A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,7
house. The yellowish stone, the slight irregularities of the bricks, even the arch windows with green trim—they all combined to date the building, a turn-of-the-century construction that had weathered a lot of bad. Someone had stuck a Banksy sticker to the window, and Sam wondered if it was still there because of negligence or if it was new and somebody would scrape it off by the end of the day. Hard to tell in a place like this.
When Sam went inside, he found himself in a lobby where worn linoleum was peeling back to expose the original tilework, every inch of the place smelling like microwaved popcorn and body odor. Two girls sat in wooden chairs, one doing up the other’s braids. On the other side of the room, a skinny white guy was scratching his neck, skin already raw and bleeding in a few spots.
Behind a massive wooden counter sat an ancient woman with a cap of white curls, her uniform bulging in places it had probably never been meant to bulge. She was flipping through sheets on a clipboard, occasionally pausing to scribble something out with a ballpoint. Sam was surprised she didn’t have a quill.
“Excuse me,” Sam said.
The ballpoint stuttered and she looked up. “Yes?” Short and curt. Welcome to New York fucking New York.
“I need to see Detective Anthony Lampo.”
“Who’s asking?”
“Sam Auden, ma’am. It’s about Detective Brower.”
Her pinched expression relaxed, then drew together again. “Ah. I see. Let me just—” She set her pen aside in favor of the telephone receiver and dialed an extension. After a pause, she spoke loudly, “I have a Sam Auden requesting to speak with you, detective. He says… ah, he says he’s here about Detective Brower.” She nodded absently to the garbled response, said goodbye, quietly set the receiver on the cradle, then looked at Sam again. “Detective Lampo will be right down.”
The guy picking at his neck chose this moment to scream, “What about the fucking movie rights, man?” Then he laughed to himself.
Jesus Christ, Sam thought. They ought to burn the whole island to the ground and try it again.
A door opened, and a middle-aged man with a bad comb-over stepped out into the lobby. The cheap suit he was wearing had obviously come off the rack at whatever the New York City equivalent of Marshall’s was, but he had a nice watch, and Sam wondered what this guy drove, where he lived, what he did on the weekends. The guy glanced around, and his eyes fixed on Sam.
“Mr. Auden?”
“That’s me.”
Lampo shot Movie-Maker a look when the guy started bitching about his rights again, but then he motioned for Sam with a come-hither gesture. “Let’s talk in private.”
Sam followed Lampo up a flight of stairs, down a hall hung with bulletin boards announcing meetings for retirement planning, sign-ups for the precinct softball team, an oologically-minded sales pitch regarding the health benefits of goose eggs, ask Rita Johansen for more information, and on and on. Lampo led him past a squad room, continuing down the hall, and then threw open a door. Two-way mirror, battered table, chairs. Sam had been in interview rooms before.
“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