Obviously reluctant, she spills anyway. “His name’s Ricki Cevolatti. He’s a small-time good guy who does jobs for Lamonte, according to my sources. He’s supposed to be at this address until four o’clock, when he leaves to start work at one of Lamonte’s clubs in Greenwich Village.”
“So you just want to talk to him.”
“That’s the plan. I have a few questions.”
Simon raises his eyebrows. “And he’s going to talk to you?”
“I can be very persuasive.” Nomi’s gaze is flat as she opens the other side of her jacket: A badge hangs from the inside pocket, one he recognizes.
It gives him enough of a jolt that he stops walking. “You’re acop?”
“Ex-cop.” She doesn’t seem excited to be talking about this. “I’ve been out two years, but I managed to hold onto the tin. Come on, it’s nearly three thirty, let’s move.”
The entrance to Cevolatti’s tenement is right next door to a Vietnamese seafood place, and the smell of rotting bass is strong as they take the outside steps. Nomi checks the names on the letter boxes inside the door at right, but most of them have been scratched out and written over too many times to be useful.
“I was told he’s on the second floor, apartment twelve.” She wrinkles her nose. “God, it smells in here.”
They go up the stairs, and Simon avoids touching the banister. Linoleum peels at the edges of the second-floor hallway.
Cevolatti’s apartment door is unlatched.
Nomi steps to the side and draws her weapon, goes into a mode that Simon hasn’t seen before. “Get back from the door,” she whispers, then, louder, “Hey Ricki, you home? What’s happening, man?”
No answer.
Nomi meets Simon’s eyes briefly, pushes the door open with her elbow, ducks inside.
Abiding by his self-imposed rule to keep out of her way, Simon only sets one foot over the threshold before he hears her say, “Ohfuck,” through a thickened throat; then he moves faster.
Chapter Six
September 1987, Saturday
The front door opens straight onto the living space of a run-down, untidy apartment. The living room is dominated by a single tableau, and for the briefest moment, Simon sees it all in extraordinary detail, clear as the flare of a camera flash or the black-and-white afterimage of a silver halide photograph.
Cevolatti—or the guy Simon assumes is Cevolatti—is on the living room rug, tied to a chair. He’s a solid, slope-shouldered guy of about thirty, hair already thinning a little on top, and he’s been dead for some time. A large quantity of blackened blood has soaked into the rug. Someone’s left the apartment window open, so flies are involved.
“Oh Jesus.” Nomi has staggered a few steps away, arm raised and mouth tucked into the crook of her elbow. “Do not touchanything. I mean it—not one goddamn thing.”
Simon studies the body, and his own reaction to it. He’s not reacting like Nomi—why? He felt discomfort on the subway, but now he’s oddly dispassionate about this man’s death, and even that awareness comes with a sense of disconnection. Instead, he feels ... curiosity. A complex interest. Also annoyance? Where is that coming from?
Something dormant inside him has activated, and now his eyes move from detail to detail, compulsive, instinctive. For a moment, with the blood and the bitter smells, he’s at work: his hands encased inslithering chainmail, his cleaver chopping through the joints, breaking knife moving smoothly—an extension of his hand and wrist—as he assesses the lines of muscle and tendon and fat, instantly judging the best places to cut.
But the unprofessional mess here in this living room brings him back: This isnotlike work, and the incorrectness of it jags on him like a broken tooth.
“This isn’t ... clean,” he says quietly. “But some parts of it are clean. This is wrong.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nomi drops her arm, appalled; the gesture disturbs the flies, and she’s forced to raise her arm over her mouth again. She looks at the body, her expression contorted. “Oh god, this is gross. I’m gonna puke ...”
“Don’t be sick in here!” Simon whispers.
“You don’t have to fucking tellmethat!” Now she’s angry and miserable, not just miserable. “Jesus—I need to look around for a minute, see if there’s anything left behind. Just—I don’t know, stay the hell away from smooth surfaces!”
He stands there for about one minute, listening to her curse as she checks the rest of the apartment’s rooms. Then she returns and holsters her weapon, begins using a pen to poke at the pizza boxes on the coffee table, the loose change in the cookie tin on a bookshelf ledge.
What does it mean that it’s not clean?Simon needs to look at something before they leave—it’s a compulsion, one he can’t contain. He breaks for the kitchen.
“Noone!” Nomi stage-whispers, her cheeks pink with alarm. “What the fuck are youdoing?”
