A Friend in the Glass (An Auden & O’Callaghan Mystery #3)

Chapter Four

“Shareed’s on my shit list,” Rufus said, a plume of white settling in the air on an exhale. The door to Dunkin’ Donuts fell shut behind him with a clang of jingle bells that hadn’t been removed postholiday. “Give her a call. Better yet, let me. I’m going to tell her how much I appreciate losing out on a morning quickie.” Rufus held his hand out expectantly.

Sam pulled up the call log, hesitated, and then passed over the phone.

Rufus tapped the most recent number and put the phone to his ear.

“Cyber 44,” a woman said in an overanimated voice.

“Uh, is this Shareed?” Rufus asked.

“Shareed? No, this is Kim.”

“Is Shareed there?”

“I think you have the wrong number, buddy. Shareed doesn’t work here.”

Rufus glanced at Sam while asking, “Hang on, what am I calling? Is this a sex hotline?”

“We’re a fucking internet café, you asshole.” Kim hung up.

Rufus pulled the phone away. “Shareed called from an internet café.” He brought up the browser on Sam’s phone, typed in the business name, then said, “Just south of us on Forty-Fourth Street.”

Sam frowned. “She’d be stupid to still be there.”

Rufus was scrolling through Cyber 44’s website. “They have an actual café inside, with something called Buckaroo Coffee on the menu… four shots of espresso, six pumps of vanilla syrup— God . Maybe Shareed couldn’t make it because she had a heart attack from the coffee.” Rufus tucked the phone into Sam’s pocket. “We can go check,” he suggested. “See if she’s dead in a little computer booth.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sam said as he nudged Rufus to start walking. “This fucking city.”

Rufus led the way downtown toward West Forty-Fourth. The cross streets were heavy with early afternoon foot traffic: tourists lost in the pursuit of Times Square, delivery employees pulling carts heavy with packages, and bike messengers swerving in and out of traffic, creating chaos for everyone in their wake. Things were a bit calmer between Ninth and Tenth Avenue at least. There was the drone of ever-constant construction, sure, but Rufus and Sam also passed by quiet apartment buildings—their fire escapes heavy with pristine snow—ground floor storefronts advertising morning yoga and evening dance lessons, a wine bar that didn’t open until five o’clock, as well as a bougie-looking secondhand furniture store selling fashionable accent pieces at price points that were most certainly not what Rufus thought of when secondhand shopping.

On the corner of Forty-Fourth and Tenth, across from a UPS drop off and nearly engulfed by overhead scaffolding, was a dark window with a neon light advertising: Cyber 44. A Pride flag, almost entirely covered in a thick layer of dust, hung lopsided underneath it.

“I don’t trust this place’s health grade,” Rufus said. “Shareed definitely died here.”

“At least she died supporting the homos.” Sam yanked the door open. “After you.”

“Such a gentleman,” Rufus said while walking in. He pulled his sunglasses off, the café so dim he would have likely collided with a table before seeing it.

A counter, barely big enough for the register and ancient laptop beside it, was shoved into the far left corner and currently unoccupied. Deeper inside was what looked like individual desks set up with towers, monitors, and gaming chairs that once upon a time had been nice but were now reaching the ends of their lifespan. Rufus didn’t see any coffee bar. Tiptoeing into the dark space, Rufus moved all the way to the end before turning and casually walking back toward the door so he was able to study the illuminated faces of café patrons.

“Excuse me?” that same excited, almost aggressive, voice said into the quiet.

Rufus stopped, looked behind him, and saw a middle-aged woman approaching. She was holding a broom and dustbin and was what they called big boned. She had short black hair and wore some t-shirt with a logo Rufus assumed was for a video game. “Just looking for a friend,” he said quickly.

“You gotta pay if you come into this area—hang on. Did you just call?”

“Just?”

“A few minutes ago?”

“Like ten or fifteen,” Rufus answered.

“I am not running a sex line!” Kim shouted, startling a few patrons, but otherwise they didn’t get up from their chairs. “This is an upstanding business! Get out, you skinny little shit.”

Rufus backed up the remaining steps before bumping into Sam, still in the doorway. While hastily pulling Sam with him, Rufus shouted back, “It was an honest mistake!”

“And you wonder why,” Sam murmured as they tumbled outside. He raised his eyebrows. “No Shareed, huh?”

