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

Chapter Twenty-Nine

By late afternoon the next day, the crowd at the Javits was even smaller. Smartly dressed men and women still filled the convention center, but it was—according to the program—the last day of the conference, and in every face, Sam could see the fatigue of days spent moving from booth to booth, panel to panel, social hour to networking event to keynote speaker, only to have their nights filled up with mandatory dinners and drinks. Not that he’d ever had to do any of it himself, but it didn’t take much of an imagination.

A quick glance at the map led them to the concierge desk on the ground floor. The woman at the desk was probably in her twenties: a blue dress, dark hair in a bob, a name tag that said ANTARA. She smiled as they approached. It was such a good smile, she didn’t even really need to ask, “Welcome to the Javits Center. How can I help you?”

“We need to page someone at the conference. Uh, one of the conferences. The MoDe US Expo.”

She nodded along as he spoke and then said, “I’m so sorry, sir, but we can’t page individual guests.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” Sam asked.

“I’m very sorry. We can provide a visual page on the directories. And you can ask the expo organizers if they have an online guide or similar platform where they might be able to message the attendee.”

“Just to be clear,” Sam said, “you can’t, or you won’t?”

“All right, killer, stand down,” Rufus warned, patting Sam’s chest before giving his arm a tug. “She won’t do it because she can’t.”

Sam let Rufus lead him away. He eyed the woman at the desk, who was—politely—pretending to ignore him. “Who the fuck doesn’t do complimentary guest pages?”

“This is New York, babe. Nothing’s complimentary.”

“What are the chances Lew’s going to see a visual page, whatever the fuck that is? Or that we can get somebody at the expo to try to contact him?”

“Probably not great,” Rufus agreed. He was still holding on to Sam’s arm. “But I do have friends in high-up places.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I can give Erik a call and let him know about Chad dealing coke from inside the offices of Civic Catalyst. I think that might be worth a little favor in return.”

“About time Erik made himself useful.”

It didn’t take long. Rufus got Erik on the phone—Sam refused to think of him as his cop-daddy , no matter how many times Rufus used the phrase—and after some haggling, he disconnected with a smile. About two minutes later, a page for Lew Frazer blared over the convention center’s speakers. Behind her desk, Antara leveled a death look at Sam. He didn’t think she knew he’d been behind the page, but then again, it sure looked like she did.

“Let’s find somewhere we can wait,” Sam said.

The open floor plan of the convention center didn’t offer a lot of places for concealment, so Sam and Rufus ended up near the doors, where people seemed to cluster. Some of them chatted in loose knots, while others were on their phones, waiting for a friend or an Uber or something. Their voices bounced back from the glass, echoing, and the heat of the bodies, the smell of slush melting into high-traffic mats, it all pressed in on Sam. He took slow, deep breaths through his mouth, phone out in front of him like he was reading something, and scanned the crowd.

After a surprisingly short time, Lew emerged from the crowd. He looked like shit—his face was puffy, his crew cut was in disarray, even though it seemed impossible with hair that short, and his color was bad. He was dressed in rumpled civvies, and he moved, to put it bluntly, with his head on a fucking swivel.

Sam nudged Rufus and started across the lobby. He made for a point on the far side, so that his trajectory wouldn’t put him on a direct course with Lew. People noticed things like that. The animal part of the brain noticed things like that. Sam kept his eyes on his phone, with Lew in his peripheral vision. Lew stood at the desk, arguing with Antara about something in a way that looked like it was going to send the young woman into not-very-concierge-like behavior. Another fifteen feet. All Sam had to do was get close enough to grab Lew before he could run. Then he’d march him—

As Sam glanced up, looking for a convenient place to talk to Lew, movement directly ahead of him caught his eye.

It was hard to tell who looked worse—Chad or Shane. Chad’s arm hung in a sling, and a cast wrapped from his hand to his elbow. He also wore one of those cervical collars, and it made it look like he was stretching his neck out too far; there was no way it was comfortable. Shane’s nose was taped and splinted, and he had the holy mother of a black eye. Well, two black eyes. To judge from how he was squinting and not too steady, he also had a concussion—another point for Rufus. Like Chad, his gaze was fixed on Lew.

What the fuck, Sam thought, were they doing here?

Disbelief made him falter. It was only for a moment, and then his body recovered, and his pace smoothed out again. But it happened at exactly the wrong time, as Lew was turning away from the concierge desk, disgust scribbled across his features. He locked eyes on Sam. The color washed out of his face, and he turned and ran.

