A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,9
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