NYC theoretically might be faster since it's sitting on an entry point for a, or more likely several, trans Atlantic cables, but New York City and St. Louis are .004 light seconds apart (tack on a few ms for copper, reduced speed of light in fiber, networking equipment) and are both major cities connected on trunk line fiber... Shouldn't make much of a difference. If he was running off a home computer in Missouri, it would, but servers the world round have fiber running all the way up into the building.