Inherit the Dead

6 SARAH WEINMAN

Perry Cristo mentally kicked himself as he got back onto Route 27. Here he’d just spent the past thirty minutes at an auto shop and it had slipped his mind to check the needle on the gas gauge. It was at the three-quarter line, enough to get him to the motel, and maybe fifty miles after that, but not much more. Normally he wouldn’t care where he filled up the car, but February in Montauk was more damp and bone chilling than in the city, which was saying something. And the light disappeared early enough to make the prospect of freezing his ass off to fill the gas tank that much more unpleasant.

But this was the Hamptons, and there wouldn’t be another gas station for ten miles. Fuck it, Perry thought, might as well get to the motel and figure things out from there. That strategy had worked for him in the past, as a cop, and it worked still as a detective without the badge. He’d only had a vague sense of what to ask Randy Hyde at the auto shop, and the kid had still told him something important. They almost always did, no matter how hard they tried to hide things. Sometimes it took a little extra cajoling, a longer beat of silence they couldn’t bear to leave unfilled, but inevitably something spilled out. Even the smallest nuggets paid off in the most unexpected ways.

Now, thanks to Randy, Perry was on his way to a place he’d never visited but had certainly heard of before. The Memory Motel. He wondered if Angel was a Stones fan, too, if their song had lodged in the back of her memory, or if she and Randy had shacked up in a room there because it was convenient. There was no point in asking Randy about it; the kid, once he’d spilled the info to Perry, had nothing else to give. It had been the same, even more so, with Lilith, the artist. Now there was a piece of work. He still heard her smooth-talking seduction in his head. For someone who chose to live the artist’s isolated life, Lilith had gone out of her way to be memorable. Plus, she’d lied to his face about not knowing Randy Hyde when she knew him in the way that counted most. Then again, maybe Randy had been lying about fucking her. Everyone lied. Why did it always come down to that?

Perry looked down at the GPS he’d installed to make sure he hadn’t missed the turnoff. He didn’t like to rely on the device’s artificial voice. Too prim, too proper, too grating, and since he liked long drives to work through the thorny knots that cases always presented him, hearing words with a robotic sound pissed him off even more. And more often than not, the voice was wrong, and “recalculating” was really code for “where the fuck are we.”

Perry saw he had another three miles to go. But as he looked down, he felt something whisper up his spine. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but there was nothing behind him. No cars ahead, either. He’d had that feeling before, and it was never good. The case was already starting to move away from simple math to more complicated algebra, but he wasn’t ready to admit there might be a darker force lurking. And if there was, he hoped he could at least fill up the gas tank.

The turnoff arrived — as always, a hair sooner than Perry anticipated — and he skidded a bit before hitting his mark. And there it was, the Memory Motel, the joint where Mick Jagger sang about hanging with Hannah baby, of curved nose and teeth. Then Perry’s mind drifted to a very different memory, of his ex-wife’s nose curving above her laughing mouth. He shook his head to make the image disappear. Not the time, not the place.

This place, though, didn’t live up to the song. It was trying too hard to be respectable. The old gaudy sign was gone, replaced by some upscale piece of crap that pretended toward upward mobility. Two statues stood on either side of the door, and when Perry went up close he won the bet with himself: they were gargoyles, the ugliest kind. He’d heard the Memory had been sold a couple of years ago to one of those tech billionaires who claimed he was going to do something “major” with it. But those plans had been cut off at some point. The outside was in dire need of a paint job, and the lobby walls were covered in a greenish tinge that couldn’t be anything else but moss.

Perry was alone in the lobby. He sniffed at the air, a stale mix of booze and cigarettes. As he did so a voice from behind him said, “What are you, a health inspector?”

Perry turned. The man’s voice was “Long-Guyland,” but the face was a generation and a half younger, at least, than he’d expected. Tattoos covered both of the man’s arms, and while Perry hoped to hell never to see underneath the all-black garb, he was sure there was more ink on the guy’s torso and legs.

“Nope. Just a visitor. You responsible for the smell?”

The man folded his arms and glowered. It would have been pitiful because of the other man’s babyish, fine-boned face framed by wispy blond hair, but Perry knew better. He’d been young once, too, with a few bar fights under his belt. He’d made sure not to get his ass kicked much, but the one time he hadn’t been able to avoid it was because of a guy like this one, barely suppressed rage ready to boil over at the next possible customer.

