Manhattan Is My Beat, Page 2

  Rune got elected to pick up the videotape and her life was never the same after that.

  She argued with her boss about picking up the tape--Tony, the manager of Washington Square Video on Eighth Street in Greenwich Village, where she was a clerk. Oh, she argued with him.

  Rewinding a tape, playing with the VCR, snapping the controls, she stared at the fat, bearded man. "Forget it. No way." She reminded him how he'd agreed she didn't have to do pickups or deliveries and that was the deal when he'd hired her.

  "So," she said. "There."

  Tony peered at her from under flecked, bushy eyebrows and, for some reason, decided to be reasonable. He explained how Frankie Greek and Eddie were busy fixing monitors or something--though she guessed they were probably just figuring out how to get comped into the Palladium for a concert that night--and so she had to do the pickups.

  "I don't see why I have to at all, Tony. I mean, I just don't see where the have-to part comes in."

  And right about then he changed his mind about being reasonable. "Okay, here's where it comes in, Rune. It's the part where I'm fucking telling you to. You know, as your boss. Anyway, whatsa big deal? There's only one pickup."

  "That's like a total waste of time."

  "Your life is a waste of time, Rune."

  "Look," she began, not too patiently, and went on with her argument until he said, "Thin ice, honey. Get your ass outa here. Now."

  She tried, "Not in the job description." Only because it wasn't in her nature to give in too quickly and then she saw him go all still and before he exploded she stood up and said, "Oh, will you just chill, Tony?" In that exasperated, sly way of hers that would probably get her fired someday but so far hadn't.

  Then he'd looked at an invoice and said, "Christ, it's only a few blocks from here. Avenue B. Guy's name is Robert Kelly."

  Oh, Rune thought, Mr. Kelly? Well, that was different.

  She took the receipt, snagging the retro, fake-leopard-skin bag she'd found in a used-clothing store on Broadway. She pushed out the door, into the cool spring air, saying, "All right, all right. I'll do it." Putting just the right tone in her voice to let Tony know he owed her one for this. In her two decades on earth Rune had learned that if she wanted to live life the way she did, it was probably a good idea to collect as many obligations from people as she could.

  Rune was five two, one hundred pounds. Today she wore black stretch pants, a black T-shirt under an businessman's Arrow shirt she'd cut the sleeves out of, so it looked like a white pinstripe vest. Black ankle boots. There were twenty-seven silver bracelets, all different, on her left forearm.

  Her lips varied in size, compressing, expanding. A barometer of her mood. She had a round face; her nose pleased her. Her friends sometimes said she looked like certain actresses who appeared in independent films. But there were few present-day actresses she cared about or tried to look like; if you took Audrey Hepburn and put her in a Downtown, New Wave version of Breakfast at Tiffany's--that's who Rune wanted to resemble and in many ways she did.

  She paused, looked at herself in a mirror sitting in an antiques shop window, the words WHOLESALE ONLY larger than the name of the place. Several months ago she'd gotten tired of her spiky black-purple haircut, had rinsed out the frightening colors, and had stopped trimming the do herself. The strands were longer now and the natural chestnut was emerging. Staring at the mirror, she now teased the hair out with her fingers. Then patted it back down. It wasn't long, it wasn't short. The ambivalence of it made her feel more homeless than she normally did.

  She started once more on her journey to the East Village.

  Rune glanced down at the receipt again.

  Robert Kelly.

  If Tony'd told her right away who the customer was, she wouldn't have given him so much crap.

  Kelly, Robert. Member since: May 2. Deposit: Cash.

  Robert Kelly.

  "My boyfriend."

  That's what she'd told Frankie Greek and Eddie at the store. They'd blinked, trying to figure out what thatmeant. But then she'd laughed and made it sound like a joke--before they grinned and sneered and asked what was it like to be in bed with a seventy-year-old man?

  Though she'd added, "Well, we have been out on a date." Which left enough doubt to make it fun.

  Robert Kelly was her friend. More of a friend than most of the men she'd met in the store. And he was also the only one she'd ever gone out with--in her three months' working there. Tony had a rule against going out with customers--not that any rule of Tony's would slow her up for more than a half-second. But the only men she ever seemed to meet at the store were either long domesticated or about what you'd expect from somebody who picks up clerks in a Greenwich Village video store.

