by C. S. Poe
“Sorry about the accommodations,” Lampo said as he walked inside first. He pulled out a chair and settled into it. “Not many places in a building full of cops we can have a moment to… discuss Jake.”
“I knew Jake in the Army,” Sam said. “What can you tell me about his death?”
Bad comb-over and equally bad suit aside, Lampo’s gaze was smart and sharp—shining like a buffed and polished diamond. “You read the newspaper? Watch the news?”
“I know people are falling over themselves to say it was suicide.”
Lampo’s mouth twitched a little and he grunted. “Yeah. That’s what the ME ruled.” He nudged the leg of the second chair with his foot, pushing it back in invitation.
No sound penetrated the interview room, and Sam knew that was standard, knew that was intentional, but the silence had a kind of ringing energy to it as he dropped into the seat opposite Lampo.
“That’s not exactly the same as saying you believe it was suicide,” Sam said slowly.
Lampo didn’t look away—his gaze followed Sam as Sam sat down. “I think the city does its job. I shouldn’t have to second-guess the investigation.” He leaned forward on the scratched surface of the metal table and folded his hands together. “I think Jake could have had his reasons.”
The tremors were starting again; Sam rested his hands on his legs, resisting the urge to sit on them. “From what I can tell, the city does fuck-all. There is no way Jake killed himself.”
Lampo frowned a little at Sam’s words. Only a little. “I think Jake was dealing with some personal shit. That’s between you and me. Maybe he wasn’t dealing as well as I thought. Some folks wear a great mask.”
“Ah,” Sam said after a moment. “Fuck that. Jake knew how to handle his shit. All his shit. I didn’t come here for your Baruch-fucking-evening-class psycho-talk. I want to know what you have—I’m talking forensics—that says this was a suicide.”
Lampo was still staring at Sam. He leaned back, looking uncomfortable in the chair. “How long did you say you knew Jake?”
“Eight years,” Sam said. “Four deployments.” The tremor was worse now, and Sam slid one hand down to clutch the back of his thigh. “And I… knew about his personal shit, as you call it. Fuck. I was his personal shit.”
Lampo’s eyes, dark and unblinking, burrowed under Sam’s skin like some sort of beetle—made him want to scratch at an itch that wasn’t there. “I see,” he finally murmured, followed by blowing out a breath. “Jake was shot in the middle of his forehead.” Lampo raised a hand to indicate as such. “Not typical of suicides.”
“No,” Sam said. “Not fucking typical.”
“ME reported no gunshot residue on his hands.”
“I know I’m new here,” Sam said, “but how fucking typical is that?”
“Not,” Lampo said, with another twitch at the corner of his mouth. A smile that tried and gave up, maybe. “Pretty damn hard to shoot yourself and not have evidence on your hands.”
“And what are you doing about it?”
“Jake’s death is an open-and-shut case, Mr. Auden,” Lampo replied, but at some point, he’d begun gripping his hands together and now they were so tightly clasped that his fingertips blanched. “Did you plan on telling me how to do my job while you were here?”
“Not really, but apparently I need to. Jake Brower didn’t kill himself. I know it. You know it. Why doesn’t your ME know it? What’s going on here?”
Lampo opened his mouth, but a knock at the door interrupted. Before he could call a response, it swung open. A small woman—her mousy brown hair pulled back into a simple ponytail and wearing a pantsuit and a nude shade of lipstick that didn’t flatter her—poked her head inside.
“Lampo.”
“Ma’am,” he said, sitting as straight as a lightning rod.
“Something going on?” Her gaze met Sam’s, then returned to Lampo.
“No.” Lampo quickly stood and wiped his hair with one hand, despite it still being in place. “Having a chat, is all.”
She studied Lampo for another beat, looked at Sam again, and then said, holding that gaze, “Your phone’s been ringing off the hook.”
“Right. Sorry. We’re done,” Lampo answered with a quick, automatic smile. He waited until the woman retreated before looking down at Sam. “We’ll have to call it here, I’m afraid.”
