by Jeff Lindsay
She asked where I had rented the car, who had rented it to me, whether I had left it unattended, where I had been when I did. I answered truthfully, and she wrote it all down. And then she hesitated, licked her lips, and perhaps she thought to herself, This could help me make detective. “Is there anybody that, in your opinion, might want to kill you?” she said.
And there it was, the last straw, the final brick in the wall, the one tiny nudge over the line. Was there anybody who wanted to kill me? In all this violent, wicked, sinful world, was there anybody left who didn’t? I could think of no way to begin, no possible starting point, and the thought of even attempting a complete list was so ludicrous that I looked at her for just a moment—and I started to laugh.
I do not actually feel real emotions, so laughing was not something that came naturally, or easily, to me. In fact, I had spent a good chunk of my youth learning when and how to laugh properly. I prided myself on the final result, which sounded dignified, restrained, and natural, and it was nothing at all like the sound that came out of me now—a crackly, high-pitched, gasping kind of noise that sounded like an endless cough by a second-rate tenor. Even if you could find somebody who liked me, they would not have said it was an attractive sound.
But it came pouring out, an interminable wheezing cackle, and I couldn’t stop it. Officer Poux just watched, and waited patiently for me to stop laughing for perhaps half a minute, and just as I began to slow down, she hardened her face into a near-perfect imitation of Deborah’s Stone-faced Cop look, and I had to laugh some more.
Officer Poux waited it out only a little longer, and then she turned away. I thought I had offended her, which seemed funny, but she came right back with one of the med techs, not the one who had treated me. This one was an African American man, about thirty-five, who looked like he should be playing linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He walked right up to me, peered into my eyes, grabbed my wrist and felt my pulse, and then turned to Officer Poux. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not really a psych expert.” He shrugged. “Probably just shock. Let him laugh it out.” And he went back to the victims with more interesting injuries.
Officer Poux watched him go, then turned back to me and just stared. She didn’t seem to blink, and she looked like she could wait as long as she had to. That turned out to be not very long, since I was already winding down. After only a few more seconds, I managed to grab the reins away from whatever strange spirit had driven me into paroxysms of cackling glee. I took a deep breath, smiled reassuringly at Officer Poux, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s just…It’s a little hard to explain.”
She kept staring for a few more seconds, and then said, like nothing at all had happened, “Can you think of anyone that, in your opinion, might want to kill you?”
“Yes, I can,” I said, fighting back a tiny tickle of resurgent hilarity. “In fact, it’s a very long list.”
“Can you give me a couple of names, sir?”
“Well, well, well” came a voice from behind me. It was unfortunately a very familiar voice, with a tone that held a perpetual sneer and quite clearly said brainless bully to those who know about such things, and it was a voice that I really did not want to hear behind me under any circumstance, much less when my car had just blown up.
“Actually,” I told her, “here comes one of them now.”
Officer Poux glanced over my shoulder and came to a sort of stiff, half-at-attention pose, and the owner of the aforementioned voice stepped into view.
“Detective Anderson,” I said. “Wonderful to see you again. But isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” he said. He looked at me with an expression that can only be described as a gloating glare, and without taking his eyes off mine, he said to Poux, “Cuff him. And it doesn’t have to be gentle.”
“On what charge, sir?” Officer Poux said.
Anderson spun on her. “On a charge of Because I Say So,” he sneered at her. “Do it.”
Poux stood motionless for just a moment longer, and it may be that she would have done what Anderson said eventually, but he didn’t give her the chance. “Fuck it,” he snarled. He leaned over and grabbed her handcuffs. “This goes in my report,” he told her, already turning on me.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Mine too.”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. He just grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and yanked my hands halfway up my back. “I knew you’d pull something,” he growled as he put the cuffs on me, much too tight. “Never should’ve let you back on the street.” He gave a final, brutal tug, and then stepped back to sneer at me where I could see it. “You just can’t keep away from trouble, can you, asshole?”
“Why bother?” I said. “You’d just make something up and tag me with it anyway.” I smiled. “Like now. How many reports will you have to forge to make this stick, Detective? And when are you going to learn to disguise your handwriting?”
He just glared at me for a moment. And then he stepped forward and gave me an openhanded slap to the face, hard. It hurt. It was hard enough to turn the world dim and make me stagger back a step, and I’m pretty sure it loosened a molar, too. But I just straightened up, smiled again, and said, “I notice you didn’t hit me until after the cuffs were on.”
His face turned darker and he clenched his fists and his teeth and I thought I might have gone too far. But before he could do anything more Officer Poux stepped between us. “Sir! That’s enough!” she said.
“It’s not half enough,” Anderson said. “Get outa my way.”
“No, sir,” she said. And then she turned to face him. “And this goes in my report, too.” She glared at him for several seconds and then added, “Sir.” It didn’t sound respectful in the least.
“You put this in your report,” Anderson said through clenched teeth, “and you’ll be a meter maid by morning.”
“Better than this,” she said. “Meter maids got too much balls to whup on a man in cuffs.”
