Chapter Fifteen
For a moment, Simon’s not sure how to react.
In close quarters, her ass pressed against him, Nomi’s presence was overwhelming. She smelled salty like the ocean, loamy like coupling. Purple stars billowed off her in dark waves. Her skin was slippery with the damp heat of the club, tattoos swirling.
Even departing, she looks regal, mink-sleek in her silky dress, hair swaying. He wants to exult, wants to cheer. Wants to lunge forward and cover her with his body. Wants to wrap his hand around her delicious throat and squeeze.
Except this isn’t why you’re here. You’re here to provide her with backup.
Right. He clenches a fist, makes a monumental effort to reassert control.
Temples thumping, he puts down his glass and stands, tracking Nomi as she walks through a crush of people with their arms raised.
The landscape of the club is watery, undulating, shifting in his vision, the heavy beat of the music blending from one track to the next.
Colors are a neon riot. People dance, their bodies swaying and jerking like they’re on hooks at Gennaro’s.
Simon presses his thumb against the cut on his left arm to clear his head, works to pull himself together and follow Nomi’s path.
Shaking off the sensations in his own body is difficult.
He’s throbbing every time he looks at her.
He needs to slap himself. Clearly, if nothing else, tonight has established that combining the postdromal effects of a migraine with meds, alcohol, and the sensory overwhelm of a nightclub is a phenomenally bad idea. Got it.
Nomi has reached the DJ station, a short dais to the left of the first bar.
At least three men are standing, bobbing, at large turntable setups, banks of machines behind.
One of the men is wearing green running shorts and long white socks and white running shoes and nothing else. All of them are wearing headphones.
Around them, another guy circles, holding a large and extremely expensive-looking camera up to his eye.
He’s white, maybe early thirties, a little schlubby in a maroon plaid shirt and jeans, with a ginger mop of hair—Daniel Sullivan, Sully.
Close by, a stony-faced Black man in coveralls, the approximate size and shape of a house.
Nomi is already chatting with Sullivan, who smiles and raises his camera to take a few shots of her.
Simon wants to detach Sullivan’s head at the neck, marshals himself as he comes alongside.
Nomi doesn’t introduce him—Simon’s learned, from the visit to Hector’s Café, that you don’t introduce your security—but continues the conversation she’s already started with Sullivan, yelling a little to be heard.
“. . . hoping I could ask you about it?”
“Oh, sure, sure.” Sullivan cocks a grin at her. “We could go to my place and talk over a drink, if you want. I’m pretty close by.”
Simon thinks someone should be giving him some sort of prize for being civilized right now.
“I’d love to,” Nomi gushes, “but I’m here with friends. Can we maybe go talk outside the door? It’s freaking loud in here.”
“Absolutely,” Sullivan yells back. “Just lemme grab my man Max.”
He steps aside to talk with his security; Nomi leans toward Simon. It’s all he can do to stop himself from grabbing her by the scruff and rubbing his lips against her neck, but he settles for inclining his head so he can hear her.
“Feeling better?” Nomi’s eyes are sparking.
“Somewhat.”
“It’s been quite a night.” Her grin is mordant. She refocuses on Sullivan as he picks up his camera bag and waves her toward the main-entry door. “This guy is kind of a creep, but I might learn something here, so keep your shit together, okay?”
Sully leads them out the big insulated door onto the balcony corridor, the one Simon remembers reaching after they climbed all those stairs on arrival.
As soon as the door shuts in their wake, the upper registers of the music disappear; the remaining sound, even the deep thud of the beat in the floorboards, becomes quieter and more manageable.
Simon feels it as a slight relief, like someone’s poured warm wax into his ears.
They’re standing about ten feet along the balcony, under the glow of the emergency lights and one of those weird green bulbs. Max the Security Guy positions himself by Sullivan’s shoulder; Simon, hands shoved in his trouser pockets, takes up a similar pose with Nomi.
“Hope I’m not talking too loud.” Pushing his camera bag to his back, Sullivan lights a cigarette. “I’ve been taking snaps in there for nearly two hours, and my hearing has gone to shit.”
“Oh no, you’re fine,” Nomi reassures.
“You’re a private investigator, huh? Never met a private investigator in a club before.
” He smiles, like their meeting is a personal compliment.
Simon recognizes Sullivan’s type: young men of the Upper East Side who come down to the Meatpacking District on the weekends for a little strange. “How did you get my name?”
“A friend of Ricki Cevolatti’s.”
“Shit, poor Ricki. I saw in the papers what happened.” But Sullivan looks more nervous than sad.
