Inherit the Dead

extremes, where the gangs congregated among shanties built among the rocks in the river and made their living from theft and, occasionally, murder. Family lore, possibly sanitized for general consumption, took the view that Petros had never actually killed anyone, although it stopped short of canonizing him as some kind of Robin Hood figure, as Petros had never limited his acts of larceny to the rich, and any redistribution of wealth occurred within his own gang. Perry had found the name of Petros among the old records, and the sole charges leveled against him had been those of pickpocketing and vagrancy, but he had run with a crowd that wasn’t slow to use a blade, and the only photo Perry could find of Petros showed a dead-eyed figure with outsize hands. Petros Christo might not have had a murder charge against his name, but he had the look of a dangerous man.
    Perry found it amusing that his apartment in Yorkville was closer to the old stomping ground of Petros Christo than it was to the tenement of Petros’s worthy, left-leaning brother. Those who had hounded Perry from the department probably felt that the link to Petros Christo was not only one of geography but also of character.He would never be able to convince them otherwise, but it was enough that cops like Watson still believed in him. It also made his job a little easier, particularly when it came to missing persons. The police had access to resources that were beyond the reach of private operatives like Perry, and it paid to have a handful of cops on his side. If nothing else, he hoped they saw in Perry a way of spiting the suits in the department, and the hated Internal Affairs in particular.
    Now, as he walked, he thought of Angel. She certainly got around for a twenty-year-old girl, although Perry’s experience of twenty-year-old girls was necessarily limited, and had been even when he was a twenty-year-old boy. At least she seemed happy to spread her favors widely across the social divide, according to Lilith Bates: from rich boys to mechanics. His great-grandfather would have approved, but it didn’t suggest a balanced personality. Had his own daughter behaved in such a manner, Perry would have—
    Would have what? He had enough trouble getting Nicky to talk about anything more than Internet memes and the last movies she’d seen. She’d been smart enough to deny him access to her Facebook page as well. Admittedly, she was a good deal younger than Angel, but he sometimes wondered if it might have been more productive to follow his daughter around instead of chasing after the specter of a girl he didn’t even know.
    The sky was still overcast, and Perry longed for the sun, for that glorious New York City winter blue. Now there were more heavy clouds overhead, and the forecast was for icy rain, maybe even snow. Perhaps it was his awareness of the impending change in the weather, or the associations he had made between a missing girl and his own beloved child, but he felt a growing sense of unease.
    He took his cell phone from his pocket and checked his messages, even though he knew that he had none waiting. It gave him the opportunity to lean against a wall and take in the situation around him.His gaze danced casually over businesspeople and stray tourists, over deliverymen and mothers pushing carriages, but the only person who seemed to be paying undue attention to anything on the block was himself. Still, it was there: a prickling of the skin on the back of his neck, as though something were slowly crawling up his back. He had long ago learned not to ignore the sensation. In the past it had presaged the impact of a brick on the sidewalk beside him, and once the snick of a blade that might otherwise have gutted him had he not responded to the goading of his fear by taking a step backward instead of forward. And it had been there that fateful night when he was tailing Derace McDonald, but not strongly enough to avoid a bullet. He had felt it, too, seconds before the shadow of IAB had fallen across him, although in that case no amount of fancy footwork could have saved him from the touch of its knife.
    Nothing. He scanned windows and doors, seeking any hint of surveillance, but none revealed itself. He paused again at St. Catherine’s Park on Sixty-eighth and watched a group of young guys shoot hoops despite the frigid weather, while kids who would have been floored by the impact of the basketball played on the jungle gym. For a moment, he