A Friend in the Dark Read online

  Except for Jake.

  And Jake deserved justice.

  He deserved to be properly mourned.

  So if Sam was here to find out what really happened, report it, and get the cops to see their mistake, then ok. Rufus owed it to Jake to sit and talk with this old friend. He owed it to Jake to offer what little information he could bear to part with, to at least put Sam on the right path.

  Jake and I fucked around together, back in the day....

  Rufus had sensed that from Jake. It wasn’t horniness, per se. He had had Natalie, a girlfriend who Jake was, in theory, sexually involved with. It had been a certain restlessness in his energy that Rufus picked up on. A glint in his eye. A hunger. Rufus could always sense the closet sorts, though. His ability to pick out the desperate guys was what got him any dick at all, even if most of those fucks left something to be desired. But that came with living in the underbelly of New York City, he supposed. This crowd wasn’t much for gay is ok. So if Rufus was feeling a need for a deep-dicking, it was either lower his standards or die from the worst case of blue balls in recent history.

  Rufus jumped over some dog shit baking on the sidewalk, snaked around several suited businessmen leaving a bar—probably a late lunch—and sidestepped a vendor unloading his hand truck and passing boxes down to someone inside the cellar of a business storefront. The city ebbed and flowed around him with endless day-to-day activities. Millions of people had no idea his foundation was gone and, once again, Rufus was completely alone.

  He stopped outside the door of BlueMoon, briefly closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Then he grabbed the handle, looked back, and waited a moment until Sam had caught up with him. Rufus yanked the sticker-laden glass door open and stepped inside. BlueMoon was about as typical an American diner as they came. The air smelled of burned coffee and cooking meat. There was a small bar and stools to the left, a register, and a kitchen window where the cook was piling up plates and ringing the bell. The narrow middle aisle of the diner was packed with two-person tables, and booths lined the right side along the big bay windows that overlooked the street.

  The diner wasn’t terribly busy. The lunch crowd had already made their way back to the offices for the second half of the workday, but a few familiar locals remained at the counter, waiting for the afternoon soaps Maddie always turned on, and a table near the front was shared by a group of tourists who looked to be horribly lost.

  Rufus was tempted to tell them that Times Square was back east a few blocks, but he let it go and walked to a booth about halfway into the diner.

  “Be right with you, Freckles,” Maddie called from the register.

  Rufus didn’t answer. He reached his usual seat, tugged off his jean jacket, and threw it into the corner of the booth against the wall with energy akin to a low-key tantrum. He sat down on the cracked vinyl seat and scooted sideways until his shoulder rested against the window. He brought one leg up to rest an elbow on his knee, then stared up at Sam.

  Sam was eyeing the diner with open displeasure. He glanced at the front door, now to his back, but reluctantly slid into the seat opposite of Rufus.

  Rufus removed his sunglasses, hung them from his T-shirt collar, and then yanked his beanie off once again. He absently finger-combed his hair while staring hard at Sam. He had a lot to ask—about Jake, about Sam, about what Sam was going to do regarding Jake—but instead Rufus blurted out the one thing that’d been chafing him since the apartment.

  “I have pubes.”

  “I could have gone the rest of my life without walking into a discussion about whether your carpet matches the drapes,” Maddie grumbled as she rounded an empty table and slid up to the booth, pen and server book in either hand. She was black and fortysomething as far as Rufus figured, with that critical glint in her eye unique to mothers.

  Rufus felt his neck and face start to warm for a second time. “It does,” he answered. “And mind your business, Maddie.”

  “Don’t get testy with me.” She slapped Rufus’s knee with her notepad. “Feet off the damn furniture.”

  He obediently shifted position, placed both Chucks squarely on the floor, and leaned against the seat with a frown. But Rufus was not sulking. It’d been a long day. A long week. A long fucking life. He was hangry too, which was never a good state to be in, and Sam with his perfect manly stubble, staring at him from across the table and probably never having someone question the state of his pubes….

  “Just a coffee, Freckles?” Maddie asked without missing a beat.

  Rufus nodded. “With cream.”

  “With cream, I know.” She looked at Sam and asked, “What about you, handsome? Coffee? Food?”

