Chapter Twenty-Seven
Did Nomi see him wink? Simon’s not sure of anything, having reached the point where colors are starting to coalesce around every person and object in the room.
He had to play it very straight with her to sound convincing in front of Lamonte.
Persuading Nomi that he’s killed Brittany was always going to be tricky—he had to lean hard into her natural suspicion.
It was tough, though. He kept wanting to break character, to grin or snort or make a joke that would ruin the act.
Would’ve done it, too, if his head hadn’t felt like it was being squeezed in a vise.
His brain is too big for his skull and is about to start leaking out the sides. His skin is throbbing. This migraine is about to crash into him like a freight train, and he’s never handled a migraine without medication before. He has no idea what the repercussions will be.
He wonders if Nomi saw his wink, if she understood what it meant.
She’s purple again now, though it’s a deep black-purple, like squid ink.
Her eyes are still pure carnivore. He hopes she got it—the wink, that is.
Maybe he accidentally winked both eyes. Or winked multiple times.
God, he can’t hold it together. It’s impossible to know if his acting is cartoonishly obvious or impenetrably subtle.
“If the kid’s dead,” Lamonte says to Ameche, from someplace behind Simon at left, “we’ll have to hold on to the body awhile, maybe stick it someplace cold. We can string the mom along if we send her bits and pieces.”
Ameche scratches his neck with his bandaged hand, a green haze all around him. “We don’t need the Axedale dude past the tenth, is that right?”
“I can check with Galetti,” Lamonte says, but then his tone turns speculative. “I still want to know who this guy is. If he’s not local, he could be with some other family, or even from the West Coast. The last thing I need is the Milano boys or those LA Israeli punks breathing down my neck.”
Simon wonders which guy they’re referring to, then makes the connection: “This guy” is him. They’re talking about him. He’s going to be questioned, and he’d better brace for it.
“Could he be a pig?” Dinkins asks, his face swirled an oily yellow.
“Ray, use your brain,” Gino Hart says. Hart’s aura is a violent magenta, a color only seen in nature in things like poisonous bugs or toxic plants. “If he killed the kid, he’s not law enforcement.”
“Feds can shoot up in front of you,” Dinkins whines, “so who the hell knows? Maybe he’s deep cover. How the fuck can you tell?”
“Who are you, dipshit?” Ameche pokes Simon in the shoulder before turning back to his boss.
“I only got a few details—he’s like a ghost. He works at Gennaro’s, lives at that dump on Gansevoort .
. . Maybe he’s fucking the PI girl.” Ameche turns to Nomi then, a big grin stretched across his blunt face.
“Is he fucking you, sweetheart? Is that what this is? Did you drag your little boyfriend into this mess because you needed a big strong man at your back? Fucking feminist bitches, it’s always the same. ”
“I don’t know who he is,” Nomi says blankly, and she actually doesn’t look sure, so she’s really convincing. Simon wonders if maybe he was too persuasive when he talked to her?
“What if he is with the Westies?” Hart suggests.
“Does it matter?” Lamonte says, shrugging. “Did you ask him?”
“Hey, box cutter man,” Hart says. “Are you with Jimmy Coonan’s crew?” He makes a face as he looks at Ameche. “Claude, what did I tell you? You hit him too hard.”
“I hit him just enough,” Ameche counters, and he slaps Simon’s shoulder again. “Hey! I’m talking to you, fuckface. What’s your deal? Who are you?”
“I’m no one.” Simon keeps his eyes on Nomi when he says it. This is going to end badly, but at least these guys aren’t focused on her anymore.
“Ah, Jesus,” Ray Dinkins laments.
“Let him have it,” Lamonte says.
Simon feels a sudden snap in his neck, and he’s looking at the other side of the room, which—even before the explosion in his cheek and head—is the first thing that registers when Ameche hits him across the face with the hand holding his gun.
Pain radiates out like a burst of white light, filling up Simon’s eyeballs, lifting his brainpan.
“Are you a fed?” Ameche pistol-whips him again. “Are you LA?”
“I’m not either of those things.” Simon’s mouth is bleeding, and the sting feels fuzzy and warm, makes his voice mumbly. “I’m no one.”
Ameche shakes his head.
Lamonte says, “Gino?” in a world-weary tone, and Gino Hart steps in close to Simon and says, “You’re mine now, baby,” and the expression on Hart’s face is as happy as a kid on his birthday.
