“It was an accident,” Brian said quickly, as if afraid I would actually introduce him by name. He had flipped the hood back up to mask his face. “Anyway, I rescued you, so let’s just get out of here quickly, before anybody else shows up, all right?”
Chutsky shrugged. “Yeah, sure, okay, you got a knife?”
“Of course,” I said. I leaned over him, and he shook his head impatiently.
“No, fuck, come on, Dex, get Deborah first,” he said.
It seemed to me that a man with only one hand and one foot who is bound hand and foot, as well as tied to a pipe, is in no place to give orders in a cranky tone of voice. But I let it pass, and I knelt beside Deborah. I cut the tape off her wrists and picked up one hand. The pulse felt strong and regular. I hoped that meant she was just unconscious; she was very healthy, and very tough, and unless she had caught a really bad break I thought she would probably be all right, but I did wish she would wake up and tell me so in person.
“Come on, quit fucking around, buddy,” Chutsky said in the same petulant tone, and I cut the rope that secured Deborah to the pipe, and the tape that held her ankles together.
“We do need to hurry,” Brian said softly. “Do we have to bring him?”
“Very fucking funny,” Chutsky said, but I knew that my brother was serious.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Deborah would be upset if we left him behind.”
“Then for goodness’ sake, cut him loose and let’s go,” Brian said, and he went to the door of the cabin and looked out, holding the shotgun at the ready. I cut Chutsky loose and he lurched to his feet — or to be accurate, to his foot, since one of them was a prosthetic replacement, like his hand. He looked down at Deborah for a second and Brian cleared his throat impatiently.
“All right,” Chutsky said. “I’ll carry her. Help me out, Dex.” And he nodded at Debs. Together we lifted her up and got her onto Chutsky’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind the weight; he shifted once to get her settled more comfortably, and then he moved toward the door as if he were off on a hike with a small day pack.
On deck, Chutsky paused briefly by Samantha, which made Brian hiss with impatience. “Is this the girl Debbie wanted to rescue so bad?” Chutsky said.
I looked at my brother, who was practically hopping on one foot in his eagerness to be gone. I looked back at my sister, draped across Chutsky’s shoulder, and I sighed. “That’s her,” I said.
Chutsky shifted Deborah’s weight slightly so he could reach over with his one real hand. He put it on Samantha’s throat and held his fingers there for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “She’s dead. Debbie’s going to be very upset.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Brian said. “Can we go now?”
Chutsky looked at him and shrugged, which made Deborah slip a little bit. He caught her — fortunately not with his steel hook — readjusted her weight, and said, “Yeah, sure, let’s go,” and we scurried for the ramp off the boat.
Getting down the wobbly gangway was a bit tricky, especially since Chutsky was using his hand to hold on to Deborah, leaving only his hook to hold the guide rope. But we did manage, and once we were on terra firma we headed quickly for the gate.
I wondered if I should feel bad about Samantha. I didn’t really think there was anything I could have done to save her — I hadn’t even done a very good job of saving myself, which had a far higher priority — but it made me uncomfortable just to leave her body there. Perhaps it was because of all the blood, which always unsettles me. Or maybe it was just that I was always so tidy with my own leftovers. Certainly it was not because I thought her death was tragic or unnecessary — far from it. It was actually a small relief to have her out of the way without having to take any of the responsibility for it myself. It meant that I was in the clear; there was no piper to be paid, and my life could slip back onto its well-oiled and comfortable rails without any more worry about frivolous court proceedings. No, on the whole, it was a very good thing that Samantha got her wish, or most of it. The only thing gnawing at me was that it made me want to whistle, and that didn’t seem right.
And then it hit me — I was feeling guilt! Me, Deeply Dead Dexter, King of the Unfeeling! I was wallowing in that soul-crushing, time-wasting, ultimate human self-indulgence — guilt! And all because I felt secret happiness from thinking that the untimely end of a young woman was a good thing for my selfish self-interests.
Had I finally grown a soul?
Was Pinocchio a real boy at last?
