Chapter Three

The phone call came the next morning while they were still in bed.

Sam fumbled through the strata of blankets, trying to find the source of the buzzing, eyes still bleary with sleep. “God damn it. If this is Weaver again because you two got your signals crossed….”

Rufus responded with what sounded like a snore.

By the time Sam’s fingers closed around the phone, it was on the fourth ring. He blinked at the unknown number and let the call go to voicemail. He played the message a moment later.

The woman had obviously started speaking too soon, and the words were clipped with hurry. “—Shareed Baker, and I have information I think you’ll be interested in. I’m going to call you again in five minutes. If you’re smart, you’ll pick up.”

As if Rufus had only just registered Sam’s comment, he asked, “Why’d Erik call you?”

“Not Erik,” Sam said. He dropped down on the pillow and scratched Rufus’s back as he studied the phone. The apartment was somewhere between see-your-breath and freeze- your-balls-off; in another hour, when the radiators kicked on, it would hover right below hell’s-eternal-flames and right above simmering-in-your-own-swamp-ass. Pauly Paul had either died or passed out, because their floor was quiet, and the city was a cicada song just getting started.

Five minutes later, the phone buzzed in his hand.

“Hello?”

She was already talking with that same frenetic speed. “—name’s Shareed Baker. Who is this?”

“How did you get this number?”

“Is this Sam Auden?”

“Let’s say it is. I’m going to ask you again: how did you get this number?”

Her breathing sounded thin. “I’ve got something you want.”

“I doubt that. I’m hanging up now.”

“Stonefish.”

A horn blatted on the street.

Rufus had turned his head as Sam spoke in clipped sentences. He pushed himself up, asking, “Sam?”

Sam shook his head.

“Yeah,” the woman who called herself Shareed said in his ear. “I thought that’d get you.”

“What do you know about Stonefish?”

“That’s going to cost you. But it’s good.”

“What do you—”

“A hundred thousand dollars. Bring it to—”

The laugh broke out of Sam, all glass edges and bitterness. “Who the fuck is this, really? A hundred thousand dollars. Nice.”

The silence on the other end of the call had a confused quality to it. “Well, make me an offer.”

“Ok, let’s see, my boyfriend owes me something in the four-digit range. So, how about, zero fucking dollars and zero fucking cents. Quit wasting my fucking time.”

Rufus sat up on his knees. “Don’t tell people I owe you money.”

“Ten thousand,” Shareed said.

“Give me a break,” Sam said. “You don’t have anything.”

“That’s not what Lew Frazer thinks.”

Sam realized he was clutching the sheet. He forced himself to release it. “If you’ve got something, and if it’s as good as you say it is, I could scrape together a couple of thousand. If. I’m going to be the judge of that.”

“Two thousand. In advance.”

Sam grunted. He did a mental tally, his savings versus the current expense of living in a city where sometimes a hot dog cost six fucking dollars. He lowered the phone to his chest and asked Rufus, “Is the BlueMoon ok for a meet?”

Rufus was frowning. “You’re not gonna bring some shitstain in there, are you? I don’t want Maddie getting caught up in something.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I come?”

Nodding, Sam raised the phone and said, “There’s a place called the BlueMoon Diner.”

This time, the silence was fractional before she blurted, “Eleven. No, ten thirty.”

“Ten thirty,” Sam said and disconnected.

“Who was that?” Rufus asked before Sam could even set the phone aside.

“I don’t know.” Sam scooted to the edge of the bed, stood, and got his jeans—folded—out of his ruck. As he stepped into them, he said, “She called herself Shareed.”

Rufus climbed off the bed and nearly face-planted after getting twisted in the sheets. He threw the blankets back onto the mattress before asking, “You don’t know who you’re meeting, but they want money? For what, exactly?”

“Information.”

Rufus grabbed his jeans from the floor—the knees had been blown out from years of wear and tear. “It’s always a lot of fun trying to make sense of your vagueness.”

As his head popped through the collar of the t-shirt, Sam said, “When I got out. When I left the Army, I mean. You remember what that dickhole said? All those dead soldiers?”

“I remember. We had a fight about it.” Rufus pawed through a pile of laundry before yanking free a long-sleeve thermal with a hole at the collar. “So it’s information about dead soldiers?”

“Maybe.”

This time, Rufus looked at Sam. “Are we going to fight about it again if I ask for answers that are more than one word? I mean, ‘information’ was good. Three syllables, even. But some rando calling at the ass-crack of dawn, demanding money in exchange for sus intel is not how I like starting the day.”

“I don’t know what she has.” Sam dug through the ruck again and considered the Beretta M9. After a moment, he slid it behind the waistband at the small of his back and pulled the long t-shirt over it. Under his coat, it would be invisible. “Hurry up. I want to watch the diner until the meet.”

They took a taxi. The back of the cab smelled like body odor and an animal stink like livestock; the driver was a shriveled white man with stringy hair to his shoulders, and Sam guessed he had chosen to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. In morning traffic, it took them fifteen minutes to get to Hell’s Kitchen. They stopped three blocks away from the BlueMoon, Sam paid the driver, and they got out.

