Inherit the Dead (19 page)

Perry checked his watch. It was almost ten thirty. He’d made good time, but all that driving had him feeling like an old man—back aching, legs stiff. He could still feel that Hamptons chill that had settled somewhere deep inside him. Not that it was any warmer in Manhattan, but the frigid city air was less damp, less invasive somehow. It hurt in a whole different way.

He pulled Nicky’s scarf tighter and dug his hands into his pockets, bracing himself against the painful cold that chewed at his face and snaked down his collar. Just one more block; he was counting the seconds until he felt the warmth of the lobby. He tried to keep his mind on the errand at hand.

Angel’s car turning up—it may or may not mean anything. On
the other hand, the finding of an abandoned vehicle in a missing-persons case was never a good thing. He could have, maybe should have, given Julia Drusilla the news over the phone. But he wanted to see her reaction—watch her face, her hands. People said so much without ever saying a word.

And then, yes, the rush of warmth as he brushed past the doorman who was opening the door.

What was it about the rich?
thought Perry as he stepped from the chill concrete night into the overwarm, marble opulence of Julia Drusilla’s Park Avenue apartment building. There was a scent and a texture to wealth, an unmistakable aura. It colored the walls, brought out the pink veins in the marble floor. Was it the same calla lily arrangement, which sat high and proud on the round lobby table, or a new one? It was taller than his daughter and probably cost more than Perry made in a week. His mother always used to say,
Money will buy what money will buy
. And that never made any sense to him then. But lately, he got it. Some people were just barely making it, while others were drifting on a cushion of money high above the rest. And you knew ’em when you saw ’em. They spent money on flowers, while you clipped coupons and bought the day-old bread.

There was a woman wrapped in a black shearling coat in the lobby. Her golden hair flowed long and shimmering; her jeans tried hard to look tattered. She had a black standard poodle on a long leather leash, and she and the dog shared a kind of lean, aloof look. They were waiting for something, something important. The woman stared at her smartphone, tapping with a single, perfectly square pink fingernail.
Tap, tap, tap
.

“May I help you, sir?” The voice bounced off the walls and the hard floor. The young woman didn’t even look up.

Had the doorman leaned on the word
sir
with just a touch of irony? Perry didn’t like to think so. But the guy had the same look
as the poodle, owned by wealth. Pampered, in a sense, manicured by association, well kept. Perry strode over to the desk and locked the other man in his hardest, nowhere-to-hide cop stare, and was gratified to see the other man squirm. A poodle, while smart enough, was no match for a pit bull. And there was much less blood shed if everyone knew this going in.

The woman and her dog left in a cloud of Chanel No. 5—which Perry recognized because it was the scent Noreen used to wear. Even though he could ill-afford it, he always made sure Santa left a bottle of the cheaper eau de toilette in her Christmas stocking, and she made sure to use it only sparingly. And that’s how normal people afforded little luxuries. Thinking of it, how he’d never been able to give her what she wanted, not really, made something inside him go hollow and angry. After so many years, one would think he could move on. But that was the thing about a pit bull; when he sunk his teeth in, you might have to break his jaw before he could let go.

Suddenly, he felt self-conscious about the fray on the collar of his trench, his old dress shoes, the jagged conditions of his cuticles. But he wouldn’t show it. No, never. A real man didn’t feel bad about his appearance.

“She’s something,” Perry said. He’d watched the doorman’s dark brown eyes drift after the young woman and her poodle. “Man. For real.”

The young Latino gave Perry a polite half smile. “May I
help
you?” he said again.

“I saw her checking you out,” said Perry. “You didn’t notice?”

The doorman issued a little snort, but Perry saw the color come up in his cheeks. “Not likely.”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. He let the sentence trail, singsong and light. It was the same doorman from his first visit, though the guy didn’t seem to recognize or remember him. Perry noticed he had
manicured nails, not polished but shaped and buffed. His skin was so dewy and fresh that he might have just come from a facial.

“Anyway,” Perry went on. “I’m here for Mrs. Drusilla. She in? Name’s Christo. I’ve been here before.”

