her handbag, which had not left her arm since their breakfast in Central Park. “I’ve got a Visa card,” she said brightly. “Where we headed?”
“Me, I’m going back to Florida.”
“Not like that, you’re not. They’ve got rules against bare feet, I’m sure.”
“Hell,” Chemo said, and loped off to locate some cheap shoes. He came back wearing fuzzy brown bathroom slippers, size 14, purchased at one of the airport gift shops. Maggie was saving him a spot at the ticket counter. She had already arranged for him to get an aisle seat (because of his long legs), and she would be next to him.
Later, waiting in the boarding area, Maggie asked Chemo if his name was Rogelio Luz Sanchez.
“Oh sure.”
“That’s what it says on your ticket.”
“Well, there you are,” Chemo said. He couldn’t even pronounce Rogelio Luz Sanchez—some alias cooked up by Rudy Graveline, the dumb shit. Chemo looked about as Hispanic as Larry Bird.
After they took their seats on the airplane, Maggie leaned close and asked, “So, can I call you Rogelio? I mean, I’ve got to call you something.”
Chemo’s hooded lids blinked twice very slowly. “The more you talk, the more I want to spackle the holes in that fucking mask.”
Maggie emitted a reedy, birdlike noise.
“I think we can do business,” Chemo said, “but only on two conditions. One, don’t ask any more personal questions, is that clear? Two, don’t ever puke on me again.”
“I said I was sorry.”
The plane had started to taxi and Chemo raised his voice to be heard over the engines. “Once I get some decent bullets I’ll be using that gun, and God help you if you toss your cookies when I do.”
Maggie said, “I’ll do better next time.”
One of the flight attendants came by and asked Maggie if she needed a special meal because of her medical condition, and Maggie remarked that she wasn’t feeling particularly well. She said the coach section was so crowded and stuffy that she was having trouble breathing. The next thing Chemo knew, they were sitting up in first class and sipping red wine. Having noticed his disability, the friendly flight attendant was carefully cutting Chemo’s surf-and-turf into bite-sized pieces. Chemo glanced at Maggie and felt guilty about coming down so hard.
“That was a slick move,” he said, the closest he would come to a compliment. “I never rode up here before.”
Maggie exhibited no surprise at this bit of news. Her eyes looked sad and moist behind the white husk.
Chemo said, “You still want to be partners?”
She nodded. Carefully she aimed a forkful of lobster for the damp hole beneath her nostrils in the surgical bandage.
“Graveline’s gonna scream when he learns about your videotape,” Chemo said with a chuckle. “Where is it, anyway?”
When Maggie finished chewing, she said, “I’ve got three copies.”
“Good thinking.”
“Two of them are locked up at a bank. The third one, the original tape, that’s for Rudy. That’s how we get his attention.”
Chemo smiled a yellow smile. “I like it.”
“You won’t like this part,” Maggie said. “Stranahan swiped the tape from the hotel room. We can’t show it to Rudy until we get it back.”
“Hell,” Chemo said. This was terrible—Mick Stranahan and that TV bitch loose with the blackmail goodies. Just terrible. He said, “I’ve got to get to them before they get to Graveline, otherwise we’re blown out of the water. He’ll be on the first flight to Panama and we’ll be holding our weenies.”
From Maggie came a muffled, disapproving noise.
“It’s just an expression,” Chemo said. “Lighten up, for Chrissakes.”
After the flight attendants removed the meal trays, Chemo lowered the seat back and stretched his endless legs. Almost to himself, he said, “I don’t like this Stranahan guy one bit. When we get to Miami, we hit the ground running.”
“Yes,” Maggie agreed, easing into the partnership, “we’ve got to get the tape.”
“That, too,” said Chemo, tugging his hat down over his eyes.
The news of gunshots and a possible kidnapping at the Plaza Hotel rated five paragraphs in the Daily News, a page of photos in the Post and nothing in the Times. That morning New York detectives queried a teletype to the Metro-Date Police Department stating that the victim of the abduction was believed to be a Miami woman named Margaret Orestes Gonzalez, a guest at the hotel. The police teletype described her assailant as a white male, age unknown, with possible burn scars on his face and a height of either six foot four or eight foot two, depending on which witness you believed. The teletype further noted that a Rapala fishing knife found on the carpet outside the victim’s room was traced to a shipment that recently had been sold to a retail establishment known as Bubba’s Bait and Cold Beer, on Dixie Highway in South Miami. Most significantly, a partial thumb-print lifted from the blade of the knife was identified as belonging to one Blondell Wayne Tatum, age thirty-eight, six foot nine, one hundred eighty-one pounds. Mr. Tatum, it seemed, was wanted in the state of Pennsylvania for the robbery-at-pitchfork of a Chemical Bank, and for the first-degree murder of Dr. Gunther MacLeish, an elderly dermatologist. Tatum was to be considered armed and dangerous. Under AKAs, the police bulletin listed one: Chemo.