Dearly Devoted Dexter

CHAPTER 18

DOAKES TOOK US TO A COFFEE SHOP ON CALLE OCHO, just across the street from a car dealership. He led us to a small table in the back corner and sat down facing the door. “We can talk here,” he said, and he made it sound so much like a spy movie that I wished I had brought sunglasses. Still, perhaps Chutsky’s would come in the mail. Hopefully without his nose attached.

Before we could actually talk, a man came from the back room and shook Doakes’s hand. “Alberto,” he said. “ Como estas?” And Doakes answered him in very good Spanish-better than mine, to be honest, although I do like to think that my accent is better. “Luis,” he said. “Mas o menos.” They chattered away for a minute, and then Luis brought us all tiny cups of horribly sweet Cuban coffee and a plate of pastelitos. He nodded once at Doakes and then disappeared into the back room.

Deborah watched the whole performance with growing impatience, and when Luis finally left us she opened up. “We need the names of everybody from El Salvador,” she blurted out.

Doakes just looked at her and sipped his coffee. “Be a big list,” he said.

Deborah frowned. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Goddamn it, Doakes, he’s got Kyle.”

Doakes showed his teeth. “Yeah, Kyle getting old. Never would have got him in his prime.”

“What exactly were you doing down there?” I asked him. I know it was a bit off message, but my curiosity about how he would answer got the best of me.

Still smiling, if that’s what it was, Doakes looked at me and said, “What do you think?” And just underneath the threshold of hearing there came a quiet rumble of savage glee, answered right away from deep inside my dark backseat, one predator calling across a moonlit night to another. And really and truly, what else could he have been doing? Just as Doakes knew me, I knew Doakes for what he was: a cold killer. Even without what Chutsky had said, it was very clear what Doakes would have been doing in a homicidal carnival like El Salvador. He would have been one of the ringmasters.

“Cut the staring contest,” Deborah said. “I need some names.”

Doakes picked up one of the pastelitos and leaned back. “Why don’t you-all bring me up to date,” he said. He took a bite, and Deborah tapped a finger on the table before deciding that made sense.

“All right,” she said. “We got a rough description of the guy who’s doing this, and his van. A white van.”

Doakes shook his head. “Don’t matter. We know who’s doing this.”

“We also got an ID on the first victim,” I said. “A man named Manuel Borges.”

“Well, well,” Doakes said. “Old Manny, huh? Really should’ve let me shoot him.”

“A friend of yours?” I asked, but Doakes ignored me.

“What else you got?” he said.

“Kyle had a list of names,” Deborah said. “Other men from the same unit. He said one of them would be the next victim. But he didn’t tell me the names.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Doakes said.

“So we need you to tell us,” she said.

Doakes appeared to think this over. “If I was a hotshot like Kyle, I’d pick one of these guys and stake him out.” Deborah pursed her lips and nodded. “Problem is, I am not a hotshot like Kyle. Just a simple cop from the country.”

“Would you like a banjo?” I asked, but for some reason he didn’t laugh.

“I only know about one guy from the old team here in Miami,” he said, after a quick and savage glance at me. “Oscar Acosta. Saw him at Publix two years ago. We could run him down.” He pointed his chin at Deborah. “Two other names I can think of. You look ’em up, see if they’re here.” He spread his hands. “About all I got. I could maybe call some old buddies in Virginia, but no telling what that might stir up.” He snorted. “Anyway, take them two days to decide what I was really asking and what they ought to do about it.”

“So what do we do?” Deborah said. “We stake this guy out? The one you saw? Or do we talk to him?”

Doakes shook his head. “He remembered me. I can talk to him. You try to watch him, he’ll know it and probably disappear.” He looked at his watch. “Quarter of three. Oscar be home in a couple of hours. You-all wait for my call.” And then he gave me his 150-watt I’m-watching-you smile, and said, “Why don’t you go wait with your pretty fiancée?” And he got up and walked out, leaving us with the check.

Deborah stared at me. “Fiancée?” she said.

“It’s not really definite,” I said.

“You’re engaged!?”

“I was going to tell you,” I said.

“When? On your third anniversary?”

“When I know how it happened,” I said. “I still don’t really believe it.”

She snorted. “I don’t either.” She stood up. “Come on. I’ll take you back to work. Then you can go wait with your fiancée,” she said. I left some money on the table and followed meekly.

Vince Masuoka was passing by in the hall when Deborah and I got off the elevator. “Shalom, boy-chick,” he said. “How’s by you?”

