Chapter Eight #2
“Yeah.” Irma points a finger. “But I’m investigating it as a member of the force.
You’re on your own. And Nomes, you were always a good cop—coulda been a great cop—but, girl, you’re still a rookie.
I’ve been in this game longer, and even I don’t want to go toe to toe with guys like Lamonte and Galetti. Be careful.”
“Irm, you know me, I’m careful as I can be.
” Nomi returns the cigarette, exhaling a thin stream of smoke.
“Okay, it’s good to get the background on all this.
Listen, one more thing—it’s unrelated. I’m tracing a guy for another client.
Can you find out about missing person reports within these states in this time frame? ”
She fishes the memo paper out of her tote, the one that has all the relevant dates and information. Irma balances her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, takes the memo and reads.
“Huh.” Irma swigs soda, her eyebrows doing that dance again. “You got me checking the whole eastern seaboard—wow. You don’t want me to—I dunno—turn straw into gold or something too?”
Nomi snorts. “If you figure out how to turn straw into gold, let me know. We could both retire early.”
“Damn, wouldn’t that be the life, huh?” Irma’s eyes soften above her grin. “You look like half-baked shit, Nomes—how you doing?”
The question needs a genuine response, not the lies she told Father Staggs. But Nomi can’t reveal everything either. “I’m okay, just a little hungover. And this case is getting hotter than I’d like.”
“Look at me, babe.” Irma hunkers forward. “Watch your ass with this. Galetti’s a businessman, but he’s still a snake. And Lamonte’s not screwing around—you saw what he did to Cevolatti.”
“I’m not doing anything to disrupt Arthur Galetti’s business,” Nomi demurs.
“No, but you’ve got a client who wants to disrupt his business. For whatever reason, your client’s work is necessary for what Galetti’s doing. You said Lamonte’s got her daughter as collateral to keep her working?”
“Yeah, and I’m getting the kid back.” Nomi feels her stubborn streak levitate right to the surface. “I’m not leaving a seven-year-old girl with a guy who has priors for pandering.”
“Well, if you get a clear shot, just take Lamonte out.” Irma ashes her smoke and laughs. “It’d save me a whole lot of trouble and paperwork in the long run, you know?”
This is the thing that Nomi has always loved about her ex-partner, and one of the reasons it was so damn hard to let policing go: She’d finally found someone on her wavelength, with the same sense of humor and the same rough brand of ethics.
Irma cocks her head. “You ever miss the station house, hon?”
Guilt was another thing that had made leaving hard. Being a woman cop is a tough row to hoe, and Nomi still feels as bad now about leaving Irma to hoe it alone as she did two years ago.
“I miss you.” She steals a sip of soda, shrugs. “Sneaking around like this to stay connected is a pain. And I miss having colleagues. But so long as Balter is still ruling the roost at Tenth Precinct, I’ve got to steer clear.”
“You don’t want to lock horns with the commanding officer who kicked you out—I get it.” Irma dabs out her cigarette. “Balter can be an asshole.”
Irma doesn’t know the half of it. But they can’t get into it today, because just like that, time’s up. She and Irma used to spend hours together in the cruiser, and now all they get is the time it takes Irma to smoke a Winston.
They exchange final news—gossip from the station, brief missives about family, last hugs—then they go collect their sandwiches. Nomi pays for Irma’s soda and her chopped cheese.
After giving her ex-partner a five-minute head start, Nomi exits back into the breeze along West Forty-Ninth.
It’s nearly two in the afternoon. She hitches her tote and does her usual street check, pulls her hat down as she walks past a graffiti mural, a tobacconist, a set of fire escape stairs draped with Old Glory.
In her mind, she turns over the stuff Irma said about Lamonte and Galetti—He’s a snake .
. . Lamonte’s not screwing around. Is she getting in too deep?
But the NYPD is only interested in nailing Galetti; bit players like Solange Jackson and her daughter get caught in the crossfire.
Who’s looking out for them? The idea of leaving Brittany Jackson to Lamonte’s tender mercies makes Nomi feel sick.
