Chapter Fifteen #2
“We were just talking about the pen.” His lips feel numb. He rubs his face, avoiding glancing over the banister at the four vertiginous flights of stairs below them. “I thought we were speaking in English.”
“French, Italian, Spanish, Maya, English . . . You’re a regular little United Nations of languages.”
“Can we discuss this later?”
“Sure, but—”
Before she can finish, the door of the club opens again, lights and music making a localized spill in the corridor. Max the Security Guy steps out, holding a white business card between thumb and forefinger.
“Sully asks me to give you this.” Max’s English is heavily accented. The card looks like a flower petal in his large hand. “You give him a phone number, he gives you a phone number.”
“Uh, thanks?” Nomi releases her arms, takes the proffered card.
Max glowers, but it doesn’t seem directed at Nomi. “And he cannot tell you, but I will tell you. They give him money to be quiet, but also they make threats, you understand? Me, I take no money, I can say what I like.”
Nomi exchanges a glance with Simon. “What do you want to say, Max?”
“Sully and Ricki, they are talking about the . . .” Max grimaces as his tolerance of English runs out. He appeals to Simon. “Can I just tell you in French? That would make everything simpler, I think.”
Nomi’s expression reveals that they’ve switched languages, but Simon nods anyway. “Of course. Go ahead, I’ll translate.”
“As you like.” Max thrusts his hands into the pockets of his coveralls. “Ricki and Sully discussed the politics of Ricki’s business. Ricki was not as stupid as Sully makes him out to be, you understand? They discussed the city council land rezoning, and the woman senator who opposes Mr. Galetti.”
Simon is giving Nomi the translation in spurts, but now she lifts a finger to interrupt. “The woman senator—do you mean Gloria Axedale?”
Simon doesn’t know that name.
“Yes, this is the woman,” Max confirms. “Mr. Galetti wants more properties. He’s buying places all along the High Line route. He submits his rezone applications, and this Axedale woman is denying them.”
“Did they mention any policies?” Despite the language barrier, Nomi’s trying to drill down for details. “Anything to do with monopoly land ownership?”
Max makes a “maybe” face. “There is something about the Cabaret Law. But this is a New York issue I don’t understand.”
“This is all public information, though,” Nomi insists. “It’s not something Ricki should have gotten killed for sharing.”
Max shakes his head. “No, listen.” He turns to Simon. “Tell her this—tell her that Ricki said the Axedale woman can no longer refuse the rezoning. He said that Mr. Galetti has found a way to make her behave.”
When Simon is finished, Nomi frowns. “What way?”
“This, I do not know.” Max has shifted back to English. “Sully, he wants to report this, but then he learns of Ricki’s death. He receives a phone call. Now, of course, he cannot report, not if he wants to keep his tongue in his mouth and his fingers on his hands.”
“Or the money in his bank account,” Nomi says.
The big man shrugs, his shoulders like two ham hocks. “That is all I can tell you.”
“Max, this is incredibly helpful,” Nomi says. “Thank you for speaking with me.”
“He is a foolish man, my boss—too much powder, you understand? But you should have this information.” Before turning to go back into the club, Max looks at Simon.
“Look after your lady. And I do not think you are Québécois, my friend. My father is from Rouen, I have been to France many times—you have more Parisian than Canadien in your accent. It was a pleasure to meet you, though.”
The security man raises a large palm in farewell, walks back through the door.
Nomi spins around. “Goddamn.”
Simon’s head is hammering, and he wants to unpack Max’s comment about his French-language background, but this puzzle is still tugging at him. “Who’s Gloria Axedale?”
“I mean, seriously, goddamn.” Nomi looks rattled and excited at once. “Axedale is a former member of the New York State Senate. She’s the current chair of the New York City Planning Commission.”
“So Ricki talked with a journalist about clashes between Galetti and Axedale, the chair of the planning commission, over rezoning.”
“And how Galetti now has a way to make Axedale approve his rezoning requests,” Nomi says. “Don’t forget that part. That’s the biggest part.”
“Then Ricki turned up dead. And now Lamonte has bought the journalist.”
Nomi chews at the metal in her bottom lip. “How is Galetti influencing Axedale?”
“Mobsters, state senators, New York City planning . . . This is getting a little complicated, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not to mention that you’ve somehow picked up the ability to speak Parisian French.”
“I didn’t ‘pick it up,’ it just . . .” Simon exhales, his head fuzzy. “Is it time to go home now?” He doesn’t want to sound plaintive, but it sort of comes out like that.
