18


When they returned from the Plaza to the apartment, Mick Stranahan said to Christina Marks: “Sure you want a killer sleeping on the sectional?”

“Doyou snore?”

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too.” From a closet she got a flannel sheet, a blanket, and two pillows. “I’ve got a space heater that works, sometimes,” she said.

“No, this is fine.” Stranahan pulled off his shoes, turned on Letterman and stretched out on the sofa, which he had rearranged to contain his legs. He heard the shower running in the bathroom. After a few minutes Christina came out in a cloud of steam and sat down at the kitchen table. Her cheeks were flushed from the hot water. She wore a short blue robe, and her hair was wet. Stranahan could tell she’d brushed it out.

“We’ll try again first thing in the morning,” he said.

“What?”

“Maggie’s room at the hotel.”

“Oh, right.” She looked distracted.

He sat up and said, “Come sit here.”

“I don’t think so,” Christina said.

Stranahan could tell she had the radar up. He said, “I must’ve scared you on the plane.”

“No, you didn’t.” She wanted to ask about everything, his life; he was trying to make it easier and not doing so well.

“You didn’t scare me,” Christina said again. “If you did, I wouldn’t let you stay.” But he had, and she did. That worried her even more.

Stranahan picked up the remote control and turned off the television. He heard sirens passing on the street outside and wished he were home, asleep on the bay.

When Christina spoke again, she didn’t sound like a seasoned professional interviewer. She said, “Five men?”

Stranahan was glad she’d started with the killings. The marriages would be harder to justify.

“Are we off the record?”

She hesitated, then said yes.

“The men I killed,” he began, “would have killed me first. You’ll just have to take my word.” Deep down, he wasn’t sure about Thomas Henry Thomas, the fried-chicken robber. That one was a toss-up.

“What was it like?” Christina asked.

“Horrible.”

She waited for the details; often men like Stranahan wanted to tell about it. Or needed to.

But all he said was: “Horrible, really. No fun at all.”

She said, “You regret any of them?”

“Nope.”

She had one elbow propped on the table, knuckles pressed to her cheek. The only sound was the hissing of the radiator pipes, warming up. Stranahan peeled off his T-shirt and put it in a neat pile with his other clothes.

“I’ll get a hotel room tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t,” she said. “I’m not frightened.”

“You haven’t heard about my wives.”

She laughed softly. “Five already at your age. You must be going for the record.”

Stranahan lay back, hands locked behind his head. “I fall in love with waitresses. I can’t help it.”

“Y ou’re kidding.”

“Don’t be a snob. They were all smarter than I was. Even Chloe.”

Christina said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, she seemed like a very cold woman.”

He groaned at the memory.

“What about the others, what were they like?”

“I loved them all, for a time. Then one day I didn’t.”

Christina said, “Doesn’t sound like love.”

“Boy, are you wrong.” He smiled to himself.

“Mick, you regret any of them?”

“Nope.”

The radiator popped. The warmth of it made Stranahan sleepy, and he yawned.

“What about lovers?” Christina asked-a question sure to jolt him awake. “All waitresses, no exceptions?”

“Oh, I’ve made some exceptions.” He scratched his head and pretended there were so many he had to add them up. “Let’s see, there was a lady probate lawyer. And an architect… make that two architects. Separately, of course. And an engineer for Pratt Whitney up in West Palm. An honest-to-God rocket scientist.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Andthey wereall dumber thanI was.” Stranahan pulled the blanket up to his neck and closed his eyes. “Good night, Christina.”

“Good night, Mick.” She turned off the lights, returned to the kitchen table, and sat in the gray darkness for an hour, watching him sleep.

When Maggie Gonzalez heard the knocking again, she got out of bed and weaved toward the noise. With outstretched arms she staved off menacing walls, doorknobs, and lampshades, but barely. She navigated through a wet gauze, her vision fuzzed by painkillers. When she opened the door, she found herself staring at the breast of a pea-green woolen overcoat. She tilted her throbbing head, one notch at a time, until she found the man’s face.

