A Friend in the Dark

by C. S. Poe

  “What’s he doing now?” Sam asked.

  Rufus took another quick glance. “Looks like he’s texting.”

  Reaching past Rufus, Sam snagged the black beanie. Then he tugged it down on Rufus’s head, tucking the red mess up under the wool, hiding a grin at Rufus’s expression. He liked the way Rufus’s hair felt; it was silky soft, softer than just about any guy’s hair that Sam had felt, and he liked how it looked against his fingers.

  But all he said was “You’re kind of a sore thumb, you know.”

  Rufus slid his sunglasses on. “Beanie isn’t so stupid now, is it?”

  “I’d never tell a hipster that his beanie looked dumb. It’d be like pushing a toddler off a trike.”

  “I’m going to kick your ass later.” Rufus took another look toward Yankee. “He’s putting the phone away.”

  “He’s going to move soon.”

  “Yeah. Shit. Like right now—he’s getting up.”

  “When he gets to the door, tell me. I’ll go. You count to thirty and follow. If he looks back, I’d rather have him see me; he knows you.”

  Rufus had nodded automatically, then shook his head and looked at Sam. “What? No way. You’re not going alone. Not even for thirty seconds.”

  Sam rolled his shoulders, ready to move when Rufus gave the word. He kept his gaze fixed on the redhead as he said, to get a rise, “I want a weekend, just a solid weekend. By the end of it, you’ll know how to sit, stay, speak when spoken to.”

  Rufus raised a finger and jabbed the air in front of Sam. “Forget kicking your ass—I’m tossing you into oncoming traffic.” Rufus quickly shifted in order to free his knees from between Sam’s legs. “He’s moving.”

  Sam launched toward the door. He thought he was pretty fast, but Rufus kept up, and they plunged out onto the street together. Night had come down, mantling the city, only it wasn’t night, Sam realized. Night wasn’t night in Manhattan. Instead of Arkansas nights, Dakota nights, clean air and the dark and the stars, Manhattan night was just a shittier, grimier day, the light smudged like charcoal between the buildings. Yankee guy was already jogging across the street toward Tompkins Square Park. A white Escalade blitzed in front of Sam and Rufus, and then a Corolla with Uber and Lyft stickers on the windshield came the other way. By the time they had an opening, Yankee was past the fence, disappearing into the deeper shadows under the trees.

  Sam and Rufus jogged after him. Not a full run, not a sprint, nothing that would make so much noise as to give them away. Sam felt the air change as they passed under the first old oak, the drop in temperature, the relative cool wicking along his skin. He breathed in the lingering smell of sun-warmed mulch and broken leaves, and, still there, Dial soap from Rufus right next to him. Adrenaline heightened everything; the world, always so sharp and intrusive for Sam, took on new edges. He did what he always did: he kept going.

  Yankee was a darker shadow up ahead. When he turned, scouting, Sam caught a handful of Rufus’s shirt, and they both slowed. A streetlight deeper in the park limned branches, traced the silhouette of the ball cap. Then, a secondary glow lit up Yankee: the phone, the screen held close to his face as he considered something. Another message? Reviewing instructions? No breeze here. On the street, a girl laughed, talking loudly about Pablo’s bad behavior when he came over for Sunday dinner. Off to the right, behind the chain-link of a basketball court, a ball bounced hard with a thump that sounded shockingly loud in the park’s stillness.

  Then Yankee was moving again. Sam’s knuckles brushed Rufus’s belly beneath the cotton, and he felt the faint tremble there, the careful release of breath. He shook his hand free from Rufus’s shirt, his fingers aching, and they followed. Yankee kept to the asphalt walkways, occasionally studying the phone again. When he turned down another path, Rufus stopped Sam, a hand held in front of his chest.

  He pointed to the fencing surrounding the walking path, made a shape in the air vaguely resembling a C, then, with a bit of a run to get the momentum, vaulted over the fence to cut across the grass and meet Yankee on the other side. Rufus turned and waved Sam to join him.