  Hi, I'm John, Fred, Stan, Sam, call me Sammie, I live up the street, this's an Armani, you like it, I'm a fashion photographer, I work for Morgan-Stanley, I got some blow, hey, you wanna go to my place and fuck?

  Kelly, Robert, deposit: cash, wore a suit and tie every time she'd seen him. He was fifty years older than she was. And when she'd offered to do him a favor, a little thing, copy a tape for him, for free, he'd looked down, blushing, and he'd asked her out to lunch to thank her.

  They'd gone to a highly turquoise 1950s revival soda shop, called the Soda Shop, on St. Marks, and, surrounded by NYU students who managed to be both morbidly serious and giddy at the same time, had eaten grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles. She'd ordered a martini. He'd laughed in surprise and said in a whisper he'd thought she was sixteen. The waitress had somehow accepted the fake ID, which showed her age to be 23. According to the authentic documentation--her Ohio driver's license--Rune was twenty.

  At lunch he'd been a little awkward at first. But that didn't matter. Rune was an old hand at keeping the conversation going. Then he warmed up and they'd had a great time. Talking about New York City--he knew it real well even though he'd been born in the Midwest. How he used to go to clubs in Hell's Kitchen, west of Midtown. How he'd have picnics in Battery Park. How he used to go for hikes in Central Park with a "lady friend" of his-- Rune loved that expression. When she was old she hoped she'd be somebody's lady friend. She'd--

  Oh, damn...

  Rune stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Goddamn. She reached into her bag and found that she'd forgotten the tape she'd made for him. Which was too bad for Mr. Kelly because he'd be looking forward to it. But mostly it was too bad for her--because she'd left it at the store and if Tony found she'd made a bootleg of a store tape, Jesus, he'd kick her right out on her ass. No pleas for mercy accepted at Washington Square Video.

  But she couldn't very well go back now and pull it out from underneath the counter where she'd hidden it. She'd bring it to Mr. Kelly in a day or two. Or slip it to him the next time he stopped in.

  Would Tony find it? Would he fire her?

  And if he did? Well, them's the breaks. Which is what she usually said, or at least thought, when she found herself back in line at the New York State Department of Labor, a place where she was a regular and where she'd made some of her best friends in the city.

  Them's the Breaks. Her mantra of unemployment. Of fate in general too, she supposed.

  Except that today, trying to be cavalier about it, she decided she didn't want to get fired. For her, this was a curious sensation--one that went beyond the usual pain-in-the-butt inconvenience of job searching that began to loom when a boss would motion her over and say, "Rune, let's you and me talk." Or "This isn't going to be easy ..."

  Though it usually was very easy.

  Rune took the firings better than most employees. She had the routine down. So why was she worried about getting canned now?

  She couldn't figure. Something in the air maybe ... As good an explanation as any.

  Rune continued east, through the area that NYU and the real estate developers were decimating for dorms and boring cinder-block apartments. A large woman thrust a petition toward her. "Save our Neighborhood" it said. Rune passed the wo
man by. That was one thing about New York. It always changed, like a snake shedding skins. If your favorite area vanished or turned into something you didn't like, there was always another one that'd suit you. All it took was a subway token to find it.

  She glanced again at Mr. Kelly's address. 380 East Tenth. Apartment 2B.

  She crossed the street and continued past Avenue A, Avenue B. Alphabet soup, alphabet city. The neighborhood growing darker, shabbier, more sullen.

  Scarier.

  Save our neighborhood...

  CHAPTER THREE

  Haarte didn't like the East Village.

  When it came to the coin-toss to see who was going to stake out the target's apartment three weeks ago, after they'd gotten back from the Gittleman hit in St. Louis, he was glad Zane'd won.

  He paused on East Tenth and looked for surveillance in front of the tenement. Zane'd been there for a half hour and had said the block looked clean. They'd learned that a while ago the target had vanished from his apartment on the Upper West Side--the apartment the U.S. Marshals Service had provided for him--and he'd given the slip to his minders. But that info was old. The feds might've tracked him down again--those pricks could find anybody if they wanted to--and be checking this building out. So this morning Haarte paused, scanned the street carefully, looking for any signs of baby-sitters. He saw none.

