Manhattan Is My Beat, Page 4

  When they'd talked ten minutes later Zane, to his dismay, told him there were witnesses. Two women. One of them had been hit by the Pontiac but the other jumped out of the way in time.

  "ID you?" Haarte asked.

  "Couldn't tell. I already changed the tags but I think we oughta get the fuck out of town for a while."

  Haarte considered this. The broker in St. Louis wouldn't pay without some confirmation of the vic's death. And Haarte hadn't had time to take a Polaroid. He also didn't want to leave the witnesses alive.

  "No," he'd told Zane. "We stay. Listen, we need that backup now. Find out who's in town."

  "What kind of backup?" Zane asked.

  "Somebody who can shoot."

  "Hi, there."

  Rune, leaning on the fence in front of Robert Kelly's building, turned. The woman she'd met in the entryway, the woman with the bag of cans, was standing unsteadily on the stoop, arms crossed, tears running down her face.

  They'd just brought the old man's body out. Rune had started to leave, after Manelli returned to the apartment, but then she'd decided to stay. She wasn't sure why.

  "Your name's Amanda?"

  The woman wiped her face with a paper towel and nodded. "That's right. How you know?"

  "The cops mentioned it. I'm Rune."

  "Rune ..." She spoke absently.

  Other tenants had come downstairs, gossiped about the shooting, then returned to their rooms or headed up the street.

  The two detectives left. Manelli said, "Good-bye." The captain hadn't even glanced at her.

  Amanda cried some more.

  Unable to stop herself, Rune cried too. Wiped her face with the tail of the shirt again.

  "How you know him?" Amanda had an accent, Rune decided, that sounded like a female Bob Marley's. Low and sexy.

  "From the video store. Washington Square Video. Where he rented movies."

  Amanda looked at her like a VCR and renting movies were a luxury she couldn't even imagine.

  Rune asked, "How'd you know him?"

  "Neighbors. Met him when he move in, a month ago. But we got close real fast. What it was, about Robert, he talk to you. Nobody else here talk to you. He always ask about my kids, ask where I came from. You know ... So hard to find somebody who just likes to listen."

  Amen, Rune thought.

  "He asked me a lot about me too. But he no say much about himself."

  "Yeah, that's true. He never seemed to like to talk about the past."

  "I no believe this happen. What do you think it was? Why somebody do this?"

  Rune shrugged. "Drugs, I'll bet. Around here ... What else?"

  "I no understand why they kill him. He wasn't no threat. If they want to rob him they could take it and just let him be. Why kill?"

  Murder's crazy...

  "He so nice," Amanda continued, speaking softly. "So nice. When I have problems with the landlord, problems with INS, Mr. Kelly help me out. I only know him one month but he write letters for me. He real smart." More tears. "What'm I gonna do?"

  Rune put her arm around the woman.

  "He help me with my rent. The INS, they took my check. My paycheck. I working but they took my check. I applied for the card, you know. I was trying to do it right, I no cheat nobody or anything. But they wouldn't let me have any money.... But Mr. Kelly, he lend me money for the rent. What'm I gonna do now?"

  "They going to send you back home?"

  She shrugged.

  "Where's that?" Rune asked. "Home?"

  "I come from the Dominican Republic," Amanda said, then added defiantly, "but this is my home now. New York City is my home...." She looked back at the building. "Why they kill somebody like him? There're so many bad people out there, so many people with bad hearts. Why they kill somebody like Robert?"

  There was no answer for that, of course.

  "I have to go," Rune said.

  Amanda nodded, wiped her eyes with the shredding paper towel. "Thank you."

  Rune asked, "For what?"

  "Waiting till they take him away. To say good-bye. That was good of you. That was very good."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Near quitting time, Tony came back to the store.

  "So where the hell were you this afternoon?"

  "I needed to clear my head," Rune told him.

  Tony snickered. "That'd take more than one afternoon."

  "Tony, no crap. Por favor."

  He dropped his backpack in front of the counter and dodged around a cardboard cutout of Sylvester Stallone, who brandished a large cardboard gun. He checked the receipts. "You should've argued with the cop. Christ, that tape ... it's over a hundred bucks wholesale."

