Chapter Fourteen #2
“Never took you for a Shakespeare fan, Noone.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He huffs a laugh. “There’s a lot I don’t know about me . . .” Then his gaze skims over the top of her head, and his energy changes. “Come this way.”
“Why?”
Instead of replying, he closes his hands over her shoulders and walks her to another bar table farther right, angles her slightly toward the back of the room—when she sees it, her breath catches.
At a round table circled by a padded leather bench seat, four men sit reclined.
Eric Lamonte, fifty years old, smoking a cigar, his cream shirt gleaming with a thin shiny stripe, gold rings on his fingers.
With his hair combed back, he looks like a lizard: chin up, affluent, cold, predatory, as he surveys his domain.
At his right is the guy who’s the reason Nomi currently has three stitches in her eyebrow: Claude Ameche is smoking cigarettes, not cigars, frowning at something in a small notebook; a serious, forty-something man on serious business.
He hardly looks at the club—jaded, just focused on work.
Two other men sit either side of Lamonte and Ameche: a guy in his late twenties who looks no-nonsense, practical, in jeans and a T-shirt like an electrician or a carpenter, and another mid-thirties guy dressed like a pimp—loud-print shirt and pale trousers, a girl on his lap.
The carpenter guy is drinking a beer. On the pimp’s knee, the girl wiggles in a dress that’s short and tight enough so you can see where his hand is moving under the fabric.
He’s laughing, looking back at the others like “Can you believe this chick?”—not a man of sustained intelligent thought.
Nomi feels a sudden hornet buzz on her skin, so intense it’s almost painful.
For a brief, awful second, she wants to cut more than anything.
She clutches her bottled water and sinks back against Noone’s chest, keeping her face as hidden as she can, and the feeling passes.
“There’s the whole gang—wow. Fucking Lamonte and Ameche.
The guy getting a lap dance, I’ve seen him in photos of Lamonte’s known associates, but I don’t know his name. The guy drinking beer is new to me.”
“He’ll be the one with the bolt cutters.” Noone is staring at the group. “He looks like a tradesman.”
“Well, now we know what we’re up against.”
“What about Galetti?”
It’s a sign that Noone’s brain is still switched on, which is good. “Galetti wouldn’t be caught here in a million years. He’s, like, seventy years old, rich as God, house in the Hamptons, boat off Long Island, the whole bit. Being on-site at the club is not his scene.”
“The invisible puppeteer.”
“Just dealing with the puppets is trouble enough.”
She could go over to their table right now and demand Brittany Jackson’s location.
They’d laugh in her face, but she gets an irrational urge to do it.
She wonders how much they’d laugh if she put a gun to Lamonte’s head .
. . Another irrational urge—she doesn’t even have her piece on her—but it’s the only language these guys understand.
Only violence and anger have meaning for them; saying “You are hurting a vulnerable child and her mom” has no impact at all.
Men like Lamonte don’t have a soft side to appeal to.
Nomi forces herself to look away. Then she sees Noone; he’s staring at Claude Ameche like he’s considering the best way to carve him up for a roast.
“Hey.” Nomi tugs hard on Noone’s lapel. “Hey. Whatever you’re thinking right now, you need to stop thinking it.”
“I had an opportunity last time, and I missed it.” He’s still staring.
“And you don’t get a second shot. I mean it, Noone. The last thing I need is you going off script because of some insult to your sense of chivalry, or whatever the fuck. There’s more at stake here. Stay focused, remember?” She tries to divert him. “Oh, look, there’s the other bar.”
The second bar is longer than the one near the entry, with at least six bartenders working double time to keep up with demand.
Laser lights glance off the mirrors and glassware behind the staff, off the fishbowl full of matchbooks in front.
Up this end, two young women in Big Mouth T-shirts are pouring shots—
“There’s Janice.” Nomi straightens. Before she can step forward, she realizes the proximity to Lamonte’s table is going to screw everything up. “Shit. If I show my face up there at the bar, I’ll get busted by Ameche for sure. And Janice won’t want to talk if—”
“I’ll go,” Noone says.
Nomi stops worrying a nail. “What?”
“I said I’ll go. Ameche didn’t see me when I followed him.”
“How do you know?”
He raises his eyebrows. “I know. And I can be useful for more than just muscle.”
She’s dubious. “Okay. But if you’re gonna be the one talking, we need to know who Ricki spoke to, what he might have said, where he picked up his deliveries—”
Noone stops her. “We won’t get all that. But I’ll do my best to get two out of three.”
“Shit.” She rakes at her hair. “What are you gonna say? It’s not like you can flash a badge.”