  Haarte continued along the sidewalk. The streets were piled with garbage, moldy books and magazines, old furniture. Cars doubled-parked on the narrow streets. Several moving vans too. People in the Village always seemed to be moving out. Haarte was surprised anybody moved in. He'd get the fuck out of this neighborhood as fast as he could.

  Today Haarte was wearing an exterminator's uniform, pale blue. He carried a plastic toolbox which contained not the tools of the bug-killers' trade but his Walther automatic on which was mounted his Lansing Arms suppressor. Also inside the box was the Polaroid camera. This uniform wouldn't work everywhere but whenever he had a job in New York--which wasn't often because he lived there--he knew the one thing that people would never be suspicious about was an exterminator.

  "I'm almost there," he said into his lapel mike. The other thing about New York was that you could seem to be talking to yourself and nobody thought it was weird.

  As Haarte approached the building, 380 East Tenth Street, Zane--parked a block away in a green Pontiac-- said, "Street's clear. Saw a shadow in his apartment. Asshole's in there. Or somebody is."

  For this hit, the way they'd worked it out, Haarte was going to be the shooter, Zane was getaway.

  He said, "Three minutes till I'm inside. Drive around back. Into the alley. Anything goes wrong we split up. Meet me back at my place."

  "Okay."

  He walked into the foyer of the building. Stinks in here, he thought. Dog pee. Maybe human pee. He shivered slightly. Haarte made over a hundred thousand dollars a year and lived in a very nice town house several miles from here, overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey. So nice he didn't even need an exterminator.

  Haarte checked out the lobby and hallway carefully. The target might not be thinking about a hit and Haarte could possibly just call up on the intercom and say that he was there to spray for roaches. The target might just let him in.

  But he might also come to the top of the stairway, aim into the foyer with his own piece, and start shooting.

  So Haarte decided on the silent approach. He jimmied the front-door lock with a thin piece of steel. The cheap lock clicked open easily.

  He stepped inside and took the pistol from his toolbox. Started down the hall to Apartment 2B.

  Rune was surprised, seeing Robert Kelly's building.

  Surprised the way people sometimes are when they come to visit a friend for the first time. She'd seen his modest clothes and had expected modest quarters. But she was looking at piss-poor. The brick was scaly, diseased, shedding its schoolhouse-red paint in dusty flakes. The wooden window frames were rotting. Rust water had trickled down from the roof and left huge streaks on the front step and sidewalk. Some tenants had patched broken panes with cardboard and cloth and yellowing newspaper.

  Of course she'd known that the East Village wasn't the greatest neighborhood--she came to clubs here a lot and hung out with friends in Tompkins Square Park on Avenue A, dodging the druggies and the wanna-be gangsters. But, picturing the gentlemanly Mr. Kelly, the image that had come to mind of his home was a proper English town house with frilly plaster moldings and flowered wallpaper. Outside would be a black wrought-iron fence and a neat garden.

  Like the set in a movie she'd seen as a little girl, sitting next to her father--My Fair Lady. Kelly would sit in the parlor like Rex Harrison, in front of the fire, and drink tea. He would take small sips (a cup of tea lasted forever in English movies) and read a newspaper that didn't have any comics.

  She felt uncomfortable, embarrassed for him. Almost wished that she hadn't come.

  Rune walked closer to the building. A three-legged chair lay on its side in the bare-dirt garden outside the front stairs. A bicycle frame was fastened with a Kryptonite lock to a no-parking sign. The wheels, chain, and handlebars had been stolen.

  Who else lived in the building? she wondered. Elderly people, she supposed. There were a lot of retirees around there. She herself would rather spend her final years there than in Tampa or San Diego.

  But how had they happened to end up there? she wondered.

  There'd be a million answers.

  Them's the breaks....

  The building just across the alley from Mr. Kelly's was much nicer, painted, clean, a fancy security gate on the front door. A blond woman in an expensive pink jogger's outfit and fancy running shoes pushed out the doorway and stepped into the alley. She started her stretching exercises. She was pretty and looked disgustingly pert and professional.

  Save our neighborhood...

