A Friend in the Dark Page 2

  He had figured out a lot of ways to use that time and quiet. First, he played back Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, Cubs 8, Indians 7. He didn’t have all of it, not perfectly—he’d only seen it the one time—but he could remember most of the at bats, the ninth inning tie at 6-6, the compacted energy he could feel even from a thousand miles away when the rain hit and the delay built into explosive pressure, then Zobrist scoring Almora, then Montero hitting a single and Rizzo crossing home plate. It was a good game. A great game. Sam had grown up in Morgan Park, the Southside Chicago neighborhood. When he was sixteen, he’d thrown away all the Sox gear his dad had bought him since he was a kid and worn a Cubs hat to dinner. His dad had put a chair through the wall. In 2016, watching Rizzo’s dusty feet hit the plate, it felt worth it.

  When he’d finished with Game 7, he went for music. He had earbuds, and he put them in, but he just turned the MP3 player to a white noise track with ten hours of run time. The world was too noisy in general; the bus was too noisy in particular—at least, sometimes: the engine revving up, the thrum of the huge tires, voices competing to be heard. The earbuds were an escape. It was like having the ocean in an aluminum case; he could drift into it, get lost. In his head, in the cocoon of white noise, he played Blind Willie McTell, then Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. He even played a joke on himself and listened to some Eric Clapton that was hanging around the back of his head.

  From time to time, he watched a blond kid two rows up. The kid kept looking back, giving Sam the eye. He had to be nineteen, maybe twenty. Probably on summer vacation. Maybe doing a gap year, which was a nice new way of saying your kid was jerking off on your dime. He had one of those Herschel bags Sam had seen college kids toting; he wore pink shorts that barely came to the middle of his thigh and a banana-colored tank. He obviously shaved. Everywhere. Sam gave him the eye right back.

  The Greyhound made its next rest stop somewhere in Ohio, a travel plaza with its lot full of semis and about a million pumps, all in use. Sam got his ruck and moved toward the front of the bus. The kid was still in his seat, playing something on his phone. Sam squeezed the back of his neck as he passed, once, just hard enough that the kid knew who was in charge. Sam didn’t look back; he didn’t need to.

  He rented one of the showers, which were more like private bathrooms, dropped his ruck inside, and then waited in the hall until the kid showed. He looked younger under the fluorescents. His hair was buzzed down on the sides, longer and styled on top, and he had his arms across his chest like the air-conditioning was too cold.

  “Hey,” the kid said with a goofy grin.

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “Uh, I’m Nicky.”

  From down the hall, pings and dings came from the video arcade.

  “What’s your name?”

  Sam shook his head. “No names.”

  “Yeah, cool, I just—”

  “No talking.”

  Red splotched the boy’s neck and chest, visible under the banana tank.

  With a shrug, Sam stepped into the shower room.

  The kid came through the door a moment later.

  Sam didn’t waste any time. He kissed the kid, flipped the lock, and kept on kissing. He maneuvered the kid toward the sink, hard kisses, bruising kisses, and the kid was whimpering. Sam caught him by the throat and squeezed once.

  “Be quiet.”

  The kid nodded; Sam thought he probably would have nodded if Sam had told him to jump off a bridge.

  Sam fucked him, a business fuck, over the sink. After, while he pulled out and tossed the condom, the kid finished himself off with his hand, letting out a loud cry.

  “Holy fuck,” the kid kept saying, head on his arm, looking like the sink was the only thing keeping him up. “Holy fuck.”

  Sam stripped out of his clothes: jeans, a white tee turned inside out, socks turned inside out. He tossed them in a pile near his ruck.

  “Holy fuck,” the kid said again, pushing himself up with shaky arms, looking at Sam in the mirror. “You are one hot fuck.”

  “What’d I say about talking?” Sam said, and then he jerked a thumb at the door.

  “Hey, you want to shower, maybe grab something to eat before we—”

  “No.”

  “Cool, but maybe—”

  “No.” Another jerk of his thumb. “Out. I want to clean up.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Sam counted down; he started at fifty-seven this time. He had his hands flat against the wall because the shakes were getting going again.

  “You don’t have to be an asshole about it,” the kid said. The offended dignity was ruined by the fact that he was trying to pull up his shorts while he talked.

