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“Rewrite,” he muttered angrily. “Fucking rewrite around a dead woman … Asshole …” Victor reached for his glass of “water” again, and then appeared to notice me for the first time. “What,” he said, and he did not sound like he was going to invite me to join him for a drink.
“I’m looking for Robert.” He just stared at me. “Robert Chase?” I said helpfully.
Victor screwed his face up and turned bright red, like he was going to give me a dose of the kind of bile he had unleashed on the phone, and I was in no mood for it. So it probably wasn’t the nicest thing I could have done, but I was past caring. “He has my little girl,” I said. “She’s eleven years old.”
All the color drained out of Victor’s face. It was an amazing thing to watch; one moment he was puffed up like a big red balloon, and the next he was a greenish-white thing with cheekbones poking through sagging flesh. “Oh, Jesus fuck, I’m dead,” he whispered, and he reached for his glass with two hands, lifting it numbly to his face and draining it.
When the glass was empty, Victor put it back down on the table. His hands were shaking and the glass rattled briefly before settling to a stop in front of him. He stared at the glass and then, finally, looked up at me with eyes that were nearly as dead as Jackie’s. “They said it was just gossip,” he said, and there was a slight slur to his words. “I never … I mean, you know. Richard Gere and the hamster. Tom Cruise is gay. All that shit. Just backstabbing bullshit Hollywood gossip.” He lifted the glass, saw it was empty, and put it back down again. “I swear, I never thought … I didn’t really think …”
Victor closed his eyes and slumped forward until his face was almost touching the tabletop. “Fuck,” he said. “Why me? Why is it always me …?” He began to shake his head, slowly and rhythmically. “I’m dead. It’s all turned to shit on me and I am soooo … fucking … dead.…” And he stopped shaking his head, and stopped breathing, and just sat there slumped into a pale green heap.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but his face had actually turned even greener, and he sat there for a long moment, motionless. Then he jerked upright, snapped his eyes open, and took a deep breath.
“You got to understand, Chase wasn’t my idea,” he said. “I wanted somebody younger, but the network needs a star. They got a list; it tells everybody’s TVQ—”
“Their what?” I said.
He gave me an impatient, irritated look. “TVQ. How popular they are. How many viewers they can get to watch something.” He held up a hand, then let it flop back down helplessly. “Robert’s is very high.”
“Right,” I said. “He’s popular.”
Victor nodded. “He’s popular. A star. And people always make up awful shit about stars. It’s … Everybody says stuff like that, you know, about anybody who makes it. It’s a mean, bitchy business, but if I thought it was really true about Chase and little girls—”
He stopped and looked down at the table again. “Fuck,” he said. “I woulda cast him anyway. He’s got a really high TVQ.” He stared at his hands for a moment, and then lurched sideways and grabbed the big blue vodka bottle and began to pour his glass full again.
I watched him, and I felt small and icy fingers tickling at the back of my neck. “What did you mean,” I said, “about Chase and little girls?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “It’s just a rumor,” he said, and he didn’t sound like he even convinced himself. He put the cap back on the vodka, and as he bent to put the bottle back on the floor I sat next to him and picked up his full glass. “What the fuck,” he said, and I slowly and carefully poured the entire glassful onto his lap.
Victor didn’t try to stop me. He just stared at the puddle of booze as it soaked into his slacks, his mouth hanging slightly open, and then he looked up at me, and I smiled. “And what is the rumor, Victor?” I said. “About Robert Chase and little girls?”
He looked at me and his Adam’s apple slid up and down, and then he finally closed his mouth and looked down again. “He likes them,” he said in a soft and husky voice. “Really likes them.” He glanced up at me briefly, then swallowed again. “He likes little girls.”
I slid closer to him and put an arm around his shoulders, feeling him tense up as I touched him. “And when you use that word ‘like,’ ” I said, “what does it really mean to you, Victor?”
“He has sex with them,” he said in a whisper. “Robert Chase is a pedophile.”
I thought about my days with Robert, and his wistful talk of kids. I thought it unconvincing and it was—but not because he didn’t like kids; it was because he really liked them. And the family portrait he left hidden on my desk. His immediate and complete interest in Astor when they met, and the way he instantly got her alone in the makeup room—and even Robert’s weekend in Mexico at a “special private resort,” which probably meant a place that catered to men with his tastes; it all added up, fit together so perfectly that in retrospect, only an idiot could have missed all the obvious clues. And I was an idiot. A true and total dolt. I had thought he was gay, and because I am a fatuous conceited idiotic dolt I had even thought he had a crush on me. And all along, it had been the kids after all.
There was no longer any doubt about it. Wave after wave of contempt for my complete stupidity washed over me, and I sat there for a very long time, just letting the waves lift me up and crash me down on the rocky shore again.
Of course Robert liked little girls, girls just like Astor. And being the Child of Darkness that she was, of course Astor would have played along, loving the sense of power and control as a full-grown man, a Star, focused all that flattering attention on her. That Saturday at Wardrobe, moments after they met, she had rushed off with him right away, down the hall to the little dressing room.…
And once more a quick movie clip flashed by on the screen in Dexter’s skull: Kathy going into that room where Astor and Robert had disappeared, and then flying out as if she’d seen a ghost, and vanishing out the door. She had seen them engaged in Inappropriate Behavior—and she had not said anything? Because Robert begged and pleaded for a chance to explain? Yes: Even with Kathy, his star power had counted for something. So she agreed to meet him that night, maybe even planning to blackmail him, and he killed her instead and took her phone so no one would know about their date. He’d even thrown up, which fit what I knew about him so well that the moment Vince told me about it I should have thought of him, and once again I let the tide of recrimination lift me and slam me into the seawall a few times. Even then I should have seen it, and if I had, my new and beautiful life would still be on track and Jackie would still be alive. Stupid, stupid, stupid Dexter.
I sat and ground my teeth and cursed myself until eventually I became aware of a very annoying sound somewhere nearby. I turned to see that I still had an arm around Victor’s shoulders, and he was clearing his throat to get my attention as he tried feebly to wriggle free.
“Hey,” he said. “Listen, I really didn’t, you know, just … Are you going to …?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, and I looked at him. He flinched away, and I realized from the sound of my voice and the chilled feeling of my face that Victor was seeing the Real Dexter, seeing him the way very few have seen him and lived. “Where did they go?” I said.
He quivered at the sound of my voice, but he just shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. “Chase was here this morning and then— Shit, I really don’t know; please, you’re hurting me.”
I looked at him just a moment longer. He was much too scared, drunk, and deflated to lie, so I let go of him and stood up.
“Fuck,” Victor said, rubbing his shoulders, “scared the shit outta me.”
I glanced back at him from the door of the trailer. “Fuck,” he said again, and as I turned away he was picking up his glass.
