Page 7 of A Friend in the Glass

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.”

Chapter Five

People in Pods apparently offered the low-price-point option for pod-based accommodations in the Five Boroughs. Sam was able to piece that together from a sun-faded flyer taped to the inside of the hotel’s front door. The flyer said,People in Pods offers the low-price-point option for pod-based accommodations in the Five Boroughs. Right, Sam thought. Because the high-price-point option is competing with the Four Seasons.

Outside, the hotel’s frontage consisted of plate-glass windows, stainless-steel trim, and brick that had been recently smeared with what Sam fervently hoped was dog shit. Inside, the lobby looked like something Andy Warhol might have slapped together on an acid trip after someone told him to “make it look like the future”: aggressively bright primary colors, lots of chrome, and speckled linoleum that was probably designed to hide dirt tracked in off the street. Boy-band music thundered through the small space from speakers mounted in the corners, but if the volume—or the quality—bothered the bored twenty-somethings lounging and flipping pages, ironically perhaps, in outdated copies ofTime Out New York, they gave no sign of it.One girl was actually asleep across an ottoman, head hanging off the edge; Sam wondered if all that blood pooling on her brain was a hazard, but he figured it couldn’t be any worse than five minutes of dealing with the city outside.

“I hate BTS,” Rufus said, addressing the music. “I hate that I can recognize them, actually. I need to hang out with Pauly Paul more often.”

“That might actually be worse,” Sam said as they approached the desk.

The clerk was youngish, bro-ish, with an expensive-looking haircut and, defying the odds, a popped collar. He was pretending to readAtlas Shrugged.

“I need to talk to one of your guests,” Sam said.

Bro looked up, not raising his head exactly, but his eyes, which gave him a much more “snotty rich boy forced to take his first job” sort of expression. “Uh, ok. And?”

“Never mind.” Sam started around the desk, heading for the elevator on the far wall.

Bro shoved the novel aside, stood from the desk, and jogged after Sam. “Hey,man. You can’t come in here if you’re not paying for a room.” He moved to cut Sam off at the elevator bank, slapping his hand over the Up button.

“Man?” Sam asked.

“Are you deaf?”

Rufus hurried after the two, wrapped both hands around one of Sam’s arms, and yanked him backward. “Don’t whip out your dick,” he whispered harshly. To Bro, he said, “Don’t call him Man or Buddy or Pal or whatever Long Island bullshit you were raised with, ok? Thanks.”

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