Sam sprinted after him.

At the same time, so did Chad and Shane.

“Rufus!” Sam shouted, and all he could do was hope Rufus understood what he was asking.

Ahead of him, Lew slid through the crowd near the doors. He didn’t shout or shove. He didn’t make any noise, although maybe that was because of the blood rushing in Sam’s ears. Lew moved like a snake, and he was getting away.

Sam did shout. “Move! Move! Get out of the fucking way!”

Men and women squawked and shuffled and looked around. They reminded him of a flock of birds too dumb to care as a hunter started picking them off. Pheasants, Sam wanted to say.

He clipped one lady with his shoulder, and she screamed. A wide-eyed man in a fedora half-fell out of Sam’s way. Then he reached the doors. Checking the crash bar with his hip, he spared a glance back for Rufus.

The redhead had body-slammed Chad to the ground, who was howling in pain as he was pinned, bad arm against the linoleum floor. Rufus scrambled over Chad’s prone body, holding his neck brace with one hand while grabbing at Shane with his other. He caught the back of Shane’s jacket and yanked, but the other man remained on his feet, kept moving, actually pulled Rufus along for a foot or two, before he tore free and broke into a run after Sam—after Lew.

Then Sam was plunging into the cold, weak daylight. He spun, trying to catch sight of Lew, and—

Hands caught him by the coat and spun him. Sam caught a glimpse of Lew’s face as he bum-rushed Sam toward the street. It wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been off balance from turning around. It still might not have worked if the sidewalk hadn’t been icy. But Sam’s feet went out from under him, and all he could do was Scooby Doo the soles of his shoes against the frozen concrete, trying to get purchase, as Lew hurled him into traffic.

Sam stumbled, caught his balance, and was hit by a car.

It was a tap, really. Barely enough to jar him. Sam steadied himself with one hand on the hood. A wide-eyed kid who looked barely sixteen stared back at him from behind the wheel of the Audi. Horns blatted as traffic began to back up.

Sam gave the kid a wave. The kid waved back, eyes growing wider.

By the time Sam got to the sidewalk, Lew was halfway down the block. Shane wasn’t far behind him. They moved down the crowded sidewalk like an arrow, parting the crowd behind them, leaving furious, shouting people in their wake. Sam started after them, trying to ignore the throbbing heat in his hip and hamstring, but he could already tell it was a lost cause. Sam had the advantage of an already cleared path, but Lew was faster, and he had too much of a lead. Unless he slipped and fell, which didn’t seem likely, he’d lose Sam sooner or later.

Shane seemed to reach the same conclusion because he stopped running. Then he pushed back his coat, grabbed a gun from his waistband, and started firing at Lew.

One. Sam counted the shots as he broke into a run again. Two, three—

Lew slewed sideways. His feet went out from under him, and he rolled across the sidewalk.

—four—

The fuckhead was still shooting. The angry pedestrians had dissolved into a screaming, fleeing mob.

—five—

“Stop!” Sam shouted. And then, because it came to him: “Police!”

It was hard to believe Shane heard him over the chaos, but his head whipped around, and he took off at a run.

Distantly, Sam registered a minor miracle—none of the bystanders seemed to have been hit. Maybe because of the slanting light of sunset and the deep shadows. Maybe just luck. But that thought was peripheral; Sam’s focus was on Lew, and he sprinted toward him. He lay on the sidewalk, and for a moment, he was so still that Sam thought he’d stopped breathing. Blood darkened his jeans, seeping outward from where the bullet had sliced open the side of his thigh. Not life threatening, although it probably hurt like a motherfucker. Scrapes and cuts on Lew’s face and head suggested the fall had been even nastier than it looked; if he was in danger, it was from that more than the gunshot wound. Even as Sam performed the field triage, Lew raised his head and moaned.

“Fucking shit” seemed to be the extent of what he had to say.

“ Sam !” Rufus was shouting, practically screaming, from farther down the sidewalk. He came running toward the two so fast he nearly plowed into them. “Oh my God, are you ok?” He raised his phone, hand shaking. “Do I call Erik again?”

Sam shook his head as he caught Lew’s arm and dragged him upright. Lew let out a sharp cry; with the foot traffic still fleeing from the shooting, the sound echoed up and down the empty block. As soon as Sam had him upright, Lew started to fold, but Sam shook him and said, “Stay on your fucking feet.” Then, to Rufus, he said, “No.” Sirens sounded in the distance. “We’ve got to get out of here.”