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

Chapter Thirty

At the northeast corner of West Thirty-Seventh, across from the Javits Center, was a high-rise construction site that Rufus was pretty sure stood on the ashes of a formerly mob-run mechanic garage and a shitty burger joint that’d had, like, at least a dozen health code violations at all times. There were no sounds of drilling or hammering, no shouting back and forth between workers. All that could be heard from the site was the ever-present wind off the Hudson whistling through the skeletal frame. Union hours must have meant work had already wrapped for the day.

Underneath the impromptu roof scaffolding, and behind the netted walkways for pedestrians, some idiot had left one of the site access doors unlocked. After a quick check both up and down the block, Rufus yanked the heavy chain from the door handles, tossed it behind a nearby Porta-Potty, and motioned Sam and Lew to follow him into the structure. Bare overhead bulbs pockmarked the site with cones of dirty yellow light, but far corners remained shrouded in harsh darkness—where even that fiery orange of a setting sun couldn’t quite reach. The floor was littered with heavy machinery and various tools of the trade.

Rufus’s breath came out in white plumes as he turned to face Lew. He demanded, “All right, Q-tip. What the fuck has been going on?”

“I got shot!” Lew hunched, pressing one hand against the wound in his leg. His color wasn’t good, and he was shaking. “You’ve got to get me to a hospital!”

“Tell us what’s been going on with Colonel Bridges and Del Jolly and then maybe I’ll call you an ambulance,” Rufus countered.

Something changed in Lew’s expression—a flicker, deep in his eyes. He seemed to dismiss Rufus and turned to Sam. “I don’t know what you and dipshit think you’re doing, but I’m out of here.”

Sam didn’t answer. It looked like maybe he couldn’t answer. His features were fixed, and he was breathing hard. He folded his arms and settled himself in front of the exit.

Lew threw a quick glance at Rufus again, then back to Sam. “Are you out of your fucking mind, Auden? This is kidnapping. This is false fucking imprisonment.”

In the distance, the sound of the sirens was getting closer.

“Get out of the fucking way!” Lew shouted. “Do you know what kind of shit you’re in?”

“Answer the question,” Sam said. He didn’t sound like the Sam Rufus knew. He didn’t sound like anybody. “Or I’ll beat you to death.”

Lew’s throat moved reflexively. He took a step back, his gaze swinging to Rufus again in a way that was almost a plea.

Rufus nearly missed that desperate look flicker across Lew’s face because he’d been too busy staring at the stranger Sam had become. Just like that. Like a switch had been hit. Rufus licked his dry lips, tried for a deep breath, but it was like the harsh cold air couldn’t reach his lungs. To Lew, he said, “I’m not kidnapping you or imprisoning you, so chill the fuck out. I want to understand what the hell is going on because people are dropping dead and I—” Rufus hesitated and then shrugged. “I just want to protect Sam. That’s all.”

Seconds trickled past. Then Lew laughed. He was still trying to apply pressure to the wound, and it must have hurt, but the sound wasn’t amused—it was hard and ugly. “You want to protect him? Jesus, kid, that’s so fucking sweet. If you want to protect him, get the fuck out of here. Like, now. Take a vacation. How does Iowa sound?” To Sam, he said, “Are you for real with this amateur hour shit?”

But Sam didn’t reply.

“ Hey ,” Rufus barked, and he could feel his face heating despite the cold. “I’m not a kid. I’ve been through enough shit in thirty-three years to make your hair turn white.” Hands on his hips, Rufus said, “Answer my fucking question or you’ll be crawling to an ambulance.”

Lew shifted his weight, and pain flashed in his face. He took a calculating look at Sam, and then the tension in his body slackened, and he gave a weary shake of his head. “Someone tried to take me out,” he said, the fight draining from his voice. “What the fuck does it look like?”

“Who?” Rufus demanded.

“Great question.” Lew looked around and hobbled over to a crate. He eased himself against it—not quite sitting, not quite standing, but it seemed to help. The bleeding from the graze on his leg looked like it had slowed, and he closed his eyes for a moment, brow furrowed, before he opened them again. “I don’t know.” He must have thought Sam was going to say something because he held up his free hand and said, “Honest to God, I don’t. Those two fucking train wrecks have been following me around all day, but I don’t know who they are. I could have handled them if Brady hadn’t pussed out.”

“Stonefish,” Sam said.

“Shit. I told them that bitch would find you.” Lew made a face as he stretched out his leg. “Goddamn fucking Stonefish.”

“It was a cover-up,” Sam said. He was breathing more rapidly now. The color in his cheeks was high, but otherwise, his face looked washed out, his eyes ringed with dark circles.

“Not a very good one.”

“Say it.”

Lew gave him a considering look. “Nobody wanted to go down for that.”

“What about Went? Did Went want to go down for it?”

In the heartbeat before it happened, Rufus realized something was about to go wrong. It was there in the way Lew paused. In the slight arch of his eyebrows. The too-smooth way he asked, “Who?”

Sam launched himself across the unfinished room.

“Sam!” Rufus threw himself into the other man’s path. “ Don’t .”

“You killed him!” Sam continued to charge forward, fighting to get past Rufus. “You goddamn piece of shit, you killed him because you were too much of a fucking coward to carry your own fucking water!”

“He killed himself!” Lew shouted back. Somehow, he’d gotten to his feet, although it was clear it was costing him. He stabbed a finger at Sam, aiming past Rufus. “That stupid pansy killed himself! It wasn’t anybody’s fault—it was a fucking disaster!” And then, with a child’s outrage at the unfairness of it all, “Why the fuck should I take the fucking heat?”