They stood toe-to-toe and glared for a moment, and then, just as Anderson opened his mouth—probably to threaten her some more—one of the other uniforms called out, “Hey, Detective? Bomb guys are here.” Anderson twitched a couple of times, as if he was being tugged in two directions by two equally rotten impulses. But he just told Poux, “Put him in my car,” spun around, and walked off to talk to the bomb guys.
Officer Poux watched him go, and when he was at a safe distance, with his back turned to us, she unlocked the cuffs, took them off my wrists, and said, “Your hands are blue. Shake ’em around; get the circulation going.”
The hands in question were kind of blue, which was no surprise, since they’d already gone numb. I shook them, flexed them, and then raised an eyebrow at Officer Poux.
She shook her head. “Hold ’em out,” she said. I did, and she snapped the cuffs back on again—but in front of me this time, and a great deal looser.
“Thank you,” I said politely.
“Just doing my job,” she said, and since that was quite true I said no more. But just before she put me carefully into the backseat of Anderson’s motor-pool car, she leaned close to my ear. “When it’s a bomb, like this?” she said softly, “it’s also my job to call the feds.”
I looked at her with some surprise. “Did you?” I asked.
She gave me a very brief, nearly invisible smile. “I did,” she whispered. And then resuming her role as a tough-as-nails, hypereffective cop, she returned to her normal voice and said, “Duck your head, sir,” and she pushed me into the car and shut the door.
I watched her go with a certain amount of admiration. In today’s paranoid post-9/11 world, it was indeed part of the job to alert as many federal authorities as possible when something happened that had even the faintest whiff of terrorism—and of course, a bomb always qualifies. But I had seen cases where Homeland Security, the FBI, and ATF were all fighting for jurisdiction with Miami-Dade, FDLE, and representatives of other government
organizations so important they didn’t even have a name.
And normally, since the local cops really want to be in charge of something that happens on their turf, the first responders would probably wait for a superior officer to arrive before calling the feds. Of course, this can waste precious time and even allow a suspect to get away, but at least it does preserve our local rights, possibly preventing another civil war.
Officer Poux had not waited. She had taken initiative and done the smart thing. And just incidentally, it was the thing that was going to save me from another stretch of sitting in the pokey with no paperwork and no hope of getting out. When the feds arrived, any suspect taken into custody—in this case, Me—would be turned over to them. And since the feds were generally a little more careful about forging documents merely because they didn’t like somebody, and since they did not, as yet, actually dislike me, I would almost certainly be turned loose, and rather quickly.
And all because Officer Poux did the right thing. It was a wonder, a rare marvel, and I decided on the spot that if I was ever police commissioner I would promote her first thing. She had gone far beyond the call of duty and actually done her job.
I watched Officer Poux as she walked away and went back to work, thinking kindly thoughts about her. As I said, every now and then, you really do have to give the cops credit for a job well done.
I sat there unmolested for quite a while—nearly an hour and a half, according to my watch, which I could now see quite easily, thanks to Officer Poux. The whole time no one beat me, or threatened me, or called me unpleasant names. On the other hand, nobody brought me coffee and a cruller either. I was left entirely alone, free to do absolutely anything I wanted to do, as long as it could be done wearing handcuffs while locked in the backseat of a car. It’s not a long list of activities. Happily for me, though, the list included something I wanted to do very much: sleep.
So I did. I dropped off almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, and didn’t wake up at all until I heard somebody opening the door of the car I was in.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see Officer Poux again, and I was not disappointed. But standing directly behind her were two new faces. I did not know either one of them, but when the door opened and Poux helped me out, turning me to face the strangers, it took only a glance to know exactly who they were.
They were a matched set, one man and one woman, in their thirties, fit-looking, and wearing expressions that were as serious as their nearly matching suits, and so it was kind of anticlimactic when the woman held up a badge and said, “FBI. Special Agent Revis.” She nodded at her male clone. “This is Special Agent Blanton. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”
I smiled at them pleasantly. “Pleased to meet you. But I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions while my rights are being violated.” Just to make sure my point got across, I held up my manacled wrists.
The feds glanced at each other, and then the man—Special Agent Blanton—looked quizzically at Poux. “Officer, is this man under arrest?”
“No, sir, not to my knowledge,” Poux said.
“Is he a danger to himself or others?” Revis asked.
“I don’t believe he is,” Poux said very carefully. “He has shown no sign of it.”
The two feds glanced at each other again, and Blanton frowned and looked back at Poux. “Then why is he cuffed?”
With one of the straightest faces I have ever seen, Poux said, “Sir. The detective in charge ordered me to cuff this man. I asked him the charge, and he told me it was a charge of”—she cleared her throat, and made a very clear effort to keep her face blank—“a charge of ‘Because I Said So.’ ”
“He said that?” Blanton said mildly.
“And then you cuffed him?” Revis said.
“No, ma’am,” Poux said. “Then the detective in charge grabbed my handcuffs and did it himself.” She hesitated, and then added, “I recuffed him later.”
“Why?” Revis said.
“The detective in charge had done it in a manner I deemed to be injurious, with this man’s hands behind his back, and much too tight, with a resulting loss of circulation.”