The doorman looked him over again, then picked up the phone and dialed.

“
Detective
Perry Christo.” He saw the kid’s eyes brighten a bit. Everyone thought he was living in a
Law & Order
episode when you said you were a detective. It was definitely a pop-culture advantage. People just loved to talk—about themselves, about everybody else.

“There’s a Detective Christo here for you, Mrs. Drusilla.” A pause followed by an obedient nod. “Of course.”

Of course.
It was in the lilt of his words that Perry picked up on something he’d missed. The doorman probably hadn’t been checking out the girl. He might have been admiring her shoes or her hair—but not her ass.

“You may go up, sir,” he said. “Twenty-fourth floor. That’s the penthouse. Penthouse A.”

“Thanks,” said Perry. “I know.” He started to move toward the elevator.

“Be careful,” said the doorman. He lowered his voice to a sly whisper. “She
bites
. But maybe you know that, too.”

Oh, an invitation to dish.
Sometimes,
Perry thought,
you just get lucky.

“Is that so?” He moved back slowly. Somewhere outside a siren wailed.

“Um-
hmm,
” the doorman said. Perry leaned in close. He knew that he might not have polish—he needed a shave, could stand to pull a brush through his hair—but Perry knew what he had, and he wasn’t shy about using it.

“She been in tonight?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s been in all right,” the doorman said. The tag on his uniform read
LUCAS
. He tapped on it. “You can call me Luke.”

“So, she’s been in all night, Luke?”

Luke raised his eyebrows and nodded slowly. Perry saw that there was something dark to him, dark appetites, dark sense of humor, something moving beneath the smooth, practiced surface. Perry suddenly liked him better.

“Alone?”

The doorman made a show of organizing his desk—pen in its little mesh cup, papers in a tidy pile. He lifted a logbook and opened it.

“You must see it all here, huh?” asked Perry. “The rich are different, right?”

“Oh, no,” Luke said. “They’re not different at all. They’re as dirty and mean as any thug in the projects. They’re just prettier.”

There were about three different notes of bitterness in the young man’s tone, and Perry planned to play them all if he had to.

“So who was here tonight?” he asked.

He saw a battle play out on the guy’s face between what he wanted to say and what he knew he should say. Finally, as though remembering what had gotten him talking in the first place, he leaned in closer to Perry.

Perry could smell the other man’s cologne. To be honest, their proximity made him a little uncomfortable. But he stayed where he was.

“There was a man earlier,” he said. Luke leaned back, brought a hand to his throat, and rubbed. It was a self-protective gesture; something about the encounter had left Luke feeling threatened. “I’ve never seen him before. Cute. In a vapid, shallow sort of way.”

Perry looked down at the leather logbook in Luke’s hand. “Is his name in here?”

Luke shook his head. “He didn’t give his name,” he said. “He wouldn’t.”

“And you didn’t insist?”

Luke gave him a tired look. “Doormen don’t insist, Detective. We do as we’re told.”

“But Mrs. Drusilla probably wouldn’t want you talking about her visitor, right?”

Luke shrugged and put his hand to his throat again.

Something about Mrs. Drusilla made Luke nervous. Perry couldn’t say that he blamed the kid; she was about as warm and cuddly as a python.

“Good night, Detective,” said Luke.

Perry slid a card over the marble countertop. “Anything interesting, give me a call.”

Luke pocketed the card, but he didn’t say anything else, just cast his eyes down to those manicured nails. Perry had been dismissed. By the doorman. At least he knew where he stood on the totem pole.

The elevator carried the scent of the calla lily arrangement up to the penthouse. The elevator chimed at each passing floor: eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . Perry thought that there weren’t any thirteenth floors in New York City, something about bad luck for the building. The people in this building might have thought they were above all of that. And maybe they were. Maybe rich people didn’t have any bad luck that they couldn’t buy their way out of.

At the end of the long, carpeted hall, the door to Penthouse A stood ajar. Perry pushed on the gold knob and took in the place for the second time, the towering ceilings, the panoramic view of Manhattan, the black marble floors, the low, white leather couches—it was his ex-wife’s dream apartment. If she died and could create her own little piece of heaven, this would be it.
You shouldn’t have married a cop,
he’d teased,
with dreams like that. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Now
you tell me,
she’d joked. Or had she been joking?