“I need my jacket,” Nomi reminds him.
They return to the club, head for the cloakroom. Nomi hands the guy her ticket, but there’s a queue. Simon stands beside her and wonders what her lip ring would feel like on his tongue if they kissed, distracts himself with a final scan of the floor.
He should say something. “I apologize. For—you know, before, on the couch.”
Nomi glances at him and snorts. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I acted like an idiot.”
“You’re recovering from a migraine, half cut on medication, then I pour schnapps down your throat and drag you along to a nightclub . . .” She shakes her head at her own poor judgment. “You did tell me you get a little loopy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget about it.”
He stares at all the people on the dance floor, doing their thing. “You really think I look good in this suit? Wait, don’t answer that.”
As he moves his head, he sees something else: Claude Ameche, serious man in a polo shirt and chinos, with a burgundy jacket, is about to walk past them.
Simon touches Nomi’s shoulder in warning. “Ameche.”
She stills, angles to look just as Ameche’s path crosses with the cloakroom queue. Ameche catches sight of Nomi: There’s a flash of instant recognition. In the same moment, he sees her dress, her loose hair, her bare legs, and makes a lascivious grin.
Simon feels Nomi stiffen, and a kind of red film washes over his vision.
“Stay here,” he says, separating from her.
Nomi is having her jacket handed to her at the cloakroom window. “Noone. What are you doing?”
As Ameche reaches the entry door, Simon is already striding toward the first bar.
The gods of violence are smiling on him: When he looks over the lip of the benchtop, someone has left a paring knife on a plastic cutting board next to a pile of limes.
Simon snatches up the knife, ignores the bartender who calls out, spins into a jog to reach the door.
He yanks it open.
“Noone! Stop!”
But the slithering viper inside him isn’t listening. He strides out the door about ten steps behind Ameche. The man has jogged down the first set of stairs to the landing. By the time Simon catches up with him, they’re halfway down the second set of stairs.
Simon doesn’t see the point of announcing himself. He kicks Ameche in the back of the knee, leaving a heel print on the twilled cotton. Ameche stumbles forward onto the second landing, turns with a look of galled shock.
Simon surprises himself by punching Ameche right in the face.
“Noone! For fuck’s sake!” Nomi has reached the balcony corridor.
Ameche grunts and falls back to the top of the third staircase. Simon’s fist is smarting, but the cool alien blood in his veins is just getting started.
The older man, accustomed to swimming with sharks, reaches into the inside of his jacket.
Simon discovers his own movements have become explosively fast, or maybe everything is happening in decelerated motion, like the Earth’s revolutions have slowed: Ameche drawing the pistol, Simon’s own hand slamming into Ameche’s wrist, the gun falling over the banister.
Green light casts everything in a murky, underwater haze, like they’re brawling at the bottom of the Hudson.
But they’re on dry land, and people are present in some background shadow play, crying out, scurrying for safety as Simon backhands Ameche’s face, shoves him hard in the chest. Ameche tumbles ungracefully down the third set of stairs, sprawling on the final landing.
Simon stalks down, hauling the man up by the lapels of his burgundy jacket.
Blood leaks in a soft stream from Ameche’s nose as Simon slams him against the landing banister.
“You like beating up women?” Simon hardly recognizes the pitilessness of his own voice.
“You cocksucker,” Ameche spits. “Do you know who you’re dealing with here?”
Simon just laughs. Is this guy really going with Don’t you know who I am?
As Ameche gropes for leverage on the banister railing, Simon takes the paring knife out of his waistband, rams it hard through the back of Ameche’s left hand, into the wood. The paring knife is not as sharp as his work knives, but it stabs through meat and muscle just the same.
Ameche howls, fixed in place. Simon grips his throat.
“Simon, have you lost your fucking mind?” Nomi is on the stairs behind them.
“Go downstairs.” Simon speaks mechanically over his shoulder as he squeezes the soft structures of Ameche’s windpipe. The man thrashes. “Get outside.”
He senses more than sees it when Nomi squeaks past behind him and heads for the exit. Ameche is choking, cursing.
Simon twists the knife in the man’s hand, enunciates carefully. “So you know who you’re dealing with—my name is Simon Noone. If you go near Nomi Pace again, next time we meet, I’ll cut out something important.”
