Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

There was a very long spell of utter silence, and I knocked again, a little more enthusiastically this time. I was about to try a truly rousing salute on the door when it swung open and an exceedingly bleary and mostly naked Manny Borque blinked up at me. “Jesus’ tits,” he croaked. “What time is it?”

“Ten fifteen,” I said brightly. “Practically time for lunch.”

Perhaps he wasn’t really awake, or perhaps he thought it was so funny it was worth saying again, but in any case he repeated himself: “Jesus’ tits.”

“May I come in?” I asked him politely, and he blinked a few more times and then pushed the door open all the way.

“This better be good,” he said, and I followed him in, past the hideous art-thing in his foyer and on to his perch by the window. He hopped up onto his stool, and I sat on the one opposite.

“I need to talk to you about my wedding,” I said, and he shook his head very grumpily and squealed out, “Franky!” There was no answer and he leaned on one tiny hand and tapped the other on the table. “That little bitch had better-Goddamn it, Franky !” he called out in something like a very high-pitched bellow.

A moment later there was a scurrying sound from the back of the apartment, and then a young man came out, pulling a robe closed as he hurried in and brushing back his lank brown hair as he came to a halt in front of Manny. “Hi,” he said. “I mean, you know. Good morning.”

“Get coffee very quickly,” Manny said without looking up at him.

“Um,” Franky said. “Sure. Okay.” He hesitated for half a second, just long enough to give Manny time to fling out his minuscule fist and shriek, “Now, goddamn it!” Franky gulped and lurched away toward the kitchen, and Manny went back to leaning his full eighty-five pounds of towering grumpiness on his fist and closing his eyes with a sigh, as though he were tormented by numberless hordes of truly idiotic demons.

Since it seemed obvious that there could be no possibility of conversation without coffee, I looked out the window and enjoyed the view. There were three large freighters on the horizon, sending up plumes of smoke, and closer in to shore a good scattering of pleasure boats, ranging from the multimillion-dollar playtoys headed for the Bahamas all the way down to a cluster of Windsurfers in close to the beach. A bright yellow kayak was offshore, apparently heading out to meet the freighters. The sun shone, the gulls flew by searching for garbage, and I waited for Manny to receive his transfusion.

There was a shattering crash from the kitchen, and Franky’s muted wail of “Oh, shit .” Manny tried to close his eyes tighter, as if he could seal out all the agony of being surrounded by terrible stupidity. And only a few minutes later, Franky arrived with the coffee service, a silver semi-shapeless pot and three squat stoneware cups, perched on a transparent platter shaped like an artist’s palette.

With trembling hands Franky placed a cup in front of Manny and poured it full. Manny took a tiny sip, sighed heavily without any sense of relief, and opened his eyes at last. “All right,” he said. And turning to Franky, he added, “Go clean up your hideous mess, and if I step on broken glass later, I swear to God I will disembowel you.” Franky stumbled away, and Manny took another microscopic sip before turning his bleary glare on me. “You want to talk about your wedding,” he said as if he couldn’t really believe it.

“That’s right,” I said, and he shook his head.

“A nice-looking man like you,” he said. “Why on earth would you want to get married?”

“I need the tax break,” I said. “Can we talk about the menu?”

“At the crack of dawn, on a Saturday? No,” he said. “It’s a horrible, pointless, primitive ritual,” and I assumed he was talking about the wedding rather than the menu, although with Manny one really couldn’t be sure. “I am truly appalled that anyone would willingly go through with it. But,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, “at least it gives me a chance to experiment.”

“I wonder if it might be possible to experiment a little cheaper.”

“It might be,” he said and for the first time he showed his teeth, but it could only be called a smile if you agree that torturing animals is funny, “but it just won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve already decided what I want to do, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

To be perfectly truthful there were several things I could think of to stop him, but none of them-enjoyable as they might be-would pass the strict guidelines of the Harry Code, and so I could not do them. “I don’t suppose sweet reason would have any effect?” I asked hopefully.

He leered at me. “How sweet did you have in mind?” he said.

“Well, I was going to say please and smile a lot,” I said.

“Not good enough,” he said. “Not by a great deal.”

“Vince said you were guessing five hundred dollars a plate?”

“I don’t guess ,” he snarled. “And I don’t give a shit about counting your fucking pennies.”

“Of course not,” I said, trying to soothe him a bit. “After all, they’re not your pennies.”

“Your girlfriend signed the fucking contract,” he said. “I can charge you anything I fucking feel like.”

“But there must be something I can do to get the price down a little?” I said hopefully.

His snarl loosened into his patented leer again. “Not in a chair,” he said.

“Then what can I do?”

“If you mean what can you do to get me to change my mind, nothing. Not a thing in the world. I have people lined up around the block trying to hire me-I am booked two years in advance, and I am doing you a very large favor.” His leer widened into something almost supernatural. “So prepare yourself for a miracle. And a very hefty bill.”

I stood up. The little gnome was obviously not going to bend in the least, and there was nothing I could do about it. I really wanted to say something like “You haven’t heard the last of me,” but there didn’t seem much point to that either. So I just smiled back, said, “Well then,” and walked out of the apartment. As the door closed behind me, I could hear him, already squealing at Franky, “For Christ’s sake move your big ass and get all that shit off my fucking floor .”

As I walked toward the elevator I felt an icy steel finger brush the back of my neck and for just a moment I felt a faint stirring, as if the Dark Passenger had put one toe in the water and run away after seeing that it was too cold. I stopped dead and slowly looked around me in the hallway.

Nothing. Down at the far end a man was fumbling with the newspaper in front of his door. Otherwise, the hall was empty. I closed my eyes for just a moment. What? I asked. But there was no answer. I was still alone. And unless somebody was glaring at me through a peephole in one of the doors, it had been a false alarm. Or, more likely, wishful thinking.

I got in the elevator and went down.

As the elevator door slid shut the Watcher straightened up, still holding the newspaper from where he had taken it off the mat. It was a good piece of camouflage, and it might work again. He stared down the hall and wondered what was so interesting in that other apartment, but it didn’t really matter. He would find out. Whatever the other had been doing, he would find out.

He counted slowly to ten and then sauntered down the hallway to the apartment the other had visited. It would only take a moment to find out why he had gone in there. And then-