  “Apparently,” Sam said, wishing for a smoke, for quiet, for soap and hot water so he couldn’t smell the kid on him anymore, “I do.”

  The rest of the bus ride, the kid pouted and shot angry, wounded looks back at Sam. Sam ran through the first two Die Hard movies in his head and watched the whole world go by in high summer, green and gold and brown. Once, a hawk swooped at the bus and swerved at the last minute, tumbling away on an updraft of hot air. Once, they drove for a stretch of twenty-seven miles of soybean fields at dusk, and against the setting sun, the silhouettes of a doe and her fawn. Like paper, Sam thought. Like the targets they hung at the range. Five meters. Fifty. A hundred and fifty. Three hundred. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands against his thighs; the air-conditioning was barely cold enough to keep him from sweating.

  At the end of the thirty-six hours and seventeen minutes, New York rose like a blister. That was when Sam started reading the e-mails Jake had sent, every one of them printed on the inside of his skull. Every e-mail since the first time they’d fucked, every e-mail Jake had ever tossed off late at night, drunk, when his guard was down. Even after Jake had left Fort Benning. Even after Jake had gotten out of the Army. Even after Jake joined the NYPD, got a girlfriend, had a whole new life. The e-mails Jake might not even remember sending from inside the blackouts where he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. The last e-mail, the one that had come two days before Jake’s death blipped on the CBS affiliate in Bald Knob, Arkansas. And by the time the Greyhound was pulling up at Port Authority, Sam knew where to start.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rufus had been walking the perimeter of Hell’s Kitchen for the last hour. He paced up and down Ninth Avenue between Forty-Ninth and Fiftieth Street twice, noting the flyers for Leaping Ladies Ballet, Pointe, Barre, Pole Dancing. All Ages and Sizes Welcome. Yes, Ladies, We Mean You! that someone had liberally distributed across the sidewalk and which the rain had partially dissolved and the July sun baked into place. He noted the guy with his dog, jingling coins in a Starbucks cup. German shepherd mix, big tongue lolling because dogs couldn’t sweat and it was fucking July in fucking Hell’s Kitchen and didn’t the guy have any sense of responsibility? He noted the wonky fire hydrant with a RESIST bumper sticker on the ribbed metal. He noted, most of all, Jake’s apartment building: four stories of red brick, a fire escape hanging uneasily off the front. Maybe the fire escape needed those pole dancing lessons; it looked like it was clinging on for dear life.

  Rufus slowed as he approached the cross-streets of Ninth and Forty-Ninth for a third time, watching the front door to Jake’s building open. A petite blonde in yoga pants, a tank top, and sunglasses straight outta Lady Gaga’s wardrobe stepped outside. 4D. And 4D made a repulsed expression as the heat and humidity of the day body-slammed her—enough that she seemed to be second-guessing her plans. But after a moment of internal deliberation, she squared her tiny shoulders and left the doorway, walking away from Rufus and toward Fiftieth. Rufus rushed across the Leaping Ladies and slipped inside the building before the door could shut and automatically lock.

  He tapped Jake’s mailbox—3C—on the wall in the vestibule as he walked toward the stairs. He hadn’t forgotten. It was just a habit. Mailboxes grounded him. They were a tangible reminder of where he was,
who he knew, what was real.

  Tap.

  Rufus took the stairs two at a time, quick and quiet on the balls of his feet, to the third floor. The building was clean and well maintained by the super, but its age showed. Water radiators hissed and sputtered in winter, landlord-white paint had been slapped on a little too thick in the hallways, and the apartments had ancient doorknobs that Rufus had picked on more than one occasion to make a fucking point to Jake that his home security was shit.

  The third floor was silent. Then again, it was a Wednesday afternoon. With the exception of Yoga Gal out front, most people held regular day jobs—Rufus not being one of those people.

  He stopped outside 3C and removed a thin metal tool from inside his jacket pocket. Rufus used to time himself, shove the door open, and loudly announce his new best time for breaking and entering.

  Jake had never thought it was funny.

  Rufus put the tool away, straightened, and leaned his shoulder on the door. It gently fell open and he slipped inside.