It was ludicrous, impossible, unthinkable — and yet, I was thinking it. Maybe it was true — maybe the birth of Lily Anne and my becoming Dex-Daddy and all the other impossible events of the last few weeks had finally and fatally killed the Dark Dancer I had always been. Maybe even the last few hours of mind-numbing terror under the reptile glare of Alana’s dead blue eyes had helped, stirring the ashes until a seed sprouted. Maybe I was a new being now, ready to blossom into a happy, feeling human, one who could laugh and cry without pretending, and watch a TV show without secretly wondering what the actors would look like taped to a table — was it possible? Was I newborn Dexter, ready to take his place in a world of real people at last?
It was all fantastically interesting speculation, and like all such navel-gazing, it almost got me killed. As I blindly marveled at myself, we came through the park all the way to the go-cart track, and I had wandered slightly ahead of the others, unseeing because of my ridiculous self-absorption. I slid around the shed at the edge of the track and very nearly stepped on two party — hearty pirates who were kneeling on the ground trying to start a thirty-year-old go-cart. They looked up at me and blinked stupidly. Two large cups of punch stood on the ground beside them.
“Hey,” one of them said. “It’s the meat.” He reached into his bright red pirate sash, and we will never know whether he was trying to get a weapon or a stick of chewing gum because, happily for me, Brian stepped around the shed just in time and shot him, and Chutsky came around and kicked the other one in the throat, so hard I could hear it crack, and he went over backward making gacking noises and clutching at his windpipe.
“Well,” said Brian, looking at Chutsky with something like affection. “I see you’re not just eye candy.”
“Yeah, I’m terrific, huh?” Chutsky said. “Really useful.” He sounded a little bit down for somebody escaping unharmed from a cannibal orgy, but perhaps getting Tasered left an emotional afterglow.
“Really, Dexter,” Brian said. “You need to watch where you put your feet.”
We made it to the main gate without further incident, which was a relief, since sooner or later our luck was bound to run out and we would stumble onto a large number of pirates, or enough who were sober, and we would have a very hard time. I had no idea how many shots Brian had left in his borrowed shotgun, but I didn’t think it could be many. Of course, there were presumably plenty of kicks left in Chutsky’s foot, but we couldn’t count on being attacked by any more bad guys thoughtful enough to charge us from a kneeling position. Altogether, I was very glad to get through the gate and back to Debs’s car.
“Open the door,” Chutsky said to me in a demanding tone of voice, and I reached for the car’s door handle. “The back door, Dexter,” he snapped. “Jesus Christ.” I made no attempt to correct his manners; he was too old and grumpy to learn, and after all, the strain of his failure this evening must have been taking some toll on his always basic etiquette. Instead I simply shifted to the car’s back door and pulled on the handle. Naturally enough, it was locked.
“For fuck’s sake,” Chutsky said as I turned around, and I saw Brian raise an eyebrow.
“Such language,” my brother said.
“I need the key,” I said.
“Back pocket,” Chutsky said. It gave me just a moment’s hesitation, which was silly. After all, I was quite well aware that he had been living with my sister for several years. But still, I was surprised at the thought that he knew her this well, tha
t he automatically knew where she kept her car keys. And it occurred to me that he knew her in other ways that I never would, too, knew other small domestic details of her life, and for some reason the thought made me hesitate for just a second, which was not, of course, a very popular choice.
“Come on, buddy, for Christ’s sake, get your head out of your ass,” Chutsky said.
“Dexter, please,” Brian added. “We need to get out of here.”
Clearly, I was going to be everybody’s whipping boy tonight, a complete waste of protoplasm. But raising any objection would just take more time. Besides, anything that could get the two of them to agree was almost certainly inarguable. I stepped over to Deborah, where she lay across Chutsky’s shoulder, and slid the keys out of the back pocket of her pants. I opened the back door of the car and held it wide as Chutsky put my sister down on the seat.