He slams Ameche’s head against the railing, then releases his hold, spins and walks briskly down the final set of stairs. Behind him, Ameche is groaning. Other people are backing away to give Simon space as he exits the building.
Out in front of the entry area, in the cool dark of the street, a yellow cab with Nomi in the back seat. “Simon, get in the fucking car!”
He climbs in, shuts the door. “I thought we weren’t taking a cab?”
“Do not say One Goddamn Word.” She looks like she wants to kill him.
“Where to, lady?” New York City cab drivers must have to sign some kind of unflappability agreement before they get this job.
“Any-Fucking-Where,” Nomi shouts, before turning to Simon as the cab takes off. “You absolute fucking fuckhead. I should push you off the Brooklyn Bridge, I swear to god. I am not even kidding.”
“Nomi—”
She pulls the silver ring from her lip, throws it into the rear passenger footwell. Turns and holds up a declamatory finger, her expression wild. “What did I say to you? What did I say? Don’t go off script. You fucking asshole—do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
Simon still feels light somehow, as if the brutality on the stairs has lifted a weight. “Nomi, come on—Ameche already knows where you live. At least now he knows you’re prepared to fight back.”
“Oh, right—I’m going to fight back. I’m fighting back against the fucking Gambino mob.
Christ, do you even hear yourself?” Nomi is a lightning storm, her oil-slick hair swirling in the wind of the cab’s rapid movement down Hudson Street, her eyes black with fury.
“I’m just one person! Ameche can bring down so much more firepower, it’s not even a contest—and this isn’t even about Ameche!
” Her voice is raw with accented emotion.
She shoves Simon hard in the joint of his shoulder.
“How do you not get this? It’s not about Ameche, and it’s not about you, and it’s not about me—although Lamonte will be quite happy to escalate things now, so thank you very much for that . . .”
Simon recognizes the callback to what she said when they first met, like he’s returned to square one. The idea dampens the quicksilver in his veins.
Nomi closes her eyes, cups them in her palms. “But it’s not about any of that. It’s about a seven-year-old kid trapped in some place she can’t leave, with men who think of her as a commodity—”
She throws up her hands, looks away. Simon realizes she’s crying.
“Nomi.” He straightens, the elation he’s feeling draining away as fast as it arrived. “Nomi, hey . . .”
“Goddammit, shut up.” She looks anywhere but at him, sniffing, swiping her eyes roughly with the back of one hand.
After a moment, she turns to him again. “Look, I dragged you out tonight while you’re loaded, and that’s on me.
But I need you to think about the bigger picture.
To think about someone other than yourself.
Because otherwise, what are we? No better than schmucks like Lamonte. ”
Simon suddenly realizes in his bones: He has made a mistake. Maybe a bad one. If the expression on Nomi’s face is any measure, maybe very bad. What can he do?
He opens and closes his mouth, reaching for solutions. “I’ll . . . I’ll fix it.”
“You can’t fix it,” Nomi says sadly. She looks away, waves toward the glittering city out the cab window. “Look at it out there—you think you can fix it? I was a cop. I tried. The big problems don’t fix.”
He swallows. Doesn’t know what to say.
“If I’ve learned anything the last two years, it’s that you can only fix the stuff around you.” She turns and slaps her palm against his bare chest, something he’d been silently hoping she’d do all night. “Fix in here. Fix this.”
His heart thumps madly under her hand. “I’m sorry,” he gets out at last.
“You’re sorry. Well, I’m . . .” She turns away to face the window once more. “I’m tired. I’m really tired, Simon. And I know you’ve somehow walked into this problem I’m trying to solve, and it’s not even your problem, and you’ve just spent five years in the jungle . . .”
The stark truth of it robs his breath. “I don’t even know my real name.”
“I get it. You don’t know your real name.
You don’t know the man you were. And listen, I’m not a perfect person.
I’m not even a good person. So with that proviso, let me give you some advice, okay?
” She’s gazing at the city neon with a profound weariness.
“Stop worrying about the man you were. Concentrate on being the man you want to become.”
There’s a long moment of quiet.
They drive around in the cab for nearly forty minutes, until it feels safe enough to return to Gansevoort Street. A big yellow gibbous moon glows among the sharp silhouettes of the Manhattan skyline.
Silver tracks dry on Nomi’s cheeks, mixing with streaks of black kohl. Simon lights a cigarette and flicks the ash out the window; the embers spin and sparkle in the cab’s slipstream, like the lights of a far-off carousel.