Jeffry Lindsay - Dearly devoted Dexter

I looked at the two small items on the hood of my car. They did not seem particularly menacing to me, but perhaps I could throw one and then hit someone on the head with the other. “No bazooka?” I asked.

“Don’t need it. Just this,” he said. He reached into the gym bag one more time. “And this,” he said, holding out a small steno notebook, flipped open to the first page. It seemed to have a string of numbers and letters on it and a cheap ballpoint was shoved through the spiral.

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” I said.

“This one is,” he said. “Top line is a phone number. Second line is an access code.”

“What am I accessing?”

“You don’t need to know,” he said. “You just call it, punch in the code, and give ’em my cell phone number. They give you a GPS fix on my phone. You come get me.”

“It sounds simple,” I said, wondering if it really was.

“Even for you,” he said.

“Who will I be talking to?”

Doakes just shook his head. “Somebody owes me a favor,” he said, and pulled a handheld police radio out of the bag. “Now the easy part,” he said. He handed me the radio and got back into his car.

Now that we had clearly laid out the bait for Dr. Danco, step two was to get him to a specific place at the right time, and the happy coincidence of Vince Masuoka’s party was too perfect to ignore. For the next few hours we drove around the city in our separate cars and repeated the same message back and forth a couple of times with subtle variations, just to be sure. We had also enlisted a couple of patrol units Doakes said just possibly might not fuck it up. I took that to be his understated wit, but the cops in question did not seem to get the joke and, although they did not actually tremble, they did seem to go a little overboard in anxiously assuring Sergeant Doakes that they would not, in fact, fuck it up. It was wonderful to be working with a man who could inspire such loyalty.

Our little team spent the rest of the day pumping the airwaves full of chatter about my engagement party, giving directions to Vince’s house and reminding people of the time. And just after lunch, our coup de grâce. Sitting in my car in front of a Wendy’s, I used the handheld radio and called Sergeant Doakes one last time for a carefully scripted conversation.

“Sergeant Doakes, this is Dexter, do you copy?”

“This is Doakes,” he said after a slight pause.

“It would mean a lot to me if you could come to my engagement party tonight.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” he said. “This guy is too dangerous.”

“Just come for one drink. In and out,” I wheedled.

“You saw what he did to Manny, and Manny was just a grunt. I’m the one gave this guy to some bad people. He gets his hands on me, what’s he gonna do to me?”

“I’m getting married, Sarge,” I said. I liked the Marvel Comics flavor of calling him Sarge. “That doesn’t happen every day. And he’s not going to try anything with all those cops around.”

There was a long dramatic pause in which I knew Doakes was counting to seven, just as we had written it down. Then the radio crackled again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come by around nine o’clock.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” I said, thrilled to be able to say it again, and just to complete my happiness, I added, “This really means a lot to me. Ten-four.”

“Ten-four,” he said.

Somewhere in the city I hoped that our little radio drama was playing out to our target audience. As he scrubbed up for his surgery, would he pause, cock his head, and listen? As his scanner crackled with the beautiful mellow voice of Sergeant Doakes, perhaps he’d put down a bone saw, wipe his hands, and write the address on a scrap of paper. And then he would go happily back to work-on Kyle Chutsky?-with the inner peace of a man with a job to do and a full social calendar when he was done for the day.

Just to be absolutely sure, our squad-car friends would breathlessly repeat the message a few times, and without fucking it up; that Sergeant Doakes himself would be at the party tonight, live and in person, around nine o’clock.

And for my part, with my work done for a few hours, I headed for Jackson Memorial Hospital to look in on my favorite bird with a broken wing.

Deborah was wrapped in an upper-body cast, sitting in bed in a sixth-floor room with a lovely view of the freeway, and although I was sure they were giving her some kind of painkiller, she did not look at all blissful when I walked into her room. “Goddamn it, Dexter,” she greeted me, “tell them to let me the hell out of here. Or at least give me my clothes so I can leave.”

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, sister dear,” I said. “You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

“I’ll be on my feet the second they give me my goddamn clothes,” she said. “What the hell is going on out there? What have you been doing?”

“Doakes and I have set a rather neat trap, and Doakes is the bait,” I said. “If Dr. Danco bites, we’ll have him tonight at my, um, party. Vince’s party,” I added, and I realized I wanted to distance myself from the whole idea of being engaged and it was a silly way to do it, but I felt better anyway-which apparently brought no comfort to Debs.

“Your engagement party,” she said, and then snarled. “Shit. You got Doakes to set himself up for you.” And I admit it sounded kind of elegant when she said it, but I didn’t want her thinking such things; unhappy people heal slower.

“No, Deborah, seriously,” I said in my best soothing voice. “We’re doing this to catch Dr. Danco.”

She glared at me for a long time and then, amazingly, she sniffled and fought back a tear. “I have to trust you,” she said. “But I hate this. All I can think about is what he’s doing to Kyle.”

“This will work, Debs. We’ll get Kyle back.” And because she was, after all, my sister, I did not add, “or most of him anyway.”

“Christ, I hate being stuck here,” she said. “You need me there for backup.”

“We can handle this, Sis,” I said. “There will be a dozen cops at the party, all armed and dangerous. And I’ll be there, too,” I said, feeling just a little miffed that she so undervalued my presence.

But she continued to do so. “Yeah. And if Doakes gets Danco, we get Kyle back. If Danco gets Doakes, you’re off the hook. Real slick, Dexter. You win either way.”

“That had never occurred to me,” I lied. “My only thought is to serve the greater good. Besides, Doakes is supposed to be very experienced at this sort of thing. And he knows Danco.”

“Goddamn it, Dex, this is killing me. What if-” She broke off and bit her lip. “This better work,” she said. “He’s had Kyle too long.”

“This will work, Deborah,” I said. But neither one of us really believed me.

____________________

The doctors quite firmly insisted on keeping Deborah for twenty-four hours, for observation. And so with a hearty hi-ho to my sister, I galloped off into the sunset, and from there to my apartment for a shower and change of clothes. What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur. After careful consideration I let simple good taste guide me, and selected a lime green Hawaiian shirt covered with red electric guitars and pink hot rods. Simple but elegant. A pair of khaki pants and some running shoes, and I was ready for the ball.

But there was still an hour left before I had to be there, and I found my thoughts turning again to Cody. Was I right about him? If so, how could he deal with his awakening Passenger on his own? He needed my guidance, and I found that I was eager to give it to him.