  "I gave you the name of the cop to talk to, you want," she shot back. "It's not my job. You're the manager."

  "Yeah, well, at least you should've come back after. Frankie Greek was here by himself. He gets overloaded when he's got to work by himself."

  She said in a low voice, "He gets overloaded when he has to tie his shoes by himself."

  Frankie, a scrawny aspiring rock star and high school dropout, had long, curly hair and reminded Rune of the poodle on the pink skirt she'd bought last week at Second-Hand Rose, a vintage clothing store on Broadway. He was in the back room at the moment.

  "Well, where were you?" Tony persisted.

  "Walking around," Rune said. "I didn't feel like coming back. I mean, he was dead. I saw him. Right in front of me."

  "Whoa. You see the bullet holes and everything?"

  "Oh, Jesus Christ. Hang it up, okay?"

  "Are they like in the movies?"

  She turned away, kept wiping the counter with Windex. Tony and Frankie both smoked. It made the glass filthy.

  "Well, you shoulda called. I was worried."

  "Worried? Like, I'm sure," she said.

  "Just call next time."

  Rune had a feel for it now. He was backing down. No trips to unemployment this week. Them's the breaks... She felt like pushing so she pushed. "There won't be a next time. I don't do any more pickups, okay? That's a rule."

  "Hey, we're all simpatico here, no? The Washington Square Video family." Tony glanced at Frankie as the skinny young man came out of the back room.

  "Think I can fix that monitor," Frankie said.

  "Yeah, well, that's not your priority. Locking up's your priority."

  The large man slung his dirty red nylon backpack over his shoulder again and disappeared out the front door.

  Frankie said, "Like, I heard you talking to Tony."

  "And?"

  "How come you didn't make up something? About coming in late today? Like say your mother got sick or something?"

  Rune said, "Why would I lie to Tony? You only lie to people who have power over you.... So what happened with the Palladium?"

  Frankie was crestfallen. "We only got one pass and Eddie, like, won the toss. Man. It was Blondie too."

  He glanced at a stack of porn tapes that had been returned and needed to be reshelved. One title seemed to interest him. He put it aside. He said, "That guy who was killed. He was that old guy you liked, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "I don't remember him too good. Was he cool?"

  She leaned on the counter, playing with her bracelets. She looked outside. The city had these weird orange streetlamps. It was close to eleven P.M. but the light made the city look like afternoon during a partial eclipse. "Yeah, he was cool." She dug under the counter and found the bootleg tape she'd made for Kelly. Turned it over in her hands. "Also, he was kind of different."

  "Like, what? Weird?"

  "Not weird the way you mean."

  "What, uhm, way do I mean?"

  She didn't answer. A thought was in her mind. "But there was one thing weird about him. Not him personally. He was the nicest old guy you'd ever want to meet. Polite."

  "So what was weird about him?"

  "Well, he'd only been a member for a month."

  "And?"

  "He rented the same mo
vie a lot."

  "A lot?"

  Rune typed on the keyboard of the little Kaypro portable computer on the counter. Then she read from the screen. "Eighteen times."

  "Wow," Frankie said, "that's weird."

  "Manhattan Is My Beat," Rune said.

  "Never heard of it. About a, like, reporter?"

  "A cop. Walking a beat. One of those old-time cop movies from the forties. You know, all the men wearing those big drapey double-breasted suits and have their hair slicked back. Nobody really famous in it. Dana Mitchell, Charlotte Goodman, Ruby Dahl."

  "Who're they?"

  "You wouldn't know them. They're not part of the Brat Pack. Anyway, the movie just came out on tape a month ago. I'm not surprised nobody was in a hurry to release it. I watched it but it wasn't my style. I like the black and white though. I hate colorization. It's a political issue with me.

  "Anyway, Mr. Kelly shows up the day after it's released. We had a poster up in the window. The distributor sent it.... Uh, there it is, in the back...."

  Frankie glanced. "Oh, yeah, I remember it."

