Dearly Devoted Dexter (11 page)

The restaurant itself was dark and cool and so quiet you could hear an American Express Black Card drop. The far wall was tinted glass with a door that led out to a terrace. And there was Deborah, sitting at a small corner table outside, looking out over the water. Across from her, facing back toward the door in to the restaurant, sat Kyle Chutsky, who would pick up the tab. He was wearing very expensive sunglasses, so perhaps he really would. I approached the table and a waiter materialized to pull out a chair that was certainly far too heavy for anyone who could afford to eat here. The waiter didn’t actually bow, but I could tell that the restraint was an effort.

“Hey, buddy,” Kyle said as I sat down. He stretched his hand across the table. Since he seemed to believe I was his new best friend, I leaned in and shook hands with him. “How’s the spatter trade?”

“Always plenty of work,” I said. “And how’s the mysterious visitor from Washington trade?”

“Never better,” he said. He held my hand in his just a moment too long. I looked down at it; his knuckles were enlarged, as if he had spent too much time sparring with a concrete wall. He slapped his left hand on the table, and I got a glimpse of his pinkie ring. It was startlingly effeminate, almost an engagement ring. When he finally let go of my hand, he smiled and swiveled his head toward Deborah, although with his sunglasses it was impossible to tell if he was looking at her or just moving his neck around.

Deborah smiled back at him. “Dexter was worried about me.”

“Hey,” Chutsky said, “what are brothers for?”

She glanced at me. “Sometimes I wonder,” she said.

“Why Deborah, you know I’m only watching your back,” I said.

Kyle chuckled. “Good deal. I got the front,” he said, and they both laughed. She reached across and took his hand.

“All the hormones and happiness are setting my teeth on edge,” I said. “Tell me, is anybody actually trying to catch that inhuman monster, or are we just going to sit around and make tragic puns?”

Kyle swiveled his head back to me and raised an eyebrow. “What’s your interest in this, buddy?”

“Dexter has a fondness for inhuman monsters,” Deborah said. “Like a hobby.”

“A hobby,” Kyle said, keeping the sunglasses turned to my face. I think it was supposed to intimidate me, but for all I knew his eyes could be closed. Somehow, I managed not to tremble.

“He’s kind of an amateur profiler,” Deborah said.

Kyle didn’t move for a moment and I wondered if he had gone to sleep behind his dark lenses. “Huh,” he finally said, and he leaned back in his chair. “Well, what do you think about this guy, Dexter?”

“Oh, just the basics so far,” I said. “Somebody with a lot of training in the medical area and in covert activities who came unhinged and needs to make a statement, something to do with Central America. He’ll probably do it again timed for maximum impact, rather than because he feels he
has
to. So he’s not really a standard serial type of— What?” I said. Kyle had lost his laid-back smile and was sitting straight up with his fists clenched.

“What do you mean, Central America?”

I was fairly sure we both knew exactly what I meant by Central America, but I thought saying El Salvador might have been a bit too much; it wouldn’t do to lose my casual, it’s-just-a-hobby credentials. But my whole purpose for coming had been to find out about Doakes, and when you see an opening—well, I admit it had been a little obvious, but it had apparently worked. “Oh,” I said. “Isn’t that right?” All those years of practice in imitating human expressions paid off for me here as I put on my best innocently curious face.

Kyle apparently couldn’t decide if that was right. He worked his jaw muscles and unclenched his fists.

“I should have warned you,” Deborah said. “He’s good at this.”

Chutsky let out a big breath and shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. With a visible effort he leaned back and flicked on his smile again. “Pretty good, buddy. How’d you come up with all that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said modestly. “It just seemed obvious. The hard part is figuring out how Sergeant Doakes is involved.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said, and clenched his fists again. Deborah looked at me and laughed, not exactly the same kind of laugh she had given Kyle, but still, it felt good to know she could remember now and then that we were on the same team. “I told you he’s good,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” Kyle said again. He pumped one index finger unconsciously, as if squeezing an invisible trigger, then turned his sunglasses in Deb’s direction. “You’re right about that,” he said, and turned back to me. He watched me hard for a moment, possibly to see if I would bolt for the door or start speaking Arabic, and then he nodded. “What’s this about Sergeant Doakes?”

“You’re not just trying to drop Doakes in the shit, are you?” Deborah asked me.

“In Captain Matthews’s conference room,” I said, “when Kyle saw Doakes for the first time, there was a moment when I thought they recognized each other.”

“I didn’t notice that,” Deborah said with a frown.

“You were busy blushing,” I said. She blushed again, which I thought was a little redundant. “Besides, Doakes was the one who knew who to call when he saw the crime scene.”

“Doakes knows some stuff,” Chutsky admitted. “From his military service.”

“What kind of stuff?” I asked. Chutsky looked at me for a long time, or anyway his sunglasses did. He tapped on the table with that silly pinkie ring and the sunlight flashed off the large diamond in the center. When he finally spoke it felt like the temperature at our table had dropped ten degrees.

“Buddy,” he said, “I don’t want to cause you any trouble, but you have to let go of this. Back off. Find a different hobby. Or else you are in a world of shit—and you will get flushed.” The waiter materialized at Kyle’s elbow before I could think of something wonderful to say to that. Chutsky kept the sunglasses turned toward me for a long moment. Then he handed the menu to the waiter. “The bouillabaisse is really good here,” he said.

Deborah disappeared for the rest of the week, which did very little for my self-esteem, because no matter how terrible it was for me to admit it, without her help I was stuck. I could not come up with any sort of alternative plan for ditching Doakes. He was still there, parked under the tree across from my apartment, following me to Rita’s house, and I had no answers. My once-proud brain chased its tail and caught nothing but air.