  Copying the movement, Sam landed easily on the other side of the fence. Then he and Rufus moved into the trees, skirting a line of boxwood, then a nasty blackberry bramble that nobody had uprooted, Sam ignoring Rufus’s grin when he hissed at a long line of scratches on his arm. Like Rufus’s touch earlier, the scratches were overwhelming; it was only practice and long years that let Sam shuffle them under everything else and keep his head in the game. They kept going until they reached a copse of cherries. When a shadow moved on the other side of the screen of leaves and branches, both men froze.

  This time, Yankee came toward them, materializing out of the darkness as he emerged into a small clearing ahead. The ambient light of the city painted him in a chalky glow, the white letters of the cap bright in contrast to everything else. Yankee took a few paces in one direction, then back, then off in a third, then back. Sam felt a moment of frustration; had they followed him this far for nothing? Was Yankee looking for a place to pee? Was this some weird, exhibitionist jerk-off game?

  Then a branch cracked off to the left, and Sam grabbed Rufus’s arm without thinking about it. Rufus was trembling; not shaking, not fear—or not just fear, anyway—but tremors. Compressed energy. This was personal for him too. Jake had meant something to him too. And Sam found himself adding to the mental list: cute and funny and vulnerable and expressive and clever and resourceful and, now, brave. Oh, top of the list, big bold letters: smartass.

  The woman who emerged from the shadows to the left was unremarkable. Mousy brown hair in a ponytail, small head, a pant suit that had probably come off a JCPenney suits and separates rack. Sam recognized her as the woman who had interrupted his conversation with Lampo. The weak light made the rest of her features indistinguishable, but the way Yankee reacted, that was remarkable. He jerked back at her appearance. He touched his pocket like a man with a talisman.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Yankee said in a low voice that carried in the still air of the clearing.

  The woman tsked. Actually tsked. “Some of us lead busy lives, Marcus. Working fifty-sixty hours a week to put away scumbags.”

  Rufus shifted. The muscles in his upper arm had tightened under Sam’s grip at the sound of her voice.

  Sam glanced at him.

  Rufus seemed to know her. Enough at least that he mouthed cop without pulling his attention away from the scene.

  “Hey,” Marcus said, “first things first, we gotta get something straight. Five hundred dollars is bullshit—”

  The woman shot him. The movement was clean, fluid, and unhesitating. A single shot. With a suppressor, Sam realized. Marcus dropped, flopping on the ground. His breathing had become a wet gurgle. The woman took four steps closer and shot again. Marcus’s head jerked once, and then no more gurgling.

  For a moment, she considered him, and then she holstered the gun. She produced something from a pocket—disposable gloves, Sam guessed—and crouched next to Marcus. Whatever she did next, the shadows obscured, but Sam had an idea that they weren’t going to find Jake’s phone tonight.

  Except. Except Sam had his Beretta M9. He was still a decent shot; the tremors were bad when he was stressed, but he’d put in a lot of hours at the range, and he just had to hit center mass from—what? Ten yards? Fifteen? But the idea was gone as soon as it came to him. He didn’t shoot unsuspecting people. He didn’t shoot people at all, if he could help it. And the fact that she was a cop had thrown everything sideways.

  Whatever opportunity Sam had, it passed, and the woman rose, studied the scene once more, and then walked into the copse of cherry trees. Sam waited until her steps had faded. Then he counted out sixty seconds, released Rufus’s arm, and sprinted for the body.

  Marcus was dead; the second shot had been to the head, a small hole—Sam was already thinking about calibers, bullet types—but enough to make sure nobody would ever hear Marcus’s story. As
Sam patted the body with the backs of his hands, searching for the phone, for anything, Rufus scrambled up beside him, talking in a furious whisper.

  “When a cop murders in cold blood, you run the opposite way.” Rufus motioned for Sam to follow him, to no avail. “Come on. That was Bridget Heckler. Jake’s sergeant. Oh my God, what the fuck is going on?”

  Nothing in the front pockets. Sam rocked the body, checked one back pocket. He rocked him the other way. Pay dirt. Working the wallet loose, he let Marcus’s body settle. Then, shaking his head, he said, “Phone’s gone.”

