Dexter Is Dead

TWENTY-THREE

I had turned my phone off before our little meet-and-greet with Ivan and his friends in the parking lot. Naturally enough, I didn’t want any unexpected noises giving me away. And I had left it off during the tête-à-tête with Ivan, because quite frankly, an artist needs to focus to perform at his very best, and any sudden chirps or tweets from the infernal omnipresent machine might have broken our very beautiful concentration.

And as I stepped out of the storage unit and into the fresh air of the early hours, I was very glad I had done so. Because when I turned it on again, out of mere reflex, I saw that Deborah had called me seven times — and even as I counted, call number eight began to ring: Deborah again. Really, it seemed a bit much — I mean, persistence can be a good thing, and in her professional life it has always been a positive virtue. But in this case, it seemed very close to presumptuous and perhaps even annoying. After all, we had barely resumed speaking to one another. She had no real right to intrude on my glow.

Still, I had to remember that she had not just enjoyed a long and leisurely session of relaxing, tension-releasing playtime, as I had. And as dreamily drained and delighted as I was, I reminded myself that there had been an actual purpose to what I had done, beyond even the achievement of such a satisfying warm blush of accomplishment. I had been trying to find out where my kidnapped children were being held, and Debs was quite interested in hearing what I had learned. And I understand very well the importance of compassion and thinking of other people’s feelings — after all, I’d been faking these things my whole life, and quite well, too. Deborah was naturally very anxious — eight calls’ worth — for me to share my newfound, delightfully obtained information with her.

So in spite of feeling like I wanted to sit in relaxed contemplation and enjoy my mellow mood, I answered the phone. “Hello, Debs,” I said, and before I could add even a single syllable more, she snapped out, “What the fuck do you know about Kraunauer? It’s all over the fucking news!”

I blinked stupidly for just a second. I should have known that something like this would create a local sensation — perhaps even a national one. “Prominent defense attorney gunned down in plain sight! Film at eleven!” And I should also have anticipated Debs putting two and two together and once again reaching a sum of Dexter. But I had selfishly thought of nothing but the pleasant task at hand, and I was momentarily unprepared. There were many things I could have said, most of them falling somewhere between temporizing and tall-tale spinning, and I thought up a couple of quite good whoppers in those few little blinks of hesitation.

But if we were going to save the children from what sounded like a very hairy situation, we would need her help. Additionally, if Debs and I were truly going to reconcile, she should almost certainly hear some version of relative truth. She’d probably figure it out anyway — she was, after all, a detective. So instead of dancing around it, I decided I would very bluntly tell her the truth — or at least a very close first cousin of the truth. “Kraunauer told us where to find the children,” I said.

I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, followed by what can only be called a stunned silence. “Jesus fuck,” she said at last.

“Yes, isn’t it?” I said.

“And then you shot him?” she said incredulously.

“He pulled a gun,” I said. “He had a very fast draw.”

“What about the two Mexican tourists who tried to help?” she demanded. “What, you shot them because they saw you?”

I very nearly laughed at that—“tourists” indeed. “Is that what they’re saying? Tourists?” I said. “I think if you pull rap sheets on the ‘tourists,’ you’ll get a more interesting picture.”

“The fuck does that mean?” she snapped.

“It means,” I said, “that they were assassins, drogas, that Kraunauer called in to kill us, but we killed them first.”

“Who’s we?” she snapped at me, and I realized that in my eagerness to be honest I had just made a very grave error. Whoever claimed honesty is the best policy, or even a good one, clearly had very limited experience with the real world.

