Skin Tight

10

One of the wondrous things about Florida, Rudy Graveline thought as he chewed on a jumbo shrimp, was the climate of unabashed corruption: There was absolutely no trouble from which money could not extricate you.

Rudy had learned this lesson years earlier when the state medical board had first tried to take away his license. For the board it had been a long sticky process, reviewing the complaints of disfigured patients, comparing the “before” and “after” photographs, sifting through the minutiae of thirteen separate malpractice suits. Since the medical board was made up mostly of other doctors, Rudy Graveline had fully expected exoneration-physicians stick together like shit on a shoe.

But the grossness of Rudy’s surgical mistakes was so astounding that even his peers could not ignore it; they recommended that he be suspended from the practice of medicine forever. Rudy hired a Tallahassee lawyer and pushed the case to a state administrative hearing. The hearing officer acting as judge was not a doctor himself, but some schlump civil servant knocking down twenty-eight thousand a year, tops. At the end of the third day of testimony-some of it so ghastly that Rudy’s own attorney became nauseated-Rudy noticed the hearing officer getting into a decrepit old Ford Fairmont to go home to his wife and four kids. This gave Rudy an idea. On the fourth day, he made a phone call. On the fifth day, a brand new Volvo station wagon with cruise control was delivered to the home of the hearing officer. On the sixth day, Dr. Rudy Graveline was cleared of all charges against him.

The board immediately reinstated Rudy’s license and sealed all the records from the public and the press-thus honoring the long-held philosophy of Florida’s medical establishment that the last persons who need to know about a doctor’s incompetence are the patients.

Safe from the sanctions and scrutiny of his own profession, Dr. Rudy Graveline viewed all outside threats as problems that could be handled politically; that is, with bribery. Which is why he was having a long lunch with Dade County Commissioner Roberto Pepsical, who was chatting about the next election.

“Shrimp good, no?” said Roberto, who pocketed one in each cheek.

“Excellent,” Rudy agreed. He pushed the cocktail platter aside and dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Bobby, I’d like to give each of you twenty-five.”

“Grand?” Roberto Pepsical flashed a mouthful of pink-flecked teeth. “Twenty-five grand, are you serious?”

The man was a hog: a florid, jowly, pug-nosed, rheumy-eyed hog. A cosmetic surgeon’s nightmare. Rudy Graveline couldn’t bear to watch him eat. “Not so loud,” he said to the commissioner. “I know what the campaign law says, but there are ways toduckit.”

“Great!” said Roberto. He had an account in the Caymans; all the commissioners did, except for Lillian Atwater, who was trying out a phony blind trust in the Dominican Republic.

Rudy said, “First I’ve got to ask a favor.”

“Shoot.”

The doctor leaned forward, trying to ignore Roberto’s hot gumbo breath. “The vote on Old Cypress Towers,” Rudy said, “the rezoning thing.”

Roberto Pepsical lunged for a crab leg and cracked it open with his front teeth. “Nooooo problem,” he said.

Old Cypress Towers was one of Dr. Rudy Graveline’s many real estate projects and tax shelters: a thirty-three story luxury apartment building with a nightclub and health spa planned for the top floor. Only trouble was, the land currently was zoned for low-density public use-parks, schools, ball fields, shit like that. Rudy needed five votes on the county commission to turn it around.

“No sweat,” Roberto reiterated. “I’ll talk to the others.”

The “others” were the four commissioners who always got pieced out in Roberto Pepsical’s crooked deals. The way the system was set up, each of the nine commissioners had his own crooked deals and his own set of locked votes. That way the tally always came out 5-4, but with different players on each side. The idea was to confuse the hell out of the newspaper reporters, who were always trying to figure out who on the commission was honest and who wasn’t.

“One more thing,” Dr. Rudy Graveline said.

“How about another beer?” asked Roberta Pepsical, eyeing his empty sweaty glass. “You don’t mind if I get one.”

“Go ahead,” Rudy said, biting back his disgust.

“Crab?” The commissioner brandished another buttery leg.

“No thanks.” Rudy waited for him to wedge it in his mouth, then said: “Bobby, I also need you to keep your ears open.”

“For what?”

“Somebody who used to work for me is threatening to go to the cops, trying to bust my balls. They’re making up stuff about some old surgical case.”

Roberto nodded and chewed in synchronization, like a mechanical dashboard ornament. Rudy found it very distracting.

He said, “The whole thing’s bullshit, honestly. A disgruntled employee.”

Roberto said, “Boy, I know how it is.”

