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 Well, I d bet on it, he said.  I think you found Dr.Danco .
I looked at Deborah. She shook her head, so I looked back at Kyle s
sunglasses. Interesting name. Is it Polish?
Chutskycleared his throat and looked out over the water.  Before your time, I
guess. There was a commercial back then.Danco presents theautoveggie . It
slices, it dices  He swiveled his dark lenses back to me.  That s what we
called him. Dr.Danco . He made chopped-up vegetables. It s the kind of joke
you like when you re far from home and seeing terrible things, he said.
 But now we re seeing them close to home, I said.  Why is he here?
 Long story, Kyle said.
 That means he doesn t want to tell you, Deborah said.
 In that case, I ll have another crab cake, I said. I leaned over and took
the last one off the plate. They really were quite good.
 Come on,Chutsky , Deborah said.  There s a good chance we know where this
guy is. Now what are you going to do about it?
He put a hand on top of hers and smiled.  I m going to have lunch, he said.
And he picked up a menu with his other hand.
Deborah looked at his profile for a minute. Then she pulled her hand away.
 Shit, she said.
The food actually was excellent, andChutsky tried very hard to be chummy and
pleasant, as if he had decided that when you can t tell the truth you might as
well be charming. In fairness, I couldn t complain, since I generally get away
with the same trick, but Deborah didn t seem very happy. She sulked and poked
at her food while Kyle told jokes and asked me if I liked the Dolphins
chances to go all the way this year. I didn t really care if the Dolphins won
the Nobel Prize for Literature, but as a well-designed artificial human I had
several authentic-sounding prepared remarks on the subject, which seemed to
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satisfyChutsky , and he chattered on in the chummiest way possible.
We even had dessert, which seemed to me to be pushing the
distract-them-with-food ploy a little far, particularly since neither Deborah
nor I was at all distracted. But it was quite good food, so it would have been
barbaric of me to complain.
Of course, Deborah had worked very hard her whole life to become barbaric, so
when the waiter placed an enormous chocolate thing in front ofChutsky , who
turned to Debs with two forks and said,  Well . . . she took the opportunity
to fling a spoon into the center of the table.
 No, she said to him.  I don t want another fucking cup of coffee, and I
don t want a fucking chocolatefoo-foo . I want a fucking answer. When are we
going to go get this guy?
He looked at her with mild surprise and even a certain fondness, as though
people in his line of work found spoon-throwing women quite useful and
charming, but he thought her timing might be slightly off.  Can I finish my
dessert first? he said.
CHAPTER 12
DEBORAH DROVEUSSOUTH ON DIXIE HIGHWAY . YES, Idid say  us. To my surprise, I
had become a valuable member of the Justice League and was informed that I was
being honored with the opportunity to put my irreplaceable self in harm s way.
Although I was far from delighted, one small incident almost made it
worthwhile.
As we stood outside the restaurant waiting for the valet to bring Deborah s
car,Chutsky had quietly muttered,  What the fuck . . . ? and sauntered away
down the driveway. I watched him as he walked out to the gate and gestured at
a maroon Taurus that had casually parked there beside a palm tree. Debs glared
at me as if it wasall my fault, and we both watchedChutsky wave at the
driver s window, which rolled down to reveal, of course, the ever-watchful
SergeantDoakes .Chutsky leaned on the gate and said something toDoakes , who
glanced up the drive to me, shook his head, and then rolled up the window and
drove away.
Chutskydidn t say anything when he rejoined us. But he did look at me a
little differently before he climbed into the front seat of the car.
It was a twenty-minute drive south to whereQuail Roost Drive runs east and
west and crossesDixie Highway , right beside a mall. Just two blocks in, a
series of side streets leads into a quiet, working-class neighborhood made up
of small, mostly neat houses, usually with two cars in the short driveway and
several bicycles scattered across the lawn.
One of these streets bent to the left and led to a cul-de-sac, and it was
here, at the end of the street, that we found the house,a pale yellow stucco
dwelling with an overgrown yard. There was a battered gray van in the driveway
with dark red lettering that saidHERMANOS CRUZ LIMPIADORES  Cruz Brothers
Cleaners.
Debs drove around the cul-de-sac and up the street about half a block to a
house with half a dozen cars parked out front and on the lawn, and loud rap
music coming from inside. Debs turned our car around to face our target and
parked under a tree.  What do you think? she said.
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Chutskyjust shrugged.  Uh-huh. Could be, he said.  Let s watch a while. And
that was the entire extent of our sparkling conversation for a good half hour.
Hardly enough to keep the mind alive, and I found myself mentally drifting off
to the small shelf in my apartment, where a little rosewood box holds a number
of glass slides, the kind you place under a microscope. Each slide contained a
single drop of blood very well-dried blood, of course. I wouldn t have the
nasty stuff in my home otherwise.Forty tiny windows into my shadow other
self.One drop from each of my small adventures. There had been First Nurse, so
long ago, who had killed her patients by careful overdose, under the guise of
easing pain. And the very next slot in the box, the high-school shop teacher [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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