Kim opened the door and continued their conversation, “Honest mistake my fat ass, boy. I have to fight tooth and nail for every fucking customer I got, and you casually toss out there my time would be better spent as a purveyor of pornography.”

“Good Lord, woman,” Sam said. He caught Rufus’s arm. “We’re going.”

Rufus shoved his sunglasses back on while countering, “The porn industry brings in like, 100 billion a year, so yeah, maybe you could afford a feather duster if you switched over.”

Kim dropped the dustbin and launched after Rufus with the broom.

“Holy shit, lady!” Rufus ran toward the end of the block. “Give me a break, I’m just looking for a friend,” he insisted a second time. “She made a phone call from your café this morning. Sam, tell her, before she tries to break my legs!”

“I feel like I should let this play out,” Sam said, leaning against the window. “It’s like Animal Planet. Fuckheads of New York. See them in their natural habitat.”

“ Sam ,” Rufus cried, dodging when Kim got close.

She was huffing and puffing something about feather dusters in the general vicinity of Rufus’s asshole before managing to knock the broom between his legs and Rufus crashed to the frozen sidewalk. Standing over him triumphantly, Kim said, “When you see God at those pearly gates, you tell him Kim Kawabe sent you.”

“Sam!”

“Christ Almighty.” Sam ripped the broom from Kim’s hand and pointed the handle at her. “Lady, chill the fuck out. Rufus, get your ass up. Back to your corners, or whatever you say after a fucking Manhattan meet-and-greet.”

Rufus took the chance to skuttle backward like a crab.

Kim, seeming unfazed by the cold, put her hands on her big hips and gave Sam a long, lingering once-over. “Sam, huh? You’re not from around here, I take it.”

“The basic human decency probably gave it away.”

“The phone call—” Rufus tried as he got to his feet.

“Shut up, I hate you,” Kim snapped at Rufus. She said to Sam, “You can ask me about a phone call, though.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up again, but all he said was “A woman who called herself Shareed. It would have been early this morning. Sometime after eight.”

Kim pursed her lips together like she was reluctant to speak, but went ahead with “I don’t know about the name, but yeah, I had a lady pay to use the phone this morning.”

“What did she look like?”

Kim narrowed her eyes as she watched Rufus join Sam’s side, still rubbing his ass. “Black. Pretty. About my age. Kept her hair real short—shorter than mine. She kinda gave me the look, you know? But she didn’t hang around long enough for me to offer some coffee.”

“Local?”

“No way. I give ten percent discounts to the hotels around here. She had one of my coupons. Not that it mattered—it was a phone call. I charged her a quarter.”

Sam threw a look at Rufus and then turned back to Kim. “What hotels? I need a list.”

“Hang on. She was a little jittery, but she didn’t cause any trouble. You’re not trying to give her a hard time or something, are you? Are you really her friend?”

“Didn’t we say that like three—”

“Red, I swear to fuck, if you open your mouth again, I’ll hit you with the dustbin next. I’m talking to Tall, Dark, and Brooding.”

“More like we’ve got business,” Sam said. “She didn’t show up for a meeting, and it’s important. We’re not going to give her any grief.”

Kim was considering that. “People in Pods.”

Rufus opened his mouth, then shut it.

“That’s the name of the hotel,” Kim explained. “It’s up the block on Forty-Fifth. Shit internet service over there. Those walls are like five feet of concrete or something. I don’t know. But a lot of my customers come from there because they can’t get any service.”

“Did she make any other calls? Do anything else? Say anything?”

“Just the three calls and then she left.”

Rufus looked at Sam. “She called you twice, right?”

Sam nodded. “So who else did she call?”

“Can you star-sixty-nine that?” Rufus asked Kim next.

She ignored Rufus and addressed Sam. “I’ve had other calls made since eight this morning.”

“God damn it,” Sam said. “What about the phone company, records, that kind of thing?”

Kim puffed herself up again. “People come to Cyber 44 because they trust that their access to information will be respected and kept private. I’m not about to go digging through call records to find out who this lady phoned. It could have been her mother, for all I know. And that ain’t my business.” She hesitated, then said to Sam, “You know, I swing both ways.”

“I don’t.” He shoved Rufus ahead of him. “Come on.”