“He’s engaged,” Deborah said before I could speak. Vince looked at her like she had said I was pregnant.

“He’s what?” he said.

“Engaged. About to be married,” she said.

“Married? Dexter?” His face seemed to struggle with finding the right expression, which was not an easy task since he always seemed to be faking it, one of the reasons I got along with him; two artificial humans, like plastic peas in a real pod. He finally settled on what looked like delighted surprise-not very convincing, but still a sound choice. “Mazel tov!” he said, and gave me an awkward hug.

“Thank you,” I said, still feeling completely baffled by the whole thing and wondering if I would actually have to go through with it.

“Well then,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “we can’t let this go unpunished. Tomorrow night at my house?”

“For what?” I asked.

He gave me his very best phony smile. “Ancient Japanese ritual, dating back to the Tokugawa shogunate. We get smashed and watch dirty movies,” he said, and then he turned to leer at Deborah. “We can get your sister to jump out of a cake.”

“How about if you jump up your ass instead?” Debs said.

“That’s very nice, Vince, but I don’t think-” I said, trying to avoid anything that made my engagement more official, and also trying to stop the two of them from trading their clever put-downs before I got a headache. But Vince wouldn’t let me finish.

“No, no,” he said, “this is highly necessary. A matter of honor, no escape. Tomorrow night, eight o’clock,” he said, and, looking at Deborah as he walked away, he added, “and you only have twenty-four hours to practice twirling your tassels.”

“Go twirl your own tassel,” she said.

“Ha! Ha!” he said with his terrible fake laugh, and he disappeared down the hall.

“Little freak,” Deborah muttered, and she turned to go in the other direction. “Stick with your fiancée after work. I’ll call you when I hear from Doakes.”

There wasn’t a great deal left of the workday. I filed a few things, ordered a case of Luminol from our supplier, and acknowledged receiving half a dozen memos that had piled up in my e-mail in-box. And with a feeling of real accomplishment, I headed down to my car and drove through the soothing carnage of rush hour. I stopped at my apartment for a change of clothes; Debs was nowhere to be seen, but the bed was unmade so I knew she had been here. I stuffed my things into a carry-on bag and headed for Rita’s.

It was fully dark by the time I got to Rita’s house. I didn’t really want to go there, but was not quite sure what else to do. Deborah expected me to be there if she needed to find me, and she was using my apartment. So I parked in Rita’s driveway and got out of my car. Purely from reflex, I glanced across the street to Sergeant Doakes’s parking spot. It was empty, of course. He was occupied talking with Oscar, his old army buddy. And the sudden realization grew on me that I was free, away from the unfriendly bloodhound eyes that had for so long now kept me from being me. A slow, swelling hymn of pure dark joy rose up inside me and the counterpoint thumped down from a sudden moon oozing out from a low cloud bank, a lurid, guttering three-quarter moon still low and huge in the dark sky. And the music blared from the loudspeakers and climbed into the upper decks of Dexter’s Dark Arena, where the sly whispers grew into a roaring cheer to match the moon music, a rousing chant of Do it, do it, do it, and my body quivered from the inside out as I came up on point and thought, Why not?

Why not indeed? I could slip away for a few happy hours-taking my cell phone with me, of course, I wouldn’t want to be irresponsible about it. But why not take advantage of the Doakes-less moony night and slide away into the dark breeze? The thought of those red boots pulled at me like a spring tide. Reiker lived just a few miles from here. I could be there in ten minutes. I could slip in and find the proof I needed, and then-I suppose I would have to improvise, but the voice just under the edge of sound was full of ideas tonight and we could certainly come up with something to lead to the sweet release we both needed so much. Oh, do it, Dexter, the voices howled and as I paused on tiptoe to listen and think again Why not? and came up with no reasonable answer…

… the front door of Rita’s house swung wide and Astor peered out. “It’s him!” she called back into the house. “He’s here!”

And so I was. Here, instead of there. Reeling in to the couch instead of dancing away into darkness. Wearing the weary mask of Dexter the Sofa Spud instead of the bright silver gleam of the Dark Avenger.

“Come on in, you,” Rita said, filling the doorway with such warm good cheer that I felt my teeth grind together, and the crowd inside howled with disappointment but slowly filed out of the stadium, game over, because after all, what could we do? Nothing, of course, which was what we did, trailing meekly into the house behind the happy parade of Rita, Astor, and ever-quiet Cody. I managed not to whimper, but really: Wasn’t this pushing the envelope a tiny bit? Weren’t we all taking advantage of Dexter’s cheerful good nature just a trifle too much?

