She spins again and walks away, stomping hard up West Forty-Ninth. The stomping helps, but when she gets to the subway station at the corner of Seventh Avenue, she’s still angry. No—she’s fuckingfurious. She takes the subway stairs down. Simon Noone and his goddamn stalker behavior ... Oh, he doesn’t “recognize American social cues”? Bullshit to that. He’s just a creepy, personal-space-trespassingasshole.
An asshole who somehow knows how to tail someone undetected.
She glares across the subway tunnel at the grimy white tile on the other side. How the hell did she not notice him? She’s had a tail before, had to lose one. Tailed plenty of suspects in turn. Her guard is always up.I know what I’m doing: That’s what she said. Well, if she’s so goddamn on the ball, how did he slip past her?
How did Noone manage to be so covert? Who the fuckisthis guy?
A heavily graffitied train arrives, brakes squealing, blowing hot metal air. Inside the carriage, an old man is playing a mouth organ at the far end. Nomi finds a seat, tugs her hat brim down. Should she dump Noone as a client? He crossed a line—more than one—and thiswhole thing is looking more and more like a bad deal. But how to get rid of him?
She thinks on the problem, eats half her pastrami on rye, rewraps the other half to get out of the subway. She’s still thinking at quarter to three, when she reaches the tenement. Sun has warmed the concrete steps. Sofia Rosa is checking her mail in the hallway, her trench coat belted and a collection of plastic shopping bags at her sneaker-clad feet. Nomi nods hello, takes the center stairs up two at a time to her apartment.
On the second floor, a forty-something guy, craggy features, flat cap, black zip jacket with the FedEx logo. He’s holding a large yellow document envelope and glancing from a clipboard to the number above her door.
Nomi’s not expecting anything by courier, although she sometimes receives mail meant for others in the building. Still, she gets a prickling feeling as the memory of Simon Noone’s warning comes back:There was a guy, older, stocky.It suddenly occurs to her that Noone had no reason to stop and reveal himself in Hell’s Kitchen unless he reallydidsee someone on her tail ...
She keeps her distance. “Help you?”
The courier guy looks over. “Nomi Pace?”
“Yes?”
“Ah, great, this is sign only.” He proffers the clipboard, with an attached pen.
Nomi’s eyes narrow with suspicion. But this guy has her name and address, the jacket, the clipboard, the impatient courier attitude ... Everything about him seems legit. How far is she willing to take this paranoia?
She makes the call, moves closer.
Which is when he steps forward and punches her in the stomach.
It all seems to happen in one action: His fist hits, her tote falls, then she’s curled over like an anemone.Be careful,Irma had said. Too late. Nomi’s bunched around the courier guy’s fist, her solar plexus made ofcement. The clipboard has clattered on the floor and spun away. Her hat has fallen off.
The craggy-featured guy backhands her viciously across the face. Her head snaps sideways, smacks the jamb of the closed door. A blinding explosion of black-edged stars. Stunned, asphyxiating, Nomi slides down the door until her cheek hits the cool, gritty linoleum.
The guy steps closer, his boot near her face. He tosses the yellow document envelope onto the floor beside her. “You got your delivery, understand?”
She can’t even nod. Without air, her ribs are hot and empty as the wind through the subway tunnel. Everything is flipped, pink and rubbery. Her eyeballs throb, pressure burning at the back of her throat. The courier guy’s shadow recedes. His footsteps echo as he walks away.
“Ai-ai-ai!” Noises somewhere, excited, yammering exclamations. “No-mee! No-mee!”
Wet on her cheek, air whistling. She manages to suck oxygen—it hurts. Slapping for purchase on the linoleum, her arms are limp as spaghetti. Suddenly, in her fish-eye field of vision, a wrinkled, brown, worried face.
“No-mee,” Sofia Rosa says, “the man is gone, but you are bleeding. You must get up.”
Getting up seems impossible. Nomi finally manages a whole breath; her chest and head both light up with pain.
“Quick now!” Her landlady seems determined. “Downstairs to my apartment, until we are sure he’s not coming back.”
Nomi scrambles away from the floor. She’s going to throw up. No, she’s got it. Sofia Rosa’s surprisingly tough hands grip her biceps. Nomi leans against hard wood, then soft flesh. Christ, she’s leaning on a seventy-year-old woman. Together they stumble down the stairs.
“Inside,” Sofia instructs, using her key and pushing open her door. “On the couch, yes. Very good. This—take this dish towel, put it against your head. Against your head, like this. Yes, harder.”
Sofia Rosa’s apartment is minuscule, poky with too much furniture. Brown floral drapes and a big TV, a particleboard end table. Velour footstool near this saggy couch that smells of gardenias and cigarettes. Nomi concentrates on staying upright, on pressing the dish towel to her face, on not puking.
Her landlady is bustling. “We will need the doctor, yes?”
“No doctor,” Nomi rasps. No cops, no doctors, no partners—she’s on her own.
“Oh, I must get my groceries! Un momento.”
