Jeff Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

"No, Debs," I said. "I'm not going to do it."

"You have to, Dex," she said.

"No," I said. "Absolutely not."

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?"

It was quite clear to me that the small talk was not going to stop, so I put a hand on the door and said, "I'm sure I'll be fine. What could possibly go wrong, breaking into a nest of vampires and cannibals who have already kidnapped and murdered several people?"

"Jesus, Dexter," Deborah said, but I felt no mercy.

"After all, I have a cell phone," I said. "If they catch me, I'll threaten to text."

"All right, shit," she said. I pushed the car door open.

"Pop the trunk," I said to her.

She blinked. "What?"

"Open up the trunk of the car," I repeated. She opened her mouth to say something or other, but I was already out of the car and around to the trunk. The release thumped and I opened it, found the tire iron, and slid it into my pocket, pulling my shirt over the protruding handle to hide it. I closed the trunk and stepped around to Deborah's window. She rolled it down.

"Farewell, sis," I said. "Tell Mother I died game."

"For Christ's sake, Dexter," she said, and I crossed the street, leaving her muttering a few syllables of worried profanity.

In truth, I was hoping that it was going to be as simple as Deborah wanted to believe it would be. Getting in would certainly be easy enough for someone of my modest abilities-I had broken into many places, in the pursuit of my innocent hobby, that seemed a great deal more formidable than this one, and most of those were inhabited by real monsters, not these playtime Halloween freaks, with their opera capes and fake teeth. In the light of the morning sun that now poured onto South Beach, it seemed very hard to take their adolescent party games at all seriously.

It was also surprisingly hard to bring the Dark Passenger online. I really needed the soft voice of guidance, the invisible cloak of interior darkness, that only the Passenger could provide, but in spite of the brief flutter of alarm in the club, apparently the snit was not over. I paused on the far side of the street and closed my eyes, placing my hand on a telephone pole and thinking, Hello? Anybody home? Somebody was home, but they still didn't feel like visiting: I felt a slow and silken rustle of wings, as if it were merely recrossing its legs and waiting for something good to happen. Come on, I thought. Still nothing.

I opened my eyes. A truck went by on Ocean Drive, its radio playing salsa music much too loud. But it was the only music I heard. Apparently, I was going to have to do this alone.

All right, then: When the going gets tough and so on. I put my hands in my pockets and started to amble around the building as if I didn't really have anyplace to go and was just gawking. Gee whiz, look at the palm trees. Nothin' like that back in Iowa. Golly.

I strolled around the building one time, looking it over without really seeming to do anything but walk and gawk. As far as I could tell, nobody cared enough to be impressed by my wonderful Innocent Act, but it never hurts to be thorough, so I played tourist for five minutes. The building took up the entire block, and I walked along past all four sides. The vulnerable spot was obvious: In a short and narrow alleyway on the far side of the club's door there was a Dumpster. It stood beside a doorway that obviously led into the club's kitchen. The door was protected from view unless someone stood right in the mouth of the alley.

I pulled my right hand out of my pocket and "accidentally" scattered half a handful of coins onto the sidewalk and, stooping to pick them up, I looked around me in all directions. Unless there was somebody on a rooftop with binoculars, I was not being watched. I left thirty-seven cents on the sidewalk and slid quickly into the alley.

It was much darker in the narrow alley, but that did not encourage the Passenger to start a conversation, and I hurried to the Dumpster all alone. I reached the back door quickly and examined it. It had two dead-bolt locks on it, which was discouraging. I could have opened them both easily enough given a little time and my own set of very special tools, but I had neither, and the tire iron would just not do: The door was out of the question. I would have to get inside by some other, less genteel entryway.