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

Chapter Twenty-Three

The bodega’s name was mostly gone, the yellow awning bleached by the sun until it was closer to the color of heavy cream, and where the security gates were pulled shut at night, tears of rust stained the concrete. Inside, it smelled like coffee and cardboard and food under a heat lamp. The linoleum, where it was visible in the narrow aisles, was blue-and-white checkerboard, scuffed and stained from decades of traffic. One of the coolers was making an ominous grinding sound.

“No,” Sam said to Rufus’s offer of Takis, and went back to his phone.

Rufus had needed snacks.

Civic Catalyst had a minimalist website; it advertised itself as one of the most effective lobbying firms in Washington (they didn’t bother to add D.C. since, you know, you weren’t their clientele if you didn’t know that). Among their services, they offered strategic counsel, advocacy, intelligence gathering, policy analysis, and issue tracking. They even offered something called message creation, and whatever the fuck that was, it gave Sam the heebie-jeebies. The About Us page had a brief description of the firm’s history—going all the way back to the Clinton era—and it included a picture of happy white people who looked like they spent a lot of time indoors. Sam didn’t recognize any of the faces. Nobody named Chad was listed anywhere on the site, as far as he could tell.

“Anybody look familiar?” he asked, displaying the photo to Rufus.

Rufus crunched loudly on Takis while leaning over the phone’s screen. “Nuh-uh. I mean, everyone at the Javits started bleeding together after a while, but I don’t think we saw these guys.”

Sam grunted and went back to research. Since the website was a dead end, he searched again for Civic Catalyst, but this time he added Conasauga.

The first result was for a site called OpenSecrets. It appeared to be dedicated to exposing the money behind politics—and behind politicians. The link took Sam to a page for an overview of Civic Catalyst. If this site was to be believed, Civic Catalyst had been hired by 127 clients the year before, for a total amount of $13,060,000. In one year. They had twenty-three full-time lobbyists. And when Sam scrolled down, he saw a list of clients that was sortable. When he sorted by the amount each company had paid, Conasauga was at the top. They’d paid Civic Catalyst almost half of their total annual amount—a little over six million dollars.

“Jesus Christ,” Sam said.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Rufus said almost at the same time. “Del’s company must have a huge piggy bank—there’s two commas in that number.” He wiped his fingers clean on his jean leg before reaching over Sam’s shoulder to scroll a little. “So Chad’s expensing fancy dinners and airfare to the same company that Conasauga is paying out the nose to. That’s not a coincidence.”

“No,” Sam said. “So, what? Del can’t send Lew after us, so he gets his lobbying firm to do it? Something about that feels off.”

He tapped the link for the list of lobbyists and scrolled through the names: Adam Lugo, Nathalia Berger, Jameson Blair, Kenneth Nasta, Sarai Cline—

“Oh, hey—” Rufus paused midthought, glanced down, and crouched. He stood back up holding a gray tabby. Scratching under the bodega cat’s chin, he continued, “Is that Nasta guy related to Jennifer Nasta? I keep getting her fucking reelection campaign texts, even when I report them as spam.”

A new search showed that, yes, Kenneth Nasta was married to Jennifer Nasta—who happened to be a member of Congress, and who was currently serving on the House Defense Subcommittee.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Sam said.

Bodega Cat climbed up Rufus’s chest and perched on his shoulder, tail wrapped around his neck.

“A Defense Subcommittee member who’s doing business with her lobbyist husband,” Rufus began, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Who, in turn, is doing business with Conasauga, who covered up a defense fiasco. Did I get that right?”

“This is a snake pit. And I bet if we start digging into Congresswoman Nasta, we’d find that Conasauga has contributed heavily to her election campaign, and that she, in turn, has been making sure Conasauga gets their share of the defense spending—contracts like Stonefish, for fuck’s sake. So, Del and the colonel have a falling out. We’re not sure why, but it seems like that woman, Evangeline, is involved somehow. Shareed too—she thought she could use Stonefish to squeeze some money out of them. No, hold on, let’s do this in order.”

“Starting with Stonefish,” Rufus interjected.

Bodega Cat meowed loudly before jumping onto a nearby shelf of family-size chip bags, where it settled in for a late afternoon nap.

“Stonefish. It’s a disaster. It’s a disaster for Lew. It’s a disaster for Colonel Bridges. And it’s a disaster for Went. Went—” Sam wanted to say dies , but he forced himself to say, “—kills himself, and he gets blamed, and everyone moves on.”

“Everyone moves on until Shareed,” Rufus prompted next. “She’s caught digging through old cases. She goes AWOL and calls you out of the blue. Why?”

“Because she’s trying to get money. Out of me. Out of anybody. She needs it because she’s already fucked herself over, and she’s trying to score big before it all implodes. So, she calls me. She calls Evangeline. And it’s no coincidence she drops Lew’s name—I think she must have called him too, and that’s how she got herself killed.”

Rufus looked over his shoulder in the direction of the guy standing behind the counter, but he was absolutely transfixed by some video on his phone. Rufus said, “Shareed shows her hand to the wrong guy and it gets her killed. And now the convention is in full swing and out comes Del Jolly and Colonel Bridges.”

“Right. And it’s where everything gets messy. So, Del and the colonel disagree about something, and it sounds like Del is the one getting screwed—when we heard them at the bar, Del was desperate. And the colonel doesn’t like that you and I are poking around; he sends Lew to get rid of us. Then Evangeline gets killed before we can get any straight answers out of her, and somebody kills the colonel. The next day, some assholes working for Civic Catalyst decide we need to go for a ride, and it turns out, they’ve got ties to a congresswoman whose husband has million-dollar ties to Conasauga. Which takes us back to my original question: what the fuck is going on?”

“The colonel’s death is where everything goes topsy-turvy,” Rufus said thoughtfully. He’d reached around Sam and quietly tugged free another snack bag of lime Takis from the shelf in front of them.

Sam didn’t bother to point out that Rufus had been eating so many Takis lately that he was likely only a bag away from becoming one.

“There’s an argument to be made,” Rufus started, “that Del could want the colonel dead, but considering Del not only attended his panel at the Javits today, but was essentially tossed into the trunk of a car afterward by peoples unknown, I’m inclined to admit… he probably didn’t pull the trigger.” Rufus offered Sam the Takis a second time.

With a roll of his eyes, Sam took it. After a few crunches, he said, “So, some questions: who wanted Evangeline dead, and why? Who wanted the colonel dead, and why? And who wanted the whole Stonefish mess to come out, and why? I mean, it’s been a long time. Why now?”

“I think another question we should consider is: who gave the go-ahead for Chad and Jarhead to come after us this morning?” Rufus asked. “Because I don’t get the feeling they’re associated with Del. Which means it was someone else. Should we be seriously looking at that connection Chad has with Civic Catalyst?”

“I think the fact that they’re tied up with Conasauga means we have to seriously consider the possibility they have something at stake in this too, even if we don’t know exactly what yet.” Sam checked his phone again. “They’ve got a satellite office here. Big surprise, since Chad’s a local. It’s on—it looks like Pine and Water. Does that sound right?”

“A lobbyist company with a satellite office in the Financial District sounds very right,” Rufus agreed. “Stereotypical, even.” He flashed Sam a big grin. “Wanna go see if that’s where Chad’s been lying low all afternoon?”