Inherit the Dead (26 page)

On the street
in front of Julia’s building was a blue wall of uniformed cops standing shoulder to shoulder to prevent foot or vehicle traffic. Inside the cordon was a fire truck, a paramedic van, and several crazily parked police cruisers, lights flashing.

A growing knot of people stood and gawked, trying to see over or through the uniforms. They were tightly packed, and Perry had to shoulder his way through.

A Rastafarian with a sheep-size coil of dreadlocks was talking to a fat man in an overcoat holding two overfull bags of groceries. The fat man was complaining that the cops wouldn’t let him through to get to his building.

“They won’t even tell me when I can get through,” the fat man said, his voice rising. “It’s an outrage. I’m
outraged
.”

“There was a jumper, man,” the Rasta said in a rhythmic baritone cadence. “A jumper.”

“What?” the fat man asked, surprised. “Somebody jumped from my building?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Who was it?”

“Don’t know,” the Rasta said with a chuckle. “I don’t know any of these rich white folks around here.”

“Was it a man or a woman? My God—I might know them.”

“Don’t know, man. I didn’t see it happen but I
heard
it. Yeah, I heard it.”

Perry paused, interested.

“What, did you hear a scream or something?”

“No scream, man. I heard it hit the ground. It was horrible, man. You know what it sounded like?”

“No,” the fat man said cautiously.

“Like, you know what it sounds like when you buy a bag of ice at the store? But the ice is all stuck together so you can’t use it right away? So you drop the bag of ice on the sidewalk to break it apart? You know that sound it makes when it hits, man?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what it sounded like. Like a bag of ice being dropped onto concrete. That smashing sound, you know, man?”

“Ugh.”

“No shit, man. I won’t forget that sound for a while.”

Perry winced, and pushed through. A uniformed cop with a wide Slavic face and little pig eyes reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To that building. I’ve got a client who lives there.”

“Can’t you see me?” the cop asked. “Am I invisible to you?”

Perry fished his PI credentials out and handed them over. “I’ve got to see my client.”

The pig-eyed cop took it and read it.

“I’m a private investigator, and I’ve got business inside that building. I’ve got a right to get through. I’d suggest you call somebody if you don’t believe me.”

The cop smirked and handed it back. “It don’t mean nothing to me.”

Perry held his tongue. One of the few cops in the NYPD who had not heard of him. Any other time he’d be thankful. The cop watched him and grinned. There were cops like this on every force—men who wore the badge solely for the pleasure of asserting power. Perry used to work with a few of them. He’d long before had his fill of the type.

“You know what you can do for me now, mister?” the cop said.

“And what would that be?”

“You can stand back and let me do my job, or I’ll cuff you and take you back to my shop.”

Perry didn’t budge. The cop’s eyes narrowed, as if he were girding himself for a fight and really looked forward to it.

At that moment, Perry saw Henry Watson inside the cordon talking to a pair of paramedics.

“Henry!”

Watson heard his name and looked up. The cop glanced over his shoulder, then back at Perry. He seemed disappointed.

Watson held up a finger to the paramedics for them to wait and walked toward Perry. His face was clouded, and he looked preoccupied.

The cop said, “If you think that’s going to get you in . . . ”

Watson said, “Perry, get in here. I need you to see something.”

The cop grudgingly stepped aside. As Perry passed him, he said, “I won’t forget this.”

But a knot formed in Perry’s gut. What did Watson want him to see?

“You look like
crap,” Watson said as he led Perry through the uniforms and vehicles toward the building.

“Thank you, I try,” Perry said.

“It’s only gonna get worse.”

“Oh, good.” Then: “There was talk back there about a jumper.”

Watson nodded his head.

“Was it a resident of the building?”

“Oh, yes. Which is why I’m glad you showed up. This way we don’t have to go out and find you.”

Perry glanced up at the building and his eyes climbed the floors, the rows of windows. They came to a rest at the open glass doors on the twenty-fourth floor’s terrace. It seemed like a half a mile up there, but he could still see the doors were open and pushed out to welcome the cold February day.

“Oh, no,” Perry said. “I think that’s the penthouse apartment of—”

“Julia Drusilla,” Watson said, finishing Perry’s thought. Watson asked a paramedic to step aside, and when the man did Perry could see the body.

She was facedown on the pavement, arms and legs splayed out at broken angles, the fan of her hair resting on her shoulders, one shoe on and one shoe off. A single rivulet of black blood snaked out from beneath her and serpentined across the pavement square until it pooled in the gutter around a comma of ice.

“Jesus,” Perry whispered. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. There was no mistaking her. Even in death she had a bad attitude.

Perry felt other detectives move in on him, from behind and on his sides. Watson just stood there, trying to read something from Perry’s face that would give him some kind of insight.

“You were working for her,” Watson said. “So you know more about her than we do right now. Like maybe why she decided to jump out of her window.”

Perry shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. Julia Drusilla was too damn mean and had way too much money coming to kill herself.

Watson said, “We’re going to leave here and go get a nice warm room at the station. And Perry, you’re going to tell me everything you know about Julia Drusilla.”

Perry assented with a stunned grunt.

As Watson led Perry toward a waiting cruiser, the pig-eyed cop looked over his shoulder and said, “Say good-bye to your meal ticket, Christo.”

