Inherit the Dead

nothing for guys like that!”
    “Good to know you’ve got lines. Or at least a price that hasn’t been met yet.”
    Perry shook his head. “I almost forgot about the coffee shop! No customers, but I bet it bangs out business on the books. Who owns it? Some corporate name? Just like who owns this building where the taxpayers and those political groups pay rent? Your own campaign always has the most dollars, plus you arrange contributions for other officials who do you favors you charge the big boys for. You get it coming and going.”
    “You’ve got nothing on me!”
    “Don’t make me try . . . What about Angel?”
    “You can’t tell anybody about her! Is this about the pictures?”
    “Have you seen them?”
    “She said they were out there. I just wanted her to . . . ”
    “What does she want?”
    “She . . . She wanted more from me. For me to . . . to do more.”
    “You mean . . . marry her?”
    “I don’t— No . She said I was blowing a chance to do and be somebody important. Hell, here, like this, I’m bigger than anybody thinks. I am somebody!”
    “And you have the thanks of a grateful nation.”
    “Who are you? What do you want?”
    Perry tossed his card on the desk, watched as it was scanned then scooped out of sight.
    Cy said: “Those pictures . . . ” Again he peered toward the office across the hall. Said: “They can’t get out!”
    “You’re not worried about your wife—you’re worried about your partner, that it?”
    “Either one could ruin me. If one does, the other will, too.” Cy shrugged. “Alone, my wife would just force a quiet settlement.”
    “But your volunteer . . . ”
    “Gwen.” The elected state official shook his head. “Gwen has to believe— know —that she’s my . . . that she and I . . . If she knew about Angel, she’d burn down the house. She accepts my wife: that’s a . . . a carrying cost. But Angel . . . ”
    “If you dump Gwen, she could cut a deal and send you to jail—”
    “What I do is essentially legal!”
    “Or just take the empire from you, make you her puppet instead of a partner.”
    “She loves me enough to do worse than that. I’ve got to keep it that way. Those pictures, even though Angel left me—”
    “When did Angel leave you?”
    “When the clocks stopped.” He shrugged. “A week or so ago. Right after she figured out . . . what you figured out.”
    Perry laughed.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “I just left a man who doesn’t dare fuck the woman he has, and now I’m with a man who doesn’t dare not fuck the woman he has.”
    “Is that other guy tied to Angel?” Cy smiled. “She doesn’t like amateurs.” He leaned across the desk to whisper: “Where is she?”
    Perry leaned forward until their faces were barely a kiss away. “Missing.”
    Cy paled under his tan. “How . . . What happened?”
    “The cops found her empty car but not her.”
    “Cops? Do they know about—I can squeeze the sheriff. Or State Police, locals.”
    Don’t give him Gawain’s name! Perry said: “As far as I know, no badges know about you and Angel.”
    Cy stared into lost time.
    The private detective said: “Where would she go? Who is she afraid of?”
    “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She was . . . too disappointed.”
    “If she gets in touch, surprise her and do the smart thing: call me.”
    “When you find her . . . Tell her I’m still here for her.”
    Perry frowned. “You want her back even though she’s big trouble?”
    “She’s worth all that. More.”
    Perry left that office. Looked through another door’s glass and caught the redheaded woman sitting behind a cheap government desk staring back at him. He felt the weight of his cell phone on his hip. Envisioned the picture of Angel caught by a creep who saw and wanted and tried to capture the redeeming essence beyond her mere physical beauty, her sensual hunger. A creep like that, that strong of emotion, people killed for less. And the redheaded woman staring at him now, Perry’d seen that kind of jealousy paid out in too manycorpses, just like he’d seen the deaths caused by the tangle of desperations embodied in the politician named Tweed who could have found his courage in an explosion of violence in some curtained room. But she can’t be dead, not Angel, not someone that vibrant. Not before I . . .
    Don’t finish that thought. Any of those thoughts.
    He walked down the long dark stairs into the dying light of the day.

Walking through that town has