Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

“So we shoot him wherever we find him?”

“The thing is, to just be ready, whatever happens,” he said. “Ideally, we get him off someplace quiet and do it. But at least we’re ready.” He patted the briefcase with his hook. “Iván brought us a couple of other things, just in case, too.”

“Like land mines?” I said. “Maybe a flame thrower?”

“Some electronic stuff,” he said. “State-of-the-art stuff. For surveillance. We can track him, find him, listen in on him—with this stuff we can hear him fart from a mile away.”

I really did want to get into the spirit of things here, but it was very hard to show any interest in Weiss’s digestive process, and I hoped it wasn’t absolutely essential for Chutsky’s plan. In any case, his entire James Bond approach was making me uncomfortable. It may be very wrong of me, but I began to appreciate just how lucky I had been so far in life. I had managed very well with only a few shiny blades and a hunger—nothing state-of-the-art, no vague plots, no huddling in foreign hotel rooms awash with uncertainty and firepower. Just happy, carefree, relaxing carnage. Certainly it seemed primitive and even slapdash in the face of all this high-tech steel-nerved preparation, but it was at least honest and wholesome labor. None of this waiting around spitting testosterone and polishing bullets. Chutsky was taking all the fun out of my life’s work.

Still, I had asked for his help, and now I was stuck with it. So there was really nothing to do but put the best possible face on things and get on with it. “It’s all very nice,” I said, with an encouraging smile that did not even fool me. “When do we start?”

Chutsky snorted and put the guns back in the briefcase. He held it up to me, dangling it from his hook. “When he gets here,” he said. “Put this in the closet for now.”

I took the briefcase from him and carried it to the closet. But as I reached to open the door I heard a faint rustling of wings somewhere in the distance and I froze. What is it? I asked silently. There was a slight inaudible twitch, a raising of awareness, but no more.

So I reached into the briefcase and got my ridiculous gun, holding it at the ready as I reached for the closet’s doorknob. I opened the door—and for a moment I could do nothing but stare into the unlit space and wait for an answering darkness to spread protective wings over me. It was an impossible, surreal, dream-time image—but after staring at it for what seemed like an awfully long time, I had to believe it was true.

It was Rogelio, Chutsky’s friend from the front desk, who was going to tell us when Weiss checked in. But it certainly didn’t look like he was going to tell us much of anything, unless we listened to him with a Ouija board. Because if appearances were any guide at all, judging by the belt so tightly wrapped around his neck and the way his tongue and eyes bulged out, Rogelio was extremely dead.

“What is it, buddy?” Chutsky said.

“I think Weiss has already checked in,” I said.

Chutsky lumbered up from the bed and over to the closet. He stared for a moment and then said, “Shit.” He reached his hand in and felt for a pulse—rather unnecessary, I thought, but I suppose there’s a protocol for these things. He felt no pulse, of course, and mumbled, “Fucking shit.” I didn’t see how repetition would help, but of course he was the expert, so I just watched as he slid a hand into each of Rogelio’s pockets in turn. “His passkey,” he said. He put that into his pocket. He turned out the usual junk—keys, a handkerchief, a comb, some money. He looked carefully at the cash for a moment. “Canadian twenty here,” he said. “Like somebody tipped him for something, huh?”

“You mean Weiss?” I said.

He shrugged. “How many homicidal Canadians you know?”

It was a fair question. Since the NHL season had ended a few months ago, I could only think of one—Weiss.

Chutsky pulled an envelope out of Rogelio’s jacket pocket. “Bingo,” he said. “Mr. B. Weiss, room 865.” He handed the envelope to me. “I’m guessing it’s complimentary drink tickets. Open it up.”

I peeled back the flap and pulled out two oblongs of cardboard. Sure enough: two complimentary drinks at the Cabaret Parisien, the hotel’s famous cabaret. “How did you guess?” I said.

Chutsky straightened up from his ghoulish search. “I fucked up,” he said. “When I told Rogelio it was Weiss’s birthday, all he could think was to make the hotel look good, and maybe pick up a tip.” He held up the Canadian twenty-dollar bill. “This is a month’s pay,” he said. “You can’t blame him.” He shrugged. “So I fucked up, and he’s dead. And our ass is deep in the shit.”

Even though he had clearly not thought through that image, I got his point. Weiss knew we were here, we had no idea where he was or what he was up to, and we had a very embarrassing corpse in the closet.

“All right,” I said, and for once I was glad to have his experience to lean on—which was assuming, of course, that he had experience at fucking up and finding strangled bodies in his closet, but he was certainly more knowledgeable about it than I was. “So what do we do?”

Chutsky frowned. “First, we have to check his room. He’s probably run for it, but we’d look really stupid if we didn’t check.” He nodded at the envelope in my hand. “We know his room number, and he doesn’t necessarily know that we know. And if he is there—then we have to, what’d you call it, play O.K. Corral on his ass.”

“And if he’s not there?” I said, because I, too, had the feeling that Rogelio was a farewell gift and Weiss was already sprinting for the horizon.

“If he’s not in his room,” Chutsky said, “and even if he IS in his room and we take him out—either way, I’m sorry to say it, buddy, but our vacation is over.” He nodded at Rogelio. “Sooner or later they find this, and then it’s big trouble. We gotta get the hell out of Dodge.”

“But what about Weiss?” I said. “What if he’s already gone?”

Chutsky shook his head. “He’s got to run for his life, too,” he said. “He knows we’re after him, and when they find Rogelio’s body, somebody will remember them together—I think he’s already gone, heading for the hills. But just in case, we gotta check his room. And then beat feet out of Cu

ba, muy rápido.”

I had been terribly afraid he would have some high-tech plan for getting rid of Rogelio’s body, like dipping it in laser solution in the bathtub, so I was very relieved to hear that for once he was speaking sound common sense. I had seen almost nothing of Havana except the inside of a hotel room and the bottom of a mojito glass, but it was clearly time to head for home and work on Plan B. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Chutsky nodded. “Good man,” he said. “Grab your pistol.”

I took the cold and clunky thing and shoved it into the waistband of my pants, pulling the awful green jacket over it, and as Chutsky closed the closet door I headed for the hallway.