I had to believe I hadn’t really heard her. “I’m sorry?” I said, and I admit it was a bit squeaky.
Debs grabbed both of my arms and shook me. “You are going to go back inside that club,” she said, “and find out what they’re hiding.”
I pulled my arms out of her grasp. “Debs, those two bouncers will kill me. To be honest, it would probably only take one of them.”
“That’s why you’re going in later,” she said, almost like she was suggesting something reasonable. “When the club is closed.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “So I won’t just be trespassing and get beaten. I’ll be breaking and entering, too, so they can shoot me. Great idea, Deborah.”
“Dexter,” she said, and she looked at me with more intensity than I could remember seeing from her in quite some time. “Samantha Aldovar is in there. I know it.”
“You can’t know that.”
“But I do,” she said. “I can feel it. Goddamn it, you think you’re the only one with a voice inside? Samantha Aldovar is in there, and she is out of time. If we back off, they kill her and eat her. And if we take the time to go through channels and go in with SRT and all that, she disappears and she’s dead. I know it. She’s in there now, Dex. I got such a strong feeling; I’ve never been more sure about something.”
It was all very compelling, but aside from one or two minor problems with her argument—like how she knew it—there was one overwhelming flaw with the whole thing. “Debs,” I said. “If you’re so sure—why not do it right, get a warrant? Why does it have to be me?”
“No way I get a warrant in time. No probable cause,” she said, and I was glad to hear that, since it might mean she wasn’t completely insane. “But I can trust you,” she said. She patted my chest, and it felt wet. I looked down, and saw that there was a large brownish stain across the front of my shirt, and I remembered the girl who had spilled her drink on me on the dance floor.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the stain. “This is that same stuff we found in the Everglades—salvia and ecstasy.” And just to show her that two could play, I said, “I know it’s the same stuff. And it’s illegal—with this sample, you have probable cause, Debs.”
But she was already shaking her head. “Illegally obtained,” she said. “And by the time we got it argued in front of a judge it’ll be too late for Samantha. This is the only way, Dexter.”
“Then you do it.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’d lose my job if I got caught, maybe even do jail time. You’ll just get a fine—and I’ll pay it.”
“No, Debs,” I said. “I’m not going to do it.”
“You have to, Dex,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
TWENTY-SIX
AND THAT IS HOW I FOUND MYSELF SITTING IN DEBORAH’S car a few hours later and watching the doorway at Club Fang. There wasn’t a whole lot to see at first. People trickled out a few at a time and either wandered away down the street or climbed into a car and drove off. As far as I could tell, nobody turned into a bat, or flew off on a broom. Nobody noticed us, but Deborah had reparked the car in a dark spot across the street, in the shadow of a delivery van nosed up onto the sidewalk. She didn’t have much to say, and I was still too peeved for light conversation.
This was Deborah’s case, and this was Deborah’s hunch, and yet here I was getting ready to take on the stupid part. I didn’t even agree with her that it had to be done, but merely because I was her brother—and adopted, at that—I had to do it. I don’t ask for fair; I know better than that. But shouldn’t things at least make sense? I go through life and work hard to blend in, follow the rules, and be a good sport—and yet when it comes time for the cigar to explode, somehow it’s always me puffing on it.
But there was no point in arguing anymore. If I refused to break into the club, Deborah would do it, and she was right; as a sworn officer of the law, she could go to prison if they caught her, while I would probably just get community service, picking up trash at a park, or teaching inner-city kids to knit. And Deb’s stay in the ICU with the knife wound was far too recent for me to let her take any kind of risk—which I’m quite sure was part of her calculations. So it was Dexter through the window, and that was that.
Just before dawn, the sign above the club’s door switched off and a lot of people came out at the same time, and then nothing at all happened for half an hour. Out over the far end of the ocean the sky got lighter and somewhere a bird began to sing, which showed how little he knew. The first jogger went by on Ocean Drive, and a delivery truck rumbled past. And finally, the black door swung open and Lurch came out, followed by the two bouncers, then Bobby Acosta, and a couple of other drudges I hadn’t seen before. A few minutes later, Kukarov himself came out, locked the door, and got into a Jaguar parked half a block away. The car started right up, which contradicted all I had ever heard about Jaguars, and Kukarov drove away, off into the dawn to Morticia and a peaceful day of rest in his crypt.
I looked at Deborah, but she just shook her head, so I waited some more. A bright orange finger of light poked up out over the ocean, and then suddenly it was a new day. Three young men in tiny swimsuits walked by speaking German and headed for the beach. I pondered the rising sun and, in a rush of dawn-inspired optimism, decided there was a one-in-three chance that this was not my last day on earth.
“Okay,” Deborah said at last, and I looked at her. “It’s time,” she said.
I looked at the club. It didn’t feel to me like it was time—time for bed, maybe, but not time for sneaking into the dragon’s den, not in all this daylight. Dexter needs shadows, darkness, guttering moonlight. Not bright morning in the Twinkie Capital of the Western World. But as usual, I was not being offered a choice.
“There might be somebody in there. A guard or whatever,” she said. “So be careful.”
I really didn’t feel like dignifying that kind of remark with a response, so I simply took a deep breath and tried to bring up the darkness to prepare myself.
“You got your phone, right?” she went on. “If there’s trouble, or if you see her and she’s, like, got a guard, just call nine-one-one and get out of there. It should be simple.”
“Not as simple as sitting in the car,” I said, and I admit I was irritated. On top of everything else, Debs had suddenly developed motormouth. How can a guy call his Passenger when everyone else wants to chat?
“Fine,” she said. “Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying, all right?”