  Rune continued. "He comes in and wants to rent it. He wasn't a member so he asks about joining. Then-- this is weirdness for you--he asks how he puts tapes in his TV. Can you believe it? He doesn't know about VCRs! So I tell him if he doesn't have a player he's got to get one and I tell him where Audio Exchange and Crazy Eddie's are. Well, he doesn't have much money, I can tell, cause he goes, 'Do you think they'll take a check? See, I just moved and it doesn't have my address on it....' That kind of stuff. And I was thinking, yeah, right, the reason they won't take the check isn't the address, it's that there's no money in the account. So I tell him about this place on Canal where they have all kinds of used stuff and he can probably get a VCR for fifty bucks."

  "Beta only, I'll bet." Frankie sneered.

  "No, they've got VHS. And he leaves and I think that's the last I'll see of him. But the next day he's back when the store opens and he says he found a player. And he joins and rents this movie he's so interested in. Turns out he's a real sweetheart, we bullshit some, talk movies...."

  "Yeah, your date," Frankie observed. "I remember him."

  "And he's not flirting or anything. He's just talking. Takes the film home. Eddie picks it up the next day. Okay, couple days later, he calls a delivery in. Rents something I don't know what it is and what else? Manhattan Is My Beat again. This goes on for weeks."

  Frankie nodded, his shaggy hair bobbing.

  "Christ," Rune told him, "I feel so sorry for the guy-- I picture him spending all his Social Security check on this stupid movie. I told him just to buy it. But you know Tony. How he marks up? He was charging almost two hundred. What a rip-off. So I tell Mr. Kelly I'm going to copy it for him."

  "Man, Tony'd be super pissed, he finds out," Frankie said, lowering his voice as if the store were bugged.

  "Yeah, whatever," Rune said. She pictured Mr. Kelly again. "You should've seen his eyes. I thought he was going to cry, he was so happy. Anyway, it was, like, noon or something and he asked if he could take me to lunch, you know, to thank me."

  "So did you make the dupe for him?"

  Rune's face fell. After a moment she said, "I did, yeah. But it was just a couple days ago. I never got the chance to give it to him. I wish I had. I wish he'd seen it once at least--the tape I'd made, I mean. He said he didn't have anything much to give me now but when he got rich, he'd remember me."

  "Yeah, right, I've heard that before."

  "I don't know. He said it in a funny way. Like, when his ship came in. It was like ... Hey, you know fairy stories?"

  "Uhm ... I don't know. You mean, like, Jack and the cornstalk?"

  She rolled her eyes. "I was thinking about this one from Japan. About the fisherman Urashima."

  "Like, who?" Frankie Greek's eyes were close together too. Like the detective in Mr. Kelly's apartment. Manelli.

  "Urashima saved a turtle from some children who were stoning it. He helped it back to the ocean. Only it turned out to be a magic turtle and took him to the sea lord's palace under the ocean."

  "How could he breathe underwater?"

  "He just could."

  "But--"

  "Don't worry about it. He could breathe, okay? Anyway, the lord's daughter gave him money and pearls and jewels. Maybe everlasting youth too, I don't remember."

  "Man, not too shabby," Frankie said. "Happily ever after."

  Rune didn't say anything for a moment. "Not exactly. He blew it."

  "What happened?" Frankie seemed marginally interested.

  "One of the things the daughter gave him was a box he wasn't supposed to open."

  "Why not?"

  "Doesn't matter. But he did open it and, bang, got turned into an old man in about five seconds flat. See, fairy tales have rules too. You have to play by them. He didn't. You've gotta listen to magic turtles and wizards. So, that's what I was thinking of when Mr. Kelly said something about getting rich. That I did a good deed and he was going to give me a reward."

  Frankie added, "Just don't open any magic boxes."

  Rune looked up. "So, that's my story about Mr. Kelly. Is it totally bizarre, or what?"

  "You ever ask him about it, why he rented it so often?"

  "Sure. And you want to hear a sad answer? He said, 'That movie? It's the high-point of my life.' He wouldn't say anything else. I'll bet his wife and him saw it on their honeymoon. Or maybe he had a wild affair with some vampy woman the night it was released and they were in a hotel in Times Square with the premiere right outside their window."

  "Like, what'd the cops say about him getting whacked? They have any idea why?"

  "They don't know anything. They don't care."

  Frankie flicked through the pages in a rock music magazine, undid one of his earrings, looked at it, put it into a third hole in his other ear. He said, "So, you've seen it, you think it's worth being the high-point of someone's life?"

