Page 60 of A Friend in the Glass

Sam flipped the swing lock out of the way and let the door close. It settled into its frame with a click. Now Sam could smell it—piss, blood, what he thought was a lingering whiff of gunfire. They would have killed him here; it would have been too much trouble to maneuver a corpse through the Savoy. It had probably happened not long after Sam and Rufus got away from Chad and Shane the day before.

As Sam moved across the room toward Del’s body, he was vaguely aware of Rufus splitting off toward the bathroom. The thud of Sam’s pulse wasn’t really a sound, but it kept time for the whisper of the room’s HVAC system, and the hoarse rattle of the wind wrapping itself around the building, subsiding, and picking up again. Del already had that shrunken look that people took on after death. A hint of gray stubble showed on one flaccid cheek. Rigor had come and gone, but one hand was still curled into a claw, and his big, expensive watch had slid on his wrist and was now upside down. When they’d dragged him over there. When they’d hauled him into the chair like a sack of meat.

The smell was starting to get into Sam’s nose, settle there. It stung his nostrils—that was the body’s way of telling him to get the fuck out of here—and it made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He tried breathing through his mouth, but it wasn’t much better.

Del was dead.

Colonel Bridges was dead.

Evangeline was dead.

Nobody was going to flip on Jen Nasta. Nobody was going to talk. The recordings weren’t worth shit.

He heard himself breathing through his mouth, the plosive bursts of it. He stared at the blackout curtains. If you pulled them open, there’d be eight million people pressed up against the fucking glass.

Went was still dead.

A soft sound suggested Rufus had come up behind him. Sam said, “Let’s go.”

But when he turned around, it wasn’t Rufus. It was Lew.

Lew looked even worse than he had earlier that evening. The scrapes and scratches on his face had stopped bleeding, and now they had that raw, inflamed look of a wound before it scabbed. A drying line of rust-colored flakes snaked down the side of his neck to stain his shirt. He’d fixed some kind of impromptu bandage where the bullet had caught him, but it was over his jeans, and it looked like the graze was still seeping. Sam’s first, disjointed thought was that he couldn’t believe they’d let him in the Savoy looking like that. But in one hand, Lew held a compact pistol, the gun aimed at Sam’s chest. So maybe that had something to do with it.

“Drop it,” Lew said.

Sam tried to take a slower, deeper breath, but he couldn’t. The air kept exploding from his lungs.

“Drop the fucking gun,” Lew said.

“You killed Went,” Sam said. His mouth was cottony. Anesthetized. He had the strange sense that he was falling.

“Fucking pathetic little cocksucking fuck. He was crying when I got there. He wanted a hug. The little faggot tried to kiss me.” He ran his free hand across his mouth—unconsciously, maybe. Or maybe not. Went had always thought he had a beautiful mouth. “I did him a favor. Now drop the gun.”

Sam noticed the slightest movement over Lew’s shoulder—Rufus crept on the worn-out soles of his shoes toward the open closet, silently reaching for the iron mounted to the wall beside the accompanying board.

“We heard the recordings. She’s got Del talking about all of it.”

“I’ll shoot you right here if I have to. Or we can do this nice and easy, Sam. It’ll be over fast.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too tight. He knew he should be thinking about the gun. He knew he should be focused on the gun. But his brain kept strobing. Went loading up on mashed potatoes in the chow. Went freaking out because he’d walked through poison sumac to take a leak. And that final night, his brain building the image out of bits and pieces: Went alone in the barracks. Until Lew showed up.

He’d been a kid. And Sam had promised himself he’d watch out for him.

Maybe Lew felt it, the change, the decision. His own expression hardened.

Rufus had unhooked the iron without making a sound. In the same split second that Lew’s grip on the pistol tightened, Rufus swung the iron against the back of Lew’s head.

As Lew stumbled, Sam launched himself forward. He brought the cheap little pistol up and then hammered down on the side of Lew’s head with it. The force of the blow redirected Lew sideways, and he hit the coffee table. His gun went off—for an instant, the muzzle flash was blinding, and then Sam’s ears rang from the sound of the shot. The stink of gunpowder filled Sam’s nose. Blinking to clear his vision, he closed with Lew again. The other man was trying to push himself up from the table, but between the blows to the head and his injured leg, he was having a hard time. Sam kicked Lew’s hand and felt something—one of the tiny bones there—give. Somehow, Lew held on to the gun. He got off another shot. The muzzle flash dazzled Sam again, and then, in the darkness that swept in, the afterimage floated in front of him. He grabbed Lew by the arm and dragged him off the table, riding him down to the floor. They landed hard, the jolt zinging up to Sam’s hip. He slammed Lew’s hand against the floor once, and then he yanked the gun free. He felt Lew’s index finger snap when it caught in the trigger guard.

Scrambling to his feet, Sam aimed the piece-of-shit pistol at Lew. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear—the sound of the gunshot was like a bell being rung inside his head. He felt like he was on fire.

From a long way off, Lew was shouting, “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! We can make a deal! I’ll tell you about Del, about Stonefish—” Panic sharpened his voice. “I’ll talk!”

Sam’s hand trembled. The gun dipped, floated, centered on Lew again. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Rufus grabbed Sam’s shoulder. “Sam, come on, please don’t. This piece of shit isn’t worth your life. If you shoot him you’ll be in prison until you’re dead. Please.”

It was like pushing something that was too heavy, almost impossibly heavy. Like trying to move a boulder. And that distant part of himself recognized that yes, it was like that, because this had been a weight on him, crushing him, for a long time. So long that, some days, he wasn’t even aware of it anymore.

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