Inherit the Dead

17 C. J. BOX

Fire and ice, Perry thought as he gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white as he cut off FDR Drive at Seventy-first Street and headed toward East Seventy-fifth and Park Avenue. His nerves were jangling from the close call on the bridge, and despite the cold February day, he felt pinpricks of sweat on his scalp and beneath his collar. His heart was still racing.

He powered the driver’s-side window down as he drove and welcomed the sharp-toothed bite of the icy air. Suddenly there was the boiling sound-track cacophony of New York — horns blaring, steam rolling out from sidewalk grates, snippets of conversation from bundled-up shoppers and pedestrians. Messengers on bikes weaved through stop-and-start traffic, and sidewalk vendors called to potential customers in balloons of vapor. The rain had eased, but the late afternoon sky was gray and mottled and close, as if someone had placed a lid over the city to prevent anyone from getting out.

Not the worst idea, Perry thought. Clamp that lid on tight and turn the heat up on Julia Drusilla. Make her uncomfortable, make her start to sweat the way he was. Make her tell him what was really going on, and why she really wanted her daughter found.

When she spilled, he thought, he could eventually find the assholes who kept trying to run him off the road. And when he found them…

But what about Angel? She seemed to know all about her inheritance. So why did she run? And what was it she’d said — something to do with her mother or… Perry tried running their conversation in his mind but kept losing the thread. The scenario he thought was clear to him — the framework of the case itself — seemed to be coming apart at the seams, and he was suddenly doing a clown act, juggling the pieces in the air, trying to reassemble them before they crashed down around him and took him down, too.

Perry had driven in New York traffic long enough that he could sense it bottling up ahead of him long before the jam-up was actually visible. It didn’t improve his mood. He’d nearly been killed again, and he was in a hurry.

Traffic didn’t flow in the city. It moved spasmodically; sprinting to the next stop, fidgeting, looking for an opening to squeeze through. So much of every day was simply spent trying to get from Point A to Point B. It was maddening.

He swung into the far left lane to pass the taxi that was slowing down ahead of him, and he accidentally cut off a bike messenger whistling through an open chute. The messenger swerved, wildly cursed at him, and thumped the top of the car with the heel of his hand before squirting away between two cars ahead.

Perry entertained a thought he’d had often where he threw his driver’s-side door open just as a bike messenger tried to sizzle past him. Someday, he vowed, he’d do it. That would show them.

Julia Drusilla’s building was still four blocks away when he saw the lights ahead. Red and white flashes from the light bars atop RMPs strobed the sides of the buildings and bounced off windows. Something near Julia’s building had attracted an army of cops.

“Where were you back there on the bridge when I needed you?” Perry asked aloud.

Traffic was crawling but not good crawling, like it was poised to break loose. It was crawling to a stop.

Perry cranked on the wheel, fitted the nose of his car between two yellow taxis with inches to spare on each side, and bolted down a shadowed side street. Screw the traffic.

It was a narrow street lined with parked cars, and he felt blessed when a four-door turned out onto the pavement, leaving a space. Perry didn’t look around or hesitate; he took the space before anyone else could take it. He’d park and walk the rest of the way — it would be quicker.

As he swung out of his car he saw the signs posted on the poles lining the street: NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING. RESIDENTIAL PERMITS ONLY.

He shrugged.

“Hey,” a thin and pinched woman called to him from where she was walking her tiny dog on the sidewalk, “you can’t park here.”

Perry reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his PI certification and flashed it so quickly she’d have no chance to note his name.

“I just did,” he said, and left her with her dog and her thoughts.

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.”