Mookie heads toward the subway, hands shaking. Trying to picture Nora doing what she did – envisioning her smashing Casimir Zoladski’s head into the floor, cutting open his shirt, slicing into his back. Then the rite with the marigolds, the chocolate, the liquor.
Doesn’t add up. Can’t be her. She’s not that strong. She’s a little thing. A fraction of his size – if he’s the whiskey bottle, she’s the shot glass. The strength it would take to pulp the kid’s face against that marble, it’d have to be – well, either him or a Trogbody, because those rock-bodied sonofabitches are strong. Even someone burning the Blue Blazes candle at both ends would have a hard time making that kind of a mess. So Mookie decides. No. His daughter is not a murderer.
But Werth’s right. Everyone else is going to think it’s her.
And if they find out she’s his daughter, they’re going to think he helped.
As he walks, Mookie’s thinking about where to go, how to find Nora. Persephone. He hates that name. Daddy-o. That’s what she called him, wasn’t it? Back there at the bar. That means she really has been hanging out with the Get-Em-Girls.
So that’s the first place he needs to look.
Which means–
It’s then that Mookie sees something as he heads back past the Boss’ place.
A Lexus. The color of liquid pearl. It sits, parked across the street.
It’s dark out but there’s a streetlight above–
And in that car, Mookie sees a familiar face. The man from this morning. Candlefly, that’s what Haversham called him. The one traveling with the Snakeface.
Correction: the Snakeface killer.
Killer. Assassin. Like so many Snakefaces. Seducers of mind, body, soul.
Life-eaters, all of them.
Casimir was at that meeting.
Mookie feels his fists ball up and he steps into the street – a coming taxi honks its horn at him and slams on the brakes, but Mookie doesn’t give a shit. As he passes, he punches out one of the cab’s headlights and keeps walking, bits of clear plastic falling off his knuckles.
Suddenly the Lexus lurches forward, headlights flicking on – it zips out of the parking space into the street. It takes off, and Mookie gives stomping chase. Behind him, the cab driver is out of the car – a fat white guy with flabby jowls. He’s flailing his hands and yelling and pointing at the front of the car, but Mookie doesn’t care. He just skids to a halt, watching the red demon eyes of the Lexus taillights turn the corner at Park and disappear.
“You better run,” he says. And if I find out that you had anything to do with Casimir’s murder, I’m going to punch you into a greasy pudding.
Karyn’s isn’t called Karyn’s, though that’s how Mookie thinks of it. She calls her place “Mackie Messer’s” – but despite the name and how she looks it’s not particularly hip or upscale. It’s a butcher shop. Everything white. White counter, white floor. Glass case showing the cuts of the day. Couple meat scales. Grinders and other equipment in the back. Freezer, too. Basic stuff, but from that comes what Mookie considers to be the real magic: cuts of meat from heritage breeds of pig and cow, duck and chicken, some of which Karyn turns into charcuterie: sausage, salumi, lardo, pate, all crafted with an expert hand and an eerie patience. Karyn is cool like that.
She’s so cool, in fact, that when Mookie calls her at 2:30 in the morning, she’s still awake. “Making a brine,” she says. And the good news is, she’s in the Chelsea shop, not in the bigger Park Slope venue.
He asks her if he can stop by. She says yeah.
He hates that he needs her for this, but he does.
Subway, then. To Chelsea. To Mackie Messer’s.
Karyn lets Mookie in. She’s a sight for sore eyes. White apron flecked with red hanging over a black bra. Pale skin inked with the sigils of a cook’s life: a skull with a knife in its teeth on the back of her neck, a garlic bulb on the left shoulder, a giant pig’s head with an apple in its mouth (and a worm poking out of the apple) covering the right shoulder all the way down to the bicep. Black punky hair in a red handkerchief.
Lipstick the color of wet cherries.
She’s beautiful to him. Not in that way. She’s gay as the day is blue – or as she puts it, “Queer as a three-dollar bill” – and he knows she’d never go for