Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

Deborah jumped wildly to one side, then recovered her professional dignity and stepped back in front of Meza, although at a safe distance. “All right,” she said. “We’ll do it here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Meza said, “let’s do it here.” And flipping his finger on the joystick, he made the chair pump a few inches forward and backward several times. “Yeah baby, yeah baby, yeah baby,” he said.

Deborah had clearly lost control of the interview with her suspect, which the cop handbook frowns upon. She jumped off to the side again, completely flustered by Meza’s fake chair sex, and he followed her around in his chair. “Come on, Mama, give it up!” he called in a voice somewhere between a chortle and a wheeze.

I’m sorry if it sounds like I am feeling something, but I sometimes get just a little twinge of sympathy for Deborah, who really does try very hard. And so, as Meza whirled his chair in a stuttering arc of minilurches at Debs, I stepped behind him, leaned down to the back of his chair, and pulled the power cable off the batteries. The whine of the engine stopped, the chair thumped to a halt, and the only remaining sounds were a siren in the distance and the small clatter of Meza’s finger rattling against the joystick.

At its best, Miami is a city of two cultures and two languages, and those of us who immerse ourselves in both have learned that a different culture can teach us many new and wonderful things. I have always embraced this concept, and it paid off now, as Meza proved to be wonderfully creative in both Spanish and English. He ran through an impressive list of standards, and then his artistic side took full flower and he called me things that had never before existed, except possibly in a parallel universe designed by Hieronymus Bosch. The performance took on an added air of supernatural improbability because Meza’s voice was so weak and husky, but he never allowed that to slow him. I was frankly awed, and Deborah seemed to be, too, because we both simply stood and listened until Meza finally wore down and tapered off with, “Cocksucker.”

I stepped around in front and stood beside Debs. “Don’t say that,” I said, and he just glared at me. “It’s so pedestrian, and you’re much better than that. What was that part, ‘ turd-sucking bag of possum vomit’? Wonderful.” And I gave him his due with some light applause.

“Plug me in, pedo de puta,” he said. “We see how funny you are then.”

“And have you run us over with that sporty SUV of yours?” I said. “No thanks.”

Deborah lurched up out of her stunned appreciation of the performance and back into her alpha role. She pushed me to one side and resumed her stone-faced staring at Meza. “Mr. Meza, we need you to answer a couple of questions, and if you refuse to cooperate, I will take you down to the station and ask them there.”

“Do it, cunt,” he said. “My lawyer would love that.”

“We could just leave him like this,” I suggested. “Until someone comes along and steals him to sell for scrap metal.”

“Plug me in, you sack of lizard pus.”

“He’s repeating himself,” I said to Deborah. “I think we’re wearing him down.”

“Did you threaten to kill the director of the Tourist Board?” Deborah asked.

Meza started to cry. It was not a pretty sight; his head flopped nervelessly to one side and mucus drooled from his mouth and nose, joined the tears, and began to march across his face. “Bastards,” he said. “They shoulda killed ME.” He snuffled so weakly that it had no effect at all except for the thin wet noise it made. “Looka me, looka what they done,” he said in his hoarse, husky voice, a croak with no edge to it.

“What did they do to you, Mr. Meza?” Debs said.

“Looka me,” he snuffled. “They did this. Looka me. I live in this chingado chair, can’t even pee without some maricón nurse to hold my dick.” He looked up, a little defiance once again showing through the mucus. “Woun’t you wanna kill those puercos, too?” he said.

“You say they did this to you?” Debs said.

He sniffled again. “Happened on the job,” he said a little defensively. “I was on the clock, but they said no, car accident, they don’t pay for it. And then they fire me.”

Deborah opened her mouth, and then closed it again with an audible click. I think she had been about to say something like, “Where were you last night between the hours of three-thirty and five,” and it occurred to her that he had most likely been right here in his powered chair. But Meza was sharp if nothing else, and he had noticed, too.

“What,” he said, snuffling mightily and actually moving a small stream of mucus, ever so slightly. “Somebody finally killed one of those chingado maricones? And you don’t think it could be me ’cause I’m in this chair? Bitch, you plug me in, I show you how easy I kill somebody piss me off.”

“Which maricón did you kill?” I asked him, and Deborah elbowed me, even though she still had nothing to say.

“Whichever one is dead, motherfucker,” he wheezed at me. “I hope it’s that cocksucker Jo Anne, but fuck, I kill them all before I finish.”

“Mr. Meza,” Deborah said, and there was a slight hesitation in her voice that might have been sympathy in somebody else; in Debs, it was disappointment at realizing that this poor blob of stuff was not her suspect. And once again, Meza picked up on it and went on the attack.

“Yeah, I did it,” he said. “Cuff me, cunt. Chain me to the floor in the backseat with the dogs. Whatsa matter, you afraid I’ll die on you? Do it, bitch. Or I kill you like I kilt those asshole suckers at the board.”

“Nobody killed the board,” I said.

He glared at me. “No?” he said. His head swiveled back to Deborah, mucus flashing in the sunlight. “Then what the fuck you harassing me for, shit pig?”

Deborah hesitated, then tried one last time. “Mr. Meza,” she said.

“Fuck you, get the fuck off my porch,” Meza said.

“It seems like a good idea, Debs,” I said.