Cars go by. Across the street, a guy pulls a wheeled pallet of carpet rolls in the other direction, toward Ninth Avenue.
On Nomi’s side, a hunched bum in a dirty jacket and a khaki beanie is on the approach.
She prepares to give him a wide berth, but as their paths cross, he reaches out and grabs her by the elbow, swings in beside her.
Nomi jerks, pulls back to give a swing of another kind. “Hey—”
“It’s me,” Simon Noone says. “Please don’t punch me.”
“Noone?” She feels her facial muscles go slack. “What the fuck?”
He’s almost unrecognizable in grubby brown drill trousers, a gray sweatshirt with dirty cuffs, a zipped nylon jacket the color of phlegm.
The khaki beanie he’s wearing makes his hair bunch at the sides and the back.
There are sweat stains on his clothes and smears on his face. Even his posture is different.
But when he removes his cheap plastic sunglasses, his eyes come into view, and there’s no disguising those. “You’re heading for the subway, yes?”
Nomi’s squinting, horrified. “What the fuck are you even doing here? Did you follow me?”
“Yes?” He seems confused by the question, which is ridiculous. “I saw you come out of Florent as I was walking home from work, and—”
“And what?” She wrenches her elbow out of his grip, slaps his sunglasses from his hand. They clatter on the sidewalk. “You figured you’d tail me for a while and find out what I’m up to? Do you know how fucked up that is? Jesus Christ, Noone!”
His cheeks pink as he glances at the sunglasses, back to her. “There was a guy in the street. He was watching you, when you came out of the café. An older guy, stocky—”
“No.” This is something concrete she can refute. She’s been doing her street checks; she’s not a rank amateur. “I don’t believe you. There is no guy.”
“There was a guy!” A touch of desperation from Noone, but she’s onto him now. His hands spread helplessly. “Look, I’m sorry—”
“Listen to me.” She grabs a handful of his disgusting jacket, jerks hard. “I’m going to use small words so you understand. This isn’t a game. This is my job, and I know what I’m doing—I’ve been doing it for literally years. I don’t need some kind of self-appointed guardian trailing me around.”
“Nomi—”
“Get out of my face.” She pushes to release him, steps away, turns back. “And stop following me! You’re not a fucking detective, and we are not partners. You want something to do after work, get a fucking hobby!”
She spins again and walks away, stomping hard up West Forty-Ninth.
The stomping helps, but when she gets to the subway station at the corner of Seventh Avenue, she’s still angry.
No—she’s fucking furious. She takes the subway stairs down.
Simon Noone and his goddamn stalker behavior .
. . Oh, he doesn’t “recognize American social cues”?
Bullshit to that. He’s just a creepy, personal-space-trespassing asshole.
An asshole who somehow knows how to tail someone undetected.
She glares across the subway tunnel at the grimy white tile on the other side.
How the hell did she not notice him? She’s had a tail before, had to lose one.
Tailed plenty of suspects in turn. Her guard is always up.
I know what I’m doing: That’s what she said.
Well, if she’s so goddamn on the ball, how did he slip past her?
How did Noone manage to be so covert? Who the fuck is this guy?
A heavily graffitied train arrives, brakes squealing, blowing hot metal air.
Inside the carriage, an old man is playing a mouth organ at the far end.
Nomi finds a seat, tugs her hat brim down.
Should she dump Noone as a client? He crossed a line—more than one—and this whole thing is looking more and more like a bad deal. But how to get rid of him?
She thinks on the problem, eats half her pastrami on rye, rewraps the other half to get out of the subway.
She’s still thinking at quarter to three, when she reaches the tenement.
Sun has warmed the concrete steps. Sofia Rosa is checking her mail in the hallway, her trench coat belted and a collection of plastic shopping bags at her sneaker-clad feet.
Nomi nods hello, takes the center stairs up two at a time to her apartment.
On the second floor, a forty-something guy, craggy features, flat cap, black zip jacket with the FedEx logo. He’s holding a large yellow document envelope and glancing from a clipboard to the number above her door.
Nomi’s not expecting anything by courier, although she sometimes receives mail meant for others in the building.
