by Jeff Lindsay
“Sorry,” she said after a few minutes. Her voice was still a bit raspy, and she cleared her throat. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said, and she sounded nearly human again. “So I had a few shots of dark rum.” She shrugged. “Okay, more than a few. Anyway, it didn’t work. So I took a couple of sleeping pills.” Jackie closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “Boy, oh, boy, did that work,” she said. “I think I almost pulled a Marilyn.”
“A what?” I said.
“Monroe,” she said with a very small smile. “You know, screen goddess takes fatal overdose. Oh, my head.”
“Do you want some aspirin?”
“I took four or five,” she said. “They’ll kick in in a minute.” She pursed her lips and sighed heavily. “It’s this guy. The stalker. Patrick Whatsit.”
“Bergmann,” I said helpfully.
“Yeah,” she said. “I just kept thinking, He’s out there, probably watching me right now, maybe sneaking into the hotel and picking the lock on my door.…”
For half a moment, I toyed with the idea of telling her that Patrick was not sneaking into anything except possibly decomposition. And in a rational world, why wouldn’t I? What reasonable person could object to the removal of a brutal killer who did appalling things to human beings and liked doing them? But on sober reflection, it occurred to me that if I told her, Jackie might realize that this was an apt description for me, too, so it might not be a good idea to tell her. And after all, rotting flesh was hardly a suitable topic of conversation for the breakfast table. So I settled for more pedestrian reassurance. “There’s a chain on the door,” I said. “And a heavily armed and deadly Dexter on the couch.”
She cleared her throat again. “I know, but this is last night, in the dark. Everything is bigger and meaner in the dark.”
Of course, she was right about that, but instead of telling her so I just nodded, and she went on.
“And then I started thinking about what you had said, about how he might drop down from the roof on a clothesline, and I swear I could hear him scrabbling at the window. I’d jump up and look, and …” She shook her head and smiled sadly at her last-night self. “Pretty dumb, right?”
“Well,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks, you don’t have to agree with me.” She sighed, and then eyed the large platter on the table with its silver cover. “Is that breakfast?”
“Your usual,” I said.
Jackie lifted the silver lid and stared at the meager scraps of food on the plate underneath. She closed her eyes, dropped the cover, and leaned away from it. “I think I need something a little bit more substantial this morning,” she said, and she stood up. “I’ll call down for some eggs.”
“The bacon is very good, too,” I said.
Jackie’s breakfast arrived so quickly they might have cooked it in the hall outside our room, and she tore into it like she hadn’t eaten for a week—which she hadn’t, as far as I could tell. The few miserable morsels of stuff she usually nibbled at didn’t really count, in my opinion, and it was a strange kind of relief to see her eating something that actually qualified as food. Even better, she left two strips of bacon on her plate. They looked terribly lonely, so I quickly gave them a good home.
And since the waiter had left us a fresh pot of coffee, we both filled our cups, and then, almost in unison, we sipped and sat back.
“Better,” Jackie said. “Much, much better.”
And it was; she looked almost superhuman again. Color and shape had come back into her face. Her cheekbones had emerged from the haze, and her eyes looked clear and bright and very violet once more.
For a minute or two we just slurped our coffee in comfortable silence. I didn’t feel any pressure to say clever and interesting things, and apparently neither did Jackie. Our reverie was finally shattered by the sound of the house phone, clamoring for attention. She jerked up to her feet, muttered, “Shit,” and stepped back in through the sliding glass door to answer it.
She came back a moment later, frowning. “Kathy,” she said. “They want to see me in wardrobe. She’s going to meet us over there.”
“But it’s Saturday,” I said. “I mean, don’t people take the day off?”
Jackie shook her head with a smile that said I had a lot to learn. “We start shooting Monday morning, Dexter,” she said. “The wardrobe and makeup people have tons of last-minute things to do, and they need us there to do them.”
“Oh,” I said, and with an effort I put on my bodyguard hat. “Will the Town Car be here to take us over?”
