Inherit the Dead

thinking, How many cars can possibly be following me, when he felt something slam into his chest. It was the heel of Lilith Bates’s right hand. “Whoa,” he said, falling back a step as she kept coming. He ducked a roundhouse, sidestepped right, grabbed her by a bicep, and twisted the arm around behind her. She flung a leg back and got him on the knee. “Jesus, stop.”
    “I’m not just an artist. I take tae kwon do.”
    He pulled her closer and bent her arm a little farther, hoping he wouldn’t actually hurt her. “Your teacher sucks,” he said.
    “Let me go.”
    “No more dancing?” he asked.
    She was screaming now. Perry looked down the road to see if whoever was in the SUV might be watching. It was gone. “I’ll let you go when—Ouch!”
    She’d stamped her heel on his right foot. He loosed his gripenough that she wriggled free. She spun around to face him and took what Perry could only assume was a tae kwon do stance. She slipped her phone out again. “Now I’m calling,” she said.
    “Call away,” he said. “But look, you were following me, and you know it. But you seem pretty harmless—”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Okay, okay, you’re not harmless. But really—”
    “Fuck you.”
    “We might be able to help each other.”
    “Forget it, we’re not—”
    “Listen, damn it. Randy Hyde. I want the truth.”
    She backed away. She was breathing hard. Perry smelled perfume and sweat. He liked it.
    “I’ll ask again: You and Randy Hyde?”
    Lilith straightened, pulled some hair out of her eyes. She considered a moment, then said, “Randall and I . . . ”
    Randall, huh, Perry thought.
    “We met. On occasion. It was nothing serious.”
    “And you weren’t jealous of his relationship with Angel?”
    “Are you serious? A man like that. I would never—”
    “But you did.”
    “It was just . . . fucking, Mr. Christo. Can you understand that? Or have you forgotten what that is?”
    “Careful who you bed down with, Lilith.”
    “I hope you’ll be a gentleman and keep this to yourself. A woman in my position—” Lilith glanced at the water. “Randall took off a week or so ago.”
    “With Angel?”
    She shrugged. “Could be. He loved her, after all.”
    Christo thought he heard more than a tinge of jealousy in her voice. “I hear Randall loved a lot of women,” he said. “Including you.”
    “I really wouldn’t know about that.”
    “Tell me about Randall . Where he goes, who he sees?”
    She chuckled to herself. “Randy never went anywhere but Sammy’s Bar, his garage, and the bedroom of whoever would let him in.”
    Yellow flashers were blinking down the road. “There’s your truck,” Perry said. “I’ll wait.”

    He left Lilith with the tow truck after she’d sworn up and down that she had no idea where Angel was, that she’d only been tailing him to find out if Randy Hyde had blown her cover. She was embarrassed and worried about her precious reputation. Maybe she’ll be helpful down the line, he thought. And she really was a looker. He had to admit that he kind of liked the way she said “fucking.” Maybe the trip had been more productive than he’d thought.
    Veering off 27 toward the LIE, Perry saw a state cop pull someone over and found himself thinking again of Gawain. Barney Fife had shot the face off of a bad guy. Perry felt certain then that Gawain had his own ex-wife. But it was about the only thing Perry felt certain about after a confusing morning. That and the delicious chowder. He chose, for now, to believe Lilith Bates, and her reason for tailing him. But what about that Toyota? That wasn’t so easily explained.

A restless sleep, your body still aching from the cramped confines of sleeping in the car in that damn motel parking lot. But you stayed on his trail to the local precinct, then saw that crazy woman having a fight with him on the side of the road before the long ride back to the city tailing his beat-up Datsun through Nassau and Queens and finally the Manhattan streets, driving around until he found a parking space that was good for a few hours, the PI too cheap to put his junk heap in a lot. Then you followed him to his lousy brownstone and waited, sitting in the rental until he came out and then it starts all over again—following, watching, waiting. But you do it because it’s what you have been dreaming of and waiting for. It’s your future and it’s so close you can almost touch it, almost taste it.

8
ALAFAIR BURKE
    P erry felt