by Jeff Lindsay
Vince shook his head. “The guy had no enemies,” he said, and he didn’t seem aware of how unlikely his statement sounded to anyone who had ever met Manny. “I mean, everybody was just in awe of him.”
“I know,” I said. “He was in magazines and everything.”
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“I can’t believe anybody would do that to him,” he said.
In truth, I couldn’t believe it had taken so long for somebody to do that to him, but it didn’t seem like the politic thing to say. “Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. Who’s assigned to the case?”
Vince looked at me like I had asked him if he thought the sun might come up in the morning. “Dexter,” he said wonderingly, “his head was cut off. It’s just like the three over at the university.”
When I was young and trying hard to fit in, I played football for a while, and one time I had been hit hard in the stomach and couldn’t breathe for a few minutes. I felt a little bit like that now.
“Oh,” I said.
“So naturally they’ve given it to your sister,” he said.
“Naturally.” A sudden thought hit me, and because I am a lifelong devotee of irony, I asked him, “He wasn’t cooked, too, was he?”
Vince shook his head. “No,” he said.
I stood up. “I better go talk to Deborah,” I said.
Deborah was not in any mood to talk when I arrived at Manny’s apartment. She was bending over Camilla Figg, who was dusting for prints around the legs of the table by the window. She didn’t look up, so I peeked into the kitchen, where Angel-no-relation was bent over the body.
“Angel,” I said, and I found some difficulty believing my eyes, so I asked him, “Is that really a girl’s head there?”
He nodded and poked at the head with a pen. “Your sister says, prolly the girl from the Lowe Museum,” he said. “They put it here because this guy is such a bugero.”
I looked down at the two cuts, one just above the shoulders, the other just below the chin. The one on the head matched what we had seen before, done with neatness and care. But the one on the body that was presumably Manny was much rougher, as if it had been hurried. The edges of the two cuts were pushed together carefully, but of course they did not quite mesh. Even on my own, with no dark interior muttering, I could tell that this was different somehow, and one small cold finger crawling across the back of my neck suggested that the difference might be very important—maybe DEXTER IN THE DARK
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even to my current troubles—but beyond that vague and unsatisfying ghost of a hint, there was nothing for me here but uneasiness.
“Is there another body?” I asked him, remembering poor bul-lied Franky.
Angel shrugged without looking up. “In the bedroom,” he said.
“Just with a butcher knife stuck in him. They left his head.” He sounded a little offended that someone would go to all that trouble and leave the head, but other than that he seemed to have nothing to tell me, so I walked away, over to where my sister was now squatting beside Camilla.
“Good morning, Debs,” I said, with a cheerfulness I did not feel at all, and I was not the only one, because she didn’t even look up at me.
“Goddamn it, Dexter,” she said. “Unless you have something really good for me, stay the fuck away.”
“It isn’t all that good,” I said. “But the guy in the bedroom is named Franky. This one here is Manny Borque, who has been in a number of magazines.”
“How the fuck would you know that?” she said.
“Well, it’s a little awkward,” I said, “but I may have been one of the last people to see this guy alive.”
She straightened up. “When,” she said.
“Saturday morning. Around ten thirty. Right here.” And I pointed to the coffee cup that was still on top of the table. “Those are my prints.”
Deborah was looking at me with disbelief and shaking her head. “You knew this guy,” she said. “He was a friend of yours?”
“I hired him to cater my wedding,” I said. “He was supposed to be very good at it.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So what were you doing here on a Saturday morning?”
“He raised the price on me,” I said. “I wanted to talk him down.”
She looked around the apartment and glanced out the window at the million-dollar view. “What was he charging?” she said.
“Five hundred dollars a plate,” I said.
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Her head snapped around to face me again. “Jesus fuck,” she said. “For what?”
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me, and he wouldn’t lower the price.”
“Five hundred dollars a plate?” she said.
“It is a little high, isn’t it? Or should I say, it was.”
Deborah chewed on her lip for a long moment without blinking, and then she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away from Camilla. I could still see one small foot sticking out of the kitchen door where the dear departed had met his untimely end, but Deborah led me away from it and over to the far end of the room.
“Dexter,” she said, “promise me you didn’t kill this guy.”
As I have mentioned before, I do not have real emotions. I have practiced long and hard to react the way human beings would react in almost every possible situation—but this one caught me by surprise. What is the correct facial expression for being accused of murder by your sister? Shock? Anger? Disbelief? As far as I knew, this wasn’t covered in any of the textbooks.
“Deborah,” I said. Not tremendously clever, but it was all I could think of.
“Because you don’t get a free pass with me,” she said. “Not for something like this.”
“I would never,” I said. “This is not . . .” I shook my head, and it really seemed so unfair. First the Dark Passenger left me, and now my sister and my wits had apparently fled, too. All the rats were swimming away as the good ship Dexter slid slowly under the waves.