I had always been very careful to keep all knowledge of Brian from Deborah. Quite natural, since the one time they’d met Brian had abducted her and taped her to a worktable for slow and careful dissection. And my brother, being no fool, had worked even harder to avoid running into Debs, since he reasoned, rather soundly, I think, that the kind of first encounter they’d had is usually quite memorable, and she was, after all, a cop. So Debs did not know Brian was even alive, let alone working with me. I was on the very edge of letting an extremely slippery cat out of the bag, and there was no way to predict which way the thing would run if I let it out the rest of the way. Deborah might fly into a violent and possibly justified rage, and decide to arrest Brian. And that, of course, might nudge Brian in the direction of even more serious action, something a little more permanent than anger. That would be very awkward for everyone involved, and especially me, since I would be jammed squarely in the middle, pushing the two of them apart and chanting, Why can’t we all just get along? I certainly didn’t want to be forced to choose between the two of them. And in all honesty, I had no idea which way that choice would go.

On top of everything else, I needed all the help I could get if I was to have any chance at all of retrieving my kids. The odds were already formidable, and one more steady hand with a motivated gun in it would make a very big difference. Somehow, some way, Debs had to accept Brian, and vice versa. They had to work together, with me, or there was simply no hope for any of us, especially the children.

And it had to be done quickly, too. I looked at my watch: a little after two a.m. If we started right now, we could hit Raul just before dawn, the ideal time for it. If we delayed, arguing about who did what to whom so many years ago, it would be daylight before we got there, and they would see us coming from three miles away.

“There’s no time for this, Debs,” I said firmly. “Stay put. We’re on our way to get you.”

“Goddamn it, who’s we?!” she was yelling when I hung up.

I put my phone away and turned back to the storage unit, and I paused as I realized the job I had in front of me now. It was a daunting task, right enough, and if I had thought Debs was going to be difficult to convince, Brian would be twice as hard. If I had any hope of persuading him to accept her I would need all the tongues of men and angels. At the moment I only had one.

I sighed heavily, and not merely because I realized I was wishing for more tongues. Somehow, a relatively simple and logical proposition—let’s do this together—had begun to seem like it would be harder and more dangerous than the real task at hand, rescuing the kids from a bevy of heavily armed drogas. Still, it is usually best to take care of the hard jobs first. So I strode manfully back into the storage unit to face my brother.

Brian was standing beside his work chair, looking fondly down at the ruin that was Ivan. The bomber was still alive, since we had to be sure he’d told us everything. Alive — but he didn’t look like he was completely sure that this was a good thing at this point. There were so many little parts of him that he would never see again — insignificant parts, perhaps, if taken one at a time. And actually, they had been taken one at a time, and very carefully, too. But there were a great many of them, and they were gone forever, and at some point the dear boy would have to add them up and ask himself if it was really worth going on without them.

It would have been very pleasant just to stand next to my brother and enjoy what we had done together — or perhaps undone is more accurate, considering the state of Ee-bahng as he lay in fragmented repose. But there was too much to do, and most of it was very time-sensitive, as well as unpleasant. So I girded my loins, stepped over to Brian with a firm stride, and said, “Brian. We have to go meet somebody. Now.”

“Really?” he said, in a voice so unhurried and even mellow that it was nearly indecent. “Who, pray tell?”

“Deborah,” I said.

Brian snapped to attention as if he was dangling from puppet strings and somebody had yanked them tight. All traces of mellow afterglow were gone as if they’d never been. “What? No, of course not,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “Completely out of the question.”

“We need her help,” I said.

He hadn’t stopped shaking his head. “No, ridiculous, she’d arrest me or something,” he said. “And we didn’t need her help with Ivan.”

“This is very different.”

“What is? What is different? I mean, different how?” he said, piling word on word with a brittle and worried energy I’d never seen from him before. “There is no reason to…to — She’s a cop, Dexter, and she has no reason to like me, you know. And she would completely…I mean, why on earth do we need her? She’s not actually one of us, you know.”

“Brian,” I said, cutting off his manic monologue. “You do remember why we’re here? With Ivan?”

“But that has nothing to — Oh, yes, I know, but…really, brother,” he said. “Even so, what can she possibly do? That you and I can’t do better without her?”

“We will need every gun we can get,” I said. “And we are not likely to pick up any other volunteers.”

