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As that word, sandwich, bounced through my head, my stomach rumbled unhappily. The burger was not sitting well, and my finely tuned digestive system was clearly troubled. Who’s sorry now? I told it. It growled back. Even the taste in my mouth was bad: rancid grease, chemical-tasting sauce, and something that hinted at old and badly abused meat. And even that was luxurious compared to what I might be eating soon, and for the rest of my natural life. I was suddenly forlorn. I remembered an old phrase Harry had used: down in the dumps. Considering the taste in my mouth, it was very appropriate.
And what could Dexter possibly do to chase away the blues? The answer occurred to me at once, and I accelerated off South Beach, onto the causeway, and away into a slightly brighter afternoon.
By the time I got close to the airport, I was practically drooling again. There was really only one valid way to cheer up Dexter. But since that was out of the question, food is always a satisfactory, though somewhat distant second best. The food that does it better than any other for me has always been Cuban, and for Cuban food there is only one possible destination for me. And so, in spite of my recent Unhappy Meal, I was eager to get there and set things right in the Land of Lunch.
Two generations of Morgans have been going to Café Relampago for their comidas Cubanas—three if you count my baby, Lily Anne. She was very partial to the maduras. I was, too—and the medianoches and ropa vieja and palomilla and the batidos de mamey and of course the black beans. Hundreds of other places in Miami made all these things, but to my prejudiced palate none compared to Relampago. So when I realized that I wanted, needed, a Cuban sandwich, it was natural for me to head out to the little strip mall near the airport where the Morgans always went for such things.
But as I pulled into the parking lot it occurred to me to wonder whether I would still be welcome there. Technically I was not a real Morgan anymore—at least according to Deborah. And what if she was having her lunch there right now? Would it be awkward? Violent? Anything could happen—the sight of me might even ruin her digestion. But considering our recent history, I decided I could live with that, so I nosed my new-smelling car into a parking spot and went in.
The decor of Café Relampago had not changed much in twenty years. It was rather basic, running to paper place mats rather than tablecloths, and thick, battered white plates, most of them with a chip or two banged out of the rim. The service was, to be diplomatic, indifferent, and sometimes downright odd. But as I walked in and smelled the aromas coming from the kitchen, I felt like I was coming home. Just to be certain that the homecoming wasn’t a little too literal, I looked carefully around; no sign of Deborah. So I just stood for a moment, sniffing, before going to my usual booth toward the back and sliding in, facing the door.
My feeling of homecoming continued through the long and strange ceremony of trying to attract the attention of a waitress, ordering, and then, finally, eating my sandwich and a side of maduras. It all seemed to take on the air of a ritual, and when at last my plate was empty and the food was inside me where it
belonged, I felt satisfied in a way that went far beyond mere sated appetite. It was very near what I imagine religious bliss must feel like, for those who have souls and can maintain a straight-faced belief in that kind of fairy tale.
In my case, it took the form of a mysterious sense of ungrounded optimism. The sandwich was good, and now it was gone, deep into Dexter; the miracle of transubstantiation had happened again, and now everything would be all right. Even as I recognized this feeling as stupid, I enjoyed it anyway, and I leaned back in the booth, ordered a café con leche, and thought about what Kraunauer had said. “Amateur sleuthing.” It nettled a bit, though I did see his point. But I had already decided that my only real hope was exactly that, and nothing he’d said changed that. He had no idea what I was really capable of doing—which was probably a good thing. So I considered where I might start with my Independent Action Project. As always, my mind reacted to being well fed by kicking right into high gear and producing a really top-notch analysis.