Dinner was annoyingly pleasant, as if to prove to me that I was buying into a lifetime of happiness and pork chops, and I played along even though my heart was not in it. I cut the meat into small chunks, wishing I was cutting something else and thinking of the South Pacific cannibals who referred to humans as “long pork.” It was appropriate, really, because it was that other pork I truly longed to slice into and not this tepid mushroom soup-covered thing on my plate. But I smiled and stabbed the green beans and made it all the way through to coffee somehow. Ordeal by pork chop, but I survived.

After dinner, Rita and I sipped our coffee as the kids ate small portions of frozen yogurt. Although coffee is supposed to be a stimulant, it gave me no help in thinking of a way out of this-not even a way to slip out for a few hours, let alone avoid this lifelong bliss that had snuck up behind me and grabbed me around the neck. I felt like I was slowly fading away at the edges and melting into my disguise, until eventually the happy rubber mask would meld with my actual features and I would truly become the thing I had been pretending to be, taking the kids to soccer, buying flowers when I drank too many beers, comparing detergents and cutting costs instead of flensing the wicked of their unneeded flesh. It was a very depressing line of thought, and I might have grown unhappy if the doorbell had not rung just in time.

“That must be Deborah,” I said. I’m fairly sure I kept most of the hope for rescue out of my voice. I got up and went to the front door, swinging it open to reveal a pleasant-looking, overweight woman with long blond hair.

“Oh,” she said. “You must be, ahm- Is Rita here?”

Well, I suppose I was ahm, although until now I hadn’t been aware of it. I called Rita to the door and she came, smiling. “Kathy!” she said. “So nice to see you. How are the boys? Kathy lives next door,” she explained to me.

“Aha,” I said. I knew most of the kids in the area, but not their parents. But this one was apparently the mother of the faintly sleazy eleven-year-old boy next door, and his nearly always-absent older brother. Since that meant she was probably not carrying a car bomb or a vial of anthrax, I smiled and went back to the table with Cody and Astor.

“Jason’s at band camp,” she said. “Nick is lounging around the house trying to reach puberty so he can grow a mustache.”

“Oh Lord,” Rita said.

“Nicky is a creep,” Astor whispered. “He wanted me to pull down my pants so he could see.” Cody stirred his frozen yogurt into a frozen pudding.

“Listen, Rita, I’m sorry to bother you at dinnertime,” Kathy said.

“We just finished. Would you like some coffee?”

“Oh, no, I’m down to one cup a day,” she said. “Doctor’s orders. But it’s about our dog-I just wanted to ask if you had seen Rascal? He’s been missing for a couple of days now, and Nick is so worried.”

“I haven’t seen him. Let me ask the kids,” Rita said. But as she turned to ask, Cody looked at me, got up without a sound, and walked out of the room. Astor stood up, too.

“We haven’t seen him,” she said. “Not since he knocked over the trash last week.” And she followed Cody out of the room. They left their desserts on the table, still only half eaten.

Rita watched them go with her mouth open, and then turned back to her neighbor. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I guess nobody’s seen him. But we’ll keep an eye open, all right? I’m sure he’ll turn up, tell Nick not to worry.” She prattled on for another minute with Kathy, while I looked at the frozen yogurt and wondered what I had just seen.

The front door closed and Rita came back to her cooling coffee. “Kathy’s a nice person,” she said. “But her boys can be a handful. She’s divorced, her ex bought a place in Islamorada, he’s a lawyer? But he stays down there, so Kathy’s had to raise the boys alone and I don’t think she’s very firm sometimes. She’s a nurse with a podiatrist over by the university.”

“And her shoe size?” I asked.

“Am I blathering?” Rita asked. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I guess I was just worrying a little bit… I’m sure it’s just…” She shook her head and looked at me. “Dexter. Did you-”

I never got to find out if I did, because my cell phone chirped. “Excuse me,” I said, and I went over to the table by the front door where I had left it.

“Doakes just called,” Deborah said to me without even saying hello. “The guy he went to talk to is running. Doakes is following to see where he goes, but he needs us for backup.”

“Quickly, Watson, the game’s afoot,” I said, but Deborah was not in a literary mood.

“I’ll pick you up in five minutes,” she said.