“Does that mean you won’t shoot me?” Simon blurts.
“Oh, if you break into my apartment again, I’ll definitely shoot you.” Nomi grins. “And you have to replace the window glass in my office, by the way. I’m not letting you off the hook on that.” She looks behind him at the clock on top of his fridge. “Shit, I’d better let you get to work.”
“Probably.” Simon checks the time himself: It’s already 3:00 a.m. “Damn, yes, I have to leave. Look, don’t take off searching any warehouses without me, okay? You shouldn’t go without backup.”
“But what if she’s there?” Nomi blurts, standing and fidgeting in place.
“Listen to me—you’re no use to Brittany if Lamonte catches you while you’re sniffing around. Wait for me to come with you.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll wait.” Nomi makes a face, almost whining with impatience.
“Go home,” Simon insists. “Get some sleep—your eyes are hanging out of your head. I’ll see you at eleven.”
“Eleven,” she agrees, backing for the door. “Is Ameche still sniffing around Gennaro’s?”
“My supervisor says no.” He’s following her out, grabbing his peacoat and blue scarf, making sure he’s got everything he needs in his pockets, switching off the light, locking the door behind them.
“Be careful anyway.” They’re on the stairs down to her place now.
“Noted. And remember what I said—wait for me, okay?”
“Okay.” At the second-floor hallway, they separate so Nomi can go to her apartment and he can take the onward route. Before turning the key in her door lock, she pivots back. “Simon?”
“Yes?” He looks up from the top riser of the descending stairs, holding the banister.
Nomi opens her mouth to say something, as a strong wind outside rattles the hinges on the door of the downstairs lobby. She shakes her head. “Nothing. See you at eleven.”
He takes the rest of the stairs down, to the background soundtrack of Nomi unlocking her apartment, then closing up after herself. Out on the street, other sounds intrude: a truck revving, someone’s transistor radio, men calling to each other, a handcart bumping along the cobblestones. The wind is really picking up, smelling of cold rain. Simon muffles his face in his scarf and strides faster because he’s late. But there’s also a spring in his step, and he’s not such an idiot that he doesn’t know why: He’s a murderer, but if Nomi still finds him tolerable, maybe there’s hope for him yet?
The lights of Gennaro’s pierce the night up ahead, and Simon dodges a van as he jogs across Washington. Inside the slaughterhouse, Mike Nell is mid-conversation with another employee, but he looks over and raises an eyebrow; Simon makes an apologetic gesture, hangs his stuff, grabs his gear.
It’s not until he’s through the doors and his knives are in his hands that he remembers the concerns he had about whether this job was something he may have to let go. But could butchering here, in an official capacity, be a peculiar kind of release valve? For him, cutting is almost a form of therapy—certainly the only therapy he can afford, and maybe the only way he can reconcile his old life and his new one.
But throughout his shift, he’s wondering whether Nomi has thrown caution to the wind and gone to the warehouse without him. Maybe she lost patience; maybe her concern for Brittany Jackson weakened her resolve to wait. Or maybe she decided that a guy with Simon’s history doesn’t make the best backup.
Thinking about it, he has trouble focusing on work. It’s the first time he hasn’t found calm in the movement of his blade, the neatness of red flesh exposed, ordered, refined. His eight hours seem to drag. But finally, his shift is over and he’s outside on Washington again as the rain that was only spitting earlier really starts coming down. It doesn’t feellike eleven in the morning; the sky above is dark as predawn. Simon rewraps his scarf and pulls his coat collar up, watches his footing on the slippery pavement as he hurries back home.
When he returns to the tenement, the lobby is chilly. There are small parcels of ground beef and steak in his coat pocket for Sofia Rosa. He knocks gently at his landlady’s door: no answer. She’s either not home, or she’s napping. He’ll come back later, once he and Nomi have checked the warehouse, or if Brittany’s not there, after they’ve gone through the property list that Nomi stole last night.
They could find this kid today; it’s a distinct possibility. Then it really will be time to drink champagne. Simon takes the stairs and uses his key to let himself into his apartment, almost whistling. He shuts the door and turns—
Claude Ameche’s ugly sneer takes up all of Simon’s vision for about one second before he’s hit in the head with a two-by-four.
Chapter Twenty-Four
October 1987, Saturday
Nomi rolls over in bed, only wakes up properly when a brilliant crackle of lightning outside brightens the room like a flashbulb and penetrates the fog of sleep. What sounds like handfuls of gravel being thrown at her window is actually rain. Goddamn, it’s really coming down out there.
She sits up, swaddled in blankets, scratches through her hair. After leaving Simon to descend the stairs and go to work, she indulged herself with one more session and a double dose of Valium before finally getting to bed at close to four in the morning. It’s now ... She checks the clock—oh crap, it’s just gone midday. The dark skies and her benzo hangover have shoved her wakeup time into the afternoon. She clambers out of bed and pads to the kitchen in her sleep tee and socks, drinks water. She told Simon she’d meet him at eleven; hopefully he’ll be cool about a minor delay.
Tidiness was kind of beaten into her at an early age, so her kit bag is already put away, and there’s no debris from last night in her living area—except for the cardboard box full of packing peanuts still sitting on her kitchen benchtop. Nomi dumps that in her office and, with the reminder of Brittany’s teeth now ricocheting in her mind, goes straightfor a hot shower. If the warehouse location pays dividends, today may be the day she gets Brittany back.
Today is also going to be wet and dark and miserable—the first shitty storm of fall—so once she’s changed the dressing on her stomach, Nomi drags on warm combat pants and a black sweater that’s slightly thicker than the one she got damp last night. In her office, she opens the drawer with her service weapon and holster and old police badge. She clips on her holster, adds her weapon, puts the tin in the inside pocket of her jacket. Pulling her jacket on, and with beanie and scarf in place, she grabs cash, keys, and the list of Galetti’s properties that she left on the newspaper pile in the hall; then she’s out the door.
There’s a little bead of worry lodged in her throat as she heads for the stairs. Was she right to grant Simon Noone some measure of absolution last night? It’s nonsensical: He breaks into her apartment, freaks her out, argues with her about his relative trustworthiness—seriously, what the fuck—then only a few hours later, she’s letting herself be won over by a little productive case research and a glass of mulled wine.
But what she said to him is also true: She has a knee-jerk desire to share the victories with him, when they occasionally come. She thinks of him sewing up her eyebrow in Sofia Rosa’s apartment ... The way he checked on her overnight ... The little hoya in its soggy plant tube on her coffee table. Can a serial murderer also be a decent human being? Noone’s past life is a horror show—she’s just not sure whether he should be condemned for that stuff when he can’t even remember it. It’s not like he was trying to conceal his past either; he hired her to find out the truth, for god’s sake.