He began to go through a quick paramedic’s exam of Deborah, which was harder than it should have been with his one hand. “Flashlight?” he said over his shoulder, and I got Debs’s big police Maglite from the front seat and held it as Chutsky thumbed up her eyelids and watched her eyes react to the light.
“Ahem,” Brian said behind us, and I turned to look at him. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I would like to disappear?” He smiled, his old fake smile again, and nodded toward the north. “My car is a half mile away in a strip mall,” he said. “I’ll just ditch the gun and this corny robe, and I’ll see you later — tomorrow for dinner, perhaps?”
“Absolutely,” I said, and believe it or not I had to fight down a very real urge to give him a hug. “Thank you, Brian,” I said instead. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said. He smiled again, and then he turned away and walked off into darkness.
“She’s gonna be okay, buddy,” Chutsky said, and I looked back to where he still squatted beside the open back door of the car. He held her hand, and he looked overwhelmingly weary. “She’s gonna be all right.”
“Are you sure?” I said, and he nodded.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “You should still take her to the ER, get her checked out, but she’s okay, no thanks to me and — ” He looked away from me and for a very long moment he didn’t say anything, long enough that I began to feel uncomfortable; after all, we were agreed that we needed to get out of here. Was this really the time and place for quiet contemplation?
“Aren’t you coming along to the hospital?” I said, more to move things along than because I wanted his company.
Chutsky didn’t move or speak. He just kept looking away, off into the park, where there were still scattered sounds of revelry and the mindless thump of the music wafting toward us on the night breeze.
“Chutsky,” I said, and I felt real anxiety growing.
“I fucked up,” he said at last, and to my very great horror, a tear rolled down his cheek. “I fucked up big-time. I let her down when she needed me the most. She could have been killed, and I couldn’t stop them, and…”
He took a deep and very ragged breath. He still didn’t look at me. “I’ve been kidding myself, buddy. I’m too old for her, and I’m no fucking good to her or anybody else. Not with…” He held up his hook, and thumped his forehead against it, resting his head there and looking down at his fake foot. “She wants a family, which is stupid for a guy like me. Old. A mess, and a cripple — and I can’t protect her, or even — It’s not me she needs. I’m just a useless, old fuckup —”
There was a shriek of female laughter from inside the park, and the sound brought Chutsky back to the here and now. He snapped his head around to the front, took another deep breath, a little steadier, and looked down at Deborah’s face. Then he kissed her hand, a long kiss with his eyes closed, and stood up. “Get her to the ER, Dexter,” he said. “And tell her I love her.” And then he marched to his car.
“Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you going to…”
Apparently, he wasn’t going to. He ignored me, got into his car, and drove away.
I did not linger to watch his taillights flicker off into the night. I secured Debs in the backseat the best I could with a seat belt around her middle, and got in. I drove two miles or so, far enough to be safe, and then pulled over. I reached for my phone, then thought better of it and instead picked up Chutsky’s phone from the seat where Debs had thrown it. His phone would be shielded from little things like caller ID. I dialed.
“Nine-one-one,” the operator said.
“You all better get a whole lotta boys over to that ol’ Buccaneer Land right fast,” I said in my best Bubba voice.
“Sir, what is the nature of this emergency?” the operator asked.
“I’m a veteran,” I said. “I done two tours in Eye-rack and I know gunfire when I hear it and that’s sure as shit gunfire in Buccaneer Land.”
“Sir, are you saying you heard gunshots?”
“More than jes’ heard it. Went and took a look in there, and they’s dead bodies everywhere,” I said. “Ten, twenty dead bodies, and folks dancin’ ‘round ‘em like a party,” I said.
“You saw ten dead bodies, sir? You’re sure?”
“And then somebody took a bite outta one and started to eat it an’ Ah run. Never seen nothin’ so groo-sum in mah life, an’ Ah wuz in Baghdad.”
“They — ate the body, sir?”
“You all best get all them SWAT boys over there pronto,” I said, and I hung up and put the car in gear. They might not round up everybody in the park, but they would get most of them, enough to get a picture of what had happened, and that would be enough to get Bobby Acosta, one way or another. I hoped that it would make Deborah feel a little better about Samantha.
