Page 32 of A Friend in the Glass

Snatching the paper, Erik made a disbelieving noise. He shook his head as he studied the page. Then he said, “This is mine now, understand? This is evidence. I don’t want to know how you got into that hotel room. I don’t want to know what else you’ve been doing. I want both of you to drop this. Right now.” When Rufus opened his mouth, Erik spoke over him. “You don’t want Sam to be next? Fine. Go play house and stay the fuck away from this. That’s how you keep Sam from taking a tumble like this lady.”

“It’s not that simple,” Sam said. “The people behind this, they’ve already got me in their sights. Rufus too, I imagine.”

“What is this? Some sort of Jack Ryan fucking TV special? Does one of you dumbfucks want to actually give me the whole story, or am I supposed to pick it up in between commercial breaks?”

“I wish Jack Ryan was involved,” Rufus began. “John Krasinski got all bulked up for that show and he’s pretty hot now.” At the look on Erik’s face, Rufus dropped the commentary. “We can’t tell you everything that’s going on, because we don’tknoweverything that’s going on. You name-dropped Evangeline and we traced her to here. Whatever’s happening, it’s multilayered and scary. Are yousureyou can’t tell us anything more about Shareed?”

Hands on hips, Erik studied them for what felt like a long moment. “She flew in Monday. Late. Came in on a plane from Atlanta. You already know where she was staying because you shat all over my crime scene. She called that Ridgeway woman. She called a hotel just around the block. She went there—we’ve got her on camera on the eighteenth floor.” Erik blew out a breath. “Of course, the dumbfucks only put cameras in the elevator, so we don’t know which room she went to.”

Rufus made a face and glanced at Sam. “Eighteenth floor?” he repeated.

“What?” Erik asked.

“Just making sure,” Sam said.

“Well, there you go. Nothing that screams conspiracy. She made some phone calls. She got some phone calls—”

“She got some phone calls?” Sam asked.

“Paranoia explains Cyber 44,” Rufus mumbled.

Erik ignored that. “—she bought something to shoot up with. She went to a hotel. I could write it off as an OD with what I’ve got.”

Rufus pointed discreetly to the escalators roped off with yellow crime scene tape. “Sure hope you don’t write that off as an OD.”

Erik flipped him the bird. “I’ve got work to do. Unless you’ve got something useful for me?”

Rufus shook his head and buttoned his jacket. “I got nada.” He took Sam’s hand and walked away from Erik, hugging the glass wall until they reached the front doors, where a uniformed officer let them exit without a parting glance. Once they’d put about a block of distance between them and the Javits, Rufus said, “Evangeline wasn’t staying on the eighteenth floor.”

“Nope,” Sam said.

Rufus hunched his shoulders against the wind. “You think Erik could have been referring to Del’s room?”

“Has to be. He was waiting in the lobby.”

“If we could get in his room,” Rufus started, “maybe we’d be able to prove he was full of shit about not knowing Shareed.”

“He freaked out pretty good when you showed him that press release.” Sam paused. “That could have had something to do with you accusing him of murder, I guess.”

“Shareed OD’ing seems pretty unlikely now. At least, if she did, I think she might have had help from someone. Maybe not Del, but something about him definitely isn’t kosher. Plus, I didn’t mention it before, but he thought I was trying to cruise him. Gross.”

The grin only lasted an instant. “What now?”

Rufus answered, “I think we should check out the eighteenth floor of the Savoy and see who might be home.”

Chapter Seventeen

The Savoy-Hell’s Kitchen was a different beast in the early evening. The same white-brick veneer, the same chrome trim, the same lobby with the same muted carpet squares and the same knockoff Scandinavian furniture, sure. But entirely different in ways that mattered.

Outside, darkness was settling over the city, but the Savoy-Hell’s Kitchen’s lobby was ablaze with light and sound. Men and women—but predominantly women—thronged the lobby. They were spilling out of the bar, most of them with drinks in hand, and they were laughing and talking at a migraine-inducing volume. They were uniformly dressed in what someone, somewhere, would have called business casual: lots of wool and corduroy and silk, lots of pastel blouses and paisley pashminas, lots of cutesy button-ups. One woman, in a violently striped blazer, was apparently demonstrating the stretchability of her trousers by extending one leg along the back of a sofa to the admiring noises of spectators.

“What in God’s name is going on in this city?” Sam asked in an underbreath as he scowled a flabby-necked man in an ill-fitting polo out of his way.

Rufus shrugged. “Even I’m not sure sometimes.”

The front desk clerk had changed since their visit that morning. The white boy with the locs was gone, and in his place was an older Asian woman, her thick, graying hair in a braid. She was staring into the middle distance. Maybe, like Sam, she was thinking New York City was ripe for another period of glacial expansion.

As Sam crossed to the bank of elevators, he considered her for a moment. “Does she look amenable to bribes?”

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