“And you think he's about to try again? At this hotel, the Breakers?”

“Yes.”

“So why don't you just stay home?” he said.

I am not really being conceited when I say that I am not used to having all the cleverness on the other side of a conversation. But Chutsky was clearly leading in this dance, and Dexter was several laps behind, limping along on two left feet with blisters blossoming on heel and toe. I had walked into this with a very clear picture of Chutsky as a real two-fisted man, even though one of the fists was now a steel hook —but nevertheless the kind of gung-ho, over-the top, damn the torpedoes guy who would leap into battle at the merest suggestion, especially when it concerned getting his hook on the man who had stabbed his true love, my sister Deborah. Clearly, I had miscalculated.

But this left a very large question mark: who was Chutsky, in fact, and how did I get his help? Did I need some cunning stratagem to bend him to my will, or would I have to resort to some form of the unprecedented uncomfortable unspeakable truth? The very thought of committing honesty made me tremble in every leaf and branch —it went against everything I had ever stood for. But there seemed no way out; I would have to be at least marginally truthful.

“If I stay home” I said, “he is going to do something terrible. To me, and maybe the kids.” Chutsky stared at me, then shook his head. “You were making more sense when I thought you wanted revenge” he said. “How can he do anything to you if you're at home and he's in the hotel?” At a certain point you really have to accept the fact that there are days when you have not brought your A game, and this was one of them. I told myself that I was most likely still suffering from my concussion, but my self answered back that this was a pitiful and now overused excuse at best, and with much more self-annoyance than I could remember experiencing for quite some time, I pulled out the notebook I had taken from Weiss's car and flipped it open to the full-color drawing of Dexter the Dominator on the front of the Breakers Hotel.

“Like this” I said. “If he can't kill me he'll get me arrested for murder.”

Chutsky studied the picture for a long moment, and then whistled quietly. “Boy howdy” he said. “And these things down here around the bottom ...”

“Dead bodies” I said. “Fixed up like the ones that Deborah was investigating when this man stabbed her.”

“Why would he do this?” he said.

“It's a kind of art” I said. I mean, he thinks it is.”

“Yeah, but why would he do this to you, buddy?”