Chapter Twenty-Three
He’s feeling better. He’s groggy from lack of sleep, and he probably needs a shave, but overall, he’s somewhat improved.
Working through tiredness is doable; the first week of work at Gennaro’s, he was basically a zombie for every shift.
What matters is that his state of mind has leveled out, and somehow that seems to count for way more.
Simon’s just swigging the rest of his espresso when there’s a quiet knock on his door, which is not something that typically happens at this time of day. It’s Nomi: She’s shivering, but she looks happy.
He keeps his voice low in deference to other residents. “It’s quarter to three in the morning.”
“No shit—let me in, dummkopf. I’m freezing my ass off out here.” She’s already pushing her way through the door. “I had another win.”
“What happened?” She’s leaving soggy footprints on the linoleum. “You’re dripping. Let me get you a towel.”
“I told you, it’s freezing. Going to rain any minute.” She accepts the towel he fetched from the bathroom, wipes her face and chafes her hands with it. “I’ve been standing outside in the cold for the last two hours. I feel like one of those slabs of beef at Gennaro’s.”
“You’re white.” He frowns, goes to the kitchen to put a flame under the ponche in the pot on the stove. “You need something warm to drink.”
“Sounds great. I’m gonna use your bathroom, okay?” When she returns, she finds a chair, shakes out her fingers to recover feeling. Squints at the glass of hot punch he’s set down. “What’s this?”
“Mulled wine.” Simon’s fixed on her eyebrow stitches, at the way they’re starting to pucker.
“Awesome.” She sips. “Mm, not bad. So I went to the Riverview, but—”
“Keep talking. I’m going to remove your stitches while you tell me.” May as well kill two birds with one stone. He walks away to fetch sharp nail scissors and tweezers and a washcloth.
“You don’t want to do that later?”
“If you leave them too long, the skin grows together wrong,” he calls from the bathroom, before walking back. “And I can listen and do this at the same time.”
“Multifunctional, right.” She continues sipping, her cheeks gradually pinking. It’s a good sign; when she’d arrived, her face had been almost translucent. “Okay, so I went to the Riverview, but Mischa was up at the Triangle, and when I got there, I saw Ray Dinkins.”
“One of Lamonte’s men.” He keeps his tone neutral, but he doesn’t feel neutral. He pats at her eyebrow with the dampened washcloth. “Tilt your head this way. Do you trust me to use scissors?”
“What? Sure. And yes, Dinkins is Lamonte’s guy. We saw him at Big Mouth.”
Simon sighs. “You followed Dinkins, didn’t you?”
“Hell yes.”
He snips a stitch, teases the thread out with the tweezers. “As your security specialist, I’d like to raise some objections.”
“You know, for a serial killer, you’ve got a real sense of civic responsibility going on there,” Nomi says.
She’s so nonchalant about it, they both pause for a second.
Simon breaks the moment by snorting. “All right, tell me what happened.”
“It was pretty straightforward—he jumped in a cab, I jumped in a cab. I tailed him out to Chelsea Piers and watched him go into some warehouse off West Nineteenth Street. Then I waited around in the freezing cold like a bum for two hours until he came out.” Nomi holds still as Simon cuts and slides out another stitch.
“A warehouse.”
“Yep. I don’t want to get too excited—I want to cross-reference with the property list and see if I can find a match. But even if it’s not listed, that warehouse could be the place they’re holding Brittany. We’ve got the Jeremy connection, we’ve got Galetti’s property list, and now this.”
“Okay, last one.” Simon snips the final stitch at her eyebrow, eases out the thread.
Nomi drains her glass. “Three wins in one night. Does that mean my streak’s over?”
“Well, your stitches are over at any rate.” He smooths the washcloth over her knitted skin. The line is distinct but neat.
“Good, they were getting itchy.” She gets up and goes into his bathroom to check her face, calls out from there. “Looks okay?”
“For a rough job, it’s okay,” he concedes, as he disposes of the trash.
She appears again in the bathroom doorway. “There’s another joke in there about getting medical treatment from a serial killer, but I don’t want to push it.”
He wants to say, “Why not?” But now he’s the one feeling unsure. Maybe she’s still scared of him—hard to say. He shrugs and settles for an awkward “It’s fine.”
“Thank you.” Nomi comes closer, her dark hair still beaded with late-night mist. “For the stitch removal, and for the wine. And . . .” She glances away, back. “When I had another win, I wanted to tell you about it. I guess I’m not ready to kick you to the curb just yet.”
