Inherit the Dead (12 page)

As she stalked off, leaving Perry bewildered at the whole exchange, he looked back to his left. The man in the sweatshirt was gone. And Perry was stuck with the tab.

Ten minutes later, still discombobulated from the whole bar business, Perry found his Datsun in the still-pouring rain and parked it in front of room twelve. He bolted the few feet, slammed the door behind him, and took stock of the room. A little dingy, a little musty, with a haphazardly made bed and some weird Painter of Light shit hanging on the wall, but it would do. It was a stopgap kind of place, perfect for Perry’s current state of mind: in suspended animation, needing a better read on where Angel might be.

He lay on his back on the paisley bedspread and took out her photo again. Just as before, he sensed he was missing something about her. About the case. But before Perry could ruminate further, exhaustion won the night.

The rain pounds against the glass and you try to stay calm, tamp down your adrenaline as you stare through the windshield of your parked car, lights off, just one more vehicle in a parking lot of vehicles, concealed by darkness and veiled by the weather.

The neon sign casts wavy colors into the night, and across the parking lot puddles like a psychedelic light show.

You watch him get out of his car, collar up against the downpour, dash to the motel door.

You imagine him stripping off his wet clothes, plodding naked to the bathroom, standing under a hot shower—that scene from
Psycho
suddenly playing in your mind, along with the piercing sound track of harsh and distorted strings and screeching violins. But this time it’s you—you’re in it!—opening the bathroom door, about to tear back the shower curtain and then, then—But how can this be? It’s not him but you in the shower and the kitchen knife is stabbing you, piercing your flesh over and over, blood spurting and mixing with the shower water, and you can’t clear your head or stop the movie.

You gasp for breath, press the heels of your palms against your eyes until everything goes black.

It’s the drink. You know you’re not supposed to—not with the meds—but you couldn’t help it.

You open the car window and lean out. Rainwater spills over your face. It feels good, like a baptism, like you are with Him, your Maker, and your mind starts to ease and your breath to slow because you know He is there for you, just for you, on your side, and everything is going to work out just fine.

T
he next morning it was gray. Perry had had his fill of the gray, his fill of the Hamptons. He just wanted to get back to the city. Then he spotted the car in his rearview mirror. The same car. Again. Like the gray.

“Enough,” he said. He sped down the road, then swerved onto the shoulder, his car crunching to a gravel halt. As the car neared, he saw it wasn’t the Toyota but a Mercedes. It slowed, the driver perhaps considering a U-turn that would have been a giveaway, though at this point, Perry wasn’t sure of what. He waited. He had stopped on a stretch with some distance between cross streets so the Mercedes wouldn’t be able to duck away easily.

He caught a quick glimpse of a woman at the wheel, a brunette in aviator shades, and her license plate. He grabbed his notebook off of the passenger seat and jotted the number down.
Ten bucks says it’s Upper East Side,
he thought. Only Upper East Side brunettes wore sunglasses in this weather. He checked his rearview once more before pulling back onto the road.

Waiting in a
windowless conference room at East Hampton Police Headquarters, Perry smelled something cooking. He realized he was
hungry. He’d bought a bagel from a deli near the motel but hadn’t been able to eat it. He’d swiped off half the cream cheese before taking a bite and had gotten some on his pants. He glanced down now at the white streak between his zipper and right pocket.
Jesus,
he thought,
anywhere but there.
A cop seeing it might think he’d had a hooker in his passenger seat. Of course, he’d made it worse by trying to wipe it away. Why did they have to slather on so much cream cheese anyway? Was there a surplus they had to bring down? He’d thrown the bagel away after two bites.

At first, Perry thought the room looked like any other cop-shop meeting room. But he saw no coffee cup rings on the long oaken table. He scanned the beige carpeting. It could have been cleaned the day before. It took him back two years to the Southampton PD, something he wanted to forget. Then there were the framed photos lining the wall facing him, all of various East Hampton chiefs squinting against sun in grip-and-grins with celebrities: Donald Trump, Wendi Murdoch, Dennis Franz. Perry thought of Franz in his
NYPD Blue
heyday. What would
he
do to find Angelina Loki? Round up a suspect or two, slap the truth out of them between commercials for beer and tampons?

A door to Perry’s left swung open, and an officer entered in full uniform: hat perched on head, navy tie knotted and clasped, pistol on hip, handcuffs dangling from belt. Perry couldn’t help but think of Barney Fife. A brass nameplate over the officer’s right breast read
GAWAIN
. Perry stood, offering his hand and a tentative smile.

“This isn’t a round table,” he said.

Gawain had heard the joke, such as it was. “Guh-VAN,” he said, giving Perry’s hand a perfunctory shake.

“Pardon?”

“It’s not GAH-wayne.”

“Sorry,” Perry said “You’re not from around here.”

“Neither are you.”

“No. The city. Though I spent a few years in Detroit after college. Does that count?”

“Not bad hockey there.”

Perry heard HAW-key. “You’re from Mass, right?”

“Hingham.”

“BPD?”

“Statie.”

“That how you knew Henry?”

“Henry?”

“Watson. NYPD.”

