“If you say so.” He glances around. “Wait, I don’t want to leave this mess here.”
He tidies everything in Sofia Rosa’s living room—bloody dish towels, surgical equipment, the tube of cream—and puts the couch to rights. The dressing materials go into his pants pocket for later. He ties his ugly jacket around his waist by the sleeves.
Nomi has been testing her limitations with standing and moving around. Now she’s ready, impatient. “Okay, let’s go.”
Chapter Ten
September 1987, Sunday
Rather than hold his arm as they make their way out of the first floor of the tenement, Nomi holds the couch, the door, the wall. Simon finds this amusing. It reminds him of a saying they have in Piedras Negras about a stubborn person: that they can see the storm clouds coming but refuse to kneel and pray for God’s protection.
Nomi is exactly like that. She sees the storm but refuses to kneel. Much as Simon knows the aphorism is supposed to be cautionary, there’s something gutsy about her attitude.
They get out the narrow door and down the steps, into the late afternoon on Gansevoort Street. After the cool gloom of Sofia Rosa’s apartment, the sidewalk seems to radiate the day’s heat. Now there’s no furniture to use as support, Nomi’s forced to lean on him as they walk.
“Where are we going?” Simon asks.
“One block, to Hector’s Café.” The bruises around her eye and the gory stitches on her eyebrow pop like neon in the sunlight. Her cheeks are developing a chalky green color. She presses her lips together.
“Nausea?”
“Yes.” Grimly determined, she concentrates on her steps. They skirt someone’s pushbike, chained up to a street-sign pole. “Talk to me. Distract me.”
“We don’t have to do this now—”
“Shut up. Yes, we do. Are you gonna talk to me or not?”
He relents, steadies his bracing arm against her weight. “Okay, you said Solange Jackson is seeing an exclusive client for Eric Lamonte. Is that what got her daughter kidnapped?”
“Yes.” Nomi swallows, firms her knees. They’re almost at Perrotta’s deli grocery. “Solange starts spending all her time with this guy. When she asks for more money, Malcolm says yes. Placating, right? Then she tells him the situation is making her uncomfortable—the guy is off his face on drugs all the time, Lamonte keeps loading him up—plus the secrecy around it is weird, and she’s losing time with her daughter. Next thing, she goes home and Brittany’s gone.”
“Who’s the client?”
“I’ve got a name—Jeremy. I’m trying to find out more. I know he’s young, white, and an addict. Solange sees him at an apartment here in the village on Perry Street, and she thinks Lamonte is paying the rent on it.”
“That seems like a strange arrangement to have with a client.”
“No kidding.” Passing the grocery, closing on the corner with Washington Street, Nomi straightens her shoulders. “Okay. Okay, I got this.”
This whole expedition is ridiculous. But they’ve come this far, and Simon feels compelled to be encouraging. “You’re doing great.”
“Yeah, I’m a fucking hero. We turn right here. What’s the deal with your clothes?”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Simon can’t believe she’s critiquing his outfit when her white shirt is crusted with bloodstains. Other pedestrians stare as they pass by.
“When I saw you in Hell’s Kitchen, I hardly recognized you. Is that what you wear to work? They let you dress like a bum at Gennaro’s?”
“I’m not dressed like a bum. Everybody dresses like this. I fit in.”
“You fit in, right.” She winces as they cross Washington and take the curb. “Wonderful. Simon Noone, human chameleon. Just up here, on the left.”
They’re under a chicken processing plant’s portico, but it’s not blocking the glare of the sun lowering in the west. The pylons of the High Line vibrate from the ambient rumble of traffic. A red delivery truck rolls around the corner up ahead; then Nomi is shaking him off.
“Let me walk alone. You can lurk behind me, but this guy won’t cooperate if I look like I can’t stand by myself.”
It’s a bad idea, but Simon lets her go.
She lists, steadies, spits onto the sidewalk. Now she’s got it. “Okay, listen, I’m going to talk to a low-level drug dealer called Leo Farina. He was a friend of Ricki’s. I’ll be faking him out, so just—I don’t know—try not to look surprised at stuff I say.”