Still, she gets a prickling feeling as the memory of Simon Noone’s warning comes back: There was a guy, older, stocky.
It suddenly occurs to her that Noone had no reason to stop and reveal himself in Hell’s Kitchen unless he really did see someone on her tail . . .
She keeps her distance. “Help you?”
The courier guy looks over. “Nomi Pace?”
“Yes?”
“Ah, great, this is sign only.” He proffers the clipboard, with an attached pen.
Nomi’s eyes narrow with suspicion. But this guy has her name and address, the jacket, the clipboard, the impatient courier attitude . . . Everything about him seems legit. How far is she willing to take this paranoia?
She makes the call, moves closer.
Which is when he steps forward and punches her in the stomach.
It all seems to happen in one action: His fist hits, her tote falls, then she’s curled over like an anemone.
Be careful, Irma had said. Too late. Nomi’s bunched around the courier guy’s fist, her solar plexus made of cement.
The clipboard has clattered on the floor and spun away. Her hat has fallen off.
The craggy-featured guy backhands her viciously across the face. Her head snaps sideways, smacks the jamb of the closed door. A blinding explosion of black-edged stars. Stunned, asphyxiating, Nomi slides down the door until her cheek hits the cool, gritty linoleum.
The guy steps closer, his boot near her face. He tosses the yellow document envelope onto the floor beside her. “You got your delivery, understand?”
She can’t even nod. Without air, her ribs are hot and empty as the wind through the subway tunnel. Everything is flipped, pink and rubbery. Her eyeballs throb, pressure burning at the back of her throat. The courier guy’s shadow recedes. His footsteps echo as he walks away.
“Ai-ai-ai!” Noises somewhere, excited, yammering exclamations. “No-mee! No-mee!”
Wet on her cheek, air whistling. She manages to suck oxygen—it hurts. Slapping for purchase on the linoleum, her arms are limp as spaghetti. Suddenly, in her fish-eye field of vision, a wrinkled, brown, worried face.
“No-mee,” Sofia Rosa says, “the man is gone, but you are bleeding. You must get up.”
Getting up seems impossible. Nomi finally manages a whole breath; her chest and head both light up with pain.
“Quick now!” Her landlady seems determined. “Downstairs to my apartment, until we are sure he’s not coming back.”
Nomi scrambles away from the floor. She’s going to throw up. No, she’s got it. Sofia Rosa’s surprisingly tough hands grip her biceps. Nomi leans against hard wood, then soft flesh. Christ, she’s leaning on a seventy-year-old woman. Together they stumble down the stairs.
“Inside,” Sofia instructs, using her key and pushing open her door. “On the couch, yes. Very good. This—take this dish towel, put it against your head. Against your head, like this. Yes, harder.”
Sofia Rosa’s apartment is minuscule, poky with too much furniture.
Brown floral drapes and a big TV, a particleboard end table.
Velour footstool near this saggy couch that smells of gardenias and cigarettes.
Nomi concentrates on staying upright, on pressing the dish towel to her face, on not puking.
Her landlady is bustling. “We will need the doctor, yes?”
“No doctor,” Nomi rasps. No cops, no doctors, no partners—she’s on her own.
“Oh, I must get my groceries! Un momento.”
Sofia Rosa steps out the front door to fetch her groceries.
Sharpness throbs at Nomi’s eyebrow; she tastes salty blood on her lip.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, it registers as interesting that when she makes herself bleed, that’s good—necessary, even—but when someone else does it, it’s a totally different story.
Her vision is still spinning, filmed with pink.
Voices out in the first-floor hallway are garbled, like she’s under the ocean.
No—it’s not distance making the words hard to understand. Whoever’s out there is speaking Spanish.
Her vision is graying fast. Someone says, “Dónde está ella?” and Sofia Rosa says, “Here, she is here.” Then the apartment door opens, and Simon Noone strides through, shoving his beanie into his jacket pocket.
“Christ, what a mess,” he mutters, and also what seem like curse words in Spanish as he takes over with the dish towel and braces her head gently. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
“Oh, perfect,” Nomi says, right before she slides into the dark.