Inherit the Dead

into Penn Station and paid for a taxi in la-di-da East Hampton to get to the train.”
    “Or someone did.”
    “Yeah, okay, someone did.”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday.”
    Perry considered. “Could be good. What about the phone? I know you don’t have a warrant, so whatever you were—”
    “Who the hell needs a warrant?”
    Perry blinked. “For the phone?”
    “You PIs, whaddaya know? I guess it’s because you just break the law all the time. It’s a cell phone.” To Perry’s blank look, he said, “Things’ve changed since your day, buddy.”
    “No shit.”
    “Mostly for the worse, but sometimes for the better. They clarified all kinds of crap about cell phones. I need a warrant to listen in on a conversation, but not to dump the phone. Or, assuming it has a GPS, to find it.”
    “I know all that, but—”
    “Like I said: I got your girl. Or”—forestalling Perry’s question—“besides her Visa card, I also got her phone. Last phone call she made was to Brooklyn.”
    “Or someone made.”
    “Yeah, someone made. You okay?”
    Perry nodded. He couldn’t explain, to Henry or to himself, the chill that had just passed through him. Maybe it was the words last phone call . Just because Perry had traced a call to Angel’s phone, it didn’t mean Angel had made it.
    It didn’t mean Angel was alive. Nothing they had found so far could be said to mean Angel was alive.
    Perry shook his head, shook off the chill. “Who’s the call to?” he asked.
    “One Athena Williams.”
    “Who is she?”
    “Some damn model citizen with no record. Law on that hasn’t changed. I can’t dig any deeper into her without—guess what?—a warrant. Jesus, Perry, don’t look so depressed. Good old Henry’s got your back. I got two more things for you.”
    “Well . . . ? Or do I have to wait until after the commercial?”
    “One: this Athena Williams lives at 354 Washington Avenue, in Brooklyn. For that I didn’t need a warrant, just a phone book.”
    “How do you know you have the right one?”
    “For Christ’s sake, how many Athena Williamses do you think there are? In Brooklyn? And.”
    “And?”
    “Your girl’s phone is there. You’re welcome.”

    On the way to his car Perry debated calling Angel’s parents to find out who Athena Williams might be. One of them might know, and it was always better to go into any situation with more information rather than less. He thought of Angel’s mother, who’d hired him to find her daughter; or her father, from whose home Angel had run away. He could ask either. Or both.
    But Perry didn’t call because he didn’t trust them. Either of them. Why? Plenty of reasons. But more important, before his troubles he’d been a cop, and a good one. Gut instinct, he’d found, was always based on something: something indefinable, something too buried or too tiny or too new to bring into the rational mind and look at. But that you couldn’t explain it didn’t make it wrong. In a situation like this he had no problem doing what his instincts told him, and looking at it later.

    Traffic moved well along the FDR but bogged down on the Brooklyn Bridge. There were days when Perry wouldn’t have minded that—he felt on top of the world here, Manhattan spread beneath him on one side, Brooklyn on the other, the East River forever dividing and connecting the two—but today the clouds hung low and the rain still spat, and Angel might be ahead of him, right down there on Washington Avenue. He fought an urge to lean uselessly on the horn.
    He inched along through the low gray clouds until he finally made it to the Brooklyn side. He had checked the address on his iPhone and it was in Fort Greene, right near the Pratt Institute. He’d just swooped down the endless bridge approach when the black Toyota he thought he’d glimpsed in his rearview mirror—and knew for sure he’d glimpsed a couple of days ago—appeared again, two cars behind him.
    No question now: this was a tail. Again. He spun a fast left then a right then another left. No one with two brain cells to rub together would bumble around like that to actually get anywhere, but as Perry turned onto DeKalb Avenue the car was still behind him.
    Damn.
    The light was changing as Perry slammed on his brakes, jumped out, and charged back toward the black Toyota. Other cars honked, irate people cursed, and the car responded by cutting into the oncoming lane and peeling out before Perry could get to it, or even get a look