“Trust me.” Noone smiles, showing a glint of sharp incisor. “Even without a badge, I can be persuasive.”
His energy has changed again, his gaze roving lazily over her face, curious and hungry, lingering on her mouth with its enticing ring.
He’s close enough so she can smell him—clean sweat, tobacco, the oily herbal tang of schnapps—and the smile is pure predator.
Trust him? You wouldn’t leave him alone in a room with your wife.
Where the hell did this come from? Is he fucking with her? Well, if it’s working on her, it’ll work on Janice. Goddamn, though, she should never have unbuttoned his shirt.
Nomi wets her lips. “Go on, then. Show me what you’ve got.”
Noone grins, strolls away toward the bar.
Nomi has to move a little closer and blend with another cluster of patrons at a different table to keep both parties—Noone and Janice, Lamonte and his crew—in her line of sight.
But Lamonte’s group doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.
Wheedling a cigarette from a girl nearby to keep her hands busy, Nomi focuses her attention on Noone as he does some wheedling of his own.
He calls Janice over to place an order, and his face comes alive.
He seems genuinely engaged, touches Janice’s hand to get a light for his smoke, initiates what looks like flirting chat as he waits for the pour, knocks back a shot.
It’s quite a transformation. Nomi’s made a performative switch herself on occasion, when she’s had to fish for information, but it’s disconcerting to see Noone change like this.
Standing at the bar, he’s all elegant angles in his black suit.
He tilts his head, makes a panty-dropping grin.
Janice looks dazzled. “All the devils are here” is right: He looks like a prince of the underworld.
Even under Noone’s spell, though, Janice reveals a few anxious tells.
Her gaze flicks toward Lamonte’s table. Noone draws her attention back.
Janice’s smile becomes less certain, but she’s still talking.
Noone must make a joke—she smiles for real—then she’s getting him a second drink, something acid yellow in a martini glass with a white napkin.
He pays, leans forward across the bar and whispers something in her ear.
Janice blushes, giggles. Nomi feels a flash of sympathetic heat between her legs.
Now Noone turns with his glass, catches Nomi’s eye, looks pointedly toward the couches closer to the entry, between the cloakroom and the bathrooms. He walks off in that direction.
Nomi clears her throat, feeling like she’s just watched a live sex show.
She drops her cigarette under her boot and dumps her empty water bottle, starts pushing through bodies.
There are maybe four couches, all of them black and ugly, with wide arms. Space is at a premium, but Noone’s somehow found a spot.
Nomi kind of wants to smack him. “Do I get a seat?”
“Right here.” He takes her by the wrist, pulls her into his lap, hands her his martini glass. “Here, you should try this, it’s good.”
The drink tastes of citrus and vodka, an icy-cold blast of sanity against the shocking warmth of Noone’s body.
Maybe he’s having trouble throwing off the bit: His long fingers make glancing touches at her arm, shoulder, waist, hip, soft as the wings of a butterfly.
She should slap his hands away when they stray too close to her scars, but something inside her doesn’t want to.
Oh, she could get into so much trouble with this guy tonight.
She won’t, because she’s not a fucking moron, but she can play a little.
She sips again. “Mm, nice—it’s a lemon drop. So what did Janice say?”
“She’s too scared to talk much. But she gave me this.” In Noone’s palm, the unfolded white napkin with the words Daniel Sullivan—Sully—Photos written in Sharpie.
Nomi examines the napkin. “Score two for Janice. That girl is not a dummy.”
“Apparently ‘Sully’ is a freelance photographer and journalist.”
“Ricki was talking to a journalist? No wonder Lamonte was pissed.” Nomi takes another sip of the cocktail, twists in place to see if Lamonte and his goons are still around. Too many bodies in the way. “No phone number for this Sully guy?”
Noone scrapes her hair away from her nape. His voice rumbles right against her earlobe. “You’ll like this—he’s over by the DJ.”
“You’re kidding. Has he got a death wish?”
“He’s got security.” Noone steadies her with one firm hand on her thigh, his thumb stroking gently near the groove of her crotch. “So did I do good?”
“You did very good.”
“I told you I’m persuasive.” Now his nose is sunk against her neck, his breath tickling the sensitive spot behind her ear. The hard ridge of his erection pokes against her butt.
“Noone . . .”
“Hm?” He’s preoccupied.
“Noone.” Nomi turns in his lap until their faces are aligned. “You look fucking amazing in that suit, but I think you might be getting a little dysregulated.” She returns his drink. “Here, you finish this. Fix your pants. I’m gonna go look for the photographer.”
She climbs off him and walks away.