Inherit the Dead (15 page)

The sky was still overcast, and Perry longed for the sun, for that glorious New York City winter blue. Now there were more heavy clouds overhead, and the forecast was for icy rain, maybe even snow. Perhaps it was his awareness of the impending change in the weather, or the associations he had made between a missing girl and his own beloved child, but he felt a growing sense of unease.

He took his cell phone from his pocket and checked his messages, even though he knew that he had none waiting. It gave him the opportunity to lean against a wall and take in the situation around him.
His gaze danced casually over businesspeople and stray tourists, over deliverymen and mothers pushing carriages, but the only person who seemed to be paying undue attention to anything on the block was himself. Still, it was there: a prickling of the skin on the back of his neck, as though something were slowly crawling up his back. He had long ago learned not to ignore the sensation. In the past it had presaged the impact of a brick on the sidewalk beside him, and once the
snick
of a blade that might otherwise have gutted him had he not responded to the goading of his fear by taking a step backward instead of forward. And it had been there that fateful night when he was tailing Derace McDonald, but not strongly enough to avoid a bullet. He had felt it, too, seconds before the shadow of IAB had fallen across him, although in that case no amount of fancy footwork could have saved him from the touch of its knife.

Nothing. He scanned windows and doors, seeking any hint of surveillance, but none revealed itself. He paused again at St. Catherine’s Park on Sixty-eighth and watched a group of young guys shoot hoops despite the frigid weather, while kids who would have been floored by the impact of the basketball played on the jungle gym. For a moment, he thought that he saw a pair of eyes alight on him and remain there for just an instant too long, features indistinct beneath the hood of a sweatshirt, body hidden beneath layers of winter clothing, but then a crowd swallowed the figure up. Had it been a man or a woman? A boy or a girl? Did she look like Angel? He had no idea—it had all happened too quickly.

I’m not just jumping at shadows,
thought Perry.
I’m jumping at the
hope
of shadows.

He moved on, but took a circuitous route back to his apartment, making a long loop onto First Avenue to buy milk that he didn’t need. The prickling went away, but the memory of it did not. He entered his building and waited until he was certain that the door had
closed properly before he turned his back on it, and the stairway to his fifth-floor walk-up seemed darker than before. When he opened the door to his apartment, he paused for a moment before entering, but if there was anyone hiding in there, he wished them luck: his apartment was so small a game of hide and seek would have lasted about two seconds. There was a bedroom with just enough room for a bed, a kitchenette with just enough room for a stove and half-size fridge, and the living area crowded with all his PI equipment.

What it did have was shelving: lots and lots of shelving. It was what had attracted Perry to it in the first place. With a little work, he was able to create spaces for his collection of vinyl and his books. He had an iPod that he had loaded with music from the CDs that were now in storage, but he rarely used it. He preferred vinyl, and not because of the difference in sound, although he had read about a study in which music played on vinyl had calmed mentally disturbed patients while music played through a computer had made them angrier, which didn’t surprise him in the least. No, what Perry liked was the ritual involved in listening to vinyl. With an iPod, you could press a button and listen to music for days, but the problem was that you could also do lots of other stuff at the same time: laundry, cooking, answering e-mail, dozing off. But vinyl demanded your attention: you had to put the record on the turntable, make sure the surface and the needle were clean, and then wait until the needle found the groove. After that you only had twenty minutes of music, so you might as well sit down and listen because pretty soon you’d be back on your feet again to change the side. Your focus became the record and, by extension, what you were hearing. Perry didn’t like music as a background. Either you immersed yourself in it or you didn’t listen to it at all. Jazz, classical, country, folk, rock: it was all the same to him. If you liked it enough not just to buy it but also to keep it, then the least that it deserved was your attention.

