Jeff Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

"I think this is it," I said, trying to sound like David Caruso.

Deborah just gave me a quick and mean look and opened the door.

The receptionist was a very thin African-American man with a shaved head and dozens of piercings in his ears, eyebrows, and nose. He was wearing raspberry-colored scrubs and a gold necklace. A sign on his desk said, LLOYD. He looked up as we entered, smiled brightly, and said, "Hi! Can I help you?" in a way that sounded like, Let's start the party!

Deborah held up her badge and said, "I'm Sergeant Morgan, Miami-Dade Police. I need to see Dr. Lonoff."

Lloyd's smile got even bigger. "He's with a patient right now. Can you wait just a couple of minutes?"

"No," Deborah said. "I need to see him now."

Lloyd looked a bit uncertain, but he didn't stop smiling. His teeth were large, very white, and perfectly shaped. If Dr. Lonoff had done Lloyd's teeth, he did really good work. "Can you tell me what this is about?" he said.

"It's about me coming back with a warrant to look at his drug register if he isn't out here in thirty seconds," Deborah said.

Lloyd licked his lips, hesitated for two seconds, and then got to his feet. "I'll tell him you're here," he said, and he vanished around a curved wall and into the back of the office.

Dr. Lonoff beat the thirty-second deadline by a full two seconds. He came huffing around the curved wall, wiping his hands on a paper towel and looking frazzled. "What the hell are you-What's this about my drug register?"

Deborah just watched him as he skidded to a stop in front of her. He seemed young for a dentist, maybe thirty, and in all honesty he looked a little too buff, too, as though he had been pumping iron when he should have been filling cavities.

Deborah must have thought so, too. She looked him over from head to toe and said, "Are you Dr. Lonoff?"

"Yes, I am," he said, still a little huffish. "Who the hell are you?"

Once again Deborah held up her badge. "Sergeant Morgan, Miami-Dade Police. I need to ask you about one of your patients."

"What you need to do," he said with a great deal of medical authority, "is to stop playing storm trooper and tell me what this is about. I have a patient in the chair."

I saw Deborah's jaw stiffen, and knowing her as well as I did I braced myself for a round or two of tough talk; she would refuse to tell him anything, since it was police business, and he would refuse to let her at his records, because doctor-patient records were confidential, and they would go back and forth until all the high cards were played, and meanwhile I would have to watch and wonder why we couldn't just cut to the chase and break for lunch.

I was just about to find a chair and curl up with a copy of Golf Digest to wait it out-but Deborah surprised me. She took a deep breath and said, "Doctor, I got two young girls missing, and the only lead I have is a guy with his teeth fixed so he looks like a vampire." She breathed again and held his eye. "I need some help."

If the ceiling had melted away to reveal a choir of angels singing "Achy Breaky Heart," I could not have been more surprised. For Deborah to open up and look vulnerable like this was completely unheard-of, and I wondered if I should help her find professional counseling. Dr. Lonoff seemed to think so, too. He blinked at her for several long seconds, and then glanced at Lloyd.

"I'm not supposed to," he said, looking even younger than his thirty or so years. "The records are confidential."

"I know that," Deborah said.

"Vampire?" Lonoff said, and he peeled his own lips back and pointed. "Like here? The canines?"

"That's right," Deborah said. "Like fangs."

"It's a special crown," Lonoff said happily. "I have them made by a guy in Mexico, a real artist. Then it's just a standard crown procedure, and the result is pretty impressive, I gotta say."

"You've done that to a lot of guys?" Deborah said, sounding a bit surprised.

He shook his head. "I've done about two dozen," he said.

"A young guy," Deborah said. "Probably not more than twenty years old."

Dr. Lonoff pursed his lips and thought. "Maybe three or four of those," he said.

"He calls himself Vlad," Deborah said.

Lonoff smiled and shook his head. "Nobody by that name," he said. "But I wouldn't be surprised if they all call themselves that. I mean, it's a kind of popular name with that crowd."

"Is it really a crowd?" I blurted out. The idea of a large number of vampires in Miami, whether actual or fake, was a little bit alarming-even if only for aesthetic reasons. I mean, really: all those black clothes? So very New York-last year.

"Yeah," Lonoff said. "There's quite a few of them. They don't all want their fangs done," he said with regret, and then he shrugged. "Still. They have their clubs, and raves, and so on. It's quite a scene."

"I only need to find one of them," Deborah said with a little bit of her old impatience.

Lonoff looked at her, nodded, and unconsciously flexed his neck muscles. His shirt collar didn't quite pop. He pushed his lips out and then in, and, suddenly reaching a decision, he said, "Lloyd, help them find that in the billing records."

"You got it, Doctor," Lloyd said.

Lonoff held out his hand toward Deborah. "Good luck, ah-Sergeant?"

"That's right," Deborah said, shaking his hand.

Dr. Lonoff held on a little too long, and just when I thought Debs would yank away her hand, he smiled and added, "You know, I could fix that overbite for you."

"Thanks," Debs said, pulling her hand away. "I kind of like it."

"Uh-huh," Lonoff said. "Well, then…" He put a hand on Lloyd's shoulder and said, "Help them out. I've got a patient waiting." And with a last longing look at Deborah's overbite, he turned around and disappeared into the back room again.

"It's over here," Lloyd said. "On the computer." He pointed to the desk he'd been sitting at when we came in, and we followed him over.

"I'm going to need some parameters," he said. Deborah blinked and looked at me, as if the word were in a foreign language-which I suppose it was, to her, since she did not speak computer. So once again, I stepped into the awkward void and saved her.

"Under twenty-four," I said. "Male. Pointy canine teeth."

"Cool," Lloyd said, and he hammered at the keyboard for a few moments. Deborah watched impatiently. I turned away and looked at the far side of the waiting room. A large saltwater fish tank sat on a stand in the corner next to a magazine rack. It looked a little crowded to me, but maybe the fish liked it that way.

"Gotcha," Lloyd said, and I turned around in time to see a sheet of paper come whirring out of the printer. Lloyd grabbed it and held it out to Debs, who snatched it and glared at it. "There's just four names," Lloyd said with a touch of the same regret Dr. Lonoff had shown, and I wondered if he got a commission on the fangs.

"Crap," said Deborah, still looking at the list.

"Why crap?" I said. "Did you want more names?"

She flicked the paper with a finger. "First name on here," she said. "Does the name Acosta mean anything to you?"

I nodded. "It means trouble," I said. Joe Acosta was a major figure in the city government, a sort of old-school commissioner who still carried the kind of clout you might have found fifty years ago in Chicago. If our Vlad was his son, we might be in for a fecal shower. "Different Acosta?" I asked hopefully.

Deborah shook her head. "Same address," she said. "Shit."

"Maybe it's not him," Lloyd said helpfully, and Debs looked up at him, just for a second, but his bright smile vanished as if she'd hit him in the crotch.

"Come on," she said to me, and she whirled away toward the door.

"Thanks for your help," I told Lloyd, but he just nodded, one time, as if Debs had sucked all the joy out of his life.