Deborah continued to regard her with one eyebrow raised, and then at last she started to shake her head. “Well, shit, who’da thunk it,” she said softly, but before she could complete what must have been a very interesting thought, her desk phone buzzed loudly, and she turned away to grab it up. “Morgan,” she said into the receiver. She looked over at me, and then said, “Yeah, I just saw him. I’ll send him right down.” She hung up the phone and gave me a mean little smile. “Robert,” she said. “He’s lonely.” She jerked her head toward the hall door. “Git,” she said.
It didn’t seem quite right that babysitting a somewhat spoiled actor should take my time when there was a killer to catch—especially when it was a killer whose vulgar, pedestrian efforts were giving the craft a bad name—but life in the workforce seldom actually makes sense for the foot soldiers, and my nonsense job was to be with Robert. I gitted.
Robert was right where I’d left him, in the lab. But he was no longer alone. Standing beside him was a pudgy African American man in his mid-thirties, with a shaved head and large horn-rimmed glasses. He had five or six gold and diamond piercings in his left ear, and he wore a worn black T-shirt that said METALLICA in ornate letters, and a pair of baggy, faded madras shorts that hung down much too low. I looked at him, and he looked back blankly. Robert saved us all from what might have been a very awkward social situation by shouting out, “Hey! Jesus, that must have been the dump from hell, huh?”
I am known far and wide for my sophisticated poise and ready banter, but I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and on top of the difficulty of having a stranger in my space, I’m afraid it had me momentarily at a loss. I just stared at Robert and muttered something like, “Oh, well, you know,” before I remembered that my excuse for leaving him had been gastric difficulty. “Actually,” I amended, “I got kind of sidetracked.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Robert said. “Just kidding. Hey! Look who’s here!” And he nudged the other man forward a step.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, who?”
The African American man rolled his eyes, but Robert said, “He’s just kidding, Renny. Dexter Morgan, this is Renny Boudreaux!”
He pronounced it “boo-drow,” and since I am a man of the world and recognize a French name when I hear one, I nodded to him and said, “Enchanté, m’sieu.”
Boudreaux stared at me and then, with a look of wonder on his face, he said, “Is that French?! Goddamn, you are smooth. I like that. French, that’s— Tell me, Dexter, you ever fuck a black man?”
I really wanted to believe I had misheard him, but he’d said it so loud and clear that there could be no mistake. So I just shook my head and said, “Not yet, no. But the day is young.”
Robert shouted with laughter, but Renny just nodded as if we were having a real conversation, and said, “Uh-huh. Well, you ain’t gonna start with me, motherfucker. So you put your goddamn French back up your ass where it belongs.” He shook his head, eyeing me warily, and said, “French. Shit.”
I have always felt that the Art of Conversation is best served when all the parties involved have some vague idea of what they are talking about, and in this case, I had been left out of the loop. I was beginning to feel like I had wandered into some kind of Surrealist Performance piece—maybe one of those that tries to provoke the audience to some extreme reaction. But at least Robert seemed to be having a good time. He laughed again, a loud and brassy laugh that didn’t sound quite sane, and he pushed Renny toward me one more time.
“Renny is playing Aaron Crait, my forensics sidekick,” Robert said. “You know, in the show.” He winked and added, “Kinda l
ike you and Vince, right?”
I had never thought of myself as having a sidekick at all, and if I did it would certainly not be someone like Vince, and suddenly to think of him in that role took me even further aback. But Robert gave me no time to ponder that uncomfortable relationship; he plowed right on cheerfully.
“Renny hit town this morning and I told him to swing by, ’cause I thought you wouldn’t mind giving him a crash course in forensics, right?” Possibly my mouth was still hanging open, because Robert suddenly looked a little uncomfortable, even a little anxious. “Um, you don’t mind, do you, Dexter?” he said. “Because it’s, you know, I thought it was important. That, you know, we’re all on the same page … So we get it right.” He lowered his voice and spoke confidentially, almost pleadingly. “Just a couple of hours, this afternoon …?”
“Well, I suppose,” I said. I was, after all, required to be at the beck and call of Big Ticket Network in general and Robert in person, and a few hours spent instructing Renny probably wouldn’t hurt.
“Thanks, that’s great, right, Renny?” He winked again, and added, “You’ve probably seen Renny on Leno or something.”
“I don’t watch Leno,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t blame you,” Robert said. “Anyway, Renny does stand-up comedy when he’s not acting.”
“Motherfucker, I told you twice!” Renny said, glaring at Robert, and I couldn’t tell whether he was actually angry. “I don’t do comedy—I do Social Commentary!” He shook his head and looked back at me. “God made this man so pretty ’cause he’s so fucking dumb,” he told me.
“Oh, I thought I was the only one who noticed,” I said, and Robert gave another of his awful shouts of laughter.
“Which part you notice, the dumb?” Renny said. “Or just the pretty—he hit on you yet, Dexter?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Is he likely to?”
“I ain’t sayin’,” Renny said. “But if he ask you to take a shower—”
“Take a rain check?” I said.
“No, dummy. Don’t drop the soap,” Renny said.
“Ha!” Robert cawed. “This is great; I knew you two would hit it off,” he said. And since I now knew that Renny and I were hitting it off, I knew exactly the right thing to do in the situation. I stepped forward and took his hand.
“Anyway—very pleased to meet you, Renny,” I said.
Renny stared for a moment, and then took my hand, and as he did he met my eyes, and time faltered into a slow and shadowed crawl—