“But she’s a cop,” he repeated, and in the interest of full disclosure I have to say he sounded just a little whiny. “And if we do this, we are breaking all kinds of laws.”

“She’s also a very good shot,” I said. “And these are her kids, too. She’ll do whatever it takes to get them back. Including shooting a couple of illegal immigrants who grabbed them.”

“But…but, Dexter,” he said, completely whiny now. “She’ll remember me.”

“Almost certainly,” I said.

“And when she finds out that this whole thing was because of me, I mean—”

“She doesn’t have to know that,” I said. And then I waved a fond farewell to my recent resolution to stick close to the truth with Debs. “We’ll tell her it was all Kraunauer.”

“She’ll believe that?” he asked dubiously.

“If I know Debs, she’ll be so anxious to get going and rescue the kids, she won’t question it until much later.” I shrugged reassuringly. “And by then you can be long gone, if you want.”

“Or dead,” he muttered.

“I will prepare her first,” I said. “You can wait in the car, and if it goes against me, you don’t even have to come in.”

He shook his head again, but slower this time. “It can’t possibly work, Dexter,” he said.

“It can,” I said. “It has to.”

Twenty minutes later Brian parked his Jeep facing out on the street in front of Deborah’s house. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and made no move to turn off the engine. I reached for the door handle, and he said, “Dexter,” and looked at me quite nervously.

“Please, Brian,” I said. “This gives us our best chance.”

He licked his lips. “I suppose so,” he said, very unconvincingly. “If she doesn’t just shoot me.”

“She carries an old Thirty-eight Special,” I said. “You won’t even notice it.”

He didn’t appear to appreciate my light wit. He just looked straight ahead through the windshield and shook his head. “I’ll wait here,” he said. “But I don’t see how—”

“I’ll call you either way,” I said, and I got out of the car and walked to Deborah’s front door.

Once again Deborah opened the door when I was only halfway up the walkway. But this time she just flung it open and spun away, and I closed it behind me as I came in and followed her back to the kitchen.

She had apparently been there for several hours, because she had shredded the old wicker place mat in front of her and started on the one to her right. Three cups stood beside her on the table, one of them still half-full of coffee, one of them empty, with the handle snapped off, and one of them lying on its side, half-shattered.

“Where are they,” she snapped at me before I could even settle into the chair opposite. “Goddamn it, what the fuck is Kraunauer — and who is we, for fuck’s sake?!”

“Please, Deborah,” I said, as soothing as I could be. “One question at a time.”

Deborah lifted her hands off the table and flexed them as if she was thinking she might strangle me. She bared her teeth and locked them together, hissing out a long breath between them. “Dexter, so fucking help me—” she said. Then she dropped her hands to the tabletop and made a visibly huge effort to control what seemed like an urgent need to kill. “All right,” she said. She picked up the battered stainless-steel spoon beside her tattered place mat and began to tap it rapidly on the table. “Where are the kids?”

“It isn’t wonderful,” I said.

“Where, goddamn it!”

“They’re on a drug lord’s yacht.”

Some people might have turned pale and faint at the news that their children were in the murderous clutches of a true archfiend. And others might have pounded the table and roared with impotent rage. Deborah simply narrowed her eyes, and you would have thought she was completely calm — except for the fact that the spoon she held in her hand was now bent neatly in half. “Where,” she said softly.

“It’s anchored off Toro Key.”

Deborah dropped the ruined spoon onto the table and flexed her fingers. “How many men will he have?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But he has three less now.”

“Three?” she snapped. “They only found two with Kraunauer.”

“We took one alive, for questioning,” I said.

Deborah was completely still for a moment, her eyes locked on mine. “Who is we?” she said, back to her dangerously soft voice. “And why did a drug lord take the children?” she said, still quiet, but obviously it was the very dangerous kind of quiet.

It really is stunning how a simple question like that can knock you right over. I had been trundling along, convinced that my brain was operating at a truly high level, prepared for all the bizarre and unlikely possibilities. And I was sure I had all of them covered, too — but then one completely obvious question—“why?”—comes along, and I realized I hadn’t even thought about it. Why did a drug lord have our kids? Why, because my brother pissed him off, of course!