Maybe it was him, but the place seemed colder as he moved from
the foyer into the main room. And it wasn’t just the fact that his client kept the air-conditioning going in the dead of winter. There was no place soft or cozy to sit, nothing out of place. It would be hard to be a kid in a place like this. Every spill a disaster. Every trip or fall into some hard edge. He found himself wondering what it was like to be Angel. She hadn’t grown up with her mother, not after the divorce. Of course the beach home in Montauk was no less opulent. And clearly, Daddy Dearest was a lunatic in his own right. Maybe Angel never had a soft place to land.

He heard his own daughter’s voice.
You’re hardly ever here, Daddy. Sometimes I don’t even know who you are.
The sting of those words had never faded, mainly because they were all too true, even if he knew she loved him.

“Detective.”

Julia Drusilla didn’t walk; she glided. It was as if there wasn’t enough weight to her so that she actually had to touch the earth. She had that delicate, brittle look. He’d taken a minute to surf the Internet on his phone, found pictures of her as a younger woman, at this gala or that one, on the social scene from the time she was a girl; and of course, she’d always possessed that patrician thinness that was inherited and not simply “achieved.” But age and illness had robbed her of any of the lushness youth had once bestowed. Once again, Perry took in her collarbone, which seemed to strain against her skin, and the knobs on her wrists that were as round and hard as marbles.

“What news?” She looked at him eagerly, wringing her bejeweled hands. She drifted over to the window, her dove-gray silk robe trailing behind her like a cloud.

He had waited this long to tell her in person in order to judge her reaction, so he wasn’t going to soften his delivery. “We’ve found Angel’s car. But no Angel. You told me not to lie. This isn’t good news.”

She bowed her head into her hands and released a strangled
sound. He almost moved to comfort her. But she had too many hard edges. He found himself remembering what Luke had said.
She bites.

“Mrs. Drusilla,” he said carefully, “I think it’s time to call in the cops. This is a real missing-persons case, and now we have evidence of foul play.”

She looked up at him. Though her face was a mask of sadness and fear, he couldn’t help noticing that her eyes were dry.

“No,” she said vehemently. “No.”

“Mrs. Drusilla—” he began. But she raised her hand.

“I’m begging you,” she said. She moved over toward him, took his hand in hers. “No police.”

“The police have resources that will be helpful in finding Angel,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“It will be a media circus,” she said. Here she issued a little cough and seemed to swoon. He led her by one spindly elbow to a low couch, where she sank, leaning back. But was it an act? He wasn’t sure. The white silk pajamas beneath her robe—it all seemed to coordinate perfectly with the room around her. The ivory walls, the plush slate-colored area rug, the glossy gray and white tables. Above the fireplace, that gigantic Jackson Pollock painting dominated—a rage of black and white and gray splatters, with some angry slashes of red.

The coughing started lightly and seemed to pick up pitch and intensity. She pointed off behind the fireplace, and he assumed she was indicating where he could find water. He found his way to the granite and stainless steel kitchen, which was enormous and so spotlessly clean that it looked never to have been used to prepare food. He rummaged through the cabinets for a glass, ran some water from the faucet, then rushed back.

She took some tentative sips, and Perry looked on helplessly. He felt guilty now for doubting her. Finally, the hacking subsided. Then she found her voice again.

“I’m dying, Detective. You know that.”

“I’m sorry.”

She took a shuddering breath. “Spare me your pity,” she said. He thought he detected a flash of nastiness, but it passed quickly. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and pleading. “I need you to find Angel before I die. I want her to know what belongs to her. But more than that, I want her to know that even though I wasn’t the mother I should have been, I loved her. I need her to know that.”

It was a variation on the same speech she’d given before.

He wanted to say something to convince her that the police could help her better than he could, but she went on.

“I can’t afford red tape, bureaucratic delays, institutionalized incompetence. I don’t have that kind of time. I need you to find her, Perry.”