Sam listened for voices from outside the interview room, the sounds of a squad room in a city that never slept; he would have settled for a coffee maker percolating. Instead, he got nothing, and he lined that up with this woman coming in here, the way she had known, somehow, the way she had asked, Something going on?
“I’ll be around for a few days,” Sam said, “if you want to trade war stories.”
Lampo just nodded. The woman, when Sam moved for the door, waited until the last minute to move, and then Sam had to squeeze past her or risk knocking a cop on her ass.
Once outside the station house, Sam consulted the mental map in his head, found the whole thing fucked to shit by the interview—shot in the center of the forehead, no fucking GSR, and they wanted to pretend it was a suicide when every cop everywhere knew the first rule was no cop died by suicide—and had to pull out his phone and open the Maps app.
After that, it was smooth sailing. Sam headed uptown, counting streets, navigating the same obstacle course he’d faced on the way to the station house, only now in reverse. Eventually, though, he spotted the apartment building across the street. It was brick with a patina of soot and dirt and dust, an iron fire escape with paint flaking away to expose rusted gouges, and it had the number stenciled on the door in gold letters, peeling now, that Sam was looking for.
He started to jog across the street and pulled up sharp at another blaring horn. Fuck this fucking city. Give him Montana again, where he could walk twenty miles down the middle of a state highway and the only living thing he’d troubled was a lost cow.
Pulling back, Sam waited for the street to clear. The door to Jake’s building swung open, and a woman stepped out, yoga pants and massive sunglasses. A skinny guy in a beanie slipped past the woman; she didn’t even seem to see him as he caught the door before it could shut and lock. Sam wasn’t a city boy, but he wasn’t a dumbshit either. The skinny guy wasn’t his focus today, though. His focus was getting inside Jake’s apartment and figuring out what had happened. The truth, please. Nothing but the truth.
When an opening appeared in the traffic, Sam sprinted. He reached the opposite side, leaned up against the wall—trying not to think about the crosshatch in black that would cover his back—and got out his phone. He held it to his ear, pretending to talk. He had to wait almost thirty minutes before he could duplicate the skinny guy’s trick, but he had to give credit: it worked like a charm. An aging hippy wearing a serape in spite of the weather, his beard knotted with beads, drifted out of the building, high as a kite, and Sam caught the door with his elbow. He took the stairs two at a time to 3C.
Sam didn’t like the idea of knocking; the building was too quiet, and, anyway, Jake was dead. If anybody was home—Jesus, the girlfriend? No, Jake had said they weren’t living together, come stay on the couch, thirsty little bitch that he was. So knocking wasn’t on the agenda. Sam settled a hand on the doorknob, lightly. He wanted to see how it felt first—if it was as old and rattly as it looked, he could probably get past it with a decent chisel and mallet from a hardware store. But if it was in better condition, he’d have to figure out something else.
When he tested the knob, though, it turned. Sam let out a slow breath. His heart beat quicker, like an internal fuse was lit. He had only a little time before the shakes started acting up, bad, and if somebody was in there, Sam would be fucked. He unholstered the M9, leaned into the door slowly until he was sure there wasn’t a chain, something that might catch it, and then he threw it open all the way, bringing the M9 up a third of the way but still mostly pointed at the ground.
The skinny guy with the beanie,
the one Sam had spotted slipping into the building, was sitting in a chair, watching the door. Eating tortilla chips. He raised his light-colored eyebrows and asked with no particular inflection in his voice, “Who the fuck are you?”
Sam brought up the M9. “Get on the ground. Drop the fucking chips and get on the fucking ground.”
The guy shoved a few more chips in his mouth and crunched loudly. “You don’t live here.”
“But I’ve got the gun, fuckwad. Get on the ground. Let me see your hands.”
The skinny kid dropped the bag unceremoniously. Crumbs littered the hardwood at his feet. He licked salt from his fingers and then wiggled them. “Here they are.”
Sam felt a moment of panic; he could feel the shakes getting started, and worse, he’d never faced down with a freckled asshole who wouldn’t just get on the fucking floor when he had a gun pointed at him. In thirty seconds, forty, the tremors would be visible. How fucking scary was a gun when the guy holding it couldn’t keep it steady?
