He started weed-whacking Rudy’s fine clothes. First he shredded the shirt and tie, then he tried trimming the curly brown hair on Rudy’s chest. The doctor yelped pitiably as nasty pink striations appeared beneath his nipples.
Chemo was working the machine toward Rudy’s pubic zone when he spied something inside the tattered lining of the surgeon’s tan coat. He turned off the Weed Whacker and leaned down for a closer look.
With his good hand Chemo reached into the silky entrails of Rudy’s jacket and retrieved the severed corner ofa one-hundred-dollar bill. Excitedly he probed around until he found more: handfuls, blessedly unshredded.
Chemo spread the money on the coffee table, beneath which Rudy thrashed and moaned impotently. The stricken surgeon observed the accounting firsthand, gazing up through the frosted glass. As the cash grew to cover the table, Rudy’s face hardened into a mask of abject disbelief. On his way back from the church he had meant to stop at the clinic and return the money to the drop safe. Now it was too late.
“Count it,” Chemo said to Maggie.
Excitedly she riffled through the bills. “Nine thousand two hundred,” she reported. “The rest is all chopped up.”
Chemo dragged Dr. Graveline from under the coffee table. “Why you carrying this much cash?” he said. “Don’t tell me the Jag dealer won’t take credit cards.” His moist salamander eyes settled on the black Samsonite, which Rudy had stupidly left in the middle of the hallway.
Rudy sniffled miserably as he watched Chemo kick open the suitcase and crouch down to count the rest of the money. “Well, well,” said the killer.
“What are you going to do with it?” the doctor asked.
“Gee, I think we’ll give it to the United Way. Or maybe Jerry’s kids.” Chemo walked over to Rudy and poked his bare belly with the warm head of the Weed Whacker. “What the hell you think we’re going to do with it? We’re gonna spend it, and then we’re gonna come back for more.”
After they had gone, Dr. Rudy Graveline sprawled on the rumpled Persian carpet for a long time, thinking: This is what a Harvard education has gotten me-extorted, beaten, stripped, scandalized, and chopped up like an artichoke. The doctor’s fingers gingerly explored the tumescent stripes that crisscrossed his chest and abdomen. If it didn’t sting so much, the sight would be almost comical.
It occurred to Rudy Graveline that Chemo and Maggie had forgotten to tell him their big secret, whatever it was they had done, whatever spectacular felony they had committed to earn this first garnishment.
And it occurred to Rudy that he wasn’t all that curious. In fact, he was somewhat relieved not to know.
27
The man from the medical examiner’s office took one look in the back of the tree truck and said: “Mmmm, lasagna.”
“That’s very funny,” said Al Garcia. “You oughta go on the Carson show. Do a whole routine on stiffs.”
The man from the medical examiner’s office said, “Al, you gotta admit-”
“I told you what happened.”
“-b ut you gotta admit, there’s a humorous aspect.”
Coroners made Al Garcia jumpy; they always got so cheery when somebody came up with a fresh way to die.
The detective said, “If you think it’s funny, fine. You’re the one’s gotta do the autopsy.”
“First I’ll need a casserole dish.”
“Hilarious,” said Garcia. “Absolutely hilarious.”
The man from the medical examiner’s office told him to lighten up, said everybody needs a break in the monotony, no matter what line of work. “I get tired of gunshot wounds,” the coroner said. “It’s like a damn assembly line down there. GSW head, GSW thorax, GSW neck-it gets old, Al.”
Garcia said, “Listen, go ahead, make your jokes. But I need you to keep this one outta the papers.”
“Good luck.”
The detective knew it wouldn’t be easy to keep the lid on George Graveline’s death. Seven squad cars, an ambulance, and a body wagon-even in Miami, that’ll draw a crowd. The gawkers were being held behind yellow police ribbons strung along Crandon Boulevard. Soon the minicams would arrive, and the minicams could zoom in for close-ups.
“I need a day or two,” Garcia said. “No press, and no next of kin.”
The man from the medical examiner shrugged. “It’ll take at least that long to make the I.D., considering what’s left. I figure we’ll have to go dental.”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll need to impound the truck,” the coroner said. “And this fancy toothpick machine.”
Garcia said he would have them both towed downtown.
The coroner stuck his head into the maw of the wood chipper and examined the blood-smeared blades. “There ought to be bullet fragments,” he said, “somewhere in this mess.”
Garcia said, “Hey, Sherlock, I told you what happened. I shot the asshole, okay? My gun, my bullets.”
“Al, don’t take all the fun out of it.” The man from the medical examiner reached into the blades of the wood chipper and carefully plucked out an item that the untrained eye would have misidentified as a common black woolly-bear caterpillar.
The coroner held it up for Al Garcia to see.
The detective frowned.”What, do I get a prize or something? It’s a sideburn, for Chrissakes.”
“Very good,” said the coroner.
Garcia flicked the soggy nub of his cigar into the bushes and went looking for George Graveline’s crew of tree trimmers. There were three of them sitting somberly in the backseat of a county patrol car. Al Garcia got in front, on the passenger side. He turned around and spoke to them through the cage. The men’s clothes smelled like pot. Garcia asked if any of them had seen what had happened, and to a one they answered no, they’d been on their lunch break. The officers from Internal Review had asked the same thing.
“If you didn’t see anything,” Garcia said, “then you don’t have much to tell the reporters, right?”
In unison the tree trimmers shook their heads.
“Including the name of the alleged victim, right?”
The tree trimmers agreed.
“This is damned serious,” said Garcia. “I don’t believe you boys would purposely obstruct a homicide investigation, would you?”
The tree trimmers promised not to say a word to the media. Al Garcia asked a uniformed cop to give the men a lift home, so they wouldn’t have to walk past the minicams on their way to the bus stop.
By this time, the ambulance was backing out, empty. Garcia knocked on the driver’s window. “ Where’s the guy you were working on?”
“Blunt head wound?”
“Right. Big blond guy.”
“Took off,” said the ambulance driver. “Gobbled three Darvocets and said so long. Wouldn’t even let us wrap him.”
Garcia cursed and bearishly swatted at a fresh-cut button-wood branch.
The ambulance driver said, “You see him, be sure and tell him he oughta go get a skull X-ray.”
“You know what you’d find?” Garcia said. “Shit for brains, that’s what.”
Reynaldo Flemm picked up an attractive young woman at a nightclub called Biscayne Baby in Coconut Grove. He took her to his room at the Grand Bay Hotel and asked her to wait while he ran the water in the Roman tub. Still insecure about his impugned physique, Reynaldo didn’t want the young woman to see him naked in the bright light. He lowered himself into the bath, covered the vital areas with suds, double-checked himself in the mirrors, then called for the young woman to join him. She came in the bathroom, stripped, and climbed casually into the deep tub. When Reynaldo tickled her armpits with his toes, the young woman politely pushed his legs away.
“So, what do you do?” he asked.
“I told you, I’m a legal secretary.”
“Oh, yeah.” When Reynaldo got semi-blitzed on screwdrivers, his short-term memory tended to vapor-lock. “You probably recognize me,” he said to the young woman.
“I told you already-no.”
Reynaldo said, “Normally my hair’s black. I colored it this way for a reason.”
He had revived the Johnny LeTigre go-go dancer disguise for his confrontation with Dr. Rudy Graveline. He had dyed his hair brown and slicked it straight back with a wet comb. He looked like a Mediterranean sponge diver.