  Rufus plucked a single-sided plastic menu from where it was wedged between two displays, one dessert and the other the Sunday specials, and smacked it down in front of Sam without a word. He then pushed aside his rolled-up silverware, grabbed a handful of sugar packets from the container on the tabletop, tore the tops off, and started dumping the contents onto his saucer plate.

  Sam blinked once at the saucer, slid the menu aside without looking at it, and said, “Eggs over easy, home fries, and—” He looked at Rufus, and Rufus realized the question was directed at him. “Toast or pancakes?”

  Rufus’s index finger was in his mouth. “Whut?”

  “You obviously know this place. You picked it for some reason, in spite of the requirements I gave you. So, which is better here: toast or pancakes?”

  “I’m on a diet.”

  “For me, dumbass.”

  Rufus’s ears were burning. He wiped his finger on the leg of his jeans. “Oh. Pancakes.”

  Sam waited for what felt to Rufus like a full minute before turning to Maddie and saying, “With pancakes. And get him whatever he normally eats. Not sugar packets. No, I’ll pay for it; you’re giving me cavities just looking at you.”

  Maddie tucked the pad into her apron pocket and echoed, “Whatever he eats? I’ll have to make it up.” She patted Rufus’s shoulder and left the booth.

  After a moment, Rufus licked his finger and stuck it into the sugar again. “I don’t need you buying me anything.”

  Just another of those long pauses before Sam rubbed his face with both hands—that stubble, that goddamn raspy, manly stubble—and snorted.

  Rufus shoved the plate to one side, put his elbows on the tabletop, and leaned forward. “I don’t know why Jake liked you.”

  “I never said Jake liked me. I said we fucked around.” Sam leaned back, stretching, all broad chest and shoulders, miles and miles of him in the booth. “And you haven’t seen me naked.”

  “I wasn’t asking to.”

  “You seem pretty keen to show me your imaginary pubes.”

  “You’re the one who—fuck you. Jake was a decent guy. And I’d have never thought Jake would have fucked around with anyone if he didn’t at least like them.” Rufus huffed, sat back, then leaned sideways to rest his head against the window. “Guess he wasn’t always on the mark with judging others.”

  Sam was doing something with his hands—Rufus couldn’t see what, but one of them knocked up against the underside of the table—and a moment later, Sam crossed his arms, tucking his hands under them. He closed his eyes; when he started speaking, it sounded so much like Jake that a frisson ran down Rufus’s spine. Not like an imitation or a party trick. Not even Jake’s voice, not really. But the cadence. It was the way Jake talked.

  “I think we’re on to something big, something really big. Oh my God, I am so drunk. Natalie thinks I’m working late.” For a moment, Sam’s voice again: “Then a string of letters like he mashed the keyboard, maybe his head coming down on it as he was blacking out.” Then, Jake’s cadence: “I met this girl, Juliana, and she said they come in from the north, and the fuckers, we’re going to get the fuckers, nobody should do this to anybody, nobody should—” Sam’s voice: “More mashed keys.” Jake: “I should tell somebody, I know I should tell somebody, but it’s not going to change anythin
g, is it? Tell me. Tell me if it’s going to change something. And tell me they won’t come after me, tell me they won’t come after me no matter what I do—” Then, in his own voice: “He hits the keyboard again, and when he comes back, he wants to talk about—” He smirked, just the faintest hint of the expression. “Us. Whatever he was looking into, he thought it was big, and so I’d say, yes: he misjudged somebody, sat on his fucking thumb trying to decide what to do about it, and it got him killed.”

  Something in an e-mail…. That was a hell of a lot of something, Rufus thought.

  “How did you…?” Rufus sat up straight, heart slugging hard in his chest. “No way Jake told you those things. Who are you, really?”

  A Fed?

  The sudden consideration wormed its way through the fog of hunger and ever-present heartbreak, mixing and churning in Rufus’s gut. But no. Undercover agents had that particular aura about them. Auras of half-truths. Auras of misdirection. Auras of something not quite right. Sam wasn’t a Fed. He was a dick, though. But maybe that’s how he handled loss.

  Handled Jake.

  Rufus’s blood sugar was too low and he was getting irritated.

  “Your turn,” Sam said. “You know him from work? How? Why should I believe you’re not the one he misjudged?”