“You could say that. So what can I do for you?” he asked with undisguised hostility.

Perry took a long breath. There was no sense in being anything other than calm. “I’m going to take something out of my pocket. Are you the kind of guy who flinches when someone does that, or will you stay quiet?”

As he’d expected, the tattooed man flinched at the question. How much time he’d done and where, Perry wasn’t about to ask.

“I’ll stay quiet,” the other man said, the hostility ebbing a little.

“Good.” Perry took out his PI license. On this guy, using expired NYPD credentials, like he had for other cases in the past, wouldn’t work. He let the other man take his time examining the laminated card. “I’m tracking the movements of a girl named Angelina Loki. Know her?”

“It’s my business to know,” the tattooed man said. “I manage the place.” The man extended his hand and let out a hearty chuckle. “Elisha Hook. Man, I never thought I’d meet a guy with a more ridiculous first name than mine. Pericles?”

“Yeah, and that was reserved for only one person: my mother. Everyone else calls me Perry. Anyway, how long have you been the manager here?”

“Three years. Took over from my dad, who took it over from his dad. Otherwise, the new owners would have tossed me out with the trash, like they did with so much shit around here.”

“The sign?”

“The sign. The chandeliers. The railings. You name it. They said they wanted to make it a classier joint. Instead, a week doesn’t go by before some asshole declares himself cock of the walk in the bar and we have to boot him out. Last Saturday was terrible. This one spic fills himself up with Jägermeister and throws a roundhouse on the black guy sitting next to him. For no reason. We never used to need bouncers around here. Now the economy’s made everybody more crazy.” For extra emphasis, Hook circled his temple with his left index finger.

Perry didn’t tune out Elisha Hook, but his little speech was useless. Now Perry knew Hook would ramble on unchecked if he didn’t steer the conversation in the direction he wanted. When Hook took a breath, Perry found his opening.

“But back to Angel Loki.”

“Yeah, what about her?” Hook’s face changed, pupils widening with anticipation.

“So you do know her?”

The light in Hook’s eyes dimmed, and he shifted uncomfortably. “Depends on what you mean by knowing.”

“Well, she was here at the Memory?”

Hook paused, as if he didn’t know how to phrase what he was going to say next. Perry’s ears pricked up, but Hook didn’t break the silence.

“She was here, then?” Perry asked. “For how long?”

“Couple of weeks, on and off. Mostly off,” Hook said, his voice dropping to nearly nothing.

“Sounds like she made an impression on you.”

“You seen her?” Hook upped his volume. “Photos don’t do that girl justice. She has… not sure how to describe it exactly, but she has something. So many celebrity big shots come and go around here, and so I know how to spot it.”

“Star quality, you mean?”

“Sure,” said Hook, “if that’s how you want to put it. That girl, she had it. She could walk into a room, stay for thirty seconds, tops, and everyone would remember. I saw it happen in the bar a couple of nights. Guys and gals alike, they all wanted to know who she was and she wasn’t talking to any of ’em.” Hook’s face scrunched up like he was trying to stave off a bad memory.

“So she didn’t talk to you, then,” said Perry. His voice had softened, too, not by design, but because the situation seemed to call for it. Something about Hook didn’t quite sit right, and as the other man launched into an embellishment of what was clearly an incidental encounter — beautiful woman, clearly unavailable and unattainable, only speaks when she needs to check in, check out, or call up for room service — Perry realized what it was: Hook had the appearance, and the first initial presentation, of a man who’d done violence, but he didn’t have the physical bearing, that weird pheromone all hyped-up types give off, of a true offender. It was as if he pretended to a rap sheet of felonies when he was lucky to have third-degree misdemeanors, at best. Perry figured Hook had been dealing with this disconnect his whole life.

“I see,” Perry said, fighting off a creeping discomfort. “When did she leave?”

Hook did a double take. “Oh, right. Really early in the morning. Like she was just waiting for the sun to come up to get out of town. Which was weird. She was more the type to show up in the bar at the tail end of last call.”

“When everyone would look at her but she wouldn’t give them the time of day,” said Perry.

“Something like that.”