I took a deep breath and tried to organize the crew to bail out a little. Deborah was the only person on earth who knew what I really was, and even though she was still getting used to the idea, I had thought she understood the very careful boundaries set up by Harry, and understood, too, that I would never cross them. Apparently I was wrong. “Deborah,” I said. “Why would I—”
“Cut the crap,” she snapped. “We both know you could have done it. You were here at the right time. And you have a pretty good motive, to get out of paying him like fifty grand. It’s either that or I believe some guy in jail did it.”
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Because I am an artificial human, I am also extremely clearheaded most of the time, uncluttered by emotions. But I felt as if I was trying to see through quicksand. On the one hand, I was surprised and a little disappointed that she thought I might have done something this sloppy. On the other hand, I wanted to reassure her that I hadn’t. And I wanted to say that if I had done this, she would never have found out about it, but that didn’t seem quite diplo-matic. So I took another deep breath and settled for, “I promise.”
My sister looked at me long and hard. “Really,” I said.
She finally nodded. “All right,” she said. “You better be telling me the truth.”
“I am,” I said. “I didn’t do this.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Then who did?”
It really isn’t fair, is it? I mean, this whole life thing. Here I was, still defending myself from an accusation of murder—from my own foster flesh and blood!—and at the same time being asked to solve the crime. I had to admire the mental agility that allowed Deborah to perform that kind of cerebral tumbling act, but I also had to wish she would direct her creative thinking at somebody else.
“I don’t know who did this,” I said. “And I don’t—I’m not getting any, um, ideas about it.”
She stared at me very hard indeed. “Why should I believe that, either?
” she said.
“Deborah,” I said, and I hesitated. Was this the time to tell her about the Dark Passenger and its present absence? There was a very uncomfortable series of sensations sloshing through me, somewhat like the onset of the flu. Could these be emotions, pounding at the defenseless coastline of Dexter, like huge tidal waves of toxic sludge? If so, it was no wonder humans were such miserable crea-tures. This was an awful experience.
“Listen, Deborah,” I said again, trying to think of a way to start.
“I am listening, for Christ’s sake,” she said. “But you’re not saying anything.”
“It’s hard to say,” I said. “I’ve never said it before.”
“This would be a great time to start.”
“I, uh—I have this thing inside me,” I said, aware that I 198
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sounded like a complete idiot and feeling a strange heat rising into my cheeks.
“What do you mean,” she demanded. “You’ve got cancer?”
“No, no, it’s— I hear, um— It tells me things,” I said. For some reason I had to look away from Deborah. There was a photograph of a naked man’s torso on the wall; I looked back to Deborah.
“Jesus,” she said. “You mean you hear voices? Jesus Christ, Dex.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not like hearing voices. Not exactly.”
“Well then what the fuck?” she said.
I had to look at the naked torso again, and then blow out a large breath before I could look back at Deborah. “When I get one of my hunches about, you know. At a crime scene,” I said. “It’s because this . . . thing is telling me.” Deborah’s face was frozen over, completely immobile, as if she was listening to a confession of terrible deeds; which she was, of course.
“So it tells you, what?” she said. “Hey, somebody who thinks he’s Batman did this.”
“Kind of,” I said. “Just, you know. The little hints I used to get.”
“Used to get,” she said.
I really had to look away again. “It’s gone, Deborah,” I said.
“Something about all this Moloch stuff scared it away. That’s never happened before.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time, and I saw no reason to say it for her.
“Did you ever tell Dad about this voice?” she said at last.
“I didn’t have to,” I said. “He already knew.”
“And now your voices are gone,” she said.
“Just one voice.”
“And that’s why you’re not telling me anything about all this.”
“Yes.”
Deborah ground her teeth together loud enough for me to hear them. Then she released a large breath without unlocking her jaw.
“Either you’re lying to me because you did this,” she hissed at me,
“or you’re telling the truth and you’re a fucking psycho.”
“Debs—”
“Which one do you think I want to believe, Dexter? Huh?
Which one?”
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I don’t believe I have felt real anger since I was an adolescent, and it may be that even then I was not able to feel the real thing. But with the Dark Passenger gone and me slipping down the slope into genuine humanity, all the old barriers between me and normal life were fading, and I felt something now that must have been very close to the real thing. “Deborah,” I said, “if you don’t trust me and you want to think I did this, then I don’t give a rat’s ass which one you believe.”
She glared at me, and for the very first time, I glared back.
Finally she spoke. “I still have to report this,” she said. “Officially, you can’t come anywhere near this for now.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” I said. She stared at me for a moment longer, then made her mouth very small and returned to Camilla Figg. I watched her back for a moment, and then headed for the door.
There was really no point in hanging around, especially since I had been told, officially and unofficially, that I was not welcome. It would be nice to say that my feelings were hurt, but surprisingly, I was still too angry to feel miffed. And in truth, I have always been so shocked that anyone could really like me that it was almost a relief to see Deborah taking a sensible attitude for once.