  “It’s a trophy piece now,” Rufus snapped, his voice so low, it was like the sound of shoe treads on gravel. “Sam, we need to go. She gave this fucker a third eye.”

  Sam nodded, pushing up from the body, and he motioned for Rufus to lead them out of the park. They took a different route, avoiding the brambles and boxwood, hopping a different section of fence, cutting along the path until they came out of the park near the basketball court. A girl sat on a bench, trimming her weave, while two other girls in matching Knicks jerseys played a fierce one-on-one. Sam felt something unknot in his gut. A cop killing a man in a city park—nothing in him could understand that. But this, this was normal, this was life. He tucked his hands under his arms, hating how they gave him away.

  They made it to the end of the block, and then Rufus froze and whispered, “Shit.”

  Sam followed his gaze and saw Heckler walking the cross street toward them. She seemed to see them at the same time, and the look of shocked recognition on her face would have been comical under other circumstances, a kind of Tom-and-Jerry look when Tom’s just had the rug pulled out from under him.

  All of this passed through his head in an instant before Rufus grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a run.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rufus didn’t let go of Sam.

  It didn’t matter that Sam could keep pace. It didn’t matter that Sam could hold his own, that he was armed. It didn’t matter that Sam had tensed up like a stone statue when Rufus had grabbed his shoulder at Bar.

  Because for as long as Rufus held on, Sam was right there.

  Still breathing.

  Heart still beating.

  Rufus made a sharp right on Avenue A and cut across St. Marks Place. The street was bustling with evening business—tattoo parlors that’d been inking Black Flag’s symbol of rebellion since before he’d been born, as well as a smattering of used record and alternative clothing shops that Rufus knew firsthand welcomed customers of all ages and backgrounds, because any kind of attitude of seniority, in his opinion, went against the very fucking notion of punk. He’d been blacklisted from more than one store within the three-block radius after seeing staff treat young customers who didn’t look the part like wannabes. He’d regaled the employees with a dissertation on why they weren’t punk, told them where they could shove their elitist attitudes, and after being tossed out, had directed the group of kids to better, more accommodating shops.

  Nestled between these establishments of youth and anarchy were those desperate to look as if they belonged. A chain burrito restaurant. A chain floral store. A nationwide bank. Bright, clean industrial lights blazed from inside their glass storefronts in stark contrast to the decades of history and grime around them. The irony of corporations bullying their way into prime real estate and trying to suck on the teat of the New York underground was not lost on the locals.

  Rufus turned left at the end of the block, raced down First Avenue, and narrowly avoided plowing into a couple exiting an Indian restaurant. The woman tripped backward into her date, who shouted a string of obscenities in Rufus and Sam’s wake. But they were fine. They didn’t matter. And Sam’s hand was still in his, so Rufus kept running.

  Rufus shifted his focus to a plane of existence where he thought prey running for their lives also went. One where he could no longer feel the frantic beats of his heart or the searing burning in his lungs. He couldn’t hear the racket of the sleepless city around him. He saw nothing but the overhead street signs counting down Seventh—Sixth—Fifth—God, they were almost there.

  Almost safe.

  Making another sudden right on Fourth Street, Rufus darted across evening traffic. If tires skidded, brakes squealed, and horns blared, he didn’t hear it. They ran over locked cellar doors that bounced ominously under their collective weight, past a row of trash and recycling bins, a bakery shuttered for the night, and then up half a dozen steps to a very unassuming apartment building. Rufus yanked a ring of keys free from his pocket and unlocked the front door. He barreled through the landing, tapped a mailbox mounted to the wall within the cramped vestibule, and led Sam up four flights of stairs without stopping until they reached 4D.

  Rufus unlocked that door, put his weight against it, and forced it free from the swollen, crooked frame. Only after the door had been shoved closed, two deadbolts and a security chain engaged, did Rufus finally release the death grip he had on Sam. He took several unsteady breaths while staring through the peephole.

  But Heckler never came up the stairs.