  The studio was too warm. The curtains had been drawn open the morning Jake left for work and never came home. Rufus’s underarms immediately began to sweat as he stood in a ray of sunlight that cut across the floor.

  He was alone.

  Alone but for the ghost of Jake. And that hand on the back of his neck grew more and more distant as each day passed. Soon it’d be gone entirely. Rufus would have only memories and heartbreak and… little else.

  To the right of the room was a queen bed, unmade. The television mounted to the wall was off. The basic kitchen looked as if it’d never been used. The closet door opposite the bed was shut. A bachelor pad in every sense, except that Jake hadn’t been a bachelor. He had Natalie. And when Rufus learned that tidbit, it’d been… a revelation. And not a welcomed one either.

  Focus.

  Rufus sucked in a deep breath through his nose, then let it out slowly through his mouth. He tugged his beanie off, took a step forward, and after an initial check in all the limited spaces the bogeyman could have possibly shoved himself into for hiding, Rufus set about methodically searching every square inch of Jake’s apartment.

  Because he’d been asked to handle a pickup.

  And someone had murdered Jake.

  It might have been because of what the job entailed.

  So Rufus owed it to Jake to at least find a scrap of information worth bringing to the NYPD and say: Here. This was the assignment and this was the man I saw—the one who took away the only person I had worth living for.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Already the city was too much for Sam; for a moment, it paralyzed him. He had rented a locker and stowed his ruck, and now he stood just outside Port Authority bus station in the alcove under the crossed I-beams and the grillwork and then the finer meshwork that, he realized after a second look, was probably designed to keep pigeons and bats from taking up residence behind the metalwork. The hot air of the city felt compressed, ultradense with humidity, the stink of piss mixing with what Sam thought had probably once been a falafel sandwich broiling on the asphalt a few feet away. More smells: rubber, exhaust, sweat. When he leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths, focusing on the cool lick of air-conditioning against his back when the doors opened behind him, a layer of soot and dust left a black crease on the sleeve of his white tee. He hated this place, hated every fucking inch of it.

  He thought about Jake.

  The map inside the terminal had been useful. Several times Jake had included his address in the blackout e-mails, inviting Sam to visit, to take him up on a place to stay for a few weeks. Nominally, the couch, but it was easy to crack Jake’s code. Jake had been playing straight too long. Jake was getting thirsty. And maybe Jake didn’t want to risk his career, his reputation, his girlfriend by trawling the gay clubs or cruising Grindr. Jake wanted take-out dick. No, delivery dick. Jake just wanted Sam to sleep on the couch. Yeah, right.

  A quick look at the map showed Sam where he was and where, more or less, he thought Jake’s apartment ought to be. Less than a mile. And, not far from the apartment, the precinct station house where Jake had worked. In the Army, even though Sam hadn’t been infantry, he’d rucked a lot of miles. And after leaving Benning, Sam had walked more. He’d walked thirty-some days. Forty, when the weather was nice, when he knew he could hit the next town by nightfall, when he needed as much fresh air and open sky as he could take in. A mile, even in a city—what the fuck was one mile?

  Well, he thought, taking those slow, deep breaths, hands tucked in his pockets because the shakes were going. Well, when you were too fucking overwhelmed to take a single fucking step, a mile started to look a lot longer.

  He thought about taking a cab. Thought about how fucking ridiculous that was, and the sheer weight of his own scorn got him moving again. He pushed off, grimacing at the second neat, black crease on his white tee, and started walking.

  Counting the blocks, the street numbers ticking down, Sam focused on things he could control: the movements of his body (well, more or less, no thanks to the fucking tremors), the rhythm of his breathing. But New York City hit him like a typhoon: horns blared; a woman jogged past with a stroller, bumping Sam from her path; ahead, a digital billboard flashed Dear Evan Hansen Critics’ Must-See over and over until Sam had the words burned on the back of his skull. Halfway through his count, he ducked into a pharmacy—Duane Reade, who the fuck had ever heard of that?—and pretended to look for razor blades until he could count twenty steady breaths.