He let the muzzle drop, M9 along his thigh, steadying his hand against his leg. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Rufus.”
Sam came the rest of the way into the apartment, shutting the door behind him and leaning against it. Anything to stay steady, stable, solid. “Why are you in Jake’s apartment?”
The cocky smile Rufus had been wearing was gone. Suddenly. Without warning. He stood from the chair, chips cracking under the heel of his Chucks. “How do you know Jake?”
Decision time, Sam thought. He scanned the studio apartment: the unmade bed, the jumble of clothes and shoes in the closet, the spotless kitchen because Jake, like so many enlisted guys, couldn’t even boil water. The heat, unnoticed until now, hammered Sam. He could smell Jake, faint and lingering. Smell Rufus too—sweat, sure, also but Dial soap, overpowering in the closed-up, heated room. Something else Sam couldn’t put his finger on. Something that tickled his gut, and Sam wasn’t sure it was pleasant.
“Jake and I were in the Army together,” Sam said. “Now you.”
Rufus hadn’t broken eye contact. Maybe hadn’t even blinked since Sam had said “Jake.” “Prove it.”
“Do you have a phone?”
Rufus patted his pocket in response.
“Facebook?”
“Facebook is for old people,” Rufus said with a short bark of a laugh.
In spite of himself, Sam snorted. “I guess perspective is skewed when your balls haven’t dropped yet. You can find a picture of our platoon from basic—search for military yearbook sites. We were at Fort Leonard Wood, 2000, B-5-9, 2nd Platoon.”
Rufus tugged his cell free and started typing. He looked up every few seconds, keeping one eye trained on Sam’s weapon, before he seemed to have zeroed in on the photo in question. Rufus brought the phone closer, studied the screen, looked Sam over with a critical expression, then said, “You aged like shit.”
“Yeah, well, call me when you get pubes and we’ll see how you’re doing.” Before Rufus could respond, Sam added, “Now you tell me how you know Jake.”
Rufus gripped the phone tight. His skin had flushed, from the hollow of his neck to the lobes of his ears visible under the beanie. “I know him from work.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam’s grin was hard, hooking one corner of his mouth. “You a big, butch cop too?”
“Obviously,” Rufus said with heavy mockery. “I still know him from work, and I’m not going to tell you anything else.” He held up the phone and waved it back and forth. “You were in basic together. Big deal. Maybe Jake hated you. Maybe you’re a stalker. I don’t even know your name.”
“Sam.”
“Sam,” Rufus repeated. “Ok. It was nice meeting you, Sam. Now you want to move aside so I can go?”
“No,” Sam said. “I’m going to level with you, Rufus. I’m going to be really fucking honest with you. I’m tired. I’ve been on a bus for a day and a half. I hate this fucking city. And you are a real fucking treat yourself. I’ve been jerked around by Jake’s asshole partner; when I ask about forensics, I get answers that ought to make sense, and then it turns out everyone wants to pretend Jake killed himself. And that’s bullshit. I knew Jake. He wouldn’t have killed himself. Not when he was—” Sam stopped, the contents of that last e-mail burning his lips. He managed to say instead, “Then I get to his apartment and find Lucky fucking Charms eating his chips and willing to tell me fuck-all about why he’s in there. So, no, I’m not getting out of the way. We’re going to have a long talk. Really long. Until I know everything I want to know.”
The color that’d been in Rufus’s face—skin marred from maybe embarrassment, maybe annoyance—hell, maybe just the heat—had drained until he was the color of Elmer’s glue. Rufus shoved his cell into his pocket. “Jake was—” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat before trying again. “Jake was murdered.”
For a moment, the shock was electric, zinging through Sam. “You’d better tell me all of it.”
Rufus tugged the black beanie from his head, revealing a shock of red. He ran a shaky hand through the thick hair and said, while staring at the scuffed toes of his Chucks, “I don’t know anything.”
“You know he was murdered.”
“And that’s it.”
“How do you know that?”
It took another moment before Rufus met Sam’s expression. “I found his body,” he whispered.
