Inherit the Dead

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 betweenhis 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