“ Uh,” she said.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Chemo, shoving her back in the room, kicking the door shut behind him, savagely cursing his own rotten luck. The woman was wrapped from forehead to throat in white surgical tape-a fucking mummy! He took the photograph from his overcoat and handed it to Maggie Gonzalez.

“Is that you?” he demanded.

“No.” The answer came from parchment lips, whispering through a slit in the bandages. “No, it’s not me.”

Chemo could tell that the woman was woozy. He told her to sit down before she fell down.

“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re Maggie Gonzalez.”

She said, “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Shut up.” He took off his broad-brimmed hat and threw it on the bed. Through the peepholes in the bandage, Maggie was able to get a good look at the man’s remarkable face.

She said, “My God, what happened to you?”

“Shut thefuckup.”

Chemo unbuttoned his overcoat, heaved it over a chair, and paced. The trip was turning into a debacle. First the man in Queens had sold him a rusty Colt.38 with only two bullets. Later, on the subway, he had been forced to flee a group of elderly Amish in the fear that they might recognize him from his previous life. And now this-confusion. While Chemo was reasonably sure that the bandaged woman was Maggie Gonzalez, he didn’t want to screw up and kill the wrong person. Dr. Graveline would never understand.

“Who are you?” Maggie said thickly. “Who sent you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“Please, I don’t feel very well.”

Chemo took the Colt from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at the bandaged tip of her new nose. “Your name’s Maggie Gonzalez, isn’t it?”

At the sight of the pistol, she leaned forward and vomited all over Chemo’s rubber-soled winter shoes.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he moaned and bolted for the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie called after him. “You scared me, that’s all.”

When Chemo came back, the shoes were off his feet and the gun was back in his pants. He was wiping his mouth with the corner of the towel.

“I’m really sorry,” Maggie said again.

Chemo shook his head disgustedly. He sat down on the corner of the bed. To Maggie his legs seemed as long as circus stilts.

“You’re supposed to kill me?”

“Yep,” Chemo said. With the towel he wiped a fleck of puke off her nightgown.

Blearily she studied him and said, “You’ve had some dermabrasion.”

“So?”

“So how come just little patches-why not more?”

“My doctor said that would be risky.”

“Your doctor’s full of it,” Maggie said.

“And I guess you’re an expert or something.”

“I’m a nurse, but you probably know that.”

Chemo said, “No, I didn’t.” Dr. Graveline hadn’t told him a thing.

Maggie went on, “I used to work for a plastic surgeon in Miami. A butcher with a capital B.”

Subconsciously Chemo’s fingers felt for the tender spots on his chin. He was almost afraid to ask.

“This surgeon,” he said to Maggie, “what was his name?”

“ Graveline,” she said. “Rudy Graveline. Personally, I wouldn’t let him trim a hangnail.”

Lugubriously Chemo closed his bulbous red eyes. Through the codeine, Maggie thought he resembled a giant nuclear-radiated salamander, straight from a monster movie.

“How about this,” he said. “I’ll tell you what happened to my face if you tell me what happened to yours.”

It was Chemo’s idea to have breakfast in Central Park. He figured there’d be so many other freaks that no one would notice them. As it turned out, Maggie’s Tutlike facial shell drew more than a few stares. Chemo tugged his hat down tightly and said, “You should’ve worn a scarf.”

They were sitting near Columbus Circle on a bench. Chemo had bought a box of raisin bagels with cream cheese. Maggie said her stomach felt much better but, because of the surgical tape, she was able to fit only small pieces of bagel into her mouth. It was a sloppy process, but two fat squirrels showed up to claim the crumbs.

Chemo was saying, “Your nose, your chin, your eyelids-Christ, no wonder you hurt.” He took out her picture and looked at it appraisingly. “Too bad,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you were a pretty lady.”

“Maybe I still am,” Maggie said. “Maybe prettier.”

Chemo put the photograph back in his coat. “Maybe,” he said.

“You’re going to make me cry and then everything’ll sting.”

He said, “Knock it off.”

“Don’t you think I feel bad enough?” Maggie said. “I get a whole new face-and for what! A month from now and you’d never have recognized me. I could’ve sat in your lap on the subway and you wouldn’t know who I was.”

