Carl Hiaasen - Skin Tight

“That didn’t hurt a bit, did it? “

I wanna ask I gotta ask right now…

“Go ahead, push the Sublimaze.”

Did you kill…?

“W hat didhe say?”

Is it true you killed…?

“This guy looks sort of familiar.”

Did you… kill Victoria… Principal?

“Victoria Principal! Boy, is he whacked out.”

Well did you?

“Wh ere’s the mask? Start the Forane. Give him the mask.”

Willie hadn’t slept much, fretting about Reynaldo’s big plan. He had tried to call Christina Marks in New York, but the office said she was in Miami. But where? Reynaldo’s plan was the craziest thing Willie had ever heard, starting with the signal. Willie needed a signal to know when to come crashing into the operating room with the camera. The best that Reynaldo could come up with was a scream. Willie would be in the waiting room, Reynaldo would scream.

“What exactly will you scream?” Willie had asked.

“I’ll scream: WILLIE!”

Willie thought Reynaldo was joking. He wasn’t.

“What about the other patients in the waiting room? I mean, here I am with a TV camera and a sound pack-what do I tell these people?”

“Tell ‘em you’re from PBS,” Reynaldo had said. “Nobody hasslesPBS.”

The shot that Reynaldo Flemm most fervently wanted was this: Himself prone, prepped, cloaked in blue, preferably in the early stages of rhinoplasty and preferably bloody. That was the good thing about a nose job, you could ask for a local. Most plastic surgeons want their rhinoplasty patients to be all the way zonked, but you could get it done with a local and a mild I.V. if you could stand a little pain. Reynaldo Flemm had no doubt he could stand it.

Willie would burst like a fullback into the operating room, tape rolling, toss the baton mike to Reynaldo on the table, Reynaldo would poke it in Rudy Graveline’s face and pop the questions. Bam bam bam. The nurses and scrub techs would drop whatever they were doing and run, leaving the hapless surgeon to dissolve, alone, before the camera’s eye.

Wait’ll he realizes who I am, Reynaldo had chortled. Be sure you go extra tight on his face.

Willie had said he needed a soundman, but Reynaldo said no, out of the question; this was to be a streamlined attack.

Willie had said all right, then we need a better signal. Just screaming isn’t good enough, he had said. What if somebody else starts screaming first, some other patient?

“Who else would scream your name?” Reynaldo had asked in a caustic tone. “Listen to what I’m saying.”

The plan was bold and outrageous, Willie had to admit. No doubt it would cause a national sensation, stir up all the TV critics, not to mention Johnny Carson’s gag writers. There would be a large amount of cynical speculation among Ray’s colleagues that what he really wanted out of this caper was a free nose job-a theory that occurred even to Willie as he listened to Reynaldo map out the big ambush. The possibility of coast-to-coast media ridicule was no deterrent; the man seemed to relish being maligned as a hack and a clown and a shameless egomaniac. He said they were jealous, that’s what they were. What other broadcast journalist in America had the guts to go under the knife just to get an interview? Mike Wallace? Not in a million years, the arrogant old prune. Bill Moyers? That liberal pussy would faint if he got a hangnail!

Yeah, Willie had said, it’s quite a plan.

Brilliant, Reynaldo had crowed. Try brilliant.

However inspired, the plan’s success depended on several crucial factors, not the least of which was the premise that Reynaldo Flemm would be conscious for the interview.

Although the surgical procedure known as liposuction, or fat sucking, was developed in France, it has achieved its greatest mass-market popularity in the United States. It is now the most common cosmetic procedure performed by plastic surgeons in this country, with more than 100,000 operations a year. The mortality rate for suction-assisted lipectomy is relatively low, about one death for every 10,000 patients. The odds of complications-which include blood clots, fat embolisms, chronic numbness, and severe bruising-increase considerably if the surgeon performing the liposuction has had little or no training in the procedure. Rudy Graveline fell decisively into this category-a doctor who had taken up liposuction for the simple reason that it was exceedingly lucrative. No state law or licensing board or medical review committee required Rudy to study liposuction first, or become proficient, or even be tested on his surgical competence before trying it. The same libertarian standards applied to rhinoplasties or hemorrhoidectomies or even brain surgery: Rudy Graveline was a licensed physician, and legally that meant he could try any damn thing he wanted.

He did not give two hoots about certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, or the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, or the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. What were a couple more snotty plaques on the wall? His patients could care less. They were rich and vain and impatient. In some exclusive South Florida circles, Rudy’s name carried the glossy imprimatur of a Gucci or a de La Renta. The lacquered old crones at La Gorce or the Biltmore would point at each other’s shiny chins and taut necks and sculpted eyelids and ask, not in a whisper but a haughty bray, “Is that a Graveline?”

Rudy was a designer surgeon. To have him suck your fat was an honor, a social plum, a mark (literally) of status. Only a boor, white trash or worse, would ever question the man’s techniques or complain about the results.

Ironically, most of the surgeons who worked for Rudy Graveline at Whispering Palms were completely qualified to do suction lipectomies; they had actually trained for it-studied, observed; practiced. While Rudy admired their dedication, he thought they were overdoing things-after all, how difficult could such an operation really be? The fat itself was abundantly easy to find. Suck it out, close ‘em up, next case! Big deal.

To be on the safe side, Rudy read two journal articles about liposuction and ordered an instructional video cassette for $26.95 from a medical-supply firm in Chicago. The journal articles turned out to be dense and fairly boring, but the video was an inspiration. Rudy came away convinced that any fool doctor with half a brain could vacuum fat with no problem.

The typical lipectomy patient was not a grotesque hypertensive blimp, but-like Johnny LeTigre-a healthy person of relatively normal stature and weight. The object of their complaint was medically mundane-bumper-car hips, droopy buttocks, gelatinous thighs, or old-fashioned “love handles” at the waist. Properly performed, liposuction would remove localized pockets of excess fat to improve and smooth the body’s natural contour. Improperly performed, the surgery would leave a patient lumpy and lopsided and looking for a lawyer.

On the morning of Reynaldo Flemm’s undercover mission, nothing as sinister as a premonition caused Rudy Graveline to change his mind about doing the nose job first. What changed the doctor’s mind, as usual, was money. Because a lipectomy usually required general anesthesia, it was more labor-intensive (and costly) than a simple rhinoplasty. Rudy figured the sooner he could get done with the heavy stuff, the sooner he could get the anesthetist and her gas machine off the clock. He could do the rhino later with intravenous sedation, which was much cheaper.

That Rudy Graveline could still worry about overhead at this point, with his career crumbling, was a tribute both to his power of concentration and his ingrained devotion to profit.

He grabbed a gloveful of Reynaldo Flemm’s belly roll and gave a little squeeze. Paydirt. Fat city.