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“Oh,” I said, somewhat surprised. “Thank you, but, um—”
He smiled again, this time a “gotcha” smile. “If he tries to intimidate you, arrest you without cause, rough you up, whatever. Call me.” He leaned back in his chair again and the smile changed to one of simple satisfaction. “We want to keep you on the outside.”
“Yes, we do,” I said. I put the card carefully—reverently—into my pocket. Twenty-four/seven; I was surely one of the Blessed.
“Back to this friend of yours,” he said, serious again. “The one who Anderson threatened. What did he do about that?”
“He took the file to the state attorney,” I said, and Kraunauer sat up straight.
“Did he?” he said softly.
“Yes. And he was once again told to back off, mind his own business, or he would lose his job.”
“Well, well, well,” Kraunauer said. He drummed the fingers of one hand on the desk, and then leaned back again. “Tell me about this friend.”
I told him as much as I could about Vince. It was not as easy as you might think, since as far as I could tell, there wasn’t all that much to tell about him. I tried to make him sound competent, trustworthy, and righteous, but I did not have a whole lot to work with. At least I could leave out any reference to the Carmen Miranda costumes, and I did.
But Kraunauer seemed fascinated, and asked several questions about his character, motivation, and job history. When we had parsed Vince more thoroughly than I would have thought necessary—or even possible—Kraunauer nodded and held out a hand. “Let me take a look at this file,” he said.
I placed it on the desk in front of him and settled onto the edge of my chair, surprisingly anxious. It was very odd, but I wanted to impress Frank Kraunauer, wanted him to think this folder was important and relevant and Dexter was a very good boy for finding it and bringing it to his attention. Even so, at least I managed to keep myself from leaping up and pointing out the good parts, and I just watched for several minutes as he frowned at each page in turn, nodding from time to time and making notes—on a legal pad, of all things.
When he was only a few pages from the end, the office door opened, and Her Royal Highness stuck her haughty and perfect head into the office. “It’s twenty past, Mr. Kraunauer,” she said with immense dignity.
He looked up with a surprised expression. “Is it? Already? Well,” he said. He closed the folder and dropped it onto his desk, watching as Herself smiled, at him only, and withdrew. Then he looked at me and let me have his small but charming smile of apology. “I’m afraid I have an appointment I can’t miss,” he said. “But I want to assure you, this stuff is going to help a lot.”
He stood up and came around the desk, and I stood up to meet him. “This is just terrific, Dexter,” he said, shaking my hand, and I was ready to believe him, because his handshake was firm, dry, and manly, and this was the first time he’d used my first name. “Absolutely great stuff,” he said.
And then he slipped his hand out of mine and put it on my shoulder, easing me out the door while continuing to assure me that everything was coming up roses and life was a wonderful thing. Moments later, I was standing in the elevator, still blinking from the magical experience, and glancing at my watch. Twenty-two past six. I’d been in Kraunauer’s Presence for twenty-two minutes. From what I knew of lawyers, that would be at least three billable hours. How much money had that cost me? Or cost Brian, perhaps. Ah, well. How can you put a price on that kind of overwhelmingly competent and focused expertise? It occurred to me that Kraunauer would know exactly how to put a price on it, and he would. But why worry? Being permanently in debt was still better than being permanently dead or in jail.
It cheered me up, and I was actually whistling as I climbed into my rental car. I’d told Deborah I’d drop off the custody papers around seven. Her little house in Coral Gables was about fifteen miles away, and there were no shortcuts. My best guess, based on years of experience with Miami traffic, was that at this time of day there was no possible way I could make it to her house in under forty-five minutes. Surprising or not, that lifted my cheerfulness one more full notch. And why not? She had done nothing to earn my considerate punctuality. She didn’t even answer my phone calls—and I wouldn’t put it past her to show up late just to irk me.
So fine—I would take my time, enjoy the drive. I might even stop for coffee. Let her wait.
I started the car, nosed out onto Ocean Drive, and began my long, slow drive to Deborah’s house.
FOURTEEN
It seems terribly odd, considering the general tone of recent events, but I actually felt somewhat chipper as I fought my way into the sludge that is Miami traffic. I had a brief moment of uneasiness as I drove away from Kraunauer’s office and headed for the MacArthur Parkway, a small and anxious hiss from the Dark Passenger that said things were not at all what they should be. And sure enough, a moment later, a car right behind me slammed on its brakes and leaned on the horn. I stepped reflexively on my own brakes and looked back, senses on high alert.
