Inherit the Dead

undercarriage of the sliding-down car. That collision sprawled the two men in a heap on the garage-bay floor.
    An arm yoked under Perry’s chin. Death smelled like oiled cement as he saw the black car sinking closer. Perry gouged Randy’s eye. Randy yelled.
    Perry rolled out from under the sinking steel sky, hesitated—grabbed the mechanic’s flailing arm and pulled the top half of the pain-blinded man out from under the car seconds before the touched-down tires took the weight of that luxury machine.
    They sat side by side on the floor, their legs splayed under the lowered car, their faces reflected in the polished black steel doors.
    Perry slammed Randy’s face into the car.
    Caught him as he rebounded, his eye bloodshot, his nose bleeding.
    The woman from the office loomed by the car’s trunk: “Randy! What did you do to him? I’m calling the cops . . . ambulance—”
    “I pulled him out from being crushed under that car—I fucking saved his life!” said Perry. “If you call the cops now, you throw him into trouble!”
    The woman froze.
    “ Wha -what?” said Randy.
    The woman said: “Whatever he—”
    “Nora!” yelled Randy. “I got this. Go back to where you’re supposed to be.”
    “Where’s that?” she muttered.
    Left two men sitting on the cement floor with their legs under a rich man’s car.
    Slammed her office door.
    A radio in the office abruptly blared an old rock song in sound-muffling defiance.
    On their feet, Perry splayed Randy against the car for a police stop pat down.
    The growl in Randy’s ear said: “What did Angel see in you?”
    “I . . . I’m . . . ”
    “You’re a punk-ass nobody in the last of your glory days.”
    A shove bounced Randy off the car. Perry didn’t let him turn around.
    “She . . . she needed me . . . and wanted me.”
    “Maybe, but you led with needed, so that’s the heart of what’s between you.”
    Randy wiped goo streaming from his gouged eye.
    “Why did she need you?”
    “I protected her.”
    “From what? Who?”
    “Whoever I could. I told you she was scared. But she was always spooked. Like somebody was going to find her or some secret and . . . I don’t know. Get her.”
    “Did she ever say who?”
    “No. Just . . . She said she got weird phone calls.”
    “From who?”
    “I don’t know, man! Who wouldn’t call her! Ask her!”
    “I can’t. She’s missing. Remember?”
    “Still?”
    “You think I drove all the way back here from Manhattan because I’m hooked on some woman I’ve never met?”
    Randy shrugged. “If it’s Angel, makes sense to me.”
    “I’m not you,” said Perry. “An East Hampton cop called me this morning, a badge named Arthur Gawain who said they found her car abandoned. But no Angel.”
    “Where is she? Is she okay? I got to—”
    “You got to be able to sell your story to the cops.”
    “You don’t have to sell the truth!”
    “What planet do you live on?” Perry frowned. “If you were her protection, why’d she break it off, why’d she leave you behind at the motel?”
    The private eye saw the shoulders shrug on the man who stood before him facing a car he could never afford and the radio-filled office that signed his paychecks.
    “Guys like me didn’t dare bother her ’cause of me. And big-bucks boys from Wall Street, Harvard princes come up here for two weeks of summer—they figured the score when she walked with me, though they never stopped trying.”
    “Tell me what changed,” said Perry. “The woman who dumped you is missing. I’m the only guy who cares about finding her and the truth. You need me to help sell whatever that is to cops, who only care about easy answers.”
    Randy’s words came out hard: “She found somebody who’s more.”
    “More what? More protection?”
    “That’s all bullshit. Nobody’s protected. Not from everything.”
    “But this new guy’s closer to some everything ?”
    “He’s got money. Power. Politics.” The back of Randy’s hand wiped his bloody nose. “Married, but a woman like Angel makes that not matter.”
    “How do you know about him and her?”
    “After her ‘I need more’ talk . . . I followed her one day. Saw them.” Randy leered at Perry: “You want to see a picture?”
    “I have one.”
    “Here’s another.” The bloody mechanic got his cell phone off a workbench, handed it over.
    The photo had been stalker-snapped from behind a pine tree by a parking lot. Randy had already zoomed the image as large as his