“I’d like to talk to this buddy of yours anyway,” Sullivan said. “Can you arrange for him to meet me?”
“Not going to happen. I’ll ask him whatever you want, but I’m not telling you his name or how to reach him. Consider me your contact.”
Sullivan’s jaw muscle worked, but all he said was, “Fine.”
“Fine.”
Sullivan reached into the grocery sack again, helping himself to a bottle of iced tea. “In the meantime, let’s talk about Ghost. What’s his legal name?”
Tobias’s brain shorted out for a good five seconds. Finally, when Sullivan’s eyebrows were halfway up his forehead, Tobias admitted, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know your best friend’s name?” Sullivan’s tone was flat.
“His name is Ghost. That’s the name he likes. It’s the one that matters.”
“Not when it comes to finding him,” Sullivan said. “But let’s move on. Don’t suppose you know his social?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Date of birth?”
“January 30th.” This, at least, Tobias was certain about. When they were in Woodbury, there’d been a cottage party for Ghost on that date.
“Year?”
Tobias shook his head. “I’m not sure. He claimed he was fifteen when we first became roommates but his age tended to change based on what he wanted at any given moment. It’s either ’96 or ’97, though. I’m pretty sure.”
“Why were you roommates?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why don’t you let me make that call?”
Reluctantly, and with the same hot flush of embarrassment he always felt speaking about it, Tobias admitted, “We were in a residential treatment program together. I was eighteen, he was a few years younger.” He could feel Sullivan’s attention like a physical hand on his skin, picking at him, searching for weaknesses.
But all Sullivan said was, “So he’d be twenty now, assuming he told the truth about his age.”
“Yes.”
“Has he lied about that sort of thing in the past?”
He lies about everything, Tobias thought bitterly. “I’m not sure.”
“Any other addresses he’s lived at?”
Tobias rattled off the one for the gray dump Ghost had stayed at before he moved into the Riviera condo, but he didn’t know any others. “Will that help?”
“Probably not. Leases aren’t like mortgages; it’s a lot harder to find out who’s paying the bills when names aren’t part of the public record. But neighbors might—”
Tobias shook his head. “He’s not very sociable. They won’t know anything about him that I don’t.”
Sullivan nodded. “Have any pictures of him?”
“No. He doesn’t like having his picture taken.”
“Parents’ first names?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s he from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s his family from?”
Tobias’s face burned. It was humiliating, knowing how much of his life he’d given to Ghost and how little Ghost had given him in return. Tobias knew it was wrong to think that way, that secrets and intimacies couldn’t be bartered, couldn’t be demanded in equal amounts, not when different people had different needs and different abilities to trust, but it had never been so baldly shoved in his face before.
“Don’t know that either, huh?” Sullivan asked.
“No.” Tobias hated how hoarse he sounded.
“What about that shoebox back at his place? Would we find anything helpful in there?”
Tobias shook his head. He’d seen inside the box only once, when by chance he’d been standing close by enough to see a staff member search through Ghost’s things when Ghost had been brought in for his third or fourth visit to Woodbury. The box was filled with assorted odds and ends—pictures cut from magazines, a broken piece of pottery, an old necklace with a broken clasp, a worn rubber stamp, amongst other things—but only Ghost knew their meanings.
“Let’s go back to this treatment place. What were you two there for?”
“It’s not related,” Tobias gritted out.
“We don’t know that. You might have details about Ghost’s life that you don’t realize are—”
“It’s...it was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t matter—”
“He was a kid. I was practically a kid, and he’s three years younger.”
Sullivan chucked his pen on the table with enough force that it bounced to the floor. “Why the fuck does Mama need a favor from a twenty-year-old street kid? You really think it’s unrelated to the sort of shit that gets a guy in trouble with the system? Use your head.”
Stung, Tobias jerked back. It wasn’t the way Sullivan had spoken to him—which seemed reasonable, considering how they’d gotten to this point—so much as that Sullivan was right. Tobias hadn’t thought it through. Finally he said, “He was there for prostitution. But I don’t know the specifics. I don’t know why that would matter to Mama.”
“You said you’re his best friend.”
That one cut deep, and Tobias spoke more sharply. “I am.”
“But you don’t know anything about him.”
“I—I know other things. Things that won’t help us here, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know him.”
“You promised you wouldn’t lie.”
“I’m not lying!”
Sullivan opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it again. He studied Tobias for what felt like a long time before he finally—and very gently—asked, “What can you tell me about him, Tobias?”
He’s beautiful, Tobias wanted to say. He’s smart and sarcastic and surprising. He saved me once, back before we were friends, simply because he could and I needed it. Where other people are soft, he’s hard. Where other people are dull, he’s sharp. He’s like the knives he uses, and he always wins. I know he doesn’t care that much about me, but it’s still more than anyone else gets from him, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it?
But in the end, all he could manage was a soft, “He doesn’t need me, not the way I need him. He doesn’t need anybody, but he lets me stay.”
Something in Sullivan’s expression shifted, a minute twist that meant oh, I get it.
“It’s not like that,” Tobias said, weary at the very idea. “I told you, we weren’t in a relationship, and I’m not in love with him.”
Church had once accused him of being in love with Ghost, and Tobias supposed from the outside that it probably looked that way. Heck, there had been moments when Tobias had wondered it