  “Do I look like a fucking murderer?” Rufus snapped, briefly losing his sense of place before saying much quieter, “Jesus Christ. I can’t tell you how I know him from work.”

  Rufus waited for the insistence, the demands. But Sam just sat there, his hands tucked up under his arms, watching him. And then he said, “The murderers I know don’t have such dainty wrists.”

  “You’re a dick,” Rufus remarked, echoing his prior thought aloud. “I don’t have dainty wrists.”

  “Some guys like dainty wrists.” Slowly, Sam worked a pack of cigarettes out from his pocket, tapping one out, fumbling with it—the movement seemed awkward to Rufus, although he couldn’t put his finger on why. Sam didn’t light it, though; he stuck it between his lips, drawing on it cold and studying Rufus.

  “You won’t tell me how you worked with Jake,” he said, taking the cigarette from between his lips and toying with the filter. “And you’re definitely not a cop.” Nothing in the tone, but the way his gaze flicked up and down Rufus, the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes, was enough. “You’re not his boyfriend, although I think you wanted to be. You’re not one of those tech guys, because why would Jake be texting you to meet him alone. I think you’re a snitch,” he said before returning the unlit cigarette to his mouth and sucking on it again.

  Rufus was flying once more. Defying gravity for that one brief, exhilarating moment before crashing to the linoleum. Pop. Snap. Sam was so matter-of-fact. So blunt. His words were like being stabbed, but the knife was so dull that Rufus wouldn’t bleed enough to die.

  Swallowing the sour taste in the back of his throat, Rufus leaned across the table and snatched the cigarette from between Sam’s lips. “Jake had a girlfriend. I don’t fuck around with guys who have girlfriends.”

  Sam’s answer was mild: “I just said that’s what I thought.”

  “Yeah? Well, while you’re thinking—I’m thirty-three, not fifteen. Talk to me like it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Rufus leaned back, springs squeaking as he adjusted his weight in the booth. He glanced at the cigarette and snapped it into two.

  Maddie returned to the booth, holding a conversation with someone at the counter across the room while somehow also addressing them at the same time. She slapped down two plates laden with greasy, oily, perfect food. The shine of butter melting atop the stack of pancakes and the hearty aroma of the home fries caused Rufus’s stomach to growl like he was housing a monster in a deep, unexplored cavern. Maddie set a canister of cream on the table before filling both mugs with coffee that smelled like it’d been brewed hours ago.

  “Everything good?” Maddie asked, looking at Rufus. She hadn’t meant the food.

  Rufus reluctantly nodded. “It’s fine. Thanks, Maddie.”

  She gave his head a few pats before leaving their booth and resuming the heated conversation with the local at the counter. “I’m not playing General Hospital again, Stan. It’s Days of Our Lives today, and if you don’t like it, you can scram.”

  Sam was digging into the potatoes, the over-easy eggs already broken open and soaking the home fries. He spoke in a low voice, his attention seemingly fixed on the food. “I hate this place. The city, I mean. I don’t like… people. I don’t like being touched. I don’t like loud noises. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “A hell of a place to come and investigate, then,” Rufus said as he pulled his own plate closer. His meal was a mirror of Sam’s. He actually never ate at BlueMoon beyond the occasional fried egg Maddie would slip him if he came in looking particularly pathetic. Rufus’s usual was coffee and sugar, so this was a hell of a treat. At the realization of his own words, Rufus’s hand froze where it hovered over his cast-aside utensils. “That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”

  Glancing up, Sam offered a small, bitter smile that seemed turned inward rather than at Rufus. All he said was “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m going to do. Not very easy when Jake’s partner tells me he was shot in the forehead and has no gunshot residue on his hands.”

  “Lampo’s a jackass,” Rufus muttered over the clatter of utensils being unrolled and falling onto his plate. He picked up the fork and licked butter off the tines.

  “You know him? Jesus, maybe you can get a straight answer out of that dickbag.”

  Rufus stabbed at his home fries. “Doubtful. What did Lampo say to you? Not about Jake’s forehead.” He stuffed the food in his mouth and talked around chewing. “I know about his forehead. I saw it. I tried to tell him, but Lampo wouldn’t listen to me—like I don’t know a thing or two about death.”