“Does that mean you won’t shoot me?” Simon blurts.
“Oh, if you break into my apartment again, I’ll definitely shoot you.” Nomi grins. “And you have to replace the window glass in my office, by the way. I’m not letting you off the hook on that.” She looks behind him at the clock on top of his fridge. “Shit, I’d better let you get to work.”
“Probably.” Simon checks the time himself: It’s already 3:00 a.m. “Damn, yes, I have to leave. Look, don’t take off searching any warehouses without me, okay? You shouldn’t go without backup.”
“But what if she’s there?” Nomi blurts, standing and fidgeting in place.
“Listen to me—you’re no use to Brittany if Lamonte catches you while you’re sniffing around. Wait for me to come with you.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll wait.” Nomi makes a face, almost whining with impatience.
“Go home,” Simon insists. “Get some sleep—your eyes are hanging out of your head. I’ll see you at eleven.”
“Eleven,” she agrees, backing for the door. “Is Ameche still sniffing around Gennaro’s?”
“My supervisor says no.” He’s following her out, grabbing his peacoat and blue scarf, making sure he’s got everything he needs in his pockets, switching off the light, locking the door behind them.
“Be careful anyway.” They’re on the stairs down to her place now.
“Noted. And remember what I said—wait for me, okay?”
“Okay.” At the second-floor hallway, they separate so Nomi can go to her apartment and he can take the onward route. Before turning the key in her door lock, she pivots back. “Simon?”
“Yes?” He looks up from the top riser of the descending stairs, holding the banister.
Nomi opens her mouth to say something, as a strong wind outside rattles the hinges on the door of the downstairs lobby. She shakes her head. “Nothing. See you at eleven.”
He takes the rest of the stairs down, to the background soundtrack of Nomi unlocking her apartment, then closing up after herself.
Out on the street, other sounds intrude: a truck revving, someone’s transistor radio, men calling to each other, a handcart bumping along the cobblestones.
The wind is really picking up, smelling of cold rain.
Simon muffles his face in his scarf and strides faster because he’s late.
But there’s also a spring in his step, and he’s not such an idiot that he doesn’t know why: He’s a murderer, but if Nomi still finds him tolerable, maybe there’s hope for him yet?
The lights of Gennaro’s pierce the night up ahead, and Simon dodges a van as he jogs across Washington. Inside the slaughterhouse, Mike Nell is mid-conversation with another employee, but he looks over and raises an eyebrow; Simon makes an apologetic gesture, hangs his stuff, grabs his gear.
It’s not until he’s through the doors and his knives are in his hands that he remembers the concerns he had about whether this job was something he may have to let go.
But could butchering here, in an official capacity, be a peculiar kind of release valve?
For him, cutting is almost a form of therapy—certainly the only therapy he can afford, and maybe the only way he can reconcile his old life and his new one.
But throughout his shift, he’s wondering whether Nomi has thrown caution to the wind and gone to the warehouse without him.
Maybe she lost patience; maybe her concern for Brittany Jackson weakened her resolve to wait.
Or maybe she decided that a guy with Simon’s history doesn’t make the best backup.
Thinking about it, he has trouble focusing on work.
It’s the first time he hasn’t found calm in the movement of his blade, the neatness of red flesh exposed, ordered, refined.
His eight hours seem to drag. But finally, his shift is over and he’s outside on Washington again as the rain that was only spitting earlier really starts coming down.
It doesn’t feel like eleven in the morning; the sky above is dark as predawn.
Simon rewraps his scarf and pulls his coat collar up, watches his footing on the slippery pavement as he hurries back home.
When he returns to the tenement, the lobby is chilly.
There are small parcels of ground beef and steak in his coat pocket for Sofia Rosa.
He knocks gently at his landlady’s door: no answer.
She’s either not home, or she’s napping.
He’ll come back later, once he and Nomi have checked the warehouse, or if Brittany’s not there, after they’ve gone through the property list that Nomi stole last night.
They could find this kid today; it’s a distinct possibility. Then it really will be time to drink champagne. Simon takes the stairs and uses his key to let himself into his apartment, almost whistling. He shuts the door and turns—
Claude Ameche’s ugly sneer takes up all of Simon’s vision for about one second before he’s hit in the head with a two-by-four.