…And if I said that to Deborah, the operation was over before it even began. I had to tell her something, and it had to be convincing, but all I could think of was how totally stupid I had been not to be ready for that most obvious question.

“Why, Dexter?” Debs repeated, and there was a dangerous edge to her voice that went far behind frustrated anger.

“It’s kind of complicated,” I said, stalling in the hope that either a brilliant idea would occur to me or, if not, the house might be hit by lightning.

“Make it simple,” she snapped.

“Well,” I said, still waiting, “it all starts with Kraunauer.”

A good start: Debs nodded. “Okay,” she said.

“One of his clients is this Mexican drug lord. Raul,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit what his name is,” she snapped.

“Well, ah — Raul found out that Kraunauer was representing me. And, um…” I paused, and not for dramatic effect. This was where the whole thing would fall to the ground — unless I had a sudden flash of inspiration. I waited for it. Deborah waited, too, but not quite as patiently. She began tapping the mangled spoon again, faster and faster. “Raul is very paranoid,” I said. “And, um, he felt that, you know…”

“I don’t know, goddamn it,” she said. “And you’re not telling me, either!”

I closed my eyes and thought once again about the relative merits of honesty. It seemed to me that the only thing you could say about it, as far as its being a good thing, was that if you didn’t tell the truth, sooner or later your made-up story would whirl around and bite you in the crotch. The only other thing I could say about honesty was that whatever else you try first, it never works and honesty ends up as your last resort anyway. And then you’re standing there with a crotch wound, and you have to tell the truth just the same, but now you have to drop it into an atmosphere of anger and resentment. Life is a rigged game; there’s really no way to win.

Here I stood, bitten to the bone by my feeble fictions. And there was Debs, more than ready and willing to bite, too, and quite probably add a few kicks to the injured area.

I took a very deep breath and opened my eyes. Debs was looking at me, and she was not wearing an expression of calm patience. “Well?” she said. A very large tendril of ice spread out from her voice and sent a slow and jagged spear of frigid malice across the table at me. She flung down the mangled spoon. It bounced twice on the table and then slid onto the floor. “Why, goddamn it?”

All righty, then, I thought. Here goes nothing.

“Do you remember my brother, Brian, Deborah?” I said, putting as much nonchalant charm into the words as possible.

It wasn’t quite enough. Debs hissed at me and half rose out of her seat. “The psycho son of a bitch that tried to kill me?” she said. “That Brian?” There was not a single vestige of soft or quiet left in her voice. “Why isn’t he dead?”

“Sit down, Debs, please,” I said.

She stayed in her half crouch a second longer, glaring and panting with rage, and then she lowered herself back down into her seat. “You miserable shit,” she grated at me through a still-locked jaw. “You hooked up with him?”

“I needed help, Deborah,” I said. “There was no one else.”

I hadn’t really intended that as any sort of shot against Deborah, but she clearly took it that way. She turned bright red and lowered her voice to a dangerous rasp. “You needed help because you expected me to put my entire fucking life and career in the dumper for you! And you’re nothing but a fucking psychopath who finally got what he deserves — and your brother is even worse!”

It really was a shame that Deborah chose to retreat into saying the same hurtful things, just when we’d been on the verge of getting along again, and the mere fact that they were mostly true things did not take away the sting. Mostly true — after all, what fair-minded person could possibly call me “nothing but” a psychopath? I’m very good at board games, too.

“He helped me, Deborah,” I said. “When I was all alone with no hope left, he helped me.” I spread my hands. “He didn’t have to, but…I’m not saying he’s Mother Teresa. But he helped me. And he hired Kraunauer to defend me.”

“He’s a psycho fucking killer,” she said in a voice that could grind granite.

“Of course he is,” I said, a little peevishly. “But he’s my brother. And he helped me.”

