His enthusiasm was infectious. She found herself nodding excitedly.
"You ever see Boomerang? Elia Kazan. He shot it on location. Not the greatest story in the world for a crime flick--I mean, there's not much secret who did it. But the point isn't what the story was but how it was told. That was about a real crime too. It was a--whatta you call it?--evolutionary step up from the studio-lot productions Hollywood thought you had to do. Manhattan Is My Beat was of the same ilk.
"Oh, you gotta understand, the era had a lot to do with it too, I mean, shifting to movies like that. The War, it robbed the studios of people and materials. The big-production set pieces and epics--uh-uh, there was no way they could produce those. And it was damn good they did. You ask me--hey, who's asking me, right?-- but I think movies like Manhattan helped move movies out of the world of plays and into their own world.
"Boomerang. The House on 92nd Street. Henry Hathaway did that. Oh, he was a gentleman, Henry was. Quiet, polite. He made that film, I guess, in forty-seven. Manhattan Is My Beat was in that movement. It's not a good film. But it's an important film."
"And they were all true, those films?" Rune asked.
"Well, they weren't documentaries. But, yeah, they were accurate. Hathaway worked with the FBI to do House."
"So, then, if there was a scene in the movie, say the characters went someplace, then the real-life characters may have gone there?"
"Maybe."
"Did you know anyone who worked on Manhattan? I mean, know them personally?"
"Sure. Dana Mitchell."
"He played Roy, the cop."
"Right, right, right. Handsome man. We weren't close but we had dinner two, three times. Him and his second wife, I think it was. Charlotte Goodman we had signed here for a couple films in the fifties. I knew Hal of course. He was a contract director for us when studios still did that. He also did--"
"West of Fort Laramie. And Bomber Patrol."
"Hey, you know your films. Hal's still around, I haven't talked to him in twenty years, I guess."
"Is he in New York?"
"No, he's on the West Coast. Where, I have no idea. Dana and Charlotte are dead now. The exec producer on the project died about five years ago. Some of the other studio people may be alive but they aren't around here. This is no business for old men. I'm paraphrasing Yeats. You know your poetry? You studying poets in school?"
"Yeah, all of them, Yeats, Erica Jong, Stallone."
"Stallone?"
"Yeah, you know, Rambo."
"Your school teaches some strange things. But education, who understands it?"
Rune asked, "Isn't there anybody in New York who worked on the film?"
"Whoa, darling, the spirit is willing but the mind is weak." Weinhoff pulled out a film companion book. And looked up the movie. "Ah, here we go. Hey, here we go. Manhattan Is My Beat, 1947. Oh, sure, Ruby Dahl, who could forget her? She played Roy's fiancee."
"And she lives in New York?"
"Ruby? Naw, she's gone. Same old story. Booze and pills. What a business we're in. What a business."
"What about the writer?"
Weinhoff turned back to the book. "Hey, here we go. Sure. Raoul Elliott. And if he was credited as the writer, then he really wrote it. All by himself. I know Raoul. He was an old-school screenwriter. None of this pro-wrestling for credits you see now." In a singsong voice Weinhoff said, " 'I polished sixty-seven pages of the tenth draft so I get the top credit in beer-belly extended typeface and that other hack only polished fifty-three pages so he gets his name in antleg condensed or no screen credit at all.' Whine, whine, whine... Naw, I know Raoul. If he got the credit he wrote the whole thing--first draft through the shooting script."
"Does he live in New York?"
"Ah, the poor man. He's got Alzheimer's. God forbid. He'd been in a home for actors and theatrical people for a while. But last year it got pretty bad; now he's in a nursing home out in Jersey."
"You know where?"
"Sure, but I don't think he'll tell you much of anything."
"I'd still like to talk to him."
Weinhoff wrote down the name and address for her. He shook his head. "Funny, you hear about students nowadays, they don't want to do this, they don't want to do that. You're--I pegged you right away, I don't mind saying--you're something else. Talking to an old yenta like me, going to all this trouble just for a school paper."