Simon tries to ignore this. He works at moving his wrists around inside the duct tape securing him to the chair.
What seems like eons ago, Captain Felipe Brava berated a crew member in Simon’s presence for using duct tape for some chore.
Brava had turned to Simon and waved the roll and said, “I hate this stuff. It’s stupid stuff.
Who would use duct tape on a boat?” which Simon took to mean that moisture acts on tape like it acts on everything you use at sea, that is to say, deleteriously.
Metal and rubber and hemp endure, but duct tape is about as useful as paper and probably more annoying, as you think you’ve done a job, but then the job you did with it breaks again.
Simon’s not sure why he’s thinking about Brava, or about boats, except that he’d like to be on one right now, and not here in this warehouse. But the captain was right; duct tape will loosen when it’s moist, and the blood covering Simon’s left wrist is helping the work.
“Okay,” Gino Harts says, as he leans with his hands on his knees, regarding Simon. “I’m gonna make you hurt now. If you want it to stop, just tell us who you are.”
He uses scissors to cut off Simon’s vest, then yanks down the collar of his Henley, and Simon wonders why, until Hart goes to the workbench and collects a cordless drill.
Nomi makes a strangled noise, says, “Oh god . . .”
Simon takes a number of deep breaths.
The sound, when Hart uses the drill on Simon’s left pectoral, is like nothing he’s heard before, except in the slaughterhouse in an amplified version; it’s the screech of the electric meat saw as it cuts through a haunch.
It’s not quite the same sound, but it’s in the same family, and Simon would scream just as loud if it were the meat saw cutting him.
“I’m no one,” he gasps, when Hart pauses. “I’m no one.”
But he can hardly breathe, the pain in his head like an eclipse, the pain in his chest like a brand. He’s going to throw up.
“Heh, then I guess we try again,” Hart says, smiling, as he lifts the drill.
“Stop!” Nomi yells. “Fucking stop, oh Jesus Christ—”
But now Hart is drilling the other side of Simon’s chest. Simon shudders in his chair like he’s convulsing, pain bursting inside his head like an exploding star. His jaw locks, his legs turn to water. Nomi is crying.
“Are we having fun yet?” Hart asks, grinning like a magenta demon as he turns to Nomi. “Don’t worry, sweetheart—you’re next.”
Simon is drenched in sweat. Strings of saliva and blood spill out of his mouth and onto the floor between his knees.
He looks up blearily through his hair as Hart returns the drill to the workbench, pokes around and collects two roofing nails and a portable battery charger with attached jumper cables.
Simon is reminded that this man cut off all ten of Ricki Cevolatti’s fingers, one by one.
“Man, Gino, you are one nasty sumbitch,” Ray Dinkins groans. “I been shot here, by the way!”
“Shut up, Ray,” Ameche says. “Gino, is this gonna take long?”
“Not long at all,” Hart replies, and before Simon can catch his breath, Hart positions the nails and attaches the battery charger’s cable clamps and flicks the switch.
Simon smells meat charring, hears Nomi screaming, and his teeth click together as he has an out-of-body experience.
In his mind, Richard Flores is bending over him, shining a penlight in his eyes, repeating, “Who are you? Hello? Who are you, my friend . . .” and Simon wants to bat the light away.
It’s piercing him, stabbing into his brain, sharp and hot as a laser.
Blue electricity is zapping quickly around his teeth, like the blue lightning in Hellraiser, and time is moving slow as molasses, fast as a gunshot.
He is floating; he is in a river of time.
The colors behind his eyelids explode into fractals and break apart.
There’s a girl with white hair putting a crown of flowers on his head—he would do anything for her.
Now she’s ushering him toward the river, and he goes under the water, is washed away.
A torrent of images and sensations and impressions flood over him, things appearing and disappearing with such rapidity that he can’t keep up: blood, fire, smoke, metal .
. . death, meat, ink, sex . . . the stink of incense and the taste of wine.
A blade in his hand and a smile on his lips . . .
And he knows this, he knows it—he remembers how to slice a roast, how to make a fine cut, how to make someone cry. For a moment, he’s lost in a vast ocean of memories related to a past he barely understands. The sense of loss and nostalgia is almost overwhelming, but there’s a sense of power too.
This is who he is.
This is his birthright and his legacy. He is a beast of cold blood, a snake on two legs, an alien in an ill-fitting human skin . . .
Simon gasps awake when Hart throws cold water on him.