T
he desk sergeant barely looked up as Watson swiped his badge to the second floor, Perry right beside him.

As they moved through, Watson’s latest partner—a smirky kid named Fleming, maybe working his first dead body—joined them as they wound their way back to one of the interview rooms.

Fleming was in his late twenties, fair-haired and fresh-faced. He looked a lot like a junior-league Watson in his slightly better suit, a gray pinstripe; the older detective’s was navy blue and, as usual, as rumpled as an unmade bed. Perry hadn’t met Fleming the other day, and he didn’t think he was going to like him.

Watson and the kid cop dropped into chairs on one side of the table and Watson waved Perry to a chair opposite, then reached forward and hit Record on the small digital recorder that was the table’s tiny metallic centerpiece.

Still standing, arms spread with his palms up, Perry asked, “An interview room? Recording me? Henry, am I a suspect?”

Patting the air between them, Watson said, “No, no, but she was your client, after all. Just have a seat.”

Reluctantly, Perry did so, as Watson told the recorder the date and time, adding the name of the interviewee, of course.

Perry said, “Yes, she was my client.”

“Why did she hire you?”

“You know why.”

“This is for the record.” Watson nodded at the recorder and gave Perry the edge of a smile.

Perry saw nothing to gain by dodging the question. Julia was dead, and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done about it. “She hired me to find her estranged daughter.”

“The daughter have a name?”

“Angelina Loki.”

“Spell that please.”

Perry did.

“And it was
her
cell phone you had me run down?”

“You already know that.”

“It’s for the record. I’m sorry, but I have to do my job here—you know that.”

Perry knew the pressure would be on Watson, that Julia Drusilla’s body was his jurisdiction, suicide or not. He nodded.

“Verbal response, please.”

“Yes. Her cell phone.”

“Did you find her?”

“I found her.”

“So, then . . . I assume your client was pleased?”

Shrugging, Perry said, “I never had the chance to tell her. When I got to the apartment, she was . . . you know.”

“Splattered?” Fleming said.

Watson shot the kid a look, but Perry didn’t react. He wouldn’t give the smart-ass kid the satisfaction. And if Watson had set up the ancient good-cop/bad-cop wheeze, he wouldn’t dignify that with a reaction, either. Was his old friend trying to put some distance between them? Was that what this was about?

Watson asked, “So . . . Julia Drusilla never knew you found her daughter?”

“That’s right. She didn’t.” Would it have made any difference if he’d reached her as soon as he’d found Angel? Perry wasn’t so sure. At the time he’d been happy for the delay. Now he was sorry.

“What was the story?”

Perry settled in. “Julia Drusilla told me she was dying and wanted to straighten things out with her estranged daughter.”

“Angelina.”

“Angel. Ms. Drusilla wanted me to track her down.”

“You had the cell number and came to me?”

Perry supposed a cop, even his friend, going on the record, had to ask questions he already knew the answer to, but that didn’t make it any less irritating.

Watson sighed. “Look, I know we’ve been through it, but I need to file a report.”

“On me?”

Watson’s jaw twitched. “On Drusilla. But you came to me, remember, got me involved. So now I’ve got to include that in that report.”

So that was part of it: his good pal wanted to make sure he looked clean and pure, none of the old Christo stain on him. The two men stared at each other a moment.

“First,” Perry said, “I went out to Long Island and met Norman Loki, Julia’s ex. When that marriage went bust, Angel moved to Long Island with her father.”

“Uh-huh,” Watson said, nodding.

“Then I met an artist, Lilith Bates—Angel’s best friend. She gave me the name of the motel where Angel and her boyfriend Randy had taken off to, and were supposedly shacked up in.”

Fleming was frowning. “They weren’t
at
the motel?”

“No. But I spoke to the boyfriend, Randy Hyde, and he’d been there, with her. And I spoke to the motel manager, too . . . but no Angel. Not anymore.”

Perry left out that he thought Randy—or that crooked politician Angel was playing with—might have been driving the car that tried to run him off the damn Brooklyn Bridge. That wasn’t part of the story—that was personal, and he’d keep it to himself.

“Then?” Watson asked.

“Then I had you run the cell number. I’m sure you remember.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice but failed.

“Yeah.” Watson nodded. “I remember.”

“And?” Fleming asked.

“And that sent me to Brooklyn to see Athena Williams.

“Who’s she?” Fleming asked.

“Angel’s nanny. She might be the only real friend that girl has in the whole world. That’s where I found my client’s daughter.”

“But you never got a chance to tell Ms. Drusilla?” Fleming asked.

Perry just shook his head.

“Verbally, please.”

“No, I never got that chance. I
already
said that.”

Watson finally asked the question the PI had been waiting for this whole time. “Why was Julia
really
looking for her daughter? If she wanted to ‘straighten things out,’ she’d had years to do it. Why now, all of a sudden?”

“Why now? She was dying, and there was the matter of an inheritance.”

“Details, please.”

Perry shrugged. “Angel would be eligible for that in a few days. When she turns twenty-one.”

“Her mom’s estate,” Fleming said, not a question.

“Which was quite sizable,” Perry said, nodding. “Mommy got a bundle when her own parents died.”

“When was that?” Fleming asked.

But it was Watson who answered: “Julia’s old man died in a crash. Him and his wife, both.”