Letting out a ragged breath, Sam knew they had reached a tipping point. Everything had to fall one way or another.
“I’m going to give you three things: Jake and I fucked around together, back in the day; we stayed in touch; he sent me something in an e-mail a few days before he died, something big.” Sam blew out another breath, pressing both hands against his thighs, hoping the weakness wouldn’t show. “But I need you to give me something too.”
Rufus’s green eyes stood out in stark contrast to his still pale complexion. His freckles—so many that it’d be impossible to count them all, connect them all—were like tiny craters on the face of the moon. He still looked a little sick. But he also appeared to be processing the imparted truth—trying to square up the Jake of the present that he knew with the Jake of the past that Sam had known. “I’m looking for his phone. Jake asked me for… a favor. And I’m trying to figure out what that was… if it’s related to his death.”
Sam studied the apartment again, more slowly this time. The evidence of a search, if any, was minimal. If Rufus was telling the truth, he was either a better burglar than Sam expected, or smarter than he seemed—or both.
“You didn’t find anything here? Nothing else that might help?”
Rufus waved a hand at the open closet. “Just finished looking when I heard you on the stairs. Nothing’s here. Except the chips.”
At the mention of food, Sam’s stomach rumbled; he thought, although he wasn’t sure, that Rufus’s stomach did some grumbling too.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said. “We need to talk. Somewhere public, plenty of exits, where I can get something to eat without picking up a case of hepatitis.” Then, to himself, “If that’s possible in this hellhole.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BlueMoon Diner was a safe spot.
A habitual spot for Rufus, since it was only six blocks uptown from Jake’s studio. It was public, of course, had one door that acted as both ingress and egress, which was actually preferable because Rufus was only one man and too many exits became problematic to watch with any sort of long-term success, and they served food. Not great food, but decent food. And he’d yet to pick up an infectious disease from the 24-7 establishment, although the busboys could certainly afford to wipe the damn tables down more than once a week.
So it’d work for Sam, he figured.
Speaking of, Rufus hadn’t said a word since Sam—no last name, which was rude—had followed him out of Jake’s apartment building. Rufus had put his sunglasses on, shoved his hands into his jean jacket pockets, and started north. And he didn’t have to l
ook over his shoulder to assure himself that Sam was following. He could feel it. Feel the other man’s eyes on the back of his head, between his shoulder blades, watching his every movement. Sam’s presence was like a punch to the face.
Aggressive.
Relentless.
Powerful—too powerful. Sam was so tightly wound, he gave off the sensation that his own skin could barely contain him.
Rufus had no doubt Sam was ex-Army. Even without the photographic proof, the way he’d entered the apartment, gun at the ready, no fear in his eyes, he’d have suspected Sam had some sort of formal training.
Rufus hated dealing with those sorts.
He’d heard Sam at the studio door, of course. But there’d been no safe escape from the third-story window, leaving him trapped. So Rufus did the only thing he could when cornered: act harmless until a getaway presented itself. It’d been a good decision, too, because even if Sam hadn’t had a Beretta trained on Rufus, he wouldn’t have had a chance in a one-on-one scuffle. It would have come down to fighting dirty. Very dirty.
Of course, Rufus hadn’t expected Sam to have known Jake either. So that’d thrown him for a hell of a spin. The media had lamented the tragic suicide of a decorated officer since Jake’s body had been discovered by the landlord at 619 West Thirty-Eighth Street, and this guy—Sam—was calling the gospel bullshit. He’d hopped a bus for—what’d he say? A day and a half?—and made a beeline for Jake’s place.
Looking for what?
Answers, most likely.
Just like Rufus was.
Because Jake had been murdered.
Rufus knew it. He didn’t understand why the cops, with all their forensics experts and medical examiners, thought otherwise. He’d been there. He’d seen Jake’s body. He’d been shot at, for fuck’s sake. But Rufus’s life straddled a line—one that blurred sometimes, like he’d had too much cheap gin and never enough food in his gut—and the side of that line where the cops existed? They dealt with him, but they didn’t like him. Hell, sometimes they didn’t believe him.