“How did she seem when she left? In a hurry? Scared? Happy?”

“Definitely in a hurry,” Hook said. “Scared? Nah, I wouldn’t say that, but she wasn’t calm, either. Maybe she was on something. I don’t know, and I don’t check. But that early, hers was the only car zooming off onto the highway. Hell of a motor on it, too.”

“That’s the Memory Motel policy: to keep clear but watch everybody?”

Hook laughed without any trace of humor. “Is that it?” The question offered a single response. Perry went for it because there was no other choice.

“For now, but I may be in touch.” Perry fished out a business card and put it on the desk. Hook didn’t take it, his arms folded, as they were when they first started talking. “Thank you for your time.”

But to Perry’s surprise, the other man hesitated, his face growing sheepish. Perry waited a beat. “Don’t tell anyone what I told you, okay?” Hook muttered.

“Why’s that?”

Now Hook was blushing full-on. “I, ah, might have let on something else to the guys. You know, after she left. When it was late, in the bar.”

Perry did everything in his power not to burst into a grin. “I won’t tell a soul,” he said.

Hook wasn’t done. “I mean it. It took a hell of a lot of work for me to build my reputation back up in this part of town. Everyone thought I was some kind of pussy. It never mattered what I did.” He held out his arms, showing off the elaborate art on it as he rotated his forearms. “It never mattered what I inked. My old man gave me the business, but if he’d found any other way, he would have. There’s nobody else to run this motel. Just me. And now that things are starting to fall apart, who’s going to take my place?”

Then the man shifted again, like he was snapping out of a trance. His eyes zeroed in on Perry’s, and the PI knew an exit line when he saw it approach like a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball.

Perry mumbled good-bye and left Hook to his fantasies of manhood and thwarted romance. Sometimes that’s all a man ever gets.

But as he got back into his car and found his way back to the Montauk Highway, Perry wondered if he had played the scene right. By his reckoning, Elisha Hook was the last guy to see Angel. He’d corroborated Randy’s story of the on-and-off timetable, but no one else saw Angel leave. For good measure Cristo had peeked into the adjacent bar, to see if he might question one of the bartenders, but it wasn’t set to open for another hour.

The rain was still pissing down and the temperature had dropped another five degrees at least while Perry was talking to Hook, and he reached down to crank up the car’s heater to the max. As he did he caught a glimpse of headlights in his rearview mirror. His spine tingled again, but he had no place to stop the car. Perry drove another mile down the highway before he was sure there was a car behind him, keeping pace several lengths back, but conspicuous enough to indicate this was more of an announcement, not a stealth job.

Why follow him?

Perry peered into the mirror to see if he could make out anything about his new friend. The car was way too far away and the rain coming down too hard for him to discern any numbers on the plates, but the car was clearly boxy and black.

At the next turnoff, for East Hampton, Perry veered a hard left and then another sharp right around Aboff’s paint store. He did so again. The car kept pace, though it dropped back a few more feet. But before then Perry saw it was, indeed, a black car. Midsize, a Toyota like one he rented for a job a few years back. There was mud on the plate, too. Intentional? Had to be. What the fuck? He’d only started looking for Angel this morning and already someone was on him. Well, whoever it was, Perry would have the last laugh. His car-evasion skills were legend, dating all the way back to his academy days.

Here we go, he thought.

Left, right, turns at the very last minute, rolling stops. Perry had to give the Toyota’s driver credit for keeping up, especially in the pouring rain, but he couldn’t be experienced at it — and definitely wouldn’t relish the expensive bill that would come due when the suspension blew out. Perry sighed. He could give another ten minutes to this crap — that was it.

On 27, the other driver got cocky, narrowing the distance between his car and Perry’s. When Perry sped up, now close to eighty, hoping his Datsun could handle it, the other driver did, too. Perry wasn’t worried, but he didn’t feel like getting into some bullshit mano a mano thing with an unknown driver.

At the next turnoff, Perry slowed down and took it more normally. Another three lefts and a couple of rights to the precinct, but he decided to reverse it and come back to see if he could trap the other driver. For the first part, the car did as Perry wanted. But when he doubled back and wound up in front of the precinct sooner than he thought, there was no black car. Just as well, Perry thought.