“Hi there.” Hart’s pleased with himself. Simon imagines what he’d look like with his eyelids removed. “I think we might try something a little different. What do you say?”
Hart moves aside, and behind him, Nomi is sitting in a chair with her wrists taped together. Her posture is rigid, and if you didn’t know her well, you wouldn’t realize she’s terrified. She’s white faced and stiff, silver on her cheeks.
She’s been crying for him, Simon realizes with wonder. Despite what he is, she’s been shedding tears for him, this girl made of adamantine with a heart full of glass and predatory, mink-dark eyes . . .
Dinkins and Ameche stand at her shoulders.
Simon wants to kill them. He wants to kill all of these men, and now he knows how to do it.
He remembers asking Nomi, Do you think I’m dangerous?
She’d been honest with him then, and she’s being honest with him now, because her face is clearly saying that she doesn’t recognize him, that there’s been a change in his internal chemistry, one maybe only she can read.
That chemical change has back-burnered his pain from the torture, brought different sensations and feelings to the fore.
Simon remembers the long-ago incident with Malcom Forest in the hallway of the tenement—the sense of uncoiling, of being released from confinement.
That feeling has returned to him now. It’s all of him.
Hart is holding the bolt cutters. “Look, you seem like a reasonably tough guy? But there’s someone who isn’t tough, and that’s your little girlfriend over here. So I’m going to take off one of her fingers, and then I’ll ask you again—”
“Who is he?” Lamonte’s deep baritone reverberates from behind Simon somewhere.
Nomi looks at Lamonte over Simon’s shoulder, her lips trembling. “He’s no one, I swear to god—”
“Tell them,” Simon rasps softly.
“Ah, no, don’t do this,” Nomi whispers as Hart approaches her. Her eyes are frantic white, fixed on the bolt cutters with a combination of horror and hypnotized fascination. “You shouldn’t do this—”
“Nomi, tell them,” Simon repeats. Warn them is what he means, because the tape on both his hands is loose now, and things are about to get interesting.
“Yeah, tell us,” Dinkins goofs, grinning despite his injury.
“See these bolt cutters?” Hart says, brandishing them in front of her. “They used to belong to my father. Do you know why they still look like new? Because I maintain my tools, that’s why. I clean off the blood and mess after every session—”
“He’s a killer,” Nomi blurts.
There’s a moment of quiet. Then Ameche and Dinkins both look at each other and burst out laughing.
“Oh, so he’s a killer,” Ameche says in a mincing voice, twisting the word like he doesn’t understand what it means.
“‘Killer’ my ass.” Dinkins sneers.
Hart is still advancing, and Nomi is babbling. “Simon Noone is a sociopathic serial murderer, you’re making a big mistake—”
“Enough!” Lamonte bellows.
The man comes forward, so now he’s squarely in Simon’s field of vision. Lamonte has an aura the same deep brown as a grizzly bear, and he looks as if he’d like to hit everyone in the room over the head with a baseball bat just so he can get a little peace and quiet.
“Miss Pace,” he rumbles, “I have been very patient, and I am not a patient man. I recommend that you stop lying to me, because if you continue to waste my time . . .”
But Simon isn’t listening anymore.
He knows who he is, and what he can do. He could do this for his own sake, for revenge or for pleasure, but what he’d really like to do is to offer it like a service. As a gift. If Nomi can shed tears for him, the least he can do is give her this gift in return . . .
But is Nomi prepared to wield such a weapon, if someone puts it in her hands?
“Nomi.” He tastes blood on his lip as he speaks—he must have bitten his tongue. “Nomi, look at me.”
Her eyes drag away from Lamonte, find Simon’s. Her voice comes out a whisper. “You killed Brittany.”
Simon shakes his head. “Forget . . . forget that now. Just tell me. Do you want this over?”
He ignores Hart, capering with the bolt cutters. Ignores Lamonte, still droning, and Ameche and Dinkins, laughing. There’s a bubble in the room, and he and Nomi are enclosed in it, and the only sounds Simon can hear are his own voice and hers.
“Yes,” Nomi breathes.
“You have to say it,” Simon says.
He can see her mind casting back to that day they first met, the incident in the hall, Simon’s clumsy attempt to force Malcolm to get lost.
Don’t hurt him, Nomi said then.
That’s not what she’s saying now.
She looks directly into Simon’s eyes. “Do it. Fuck them up.”
Simon sighs, and smiles, and stands from his chair.