She nodded and sat down, reaching for her cup. “It’ll be in front in ten minutes,” she said. She drained the cup, put it on the table, and said, “I better get ready.” But before she could stand up, her cell phone chimed. She shook her head and said, “It never ends.” But when she picked it up and looked at the screen, she said, “Oh,” with surprise. “It’s your sister.” She touched the screen and held the phone up to her ear.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” she said. “No, I’ve already had breakfast.” She glanced at me with amusement. “Of course. He even finished mine.… I know, he must have a high metabolism, because …”
It’s always nice to know people are talking about you, but from the smirks Jackie sent my way, it might not have been the most flattering conversation. But short of snarling and ripping the phone from Jackie’s hand, there was nothing I could do but endure, so I did, and the talk apparently changed to some other topic right after.
“Really,” Jackie said. “On your day off? … I know; that’s why I’ve tried to avoid it.… No … No, I have to go for a fitting.… A costume fitting. For the show … You did know we start shooting Monday? … Oh, good, because …”
She glanced at me again, this time with something else in her eyes—challenge? Speculation? I couldn’t be sure. Her tongue poked out between her lips, and her mouth twitched as if she was trying to fight off a mischievous impulse and not succeeding. “Sure, why not?” she said. “It’s a great idea; they’ll love it.… Well, I don’t mind.… No, she’s a little bit of a witch, but I think it’s okay.… I’ll make sure it’s okay.… Sure, that will be great. Bye.” She touched the screen again and put the phone down. “Your sister,” she said, quite unnecessarily.
“I know,” I said. “How am I?”
But Jackie was already on her feet and rushing away. “I have to get ready,” she called over one shoulder, and then she was gone, wafting herself away into the murky mysteries of makeup, hair, and whatever else it is that women do when they Get Ready.
Ten minutes later the doorman called on the house phone to tell me the car was here, and only two or three minutes after that, we were in the elevator and heading down to the lobby. Benny, the doorman, had finally taken a day off, and his replacement waited by the door for us, staring at Jackie with visible tension, mixed with awe.
Even though there was no actual need for it, I went through my routine of stepping outside and looking around. Everything seemed fine. There was no sign of soaking-wet, barnacle-encrusted stalker anywhere. The Corniche still looked expensive.
The driver in the Town Car was the same man, which seemed a little surprising. I opened the front door and stuck my head in. “Don’t you get weekends off?”
“Not if I’m driving Jackie Forrest,” he said. Then he winked at me. “Besides, I get double time.”
As a fellow workingman, I was very happy for him, and I closed the door and went to get Jackie. I wondered whether I was getting double time. It occurred to me that we had never discussed an actual price for my services, and I wondered how I could bring that up without sounding mercenary. Of course, I actually was mercenary—more than that, with Patrick tucked into his watery grave, I was technically a contract killer now, which seemed just about as mercenary as you can get. I hadn’t thought of it like that before, and I did now; it seemed unimaginable that I had killed for money. I hadn’t done so on purpose—I had killed Patrick so I could relax for a few days and
enjoy the life of a Celebrity Companion.
Of course, that made it seem even worse: I had killed for room service. What a terrible, low creature I was. I wondered whether I should feel cheap and tawdry, or perhaps just jaded and callous. How much lower could I sink? I was already indifferent to the suffering of my victims, so I couldn’t really try to make that fit a new and colder me, if there actually was one.
I didn’t think I was any different, but you are always the last to know when you have changed for the worse. Perhaps the new me was already a monster of ego and indifference. What next? Would I lose my table manners, or stop tipping in restaurants? But in the short walk back to the hotel’s lobby, I couldn’t really work out any details about how this new thing should make me act, so I decided not to worry about it, and I went back to wondering how I could bring the topic of Disbursement for Dexter to Jackie’s attention.
By the time I handed Jackie into the backseat of the Town Car, I still hadn’t come up with anything that didn’t seem confrontational or boorish. So I shelved the topic for the time being and settled back to enjoy the ride.