  Never came creeping down the hall.

  Never knocked on the door.

  Rufus flipped a light switch on the wall and walked deeper into the studio. An unmade bed was shoved against the far wall underneath two windows that overlooked the street. To the right was what barely qualified as a kitchen: two overhead cupboards, an ancient and discolored fridge, half a countertop with a half-sized sink, and two stovetop burners. The other side of the studio was strewn with what amounted to stuff and things on the floor, since Rufus had little in the way of furniture. Two piles of clothes—one clean, the other dirty. Besides that, a few dozen books carefully organized into three separate piles, all marked on the spine with New York Public Library. The one door in the apartment was to the immediate right of the front entrance and down a short hall, housing a closet-sized bathroom.

  Rufus dropped his jean jacket, beanie, and sunglasses on the floor before his shoulders sagged. Almost like it was too difficult to stand, he got down into a crouched position and hugged his knees. “What the fucking fuck is going on?” Rufus asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

  Sam moved to the windows, parting the blinds with a finger, the plastic slats clicking against each other.

  “She shot him,” Rufus said between breaths.

  “Does she know your name? Heckler, is that what you said? Does she know where you live?”

  Rufus slowly drew back up to his full height. “I was Jake’s CI, but she’d have access to my information, I guess.”

  “What matters right now is how long it will take for her to find us. She killed Marcus and took the phone; that means she was involved at some level with Jake’s death. And that means she already wanted you dead.” Sam stepped away from the blinds; they swooshed back against the glass. His gaze roamed the apartment: the books, the clothes, the books, the bathroom, the books, the fridge, the books. “Now we’re witnesses to a murder. She has to remove us.”

  “Heckler doesn’t know we saw it, though.” Rufus yanked his high-tops off and took a seat on the edge of the mattress.

  “Really?” Sam said.

  “Really,” Rufus echoed before glancing sideways. “Wait, what do you mean? Yeah, really. We could have been taking a stroll around the neighborhood.”

  “Ok. Fine. Let’s pretend that’s what it was. You’re Heckler. You just killed a guy, shot him in cold blood in a public park. And that guy, he just happens to be carrying the cell phone of a dead cop. She grabs the phone, leaves the park, and sees—well, fuck me backward, in the sheerest of fucking coincidences, it’s Jake’s informant. The one who was supposed to be dead. But, hey, he’s probably just out for his evening fucking constitutional.”

  Rufus’s hands were tingling, the blood leaving his extremities and his vision morphing like he was going through a tunnel. God help him if his anxiety actually caused him to pass out in front of Sam.

  Tucking his hands under h
is arms, Sam paced. Tried to pace. The small room made it difficult, and even with black spots whirling in his vision, Rufus felt a moment of—pity? compassion?—watching Sam struggle to control the tremors.

  “I can’t prove it,” Sam said, his voice locked down again. “I’m telling you I saw her face, and that woman knew who you were and was surprised to see you walking around.”

  “I might vomit.”

  Sam glanced around the apartment, grabbed a popcorn bucket off the counter—purchased on one of Rufus’s rare mother-son outings, vintage plastic, circa 1999—and pressed it into Rufus’s hands.

  Rufus held on to the bucket for a moment, gripping the plastic hard enough that his fingertips squeaked against it. But he didn’t have anything to clean it out with if he upchucked, and then the smell would permeate the plastic and it’d be one more moment in his life when everything turned to dogshit. Rufus carefully set the bucket on the floor beside the bed, planted his hands on his knees, put his head down, and took a few breaths. Strangled breaths at first, but then he thought of the yoga book on the floor in the return pile. Not that Rufus had been interested in taking up the practice, before or after reading the text, but there’d been a segment on the art of breathing in chapter two.

  He walked himself through those paragraphs from memory. Notice you are breathing. Be aware of it. Is your breath fast? Slow it down. Deeply now, from your toes, through your core, then release. The topic had gotten more complex after that. Something about classic pranayama techniques, alternate nostril breathing, (which, aside from when he had a cold, Rufus had no idea how to do), but the principal remained.