  “I already told you: no gunshot residue. That’s it. Then somebody—his supervisor, I guess—came in. She must have put the fear of God in him because he wrapped things up and got me out of there faster than a twink with a hot douche.”

  Rufus screwed his expression up, took another bite, and said, “You’re all class.”

  “Have you ever had a hot douche? It’s like Satan himself is breathing up your bunghole.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” Rufus missed stabbing at a bit of potato, accidentally flicked it off his plate, and watched it land on the floor. He glanced at Sam again. “Lampo really told you there wasn’t any residue on Jake’s hands?”

  “Yes. And he all but told me he thought it was murder too.”

  “He said that?”

  “No, that’s why I said he all but told me. He kept saying things weren’t typical—where he shot himself, the absence of GSR. ‘Pretty damn hard to shoot yourself and not have evidence on your hands’ were his exact words. He tried to say the case was open-and-shut, but when I called his bullshit, I think he might have agreed with me. Then his boss showed up, and I was out on the sidewalk with a scorched rectum.”

  As Sam spoke, Rufus could feel a telltale prickle in the corners of his eyes. He sniffed loudly, blinked rapidly, and stared out the window. “I told Lampo. I told him that.” Rufus’s voice caught like he had a wedge of potato stuck in his throat. “Fucking Jake. Goddamn it. There was someone else there when I found him. The guy almost blew my head off. But Lampo—” Rufus made a fist and punched the sagging seat underneath him. The springs protested. “He’s never taken anything I’ve said seriously unless it’s filtered through Jake. And Jake’s dead, so he couldn’t say, ‘Lampo, you dumb fuck, of course someone shot me.’”

  “What the fuck?” Sam said. “There was someone else there? And you saw him? Why the fuck didn’t you say something earlier?”

  Rufus hastily wiped one eye and did his best to glare daggers at Sam. “I did. I told Jake’s partner. Who else is there—you? Fuck you.”

  “Forget me for a minute. Lampo just ignored you? Is he
dumber than shit? Lazy? What the fuck? And why were you even there in the first place? Were you supposed to be meeting Jake?”

  Rufus stabbed at his home fries again. One bite, two, a third until his mouth was full and his tongue was burned. He washed it down with coffee and then cut a wedge of a pancake with the side of his fork. “Yeah,” he confirmed, voice low. “He had a job for me.”

  “And what was the job?”

  Rufus picked up a small container of syrup, the handle sticky. He drowned the pancake before eating the slice. “A pickup.”

  “What were you picking up?”

  Rufus sucked syrup off his thumb. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have been rifling through Jake’s underwear drawer earlier.”

  For a moment, Sam’s face was tight. Then he said, “That’s why you’re looking for his phone.”

  “Jake has to have record somewhere of what the job was. I tried his personal laptop but that was a deadend. He did most of his business on his phone. I figured finding that was better than letting my bare ass flap in the wind.”

  “The phone seems like a good place to start,” Sam said; it sounded like a concession.

  Rufus cut another wedge of pancake. “Sounds like you intend to stick with me after we eat.”

  Sam’s knife and fork hovered over the pancakes. Then, with a casualness that seemed exaggerated, he cut into the mound of fluffy deliciousness. “It would be helpful,” he said, the words in time with the slow rocking of the knife, “to have someone else with me. Someone who knew Jake from here, as a cop. Someone who knows the city.”

  “You think you can buy me one meal and I’ll put out?”

  This time, Sam’s smile was a grin, and it was directed one-hundred percent at Rufus. “A guy can hope. Those dainty wrists and all.”

  Rufus couldn’t recall a single conversation in his adult life that had this much sexual innuendo and didn’t immediately end with some guy punching him in the neck for being queer. Even after getting food in his stomach, Rufus wasn’t sure what he thought of Sam. Besides the obvious, of course. Sam was gorgeous and probably knew it, confident in his masculinity, and frustrating in conversation. So the dickish personality was probably fairly true to his character and not something Rufus superimposed on Sam merely because he had hunger pains and little patience. Sam was also gay—maybe gay?—definitely, Rufus was certain. And that was, on the one hand, sort of nice—the casualness with which Sam embraced his sexuality, the teasing, the possibility of someone to flirt with—but on the other hand, Rufus wasn’t any good at that sort of stuff.