“I’m looking for Robert.” He just stared at me. “Robert Chase?” I said helpfully.
Victor screwed his face up and turned bright red, like he was going to give me a dose of the kind of bile he had unleashed on the phone, and I was in no mood for it. So it probably wasn’t the nicest thing I could have done, but I was past caring. “He has my little girl,” I said. “She’s eleven years old.”
All the color drained out of Victor’s face. It was an amazing thing to watch; one moment he was puffed up like a big red balloon, and the next he was a greenish-white thing with cheekbones poking through sagging flesh. “Oh, Jesus fuck, I’m dead,” he whispered, and he reached for his glass with two hands, lifting it numbly to his face and draining it.
When the glass was empty, Victor put it back down on the table. His hands were shaking and the glass rattled briefly before settling to a stop in front of him. He stared at the glass and then, finally, looked up at me with eyes that were nearly as dead as Jackie’s. “They said it was just gossip,” he said, and there was a slight slur to his words. “I never … I mean, you know. Richard Gere and the hamster. Tom Cruise is gay. All that shit. Just backstabbing bullshit Hollywood gossip.” He lifted the glass, saw it was empty, and put it back down again. “I swear, I never thought … I didn’t really think …”
Victor closed his eyes and slumped forward until his face was almost touching the tabletop. “Fuck,” he said. “Why me? Why is it always me …?” He began to shake his head, slowly and rhythmically. “I’m dead. It’s all turned to shit on me and I am soooo … fucking … dead.…” And he stopped shaking his head, and stopped breathing, and just sat there slumped into a pale green heap.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but his face had actually turned even greener, and he sat there for a long moment, motionless. Then he jerked upright, snapped his eyes open, and took a deep breath.
“You got to understand, Chase wasn’t my idea,” he said. “I wanted somebody younger, but the network needs a star. They got a list; it tells everybody’s TVQ—”
“Their what?” I said.
He gave me an impatient, irritated look. “TVQ. How popular they are. How many viewers they can get to watch something.” He held up a hand, then let it flop back down helplessly. “Robert’s is very high.”
“Right,” I said. “He’s popular.”
Victor nodded. “He’s popular. A star. And people always make up awful shit about stars. It’s … Everybody says stuff like that, you know, about anybody who makes it. It’s a mean, bitchy business, but if I thought it was really true about Chase and little girls—”
He stopped and looked down at the table again. “Fuck,” he said. “I woulda cast him anyway. He’s got a really high TVQ.” He stared at his hands for a moment, and then lurched sideways and grabbed the big blue vodka bottle and began to pour his glass full again.
I watched him, and I felt small and icy fingers tickling at the back of my neck. “What did you mean,” I said, “about Chase and little girls?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “It’s just a rumor,” he said, and he didn’t sound like he even convinced himself. He put the cap back on the vodka, and as he bent to put the bottle back on the floor I sat next to him and picked up his full glass. “What the fuck,” he said, and I slowly and carefully poured the entire glassful onto his lap.
Victor didn’t try to stop me. He just stared at the puddle of booze as it soaked into his slacks, his mouth hanging slightly open, and then he looked up at me, and I smiled. “And what is the rumor, Victor?” I said. “About Robert Chase and little girls?”
He looked at me and his Adam’s apple slid up and down, and then he finally closed his mouth and looked down again. “He likes them,” he said in a soft and husky voice. “Really likes them.” He glanced up at me briefly, then swallowed again. “He likes little girls.”
I slid closer to him and put an arm around his shoulders, feeling him tense up as I touched him. “And when you use that word ‘like,’ ” I said, “what does it really mean to you, Victor?”
“He has sex with them,” he said in a whisper. “Robert Chase is a pedophile.”