She glared. I could see her jaw moving in a half circle and I thought I could even hear her teeth grinding away. “What does he have to do with this?” she said. “With this Raul taking my kids?”

“Brian thought Raul was dead,” I said. “He took a large chunk of money and ran with it.”

“And Raul wasn’t dead.”

“No, he wasn’t,” I said. “And he came after Brian.”

“And Kraunauer put Raul onto you?”

I nodded. The story still had a few holes in it, but I hoped we were done; it already sounded bad enough. “And so Brian and I lured Raul’s shooters into a trap and captured one, so we could learn where the kids are,” I said. “And now we know.”

I watched Deborah work her jaw again. It might be that I was seeing only what I hoped to see, but she looked like she was actually thinking it over and deciding to accept things as they were. In any case, she didn’t seem to be grinding quite as hard.

“Deborah,” I said. “We need to get going.” She looked up at me and there was still anger in her face, but not as much — and it was mixed with something else, too — determination? Acceptance? I didn’t know, but I pushed it anyway. “Whatever you think of Brian is beside the point,” I said. “What matters is that we need him.” Debs opened her mouth and began to rise up from her seat again, but I overrode her with, “The kids need him, Deborah.”

She goggled for a second, her mouth half-open, and then she thumped back onto the seat. “What the fuck does that mean?” she hissed.

“Do the math, Debs,” I said. “We have no idea how many guns will be against us when we get on that boat — but I promise it’s more than two. Maybe as many as a dozen.” I leaned forward and tapped the table for emphasis, a dramatic technique I’d seen used effectively many times on TV. “We need everybody we can get,” I said.

“Even your fucking psycho killer so-called brother,” she snarled.

I shook my head impatiently. “Debs, come on. We’re not going out there to arrest these people.”

“I’m still a cop! I can’t just let you—”

“You can — you have to,” I insisted. “You don’t want blood on your hands, fine, that’s your choice — but we can’t leave Raul alive.”

“For shit’s sake, Dexter — you want to execute him!”

“Oh, grow up!” I snapped. “He’s a drug lord — and as long as he’s alive we’re not safe — the kids are not safe!”

“Goddamn it…”

“Deborah, you know it’s true. We need Brian for this,” I said. “Any of your buddies on the force likely to help us? Want to ask one of the other detectives? Maybe Captain Matthews? Think they’ll want to tag along for a completely illegal raid and firefight, followed by an execution? And we have to execute him, Debs.” And then I pointed my finger right at her, another technique culled from TV, and I said very forcibly, “If Raul lives — the kids die.”

It was a wonderful point, forceful and logical at the same time, and Debs knew it. She bit down on her lips and hissed and growled, but she didn’t say anything else, so I said again, “We need Brian, Debs.”

I glanced significantly at my watch. “And we need to do this now.”

She glared at me, but it was a slightly more human glare. Then she looked away, swallowed visibly, and finally looked back at me. She nodded once, very briskly. “All right,” she said. “For the kids.” She leaned over the table toward me as far as she could go. “But when we get this done—”

“If we get it done, Debs,” I said, suddenly weary of wading through so much of what Harry had always called Bullshit Soup. “It’s still a very long shot. But if we do it…Shit. We’ll worry about it then.”

She looked at me, then nodded. “Where is he?” she said.

“He’s parked out front,” I said.

She bit down hard, took a deep breath, and said, “Get him.”

“Your word, Deborah—”

“For fuck’s sake, get him!” she snarled. “We’re in a hurry, remember?” I looked at her for a second longer, and she glared back, but she nodded one time. “Get him,” she said. “I’ll behave.”

It was as good as I was going to get, and better than I’d really expected. I pushed back from her rickety table and headed out the front door.

Brian was waiting where I’d left him, which was a relief. His engine was still running, of course, but he’d stayed, which was wonderful. I’d half expected to find him gone, racing away in a lather of panic. And when I opened the door, he certainly looked at me with something very close to alarm. I heard the engine rev one time as his foot stomped down reflexively, but he didn’t put it in gear.