Chemo thought he heard sniffling behind the bandages. “Don’t fucking cry,” he said. “Don’t be a baby.”

“I don’t understand why Rudy sent you,” Maggie whined.

“To kill you, what else?”

“But why now? Nothing’s happened yet.” Chemo frowned and said, “Keep it down.” The pink patches on his chin tingled in the cold air and made him think about Rudy Graveline. Butcher with a capital B, Maggie had said. Chemo wanted to know more.

A thin young Moonie in worn corduroys came up to the park bench and held out a bundle of red and white carnations. “Be happy,” the kid said to Maggie. “Five dollars.”

“Get lost,” Chemo said.

“Four dollars,’ said the Moonie. “Be happy.”

Chemo pulled the calfskin cover off his Weed Whacker and flicked the underarm toggle for the battery pack. The Moonie gaped as Chemo calmly chopped the bright carnations to confetti.

“Be gone, Hop-sing,” Chemo said, and the Moonie ran away. Chemo recloaked the Weed Whacker and turned to Maggie. “Tell me why the doctor wants you dead.”

It took her several moments to recover from what she had seen. Finally she said, “Well, it’s a long story.”

“I got all day,” Chemo said. “Unless you got tickets to Phantom or something.”

“Can we go for a walk?”

“No,” Chemo said sharply. “Remember?” He had thrown his vomit-covered shoes and socks out the ninth-floor window of Maggie’s room at the Plaza. Now he was sitting in bare feet in Central Park on a forty-degree February morning. He wiggled his long bluish toes and said to Maggie Gonzalez: “So talk.”

She did. She told Chemo all about the death of Victoria Barletta. It was a slightly shorter recital than she’d put on the videotape, but it was no less shocking.

“You’re making this up,” Chemo said.

“I’m not either.”

“He killed this girl with a nose job?”

Maggie nodded. “I was there.”

“J esus H. Christ.”

“It was an accident.”

“That’s even worse,” Chemo said. He tore off his hat and threw it on the sidewalk, spooking the squirrels. “This is the same maniac who’s working on my face. I can’t fucking stand it!”

By way of consolation, Maggie said: “Dermabrasion is a much simpler procedure.”

“Yeah, tell me about simple procedures.” Chemo couldn’t believe the lousy luck he had with doctors. He said, “So what does all this have to do with him wanting you dead?”

Maggie told Chemo about Reynaldo Flemm’s TV investigation (without mentioning that she had been the tipster), told how she had warned Rudy about Mick Stranahan, the investigator. She was careful to make it sound as if Stranahan was the whistle-blower.

“Now it’s starting to make sense,” Chemo said. “Graveline wants me to kill him, too.” He held up the arm-mounted Weed Whacker. “He’s the prick that cost me this hand.”

“Rudy can’t afford any witnesses,” Maggie explained, “or any publicity. Not only would they yank his medical license, he’d go to jail. Now do you understand?”

Do I ever, thought Chemo.

The white mask that was Maggie’s face asked: “Are you still going to kill me?”

“We’ll see,” Chemo replied. “I’m sorting things out.”

“How much is that cheap bastard paying you?”

Chemo plucked his rumpled hat off the sidewalk. “I’d rather not say,” he muttered, clearly embarrassed. No way would he let that butcher fuck with his ears. Not now.

Christina Marks and Mick Stranahan got to the Plaza Hotel shortly before ten. From the lobby Stranahan called Maggie’s room and got no answer. Christina followed him into the elevator and, as they rode to the ninth floor, she watched him remove a small serrated blade from his wallet.

“Master key,” he said.

“Mick, no. I could get fired.”

“Then wait downstairs.”

But she didn’t. She watched him pick the lock on Maggie’s door, then slipped into the room behind him. She said nothing and scarcely moved while he checked the bathroom and the closets to see if they were alone.

“Mick, come here.”

On the bedstand were two prescription bottles, a plastic bedpan, and a pink-splotched surgical compress. Stranahan glanced at the pills: Tylenol No. 3 and Darvocet. The bottle of Darvocets had not yet been opened. A professional business card lay next to the telephone on Maggie’s nightstand. Stranahan chuckled drily when he read what was on the card:


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