“What kind of stuff?” I asked. Chutsky looked at me for a long time, or anyway his sunglasses did. He tapped on the 9 2
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table with that silly pinkie ring and the sunlight flashed off the large diamond in the center. When he finally spoke it felt like the temperature at our table had dropped ten degrees.
“Buddy,” he said, “I don’t want to cause you any trouble, but you have to let go of this. Back off. Find a different hobby.
Or else you are in a world of shit—and you will get flushed.”
The waiter materialized at Kyle’s elbow before I could think of something wonderful to say to that. Chutsky kept the sunglasses turned toward me for a long moment. Then he handed the menu to the waiter. “The bouillabaisse is really good here,” he said.
Deborah disappeared for the rest of the week, which did very little for my self-esteem, because no matter how terrible it was for me to admit it, without her help I was stuck. I could not come up with any sort of alternative plan for ditching Doakes.
He was still there, parked under the tree across from my apartment, following me to Rita’s house, and I had no answers. My once-proud brain chased its tail and caught nothing but air.
I could feel the Dark Passenger roiling and whimpering and struggling to climb out and take the steering wheel, but there was Doakes looming up through the windshield, forcing me to clamp down and reach for another can of beer. I had worked too hard and too long to achieve my perfect little life and I was not going to ruin it now. The Passenger and I could wait a bit longer. Harry had taught me discipline, and that would have to see me through to happier days.
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“Patience,” Harry said. He paused to cough into a Kleenex.
“Patient is more important than smart, Dex. You’re already smart.”
“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it politely, really, because I was not at all comfortable sitting there in Harry’s hospital room. The smell of medicine and disinfectant and urine mixed with the air of restrained suffering and clinical death made me wish I was almost anywhere else. Of course, as a cal-low young monster, I never wondered if Harry might not feel the same.
“In your case, you have to be more patient, because you’ll be thinking you’re clever enough to get away with it,” he said.
“You’re not. Nobody is.” He paused to cough again, and this time it took longer and seemed to go deeper. To see Harry like this—indestructible, supercop, foster-father Harry, shaking, turning red and weepy-eyed from the strain—was almost too much. I had to look away. When I looked back a moment later, Harry was watching me again.
“I know you, Dexter. Better than you know yourself.” And this was easy to believe until he followed up with, “You’re ba-sically a good guy.”
“No I’m not,” I said, thinking of the wonderful things I had not yet been allowed to do; even wanting to do them pretty much ruled out any kind of association with goodness. There was also the fact that most of the other pimple-headed hormone-churning twinkies my age who were considered good guys were no more like me than an orangutan was. But Harry wouldn’t hear it.
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“Yes, you are,” he said. “And you have to believe that you are. Your heart is pretty much in the right place, Dex,” he said, and with that he collapsed into a truly epic fit of coughing. It lasted for what seemed like several minutes, and then he leaned weakly back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again they were steely Harry blue, brighter than ever in the pale green of his dying face. “Patience,” he said. And he made it sound strong, in spite of the terrible pain and weakness he must have felt.
“You still have a long way to go, and I don’t have a whole lot of time, Dexter.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. He closed his eyes.
“That’s just what I mean,” he said. “You’re supposed to say no, don’t worry, you have plenty of time.”
“But you don’t,” I said, not sure where this was going.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “But people pretend. To make me feel better about it.”
“Would you feel better?”
“No,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “But you can’t use logic on human behavior. You have to be patient, watch and learn. Otherwise, you screw up. Get caught and . . . Half my legacy.” He closed his eyes again and I could hear the strain in his voice. “Your sister will be a good cop. You,” he smiled slowly, a little sadly, “you will be something else. Real justice. But only if you’re patient. If your chance isn’t there, Dexter, wait until it is.”
It all seemed so overwhelming to an eighteen-year-old ap-prentice monster. All I wanted was to do The Thing, very simple really, just go dancing in the moonlight with the bright blade flowing free—such an easy thing, so natural and D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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