“All is well,” I said as soothingly as possible. “The Maginot Line is secured, the truce is agreed, and I have her promise not to invade Poland.”

Brian blinked at me with owl-large eyes. “That’s even worse than de Tocqueville,” he said. “Sometimes, brother, you try too hard.”

I was quite sure that his snappishness was no more than jealousy; he hadn’t managed anything clever for hours. But the important thing was that he took me at my word, turned off the ignition, and climbed out of his car. He walked around and stood uncertainly beside me for a moment. Then he shook himself, squared his shoulders, and said, “ ’Twere best done quickly.” He gave me a glance to make sure I’d noticed the Shakespeare, and then he stepped through the gate onto Deborah’s front walk.

I followed along right behind, but even so Brian was quicker. Perhaps he really did want to get it over with. By the time I got back inside, he and Debs were standing face-to-face in the kitchen, only a few feet apart. Deborah wore her working scowl, but at least her clenched fists were empty of weapons. Brian just gazed at her neutrally, arms crossed. Under the circumstances, and considering why we were joining together, it would have been wildly inappropriate to call it a Mexican Standoff. But it did look like they were each waiting for the other to attack with a knife so they could open fire with an Uzi. Still, it was probably the best family get-together I could hope for.

It was also quite clear that it was up to me to keep things moving at a lively pace, and along the way try to prevent these two from killing each other, so I made a modest and optimistic start. “Deborah, Brian. Brian, Deborah. Okay? Now,” I said, dragging out one of the rickety kitchen chairs and sitting. “I think you’ll both agree that we should get there quickly, and try to take them in the dark, by surprise?”

“Surprise,” Debs said bitterly, still staring at Brian. “He’s got our kids, and he knows you two are killing his men. How will this be a surprise?”

“He doesn’t know we’re coming,” I said. “He doesn’t even know that we found out where he is.”

“People don’t usually come after him,” Brian said helpfully, still watching Deborah. “I really don’t think he’ll expect it.”

“And what if he guesses?” she demanded. “Then what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“We could stay here and have coffee instead,” Brian said.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Deborah’s glare got meaner and angrier. She opened her mouth to say something back, and I’m sure it would have been a real doozy.

But I was actually more interested in preventing doozies and promoting an atmosphere of willing cooperation. So I jumped in before she could say something that might collapse our alliance before it even started. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We still have to try, right? Now, what can you tell us about this yacht, Brian?”

Brian sat in an equally flimsy chair, without taking his eyes off Deborah. “I have seen it,” he said. “I’ve even been on board once.” He glanced at me, then quickly back to Debs. “The Nuestra Señorita. It’s a very nice boat,” he said. “Very nice.”

Deborah snorted. “Nice. Thanks, that’s really helpful.”

As I said, it was all up to me. “Could you sketch out a floor plan, Brian?” I said. “Debs, maybe you could get paper and pencil?”

She clearly didn’t want to look at anything but Brian, but she took a step back and turned quickly to a drawer in the counter behind her. Brian tensed as she reached into the drawer, but Debs turned back around holding only a notebook and a badly chewed ballpoint pen. Still watching Brian, she dropped them on the table in front of him and then, at last, she sat down right across from him.

“Good, thank you,” I said in my best bright and cheerful Mr. Rogers voice. “Brian?”

My brother picked up the pen, flipped open the notebook, and then, slowly and reluctantly, dropped his eyes from Debs and onto the paper. “Well,” he said, beginning to sketch quick lines, “as I said, it was only once. But what I remember is this.” The lines became the back end of a large boat, superstructure looming above. “The rear end…” He looked up at me. “The stern,” he said happily. He made a few quick lines. “Like this. I think they call it stepped?” He glanced up for confirmation. I nodded. “You know,” he said, turning to Debs, “it’s much lower to the water than the sides. So you can get on and off to go swimming. And onto the launch — there’s a beautiful launch that hangs on these hooks on the back.” He tapped the drawing with the pen. “That’s the easy way to get on board.”

