SKIN TIGHT by Carl Hiaasen

Joe Salazar idly tested the knobs on the condom machine and said, “So you got a better idea, right?”

“Well … ,” Roberto said.

Murdock loosened his grip on the commissioner and straightened his jacket. “You’re not the idea man, are you? I mean, it was your idea to meet at this pussy parlor.” He walked over to the urinal and unzipped his trousers. “Joe and I will think of something. We’re idea-type guys.”

Salazar said, “For instance, suppose we get a warrant to arrest the suspect for the murder of his former wife. Supposing we proceed to his residence and duly identify ourselves as sworn police officers. And supposing the suspect attempts to flee.”

“Or resists with violence,” Murdock hypothesized.

“Yeah, the manual is clear,” Salazar said.

Murdock shook himself off and zipped up. “In a circumstance such as that, we could use deadly force.”

“I imagine you could,” said Roberto Pepsical, sober as a choirboy.

The three of them stood there in the restroom, sweating under the hot bare bulb. Salazar examined a package of flamingo-pink rubbers that he had shaken loose from the vending machine.

Finally Murdock said, “Tell your friend it sounds fine, except for the price. Make it ten apiece, not five.”

“Ten,” Roberto repeated, though he was not at all surprised. To close the deal, he sighed audibly.

“Come on,” said Joe Salazar, unlocking the door. “We’re missing the fingerpaint contest.”

Over the whine of the outboard Luis Córdova shouted: “There’s no point in stopping.”

Mick Stranahan nodded. Under ceramic skies, Biscayne Bay unfolded in a dozen shifting hues of blue. It was a fine, cloudless morning: seventy degrees, and a northern breeze at their backs. Luis Córdova slowed the patrol boat a few hundred yards from the stilt house. He leaned down and said: “They tore the place up pretty bad, Mick.”

“You sure it was cops?”

“Yeah, two of them. Not uniformed guys, though. And they had one of the sheriff boats.”

Stranahan knew who it was: Murdock and Salazar.

“Those goons from the hospital,” said Christina Marks. She stood next to Luis Córdova at the steering console, behind the Plexiglas windshield. She wore a red windbreaker, baggy knit pants, and high-top tennis shoes.

From a distance Stranahan could see that the door to his house had been left open, which meant it had probably been looted and vandalized. What the kids didn’t wreck, the seagulls would. Stranahan stared for a few moments, then said: “Let’s go, Luis.”

The trip to Old Rhodes Key took thirty-five minutes in a light, nudging sea. Christina got excited when they passed a school of porpoises off Elliott Key, but Stranahan showed no interest. He was thinking about the videotape they had watched at Christina’s apartment—Maggie Gonzalez, describing the death of Vicky Barletta. Twice they had watched it. It made him mad but he wasn’t sure why. He had heard of worse things, seen worse things. Yet there was something about a doctor doing it, getting away with it, that made Stranahan furious.

When they reached the island, Luis Córdova dropped them at a sagging dock that belonged to an old Bahamian conch fisherman named Cartwright. Cartwright had been told they were coming.

“I got the place ready,” he told Mick Stranahan. “By the way, it’s good to see you, my friend.”

Stranahan gave him a hug. Cartwright was eighty years old. His hair was like cotton fuzz and his skin was the color of hot tar. He had Old Rhodes Key largely to himself and seldom entertained, but he had happily made an exception for his old friend. Years ago Stranahan had done Cartwright a considerable favor.

“White man tried to burn me out,” he told Christina Marks. “Mick took care of things.”

Stranahan hoisted the duffel bags over his shoulders and trudged toward the house. He said, “Some asshole developer wanted Cartwright’s land but Cartwright didn’t want to sell. Things got sticky.”

The conch fisherman cut in: “I tell the story better. The man offered me one hunnert towsind dollars to move off the island and when I says no thanks, brother, he had some peoples pour gasoline all on my house. Luckily it rain like hell. Mick got this man arrested and dey put him in the big jail up Miami. That’s the God’s truth.”

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