Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

It occurred to me that maybe Robert was avoiding me because of his animosity toward Jackie, and because I was so obviously with her now-and in fact, the last time he had really spoken to me was at the wardrobe room in the hotel, when he saw me arrive with Jackie. And then my kids had shown up, and we had all gone our separate ways, and of course he couldn’t confront me, point an angry finger at me, and accuse me of being straight. Whatever; I did not regret the way I had gone, even if Robert probably did.

Whatever his reasons, Robert stayed away, and that made it very difficult to give him technical advice. But I managed to contain my dismay somehow and still gather my share of pastelitas .

And for some other reason, those two days also went by without any progress in catching Kathy’s killer. It seemed impossible, at least to Anderson, but somehow he was no closer to finding his perp than he had been the day he was born. He was still convinced Kathy’s murder had been the work of the same killer, and so it was naturally hard to find any leads. I would have been very glad to lead him to Patrick, especially if I could leave them together underwater, but of course that would be against the rules: Being an Odious Dumbfuck did not make Anderson eligible for my Special Attention. Besides, Patrick did not kill Kathy. And since I really had no interest in finding out who did, I let Anderson flail around in his dull and ignorant fog. I hadn’t really liked Kathy, and it wasn’t my job to bring her killer to justice. And in any case, I was much too busy practicing my lines, and shooting my first two scenes.

My acting seemed to be reasonably well received. At any rate, nobody actually complained, and when I finished the first scene, the one where I told Jackie, “The lab results are back,” she gave me a hug.

“Can you say Emmy?” she said to me, smiling.

“Do they give one for best supporting geek?” I asked her.

“They’ll have to now,” she said.

Even with the strain of waiting for my award, the two days and nights went by rapidly. And then the third day of shooting was upon us.

Wednesday was our first day off the soundstage and out onto the warm and wicked streets of Miami. We were shooting downtown, a few blocks in from Biscayne Boulevard, on a side street that bordered a large parking lot. It was my big scene, too, the one where I, as Ben Webster, shuffled off my mortal coil, and Jackie, as hard-boiled detective Amber Wayne, swore dire vengeance over my cooling corpse.

The streets were cordoned off for several blocks in each direction, and the uniformed cops kept a tighter perimeter than they ever did at a homicide scene. Inside the parking lot, a handful of large, air-conditioned trailers had been set up. One was for all the male cast members, one for female-and one, to my surprise and delight, was dedicated entirely to the individual comfort and well-being of Miss Jackie Forrest-and that meant Dexter’s comfort, too. It was a lovely arrangement, even though Jackie assured me that it was standard practice, one of the tangible perks of being a Leading Lady. It was understood that true artists needed privacy in direct proportion to their salary and their billing on the head credits. But as Jackie’s new boy toy, I was welcome to enjoy a little semiprivacy along with her, and I did not allow any antique notions of solidarity with the working class to hold me back from taking advantage of the lush, cool trailer, nor its well-stocked refrigerator. Instead, I dressed in my Ben Webster costume in the bedroom of Jackie’s trailer, and then lounged on the sofa with a cup of coffee and tried not to feel bad about all the other small-part actors who had been crammed into one trailer all together. Somehow, I managed to live through the crushing guilt, and at around ten thirty in the morning, my call came at last.

A very dark-skinned, very excited young man with a Haitian accent led me to the place on the street where I was scheduled to die. I easily could have found it on my own, since it was ringed by people, vans, and trucks-one with a large generator-as well as cameras, lights, and a blue-and-white-striped canopy where a man I recognized as Victor, the director, sat with a few others perched in high canvas-backed chairs in front of some large flat-screen monitors. Victor did not look up as we walked past. He seemed very busy giving instructions to his peeps. I looked for a megaphone, or a martini shaker-anything that spoke of Hollywood’s hallowed traditions-but there were only walkie-talkies, and a huge paper cup of coffee from a nearby restaurant in each hand.

My young guide led me past the command center, explaining to me breathlessly that he was studying communications right here at Miami-Dade Community College, and his uncle Hercule was driving a scenery truck for the show and got his nephew, himself, Fabian, this fantastic job as a production assistant, which did not pay so much, but was a fantastic experience, and if I would just step over here?

I stepped. Fabian led me to a white open-sided van, where a large man with a shaved head and an ornate mustache sat on the bumper. He stood as we approached, and called out, “This him, Fabian? Brilliant!” Even without the “brilliant,” his accent said he was British. He held out his hand, looming several inches taller than either me or Fabian.

“Hullo, mate,” he said. “Name’s Dickie Larkin. I’ve got to get you all blooded up.”

I shook his hand and Fabian vanished at a half trot. And as Haitian Fabian handed me to British Dickie, I had to wonder: Was I seeing an example of good American jobs stolen away by foreigners?

But Dickie gave me no time to brood over socioeconomic paradigms. He took my elbow and led me to the van’s side door. “Shirt off,” he said, and he leaned into the double doors.

“I just put it on,” I said.

“And now you’ll bloody well have it off,” he said. “Got to get you wired, haven’t I?”

“Oh,” I said. “Have you?”

He turned around holding a wire harness with four small red tubes hanging from it. “I have,” he said. “You can’t die properly without your squibs.”

“I thought a squib was a kind of small chicken,” I said.

“That’d be a squab , laddie boy, and it’s a pigeon.” He held up his strange harness and shook it. “This is a squib. Four of the lovely little buggers.” He held them toward me. “Which I can’t bloody put on you if you don’t take the bloody shirt off.”

“Well, then,” I said, and I pulled my Ben Webster shirt off, feeling a little odd to be standing in the street in a seminaked state. But I would just have to get used to such things; I was an actor now, and my body was my canvas, half bare or not. In any case, Dickie didn’t give it any thought. He went to work, whistling cheerfully, and explaining squibs to me as he put them in place.

“It’s nothing but a small firecracker,” he said. “And a detonator.” He nodded into the van. I tried to peer around him, but he was too big. “I’ve got a little black box,” he said. “Hit the toggle and bang-o! Arms up.”

I put my arms straight up as Dickie ran the harness around my back, and then reached behind him for four small plastic baggies, each one filled with something that looked disturbingly like blood. My face must have shown some slight revulsion, because Dickie shook his head. “It’s fake blood, laddie,” he said. “Guaranteed AIDS-free.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is it, um, messy?”

“No worries,” he said. “You don’t have to clean it up.”

He was right, of course, and that was some small consolation-but I really don’t like blood, and the thought of carrying it next to my skin like that was mildly repulsive. But I clamped down on my feelings with iron-handed professionalism and let Dickie do his job. He placed one of the bags on top of each of the little red tubes. “The squib fires,” he said. “That pops the blood bag, and it looks like you’ve been shot. Cheap and lovely. There,” he said, and he stepped back.