“Appreciate it, but I’ve gotta go make some calls.”
“Following up on the stuff in Cevolatti’s wallet?”
“A little of that,” she acknowledges. “A few calls for your case too.”
“I’ve been thinking about the scene in Flatbush.” Simon’s stare becomes sharp. “There’s really only two questions you need the answers for, right?”
Nomi purses her lips and nods. “They tortured him for information. So what did he know?”
“And who did he tell? That’s probably what got them so mad.”
Nomi feels her hackles rise. She’d kind of assumed that Cevolatti was mutilated to convince him to give up information, and that the vicious assault on his tongue was the killer getting angry when he wouldn’t talk. But Simon’s right: Cevolatti would’ve given up his infoafter losing the first finger. Whoever killed him was angry about the info being shared elsewhere.
“It was Lamonte, wasn’t it?” Simon says quietly. “The hack job, I mean.”
“No theories yet. I’ll make some calls.” Nomi won’t commit until she knows more. She clutches her new bundle, heads for the staircase. “Okay, have a good night.”
“Yeah. You too.”
Simon seems either confused or disappointed that she’s not up for socializing, his wineglass drooping in his fingers as he closes the door. But that’s not how this works: Nomi doesn’t want to get too familiar with clients, especially not clients who live in her building. Not clients who give her advice about other cases she’s working on.
Not clients who seem too insightful about murder for their own good.
Once she gets inside her apartment, breathing feels easier. She sets the cigar-box bundle on her desk, sheds her jacket, dumps her weapon in its holster in the dedicated drawer. From the kitchen, she grabs a beer. Schlitz in hand, she turns on the desk lamp and makes two calls—one to an NYC library contact who can maybe help her track East Coast obits and missing person reports from 1981 to 1983, and another to a journalist friend who can help with the same request. It’s good to have backup. Nomi writes a note to herself for tomorrow, to see if it’s feasible to contact the US State Department about American citizens missing in a foreign country, which was what Beko suggested—considering Noone’s fake papers, she’s doubtful.
Now, the cigar-box bundle. She takes a swig of beer, burps loudly. Examines the scrap of clothing label again, this time with a magnifying glass. Nothing much to see. Woven labels with custom-embroidered names seem like something only rich people would have, though. Unless this is a brand label—but that would likely be printed, not sewn, right? The label fabric seems to be standard cotton in a tight weave; no clues there.
She pushes the cigar box away and flips through the hardcover notebooks. Simon Noone’s spiky, sprawling handwriting is like a jagged mountain range. She removes the loose papers—his ID documents, which appear to be excellent, artfully weathered fakes—and stacks everything together, puts it all to one side. She’s going to have to spend some time examining everything and taking notes, but she doesn’t have the energy for that right now.
She sets her beer down, walks out of her office to dig Cevolatti’s wallet out of her abandoned jacket, returns to her desk, upends the wallet onto her blotter. Receipt, receipt, receipt, receipt ... Just a shit ton of receipts. At least a dozen business cards. Two or three old sticky notes, folded up. A stub of what looks like a bookie’s slip. Cevolatti was a pack rat; if this is the state of his wallet, she’d hate to see the glove compartment of his car.
Nomi digs out the rest: a few lost quarters, a New York driver’s license, a credit card in his name, a subway token. A small key, maybe for a post office box. Cevolatti would have had a letter box at the bottom of his apartment building stairs—so why would he need a post box? Something to check out. Forty-three dollars in bills, which she pockets: Cevolatti sure won’t be spending it.
She sets aside the post box key, the business cards, the sticky notes, the bookie’s slip, and goes through the receipts. Throws out anything marked McDonald’s, A&P, Foodtown, D’Agostino, 7-Eleven, or Dunkin’ Donuts, keeping three that have phone numbers on the backs. Everything useful she bundles with a rubber band. The driver’s license and credit card she adds to the pile; the subway token and quarters she sweeps into her top drawer.
