Carl Hiaasen - Skin Tight

Rudy knew him only as Chemo, a cruel but descriptive nickname, for he truly did appear to be in the final grim stages of chemotherapy. Black hair sprouted in random wisps from a blue-veined scalp. His lips were thin and papery, the color of wet cement. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at gawkers with a dull and chilling indifference; the hooded lids blinked slowly, pellucid as a salamander’s. And the skin-the skin is what made people gasp, what emptied the waiting room at Whispering Palms. Chemo’s skin looked like breakfast cereal, like somebody had glued Rice Krispies to every square centimeter of his face.

This, and the fact that he stood six foot nine, made Chemo a memorable sight.

Dr. Graveline was not alarmed, because he knew how Chemo had come to look this way: It was not melanoma, but a freak electrolysis accident in Scranton, many years before. While burning two ingrown hair follicles off the tip of Chemo’s nose, an elderly dermatologist had suffered a crippling stroke and lost all hand-eye coordination. Valiantly the old doctor had tried to complete the procedure, but in so doing managed to incinerate every normal pore within range of the electrified needle. Since Chemo had eaten five Valiums for breakfast, he was fast asleep on the table when the tragedy occurred. When he awoke to find his whole face blistered up like a lobster, he immediately garroted the dermatologist and fled the State of Pennsylvania forever.

Chemo had spent the better part of five years on the lam, seeking medical relief; ointments proved futile, and in fact a faulty prescription had caused the startling Rice Krispie effect. Eventually Chemo came to believe that the only hope was cosmetic surgery, and his quest for a miracle brought him naturally to Florida and naturally into the care of Dr. Rudy Graveline.

At three sharp, Rudy motioned Chemo into the consultation room. Chemo ducked as he entered and shut the door behind him. He sat in an overstaffed chair and blinked moistly at Dr. Graveline.

Rudy said: “And how are we doing today?”

Chemo grunted. “How do you think?”

“When you were here a few weeks ago, we discussed a treatment plan. You remember?”

“Yep,” Chemo said.

“A nd a payment plan, too.”

“How could I forget?” Chemo said.

Dr. Graveline ignored the sarcasm; the man had every right to be bitter.

“Dermabrasion is expensive,” Rudy said.

“I don’t know why,” Chemo said. “You just stick my face in a belt sander, right?”

The doctor smiled patiently. “It’s a bit more sophisticated than that-”

“But the principle’s the same.”

Rudy nodded. “Roughly speaking.”

“So how can it be two hundred bucks a pop?”

“Two hundred and ten,” Rudy corrected. “Because it requires uncommonly steady hands. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”

Chemo smiled at the remark. Rudy wished he hadn’t; the smile was harrowing, a deadly weapon all by itself. Chemo looked like he’d been teething on cinderblocks.

“I did get a job,” he said.

Dr. Graveline agreed that was a start.

“At the Gay Bidet,” Chemo said. “It’s a punk club down on South Beach. I’m a greeter.” Again with the smile.

“A greeter,” said Rudy. “Well, well.”

“I keep out the scum,” Chemo explained.

Rudy asked about the pay. Chemo said he got six bucks an hour, not including tips.

“Not bad,” Rudy said, “but still… “He scribbled some figures on a pad, then took a calculator out of his desk and punched on it for a while. All very dramatic.

Chemo stretched his neck to look. “What’s the damage?”

“I figure twenty-four visits, that’s a minimum,” Rudy said. “Say we do one square inch every session.”

“Shit, just do it all at once.”

“Can’t,” Rudy lied, “not with dermabrasion. Say twenty-four visits at two ten each, that’s-”

“Five thousand and forty dollars,” Chemo muttered. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Dr. Graveline said: “I don’t need it all at once. Give me half to start.”

“J esusH. Christ.”

Rudy put the calculator away.

“I just started at the club a week ago,” Chemo said. “I gotta buy groceries.”

