A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,24

the mind reading, though.”

“Uh-huh. Is your last name really Auden?”

“It’s Auden.” It looked for a moment like Sam might say something, maybe ask for Rufus’s real last name. Then someone passing by jostled him, and Sam startled, took a deep breath, and looked around. A wild look. Almost a feral look. “Can we—” He made a vague gesture. “Can you just fucking get us off the street, please?”

Rufus pretended not to notice the expression that’d swept across Sam’s face. “Grouch.” He reached Queenie’s, yanked the door open, and stepped inside. Rufus held it long enough for Sam to grab, then drifted into the crowd of grisly patrons.

Queenie’s was old as sin. It smelled like cigarettes, despite the smoke-free legislation in the city that required bars to jump through loopholes in order to offer their patrons a Marlboro with their martini. It smelled like cheap booze too, which probably meant they didn’t serve martinis. It also smelled like someone had been jacking off in the corner for the last decade and had been leaving their load on the floor. All this, and folks were still crowded inside.

Rufus wove around a few haphazardly placed tables and mingling groups of men at least a decade older than himself before reaching the bar. He didn’t touch the countertop. Nope. It looked sticky. But he patiently waited for the bald guy serving beer in glasses with hard-water stains to notice him.

The bartender didn’t ask what Rufus wanted. He just threw down a napkin on the sticky bar and raised thinning eyebrows.

“No, thanks. But I’m wondering if you might have seen a friend of mine recently. Tall. Big this way,” Rufus said, holding either hand out from his shoulders and giving a vague description of Jake without coming out saying: my friend, the cop. “Blond hair. Butch.”

The bartender pulled a grimy towel from his shoulder, flapped it once, and said, “Butch?”

“Yeah. A guy with testosterone to spare,” Rufus replied.

“Haven’t seen him.”

“Anyone report a lost iPhone, then? It’s black with a matching butch case.”

Those thinning eyebrows wiggled, and the bartender made a face. “Sure, I got it. In a box with all the other butch phones nobody bothered to pick up. Right there with their car keys and their wallets and a few stacks of cash.”

“Aren’t you charming,” Rufus said dryly.

“Buy a drink and I’ll be so fucking charming, your little pussy will squirt. Otherwise, get the fuck out.”

“Mazel tov.” Rufus adjusted his sunglasses with his middle finger, turned, and walked back to the door. “Fuck this place,” he said to Sam.

“That went well,” Sam said.

Rufus stepped outside and started walking. “Queenie’s is the pits.”

“The tips of your ears turn pink,” Sam said, following. “And the tip of your nose.”

“It’s a sunburn,” Rufus said automatically, tugging his beanie down over his ears.

Sam didn’t say anything, but the big dumb fuck was grinning, which was even worse.

Rufus stopped to poke his head into a dry cleaners. A brief conversation with the owner confirmed no one like Jake had been seen in the shop, and no, they didn’t have a lost and found beyond unclaimed jackets, one as old as last December. Rufus tried again at a sushi joint, of which there had been a lost phone, but the hostess swore she’d chased the owner down the street to return it. More of the same at a Starbucks and even a nail salon. No one had seen anyone matching Jake’s description since he’d still been alive, and no one was admitting to having found an unclaimed iPhone.

Rufus was well and truly agitated by the time they came to a stop at the next watering hole, the late-afternoon light turning the façade gold. Bar. That was the name of this place. It was probably supposed to be funny or ironic or some shit. The door was propped open, and hipsters moved in and out like the tides. At least it appeared night and day in cleanliness compared to Queenie’s.

“His phone wasn’t moving,” Rufus told Sam. He sidestepped a group of college-age kids as he approached the open door of Bar.

“I bet you know how to use your tongue,” Sam said. “Conversationally, I mean. Maybe try a little sweet talk this time.”

Rufus paused in the threshold, took his sunglasses off, and stared at Sam. “I’ve been perfectly polite.”

“Polite, yes. I said sweet talk.”

“Whatever you say, Bruce Banner.”

Bar looked like it had been picked up fully intact and moved from Williamsburg to Alphabet City. Tacky, weird art hung on the walls, and