He kicked off his shoes and put on the latest Sun Kil Moon album, bought from the band’s Web site. He looked around his apartment as the music played, Mark Kozelek’s voice almost as deep as his own, as though he had found a way to put his own sense of dislocation to music. Those first years outside the department had been the hardest: he had lost not one family because of what had occurred, but two. The NYPD had been as much a part of his life as the woman and child who shared his home. Now both families were gone, but he was still here: he had survived the loss of both, even though he would have sworn years before that such a thing would not be possible.

And although he could not have said that he loved what he did—the insurance cases, the missing persons, the casework for lawyers seeking to get clients off the hook regardless of their innocence or guilt—it suited something deep in his nature. Perhaps he had always been more inclined to a solitary existence than he might have wanted to believe, although he continued to fight it. Women passed through his life, or he passed through theirs: sometimes, he wasn’t sure which was the truth. He lived alone; his ex-wife had a new man in her life; his daughter was growing up too fast—but he kept trying, as much for Nicky’s sake as for his own. He tried never to miss his scheduled calls with her, though it happened, and he paid his child support even when it left him broke for the rest of the month. He gave his ex, Noreen, no cause to complain because he was desperate to hold on to his daughter.

The thought brought him back to Julia Drusilla. Despite all that she had said about her daughter, there had been a disconnection between what was spoken and what was felt. Until now, Perry had struggled to grasp the source of his dissatisfaction with the woman, but thinking about his daughter in the solitude of his apartment had made it clear to him: there was not enough pain. For Perry, the absence of his daughter in his day-to-day life was like an open wound,
an emptiness in his being that erupted in agony with even the softest touch of memory. Maybe the fact of Julia Drusilla’s own impending mortality had dulled the loss of her daughter, but then why the need for a deathbed reunion? Yes, there had been a sense of urgency to Drusilla’s desire to have her daughter back, but was it to fill a hole in her being or a hole in her wallet? But Julia Drusilla was rich, so what need did she have for the money? She was also dying, which made the need for money even less pressing, unless she planned to be buried with it.

He stopped thinking, and started listening. He closed his eyes and let the music wash over him as he imagined his daughter sitting next to him, her hand in his, sharing silence in music.

The needle rose. The telephone rang. The timing could not have been more perfect. He picked up the phone and for a single second expected to hear his daughter’s voice. Instead, Arthur Gawain from the East Hampton Police Department spoke.

“We’ve found Angel’s car,” he said.

“And Angel?”

“If we’d found her, do you think I’d have started off with the car?”

“Anything I should know?”

“The car looked as if it had been abandoned, that’s all. No sign of anything else.”

“I’m coming out there,” said Perry, thinking if he left now he could be there before dark. He hung up before Gawain could say no.

Before he left, he replaced the record in its sleeve.

You had to be careful with fragile things.

So much easier to follow the PI on foot than by car.

You leave just enough distance between you, and there are plenty of people on the street for distraction. But damn, it’s cold, and you’ve been following him since morning, first to the police station, waiting outside, standing around trying to look innocent in front of a police station, almost funny, all those cops going in and out and no one giving you a second glance. You try to imagine who the PI is here to see, someone who will hopefully help him and help you at the same time.

You walk up and down the block trying to keep warm, your hands going numb, damn gloves left behind in the car, and then, just as you’re passing in front of the precinct entrance, the PI comes out and you practically jump but he doesn’t notice, he’s so preoccupied, and you slide behind a group of uniforms, using them as a shield.

You let him get a half block ahead then catch up walking slowly but purposely until he stops and you duck under the awning of an apartment building and watch as he gets his cell phone out and scrolls through messages, half looking at his phone and half surveying the area, and you wonder if he’s aware of you at all.

He starts walking again and you do, too, slower now, cautious, and when he stops beside a church, you turn around and pretend to buy something at a newspaper stand until he’s moving again, heading home, you think, though his route is different so you’re not sure, wondering if he’s learned something important and if he’s heading somewhere else, so you move a little quicker, afraid you might lose him, following around a corner and onto First Avenue, the wind in your face, an icy chill off the river. And when he goes into a deli, you speed up, a daring part of you wanting to tease the situation even more than you already have and so you follow him in, watch him take a carton of milk to the counter, the two of you only six, seven feet apart, your hood up so he can’t see your face, and you’re nervous but excited, your whole body electric.

