Inherit the Dead

gust of wind made him shiver. He’d walked only a few blocks, but he was freezing. His winter coat, a three-year-old trench with a cheap zip-in lining, wasn’t doing the trick. His glovelesshands—he’d lost the third pair he had bought on the street a week ago—were jammed into his pockets and going numb. If Nicky noticed, she’d be getting him a new pair for sure. God, how he loved that kid. His best work, for sure.
    Last night’s call played again as he crossed Lexington Avenue.
    I’ll expect you at nine, Detective.
    One more time Perry had neglected to correct his status with the client he was about to see. Six years since he’d been a detective. A lifetime, though Perry still saw it like it was yesterday, that damn Bayer case immediately in his mind.
    A taxi’s blaring horn brought him back to the moment in the middle of the street, but not for long.
    I know you would never do anything bad, Daddy.
    The look on his daughter’s face when she’d said that—bravery mixed with sadness mixed with confusion, trying to smile, to make him feel better.
    You’re right, sweetheart. I wouldn’t. And I didn’t.
    The taxi beeped again, the driver leaning out his window, “Get out of the street, asshole!”
    Perry flipped him the finger as he dodged and jogged across the street then headed on to Park Avenue.
    Could it be that the cold was a little less bitter here, the air sweeter? No dirty snow in the gutters. No ice on the perfectly clean sidewalks.
    The rich, thought Perry.
    He took in the wide avenue lined with beautiful old apartment buildings and beautiful new ones. He made it only halfway across, stopped by traffic, on the center divider where there were tulips in spring and begonias in summer, trees all year round. The median was currently housing large Botero sculptures of bulky men and women, three or four to a block, bronze figures lightly dusted with last week’ssnow that gave them the look of huge Christmas ornaments. Perry noted one lone icicle hanging off the breast of a sculpted woman and wondered why the city needed sculptures of fat people in the middle of its ritziest avenue? Was it to make all the rich ladies, those social X-rays starving themselves to death, feel better, thinner? As if that were possible.
    Perry flicked his finger at the icicle, watched it shatter. A woman beside him in a dark mink raised an eyebrow, or tried, her Botoxed mask as frozen as the ice. In a few months, he knew there would be other sculptures, then flowers, niceties few parts of the city could afford but apparently a requirement for this neighborhood.
    Perry reconsidered what he had managed to glean from several hours on the Internet about Julia Drusilla. She was a socialite who was no longer very social, her name and face having disappeared from the society pages over the past few years. There’d been mention of her parents’ deaths a decade ago, and the fact that her father had made—and married—a fortune. Plus a few references to Julia Drusilla’s charitable giving. Beyond that, she remained a mystery. One he was about to confront.
    Seven twenty Park was a limestone and sienna prewar building, solid and substantial-looking, with an arched entrance and canopied walkway. Huge urns with seasonal evergreens stood beside the double-door entrance. A doorman, red-nosed and with graying temples, white gloves, and a uniform so starched it could have stood on its own, opened the door while Perry attempted to smooth his own windblown hair into place. Suddenly everything about him felt wrong: his coat, his gloveless hands, his chewed cuticles, his old uniform dress shoes, which had surely lost their luster. Why hadn’t he polished them?
    A few steps inside were small heaters warming the foyer so residents did not have to freeze while waiting for cars and drivers ortaxis, and right now Perry appreciated them. He rubbed his hands together while a second doorman, this one a young Latino, looked him up and down with something more than the usual doorman appraisal, though Perry wasn’t sure what, or why.
    “May I help you, sir?”
    “I’m here to see Julia Drusilla.”
    Something ticked on the young man’s face, barely noticeable but Perry caught it.
    “Your name?”
    “Perry Christo. She’s expecting me.”
    “One moment, sir.” The young doorman plucked the house phone off the wall. “Mrs. Drusilla—” Another tic, this one longer, eye blinking, corner of the mouth tipping up to meet it. “There is a