“Is that why you’ve got security?” Nomi asks politely.
“Oh, nah.” Sullivan waves his cigarette perilously close to his ginger fringe. “Not at all. I had a couple rough experiences a while back—I was riding along with the Guardian Angels about three years ago, yeah? Anyway, I ask Max to come with me sometimes when I’m going someplace hairy.”
“Lamonte’s clubs can get hairy?”
Sullivan just smiles and shrugs. “It’s the West Village.”
Nomi nods, lets it go. “So, look, I’m not investigating Ricki’s death, but I’m trying to find out a little more about Ricki’s last few days. Where he went, who he saw, what he said, that kind of thing. It could impact another case I’m working on.”
“Ah, Ricki. Well, Ricki was a doofus, you know. Always shooting off his mouth.”
“How did you know him?”
Sullivan takes another drag, gestures toward the door of the club from which they’ve just emerged.
“Like this. We met at clubs in the Village, or down in Soho. I mean, he was my dealer, right? But we got friendly. We’d have a few drinks, gossip a little.
We weren’t super tight or anything, but we got along. ”
Nomi’s kohl-dark eyes have narrowed. “He knew you were a journalist?”
“Oh yeah, sure. But you know—photojournalist. Ricki thought it was just about taking pictures.”
“He didn’t know you broke stories.”
“Long photo essays, mainly, but yeah.”
“Can I ask what you and Ricki chatted about, last time you saw him?”
Sullivan scratches the back of his neck, perhaps annoyed that this tête-à-tête with the hot girl has become more interrogation than seduction.
“Look, Ricki was an okay guy, but he wasn’t the brain-surgeon type, you feel me?
We’d talk about the scene, talk about work—that was mainly it.
I don’t even remember what we talked about last time. ”
“Bummer.” Nomi smiles, trying to be a little more coaxing. “It would really help me if you could remember.”
“I mean, we covered some ground.” Sullivan waves, noncommittal. “You know—the situation in the district, places shuttering since AIDS, the city cracking down. The future of the clubs, basically. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
“I guess not.” Sensing Sullivan’s impatience and his obvious lack of interest in cooperating, Nomi calls it. “Okay, well, I appreciate you talking to me. I’m sure you’ve gotta get back to the floor, so let me just . . .”
She moves to grab a Sharpie sticking out of the breast pocket of Sullivan’s plaid shirt. Max the Security Guy glares, takes a step.
“It’s fine, Max,” Sullivan says, handing Nomi the pen.
“Be careful,” Max says to his boss in an undertone.
“You know me, Max, I’m always careful.”
“It’s just a pen,” Simon notes.
Max startles, stares at him.
Sullivan blinks at Simon, flustered. “Hey, you speak French? Makes sense—you look kinda like a northerner.”
Nomi is gaping, and Simon has to think on his feet, not having realized they were speaking French at all. He hopes Sullivan mistakes his wide eyes for blithe surprise, not stunned shock. “You were raised French speaking?”
“Yeah, I got the US-Canadian thing going on.” Sullivan nods amiably. “That’s cool, man. Don’t meet so many Québécois in NYC.”
Nomi has recovered fast and is now just giving Simon side glances as she uses the Sharpie to write on the back of Sullivan’s hand. “Okay, so this is my number. If you think of anything else about Ricki or your conversation, give me a call.”
Sullivan grins at her, sly. “Can I give you a call anyway?”
Simon has an abrupt vision of himself as a French-speaking cannibal tearing strings of tendon off Daniel Sullivan’s bones with his teeth.
“Sure,” Nomi says good naturedly.
“Sweet.” Sullivan gives her what appears to be his most-practiced smile. “Real sorry to bail on you, but I gotta get the rest of these shots. Good to meet you, though. We’ll catch that drink some time.”
“I’d love that,” Nomi says, managing not to sound insincere. “See you ’round.”
Sullivan and Max the Security Guy move past them and back to the heavy door, which lets out a wail of cresting music as it opens. Nomi maintains her smile until the door closes, then lets her expression drop as she turns.
“Sully’s bought.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I mean, that guy he’s got for security is huge, but I’m telling you right now, it’s not Max who’s keeping Sully safe in the clubs. Lamonte has got to him.”
Simon leans back on the banister. “He was nervous. His hands were shaking while he smoked.”
“I saw.” She glares accusingly. “Oh, and hello—did you know you could speak French?”
“No,” Simon mutters, feeling inexplicably embarrassed.
“You were just standing there exchanging sentences in French, and I had no idea what all three of you were saying. Wow.”