Page 41 of A Friend in the Glass

“Am I a straight bachelor?” Rufus asked, mostly to himself, as he crept through the railroad style kitchen and into the living room.

“How to tell you?” Sam mused.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Rufus said over his shoulder. He stopped in the middle of the room. A leather couch, glass-top desk, ergonomic chair—gotta get that lumbar support—a squat bookshelf populated mostly by titles on economics and alpha male self-help guides, a bike shoved into the far corner thatwas probably never ridden, and an impressive television and entertainment setup. “Look at the size of this fucking screen,” Rufus said with a low whistle.

“Look at the size of this apartment,” Sam said drily. “His toilet’s not in his kitchen.”

“It’s called multitasking, Sam.”

“Back to your ‘straight bachelor’ comment.”

Rufus rolled his eyes. “Are we here to be nosey or are we here to discuss my interior decorating skills?”

This time, the tone wasdefinitelydry. “It’s called multitasking.”

“Oh my God, you’ve been hanging around me way too much.” Rufus went to the bookshelf and began pulling at spines, checking for anything that might have been tucked behind the books.

Sam, meanwhile, moved into the bedroom. The sounds of a search drifted out to where Rufus was still working—the thud of the mattress falling back into place, the scrape of drawers that had swollen tight in the humidity, bifold doors rattling open.

“You’re like a bull in a china shop,” Rufus called, before stopping at a three-ring binder on one of the lower shelves. Half expecting a collection of baseball cards, he yanked it free and flipped through several pages before adding, “I think I found Chad’s taxes or something.”

Sam appeared in the doorway a moment later. “I want the little fucker to know somebody was here.” His gaze fell on the binder. “No shit. Really?”

Rufus shrugged and then said, “It looks like expense reports, maybe?”

“What the fuck is he expensing?”

“Lots of meals. There’s some bridge and tunnel tolls… airfare….” Rufus’s voice trailed off for a minute before he looked toward Sam and clarified, “LaGuardia to Atlanta. He did that a few times. And there’s some car rentals here too.”

“You’re kidding.” But Sam’s voice didn’t sound like he thought it was a joke. “Benning is two hours from Atlanta. That’s where he’d fly if….”

Rufus got down on one knee, set the open binder on the floor, and started taking pictures of each page with his phone. “Each of these reports is being expensed to the same company,” he said. “Civic Catalyst.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The bodega’s name was mostly gone, the yellow awning bleached by the sun until it was closer to the color of heavy cream, and where the security gates were pulled shut at night, tears of rust stained the concrete. Inside, it smelled like coffee and cardboard and food under a heat lamp. The linoleum, where it was visible in the narrow aisles, was blue-and-white checkerboard, scuffed and stained from decades of traffic. One of the coolers was making an ominous grinding sound.

“No,” Sam said to Rufus’s offer of Takis, and went back to his phone.

Rufus had needed snacks.

Civic Catalyst had a minimalist website; it advertised itself as one of the most effective lobbying firms in Washington (they didn’t bother to add D.C. since, you know, you weren’t their clientele if you didn’t know that). Among their services, they offered strategic counsel, advocacy, intelligence gathering, policy analysis, and issue tracking. They even offered something called message creation, and whatever the fuck that was, it gave Sam the heebie-jeebies. The About Us page had a brief description of the firm’s history—going all the way back to theClinton era—and it included a picture of happy white people who looked like they spent a lot of time indoors. Sam didn’t recognize any of the faces. Nobody named Chad was listed anywhere on the site, as far as he could tell.

“Anybody look familiar?” he asked, displaying the photo to Rufus.

Rufus crunched loudly on Takis while leaning over the phone’s screen. “Nuh-uh. I mean, everyone at the Javits started bleeding together after a while, but I don’t think we saw these guys.”

Sam grunted and went back to research. Since the website was a dead end, he searched again for Civic Catalyst, but this time he added Conasauga.

The first result was for a site called OpenSecrets. It appeared to be dedicated to exposing the money behind politics—and behind politicians. The link took Sam to a page for an overview of Civic Catalyst. If this site was to be believed, Civic Catalyst had been hired by 127 clients the year before, for a total amount of $13,060,000. In one year. They had twenty-three full-time lobbyists. And when Sam scrolled down, he saw a list of clients that was sortable. When he sorted by the amount each company had paid, Conasauga was at the top. They’d paid Civic Catalyst almost half of their total annual amount—a little over six million dollars.

“Jesus Christ,” Sam said.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Rufus said almost at the same time. “Del’s company must have a huge piggy bank—there’s two commas in that number.” He wiped his fingers clean on his jean leg before reaching over Sam’s shoulder to scroll a little. “So Chad’s expensing fancy dinners and airfare to the same company that Conasauga is paying out the nose to. That’s not a coincidence.”

“No,” Sam said. “So, what? Del can’t send Lew after us, so he gets his lobbying firm to do it? Something about that feels off.”

He tapped the link for the list of lobbyists and scrolled through the names: Adam Lugo, Nathalia Berger, Jameson Blair, Kenneth Nasta, Sarai Cline—

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