I thought about my days with Robert, and his wistful talk of kids. I thought it unconvincing and it was—but not because he didn’t like kids; it was because he really liked them. And the family portrait he left hidden on my desk. His immediate and complete interest in Astor when they met, and the way he instantly got her alone in the makeup room—and even Robert’s weekend in Mexico at a “special private resort,” which probably meant a place that catered to men with his tastes; it all added up, fit together so perfectly that in retrospect, only an idiot could have missed all the obvious clues. And I was an idiot. A true and total dolt. I had thought he was gay, and because I am a fatuous conceited idiotic dolt I had even thought he had a crush on me. And all along, it had been the kids after all.
There was no longer any doubt about it. Wave after wave of contempt for my complete stupidity washed over me, and I sat there for a very long time, just letting the waves lift me up and crash me down on the rocky shore again.
Of course Robert liked little girls, girls just like Astor. And being the Child of Darkness that she was, of course Astor would have played along, loving the sense of power and control as a full-grown man, a Star, focused all that flattering attention on her. That Saturday at Wardrobe, moments after they met, she had rushed off with him right away, down the hall to the little dressing room.…
And once more a quick movie clip flashed by on the screen in Dexter’s skull: Kathy going into that room where Astor and Robert had disappeared, and then flying out as if she’d seen a ghost, and vanishing out the door. She had seen them engaged in Inappropriate Behavior—and she had not said anything? Because Robert begged and pleaded for a chance to explain? Yes: Even with Kathy, his star power had counted for something. So she agreed to meet him that night, maybe even planning to blackmail him, and he killed her instead and took her phone so no one would know about their date. He’d even thrown up, which fit what I knew about him so well that the moment Vince told me about it I should have thought of him, and once again I let the tide of recrimination lift me and slam me into the seawall a few times. Even then I should have seen it, and if I had, my new and beautiful life would still be on track and Jackie would still be alive. Stupid, stupid, stupid Dexter.
I sat and ground my teeth and cursed myself until eventually I became aware of a very annoying sound somewhere nearby. I turned to see that I still had an arm around Victor’s shoulders, and he was clearing his throat to get my attention as he tried feebly to wriggle free.
“Hey,” he said. “Listen, I really didn’t, you know, just … Are you going to …?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, and I looked at him. He flinched away, and I realized from the sound of my voice and the chilled feeling of my face that Victor was seeing the Real Dexter, seeing him the way very few have seen him and lived. “Where did they go?” I said.
He quivered at the sound of my voice, but he just shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. “Chase was here this morning and then— Shit, I really don’t know; please, you’re hurting me.”
I looked at him just a moment longer. He was much too scared, drunk, and deflated to lie, so I let go of him and stood up.
“Fuck,” Victor said, rubbing his shoulders, “scared the shit outta me.”
I glanced back at him from the door of the trailer. “Fuck,” he said again, and as I turned away he was picking up his glass.
I went out of Victor’s trailer and left the magical world of show business behind me forever. No more lights, cameras, and squibs, and finding my mark. No more adoring crowds and sunset mojitos and chauffeured Town Cars. Farewell to the grips and gaffers and extras. And adios to hiring pedophiles because they’re popular, and pretending that anything is okay if it helps the ratings and you don’t actually see anything wrong.
And good-bye forever to the new me in a f
limsy gaudy setting that was all bright colors and happy lies on the surface, and nothing but sickness and death underneath where it counts, just like everything else in this vile rotten world. There would be no escape for me, no hope of happiness, no new career.
Dexter’s Debut had been derailed.
I headed for my car. I wasn’t sure yet where I was going, but at least it would be away from this.
THIRTY-FOUR
WHEN I GOT TO MY CAR I STILL DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO GO. It seemed fairly appropriate for the total moron I had turned out to be: clueless, aimless, hopeless. The Avatar of Idiocy. No idea where to go, but an urgent need to go there fast. So naturally I just sat in my car and rested my forehead on the wheel. It wasn’t much, but at least it wasn’t destroying anybody close to me.