I could feel the Dark Passenger roiling and whimpering and struggling to climb out and take the steering wheel, but there was Doakes looming up through the windshield, forcing me to clamp down and reach for another can of beer. I had worked too hard and too long to achieve my perfect little life and I was not going to ruin it now. The Passenger and I could wait a bit longer. Harry had taught me discipline, and that would have to see me through to happier days.

“Patience,” Harry said. He paused to cough into a Kleenex. “Patient is more important than smart, Dex. You’re already smart.”

“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it politely, really, because I was not at all comfortable sitting there in Harry’s hospital room. The smell of medicine and disinfectant and urine mixed with the air of restrained suffering and clinical death made me wish I was almost anywhere else. Of course, as a callow young monster, I never wondered if Harry might not feel the same.

“In your case, you have to be
more
patient, because you’ll be thinking you’re clever enough to get away with it,” he said. “You’re not. Nobody is.” He paused to cough again, and this time it took longer and seemed to go deeper. To see Harry like this—indestructible, supercop, foster-father Harry, shaking, turning red and weepy-eyed from the strain—was almost too much. I had to look away. When I looked back a moment later, Harry was watching me again.

“I know you, Dexter. Better than you know yourself.” And this was easy to believe until he followed up with, “You’re basically a good guy.”

“No I’m not,” I said, thinking of the wonderful things I had not yet been allowed to do; even wanting to do them pretty much ruled out any kind of association with goodness. There was also the fact that most of the other pimple-headed hormone-churning twinkies my age who were considered good guys were no more like me than an orangutan was. But Harry wouldn’t hear it.

“Yes, you are,” he said. “And you have to believe that you are. Your heart is pretty much in the right place, Dex,” he said, and with that he collapsed into a truly epic fit of coughing. It lasted for what seemed like several minutes, and then he leaned weakly back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again they were steely Harry blue, brighter than ever in the pale green of his dying face. “Patience,” he said. And he made it sound strong, in spite of the terrible pain and weakness he must have felt. “You still have a long way to go, and I don’t have a whole lot of time, Dexter.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. He closed his eyes.

“That’s just what I mean,” he said. “You’re supposed to say no, don’t worry, you have plenty of time.”

“But you don’t,” I said, not sure where this was going.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “But people pretend. To make me feel better about it.”

“Would you feel better?”

“No,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “But you can’t use logic on human behavior. You have to be patient, watch and learn. Otherwise, you screw up. Get caught and . . . Half my legacy.” He closed his eyes again and I could hear the strain in his voice. “Your sister will be a good cop. You,” he smiled slowly, a little sadly, “you will be something else. Real justice. But only if you’re patient. If your chance isn’t there, Dexter, wait until it is.”

It all seemed so overwhelming to an eighteen-year-old apprentice monster. All I wanted was to do The Thing, very simple really, just go dancing in the moonlight with the bright blade flowing free—such an easy thing, so natural and sweet—to cut through all the nonsense and right down to the heart of things. But I could not. Harry made it complicated.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re dead,” I said.

“You’ll do fine,” he said.

“There’s so much to remember.”

Harry reached a hand out and pushed the button that hung on a cord beside his bed. “You’ll remember it,” he said. He dropped the cord and it was almost as though it pulled the last of the strength from him as it flopped back down by the bedside. “You’ll remember.” He closed his eyes and for a moment I was all alone in the room. Then the nurse bustled in with a syringe and Harry opened one eye. “We can’t always do what we think we have to do. So when there’s nothing else you can do, you wait,” he said, and held out his arm for his shot. “No matter what . . . pressure . . . you might feel.”

I watched him as he lay there, taking the needle without flinching and knowing that even the relief it brought was temporary, that his end was coming and he could not stop it—and knowing, too, that he was not afraid, and that he would do this the right way, as he had done everything else in his life the right way. And I knew this, too: Harry understood me. No one else ever had, and no one else ever would, through all time in all the world. Only Harry.

The only reason I ever thought about being human was to be more like him.

CHAPTER 11

A
ND SO I WAS PATIENT. IT WAS NOT AN EASY THING,
but it was the Harry thing. Let the bright steely spring inside stay coiled and quiet and wait, watch, hold the hot sweet release locked tight in its cold box until it was Harry-right to let it skitter out and cartwheel through the night. Sooner or later some small opening would show and we could vault through it. Sooner or later I would find a way to make Doakes blink.

I waited.

Some of us, of course, find that harder to do than others, and it was several days later, a Saturday morning, that my telephone rang.

“Goddamn it,” said Deborah without any preamble. It was almost a relief to hear that she was her recognizable cranky self again.

“Fine, thanks, and you?” I said.

“Kyle is making me nuts,” she said. “He says there’s nothing we can do but wait, but he won’t tell me what we’re waiting for. He disappears for ten or twelve hours and won’t tell me where he was. And then we just wait some more. I am so fucking tired of waiting my teeth hurt.”

“Patience is a virtue,” I said.

“I’m tired of being virtuous, too,” she said. “And I am sick to death of Kyle’s patronizing smile when I ask him what we can do to find this guy.”

“Well, Debs, I don’t know what I can do except offer my sympathy,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you can do a whole hell of a lot more than that, Bro,” she said.

I sighed heavily, mostly for her benefit. Sighs register so nicely on the telephone. “This is the trouble with having a reputation as a gunslinger, Debs,” I said. “Everybody thinks I can shoot the eye out of a jack at thirty paces, every single time.”

“I still think it,” she said.

“Your confidence warms my heart, but I don’t understand a thing about this kind of adventure, Deborah. It leaves me completely cold.”

“I have to find this guy, Dexter. And I want to rub Kyle’s nose in it,” she said.