Past a liquor store and a Magic Cue Billiards place, there’s a bodega on the corner of West Forty-Ninth—Nomi steps inside. At the counter, she orders a pastrami on rye with Swiss cheese and mustard. It’s one o’clock. Benito has the radio going in the store—Robbie Nevil crooning “C’est la Vie” through the speakers. Nomi turns the steel barbell in her ear; the lobe is hot to the touch. She dawdles among the shelves as Benni makes her sandwich, watching as other customers come and go, waiting for the bell above the door to ring for the right person. Just as she’s starting to think that this trip has been for nothing, Irma walks in and up to the counter.
“Hey, Benito, how you doing. You wanna make me a chopped cheese on a kaiser roll?” Irma spots Nomi and smiles. “Benni, me and my friend here are going out the back, okay? Jesus, Nomes, what the fuck is going on with that hat.”
Irma Rosado is short and tough faced, dark circles around darker eyes, light-brown skin and a crown of springy black hair. She’s dressed in civvies—a T-shirt and tight jeans and knee boots, a quilted vest, her ever-present gold hoop earrings—and she’s fifteen years Nomi’s senior.
Nomi’s glad as hell to see her. “It’s my cover, dummkopf. Holy shit, look at you—it’s been too long. Give me a hug.”
They embrace; then Irma grabs a soda from the refrigerator and hustles Nomi toward a door plastered in grocery advertisements that looks like the entry to a walk-in pantry. Itisa pantry, but past another door at the back, there’s the world’s tiniest outdoor area: flagstone pavers surrounded by corrugated iron fencing. Beneath a short washing line flapping with dish towels, one of those ugly cast-aluminum patio tables.
Irma grabs one of the side-ended apple crates that Benni’s using as chairs, pulls it up to the table, lights a Winston with the Bic she had tucked in her bra. “Okay, look, I would love for this to be a fun reunion, but everyone’s stressed about more West Side mob action.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nomi shakes her head at Irma’s offer of a cigarette as she finds her own crate. “I was at Cevolatti’s place. I called it in.”
“Youcalled it in?” Irma’s thin, overplucked eyebrows dance; smoke wreathes her face and soaks into the dish towels above them. “They said it was a guy’s voice on the recording.”
“I got someone to call it in,” Nomi clarifies. “Cevolatti had been like that awhile when I got there. It’s part of this Lamonte case.”
“Sure it’s the Lamonte case.” Irma ashes her cigarette with a flick. “He’s all over it, and eventually he’ll leave traces somewhere, for some other crime, and we’ll nail him for good. But right now, we’re not interested in a soldier like Lamonte. We need his boss, Galetti.”
Nomi feels cold ripple into her stomach at the mention of the old mob capo’s name. “Galetti runs Lamonte?”
“My next envelope through Enrique, I was gonna tell you.” Irma stands to pop the cap off her soda with the wall-mounted bottle opener near the pantry door, reclaims her seat. “We’ve been looking into it—Galetti’s extending his reach north of Leroy Street, and he’s bought out the leases on Lamonte’s club properties. Lamonte has kissed the ring, but there’s been some shuffling for position. I mean, maybe this Cevolatti thing is Lamonte getting pissed that Ricki was trying to muscle in somehow?”
Nomi considers telling Irma about her theory, that Cevolatti blabbed something important. But she has nothing concrete on that yet except her own gut feeling and Simon Noone’s speculation. “I don’t think so. Ricki was just a grunt, and word is he was loyal to Lamonte. Could be he screwed up somehow, which put Lamonte in a tight spot.”
“Makes sense.” Irma sips her soda. “But Lamonte must’ve been pretty pissed off. That murder scene seemed personal. If you’re mob, and you’re small, you don’t need that kind of mess—you don’t usually bring your friendly neighborhood finger remover along, for instance.”
That sounds like solid confirmation of Noone’s crime scene deductions. Nomi shrugs. “Well, the Italians love drama.”
“Almost as much as us Puerto Ricans.” Irma grins. “Anyway, now you know what you’re dealing with, yeah?”
That could meanSo you know this is serious, or it could meanSo you know how dangerous this is, or it could meanSo you know the NYPD has its eyes trained in the same direction. Any of these meanings stand as a warning.
The dish towels flap; higher above them, a cloud drifts through a rhombus of sunny sky. Nomi sighs at the new complication. “Galetti, huh?”
“Yeah.” Her former NYPD partner makes a face. “We’re getting reports higher up the chain about kickbacks, extortion, intimidation tactics. Bigger ripples—that’s what Balter and the other boys are talking about down at the station. How the big fish create ripples in the pond.”
“Shit.” That puts Solange Jackson between a rock and a hard place. “So the problem I have is that my client is working for Malcolm Forest, who’s set her up with an exclusive VIP, some guy called Jeremy. She’s not thrilled about the arrangement.”
“And Lamonte runs Forest. Right.” Irma frowns, takes another sip from her bottle. “Your client should maybe get off that train.”
“She would, but Lamonte’s got her daughter. Which is why she hired me.”
“Oh, that’s a problem.”
“Tell me about it.” Nomi gestures to get a drag off Irma’s cigarette. “So you and me are dealing with the same issue.”
“Yeah.” Irma points a finger. “But I’m investigating it as a member of the force. You’re on your own. And Nomes, you were always a good cop—coulda been a great cop—but, girl, you’re still a rookie. I’ve been in this game longer, and even I don’t want to go toe to toe with guys like Lamonte and Galetti. Be careful.”
“Irm, you know me, I’m careful as I can be.” Nomi returns the cigarette, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. “Okay, it’s good to get the background on all this. Listen, one more thing—it’s unrelated. I’m tracing a guy for another client. Can you find out about missing person reports within these states in this time frame?”
She fishes the memo paper out of her tote, the one that has all the relevant dates and information. Irma balances her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, takes the memo and reads.
“Huh.” Irma swigs soda, her eyebrows doing that dance again. “You got me checking the whole eastern seaboard—wow. You don’t want me to—I dunno—turn straw into gold or something too?”
Nomi snorts. “If you figure out how to turn straw into gold, let me know. We could both retire early.”
“Damn, wouldn’t that be the life, huh?” Irma’s eyes soften above her grin. “You look like half-baked shit, Nomes—how you doing?”