Now it’s dark beyond her office window. Faintly, from upstairs, the crisp, poignant lilt of violins. Nomi sits on the corner of the desk with her feet on the chair, finishing the dregs of her Schlitz as she watches the lights of the street outside. Yesterday she told Simon Noone that Solange’s case was challenging; now she’s got a mutilated body on her hands. This whole thing is shaping up worse and worse.
Lamonte was Ricki’s boss—but did Lamonte kill Ricki? The connection makes it seem like an obvious jump, but it’s an assumption. Could it have been someone else? So far as she knows, Ricki wasn’t involved in anything that would put him in another set of crosshairs. He was Lamonte’s man. Maybe Ricki was killed by one of Lamonte’s enemies? Lamonte would have plenty of enemies. But being Lamonte’s man would also afford you a certain level of respect and protection, and there’s been no word on the street about internecine squabbles or planned retaliatory action.
So it comes back to Simon’s idea, that Lamonte killed his own guy, which makes more sense than any other theory. Reputationally, Lamonte is a man of volcanic anger, and Nomi knows he’s killed people personally before—in fact, today’s crime scene bears a distinct resemblance to a homicide near Chachi’s two years ago that Lamonte was implicated in. She heard that the detectives from Sixth Precinct were never able to pin it on him, but the similarities are there: the victim tied to a chair, stab wounds from a stiletto knife ...
Question is, why would Lamonte kill his own guy? It’s usually a matter of disloyalty: someone working for another boss on the side, someone with their hand in the till, someone screwing up bad or talking out of school. From what she heard at the Riverview last night, Ricki Cevolatti was strictly small beer: too content in his position to become a dog with two masters, and the kind of guy unlikely to steal from his boss. If she had to wager real money on motive, she’d put it on Ricki talking to someone he shouldn’t—or talkingaboutsomething he shouldn’t.
It’s not what he knew, it’s who he told.Again, Simon’s probably right. So what did Ricki know, or who did he tell, that got Eric Lamonte riled up enough to go crazy with the knife?
Nomi tries to step it out in her mind. Small-time Ricki is asked by Lamonte to carry out some mundane shitkicker job, because that is the function of small-time Rickis the world over. In the course of this job, Ricki discovers information he’s supposed to keep a lid on. But,being the type of guy he is—sloppy, from the looks of both his wallet and his apartment—or maybe under the influence of a few drinks or whatever, he spills the beans. Word gets back to Lamonte that Ricki talked. Shortly after that, Lamonte and his efficient associate with the bolt cutters pay Ricki a visit ...
It has to be something to do with Brittany Jackson’s abduction.Hasto be. Eric Lamonte runs three clubs in the district, and so far as Nomi’s aware, there’s nothing going down in any of them that’s worth killing for. But the job that Malcolm’s got Solange working—the level of secrecy around it—is weird and excessive, and Lamonte set it up. The only way Nomi’s going to get Brittany back to her mom is if she follows that trail of secrecy to its source.
All these men—Lamonte, Ricki, Malcolm—and at the center of their web is a seven-year-old girl being used as collateral.
Nomi rubs a hand across her face, trying to unclench her jaw, remembering how Solange had shared a Polaroid of Brittany at her first appointment: The photo showed a sturdy girl maybe a year younger than she is now, her black curls tied up in high pigtail knots, her smooth cheeks tinted bronze as she grinned. A girl who was happy and thriving because her mom had made a bunch of tough, unpleasant sacrifices to ensure she’s well cared for.
It makes Nomi catch her breath. Maybe it’s not just Brittany herself, but the combination of elements that’s getting to her: the daughter and her mom being victimized. Because Nomi’s been that girl, she understands those sacrifices, and it burns her to see another mother-daughter pair getting screwed over by a guy like Lamonte, who thinks of women as merchandise and thinks of children—especially little girls—only as useful bargaining chips ...
If Nomi dwells on it too much, she gets the urge to torch something. But she has to be strategic, not rage-filled. She needs calm.
She’s earned a bath—and a little more.