  "Depends on how low your life has been."

  "Like, what's it about?" the young man asked. "This movie?"

  "There's a bank robbery in the 1930s or '40s, okay? Somewhere down in Wall Street. The robbers're holed up with a hostage in the bank and this young cop--you know, in love with the girl next door's name is Mary, that kind of hero--goes into the bank to exchange himself for the hostage. Then he kills the robber.... And then what happens is the cop can't resist. See, he's in love and he wants to get married but he doesn't have enough money. So he takes the loot and sneaks it out of the bank. Then he buries it someplace. The cops find out about it and throw him off the force and arrest him and he goes to jail."

  "That's all?"

  "I think he gets out of jail and gets killed before he digs up the money, only I got bored and didn't pay a lot of attention."

  Frankie said, "Hey, here it is. Listen." He read from the video distributor catalogue. " 'Manhattan Is My Beat. Nineteen forty-seven.' Oh, this is so bogus. Listen. 'A gripping drama of a young, idealistic policeman in New York City, torn between duty and greed.' "

  Rune glanced at the clock. Quitting time. She locked the door. "All I know is, if I ever made a movie, I'd shoot anyone who called it a 'gripping drama.' "

  Frankie said, "If I ever make a movie anybody can call it anything they want, as long as I, like, get to play on the sound track. Hey, it says here it's based on a true story. About a real bank robbery in Manhattan. Somebody got away with a million dollars. It says it was never recovered."

  Really? Rune hadn't known that.

  "It's late," she told Frankie. "Let's get out of here. I need to--"

  A loud knock on the glass door startled them. A threesome stood outside--a man and woman, arm in arm, and another woman. In their twenties. The couple was in black. Jeans, T-shirts. She was taller than he was, with very short yellow-white hair and pale, caked makeup. Dark purple lips. The man wore high black boots. He was thin. He had a long face, handsome and angular. High cheekbones. They both had yellow Sony Walkman wires
and earphones around their necks. Her cord disappeared into his pocket. The look was Downtown Chic and they displayed it like war paint.

  The other woman was chubby, had spiky orange hair and she moved her head rhythmically--apparently to music that only she could hear (she didn't wear a Walkman headset). The cut and color of her hair reminded Rune of Woody Woodpecker's.

  Another knock.

  Frankie looked at the clock. "What do I say?"

  "One word," Rune said. "The opposite of Open."

  But then the young man in black touched the door like a curious alien and gave Rune a smile that said, How can you do this to us? He lifted his hands, pressed them together, praying, begging, then kissed his fingertips and looked directly into Rune's eyes.

  Frankie called, "Like, we're closed."

  Rune said, "Open it."

  "What?"

  "Open the door."

  "But you said--"

  "Open the door."

  Frankie did.

  The man outside said, "Just one tape, fair lady, just one. And then we'll depart from your life forever...."

  "Except to return it," Rune said.

  "There's that, sure," he said. Walking into the store. "But tonight, we need some amusement. Oh, sorely."

  Rune said to the blond woman, "When do you have to have him back to Bellevue?"

  The woman shrugged.

  The Woodpecker said nothing but walked through the racks of movies, studying them while her head rocked back and forth.

  "Are you members?" Rune asked.

  The blonde flashed a WSV card.

  "Three minutes," Rune said. "You've got three minutes."

  The man: "Such a small splinter of life, don't you think?"

  "Two and three-quarters," Rune responded. "And counting."

  Was this guy over the edge or not? Rune couldn't decide.

  The blonde spoke. She asked Frankie, "What's good?"

  "Like, I don't know, I'm new here."

  "We're all new everywhere," the young man said meaningfully, looking at Rune. "All the time. Every three minutes, every two and a half minutes. David Bowie said that. You like him?"

  "I love him," Rune said. "How'd he get two different-colored eyes?"

  The man was looking at her own eyes. He didn't answer. Didn't matter; she forgot that she'd asked him a question.

  Rune found her lipstick and carefully put it on. She brushed out her hair with her fingers. She decided she should be more coy. Looked at her watch. "Two minutes. Less now."

  He asked her, "Want to go to a party?"