I nosed the car up onto I-95 and began the drive to Jackson. There were several closer hospitals, but if you are a Miami cop, you tend to home in on Jackson, which has one of the best trauma units in the country. And since Chutsky had assured me that the visit was precautionary only, I thought it best to go with the experts.
So I drove south as fast as I dared, quietly for the first ten minutes, and then just before the turnoff for the Dolphin Expressway, I heard sirens, and then more sirens, and a column of emergency vehicles long enough to deal with a major invasion went by in the opposite direction. They were followed closely by a matching column of satellite trucks from the local news departments — all headed north, presumably to Buccaneer Land. Moments after the noise had faded, I heard movement in the backseat and a few seconds later Deborah spoke. “Fuck,” she said, not really a surprising first word, considering the source. “Oh, fuck.”
“You’re all right, Deborah,” I said, craning my neck to see her in the mirror. She lay there with her hands clasped over her middle and a look of numb panic on her face. “We’re on our way to Jackson, but just to check. Nothing to worry about; you’re okay.”
“Samantha Aldovar?” she said.
“Um,” I said. “She didn’t make it.” I glanced again in the mirror; Debs closed her eyes and rubbed her stomach.
“Where’s Chutsky?” she said.
“Well, ah, I don’t really know,” I said. “I mean, he’s okay, you know, not hurt. He said, ‘Tell Deborah I love her,’ and then he drove away, but…” A large truck jerked in front of me, even though I was in the HOV lane, and I had to swerve and brake. When I looked back in the mirror again, her eyes were still closed.
“He’s gone,” she said. “He thinks he let me down, and so he got all noble and left me. Just when I need him most.”
The idea of needing Chutsky at all, letting alone “most,” seemed like stretching credibility to me, but I played along.
“Sis, you’re going to be all right,” I said, searching for the right reassuring words. “We’ll get you checked out at Jackson, but I’m sure you’re fine, and you’ll be back at work tomorrow and everything will seem all right, and —”
“I’m pregnant,” she said, which really left me nothing at all to say.
EPILOGUE
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sp; Chutsky really was gone — Deborah was right about that. After a few weeks it became clear that he wasn’t coming back, and there was nothing she could do to find him. She tried, of course, with all the single-minded skill of a very stubborn woman who was also a very good cop. But Chutsky had spent a career in black operations, and he swam at a deeper level. We didn’t really even know if Chutsky was his real name. After a lifetime of espionage, he probably didn’t know either, and he vanished as completely as if he had never existed.
Deborah was right about the other thing, too. It soon became very obvious to everyone that all of her pants were suddenly too tight, and her usually bland shirts had changed into loose-fitting, Hawaiian-patterned things, the kind that she would normally never willingly accompany even to the drunk tank. Deborah was pregnant, and she was determined to have the baby, with Chutsky or without him.
I worried at first that her new status as an unmarried mother would hurt her standing at work; cops are generally very conservative people. But I had apparently not kept up with the New Conservatism. Nowadays, Family Values meant that getting pregnant when you were single was fine, as long as you stayed that way, and Deborah’s prestige at work actually went up as her belly got bigger.
You would have thought that a pregnant detective would have been sympathetic enough to convince anyone of a person’s wickedness, but at the bail hearing for Bobby Acosta, the lawyers played up the fact that Joe had just lost his wife — Bobby’s stepmother, who had raised him and meant so much to him, now tragically departed, and they somehow forgot to mention that she had died in the act of torturing and murdering a few sundry people, like wonderful precious me. The judge set bail at five hundred thousand dollars, which was chump change for the Acosta family, and Bobby skipped happily out of the courtroom and into the arms of his ever-loving father, as we had known all along he would do.
Deborah took it better than I thought she would. She did say a bad word or two, but after all, she was Deborah, and all she really said was, “Well, fuck, so the little shit walks,” and then she looked at me.
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