But it was no real threat, just an eager idiot, overanxious to get home after a hard day on the job. I watched the car in the mirror, a newish dark blue SUV, as it pulled out into traffic and joined the rest of us in the long, never-ending stream of cars headed for the causeway and home.
Aside from that, I saw no suspicious cars on my tail, and no one on the sidewalk seemed to be pointing a bazooka. I decided that the Passenger was just responding uneasily to our newfound freedom, no doubt simply picking up on tiny things, the perfectly normal universal hostility of the rush-hour drivers all around us, so I dismissed it and settled back to enjoy my own rare and unwarranted high spirits.
There was absolutely no reason for me to feel anything but angst, and yet there was an unquestioned spring of good cheer welling up from some rarely used spot inside. It wasn’t just my excellent prospects for making Debs wait for me, juggling children and gnashing her teeth. A larger part of this unwarranted and uncharacteristic brightness came from the general sense of belonging I got from the savage, merciless ferocity of driving in My City at rush hour. In the past I’d always gotten a sort of My-Country-My-People affinity from being up to my neck in a sea of drivers with a total lack of empathy and a naked lust to kill. It was nice to feel this sense of happy belonging settle over me once more; it meant that some tiny, deeply buried part of Dexter had decided that the world was restored to its natural state and Things were going to be all right.
And another cause of my lunkheaded happiness was certainly born of my sense of accomplishment. I had delivered a vital chunk of evidence into the hands of my powerful and supremely effective lawyer, and thereby put the first nail into Detective Anderson’s coffin, while removing one from my own. But yet another piece of my stupidly good mood, I realized, was because of the effects of being in the company of Kraunauer himself. His aura was almost tangible. There was something about him that impressed me, which all by itself was impressive enough. I had always considered myself the Master of Duplicity, the Paradigm of Synthetic Behavior. No one else had ever come close—until now. Kraunauer left me in the dust. He was the most highly polished faker I had ever met, and I could do nothing but watch and admire every time he favored me with one of his completely artificial smiles. And he had not merely one fake grin; I’d already seen at least seven, each with its own very specific application, each so perfect as to leave me breathless with admiration.
Aside from my appreciation for someone who was better than me at something I held dear, there was an unspoken assumption of command in his bearing. And it worked. Just being near him made me want to please him. It should have been deeply unsettling, but somehow it wasn’t.
I have no real feelings. And I am certainly not capable of love, or even hero worship. There was no one in this world I cared more for than Dexter. But in our short time together, Frank Kraunauer had impressed me in a way no one else ever had, with the possible exception of Harry, my adoptive father. On the face of it, that was beyond absurd, and I wondered about it. Harry had saved me, created me, taught me how to use my gifts, and consequently made my life into something that, until recently at least, I rather enjoyed in my own quiet way. Harry was the All-Father, the Fount of Wisdom, Maker of the only Map of the Dark Path, and I had known him for many years.
But I had only met Kraunauer recently, spent less than an hour in his company, and I didn’t really know him at all, except to know that he was, in his own way, as completely without feelings as I was. I knew this from his reputation, of course. But from being in his company I had also sens
ed that somewhere behind his eyes there lurked that familiar Dark Emptiness. He was a predator, totally without mercy, the kind of dedicated and enthusiastic shark who didn’t even need the smell of blood in the water to strike. He ripped out chunks of flesh because that’s what he was made to do, and he liked it that way. Naturally enough, that kind of inborn enthusiasm struck a chord in me.
Beyond all that, he was on my side, and it was universally acknowledged that he did not fail. Drug kingpins, brutal dictators, mass murderers—he always came through for his clients, no matter how heinous the crimes they had committed. Because of him, some truly awful, wicked, dreadful monsters roamed free. And if all went as it should, I would soon be one of them. All hail Kraunauer.
So I settled into my seat and relaxed, enjoying the drive. I made it over the causeway in under fifteen minutes, which was disappointing, since I really did want to keep Deborah waiting. But once I turned south onto I-95, things slowed down again to a very satisfying crawl. I inched along, making only a block or two every five minutes, and taking pleasure from traveling so slowly that for the most part, the speed wasn’t even enough to register on the speedometer. With any luck at all, I would make Debs wait for a good half hour or more.