The wind sliced off the Hudson, shrieking up the concrete canyons, and Sam was grateful for the heavy Patagonia jacket. Rufus, on the other hand, huddled inside his hoodie and jean jacket, looking more miserable with every passing second. Sam’s watch said eight forty-five, which meant too long for Rufus to stand outside.

“Suggestions?” Sam asked.

“We park our asses inside and drink some too-strongly-brewed coffee.” Rufus put a hand on his head to keep from losing his beanie in a passing gale.

“I want to see if she brings anyone with her. Or if she has anyone following her.”

“On the Richter scale of paranoia, you’re kinda cranked up to eleven.”

“There,” Sam said, nodding at a Dunkin’ Donuts with a plate-glass window that offered a sight line on the BlueMoon.

He heard Rufus sigh, but he chose not to acknowledge it.

Inside, the air smelled like fryer oil, yeast, and confectioner’s sugar. A handful of customers, mainly older men but a few women, stood in line. One of the men wore a CPO jacket with iron-on letters that spelled out FUCK SATAN PRAISE JESUS on the back. A woman in a plastic hair-coloring cap was frowning at the jacket, probably deciding whether or not to throw in with the Prince of Darkness. The girl behind the counter was white, pregnant, and no older than sixteen. She looked like she needed a few of the donuts herself.

“How many?” Sam asked when it was their turn.

“Three of those chocolate ones with the sprinkles,” Rufus said while pointing at the donuts in the glass case. “And I should get a coffee too, for being dragged out of bed.”

“How big of a coffee,” Sam asked, “and how expensive?”

The answer turned out to be very and only moderately. Sam added a plain glazed for himself, as well as a small black coffee. Then they took their place at the window. The woman in the hair-coloring cap hung around too, working on a paper tray of donut holes—or munchkins, or whatever they were calling them now—and occasionally massaging her hair through the cap, as though afraid the follicles might not absorb every drop of Thoroughbred Pony or whatever the hell color she’d chosen.

Rufus had managed to shove an entire donut in his mouth on the first try, although in his defense, Sam felt the donuts were mostly air to begin with. Rufus took a sip of coffee after, then asked, “So this Shareed lady is in the Army?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t she be? If she’s got information on something that happened when you were active duty?”

“I don’t know.”

Rufus rolled shut the top of his donut bag, put a hand on his hip, and asked, “What do you know, then? No. What do you know that you’re also going to tell me? You didn’t want to talk about it before, and that’s fine. It’s whatever. But now we’re creepin’ from inside a donut shop and I feel like I deserve to know why.”

On the street outside, a bike courier flew past, ringing his bell and shouting at a middle-aged man pulling a shopping cart full of books into the street. The wind rapped against the glass.

“It was a training accident,” Sam said, and he was surprised to hear his own voice perfectly level. “The nickname was Stonefish; someone said that was the internal name for the project, but I don’t know if that’s true. They were amphibious vehicles, supposed to be a significant upgrade with all the MRAP advancements we had to figure out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The next best thing from Conasauga Solutions. It stormed; the NWS issued a flash flood warning, but they either didn’t know or they didn’t care. Two of the vehicles capsized. Fourteen soldiers drowned.” His breath fogged the glass, and then the patch of fog shrank, and then it was gone. “Someone I… cared about died. He was an NCO. A sergeant. Not when they capsized. Shit, I am telling this all wrong. They said it was his fault. He killed himself.” His hands were shaking, and he steadied them against his legs. “Went—that was his name—Went wouldn’t have done that. Ordered them to cross if it wasn’t safe. He was always cautious. Too careful for a soldier. I thought the whole thing smelled wrong. Lew Frazer had just made captain, and he was the golden boy, his star on the rise. I asked too many questions. Nobody liked that. I left because….” Because of Went. Because of the MPs who showed up at my door. Because of the warning passed word of mouth that I was fucking myself over every time I asked another question. Because I realized it didn’t matter; Went was gone.

He replayed his words. He heard his own rambling attempts to explain. Face hot, he stared through the washed-out reflection in the glass and at the street beyond.

Rufus shifted, met Sam’s gaze briefly in the window, then he seemed to focus on BlueMoon across the street. His free hand found Sam’s and gave it a squeeze. “How much was this Shareed lady asking for? A hundred thousand?”

A barking laugh escaped Sam. “She’s new to this. Or not good at it. Or both. She had no idea how much to ask for.” He hesitated and said, “She used Lew’s name. She knew I’d bite.”

Rufus’s eyes cut across the glass once more, this time lingering on Sam’s reflection. “If you left the Army years ago, what’s any of this matter? In October—that guy Jonny—he said Lew had been looking for you. But why? What’s it matter ?”

The question had a jack-in-the-box answer, and Sam wasn’t ready for that, so he settled for saying, “It matters to me.”

The conversation stalled there. On the other side of the glass, the city thrummed with an energy that Sam felt totally cut off from. Twice he spotted women he thought might be Shareed approaching the BlueMoon, but neither woman entered the diner. Ten thirty crept past. Then eleven.

The teen mom behind the counter said they needed to order something or get out.

“Where the fuck is she?” Sam muttered as he paid for sausage-egg-and-cheese croissants.

By twelve thirty, he gave up and jerked his head at the door, and Rufus followed him out into the cold.