Rune stood up and shook the old man's hand. "Like, I think you get out of life what you put into it."
All right. I'm two hours late, she thought.
She wasn't just hurrying this time; she was sprinting. To get to work! This was something she'd never done that she could ever remember. Tony's voice echoing in her memory. Back in twenty, back in twenty.
Along Eighth Street. Past Fifth Avenue. To University Place. Dodging students and shoppers, running like a football player, like President Reagan in that old movie of his. The one without the monkey.
No big deal. Tony'll understand. I was on time this morning.
Them's the breaks.
He's not going to fire me for being a measly two hours late.
A hundred twenty minutes. The average running time for a film.
How could he possibly be upset? No way.
Rune pushed into the store and stopped cold. At the counter Tony was talking to the woman who was apparently her replacement, showing her how to use the cash register and credit card machine.
Oh, hell.
Tony looked up. "Hi, Rune, how you doin'? Oh, by the way, you're fired. Pack up your stuff and leave."
He was more cheerful than he'd been in months.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The woman, an attractive redhead in her twenties, looked uncertainly at Rune. Then at Tony.
Rune said, "Look, Tony, I'm really, really sorry. I got ..."
You only lie to people who can control you.
But I don't want to get fired. I don't, I don't, I don't.
"...I got stuck on the subway. Power failure. Or somebody on the tracks. It was disgusting. No lights, it was smelly, it was hot. And I--"
"Rune, I've had it. Frankie Greek's sister went into labor just after you left and he had to take her to the hospital. And I know she did, 'cause I called her ob-gyn to check."
"You did what?" Rune asked.
Tony shrugged. "He coulda been faking. What'd I know? But whatta you want me to do when you give me some half-assed excuse about the subway? Call the head of the MTA? Ask him if the E train got stuck at Thirty-fourth Street?"
"Please don't fire me."
"I had to work by myself for two fucking hours, Rune."
"Jesus, Tony, it's not like a hot dog stand at Giants Stadium at halftime. How many customers did you have?"
"That's not the point. I missed lunch."
"I'll be better. I really--"
"Time out," the redhead said, shutting them both up. She added, "I'm not taking the job."
"What?" Tony was looking at her.
"I can't take somebody else's job."
"You're not. I fired her before I hired you. It's just that she didn't know."
"Tony," Rune said. Hated that she was pleading but she couldn't help it. What would Richard think if he heard she got canned? He already thought she was totally irresponsible.
"I'd feel too guilty," the redhead explained.
Tony: "You said you needed a job."
"I do. But I'll find something else."
"No, no, doll," Tony said, "don't worry."
But then she said in a stony voice, "You fire her, I'm leaving too."
Tony closed his eyes momentarily. "Jesus Christ." He then leaned forward and glared at Rune. "Okay. Frankie's only going to be working half-days until his sister's back home. You can fill out his schedule. But if you miss any more shifts, without a real excuse, that'll be it."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you."
Tony then smiled at the woman, probably thinking he'd scored some points with her for his
generosity. He didn't notice that her expression, as she looked back at him, was the way you squint at a roach just before you squoosh it.
"Rune," Tony said, "this is Stephanie. Isn't she pretty? Great hair, don't you think? Why don't you show our beautiful new employee the ropes? I'm going to the health club."
He sucked his gut in, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and pushed out the door.
Isn't she pretty, got great hair...
Rune stepped on the jealousy long enough to say to Stephanie, "Thanks. I don't know what to say. I can't really afford to get fired right now."
"Oh, I've been there." Stephanie glanced at the door as Tony disappeared down the street. "So he's really in a health club?"
"You bet he is," Rune whispered.
Then said, "Burger King," at the same time Stephanie said, "McDonald's?" They burst into laughter.
"You don't want to get the straight and gay adult mixed up when you're putting them back," Rune was explaining.
"Right. You don't." The woman did have incredible hair--long red-blond strands that tumbled over her shoulders the way hair seems to do only in shampoo commercials.
"What's your name again?" Rune now asked her. It started with an S. But she had a lot of problems with S names. Susan, Sally, Suzanne ...