How could this be me? How could so much cool and clever confidence turn into this sorry heap of used and brainless body parts? Dexter the Doofus, who had blithely introduced Astor to a pedophile and encouraged them to play together; Dexter the Dim, who set up Jackie to be killed, and then left her alone with the killer—a killer who had been right under my nose for more than a week, and I’d never had a clue. Dexter the Destroyer, who left suffering and misery and death in his wake and moved happily on, unaware of everything behind—and apparently everything ahead, too. It was just plain luck that I hadn’t strangled myself trying to tie my shoes.
And I couldn’t even believe it was an aberration, a hasty left turn off a well-traveled path of cunning. I had screwed up everything in sight so effortlessly, naturally, and thoroughly that I had to believe this was the real Me emerging at last. I’d been lucky for a long stretch, never really noticing what a dolt I truly was, but my luck had finally run out, and here I was, stuck being the worst possible Me at a time when I needed most to be the smooth and clever engine of destruction I had always been before, if only in my imagination.
And so, with the world crashing around me in flames, here was me, sitting motionless in my car, massaging my temples and wondering where all the thoughts had gone. Astor could be anywhere. Robert might have taken her to his special resort in Mexico, or out to L.A., or anyplace in between. He could be doing terrible things to her right now, while she pleaded and squirmed and wondered why help didn’t come. But Help, in the form of Dexter, was not going to come, because it didn’t know where to go—and that might be a real stroke of luck for her, considering how I’d done so far. And of course, how I was doing now, too, because sitting here telling myself I was a dolt was no help to anyone, even if it was true.
So think, Dexter: Try really hard to make something new and wonderful happen in that dull unmoving sandbox in your skull. Try for an actual thought, a genuine idea, before it’s too late for Astor, too—if it isn’t already.
Nothing came. That was not a surprise to me, in my current state of overwhelming idiocy. I should just accept the fact that I was mentally deficient and learn to be happy. Maybe buy a banjo. Because I had no clue at all where they might be, and not even the glimmer of a hint of how to find out. I could only hope that somewhere along the way, somehow, somebody would stumble over the two of them and get Astor away from Robert. Clearly it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t find them if they fell out of a tree and landed on my head. Even Rita had a better chance. At least she’d had a whatchacallit, one of them idea things.…
And maybe that idea had panned out. Maybe her luck was running better than mine. It couldn’t be a lot worse, not unless she’d accidentally set herself on fire. So I pulled out my phone and called Rita, mostly because I was such an unvarnished blockhead that I couldn’t think of anything else.
But Rita’s phone rang and rang and went right to voice mail. Wherever she’d gone, she was still there. Did that mean she’d found them? Or was she just stuck in traffic? And where had she gone, anyway?
I tapped on the message she’d left earlier, and listened to it again. It hadn’t changed at all. The only part of it that gave even a faint whiff of a hint was when she said, “… you said she might come home, and I thought, that’s right, she might, but maybe not—and so anyway, I’ll just be gone for twenty minutes.…”
“Come home but not” was typical Rita-ese, so convoluted and incomplete that it might mean almost anything. But I had been struggling to understand her for many years now, and I thought I could interpret. Of course, thought was proving to be a dangerous and alien activity for me, but I tried it anyway, and I took “home but not” and added it to “gone for twenty minutes,” and there was only one thing it could mean. It was probably the wrong thing, but what I came up with was our new house. Home but not home, a ten-minute drive away, and definitely a place that Astor would want to go.
Of course, I had to assume that Astor had some say in where they went, but I knew how persuasive she was, or, failing that, how very stubborn. And Robert would be desperate to find a place where he could lie low. He was new at all this—except, apparently, for the pedophilia—and he would assume that the whole world was on his trail. So he’d want to find someplace quiet and unexpected, a place nobody would think to look. And ever-helpful Astor could very well suggest a place where she felt secure: the unoccupied, surrounded-by-hedges, complete-with-Her-Own-Room, very quiet New House.