Rufus, still shoving Sam back, the soles of his Chucks scraping against the bare concrete floor, shouted at Lew, “ Can it with that tired, bullshit story. Sam, come on. Sam ! If you kill him, you’re no better than everyone else involved.”

It took a few moments of struggle, but Sam let himself be corralled at the exit. He was panting, sweat glistening at his hairline in spite of the cold, and then he spun away from Rufus and put his hands on his knees like he might be sick.

Rufus had started after Sam, but if the painful pins and needles in his own extremities was even one percent of what his boyfriend was feeling right then, Rufus knew that touching Sam was a bad idea. He, instead, turned toward Lew. “Who were you referring to? ‘That bitch would find you.’”

“Baker. That CID cunt.”

“Who’d you tell that Shareed would find Sam?”

Lew shifted slightly against the crate and whispered, “Fuck.” The graze might not be life threatening, but it must have hurt like hell. Or maybe Lew was just feeling the pinch of finally having his ass on the line. But he finally said, “Del. Evangeline. Colonel Bridges.”

Quieter, Rufus asked, “Did you murder Colonel Bridges?”

The pause was almost nothing, but it was there. “What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? No. No, I did not fucking murder Colonel Bridges. What kind of half-assed op are you running here?”

Rufus crossed his arms against the cold, but it did nothing to deter the shaking and shivering that went deep, all the way past his rib cage. “You know, Lew, at the start of all this, I honestly thought Sam just had an ax to grind. I thought that maybe he hated you so much because of a past falling out that he was forcing all clues to lead back to you. But now that I’ve met you, I can say, with all sincerity, I wouldn’t trust you to shake my dick dry. You were shit scared of Shareed contacting Sam, weren’t you? Because Sam knows you. He knows you’re a liar. You’re a fucking liar. And a piss-poor actor, too.”

“Fuck you.” Lew looked past Rufus to Sam. “And fuck you. And fuck whatever this bullshit is you’ve got going. I didn’t kill anybody, so if that’s what you wanted to know, can I go to a fucking hospital now?”

“What happened to Shareed?” Sam’s voice was rough, but he sounded like he was back in control of himself. “What did Del and Evangeline and the colonel say when you told them what she was going to do?”

Shaking his head, Lew said, “You don’t know these people. They’re insane. Look, it was one thing when—when it was an accident, all right? I mean, shit went down, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Everybody went on with their lives.”

“Not everybody. Not Went.”

“You know what I mean. It was fine until Shareed started poking around. Fucking junkie trying to squeeze cash out of the wrong people. Evangeline looked like a fucking ice queen, but she was psycho. She lost her mind when Shareed tried that shit. I told them to pay her off. It’d be cheaper in the long run. I told them they didn’t want Shareed telling—” He didn’t quite look at Sam. “—people what she’d found.”

“What’d Evangeline do, Lew?”

“I don’t know. I’m not saying she did anything. But I’m telling you, you don’t know these people.”

“What else don’t I know?”

Lew grimaced as he repositioned his hand over the wound to his leg. The drying blood made sticky noises. “You want to know who killed the colonel? How about Del fucking Jolly? Talk about a nutcase. All he cares about is his fucking company. Stonefish? Who do you think wanted to make it go away? Jesus, he would have promised anything. And then when Colonel Bridges decided he was done with Conasauga, he had a meltdown.”

“And let me guess,” Sam said, “you’re going to try to tell me he killed Evangline too?”

“She was the one taking the colonel.” Lew offered a one-shouldered shrug. “What do you think?”

Rufus waved a hand irritably, interrupting with, “How wrapped up in this is Congresswoman Nasta?”

The redirect made Lew hesitate. “Who?”

Rufus frowned a little. “Jennifer Nasta,” he reiterated. “Or what about her husband—Kenny. He’s a lobbyist, right?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Sam said.

“I mean, I heard the name….” Lew trailed off. Then he grinned—a nasty little lightning stroke that vanished almost immediately. “Shit, they dragged her into this? How?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Sam said.

Lew didn’t respond right away, but the expression on his face suggested he was thinking. Almost absently, he said, “No clue. Sorry.”

Taking a few steps toward Lew, Rufus uncrossed his arms and said, “I think you’re feeding us more of that Grade A bullshit, Lew. Wanna try again?”

“Sorry, princess, I don’t know. But I’d love to find out.” Lew gave the unfinished building another scan. “If we’re done?”

As he started to push himself up from the crate, though, he slipped, and he slid toward the floor with a pained sound. Sam stepped past Rufus—it wasn’t clear if he was going to grab Lew to restrain him or to help him—and then everything went wrong.

Lew shot upright faster than should have been possible for someone who’d been clipped by a bullet. As he came up, something gleamed in his hands—a three-foot steel scaffolding support. The hollow length of metal whistled as he swung it through the air. At the last moment, Sam twisted back; reflexes saved him from being struck in the head, but the blow caught him on the arm instead, and Sam staggered back another step.

The steel support whipped toward Rufus next, and it gave Lew a temporary opening. He lurched toward the exit.

In the split second that followed the air being sliced in two, Rufus knew Lew was getting away, but he wasn’t willing to lose his head over the guy, and had ducked and covered, the steel length whizzing overhead and slamming into a wall somewhere at his back. Rufus lowered his hands and looked up in time to see Lew slip out the access door. He swore, jumped to his feet, and chased after—calling for Sam, calling for Lew—and when he burst through the doorway and hurdled over the white-and-orange road barriers, he caught sight of Lew taking part in a New York moment: climbing into the back of a taxi and driving away.