Then he looks over and you feel his eyes on you and you know he’s
thinking: Is this someone I should look at, is this someone I know? But you don’t dare look up. You just reach for a box of Oreos acting casual, normal, waiting until when he’s paid for his milk and then he’s out of the store and you buy the cookies and wait again to make sure he’s not going to come back. Then you head out, stop in the doorway, peer up and down the street, spot him a half block ahead, and wait another minute until you see him turn the corner.

You catch up in time to see him go into his apartment building. Then you slide into the rental car and eat the Oreos one by one, splitting them open and licking the cream with the tip of your tongue, the whole time staring up at the PI’s fifth floor, waiting.

A
nother trek out to the Hamptons. It was almost three when Perry finally pulled into the garage. He needed to see and hear what Randy had to say about Angel’s car. Thought if he was smart, he’d have ol’ Randy check out his Datsun, too, all the miles he was putting on it with this case.

“You don’t belong here.”

The woman behind the counter who snarled those words at Perry as he entered the office of Gil’s Gas & Auto wore too much makeup that did too little to cover the hard miles that had plunked her here in this Long Island garage. Her twentieth high school reunion had come and gone, but local gossips often noted she was “still” pretty. Her perfume, white blouse, and dark slacks cost more than necessary for working this auto shop’s computer, credit card reader, cash register, and customer counter. She kept coffin eyes on Perry, shook a cigarette out of the pack on her desk, flicked a blue flame from a lighter.

Swirling cigarette smoke carried Perry’s eyes to the gas station wall, hung with five framed photos faded by sunlight and weighted by dust. He hadn’t noticed them last time, but now he took them in.

Perry saw the five photos were all of the same man as he aged through life, from a high school football player to a soldier in two
photos of American soldiers in desert camo fatigues. Soldiers in one photo held a banner:
LONG ISLAND NATIONAL GUARD MECH. DIV. ZULU—OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM
. The fourth photo showed the same man, but older and looking lost. The fifth photo showed him even older and standing beside the thirtysomething ghost of the woman smoking at the desk. The ghost clutched a bouquet, wore a workday dress and the brave smile of some last best hope.

Perry nodded to the photos. “So that’s Gil.”

“Like you care,” said the woman. “I got told what you look like. You’re not supposed to be here.”

Perry shrugged. “Free country.”

“Since when.”

“I’m here to see Randy.”

“He doesn’t want to see you again.” She sucked on the cigarette. Made its ember burn traffic-light orange. “He told me. You got nothing for him. Nothing on him.”

“It’s heartening to see a boss who cares so much about her employees.”

She billowed a cloud of smoke toward Perry. “I’m not the boss.”

Perry nodded. “Sure.”

Left her with her smoldering cancer stick and walked into the garage bay.

“Randy!” she yelled past him. “If you need me, I’m here! I’m here!”

Perry found Angel’s ex-
whatever
Randy standing beside a car lift that held a luxury sedan suspended above their heads.

A gray work shirt hid Randy Hyde’s tattoos, but not the bulge of his muscles. His empty hands flexed with the ambition of fists.

Perry stopped beside an overturned fuel drum covered with tools.

Randy said: “We’re done talking.”

“We’re done with your bullshit, but we’re not done with talking about Angel.”

Randy drew his lips back over his teeth. “So, guess you’re just another hotshot wannabe hooked by that blond cunt.”

That brutally degrading term keyed Perry’s cop savvy of how much multilayered malice could trigger the word. Beyond that alarm, he felt as if an affront had splattered him or someone he loved—someone not like his ex-wife and certainly not like his daughter but . . . He felt himself shimmer from
smart
to
street
.

Perry said: “So, if that’s what she is, guess now you’re just a worthless dick.”