“But for a doctor, Bobby, it could be a disaster. My reputation, my livelihood, surely you can understand. That’s why I need to know if the cops ever go for it.”

Roberto Pepsical said, “I’ll talk to the chiefmyself.”

“ Only if you hear something.”

Roberto winked. “I’ll poke around

“I’d sure appreciate it,” Dr. Graveline said. “I can’t afford a scandal, Bobby. Something like that, I’d probably have to leave town.”

The commissioner’s brow furrowed as he contemplated his twenty-five large on the wing. “Don’t sweat it,” he said confidently to the doctor. “Here, have a conch fritter.”

Chemo was in the waiting room when Rudy Graveline got back to Whispering Palms.

“I did it,” he announced.

Rudy quickly led him into the office.

“You got Stranahan?”

“Last night,” Chemo said matter-of-factly. “So when can we get started on my face?”

Unbelievable, Rudy thought. Very scary, this guy.

“You mean the dermabrasion treatments.”

“Fucking A,” Chemo said. “We had a deal.”

Rudy buzzed his secretary and asked her to bring him the morning Herald. After she went out again, Chemo said, “It happened so late, probably didn’t make the paper.”

“ Hmmmm,” said Rudy Graveline, scanning the local news page. “Maybe that’s it-must have happened too late. Tell me about it, please.”

Chemo wet his dead-looking lips. “I torched his house.” No expression at all. “He was asleep.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“I watched it go up,” Chemo said. “Nobody got out.” He crossed his long legs and stared dully at the doctor. The droopy lids made him look like he was about to doze off.

Rudy folded up the newspaper. “I believe you,” he said to Chemo, “but I’d like to be sure. By tomorrow it ought to be in the papers.”

Chemo rubbed the palm of one hand along his cheeks, making sandpaper sounds. Rudy Graveline wished he would knock itoff.

“What about the TV?” Chemo asked. “Does that count, if it makes the TV?”

“Of course.”

“Radio, too?”

“Certainly,” Rudy said. “I told you before, no big deal. I don’t need to see the actual corpse, okay, but we do need to be sure. It’s very important, because this is a dangerous man.”

“Was,” Chemo said pointedly.

“Right. This was a dangerous man.” Rudy didn’t mention Stranahan’s ominous phone call on Maggie Gonzalez’s answering machine. Better to limit the cast of characters, for Chemo’s sake. Keep him focused.

“Maybe it’s already on the radio,” Chemo said hopefully.

Rudy didn’t want to put the guy in a mood. “Tell you what,” he said in a generous tone. “We’ll go ahead and do the first treatment this afternoon.”

Chemo straightened up excitedly. “No shit?”

“Why not?” the doctor said, standing. “We’ll try a little patch on your chin.”

“How about the nose?” Chemo said, touching himself there.

Rudy slipped on his glasses and came around the desk to where Chemo was sitting. Because of Chemo’s height, even in the chair, the surgeon didn’t have to lean over far to get a close-up look at the corrugated, cheesy mass that passed for Chemo’s nose.

“Pretty rough terrain,” Rudy Graveline said, peering intently. “Better to start slow and easy.”

“Fast and rough is fine with me.”

Rudy took off his glasses and struck an avuncular pose, a regular Marcus Welby. “I want to be very careful,” he told Chemo. “Yours is an extreme case.”

“You noticed.”

“The machine we use is a Stryker dermabrader-”

“I don’t care if it’s a fucking Black and Decker, let’s just do it.”

“Scar tissue is tricky,” Rudy persisted. “Some skin reacts better to sanding than others.” He couldn’t help remembering what had happened to the last doctor who had screwed up Chemo’s face. Getting murdered was even worse than getting sued for malpractice.

“One little step at a time,” Rudy cautioned. “Trust me.”

“Fine, then start on the chin, whatever,” Chemo said with a wave of a pale hand. “You’re the doctor.”

Those magic words.

How Rudy Graveline loved to hear them.

Compared to other law firms, Kipper Garth’s had the overhead problem licked. He had one central office, no partners, no associates, no “of counsels.” His major expenses were billboard advertising, cable, telephones (he had twenty lines), and, of course, secretaries (he called them legal aides, and employed fifteen). Kipper Garth’s law practice was, in essence, a high-class boiler room.

The phones never stopped ringing. This was because Kipper Garth had shrewdly put up his billboards at the most dangerous traffic intersections in South Florida, so that the second thing every noncomatose accident victim saw (after the Jaws of Life) was Kipper Garth’s phone number in nine-foot red letters: