“How can you not want to catch this guy?” I said, and I made a little bit of awkward desperation slide into my voice.
“It’s not my job,” he said. “And it’s not your job, either, Dexter. If you think this guy is going to check into this hotel, tell the cops. They got plenty of guys they can use to stake it out and grab him. You just got you, buddy—and don’t take this wrong, but this could be a little rougher than you are used to.”
“The cops will want to know how I know,” I said, and I regretted it instantly.
And Chutsky picked it up just as quickly. “Okay. So how DO you know?” he said.
There comes a time when even Disingenuous Dexter has to place at least one or two cards faceup on the table, and clearly it had arrived. And so throwing my inborn inhibitions out the window, I said, “He’s stalking me.”
Chutsky blinked. “What does that mean?” he said.
“It means he wants me dead,” I said. “He’s made two tries already.”
“And you think he’s about to try again? At this hotel, The Breakers?”
“Yes.”
“So why don’t you just stay home?” he said.
I am not really being conceited when I say that I am not used to having all the cleverness on the other side of a conversation. But Chutsky was clearly leading in this dance, and Dexter was several steps behind, limping along on two left feet with blisters blossoming on heel and toe. I had walked into this with a very clear picture of Chutsky as a real two-fisted man, even though one of the fists was now a steel hook—but nevertheless the kind of gung-ho, over-the-top, damn-the-torpedoes guy who would leap into battle at the merest suggestion, especially when it concerned getting his hook on the man who had stabbed his true love, my sister Deborah. Clearly, I had miscalculated.
But this left a very large question mark: Who was Chutsky, in fact, and how did I get his help? Did I need some cunning stratagem to bend him to my will, or would I have to resort to some form of the unprecedented uncomfortable unspeakable truth? The very thought of committing honesty made me tremble in every leaf and branch—it went against everything I had ever stood for. But there seemed no way out; I would have to be at least marginally truthful.
“If I stay home,” I said, “he is going to do something terrible. To me, and maybe the kids.”
Chutsky stared at me, then shook his head. “You were making more sense when I thought you wanted revenge,” he said. “How can he do anything to you if you’re at home and he’s in the hotel?”
At a certain point you really have to accept the fact that there are days when you have not brought your A game, and this was one of them. I told myself that I was most likely still suffering from my concussion, but my self answered back that this was a pitiful and now overused excuse at best, and with much more self-annoyance than I could remember experiencing for quite some time, I pulled out the notebook I had taken from Weiss’s car and flipped it open to the full-color drawing of Dexter the Dominator on the front of The Breakers Hotel.
“Like this,” I said. “If he can’t kill me, he’ll get me arrested for murder.”
Chutsky studied the picture for a long moment, and then whistled quietly. “Boy howdy,” he said. “And these things down here around the bottom …?”
“Dead bodies,” I said. “Fixed up like the ones that Deborah was investigating when this man stabbed her.”
“Why would he do this?” he said.
“It’s a kind of art,” I said. “I mean, he thinks it is.”
“Yeah, but why would he do this to YOU, buddy?”
“The guy that was arrested when Deborah was stabbed,” I said. “I kicked him hard, right in the head. That was his boyfriend.”
“Was?” said Chutsky. “Where is he now?”
I have never really seen the point in self-mutilation—after all, life itself is on the job and doing really well at it. But if I could have taken back that word was by biting down hard on my own tongue, I would cheerfully have done so. However, it had been said and I was stuck with it, and so, floundering about for a small chunk of my formerly sharp wit, I found a little piece of it and came out with, “He skipped bail and disappeared,” I said.
“And this guy blames you because his boyfriend took off?”
“I guess so,” I said.
Chutsky looked at me and then looked down at the drawing again. “Listen, buddy,” he said. “You know this guy, and I know you gotta go with your gut feeling. It’s always worked for me, nine times out of ten. But this is, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Kind of, really thin, don’t you think?” He flipped a finger at the picture. “But anyway, you were right about one thing. If he’s going to do this, you do need my help. A lot more than you thought.”
“What do you mean?” I asked politely.
Chutsky smacked the drawing with the back of his hand. “This hotel,” he said. “It isn’t The Breakers. It’s the Hotel Nacional. In Havana.” And seeing that Dexter’s mouth was hanging open in a most unbecoming way, he added, “You know, Havana. The one in Cuba.”
“But that’s not possible,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been there. That’s The Breakers.”