Page 22 of A Friend in the Glass

“Excuse me, Anson,” she said.

Anson was still trying to see her tatas, and he didn’t seem to realize what was happening until she had already stepped away.

Sam followed her a few yards down the hall to a spot where the crowd thinned. Rufus was coming up in the opposite direction, and although Sam didn’t know what the redhead was planning, he figured it was sneaky. He positioned himself so that Evangeline had to turn to face him, with her back now to Rufus.

“I’m sorry, Mr.—”

“Auden. Sam Auden.”

Her expression remained pleasantly blank.

“I wanted to talk to you about Shareed Baker.”

This time the computer eyes found and accessed the file right away. Whatever was on the hard drive, it didn’t make Evangeline happy, but the rest of her face stayed rigidly congenial. “Who?”

“You know who.”

Rufus had shaken out the program, raised it up like he meant to read from it, then bumped Evangeline’s right shoulder as he stepped past. “Oops,” he said automatically, not stopping as he continued at a leisurely pace back toward the exhibition hall.

“Excuse me,” Evangeline called after him, but Rufus didn’t look back.

“Shareed Baker,” Sam said.

When she looked back at him, she’d locked down her expression again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know who Shareed Baker is. You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Really?” Sam asked. “That’s not what the NYPD thinks. Do you want to explain why your name came up in an investigation of Shareed Baker’s death?”

The delay was fractional, but it was there. The question had been a body blow. But then Evangeline had the plastic smile back into place, and she was shaking her head as she said, “But you’re not with the police, are you? You would have told me if you were. Goodbye, Mr. Auden.”

She held herself a little too stiffly as she clicked away on her heels, and her voice was a little too bright as she called down the hall, “Douglas St. John, stop right there, you wicked old man. You owe me a coffee!”

And Douglas St. John, who looked like he was already a couple of pacemakers deep, waved a liver-spotted hand and smiled a DentaWhite smile.

Once Evangeline and Douglas St. John had begun walking, Rufus re-appeared around the corner. He moved on long legs back to Sam, holding up what looked to be a hotel keycard still in the paper sleeve. Rufus had a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I was prepared for anything,” he began. “What was she gonna have? A clutch? A tote? A purse is a guy’s best friend—those flap ones with the magnetic button. Do you know how quickly I can open one of those and snag a wallet?” Rufus didn’t let Sam answer before holding up two fingers. “Two seconds. Two fucking seconds. So like I said, I was ready. But when I saw you walking with her—no purse, no nothing—I thought, what kind of lady isn’t carryingsomething. Then I saw the square outline on her thigh and realized she had pockets—shallow ones, too—and anyway, I got her hotel card.”

Sam blinked his way through the onslaught of information. Then he said, “Good job?”

Rufus took out his phone, copied the name of the hotel from the envelope’s decal, then said, “Thirty-Seventh and Tenth. Looks like they’re partners with a vegan Japanese restaurant too.” He put the phone away. “I don’t know who would eat vegan sushi, but there you go.”

The exposition hall was emptying again, the outgoing tide of bodies as the next round of panels began. Evangeline had disappeared into another room, which meant, Sam hoped, that she’d be at the expo for at least another hour. He nodded toward the escalator and said, “Let’s go.”

The Savoy-Hell’s Kitchen was a newish-looking building with a white-brick veneer and enormous windows. Even in the scummy winter light, chrome trim glinted and flashed when the clouds shifted. It looked like the kind of place midlevel executives would hire midlevel hookers, presumably while midlevel pimps waited in midlevel sedans. It wasn’t what Sam had expected from Evangeline Ridgeway, and he wondered whowas footing the bill. The Army, maybe? God knows they’d love a place like the Savoy-Hell’s Kitchen.

Inside, the lobby consisted of carpet squares in muted color patterns, modernish seating with easy-wash upholstery, and the kind of blond wood furniture that interior decorators seemed to think screamed civilization. A few solitary people were spaced throughout the room, two men and a woman, all of them absorbed in their devices. To the right, an opening connected with the hotel bar, where the lights were dimmed even in the late morning and the dark wood and tinted glass suggested the kind of sophistication that involved olives and, at the end of the night, a case of crabs. The front desk stood at the far end, and the white boy who was working the desk had locs and the smirk of a guy used to getting some without really trying. He was on his phone—presumably in the midst of arranging to get some later, to judge by that smirk—and didn’t look up when Sam and Rufus passed him on the way to the elevator.

Sam had just pressed the Up button when he heard a man say behind him, “Trouble finding a cab, Colonel?”

Rocking back on his heels, Sam waited a beat until he thought he could be casual. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

A man in a navy suit and wool overcoat had just come through the revolving door; Sam recognized him as the person Lew had been talking to—arguing with—when Sam had spotted him the day before. He was solidly built, balding, with a small mouth and teeth that made Sam think of a rat. Another man, older, was rising from where he’d been sitting in the lobby. He wore his white hair in a side part, slicked back in a way that suggested 1983, and he wore money like cologne; he looked like he had probably been best friends with Reagan. Sam recognized him, now that he turned his full attention to the man—he hadalso been on the stage. The one Evangeline had called Del. Some sort of executive, if Sam remembered correctly, with Conasauga.

The man who must be Colonel Leslie Bridges, if the convention program was accurate, was out of uniform. He pulled off his overcoat, glanced around, and said, “I was finalizing arrangements. As I said on the phone, I think we’ve reached the end of our road together.”

Del made a moue. “Let’s be civilized about this. A drink? Maybe I can change your mind.”

Bridges glanced at the bar.

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