  Rune continued to the front stairs of Mr. Kelly's building. An idea occurred to her. She'd pick up the tape but instead of going back to the store she'd take a few hours off. She and Mr. Kelly could go have an adventure.

  She'd take him for a long walk beside the Hudson.

  "Let's look for sea monsters!" she'd suggest.

  And she had this weird idea that he'd play along. There was something about him that made her think they were similar. He was ... well, mysterious. There was nothing literal about him--being unliteral was Rune's highest compliment.

  She walked into the entryway of his building. Beneath the filth and cobwebs she noticed elaborate mosaic tiles, brass fixtures, carved mahogany trim. If it were scrubbed up and painted, she thought, this'd be a totally excellent place....

  She pushed the buzzer to 2B.

  That'd be a fun job, she thought. Finding junky old buildings and fixing them up. But people did that for a living, of course. Rich people. Even places like this could cost hundreds of thousands. Anyway, she'd want to paint murals of fairy tales on the walls and decorate the place with stuffed animals and put magical gardens in all the apartments. She supposed there wasn't much of a market for that kind of look.

  The intercom crackled. There was a pause. Then a voice said, "Yes?"

  "Mr. Kelly?"

  "Who is it?" the staticky voice asked.

  "Here's Johnnyyyyyyy," she said, trying to impersonate Jack Nicholson in The Shining. She and Mr. Kelly had talked about horror films. He seemed to know a lot about movies and they'd joked about how scary the Kubrick film was even though it was so brightly lit.

  But apparently he didn't remember. "Who?"

  She was disappointed that he didn't get it.

  "It's Rune. You know--from Washington Square Video. I'm here to pick up the tape."

  Silence.

  "Hello?" she called.

  Static again. "I'll be there in a minute."

  "Is this Mr. Kelly?" The voice didn't sound quite right. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe he had a visitor.

  "A minute."

  "I can come up."

  A pause.
"Wait there," the voice commanded.

  This was weird. He'd always seemed so polite. He didn't sound that way now. Must be the intercom.

  Several minutes passed. She paced around the entryway.

  She was looking outside when, finally, she heard footsteps from inside, coming down the stairs.

  Rune walked to the inner door, peered through the greasy glass. She couldn't see through it. A figure walked forward slowly. Was it Mr. Kelly? She couldn't tell.

  The door opened.

  "Oh," she said in surprise, looking up.

  The woman in her fifties, with olive-tinted skin, stepped out, glanced at her. She made sure the door closed before she left the entryway so Rune couldn't get inside--standard New York City security procedures when unknown visitors were in the lobby. The woman carried a bag of empty soda and beer cans. She took them out to the curb and dropped them in a recycling bin.

  "Mr. Kelly?" Rune called again into the intercom. "You all right?"

  There was no answer.

  The woman returned and looked over Rune carefully. "Help you?" She had a thick Caribbean accent.

  "I'm a friend of Mr. Kelly's."

  "Oh." Her face relaxed.

  "I just called him. He was going to come down."

  "He's on the second floor."

  "I know. I'm supposed to pick up a videotape. I called five minutes ago and he said he'd be right out."

  "I just walked past his door an' it was open," she said. "I live up the hall."

  Rune pushed the buzzer and said, "Mr. Kelly? Hello? Hello?"

  There was no answer.

  "I'ma go see," the woman said. "You wait here."

  She disappeared inside. After a moment Rune grew impatient and buzzed again. No answer. She tried the door. Then she wondered if there was another door-- maybe in the side or in the back of the building.

  She stepped outside. Walked to the sidewalk and then continued on to the alley. The pert yuppie woman was still there, stretching. The only exercise Rune got was dancing at her favorite clubs: World or Area or Limelight (dancing was aerobic and she also built upper-body strength by pushing away drunk lawyers and account execs in the clubs' co-ed rest rooms).

  No, there was nobody else. Maybe she--

  Then she heard the scream.

  She turned fast and looked at Mr. Kelly's building. Heard a woman's voice, in panic, calling for help. Rune believed the voice had an accent--maybe the woman she'd just met, the woman who knew Mr. Kelly. "Somebody," the voice cried, "call the police. Oh, please, help!"