“No good,” Debs said, spitting the words like they tasted bad. “If there are guards, that’s where they’ll be.”

“Oh, there are guards,” Brian said, just a little too cheerfully. “Lots of them.”

“About how many, do you think, Brian?” I said.

“Why, I don’t really know,” he said.

“Terrific,” Deborah muttered.

“But I think we can count on ten or twelve,” he said. “Plus Raul, his captain, probably a few mujeres from his harem.” He smiled again, and it was inappropriate as well as being poorly executed. “Raul is really quite the ladies’ man.”

“They won’t all be on deck,” I said. “Not if we get there before first light.”

“Mmm, nooo,” Brian said thoughtfully. “I’m sure most of them will be asleep. I mean, I hope so.”

“Great,” Deborah snapped. “You can’t tell us how many or where they are or anything except that we should hope they’re taking a siesta?”

“I would guess two on deck, probably at the back,” I said, as if we were having a reasonable chat. “And maybe one up on the bridge. What do you think, Debs?”

She looked at me and chewed on her lower lip for a second. Then she nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. “That’s how I’d do it.”

“Of course, technically,” Brian said thoughtfully, “you aren’t actually a Mexican drug lord.”

I suppose Brian wanted to prove he could snark, too, and it worked. Debs whipped back around to face him, and once again I had to leap in and keep things moving in a positive direction.

“How high off the water is the bow, Brian?” I said.

“Oh, well, I don’t really know, much higher than the stern,” Brian said. “But I was mostly downstairs.”

“Okay,” I said, and nodded at the pen and paper. “Give us an idea of what that’s like.”

“Hmm,” he said, picking up the pen and frowning. “I seem to remember…a really big lounge area, like a living room.” He flipped to a new page and drew a wide space, with sofalike benches along the sides. “A big flat-screen TV. Wet bar, kitchenette — just for snacks. The main kitchen is downstairs.” He smiled at me conspiratorially. “The galley.”

“What else?” I prompted.

Brian tapped the paper thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “at the far end, toward the front of the boat…” I waited for the terrible smile and the word bow, but apparently he didn’t think of it, and I was spared. “The stairs go down to the cabins,” he said.

“How many stairs?” Deborah snapped.

“Oh, not that many,” Brian said. “Five or six? Not many.”

“And how many cabins?” I asked him.

Brian shrugged. “You have to understand, I didn’t go down there,” he said. “I just glanced down when Raul came up. His cabin — the main one — it’s all the way up at the front.” He frowned. “I saw four or five doors along the hall. One’s the kitchen….I’d guess three more cabins.”

“The kids will be together in one of the cabins,” Deborah said.

“You’d better hope so,” I said. Personally, I would have put kids in the bilge — especially mine.

“They will be in a cabin,” Debs said positively. “But as far from Raul as possible.”

I thought that part made sense, and I glanced at Brian. He nodded. “That’s probably right,” he said. “Raul does like children. But he also likes his privacy, especially when he’s with his mujeres.”

“Good,” I said, trying to sound dynamic, forceful, and optimistic, as if we’d actually accomplished something. “So how do we do this?”

The two of them looked up at me, and I had to suppress a snort, because their faces wore identical expressions of blank befuddlement. They were both equally surprised at the question; neither of them had a clue how to go about our little quest, and it was the only thing they’d agreed on yet. Once again, the one thing that can always be relied upon to unite absolutely anybody and everybody is Ignorance.

Deborah broke the spell by standing up abruptly. “We got about four hours until dawn,” she said. “Let’s just go, and take it as it comes. Whatever it takes.”

I opened my mouth to object and point out that careful planning is the mother of success — but Brian was already nodding his head and standing up. “We’ll take my car,” he said, looking at me. “Over to your boat? After that, we’ll just have to wing it.” He turned and walked out of the room, and with no more than a nod at me, Deborah followed, and I could only shrug and trail along behind.

As I said, Ignorance unites us all.