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I scrub my hand over my face. “The baby, I think he …”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s enough to send anyone off the rails. A bender’s got to be the most logical explanation. It’s just not likely that the Russians who hacked into my company would turn up after so many months.” He pats my arm. “He’ll be passed out somewhere.”
And I nod at him. Is he just being hopeful? But he could be right—all those times I’ve seen him sleeping it off in the apartment. It’s the most likely explanation, but my God, he’s not always been safe doing that.
“We need to know where he goes to get the particular drugs he takes,” Jo says.
“Do you know anything about that?” I ask, turning to Janus.
“He’s never shared much about what he does, Kate. I’ve had a go at him about it so many times, but he’s always argued he doesn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
“And he just ends up putting himself in danger,” Jo grumbles.
Where might he go? I think about the prostitutes down by the river, that he was followed from parkour.“Do you think, Darren … Oh! Hang on, he mentioned some guy at a shelter he knew, someone he got to know when Zach was alive. Maybe he could point us in the right direction.”
“Do you remember a name?” Janus asks.
I screw up my face. “Sam? Simon? … No, Steve, I think.”
Jo starts scrolling through his phone. “Ha! There’s a contact called ‘Steve (Shelter)’ in his phone.”
She hands me the phone, and I press the number with shaking fingers. The dial tone echoes into my ear as I wait for the call to connect.
“Hello, Steve Miller.”
“Oh, hi, Steve, my name’s Kate Thurman, and I’m a friend of Fabian Adramovich and …”
“Kate! How lovely to speak to you. Fabian’s told me all about you.”
He has?
“Bought you some fancy-ass bed when he messed up, he told me. Is everything okay?”
“Well, actually no. That’s why I’m calling,” I give him a rundown of his empty apartment, the fact that his phones are still here.
“Okay, okay,” Steve says. “There are several places you can check where people go to buy stuff. There were a couple of places he used to hang out when he was looking for Zach. I think he got to know some of the squatters. But some guys have also come into the hostel this morning. Let me do a quick ask around and see if anyone’s seen him. There’re a few people here who know him. Last night, you say?” It’s like he keeps an eye on people for a living, and maybe he does.
“Anytime between 3 a.m. and well, now really.”
“Okay, give me ten minutes and I’ll call you back.”
But it doesn’t take ten minutes. Five minutes later, Fabian’s phone buzzes in my hand, and I put it on speaker and place it on the table.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, a guy here says he saw him last night, down in Greenpoint. There’s an old factory building that squatters have been living in for years. He said they were having some kind of party. Said he was off his face, could hardly walk. It’s near the old Budweiser factory on Huron Street.”
It could still be bad but thank God he’s not been kidnapped.
Janus nods. “We’ll find it, and thanks, Steve.”
“Hope you find him. That’s not a great place. The guy who runs it is involved in all sorts of stuff. Let me know, yeah? I’m worried now. We’ve been friends a long time.”
Another friend of his I’ve never heard about. He talks about preferring his own company, but he has so many friends in this city.
“The Uber is five minutes away,” Janus says, and I grab my bag as we head down to the street.
39