First: The case against me depended on motive. Kraunauer had confirmed that they would try to make everyone believe I had killed Robert, Jackie, and Rita because they found out about my pedophiliac interest in Astor. Anderson had probably chosen to go that way because tagging me as a pedophile would automatically trigger the most extreme gag reflexes. I was already guilty just because I was accused of that most heinous of crimes. And just as important, because Astor was a minor, and as Kraunauer had said almost certainly bullied into a fake cover story by me, her brutal slavering stepdad, her testimony would be discounted, if it was presented in evidence at all. That made the whole case a simple matter of my word against a massive amount of circumstantial evidence—and whatever you might have learned to the contrary from watching Perry Mason reruns, circumstantial evidence is very convincing. If a prosecutor leads a jury—or even a judge—through a logical, barely credible sequence of events backed up by one or two flimsy pieces of happenstance, he will get a conviction nine times out of ten. When you factor in how badly Anderson, and most of the force, really wanted me to be guilty, it rose to nine and a half.
So that meant that as long as the SA could believably present me as a pedophile, it was ipso facto proof that I was also a murderer. And of course, once I was perceived as a murderer, it was just common sense to believe I was a pedophile, too. Most people find circular logic oddly compelling, even reassuring. I had testified in enough courtrooms; I could see it going that way as clearly as if it was unfolding in front of me.
All right, then: Taking the ipso facto as prima facie, it stood to reason that if I was not a pedophile, I was also not a murderer. Quad erat demonstrandum.
And that meant that if I could provide reasonable doubt—if I could prove, for example, that Robert Chase was the real pedophile—then I should be in the clear. Robert actually was the pedophile in this case. But thinking about things the way I was, reflecting on them as evidence, taking into account legal procedure and precedent, had already pushed my brain into a groove of wily, multifaceted paranoia where nothing was as it seemed. And so I actually had to pause and reflect for just a moment, because the fact that Robert really was a pedophile made it seem like a disadvantage to present him as one. Dealing with our legal system will do that to you. You begin to doubt your own existence unless you have very specific instructions from the judge.
Happily for me, I shook the mood off quickly. Since I knew Robert was guilty, I also knew I could find a way to prove it. I am not being conceited; I am very good at finding things, especially when my precious irreplaceable skin is on the line. If proof existed, I would find it. I tried to cap that thought with another Latin tag, but apparently my teachers had failed to provide me with one I hadn’t used yet. Oh, well; there was really no point in being angry at them, even for such an important failure. Illegitimi non carborundum, I suppose.
I had been forcibly inflicted with Robert’s company for several weeks, while he learned to “be me” for the part he was to play in the pilot, the doomed TV show that had brought all this fecal matter raining down on my undeserving head. In that time, he had almost certainly said a few things that might give me a place to start looking. I thought back over everything I remembered hearing him say, and unfortunately it was a fairly small file. Not what he had said—he’d blathered almost nonstop. The problem was what I remembered him saying. There had been so much drivel, and it had been so annoying, I had tried very hard to shut him out, to not hear what he said, since it was mostly fatuous, vacuous, and even flatulent.
By the time I finished my café con leche, I had come up with a grand total of very close to zero significant leading remarks. In fact, it really came down to just one thing: He’d taken a weekend trip to a “private resort” in Mexico. Knowing what I now knew about Robert, I would bet that it was a resort designed especially for someone with his whimsical tastes in romantic partners. But of course, I would have to find the place, based just on his remarks.
…Except, wait a minute. He had actually gone there, by airplane. That meant that there would be a paper trail, and even better, a data trail. The airline would have kept a record, and so would both U.S. and Mexican customs and the credit card company. Setting aside false modesty for the moment, I have to admit that I am very good at getting into a database where I am not wanted. With that many options, I could almost certainly find a few excellent clues about the location of Robert’s Club Ped.
But then I would have to go down there to find absolute proof, which was very dicey indeed. In the first place, such places tend to regard prying in a rather unfavorable light, and also tend to express their unfavorable opinion of the pryer in very vigorous, usually fatal ways.
And in the second and more important place, Mexico was a foreign country with a different language and very different customs. I couldn’t simply go down there and flounder around until I saw a gaggle of heavily made-up ten-year-olds marching into a closely guarded compound. And that raised another problem with the whole Mexican Adventure: What kind of proof could I hope to find? The whole thing began to seem more and more tenuous the more I thought about it.
