As Willie recalled, Reynaldo didn’t think much of Christina’s theory.
He said to Willie: “This’ll be hairy, but we’ve done it before. We’re a good team.”
“Yeah,” said Willie, half-heartedly draining his glass. Some team. The basic plan never changed: Get Reynaldo beat up. Now remember, he used to tell Willie, we got to live up to the name of the show. Stick it right in his motherlovingface, really piss him off. Willie had it down to an art: He’d poke the TV camera directly at the subject’s nose, the guy would push the camera away and tear off in a fury after Reynaldo Flemm. Now remember, Reynaldo would coach, when he shoves you, jiggle the camera likeyou were really shaken up. Make the picture super jerky looking, the way they do on Sixty Minutes. If by chance the interview subject lunged after Willie instead of Reynaldo, Willie had standing orders to halt taping, shield the camera and defend himself-in that order. Invariably the person doing the pummeling got tired of banging his fists on a bulky, galvanized Sony and redirected his antagonism toward the arrogant puss of Reynaldo Flemm. It’s me they’re tuning in to see, Reynaldo would say, I’m the talent here. But if the beating became too severe or if Reynaldo got outnumbered, Willie’s job then was to stow the camera (carefully) and start swinging away. Many times he had felt like a rodeo clown, diverting Reynaldo’s enraged attackers until Reynaldo could escape, usually by locking himself in the camera van. The van was where, at Reynaldo’s insistence, Christina Marks waited during ambush interviews. Reynaldo maintained that this was for her own safety, but in reality he worried that if something happened to her, it might end up on tape and steal his thunder.
Reflecting upon all this, Willie ordered another planter’s punch. This time he asked the waitress for more dark rum on the top. He said to Reynaldo, “What makes you think this doctor guy’ll break?”
“I’v e met him. He’s weak.”
“That’s what you said about Larkey McBuffum.”
L arkey McBufrum was a crooked Chicago pharmacist who had been selling steroid pills to junior high school football players. When Reynaldo and Willie had burst into Larkey’s drug store to confront him, the old man had maced Willie square inthe eyes with an aerosol can of spermicidal birth-control foam.
“I’m telling you, the surgeon’s a wimp,” Reynaldo was saying. “Put a mike in his face and he’ll crack like a fucking Triscuit.”
“I’ll stay close on him,” Willie said.
“Not too close,” Reynaldo Flemm cautioned. “You gotta be ready to pull back and get us both in the shot, right before it happens.”
Willie stirred the dark rum with his finger. “You mean, when he slugs you?”
“Of course,” Reynaldo said curtly. “Christ, you ought to know the drill by now. Of course when he slugs me.”
“Will that be,” Willie asked playfully, “before or after the big confession?”
Reynaldo gnawed on this one a few seconds before giving up. “Just get it, that’s all,” he said stiffly. “Whenever it happens, get every bloody second on tape. Understand?”
Willie nodded. Sometimes he wished he were still freelancing for the networks. A coup in Haiti was a picnic compared to this.
The Pennsylvania State Police were happy to wire a photograph of Blondell Wayne Tatum to Sergeant Al Garcia at the Metro-Dade Police Department. Garcia was disappointed, for the photograph was practically useless. It had been taken more than twenty years earlier by a feature photographer for a small rural newspaper. At the time, the paper was running a five-part series on how the Amish sect was coping with the social pressures of the twentieth century. Blondell Wayne Tatum was one of several teenaged Amish youths who were photographed while playing catch with a small pumpkin. Of the group, Blondell Wayne Tatum was the only one wearing a brand-new Rawlings outfielder’s mitt.
For purposes of criminal identification, the facsimile of the newspaper picture was insufficient. Garcia knew that the man named Chemo no longer wore a scraggly pubescent beard, and that he since had suffered devastating facial trauma as a result of a freak dermatology accident. Armed with these revisions, Garcia enlisted the help of a police artist named Paula Downs. He tacked the newspaper picture on Paula’s easel and said: “Third one from the left.”
Paula slipped on her eyeglasses, but that wasn’t enough. She took a photographer’s loupe and peered closely at the picture. “Stringbean,” she said. “Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old.”
Garcia said: “Make him thirty-eight now. Six foot nine, one hundred eighty pounds.”
“No sweat,” Paula said.
“And lose the beard.”
“Let’s hope so. Yuk.”
With an unwrapped cigar, Garcia tapped on the photograph. “Here’s the hard part, babe. A few years ago this turkey had a bad accident, got his face all fried up.”
“Burns?”
“ Yup.”
“What kind-gas or chemical?”
“Electrolysis.”
Paula peered at the detective over the rim of her spectacles and said, “That’s very humorous, Al.”
“I swear. Got it straight from the Pennsylvania cops.”
“ Hmmmm.” Paula chewed on the eraser of her pencil as she contemplated the photograph.
Al Garcia described Chemo’s face to Paula the way that Mick Stranahan had described it to him. As Garcia spoke, the artist began to draw a freehand composite. She held the pencil at a mild angle and swept it in light clean ovals across the onionskin paper. First came the high forehead, the sharp chin, then the cheekbones and the puffy blowfish eyes and the thin cruel lips. Before long, the gangly young Amish kid with the baseball mitt became a serious-looking felon.
Paula got up and said, “Be right back.” Moments later she returned with a salt shaker from the cafeteria. She lifted the onionskin and copiously sprinkled salt on the drawing pad. With the heel of her left hand she spread the grains evenly. After replacing the onionskin that bore Chemo’s likeness, Paula selected a stubby fat pencil with a soft gray lead. She held it flat to the paper, as if it were a hunk of charcoal, and began a gentle tracing motion across the drawing. Instantly the underlying salt crystals came into relief. Garcia smiled: The effect was perfect. It gave Chemo’s portrait a harsh granular complexion, just as Mick Stranahan had described.
“You’re a genius,” Garcia told Paula Downs.
She handed him the finished composite. “You get some winners, Al.”
He went to the Xerox room and made a half-dozen copies of the sketch. He stuck one in John Murdock’s mailbox. On the back of Murdock’s copy Garcia had printed the name Blondell Wayne Tatum, the AKA, and the date of birth. Then Garcia had written: “This is your guy for the Simpkins case!!!!”
Murdock, he knew, would not appreciate the help.
Garcia spent the rest of the afternoon on Key Biscayne, showing Chemo’s composite to dock boys, bartenders, and cocktail waitresses at Sunday’s-on-the-Bay. By four o’clock the detective had three positive I.D. ‘s saying that the man in the drawing was the same one who had been drinking with Chloe Simpkins Stranahan on the evening she died.
Now Al Garcia was a happy man. When he got back to police headquarters, he called a florist and ordered a dozen long-stemmed roses for Paula Downs. While he was on the phone, he noticed a small UPS parcel on his desk. Garcia tore it open with his free hand.
Inside was a videotape in a plastic sleeve. On the sleeve was a scrap of paper, attached with Scotch tape. A note.
“I told you so. Regards, Mick.”
Garcia took the videotape to the police audio room, where a couple of the vice guys were screening the very latest in bestiality verite. Garcia told them to beat it and plugged Stranahan’s tape into a VHS recorder. He watched it twice. The second time, he stubbed out his cigar and took notes.
Then he went searching for Murdock and Salazar.