We rolled across town through light traffic, mostly keeping our thoughts to ourselves. Several times I caught Jackie looking at me with what could only be called a secret smirk, and while it’s nice to be the target of other people’s happiness, I didn’t get any joy from her barely suppressed amusement—especially since I had no idea what was causing it.
The crew, and most of the lesser cast members, had been put up in the Hyatt Regency downtown. It was a quick drive on a Saturday morning, and we pulled into the short circular driveway in front of the hotel only fifteen minutes later. Once again I got out and pantomimed eternal vigilance, looking all around for any sign of a lurking Patrick. I didn’t see any trace of him, which was bad news for zombie lovers, and I reached into the car and gave Jackie a hand out.
Wardrobe had a suite on the twenty-fourth floor, and we stepped into an elevator filled with three businessmen, complete with gray suits and briefcases, which seemed like overkill on a Saturday morning. Maybe there was a board meeting at their church. The door slid shut, and one of them glanced importantly in our direction. He looked away haughtily, and then did a double take. “Holy shit, Jackie Forrest?!” he blurted out, and the other two gave a start and then gaped at us, too.
Jackie smiled graciously and did her part, the noblesse oblige she had talked about. I almost wished she’d been rude to them, since I had to hold the elevator door open for a long minute while she signed one of the briefcases with a Magic Marker. There were distant chimes, indicating that somebody else wanted the elevator, and the door kept thumping me as it tried to close and answer the call.
But finally, Jackie tore herself away from her adoring public and stepped out onto the twenty-fourth floor, and as the doors slid shut I heard the autograph hound excitedly saying to the others, “Hot damn, what an amazing piece of—” And then, happily, the doors slid shut on the last word, leaving me to guess what Jackie was an amazing piece of, and we fled down the hall to the suite where Wardrobe had set up shop.
Stepping into the suite was like finding yourself in a beehive the moment after someone has whacked it with a stick. In the eye of the storm, a tall woman of indeterminate age stood commandingly beside a dress dummy. Robert was parked unmoving in front of her, wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt as the woman tugged it closed and began to button it. Robert looked very much like he was afraid to move, and I looked at the woman a little more closely to see what could inspire such dread.
Her hair was black, streaked with gray that might have been dyed, and she had large glasses in black frames that swirled out on the sides and glittered with rhinestones. Her face was set in an expression of permanent meanness, lips pinched and eyes squinched, as if she automatically disapproved of absolutely everything and knew just what to do about fixing it and making you sorry.
A tape measure hung around her neck, and she was yelling at someone named Freddy to for shit’s sake get the fucking hot-glue gun before it fucking froze. And a wispy young man, probably Freddy, fled from her in terror, presumably to find the fucking hot-glue gun.
Over by the floor-to-ceiling window, on a low couch and several accompanying chairs, a handful of men and women sat together, chatting. On a side table next to them was a large chrome coffee urn and a few pastry boxes.
Another slender young man ran by in the opposite direction, his arms full to overflowing with blue police uniforms. I glanced at one sleeve that dangled loose; it said, MIAMI POLICE. I wondered where they’d gotten the badges, since I had been around Miami police my whole life and I had never seen anything like them.
“Close your mouth,” Jackie said, and I realized I had been staring in wonder, mouth agape, at the melee. “If Sylvia sees any weakness, it’s all over.”
I closed my mouth and Jackie took my elbow to steer us both to safety. But before I could take more than one step, the door to the suite bumped open, and I turned around to look. And sadly for my self-image, my mouth dropped open again.
Because standing there, framed by the doorway, stood Cody and Astor. Behind them, a baby carriage with two passengers rolled into view, and my jaw dangled even lower as I recognized the two passengers as my daughter, Lily Anne, and Deb’s son, Nicholas. “Dadoo!” Lily Anne called, holding her arms out for me to pick her up, and Nicholas bounced up and down with the excitement of the moment.
And, of course, right behind them, wearing a smirk and pushing the carriage, was Sergeant Sister Deborah.
