Chapter Twelve
They’ve crossed Greenwich Street, and they’re about to hit Hudson.
Nomi examines the building walls on this side, which sport geological layers of tattered advertising posters for shows, clubs, bands, fundraisers—there’s some good gigs coming up.
A kid goes by on a bike. Far in the distance, rusted water towers.
Before they left Florent, Nomi scooped the rest of the grapes into her cupped hand. She snacks as they walk. “Okay, I was planning to catch the subway, but given your aversion, and my concussion, we should probably get a cab.”
“Probably, yes.” Noone is wearing more normal clothes: jeans, a dark chambray shirt, his black peacoat, his engineer boots. It’s quite a contrast from his work wear. “Although if I’m pretending to be hired security, I feel like you should be paying me.”
“See? Your sense of humor’s coming back, you must be feeling better.” Traffic is bustling on Hudson Street. As they reach the curb, Nomi finishes the grapes, wipes her hand on her shirt, flings her arm up toward the road. “Hey! Hey, I’m waving here!”
It only takes about three seconds for one of the clunky yellow Checkers to pull up in front of them.
Nomi wrenches open the cab’s rear door and pushes Noone inside, clambers in after him.
“Talking in Your Sleep,” by The Romantics, is playing on the radio.
The cab smells of old Chinese takeout, and the black vinyl seat is slightly sticky, with a broken spring.
Noone grimaces in distaste. “Delightful.”
That he’s spent five years in Guatemala and is still such a snob is hilarious. “You don’t like the subway, you don’t like cabs . . . What’s next, bus phobia?”
“I really need to buy that bicycle. Where are we going?”
“South. But we’ve got to do a Midtown loop first.” Nomi leans toward the driver, a weedy Irish guy with a bulbous nose.
“Take a left onto Horatio, then go up Eighth Avenue to West Thirty-Third—the Farley Post Office building. Then we’re going to Hudson Square.
And, sir, it is illegal to mess with the meter, just drive how I told you, okay? ”
“So you found Janice D’Addario’s address?” Noone asks.
“Yep.” As they pull into traffic, she turns back. “I got in touch with someone I know who works at Chachi’s, this club off Hudson in Greenwich Village. With the connection to Leo Farina and Ricki Cevolatti, I figured Janice was probably on staff there. It was a hunch, but it played out.”
“Nice work.”
“I told you, this is my job. I want to get this fixed. Brittany Jackson has been missing for nearly five days, and it’s bugging the shit out of me.”
Noone cocks his head at her. “You’re pretty committed to this case, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I mean, I am getting paid.” She tries to downplay it further. “Plus, I’m personally motivated—if I can avoid getting jumped outside my apartment again, that would be fantastic.”
“I do prefer it when I’m not sewing pieces of your face back together.” Noone’s hair ruffles in the breeze coming through the window. “So why are we going to the post office building?”
“Because I found this in Ricki’s wallet.
” She leans back on the seat to scrape the key out of her front jeans pocket, shows him the number.
“I called the post office, and this is definitely for a post box. No boxes marked two-oh-two at the post office near Ricki’s place in Flatbush, so the main Manhattan building is my next best guess. ”
Traffic on Eighth isn’t great, but it’s not terrible.
They pass a Wine the cab driver sighs.
Noone comes back in under five minutes, jogging unhurriedly down the marble steps, a bundle under one arm. The hems of his black coat flare, his profile framed by Corinthian columns like he’s royalty.
“The key worked.” He slides fully into the cab and slams the door behind himself. “The box was bigger than the normal ones for mail. This was everything inside.”
He’s deposited a stack of paper in her lap. Nomi frowns at it. “What the hell is this?”
“Looks like a pile of newspapers,” he notes.
“Lady, where to?” the cab driver says. “I gotta get off the curb.”
“This is bizarre,” Nomi says, and then, to the driver, “Okay, pull back onto Eighth, turn left onto West Thirty-Third, then left onto Ninth. Follow it all the way onto Bleecker Street. Seriously, Noone, that was everything in the box?”
“That was everything. Just the newspapers. Maybe there’s something important mixed in with them?”
Nomi waves both hands to indicate “maybe?” and then shoves the stack of broadsheets—looks to be all New York Times—into her tote for safekeeping. “I’ll go through this later.”
“You wanted me to check the post box because you thought it might be under surveillance, didn’t you?” Noone doesn’t seem mad about it, but he’d clearly like a response.
The radio song has changed to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” which is plenty loud, but Nomi still keeps her voice lowered.
“My ex-partner said the cops have Cevolatti’s murder on their radar.
If they’re surveilling any locations connected to Ricki, I’d rather they saw you—who they don’t know—than me. ”
“You’re really trying to stay out of sight of the police,” Noone notes. “Is there anything I should know?”
“Only that I don’t appreciate folks from Tenth Precinct being all up in my business. Apart from my ex-partner, there’s nobody from my old job who I want to stay in touch with.”
Noone regards her curiously. “So why exactly did you leave the NYPD?”
Nomi just shrugs, noncommittal. Noone’s brows lift, but there’s really no response to his question that she’s prepared to give here, in the back of a cab.
Ninth Avenue turns into Hudson; they’re almost close enough here to just get out and walk home.
But there’s still Janice to deal with. The cab barrels past the Meatpacking District, heading farther south.
Buildings either side of Hudson Street begin shrinking, begin bristling with fire escapes, begin looking more residential.
They pass the playground at the top of Bleecker, and suddenly there are some nice streetlamps and brownstones.
The streets become narrower. Their cab gets held up by a yellow school bus.
Past a Hertz garage, they turn onto Seventh Avenue.
At the intersection with Carmine, where it turns into Varick, Nomi tells the driver to pull over so she can pay.
They get out, the spires of the financial district poking up like hypodermic needles in the distance.
A guy in jean shorts goes past on roller skates.
Nomi checks the address she wrote on her hand as she and Noone jaywalk across Varick.
He scans the landscape, scraping back his hair. “This is Hudson Square?”
“Yes? Or maybe Greenwich Village. Or Soho. I don’t know—folks call it different things depending on how fancy they want to seem.” She hitches her tote, nods toward a left turn just after a printshop and a little red corner café. “Okay, this is the address I have.”
The street is narrow, with a bodega and signs for an Italian social club.
The buildings along here are mixed tenements and industrial businesses: a bakery, a carpentry workshop, two garages.
Some of the fire escapes are folded down right onto the sidewalk.
But street plantings—including some full-grown trees—make it into a nice neighborhood.
They reach a tenement, indistinguishable from the other tenements on the block.
Nomi doesn’t try the front door, ducks through an old carriage entrance on the right.
It leads through to an ugly communal garden area with concrete pavers, a dried-up fountain, withered shrubs.
At left, an open wooden door shows six shallow stairs leading into the tenement.
They arrive at a short, dark landing with two apartments opposite each other. Nomi can smell old drains, cooked vegetables, body odor: the scent of many people living in close proximity. These are the types of apartments where the bathtub is in the kitchen.
“Here goes nothing.” Nomi knocks on the left-hand door. No answer. She tries again. Still nada. She tries the door handle. No luck. “Shit.”
“If she’s not home, is that it?” Noone looks a little frustrated.
Nomi winces. “Okay, I heard that Janice hasn’t been at work the last few days, so I have a feeling . . .”