They all turned and looked at me, and Blanton frowned. He stepped forward and looked hard at my face where Anderson had slapped me. “Did the loss of circulation result in a contusion to this man’s face?” he said.
Poux went absolutely rigid in face and body and looked straight ahead. “No, sir,” she said.
“Do you have certain knowledge of what did cause this contusion?” Revis demanded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Blanton sighed and faced Poux. “Are you inclined to share that information, Officer—” He frowned and looked at Poux’s name tag. “Officer…Powks?”
“Pronounced ‘Pooh,’ sir,” she said, unmoving.
“Your first name isn’t Winnie, is it?” Revis said wryly.
“Melanie,” she said.
“Too bad,” Revis muttered.
“Officer Pooh,” Blanton said sharply. “How did this man get this mark on his face?”
“The detective in charge struck him, sir,” Poux said. “After he put on the cuffs.” She looked so absolutely upright and military I had to stop myself from whistling “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Blanton closed his eyes and sighed. Revis merely said, “I think you can take the cuffs off him, Poux.”
Poux stepped smartly over to me and I held up my wrists. She unlocked them and, just before she turned away, I winked at her. She didn’t wink back.
“Thank you, Officer Poux,” Revis said. “You can return to your duties.”
Poux marched off, and I stepped forward into the space she’d been in. “Pleased to meet you,” I said to Revis as she turned to look at me. “My name is Dexter Morgan.”
“Would you be willing to answer a few questions, Mr. Morgan?” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
They led me into the hotel’s dingy little lobby. It was far enough from the blast that it hadn’t been damaged. Considering the state of the rotting old furniture, that was neither believable nor fortunate. The old couple who ran the place had turned off the television. He sat in a moldering overstuffed chair with an expression on his face he must have learned from Edvard Munch, while she bustled back and forth with a pot of coffee and a stack of Styrofoam cups.
There was a small couch that wasn’t totally repugnant, and Revis motioned me to sit. She sat facing me in a straight-backed wooden chair. Her partner, Blanton, stood behind her, to her left, clearly giving her the lead. “That was your car that blew up, Mr. Morgan?” she said.
“Rented,” I told her with a charming, self-effacing smile.
As good as it was, the smile may not have worked, judging by her next question. “Did you blow up the rental car, Mr. Morgan?”
“No,” I said.
She just nodded. “The detective thinks you did it.”
“Yes, he would,” I said.
“That was a pretty big bomb, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Who put it there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And in all honesty I didn’t really know. I had a couple of very good guesses, but that was really none of the FBI’s business. Of course, they thought it was.
“If you had to guess, who do you think did it?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “it is a rented car. It could be aimed at the last person who drove it. Or even, you know. Some kind of mistake.”
“A mistake,” Blanton said, with sharp skepticism. “Somebody put a bomb like that in the wrong car?”
I shrugged. “It could happen. This is Miami.”
“Mr. Morgan,” Revis said, “that’s a little hard to believe, isn’t it?” She raised one eyebrow. “Even in Miami?”
“A couple of years ago, only a few miles from here,” I said, “a man was killed when a chunk of frozen sewage fell from a passing airplane and crashed through his roof.”
“Why did the detective hit y
ou?” Blanton said abruptly.
“He doesn’t like me,” I said.
Blanton just looked at me, but Revis snorted and said, “That was my first guess.”
“Do you know why he doesn’t like you?” Blanton said. “Or is that more frozen sewage?”
I hesitated. I suppose a real human being would have plunged right into the long and twisty tale, full of confidence in the forthright integrity of two upstanding federal agents and the noble system they represented. Unfortunately, I knew better. Everyone has a hidden agenda, and it is never, never, never what it looks like on the surface—which is, of course, why it is a hidden agenda. Revis and Blanton might decide to help Anderson in order to secure better local cooperation, which would show up on the monthly report and cause a budget increase, resulting in longer coffee breaks for the entire Bureau. There was no way to know. And so there was also no way to know whether telling them all was a good thing.
“Mr. Morgan?” Revis prompted.
I looked at her, and then at Blanton, her partner. They certainly looked forthright and upstanding. Of course, so did I, and we all know how much that means. But every now and then, you run out of logical and reasonable options, and you just have to swallow hard, cross your fingers, and tell the truth.
So I did. I told the whole sad story of deceit, treachery, malice, and heinous ineptitude. Believe it or not, I actually told it pretty much as it happened, with only one or two minor changes in emphasis, and a couple of well-timed pauses, mostly when I was talking about Rita’s death, in which I cleared my throat. I had learned from watching daytime TV that throat clearing is something Manly Guys do to show that they are fighting back emotions. I thought it was a wonderful shortcut, since clearing my throat was a great deal easier than making all those tragic faces.
Revis and Blanton just watched me, apparently listening intently. When I finished, they looked at each other, and held the stare for an embarrassingly long time. Neither of them said a word, but they apparently had a whole conversation, because eventually she turned back to me and said, “We will probably want to ask you a few more questions later on. Where will you be staying?”