  On his second try, he did better. He caught the tempo of the bodies on the sidewalk. He was a fast walker, tall, taking long strides with long legs, and this time he was the one passing people—although one skinny lady with her hair up in locs, probably two feet shorter than him, shot past like a burning arrow, and Sam had to admit he didn’t stand a chance. He turned on Forty-Ninth, jogging the last half of the crosswalk as a taxi blatted at him and tried to cut him off. Sam gave him the finger; every inch of his body prickled with adrenaline, threat response, the need to unholster the M9 he had under his arm. When he came up on the sidewalk, he met eyes with a woman who had to be eighty, built like a Star Destroyer and wearing a motley of animal-print spandex. She gazed at him with disgust and then flicked her hand under chin. Why would anybody live here, Sam wondered. Why didn’t they all run away screaming?

  Two more blocks. They were semidecent, which for Sam meant relatively less crowded. One had active construction proceeding, so Sam had to detour off the sidewalk and follow a plywood maze under metal scaffolding. And the last one had what Sam thought might be intended to pass as a playground: asphalt and basketball hoops, low cement walls with chain fencing, orange-and-white plastic traffic dividers snugged up against the walls like they were in storage. Two teenagers were playing basketball. One of them, obviously older, dunked the ball and came after the other kid, shouting down into his face.

  Fuck. Men everywhere, every age, were always spitting the same fucking macho bullshit. Sam never thought about women, but maybe he needed a change just so he could have a fucking conversation.

  Sam wandered two more blocks, cutting up, back, up again, until he spotted the massive brick-and-stone building of the station house. The yellowish stone, the slight irregularities of the bricks, even the arch windows with green trim—they all combined to date the building, a turn-of-the-century construction that had weathered a lot of bad. Someone had stuck a Banksy sticker to the window, and Sam wondered if it was still there because of negligence or if it was new and somebody would scrape it off by the end of the day. Hard to tell in a place like this.

  When Sam went inside, he found himself in a lobby where worn linoleum was peeling back to expose the original tilework, every inch of the place smelling like microwaved popcorn and body odor. Two girls sat in wooden chairs, one doing up the other’s braids. On the other side of the room, a skinny white guy was scratching his neck, skin already raw and bleeding in a few spots.

  Behind a massive wooden count
er sat an ancient woman with a cap of white curls, her uniform bulging in places it had probably never been meant to bulge. She was flipping through sheets on a clipboard, occasionally pausing to scribble something out with a ballpoint. Sam was surprised she didn’t have a quill.

  “Excuse me,” Sam said.

  The ballpoint stuttered and she looked up. “Yes?” Short and curt. Welcome to New York fucking New York.

  “I need to see Detective Anthony Lampo.”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Sam Auden, ma’am. It’s about Detective Brower.”

  Her pinched expression relaxed, then drew together again. “Ah. I see. Let me just—” She set her pen aside in favor of the telephone receiver and dialed an extension. After a pause, she spoke loudly, “I have a Sam Auden requesting to speak with you, detective. He says… ah, he says he’s here about Detective Brower.” She nodded absently to the garbled response, said goodbye, quietly set the receiver on the cradle, then looked at Sam again. “Detective Lampo will be right down.”

  The guy picking at his neck chose this moment to scream, “What about the fucking movie rights, man?” Then he laughed to himself.

  Jesus Christ, Sam thought. They ought to burn the whole island to the ground and try it again.

  A door opened, and a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over stepped out into the lobby. The cheap suit he was wearing had obviously come off the rack at whatever the New York City equivalent of Marshall’s was, but he had a nice watch, and Sam wondered what this guy drove, where he lived, what he did on the weekends. The guy glanced around, and his eyes fixed on Sam.

  “Mr. Auden?”

  “That’s me.”

  Lampo shot Movie-Maker a look when the guy started bitching about his rights again, but then he motioned for Sam with a come-hither gesture. “Let’s talk in private.”

  Sam followed Lampo up a flight of stairs, down a hall hung with bulletin boards announcing meetings for retirement planning, sign-ups for the precinct softball team, an oologically-minded sales pitch regarding the health benefits of goose eggs, ask Rita Johansen for more information, and on and on. Lampo led him past a squad room, continuing down the hall, and then threw open a door. Two-way mirror, battered table, chairs. Sam had been in interview rooms before.