Rudy came around the desk and sat down on the edge. In a fatherly tone he asked: “You have Blue Cross?”

“The fuck, I’m a fugitive, remember?”

“Of course.”

Rudy shook his head and mused. It was all so sad, that a great country like ours couldn’t provide minimal health care to all its citizens.

“So I’m screwed,” Chemo said.

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Graveline rubbed his chin. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a job I need done.”

If Chemo had had eyebrows, they would have arched.

“If you could do this job,” Rudy went on, “I think we could work a deal.”

“A discount?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Idly, Chemo fingered the scales on his cheeks. “What’s the job?”

“I need you to kill somebody,” Rudy said.

“Who?”

“A man that could cause me some trouble.”

“W hat kindof trouble?”

“Could shut down Whispering Palms. Take away my medical license. And that’s for starters.”

Chemo ran a bloodless tongue across his lips. “Who is this man?”

“His name is Mick Stranahan.”

“W here doIfind him?”

“I’m not sure,” Rudy said. “He’s here in Miami somewhere.”

Chemo said that wasn’t much of a lead. “I figure a murder is worth at least five grand,” he said.

“Come on, he’s not a cop or anything. He’s just a regular guy. Three thousand, tops.” Rudy was a bear when it got down to money.

Chemo folded his huge bony hands. “Twenty treatments, that’s my final offer.”

Rudy worked it out in his head. “That’s forty-two hundred dollars!”

“Right.”

“You sure drive a hard bargain,” Rudy said.

Chemo grinned triumphantly. “So when can you start on my face?”

“Soon as this chore is done.”

Chemo stood up. “I suppose you’ll want proof.”

Rudy Graveline hadn’t really thought about it. He said, “A newspaper clipping would do.”

“Sure you don’t want me to bring you something?”

“Like what?”

“A finger,” Chemo said, “maybe one of his nuts.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Dr. Graveline, “really it won’t.”

Stranahan got Maggie Orestes Gonzalez’s home address from a friend of his who worked for the state nursing board in Jacksonville. Although Maggie’s license was paid up to date, no current place of employment was listed on the file.

The address was a duplex apartment in a quiet old neighborhood off Coral Way, in the Little Havana section of Miami. There was a chain-link fence around a sparse brown yard, a ceramic statue of Santa Barbara in the flower bed, and the customary burglar bars on every window. Stranahan propped open the screen door and knocked three times on the heavy pine frame. He wasn’t surprised that no one was home.

To break into Maggie Gonzalez’s apartment, Stranahan used a three-inch stainless-steel lockpick that he had confiscated from the mouth of an infamous condominium burglar named Wet Willie Jeeter. Wet Willie got his nickname because he only worked on rainy days; on sunny days he was a golf caddy at the Doral Country Club. When they went through Wet Willie’s place after the arrest, the cops found seventeen personally autographed photos of Jack Nicklaus, going back to the 1967 Masters. What the cops did not find was any of Wet Willie’s burglar tools, due to the fact that Wet Willie kept them well hidden beneath his tongue.

Stranahan found them when he visited Wet Willie in the Dade County Jail, two weeks before the trial. The purpose of the visit was to make Wet Willie realize the wisdom of pleading guilty and saving the taxpayers the expense of trial. Unspoken was the fact that the State Attorney’s Office had a miserably weak case and was desperate for a deal. Wet Willie told Stranahan thanks anyway, but he’d just as soon take his chances with a jury. Stranahan said fine and offered Wet Willie a stick of Dentyne, which the burglar popped into his mouth without thinking. The chewing dislodged the steel lockpicks, which immediately stuck fast in the Dentyne; the whole mess eventually lodged itself in Wet Willie’s throat. For a few hectic minutes Stranahan thought he might have to perform an amateur tracheotomy, but miraculously the burglar coughed up the tiny tools and also a complete confession. Stranahan kept one of Wet Willie’s lockpicks as a souvenir.