“Hi, Dexter,” Astor said. “This place looks crazy. Do they have any doughnuts or anything?”
“Aunt Deborah said,” Cody said softly.
“What, the what what,” I said, sounding brain-damaged even to me.
“Move it, Dex,” Deborah said. “And close your mouth.”
TWENTY-TWO
HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT EVERY NOW AND THEN IT begins to feel like the entire world is a conspiracy designed to make you look like a total idiot? And if you are a reasonable being with even a nodding acquaintance with logic, you tell yourself this is mere paranoia; you talk yourself out of it and soldier on. But then something happens to make you think it’s not such a far-fetched idea after all.
This was clearly one of those moments. In front of me Debs was smirking. Cody and Astor, moving around me to see into the room, glanced up and smirked, too. And when I turned around to look at Jackie, there on her face was the unkindest smirk of all.
“What, um,” I said, and I was quite proud that I did not actually stutter, “what is going on here?”
“Dexter, you get to work on a movie,” Astor said, with a certain amount of venom, though not as much as she used with Rita lately. “With stars …” She glanced at Jackie, and then at Robert. “And instead you didn’t even tell us, or bring us here, or anything.” She looked at me now, a cold and cranky glare. “You know I’m going to be an actress, and you’re supposed to care about us, and help us learn things and do cool stuff, and you didn’t even tell us.”
“You should have told us,” Cody said softly, and that hurt more than Astor’s contempt.
“Yes, but, school is … and anyhow,” I said, and regrettably, I was stuttering now.
“It’s Saturday,” Cody said.
“You’re acting like a putz,” Astor told me. And before I could wonder where she had learned that word, Deborah pushed the stroller through the door and into the room next to me.
“Rita called and asked me if I could watch the kids,” Debs told me. “Some kind of awful crisis at work involving the euro and real estate prices in Germany. Which you would know if you ever called her.”
“Yes, but …” I said. “I mean, on a Saturday …?”
“You really are a putz,” Debs said, shaking her head.
I glanced at Jackie; she smiled and nodded. “You are,” she said happily.
They all stared at me with mild contempt and amusement; it seemed like even the two babies had learned
the look, and I waited for Lily Anne to call out, “Putz, Dadoo!” Happily for me, she didn’t, and I made a valiant effort to collect the tattered shreds of my dignity.
“Well,” I said, “I’m very happy to see you all.”
I could have continued my embarrassing groveling, but Astor had locked her eyes onto Jackie. “Are you an actress?” she asked, almost shyly, which was a very odd tone coming from Astor.
Jackie looked down at her and raised one eyebrow. “Yes, I am,” she said.
“Are you famous?” Astor said.
Jackie gave her a polite smile. “I guess it’s a matter of opinion,” she said.
Astor stared a moment longer, then frowned, glanced at me, and asked Jackie, “Why are you with Dexter?”
Jackie looked at me for help, but I had nothing. The tip of her tongue poked out between her lips and she took a deep breath. “Dexter is … helping me with … a problem,” she said.
Astor shook her head. “What kind of problem could he help you with?” she said, and the old, snarky tone was back in her voice; she even snickered. “Do you have a blood-spatter problem?”
“No, of course not,” Jackie said.
“That’s all Dexter can do,” Astor said. “Except—” She caught herself just in time, looked at me, and then her jaw dropped open and she whirled back around to Jackie. “Oh, shit,” she said. “You’re having an affair.” She looked back at me. “Dexter is having sex with a famous actress! That is so cool!”
Jackie actually blushed, and my sister, Deborah, helpful as ever, let out an amused snort.
“What? No!” I said. “Astor, that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, then, what?” she demanded. “Why are you hanging out with her?”
I hesitated, and Jackie didn’t have anything to say, either. Deborah raised one eyebrow and shrugged, which was not terribly helpful. Apparently it was all on me, so I tried tiptoeing up to it. “It’s kind of secret,” I said.
“Affairs are always secret,” Astor said. I wondered if anyone would notice if I flung her out a window.