Double Dexter (38 page)

“Today at two thirty,” Rita said, and she leaned down and kissed me again. “The address is on the refrigerator, on the blue Post-it.” She straightened up and said, “Don’t forget,” and then she vanished into the living room calling for Astor. Their voices rose together into a complicated and pointless squabble about the dress code, which didn’t apply because it was summer, and anyway the skirt wasn’t
that
short, so why should she have to wear shorts under it, and after only a few minutes of hysteria the front door slammed three more times and a sudden quiet descended. I sighed with relief, and I believe I could almost feel the whole house do the same.

And even though I do not like having someone else manipulate my schedule, and I don’t like dealing with lawyers even more, I got up and took the blue Post-it from the fridge. It said,
Fleischman, 2:30
, and below that was an address on Brickell Avenue. That didn’t tell me much about how good a lawyer he might be, but at least the address meant he would be expensive, which really ought to be some consolation. It wouldn’t hurt to go see him and find out if he could help me out of my trouble with Hood and Doakes. It was time for me to think about getting the full weight of the law off my back—especially since my other problem was one quick phone call away from being solved.

So I tucked the Post-it into my pocket and went to get my phone, and as I punched in Brian’s number it occurred to me that this was not the sort of lighthearted chitchat that was truly appropriate for a cell phone. I had heard enough taped conversations to know better. Even the standard evasions, like, “Did you see the guy with the thing about the stuff?” sounded highly suspicious when played back to a jury. Cell phones are wonderful devices, but they are not actually a secure form of communication, and if Doakes was going to all the trouble of tailing me, he might very well have access, legal or not, to anything I said on the phone. And so, thinking that “Better safe than sorry” was an excellent motto for the day, I arranged to meet Brian for lunch at Café Relampago, my favorite Cuban restaurant.

I spent the morning puttering around the house and tidying up things that were really at least half-tidy already, but it was better than sitting on the couch again and trying to convince myself that watching daytime TV was better for me than slamming my head against a brick wall. I unpacked my gym bag and put everything away with loving care.
Soon
, I told my toys.

At twelve thirty I locked up the house and got into my car. As I nosed it into the street, Sergeant Doakes pulled out behind me and followed along; all the way across the city on the Palmetto Expressway he stayed right behind me, and when I got off by the airport and wound my way to the strip mall that held Café Relampago, he was still on my tail. I parked in front of the café and Doakes parked a few spots to my left, between me and the parking lot’s only exit. Happily for me, he did not follow me inside. He simply sat in his car, motor idling, staring at me through the windshield. So I gave him a cheery wave and went in to meet my brother.

Brian was sitting in a booth at the back, facing the door, and he raised his hand in greeting when I came in. I slid onto the seat facing him. “Thank you for meeting me,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows in pretend surprise. “Of course,” he said. “What’s family for?”

“I’m still not sure,” I said. “But I do have a suggestion.”

“Do tell,” he said.

But before I could, in fact, tell him, the waitress rushed over and
slapped two plastic menus onto the table in front of us. The Morgan family had been coming to Café Relampago my whole life, and this waitress, Rose, had served us hundreds of times. But there was no flicker of recognition in her face as she dropped the menus in front of me and, as Brian opened his mouth to speak to her, hurried away again.

“Charming woman,” Brian said, watching Rose disappear back into the kitchen.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “Wait till you see how she puts a plate on the table.”

“I can hardly wait,” he said.

I could have made small talk, or told Brian the secret Morgan family technique for getting Rose to bring the bill in under five minutes, but I felt events pressing in on me, so I cut right to the chase. “I need a little favor,” I said.

Brian raised his eyebrows. “Of course, I grew up in foster care,” he said, and he began to play with a sugar packet on the tabletop. “But in my experience, when a family member asks for a ‘little favor,’ that always means it’s huge, and probably painful.” He flipped the sugar from one hand to the other.

“I hope it will be very painful,” I said. “But not for you.”

He stopped flipping the sugar packet and looked up at me with a faint gleam of something dark stirring at the back of his eyes. “Tell me,” he said.

