Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

He winked at me. “Meet a friend,” he said, and he would say no more. He picked up his new briefcase and headed out the door. So even though it was a little bit disturbing to be winked at, I had no real choice, and I followed meekly along out of the room, out the hotel’s side door again, and into a waiting taxi.

The streets of Havana were even busier in the fading light. I rolled down my window to see, hear, and smell the city, and was rewarded by an ever-changing but never-stopping surge of music, seemingly coming from every door and window we passed, as well as from the many groups of musicians clustered on the street. Their song rose and fell and mutated as we drove through the city, but somehow it always seemed to come back to the chorus of “Guantanamera.”

The cab followed a tortured path over rough cobbled streets, always through crowds of people singing, selling things, and, strangely, playing baseball. I lost all sense of direction very quickly, and by the time the cab stopped at a barrier of large iron globes in the middle of the road, I had no idea what direction we had come from. So I followed Chutsky up a side street, through a plaza, and into an intersection in front of what seemed to be a hotel. It was bright orange pink in the light of the setting sun, and Chutsky led me in, past a piano bar and a number of tables spread with pictures of Ernest Hemingway that looked like they’d been painted by elementary school children.

Beyond these was an old-fashioned elevator cage at the far end of the lobby, and we went over to it and Chutsky rang the bell. As we waited I looked around me. Off to one side was a row of shelves containing merchandise of some kind and I wandered over for a look. There were ashtrays, mugs, and other items, all containing a likeness of Ernest Hemingway, in this case done by someone a bit more skillful than the grade school artists.

The elevator arrived and I walked back to get in. A massive gray iron gate slid open to reveal the inside, complete with a grim old man operating the controls. Chutsky and I got in. A few more people crowded in with us before the operator slid the iron gate shut and cranked the handle into the up position. The cage lurched and we began to move slowly upward, until we reached the fifth floor. Then the elevator operator yanked the handle and we thumped to a stop. “The room of Hemingway,” he said. He pulled the gate open and the rest of the people on board skittered out. I glanced at Chutsky, but he shook his head and pointed up, so I stood and waited until the gate slid shut again and we jerked our way up two more flights before staggering to a halt. The man slid the gate open and we stepped gratefully out into a small room, really no more than a roof over the elevator and the top of a flight of stairs. I could hear music playing nearby, and Chutsky, with a wave of his hand, led me out onto the r

oof and toward the music.

A trio was playing a song about ojos verdes as we walked around a trellis to where the musicians were set up, three men in white pants and guayaberas. A bar was against the wall beyond them, and on the other two sides there was just the city of Havana spread out below us in the orange light of the setting sun.

Chutsky led the way to a low table with a cluster of easy chairs around it and he nudged his briefcase under the table as we sat down. “Pretty nice view, huh?” he said.

“Very pretty,” I said. “Is that why we came here?”

“No, I told you,” he said. “We’re gonna meet a friend.”

And whether he was kidding me or not, that was apparently all he was going to say on the subject. In any case, the waiter appeared at our table at that point. “Two mojitos,” Chutsky said.

“Actually, I think I’ll stick to beer,” I said, remembering my mojito-induced nap a little earlier.

Chutsky shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Try a Crystal, it’s pretty good.”

I nodded at the waiter; if I could trust Chutsky for anything at all, I was pretty sure it would be beer selection. The waiter nodded back and went to the bar to get our drinks and the trio launched into “Guantanamera.”

We’d had no more than one sip of our drinks when I saw a man approaching our table. He was very short and dressed in brown slacks and a lime-green guayabera, and he carried a briefcase that looked very much like Chutsky’s.

Chutsky jumped up and held out his hand. “Ee-bangh!” he yelled, and it took me a moment to realize that Chutsky was not experiencing a sudden attack of Tourette’s syndrome, but only the Cuban pronunciation of the newcomer’s name, Iván. Ee-bangh held out his hand, too, and embraced Chutsky as they shook hands.

“Cahm-BEYL!” Ee-bangh said, and again it took a moment—this time because I hadn’t really remembered that Chutsky was Reverend Campbell Freeney. By the time all the gears had meshed, Ivan had turned to look at me with one raised eyebrow. “Oh, hey,” Chutsky said, “this is David Marcey. David, Iván Echeverría.”

“Mucho gusto,” Iván said, shaking my hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I told him in English, since I was not sure whether “David” spoke any Spanish at all.

“Well, sit down,” Chutsky said, and he waved at the waiter as Iván sat. The waiter hurtled over to our table and took Iván’s order for a mojito, and when it arrived, Chutsky and Iván sipped and talked cheerfully in very rapid Cuban Spanish. I could probably have followed along if I had really worked at it, but it seemed like an awful lot of hard labor for what seemed to be a private conversation made up mostly of fond memories—and in truth, even if they had been discussing something far more interesting than What Happened That Time, I would have tuned it out; because it was full night now, and coming up over the rim of the roof was a huge, reddish-yellow moon, a bloated, simpering, bloodthirsty moon, and the first sight of it turned every inch of my skin into a chilled carpet of goose bumps, all the hairs on my back and arms stood up and howled, and running through every corridor of Castle Dexter was a small and dark footman carrying orders to every Knight of the Night to Go Now and Do It.

But of course it was not to be. This was not a Night of Letting Go; it was very unfortunately a Night of Clamping Down. It was a night to sip rapidly warming beer, pretend I could hear and enjoy the trio; a night to smile politely at Ee-bahng and wish it was all over and I could get back to being happy homicidal me in peace and tranquillity. It was a night to endure, and hope that someday soon would find me with a knife in one hand and Weiss in the other.

Until then, I could only take a deep breath, a sip of beer, and pretend to enjoy the lovely view and the wonderful music. Practice that winning smile, Dexter. How many teeth can we show? Very good; now without teeth, just the lips. How far up can you make the corners of your mouth go before it looks like you are in very great internal pain?

“Hey, you all right, buddy?” Chutsky called some twenty minutes later. Apparently I had let my face stretch past Happy Smile and into Rictus.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just, ah—fine, really.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, though he didn’t look convinced. “Well, maybe we better get you back to the hotel.” He drained his glass and stood up, and so did Iván. They shook hands, and then Iván sat back down and Chutsky grabbed his briefcase and we headed for the elevator. I looked back to see Iván ordering another drink, and I raised an eyebrow at Chutsky.

“Oh,” he said. “We don’t want to leave together. You know, at the same time.”

Well, I suppose that made as much sense as anything else, since we were now apparently living in a spy movie, so I watched everyone else carefully, all the way down in the elevator, to make sure they weren’t agents of some evil cartel. Apparently they weren’t, since we made it safely all the way down and into the street. But as we crossed the street to find a taxi, we passed a horse and buggy waiting there, something I really should have noticed and avoided, because animals don’t like me, and this horse reared up—even though he was old and tired and had been placidly chewing something in a nose bag. It was not a very impressive maneuver, hardly a John Wayne moment, but he did get both front feet off the ground and make a noise of extreme displeasure at me, which startled his driver nearly as much as it did me. But I hurried on by and we managed to get into a taxi without any clouds of bats swarming out to attack me.

We rode back to the hotel in silence. Chutsky sat with his briefcase on his lap and looked out the window, and I tried not to listen to that fat overwhelming moon. But that didn’t work very well; it was there in every postcard view of Havana we drove through, always bright and leering and calling out wonderful ideas, and why couldn’t I come out to play? But I could not. I could only smile back and say, Soon. It will be soon.

Just as soon as I could find Weiss.

THIRTY-TWO