There are only so many indoor games one can play with two children of such tender ages and damaged spirits as Cody and Astor; most of the board games were uninteresting or incomprehensible to them, and too many of the card games seemed to require a lighthearted simplemindedness that even I could not fake convincingly. But we finally hit on hangman; it was educational, creative, and mildly homicidal, which made everyone happy, even Rita.
If you had asked me pre-Doakes if a life of hangman and Miller Lite sounded like my cup of tea, I would have been forced to confess that Dexter Oolong was somewhat darker. But as the days piled up and I slipped further into the reality of my disguise, I had to ask myself: Was I enjoying the life of Mr. Suburban Householder just a little too much?
Still, it was very comforting somehow to see the predatory zest Cody and Astor brought to something as harmless as hangman. Their enthusiasm for hanging the little stick figures made me feel a bit more like we might all be part of the same general species. As they happily murdered their anonymous hanged men, I felt a certain kinship.
Astor quickly learned to draw the gallows and the lines for the letters. She was, of course, much more verbal about it. “Seven letters,” she would say, then tucking her upper lip between her teeth add, “Wait. Six.” As Cody and I missed on our guesses she would pounce and call out, “An ARM! Ha!” Cody would stare at her without expression, and then look down to the doodled figure hanging from its noose. When it was his turn and we missed a guess, he would say in his soft voice, “Leg,” and look up at us with something that might almost have been triumph in someone who showed emotion. And when the line of dashes under the gallows was finally filled in with the spelled-out word, they would both look at the dangling man with satisfaction, and once or twice Cody even said, “Dead,” before Astor bounced up and down and said, “Again, Dexter! My turn!”
All very idyllic. Our perfect little family of Rita, the kids, and Monster makes four. But no matter how many stick figures we executed, it did nothing to kill my worry that time was gurgling rapidly down the drain and soon I would be a white-haired old man, too feeble to lift a carving knife, tottering through my horrifyingly ordinary days, shadowed by an ancient Sergeant Doakes and a sense of missed opportunity.
As long as I couldn’t think of a way out, I was in the noose as surely as Cody and Astor’s stick figures. Very depressing, and I am ashamed to admit that I almost lost hope, which I never would have done if I had remembered one important thing.
This was Miami.
CHAPTER 7
OF COURSE IT COULDN’T LAST. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that such an unnatural state of affairs had to give way, yield to the natural order of things. After all, I lived in a city where mayhem was like the sunshine, always right behind the next cloud. Three weeks after my first unsettling encounter with Sergeant Doakes, the clouds finally broke.
It was just a piece of luck, really-not quite the falling piano I had been hoping for, but still a happy coincidence. I was having lunch with my sister, Deborah. Excuse me; I should have said, SERGEANT Deborah. Like her father, Harry, Debs was a cop. Owing to the happy outcome of recent events, she had been promoted, pulled out of the prostitute costume she had been forced to wear by her assignment with vice, whisked off the street corner at last and into her very own set of sergeant’s stripes.
It should have made her happy. After all, this was what she thought she wanted; an end to her tenure as a pretend hooker. Any young and reasonably attractive female officer assigned to vice would sooner or later find herself in a prostitution sting operation, and Deborah was very attractive. But her lush figure and healthy good looks had never done anything for my poor sister except embarrass her. She hated to wear anything that even hinted at her physical charms, and standing on the street in hot pants and a tube top had been sheer torture for her. She had been in danger of growing permanent frown lines.
Because I am an inhuman monster, I tend to be logical, and I had thought that her new assignment would end her martyrdom as Our Lady of Perpetual Grumpiness. Alas, even her transfer to homicide had failed to bring a smile to her face. Somewhere along the way she had decided that serious law enforcement personnel must reshape their faces until they look like large, mean-spirited fish, and she was still working very hard to accomplish this.
We had come to lunch together in her new motor-pool car, another of the perks of her promotion that really should have brought a small ray of sunshine into her life. It didn’t seem to. I wondered if I should worry about her. I watched her as I slid into a booth at Café Relampago, our favorite Cuban restaurant. She called in her location and status and then sat across from me with a frown.
“Well, Sergeant Grouper,” I said as we picked up our menus.
“Is that funny, Dexter?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very funny. And a little sad, too. Like life itself. Especially your life, Deborah.”
“Fuck you, Charlie,” she said. “My life is fine.” And to prove it, she ordered a medianoche sandwich, the best in Miami, and a batido de mamey, a milk shake made from a unique tropical fruit that tastes something like a combination of peach and watermelon.
My life was every bit as fine as hers, so I ordered the same thing. Because we were regulars here, and had been coming here most of our lives, the aging, unshaven waiter snatched away our menus with a face that might have been the role model for Deborah’s, and stomped off to the kitchen like Godzilla on his way to Tokyo.
“Everyone is so cheerful and happy,” I said.
“This isn’t Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Dex. It’s Miami. Only the bad guys are happy.” She looked at me without expression, a perfect cop stare. “How come you’re not laughing and singing?”
“Unkind, Deb. Very unkind. I’ve been good for months.”
She took a sip of water. “Uh-huh. And it’s making you crazy.”
“Much worse than that,” I said with a shudder. “I think it’s making me normal.”
“Coulda fooled me,” she said.
“Sad but true. I’ve become a couch potato.” I hesitated, then blurted it out. After all, if a boy can’t share his problems with his family, who can he confide in? “It’s Sergeant Doakes,” I said.
She nodded. “He’s got a real hard-on for you,” she said. “You better keep away from him.”
“I would love to,” I said. “But HE won’t keep away from ME.”
Her cop stare got harder. “What do you plan to do about it?”
I opened my mouth to deny all the things I had been thinking, but happily for the good of my immortal soul, before I could lie to her we were interrupted by the sound of Deb’s radio. She cocked her head to one side, snatched up the radio, and said she was on her way. “Come on,” she snapped, heading for the door. I followed meekly behind, pausing only to throw some money on the table.
Deborah was already backing out her car by the time I came out of Relampago’s. I hurried over and lunged for the door. She was moving forward and out of the parking lot before I even got both feet in. “Really, Deb,” I said. “I almost lost a shoe. What’s so important?”
Deborah frowned, accelerating through a small gap in traffic that only a Miami driver would have attempted. “I don’t know,” she said as she turned on the siren.
I blinked and raised my voice over the noise. “Didn’t the dispatcher tell you?”
“Have you ever heard the dispatcher stutter, Dexter?”