I told him. I stumbled through a rather clumsy explanation of how Crowley had seen me at play. I’m not sure why I felt so awkward telling it. It is true that I never really like to talk about Those Things; but beyond that, I think I was embarrassed to admit to my brother that I had been so childishly careless and allowed myself to be seen. I felt my cheeks get hot, and I had trouble meeting his eyes, which had locked onto me as I began to talk, and stayed locked on me until I faltered to a finish.

Brian did not say anything at first, and I thought about reaching over and grabbing a sugar packet of my own to play with. In the silence, Rose appeared suddenly and slammed two glasses of water in front of us, scooped up the menus, and vanished again before either of us could speak.

“Very interesting,” Brian said at last.

I glanced at him; he was still looking at me, and the faint shadow was still there in his eyes. “Do you mean the waitress?” I asked.

He showed me his teeth. “I do not,” he said. “Although her performance has certainly been diverting so far.” He finally looked away from me, glancing over his shoulder at the kitchen door, where Rose had disappeared. “So you find yourself with this little problem,” he said. “And naturally you come to your brother for help …?”

“Um, yes …”

He picked up the sugar packet again and frowned at it. “Why me?”

I stared at Brian, wondering if I had heard him wrong. “Well,” I said, “I don’t really know too many people who can do this kind of thing.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, still frowning at the sugar, as if he was trying to read the tiny print on the packet.

“And like I said, I’m being watched,” I said. “Sergeant Doakes is out in the parking lot right now.”

“Yes, I see,” he said, although he wasn’t actually seeing anything but the sugar packet in his hands.

“And you’re my brother?” I added hopefully, wondering why he had suddenly gone all vague. “I mean, the whole family thing?”

“Yeeeesss …” Brian said doubtfully. “And, ah … that’s really all of it? An inconsequential favor from your favorite family member? A small gift-wrapped project for big brother, Brian, because little Dexie is in time-out?”

I had no idea why Brian was acting so strangely, and I really was counting on his help, but he was getting more annoying with each syllable and I’d had enough. “Brian, for God’s sake,” I said. “I need your help. Why are you being so weird?”

He dropped the sugar packet onto the table, and the small sound it made seemed much louder than it really was. “Forgive me, brother,” he said, and he looked up at me at last. “As I said, I grew up in foster care. It’s given me a rather nasty, suspicious turn of mind.” He showed me his teeth again. “I’m sure you have no ulterior motives at all here.”

“Like what?” I said, genuinely puzzled.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t help thinking that it might be some kind of setup?”

“What?”

“Or that you might want to use me as a kind of cat’s paw, just to see what happens?”

“Brian,” I said.

“It’s the sort of thing that naturally occurs to one, isn’t it?” he said.

“Not to me,” I said, and because I could think of nothing more compelling, I added, “You’re my brother.”

“Yes,” he said. “On the other side, there is that.” He frowned, and for a moment I was terrified that he would pick up the sugar packet again. But instead, he shook his head, as if overcoming a large temptation, and looked me in the eye. For a long moment he simply stared, and I stared back. Then his face lit up with his terrible fake smile. “I would be delighted to help you,” he said.

I exhaled a very large cloud of anxiety, and inhaled even more relief. “Thank you,” I said.

T
HE LAW OFFICES OF FIGUEROA, WHITLEY AND FLEISCHMAN
were on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise building on Brickell Avenue, just on the edge of the area where office space starts to get pricey. The lobby was deserted when I walked in at two fifteen, and as I stood next to the elevator and scanned the building’s directory, I noticed that very few of the floors had any tenants at all. Like many of the newer buildings in Miami’s cluttered skyline, this one had apparently been built during the wild optimism of the last real estate boom, when everyone was certain prices would keep going up forever. Instead, prices had collapsed like a punctured balloon, and half of the glittering new buildings in downtown Miami had turned into shiny and very overpriced ghost towns.