It was all good all the time for Dexter, but for some reason, it didn’t really feel like a very large victory as I headed for the door and exile.
I was waiting for the elevator to arrive when I was blindsided by a hoarse shout of “Hey!”
I turned and saw a grim, very angry old man racing at me wearing sandals and black socks that came up almost to his knobby old knees. He also wore baggy shorts and a silk shirt and an expression of completely righteous wrath. “Are you the police?” he demanded.
“Not all of them,” I said.
“What about my goddamn paper?” he said.
Elevators are so slow, aren’t they? But I do try to be polite when it is unavoidable, so I smiled reassuringly at the old lunatic. “You didn’t like your paper?” I asked.
“I didn’t get my goddamn paper!” he shouted at me, turning a light purple from the effort. “I called and I told you people and the 200
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colored girl on the phone said to call the newspaper! I watch the kid steal it, and she hangs up on me!”
“A kid stole your newspaper,” I said.
“What the hell did I just say?” he said, and he was getting a little bit shrill now, which did nothing to make waiting for the elevator any more enjoyable. “Why the hell do I pay my taxes, to hear her say that? And she laughs at me, goddamn it!”
“You could get another paper,” I said soothingly.
It didn’t seem to soothe him. “What the hell is that, get another paper? Saturday morning, in my pajamas, and I should get another paper? Why can’t you people just catch the criminals?”
The elevator made a muted ding sound to announce its arrival at last, but I was no longer interested, because I had a thought.
Every now and then I do have thoughts. Most of them never make it all the way to the surface, probably because of a lifetime of trying to seem human. But this one came slowly up and, like a gas bubble bursting through mud, popped brightly in my brain. “Saturday morning?” I said. “Do you remember what time?”
“Of course I remember what time! I told them when I called, ten thirty, on a Saturday morning, and the kid is stealing my paper!”
“How do you know it was a kid?”
“I watched through the peephole, that’s how!” he yelled at me.
“I should go out in the hall without looking, the job you people do?
Forget it!”
“When you say ‘kid,’ ” I said, “how old do you mean?”
“Listen, mister,” he said, “to me, everybody under seventy is a kid. But this kid was maybe twenty, and he had a backpack on like they all wear.”
“Can you describe this kid?” I asked.
“I’m not blind,” he said. “He stands up with my paper, he’s got one of those goddamn tattoos they all have now, right on the back of his neck!”
I felt little metal fingers flutter across the back of my neck and I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “What kind of tattoo?”
“Stupid thing, one of those Jap symbols. We beat the crap out of the Japs so we could buy their cars and tattoo their goddamn scrib-bles on our kids?”
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He seemed to be only warming up, and while I really admired the fact that he had such terrific stamina at his age, I felt it was time to turn him over to the proper authorities as constituted by my sister, which lit up in me a small glow of satisfaction, since it not only gave her a suspect better than poor Disenfranchised Dexter but also inflicted this beguiling old poop on her as a small measure of punishment for suspecting me in the first place. “Come with me,” I said to the old man.
“I’m not going an
ywhere,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you like to talk to a real detective?” I said, and the hours of practice I had spent on my smile must have paid off, because he frowned, looked around him, and then said, “Well, all right,” and followed me all the way back to where Sergeant Sister was snarling at Camilla Figg.
“I told you to stay away,” she said, with all the warmth and charm I had come to expect from her.
“Okay,” I said. “Shall I take the witness away with me?”
Deborah opened her mouth, then closed and opened it a few more times, as if she was trying to figure out how to breathe like a fish.
“You can’t—it isn’t— Goddamn it, Dexter,” she said at last.
“I can, it is, and I’m sure he will,” I said. “But in the meantime, this nice old gentleman has something interesting to tell you.”
“Who the hell are you to call me old?” he said.
“This is Detective Morgan,” I told him. “She’s in charge here.”
“A girl?” he snorted. “No wonder they can’t catch anybody. A girl detective.”
“Be sure to tell her about the backpack,” I told him. “And the tattoo.”
“What tattoo?” she demanded. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The mouth on you,” the old man said. “Shame!”
I smiled at my sister. “Have a nice chat,” I said.
T W E N T Y - S I X
Icould not be sure that I was officially invited back to the party, but I didn’t want to go so far away that I missed the chance to graciously accept my sister’s apology. So I went to loiter just inside the front door of the former Manny Borque’s apartment, where I could be noticed at the appropriate time. Unfortunately, the killer had not stolen the giant artistic ball of animal vomit on the pedestal by the door. It was still there, right in the middle of my loitering grounds, and I was forced to look at it while I waited.
I was wondering how long it would take Deborah to ask the old man about the tattoo and then make the connection. Even as I wondered, I heard her raise her voice in official ritual words of dismissal, thanking the old man for his help and instructing him to call if he thought of anything else. And then the two of them came toward the door, Deborah holding the old man firmly by the elbow and steering him out of the apartment.