Surely there must be something else? Out of pure reflex I lifted my little porcelain coffee cup, even though I’d completely drained it several minutes ago. But it may be that there were fumes left in the cup, or that the café con leche was particularly strong today. In any case, as I absentmindedly sipped at the empty cup, I had a sudden flash of memory. I remembered the doomed TV show’s director—Vic Something?—saying that he’d heard all the rumors about Robert and chose not to believe them. If Vic had heard rumors, others would have heard them, too. In my far too brief stay in the swinging swirling world of show business, I had learned that what we peasants call “Hollywood” is, in reality, a very small and tight-knit town. One drunken remark can echo around that unpleasant little community for years, and I was quite sure that someone else would be able to tell me something helpful about Robert and his wicked ways.
Of course, things being what they were, Hollywood was nearly as inscrutable as Mexico. But at least I knew one or two residents of that bright and brittle world, and I could hope that they would remember me as “poor Jackie’s boyfriend,” rather than “the pedophile/killer.” And if I could confront them face-to-face, I could give one of my justly famous impressions; Grieving Boyfriend should be easy. I’d seen it often enough on the afternoon dramas I used to study.
And perhaps the coffee really wasn’t as good as I’d thought a minute ago, because in the midst of feeling slyly smug about my anticipated acting, I remembered that I was not supposed to leave town, and that made it just a little harder to get face-to-face with somebody on the West Coast. I was back to the legendary Square One.
So I sat for a few more minutes, trying to think, and realizing only that I was still not as good at it as I used to be. Maybe I never really was. I’d probably just been stumbling along wrapped in a cloud of ignorant luck, unaware that there was a huge storm of Retribution trailing along behind
me. It had caught up to me at last, and I wasn’t going to think myself out of it.
Happily for the tatters of my self-esteem, when I was just about to think up some wonderful new adjectives for Self-Deluded Idiot, I pulled myself back from the bleak landscape that I was suddenly finding far too comfortable. Misery is a weakness, I told myself sternly, and you can’t afford it right now. There were things to do, people to see, and no time at all to sit and mope. I looked at my watch; it was almost four. I could still get back to my hotel room before the worst of the rush-hour traffic turned the roads into a homicidal crawl.
I paid my check and headed out the door.
NINE
Rush hour started anyway when I was only about halfway home. I thought about it that way, “home,” out of some kind of strange mental reflex. Of course, the first part of the drive was the same one I used to take going home from work, back in the Golden Days when I actually had a home. And a job. One way or another, I would have a home again someday, either in a nice little house or in the Big House. But the idea of a job was starting to seem odd—especially a job working alongside all the people who were trying to frame me now. I wondered whether I would ever go back to work there.
In any case, the traffic had slowed to a vile-tempered crawl long before I got off the Palmetto Expressway and came down onto South Dixie. I tried, but I couldn’t make myself relax and get into the true spirit of it, honking and flipping people off. It just didn’t seem worth doing. I’d always enjoyed it in the past, but now…I wasn’t enjoying anything lately. Not getting out of jail, or Kraunauer’s suits—nothing at all. It was very disturbing, but on the list of Dexter’s Big Problems—Survival, Freedom, Life Itself—I couldn’t rank it very high.
Nevertheless, that was what I was musing about when I finally got to the hotel: Why couldn’t I take pleasure in anything? Had it been too long since I’d had a chance to unwind and enjoy a quiet evening with a Special Friend and a roll of duct tape? I tried to remember the last time and couldn’t. Patrick Bergmann, the idiot redneck who’d been stalking Jackie Forrest, didn’t really count. Smacking somebody with a boat hook in broad daylight just wasn’t the same thing as really taking time to get to know a person, really expressing myself in a pointed way, getting a New Friend to Open Up and share his feelings—muffled by a gag, of course. Some of those feelings were quite loud and shrill, and it wouldn’t do to bother the neighbors.
