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.
Rudy selected a Number 15 blade and made a one-quarter inch incision in Reynaldo’s navel. Through this convenient aperture Rudy inserted the cannula, a long tubular instrument that resembled in structure the nose of an anteater. Rudy rammed the blunt snout of the cannula into the soft meat of Reynaldo’s abdomen, then scraped the instrument back and forth to break up the tissue. With his right foot the surgeon tapped a floor pedal that activated a suction machine, which vacuumed the fat particles through small holes in the tip of the cannula, down a long clear plastic tube to a glass bottle.
Within moments, the first yellow glops appeared.
Johnny LeTigre’s spare tire!
Soon he would be a new man.
In the waiting room, Willie got to talking with some of the other patients. There was a charter-boat captain with a skin cancer the size of a toad on his forehead. There was a dancer from the Miami ballet who was getting her buttocks suctioned for the second time in as many years. There was a silver-haired Nicaraguan man whom Willie had often seen on television-one of the contra leaders-who was getting his eyelids done for eighteen hundred dollars. He said the CIA was picking up the tab.
The one Willie liked best was a red-haired stripper from the Solid Gold club up in Lauderdale. She was getting new boobs, of course, but she was also having a tattoo removed from her left thigh. When the stripper heard that Willie was from PBS, she asked if she could be in his documentary and hiked up her corduroy miniskirt to show off the tattoo. The tattoo depicted a green reticulated snake eating itself. Willie said, in a complimentary way, that he had never seen anything like it. He made sure to get the stripper’s phone number so that he could call her about the imaginary program.
The hour passed without a peep from Reynaldo Flemm, and Willie began to get jittery. Reynaldo had said give it to nine o’clock before you freak, and now it was nine o’clock. The halls of Whispering Palms were quiet enough that Willie was certain he would have heard a scream. He asked the ballet dancer, who had been here before, how far it was from the waiting area to the operating room.
“Which operating room?” she replied. “They’ve got four.”
“Shit,” said Willie. “Four?”
This was shocking news. Reynaldo Flemm had made it sound like there was only one operating room, and that he would be easy to find. More worried than ever, Willie decided to make his move. He hoisted the Betacam to his shoulder, checked the mike and the cables and the belt pack and the battery levels, turned on the Frezzi light (which caused the other patients to mutter and shield their eyes), and went prowling through the corridors in search of Reynaldo Flemm.
When the telephone on the wall started tweeting, Dr. Rudy Graveline glanced up from Johnny LeTigre’s gut and said: “Whoever it is, I’m not here.”
The circulating nurse picked up the phone, listened for several moments, then turned to the doctor. “It’s Ginny at the front desk. There’s a man with a minicam running all over the place.”
Rudy’s surgical mask puckered. “Tell her to call the police… No! Wait-” Oh Jesus. Stay calm. Stay extremely calm.
“He just crashed in on Dr. Kloppner in Suite D.”
Rudy grunted unhappily. “What does he want? Did he say what he wants?”
“He’s looking for you. Should I tell Ginny to call the cops or what?”
The nurse-anesthetist interrupted: “Let’s not do anything until we finish up here. Let’s close up this patient and get him off the table.”
“She’s right,” Rudy said. “She’s absolutely right. We’re almost done here.”
“Take your time,” the anesthetist said with an edge of concern. Under optimum conditions, Rudy Graveline scared the daylights out of her. Under stress, there was no telling how dangerous he could be.
He said, “What’re we looking at here?”
“One more pocket, maybe two hundred cc’s.”
“Let’s do it, okay?”
The wall phone started tweeting again.
“Screw it,” said Rudy. “Let it go.”
He gripped the cannula like a carving knife, scraping frentically at the last stubborn colony of fat inside Reynaldo’s midriff. The suction machine hummed contentedly as it filled the glass jar with gobs of unwanted pudge.
“One more minute and we’re done,” Rudy said. Then the doors opened and an awesome white light bathed the operating room. The beam was brighter and hotter than the surgical lights, and it shone from the top of a camera, which sat like a second head on the shoulder of a man. A man who had no business in Rudy Graveline’s operating room.
The man with the camera cried out: “Ray!”
Rudy said, “Get out of here this minute.”
“Are you Dr. Graveline?”
Rudy’s hand continued to work on Reynaldo Flemm’s belly. “Yes, I’m Dr. Graveline. But there’s nobody named Ray here. Now get out before I phone the police.”