And one last little shard of something that might have been thought clattered onto the floor of the dusty unused Ballroom of Dexter’s Brain: If Robert and Astor had gone there to hide out, and if Rita went there and found them, Robert would not smile, autograph a picture, and send her on her way. He would, in fact, do all he could to keep her from leaving again and giving up his location. He would, very probably, tie or tape her securely. And if he had any sense at all he would gag her, too. Then he would put her in a closet, or in a bathroom, and leave her while he watched his back trail and waited to see who or what might be coming after him.
And taking everything into consideration, there was only one person left who could come after him: Me. This was not good news for the good guys, considering my recent track record, but there was no one else. And if there had been someone else, I wouldn’t want them anyway.
Robert had Astor, and she was mine. She belonged to me the way a gazelle belongs to a lion, and he had snatched her away, taken something of mine, and I could not let him get away with that.
And Robert had killed Jackie, and left me stranded on the shore of a dark and sandy place filled with nothing but epic emptiness. He had taken away the only thing I’d ever had that felt like feeling, my only ever stab at happiness, and for that he could not possibly suffer enough, not if I could tape him under my knife every night for a year, each session longer and more pleasantly inventive. There was no possible payment that could make up for what he had taken from me, but what he could pay, I would take. And I would not stop taking until it was all gone, and all of him, too: every too-white tooth and too-bright smile, every studied gesture and practiced expression, all of it. I would take everything he had, everything he ever was or would be, and I would send him far away forever to the place where only pain is real, never-ending soul-destroying shattering pain. And if I left a mess big enough to lead the cops straight to me, that was fine, too. There was nothing left in this world but dumb suffering, and whether I endured it in prison or on the sofa with Rita, it was all the same to me.
This might be the very last thing I did, but I would do it. I would take Robert out of his smug, pampered, lily-gilded world, and I would drag him straight into mine: the world of Dexter’s Dark Delight. He had no idea what he had unleashed when he pulled my chain. I was coming, and even if he knew it, he would be waiting for meek and mild-mannered Daytime Dexter, Doughnut Dexter, the soft-bellied blood-spatter boy from the office who was no more threat than a swivel chair. But that Dexter was gone, maybe forever, and it was something very different that was coming for Robert, and he would not like that difference, not at all.
I started my car and nosed it out of the lot, past the cop on the perimeter, and into the nighttime traffic, and the dim starless eveni
ng bled into me and filled me with the glow of very special purpose and I was ready for Robert.
It was the height of rush hour, and the traffic was snarled beyond repair. I inched along, grinding my teeth and thinking of new and special things to do to Robert. He was good-looking, and far too aware of that; that would be a help; I could use that. I could spend hours just playing with his face, slowly and carefully removing each separate bit of it and holding it up in front of his eyes so he would see Me holding permanently removed pieces of him, and see every step of the way that I was doing it, and it could not be stopped or slowed or repaired. This was happening to him, and this was all there was and all there would ever be, and there was no going back from it. This was the forever show in Dexterland, and tickets were nonrefundable and one-way only.
And I was so very wrapped up in my pleasant daydreams that before I knew it, I was down onto U.S. 1 and headed south to the New House. The traffic sputtered and wheezed and crawled along, but I idled along with it, thinking only of what was about to happen so very thoroughly to someone who deserved it more than anybody else ever had.
I turned left off U.S. 1, and in a few minutes I was there. I drove by once to see any sign that they were inside. A small convertible was pulled up in front of the garage door. Rita’s minivan was parked slapdash behind it. A full house, but the wild card was coming.
I went on by, scanning the area for anyone watching, and saw no one, nothing out of place, no more than the quiet middle-class neighborhood it was supposed to be. All along the street there were modest homes radiating the contented evening stillness of a day well done. Bicycles leaned against trees, Rollerblades lay in the driveways, and the muted aromas of a half-dozen dinnertimes threaded between the houses and dueled for dominance. But nothing was outside, no one was watching, and all was exactly as peaceful and unsuspecting as I wanted it to be.