Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

Great, Deborah said. There must be a million of those in Miami.

And they all sell tacos, Vince said very helpfully. I mean, yuck.

Deborah looked at him. You re a total fucking idiot, you know that? she said.

No, I didn t know that, Vince said cheerfully.

Why tacos? Duarte said. I mean, who eats fucking tacos? I mean, come on.

Maybe he couldn t find empanadas, I said.

He looked at me blankly. Empa-what? he said.

Can you find out where it came from? Debs said.

You know, like analyze the spices or something?

Debs, for God s sake, I said. It s just a taco. They re all pretty much the same.

No, they re not, Deborah said. These tacos got a cop killed.

Killer tacos, Vince said. I like that.

Maybe it s a hangout, I said, and Deborah looked at me expectantly. I shrugged. You know, sometimes word gets around, like the burgers are great at Manny s, or the medianoche at Hidalgo is the best in town, or whatever.

Yeah, but these are tacos, Vince said. I mean seriously.

All right, so maybe they re cheap, I said. Or the girl who makes them is wearing a string bikini.

I know a lunch wagon they do that, Duarte said.

This very nice-looking woman, she wears a bikini? They go around to construction sites, and she does big business, believe me. Just from showing her boobs.

I can t believe you assholes, Debs said.

Why does it always end up about tits?

Not always. Sometimes it s ass, Vince said, cleverly bringing ass back into the conversation one more time. I began to wonder if there was a hidden camera, with a smirking game-show host handing out a prize every time we used the word.

We could ask around, Duarte said. See if any of the other detectives are talking about a great taco place.

Or great tits, Vince said.

Deborah ignored him, which should have made him grateful. Find out what you can from the wrapper, she said, and then she turned away and hustled out of the room. Duarte straightened up, nodded at us, and followed her out.

I watched them go. Vince blinked at me, and then bustled out of the room, mumbling something about reagent, and for a moment I just sat there. My shirt still felt damp, and I was very peeved with Camilla Figg. She had been standing right behind me, much too close for safety, and I could think of no reason for that kind of proximity. Even worse, I really should have known it when somebody got that near to my exposed back. It could have been a drug lord with an Uzi, or a crazed gardener with a machete, or almost anything else as lethal as a cup of that wretched coffee. Where was the Passenger when you really needed him? And now I was sitting in a chilly lab wearing a wet shirt, and I was pretty sure that would not help my already fragile health. Just to underline the point, I felt a sneeze coming on, and I barely got a paper towel up to my nose before it erupted. Cold pills bah, humbug. They were worthless, like everything else in this miserable world.

Just before I melted into a dripping heap of mucus and self-pity, I thought of the clean shirt hanging behind my desk. I always kept one on hand in case of a work-related accident. I took it off the hanger and put it on, tucking the damp, coffee-spattered shirt into a plastic grocery bag to take home. It was a nice shirt, a beige guayabera with silver guitars on the hem. Perhaps Rita would know a magic trick to get the stains out.

Vince was already back in the lab when I returned, and we went right to work. And we really tried our very best. We ran every test we could think of, visual, chemical, and electronic, and found nothing that would bring a smile to my sister s face. Deborah called us three times, which for her showed wonderful self-control. There was really nothing to tell her. I thought it was very likely that the wrapper held a taco and came from a lunch wagon, but I certainly couldn t have sworn to it in a court of law.

At around noon the cold pills wore off and I began to sneeze again. I tried to ignore it, but it s very difficult to do really high-quality lab work while holding a paper towel to your nose, so I finally gave up. I have to get out of here, I said to Vince. Before I blow my nose all over the evidence.

It couldn t hurt the tacos, he said.

I went to lunch alone, at a Thai restaurant over by the airport. It s not that looking at old taco wrappers had made me hungry, but I have always believed that a large bowl of spicy Thai soup fights a cold better than anything else, and by the time I finished my soup I could feel my system sweating out the unhealthy molecules, forcing the cold out through my pores and back into the Miami ecosphere where it belonged. I actually felt a great deal better, which made me leave a tip that was slightly too large. But as I walked out the door and into the afternoon heat, the entire front of my skull exploded with an enormous sneeze, and the accompanying ache kicked at my skeletal system as if someone was tightening vise grips on all my joints.

Happiness is an illusion and sometimes so is Thai soup. I gave up and stopped at a drugstore to buy more cold pills. This time I took three of them, and by the time I got back to the office the throbbing in my nose and my bones had subsided a little bit. Whether it was the cold pills or the soup, I began to feel like I might be able to handle any routine pain the day might throw at me. And because I was more or less prepared for something unpleasant to happen, it didn t.

The rest of the afternoon was completely uneventful. We worked on, using all our massive skill on what was really rather flimsy evidence. But by the end of the day, the only thing I d found out was that Masuoka disliked all Mexican food, not just tacos. If I eat that stuff, I get really bad gas, he told me. Which really has a negative impact on my social life.

I didn t know you had one, I said. I had the crumb from the taco shell under a microscope in the vain hope of finding some tiny clue, while Vince was examining a grease spot on the wrapper.

Of course I have a social life, he said. I party almost every night. I found a hair.

What kind of party is that? I said.

No, there s a hair in the grease, he said. For partying, I shave all over.

Way too much information, I said. Is it human?

Yeah, sure, he said. A lot of people shave.

The hair, I said. Is it a human hair?

He frowned into his microscope. I m gonna guess rodent, he said. Another reason I don t eat Mexican food.

Vince, I said, rat hair is not a Mexican spice. It s because this came from a sleazy lunch wagon.

Hey, I don t know; you re the foodie, he said. I like to eat someplace where they have chairs.

I ve never eaten one, I said. Anything else?

Tables are nice, he said. And real silverware.

Anything else in the grease, I said, winning a very tough struggle against the urge to push my thumbs deep into his eye sockets.

Vince shrugged. It s just grease, he said.

I had no better luck with the taco crumb. There was simply nothing there to find, except that it was made of processed corn and contained several inorganic chemicals, probably preservatives. We did every test we could do on-site without destroying the wrapper and found nothing significant. Vince s verbal wit did not leap magically to a higher level, either, and so by quitting time my mood had not really burbled up into steady good cheer. If anything, I felt even meaner than I had that morning. I fended off one last telephone attack from Deborah, locked up the evidence, and headed for the door.

Don t you want to go for tacos? Vince called as I hit the door.

Go jump up your ass, I said. After all, if there really was a prize for saying ass, I deserved a shot at it.

I drove home through the usual rush-hour traffic, a nerve-jangling crawl of aggressive lane jumping and near collisions. A pickup truck was on fire on the shoulder of the Palmetto Expressway. A shirtless man in jeans and a battered cowboy hat stood beside it, looking almost bored. He had a large tattoo of an eagle on his back and a cigarette in one hand. Everyone slowed to look at the smoldering pickup, and behind me I could hear a fire truck, siren shrieking and horn blasting as it tried to get through the dawdling gawkers. As I edged past the burning truck my nose began to drip again, and by the time I got home some twenty minutes later, I was sneezing, one good skull-splitting blast every minute or so.