Rita was not in the waiting room when I stepped off the elevator, so I sat down and thumbed through a copy of
GOLF
magazine. There were several articles on improving my short game that would have been much more interesting if only I played golf. The large golden clock on the wall said it was exactly two thirty-six when the elevator doors slid open and Rita stepped out. “Oh, Dexter, you’re here already,” she said.

I never really know what to say to that kind of painfully obvious
remark, even though it seems to be very popular, so I just admitted that I was, in fact, right here in front of her, and she nodded and hustled over to the receptionist. “We have an appointment with Larry Fleischman?” she announced breathily.

The receptionist, a cool, stylish woman of around thirty, cocked her head at the appointment book and nodded. “Mrs. Morgan?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Rita said, and the receptionist smiled and dialed a number on the phone on her desk.

“Mr. and Mrs. Morgan,” she said into the phone, and a few moments later we were ushered into an office halfway down the hall, where a serious-looking man of about fifty with badly dyed black hair sat behind a large wooden desk. He looked up as we entered, and then stood and held out his hand.

“Larry Fleischman—you must be Rita,” he said, taking her hand and staring deep into her eyes with well-practiced and totally fake sincerity. “Carlene has told me so much about you.” His eyes flicked down to the front of her blouse and Rita blushed and gently tried to disengage her hand. Larry looked up at her face and reluctantly dropped her hand at last, and then he turned to me. “And, uh … Derrick?” he said to me, holding out his hand just far enough away that I had to lean over to shake it.

“Dexter,” I said. “With an ‘X.’ ”

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “Unusual name.”

“Almost bizarre,” I said, and then, just to keep things on an even footing, I added, “And you must be Leroy Fleischman?”

He blinked and dropped my hand. “Larry,” he said. “It’s
Larry
Fleischman.”

“Sorry,” I said, and for a moment we just looked at each other.

Finally, Larry cleared his throat and looked back at Rita. “Well,” he said, frowning. “Sit down, won’t you?”

We sat facing the desk in matching chairs, battered wooden things with worn fabric seats, and Larry sat back down behind his desk and opened a manila folder. It had only one sheet of paper in it, and he picked that up and frowned at it. “Well,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”

Our problem was apparently not written on the paper, and I wondered whether there was anything written on it at all, or if it was just
a prop for Larry’s I-am-a-real-lawyer act, and the folder was as phony as his hair color. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder whether Larry could possibly be any help at all. If I was going to fight off a determined and dishonest attack by Hood and Doakes, I needed an attack dog, a lawyer who was sharp and eager and very aggressive and ready to snap the leash and maul that vile old whore, Justice. Instead I was looking at a middle-aged poser who clearly didn’t like me, and would probably decide to help them throw me in the slammer so he could hit on my wife.

But we were here, after all, and Rita seemed to be impressed. So I sat and let her burble her way through our tale of woe. Larry stared at her and nodded, occasionally tearing his eyes off her cleavage and looking over at me with an expression of dull surprise.

When Rita finally finished, Larry leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. “Well,” he said. “First of all, I want to reassure you that you’ve done exactly the right thing by coming here to consult me.” He smiled at Rita. “Too many people wait to consult an attorney until things have gone too far for me to be really helpful. Which you haven’t done, in this case.” He seemed to like the sound of that, and he nodded a few times in the direction of Rita’s breasts. “The important thing,” he told them, “is to have some good legal advice at the very beginning of this thing. Even if you are innocent,” he said, turning to look at me with an expression that said he didn’t really think I was. Then he turned back to Rita and gave her a condescending smile. “The American legal system is the finest in the world,” he told her, which didn’t seem remotely possible, since he was part of it. But he said it with a straight face and went on. “However, it is an adversary system, which means that it’s the prosecutor’s job to get a conviction any way he can, and it’s
my
job to stop him and keep your husband out of jail.” He looked at me again, as if he was wondering whether that was such a good idea after all.

“Yes, I know,” Rita said, and Larry snapped his head back around and looked at her attentively. “I mean, that’s exactly— And I don’t even know … Have you had, you know. A lot of experience? With, um, this kind of … I mean, we understand that criminal law and corporate law are very much— And Carlene said, your sister-in-law? So it might be important.”