“Yes. I mean, Iamgetting paid.” She tries to downplay it further. “Plus, I’m personally motivated—if I can avoid getting jumped outside my apartment again, that would be fantastic.”
“I do prefer it when I’m not sewing pieces of your face back together.” Noone’s hair ruffles in the breeze coming through the window. “So why are we going to the post office building?”
“Because I found this in Ricki’s wallet.” She leans back on the seat to scrape the key out of her front jeans pocket, shows him the number. “I called the post office, and this is definitely for a post box. No boxesmarked two-oh-two at the post office near Ricki’s place in Flatbush, so the main Manhattan building is my next best guess.”
Traffic on Eighth isn’t great, but it’s not terrible. They pass a Wine & Liquor store, and a Nude Revue Video, then an Irish pub on the corner of West Thirtieth. Things are snarling up ahead, where the Farley building and Madison Square Garden face each other across the street like Scylla and Charybdis, turning Eighth Avenue into the Strait of Messina for cars. Nomi tells the cab driver to ease into the left lane.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” she says to Noone, her eyes on the road ahead. “We’re going to pull over out front, near the steps—”
“It’s No Standing out front of the Farley building,” the driver says mournfully from the front.
“Shut up, I’m not talking to you. We’re going to pull over out front, near the steps. You’re going to get out.” Nomi shoves the key into Noone’s palm, folds his fingers over it. “Go up the steps, stay left, go into the foyer.”
“You want me to find the post office boxes?” He looks unsure.
“It’s easy—they’re immediately to the left once you’re through the doors. Go to locker two-oh-two, see if the key fits. If it does, bring me back whatever is inside the locker. Shouldn’t take you longer than five minutes.”
“And if itdoestake me longer than five minutes?”
“It won’t. After this set of lights—are you ready?” They pull up near a hot dog stand and another cart selling fresh-roasted chestnuts. “Okay,go.”
Noone, to his credit, doesn’t hesitate. He flings open the car door and strides up the steps, long legs eating up distance it would’ve taken twice as long for her to cover, until he gets through the ornate, left-side foyer door.
Nomi sits in the cab, watching the place he entered, willing him to move fast. Car horns sound behind them; the cab driver sighs.
Noone comes back in under five minutes, jogging unhurriedly down the marble steps, a bundle under one arm. The hems of his black coat flare, his profile framed by Corinthian columns like he’s royalty.
“The key worked.” He slides fully into the cab and slams the door behind himself. “The box was bigger than the normal ones for mail. This was everything inside.”
He’s deposited a stack of paper in her lap. Nomi frowns at it. “What the hell is this?”
“Looks like a pile of newspapers,” he notes.
“Lady, where to?” the cab driver says. “I gotta get off the curb.”
“This is bizarre,” Nomi says, and then, to the driver, “Okay, pull back onto Eighth, turn left onto West Thirty-Third, then left onto Ninth. Follow it all the way onto Bleecker Street. Seriously, Noone, that was everything in the box?”
“That was everything. Just the newspapers. Maybe there’s something important mixed in with them?”
Nomi waves both hands to indicate “maybe?” and then shoves the stack of broadsheets—looks to be allNew York Times—into her tote for safekeeping. “I’ll go through this later.”
“You wanted me to check the post box because you thought it might be under surveillance, didn’t you?” Noone doesn’t seem mad about it, but he’d clearly like a response.
The radio song has changed to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” which is plenty loud, but Nomi still keeps her voice lowered. “My ex-partner said the cops have Cevolatti’s murder on their radar. If they’re surveilling any locations connected to Ricki, I’d rather they saw you—who they don’t know—than me.”
“You’re really trying to stay out of sight of the police,” Noone notes. “Is there anything I should know?”
“Only that I don’t appreciate folks from Tenth Precinct being all up in my business. Apart from my ex-partner, there’s nobody from my old job who I want to stay in touch with.”
Noone regards her curiously. “So why exactlydidyou leave the NYPD?”
Nomi just shrugs, noncommittal. Noone’s brows lift, but there’s really no response to his question that she’s prepared to give here, in the back of a cab.
Ninth Avenue turns into Hudson; they’re almost close enough here to just get out and walk home. But there’s still Janice to deal with. The cab barrels past the Meatpacking District, heading farther south. Buildings either side of Hudson Street begin shrinking, begin bristling with fire escapes, begin looking more residential. They pass the playground at the top of Bleecker, and suddenly there are some nice streetlamps and brownstones. The streets become narrower. Their cab gets held up by a yellow school bus.
Past a Hertz garage, they turn onto Seventh Avenue. At the intersection with Carmine, where it turns into Varick, Nomi tells the driver to pull over so she can pay. They get out, the spires of the financial district poking up like hypodermic needles in the distance. A guy in jean shorts goes past on roller skates. Nomi checks the address she wrote on her hand as she and Noone jaywalk across Varick.
He scans the landscape, scraping back his hair. “This is Hudson Square?”
