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“It’s not my job,” she insisted. “My job is taking down perps—not babysitting a model.”
I looked at Jackie to see how she would take that; she just looked at Debs with awe and shook her head slowly. “Perfect,” she said softly.
“Your job,” Matthews said sternly, “is to follow orders. My orders,” he added, glancing again at Jackie to see if she was impressed. But Jackie hadn’t taken her eyes off Deborah.
“Goddamn it, Captain,” Debs said, but Matthews held up a hand and cut her off.
“That’s enough,” he snapped. “I am assigning you to be technical adviser to these people. Period. Until further notice.” Debs opened her mouth to say something, but Matthews plowed right over her. “You’ll do it and do it right, and that’s it, all of it, end of discussion.” He leaned toward my sister slightly. “And, Morgan—watch your language, all right?” He stared at her, and she stared back, and for a moment that was all that happened, until Eissen finally broke the spell.
“Good, that’s settled,” he said, and he put on a fake smile to indicate that everyone was happy now. “Thank you for your cooperation, Captain. The network is very grateful.”
Matthews nodded. “Well, that’s, ahem. And I’m sure this is a good thing.” He looked at me and then at Deborah. “For all of us,” he said, glaring at my sister.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Eissen said.
“This is going to be awesome,” Jackie gurgled.
Deborah did not appear to agree.
TWO
“LISTEN,” ROBERT CHASE SAID TO ME AS WE WALKED DOWN THE hall together toward my lab. “We need to get a few ground rules straight, all right?”
I looked at him, seeing only his profile, since he was staring straight ahead through his sunglasses. “Rules?” I said. “What do you mean?”
He stopped walking and turned to face me. “It’s Derrick, right?” he said, holding out a hand.
“Dexter,” I said. “Dexter Morgan.” I shook his hand. It was soft, but his grip was firm.
“Right. Dexter,” he said. “And I’m Robert. Okay? Just Robert.” He held up a warning finger. “Not Bob,” he said.
“Of course not,” I said. He nodded as if I had said something thoughtful and continued walking down the hall. “Okay,” he said, holding up the palm of his hand and waving it. “I’m just a regular guy. I like the same things you like.”
That didn’t seem possible, considering what I actually like, but I decided not to challenge him. “Okay,” I said.
“I don’t ride around in a Ferrari, or snort coke off a hooker’s tits, all right?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, good.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he said, with a thoughtful and manly smile. “I like the ladies. Absolutely love ’em.” He glanced at me to make sure I believed him, and then went on. “But I don’t do the whole … celebrity thing. Okay? I’m a working actor, not a star. I do a job, just like you do, and when I’m done for the day I like to relax, have a few beers, watch a ball game. Perfectly normal stuff. You know? Not clubbing and groupies and party all night. That’s …” He shook his head. “That’s bullshit.”
It was all very interesting, but I have found that most of the time, when someone underlines something that much, they are either trying to convince themselves—or trying to disguise something very different. Maybe he really did snort cocaine from hookers’ tits, and just didn’t want to share. But of course, my experience with Hollywood Leading Men had been limited to watching them on TV with less than half of my attention, so it was also possible that Robert Chase was making a real point with a monologue from some past role. In any case, he did seem to be going on a bit about having “normal” tastes in women and sports, and I really had to wonder whether it was actually leading to some kind of point. “All right,” I said. “So what’s the rule?”
He twisted his head slightly, as if he hadn’t heard me. “What do you mean?” he said.
“Ground rules,” I said. “You said we were going to get the ground rules straight.”
He stopped walking and turned to look at me with no real expression on his face. I looked back. Finally, he smiled, and then patted me on the shoulder. “All right,” he said. “I guess I got a little … what. Pompous.”
“Not at all,” I said, lying politely.
“The point is,” he said, “I don’t want any kind of, you know. Special treatment, or whatever. Just do what you normally do, and act like I’m not even there. Do what you always do, okay?”
I had to believe he meant what he said, but even one brief moment of actual thought should have shown him how impossible his First Rule really was. In the first place, he was already getting special treatment, because I had been ordered to give it to him. And in the second, if I truly did what I always did, he would almost certainly run screaming from the room. Still, life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with Logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point. So I simply nodded as agreeably as possible, as if he was really making sense. “Sure,” I said. “Anything else?”
He glanced around him in the hallway—a little furtively, I thought. “I don’t like … blood,” he said. He swallowed. “I’d kind of like to, um. Not have to see it too much.”
So far, Chase had struck me as somewhat humorless, but this statement was so wildly unlikely that I stared at him to see if he was kidding. He didn’t seem to be; he glanced at me, looked around again, and then down at his shoes. They were worth looking at. They probably cost more than my car.
