Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

WE GOT BACK TO OUR ROOM WITHOUT INCIDENT AND with no more than a dozen words between the two of us. Chutsky’s lack of wordiness was proving to be a really charming personality trait, since the less he talked, the less I had to pretend I was interested, and it saved wear on my facial muscles. And in fact, the few words he did say were so pleasant and winning that I was almost ready to like him. “Lemme put this in the room,” he said, holding up the briefcase. “Then we’ll think about dinner.” Wise and welcome words; since I would not be out in the wonderful dark light of the moon tonight, dinner would be a very acceptable substitute.

We took the elevator up and strolled down the hall to the room, and when we got inside, Chutsky put the briefcase carefully on the bed and sat beside it, and it occurred to me that he had brought it with us to the rooftop bar for no reason I could see, and was now being rather careful of it. Since curiosity is one of my few flaws, I decided to indulge it and find out why.

“What’s so important about the maracas?” I asked him.

He smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “Not a single damn thing.”

“Then why are you carrying them all over Havana?”

He held the briefcase down with his hook and opened it with his hand. “Because,” he said, “they’re not maracas anymore.” And sliding his hand into the briefcase, he pulled out a very serious-looking automatic pistol. “Hey, presto,” he said.

I thought of Chutsky lugging the briefcase all over town to meet Ee-bangh, who then came in with an identical briefcase—both of which were shoved under the table while we all sat and listened to “Guantanamera.”

“You arranged to switch briefcases with your friend,” I said.

“Bingo.”

It does not rank among the smartest things I ever said, but I was surprised, and what came out of my mouth was “But what’s it for?”

Chutsky gave me such a warm, tolerant, patronizing smile that I would gladly have turned the pistol on him and pulled the trigger. “It’s a pistol, buddy,” he said. “What do you think it’s for?”

“Um, self-defense?” I said.

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“You do remember why we came here, right?” he said.

“To find Brandon Weiss,” I said.

“FIND him?” Chutsky demanded. “Is that what you’re telling yourself? We’re going to FIND him?” He shook his head. “We’re here to kill him, buddy. You need to get that straight in your head. We can’t just find him, we have to put him down. We’ve got to kill him. What’d you think we were going to do? Bring him home with us and give him to the zoo?”

“I guess I thought that sort of thing was frowned on here,” I said. “I mean, this isn’t Miami, you know.”

“It isn’t Disneyland, either,” he said, unnecessarily, I thought. “This isn’t a picnic, buddy. We’re here to kill this guy, and the sooner you get used to that idea the better.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“There ain’t no but,” he said. “We’re gonna kill him. I can see you have a problem with that.”

“Not at all,” I said.

He apparently didn’t hear me—either that or he was already launched into a preexisting lecture and couldn’t stop himself. “You can’t be squeamish about a little blood,” he went on. “It’s perfectly natural. We all grow up hearing that killing is wrong.”

It kind of depends on who, I thought, but did not say.

“But the rules are made by people who couldn’t win without ’em. And anyway, killing isn’t always wrong, buddy,” he said, and oddly enough he winked. “Sometimes it’s something you have to do. And sometimes, it’s somebody who deserves it. Because either a whole lot of other people will die if you don’t do it, or maybe it’s, get him before he gets you. And in this case—it’s both, right?”

And although it was very odd to hear this rough version of my lifelong creed from my sister’s boyfriend, sitting on the bed in a hotel room in Havana, it once again made me appreciate Harry, both for being ahead of his time and also for being able to say all this in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was cheating at Solitaire. But I still couldn’t warm to the idea of using a gun. It just seemed wrong, like washing your socks in the baptismal font at church.

But Chutsky was apparently very pleased with himself. “Walther, nine-millimeter. Very nice weapons.” He nodded and reached into the briefcase again and pulled out a second pistol. “One for each of us,” he said. He flipped one of the guns to me and I caught it reflexively “Think you can pull the trigger?”

I do know which end of a pistol to hold on to, whatever Chutsky might think. After all, I grew up in a cop’s house, and I worked with cops every day. I just didn’t like the things—they are so impersonal, and they lack real elegance. But he had thrown it at me as something of a challenge, and on top of everything else that had happened, I was not about to ignore it. So I ejected the clip, worked the action one time, and held it out in the firing position, just like Harry had taught me. “Very nice,” I said. “Would you like me to shoot the television?”

“Save it for the bad guy,” Chutsky said. “If you think you can do it.”

I tossed the gun on the bed beside him. “Is that really your plan?” I asked him. “We wait for Weiss to check in to the hotel and then play O.K. Corral with him? In the lobby, or at breakfast?”

Chutsky shook his head sadly, as if he had tried and failed to teach me how to tie my shoes. “Buddy, we don’t know when this guy is going to turn up, and we don’t know what he’s going to do. He may even spot us first.” He raised both eyebrows at me, as if to say, Ha—didn’t think of that, did you?