Perry was hoping Gawain would sit, but he stood there, Fife-like, with his hands still on his hips and his hat still on his head. His cheeks sagged a little on a thin face decorated with a salt-and-pepper goatee.

“We worked on a case once.”

“Ugly?”

Perry had read about it in old
Boston Globe
clips. The New York cops were hounding a drug dealer who’d survived the Mexico wars and left a bloody mess in Harlem before skating up to Boston on his way to Canada. When the Boston cops rousted him from a crack house in Dorchester, he’d shot an old lady while stealing her car. The cops ran him down on the interstate. The Mexican took a fatal bullet to the head, then four more that disintegrated the left side of his face. After the Mexican embassy got involved, the shooter—a state cop—was relegated to desk duty and soon found work elsewhere. Elsewhere being East Hampton.

“Depends on your perspective,” Gawain said.

“I suppose.”

“You were a cop, weren’t you, Pete?”

“Perry. Yep.”

“Henry said.” Gawain removed his hat, revealing a feathery widow’s peak. He set the hat on the table. “Sometimes you’re just doing
what they told you to do, and next thing you know, they forgot they told you to do it. You know?”

“Sure do.”

“You interested in some breakfast?”

“That sounds very good.”

“Got some chowder here.”

“For breakfast?”

Gawain managed a smile. “You’d eat this chowder for your last meal. We get it from Jeanne’s down the street. She’s from Yarmouth. Back in a minute.”

Butter shimmered golden
on the surface of the scallop chowder.
Such good things come in foam cups,
Perry thought. He wanted another bag of oyster crackers, but he and Detective Gawain were into Angel Loki now, and he didn’t want to interrupt.

He’d told Gawain about his assignment, about Julia Drusilla, about the family millions, about his trip to Montauk, about Angel’s cloying so-called friend Lilith, about Angel supposedly taking off with her alleged boyfriend, one Randy Hyde of East Hampton. Perry had slid the snapshot of Angel across the table to Gawain, who’d given the photo a long look before sliding it back.

“Pretty,” Gawain said.

“Lots of pretties around here, though, eh?”

“That’s correct. Has she been officially declared missing?”

“Not yet.”

“And she dumped Hyde?”

Perry nodded. “We think so.”

“It wouldn’t bother us if he was dumped for good.”

“He’s a problem?”

“A tick.”

Gawain recited as he dug the last sweet bits of scallop out of his cup. “Hyde, Randall Carter. Date of birth: seven/fifteen/eighty-three. Six feet two, one hundred ninety-five pounds. Eyes blue, hair blond. Drunk and disorderly. Assault and battery. Driving on the beach. Bike too loud. Car too loud. Telling cops to eat shit. You know.”

“But the ladies love him.”

Gawain pushed his cup aside and dabbed at his mouth with a restaurant napkin. “You seem surprised,” he said.

“No. But you really think a girl from her side of the tracks would go for a grease monkey?”

“Why wouldn’t a guy with big muscles and a big bike and a big attitude make some smart rich kid think she could change him for the better? Isn’t that the way of the world? Besides, you ever watch those reality shows? Greasers are all the rage now.”

“I don’t watch TV.”

“And, oh, rumor has it—though I have not personally confirmed this—that Mr. Hyde has quite a torque wrench between his legs.”

“Ah.”

“Not that that or money or good looks are of any importance to women.” He stared into the table for a moment, then looked up at Perry, as if appealing to him. “They really just want men of good character, right?”

“Right.” Perry glanced at Gawain’s ring finger. It was bare. “Did Randy Hyde by chance ever go around with some of the, shall we say, older ladies who summer out here?” Perry pretty much knew the answer but hoped to get it confirmed.

“Let me put it this way,” Gawain said. “We have yet to find sufficient evidence to charge him with prostitution.”

“Got it. And he’s never been busted for sexual assault?”

“Nope,” Gawain said. “I mean, Randy Hyde is a total loser, and I
wouldn’t want him near any daughter of mine, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind who goes for that sort of thing.”

“What about his business? That in decent shape?”

“It wasn’t—it isn’t his. A guy named Gil Stone owns it. I have to say I’ve heard old Hyde’s actually pretty good at keeping a car running, which can be lucrative around here. Not a lot of Jiffy Lubes out this way.”

Perry had to wonder again if Hyde knew about the pot of money awaiting Angel. Or if he had ever encountered Julia Drusilla. She seemed like the kind of older woman who might be inclined to sample his goods. He stifled a shudder and said, “Anything else?”

“I wish,” Gawain said. He stood, picked up his hat. “The truth is, we can’t do a lot until this Angel girl is declared missing.”

“Right.” Perry stood. “Thanks for the soup.”

“Chowder,”
Gawain said. “Look, I’d like—we’d like to be helpful. Henry’s a good cop. And we can do without Mr. Hyde, even if the women can’t.”

“Ah—reminds me,” Perry said. He snatched his notebook from a pocket, tore a page out, and handed it to Gawain. “Brunette followed me from Montauk. Didn’t get much of a look at her. But can you run the plate?”

“Can do,” Gawain said. “We’ll get back to you.”