Later on, when things were knee-deep in hell, he’d wonder if that was another move he hadn’t exactly played right.

“You got a room?” Perry asked.

Elisha Hook was surprised to see him again. And Perry was surprised to be back at the Memory Motel. But Arthur Gawain had been called away. It was cheaper to spring for a night in the Hamptons, see Gawain in the morning, and leave for Manhattan afterward instead of driving back and forth and wasting gas. The rain was supposed to clear out in the morning, too.

“Guess you didn’t want to leave town without staying in our famous digs?” Hook’s face crinkled into something approximating a grin. “You’re in luck. Mick’s old room is free.”

“Sure, sure,” Perry said. He doubted the motel manager had any idea where Mick Jagger had ever slept.

Hook slid a key across the counter, and Perry filled out the guest card.

“Can I get something to eat in there?” He angled his thumb toward the bar.

“Sure. It just opened up a few minutes ago. We usually got live music, too, but not tonight. A shame.”

Perry said nothing. Live music was not what he needed right now.

Inside the bar, he took a seat at the farthest left, away from the handful of locals who acted like the place was their living room. The bartender, with his weathered face and taciturn expression, looked a little old for the job, hovering around fifty, if Perry was any judge. The PI ordered a Driftwood Ale and a turkey sandwich, then slid Angel’s photo across the mahogany surface.

The bartender studied the photo. “She was here, couple of weeks ago, with a real bruiser. At least he wanted to think so.”

“Why? He start trouble?”

The bartender shook his head. “I just didn’t like him. Thought he was God’s gift to everyone, especially women. The girl, though”—he tapped Angel’s photo—“she didn’t mind.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just that he had his hands all over her, and she seemed to like it fine.”

“You see them often?” Perry wanted to know.

“They came in for drinks and snacks a couple of nights. I didn’t spend much time with them. The place gets crowded.” The bartender shrugged. “But she was a real looker, hard to miss.” Something at the other side of the bar caught the man’s eye. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, leaving Perry to his beer and food.

Three swigs later, a man of about forty, in black jeans and a hooded sweatshirt over a green sports shirt, took the barstool beside Perry’s. “Nasty night,” he said, signaling for a drink.

Perry scooped up the photo of Angel but not before the other guy got a good glimpse. “Pretty,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Perry said, downing the rest of his beer. The bartender returned with two more Driftwoods. What the hell, Perry thought. Since the guy was clearly interested in Angel’s photo, it was worth asking a few questions.

“You’re staying here?”

The other man shook his head. “Nah, just passing through. I thought the Led Zeppelin cover band was playing tonight, but I got the dates mixed up. They’re supposed to be really something else.” His eyes brightened. “You know this place was voted the best bar in the Hamptons a few years back? That’s why I had to stop by. I didn’t want to miss it. I’ve already missed too many things.”

Perry wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean but said nothing. The guy continued. “My mother always says I’m too dramatic… ” He trailed off into a half chuckle. “So what’s your deal? You staying here?”

“Just for the night. Had a meeting that got pushed back a day,” Perry said. “Plus, I’m looking for information about the girl. Know anything?”

“Never seen her,” the man said, running a hand through his hair. “But I know my mother would have a lot to say about someone that pretty.”

Perry let the comment slide. Some guys, they dress like adults but stay children forever, their best girls always their mothers.

He felt a rustle to his right, turned to find a blowsy blonde smiling up at him. “Well hello, sailor.” She was eager, buxom, and Botoxed.

Perry wanted to roll his eyes, the urge he always had with women trying too hard. “Hey,” he said.

“What are you drinking?”

“I’m good.”

She laughed. “Your bottle is empty.” She signaled the bartender for another round. “What brings you to the Memory?” she cooed.

Perry slid over Angel’s photo. “Her.”

The woman frowned. “What about her?” she asked, her voice sharp as glass.

“She was here a while ago. Now she’s gone. Know anything?”

The drinks arrived, but the woman pretended not to notice. “Why would I know anything? Am I supposed to know something about every person who ever walks into this dumb joint?”

“Well, I’m not sure—” Perry started, feeling off-balance. Was this woman bipolar? First she was hitting on him; now she was insulted.

“Oh, forget it,” she said, grabbing her bottle and sliding off the barstool. “You’re a real stinker.”

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.