"Stephanie."
Right. Rune stored it away in her brain and continued with the training session. "See, we don't have covers on the porn so people have to rent them by the titles. With some it's easy. Soldier Boys, Cowboy Rubdown, Muscle Truckers, you know? But some, you can't tell. We had one guy rent Big Blonds, only it turns out that blondes with an E on the end is girl blondes and without the E is boy blonds. Did you know that? I didn't. Anyway, he got boys with big dicks and he wanted girls with big boobs. He wasn't happy. Hey, your hair is totally radical. Is that your real color?"
"For now it is." Stephanie examined Rune's arm. "Love your bracelets."
"Yeah?" Rune shook her arm. They jingled.
Stephanie said, "Someone wanted me to do a porn movie once. In L.A. This guy said he was a UCLA film grad. Came right up to me in a coffee shop--I was hanging, reading Variety--and asked me if I wanted to do skin flick."
"No kidding," Rune said. Nobody'd ever asked her to do a porn film. She was wondering if she should feel insulted.
Stephanie paused, looking at a poster for Gaslight. "Ingrid Bergman. She was beautiful."
"Even with short hair," Rune said. "Like in For Whom the Bell Tolls." She ran her fingers over her head. Patted the strands down again. Thought about a wig. "The porn, did you do it?"
"Naw. Just didn't seem right."
"I'd be scared to death of, you know, catching something."
Stephanie shrugged. "Where'd you get them? The bracelets?"
"Everywhere. I'll be walking down the street and then there's this feeling I get and it's a bracelet calling me. Next store I come to, bang, there's one in the window."
Stephanie looked at her skeptically.
"It happens. I swear to God."
"Tony said you were slacking off."
"Every minute I spend not making his life easier is his definition of slacking off. What it is, this friend of mine got murdered. And I'm trying to find out what happened."
"No!"
"Yeah."
Stephanie said, "I got carjacked in Hollywood. I was in a Honda. You wouldn't think anybody'd kill somebody for a Honda. But I thought they were going to shoot me. I let 'em take it. They just drove off. Stopped at a stop sign and signaled to make a right turn. Like nothing'd happened. Doesn't it seem weird they'd kill you for a car? Or even just a few hundred dollars?"
Or for a million dollars, Rune thought. Seeing in her mind's eye Robert Kelly, lying back in his chair. The bullet holes in his chest. And the one in the TV.
Stephanie added, "I took a self-defense course after that. But that doesn't do you any good against a guy with a gun."
Rune pushed the sad thoughts from her mind and walked through the shelves, putting the tapes back, gesturing Stephanie after her.
"You'll learn stuff, working here. About human nature. That's why I took the job. Of course I don't exactly know what to do with the human nature I learn. But it's still fun to watch people. I'm a voyeur, I think."
"What can you learn about people in a video store?"
"How's a for-instance? There's this guy, cute, a stockbroker, always smelled like garlic but I flirted with him anyway. He rents all these Charles Bronson films, Chuck Norris, Schwarzenegger. Then he shows up here one night and he's got this yuppie trendoid girl hanging on him like he's a trapeze, okay? Suddenly no more Commando. All he wants are things like The Seventh Seal and Fellini and a lot of the recent Woody Allen--you know, not Bananas but the relationship stuff. And things you'd see on PBS, right? That lasts for a month, then Miss Culture goes bye-bye and it's back to Death Wish 8 for a couple months. Then he comes in with some other girl all in leather and studs. I know what you're thinking but guess what she likes? Old musicals. Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred and Ginger. That's all he rents for two months. Guy's going to develop a complex. I mean, you've gotta be yourself, right?"
Stephanie was brushing her hair.
Rune continued. "Like, speaking of adult films ... Oh, don't call them dirty movies. Tony doesn't like that, and besides, it's a mega-business. We make forty percent of our gross on them even though they're only twelve percent of inventory.... Well, what I was saying was that now women rent almost as many as men. And they don't rent all that much straight ... mostly it's gay male flicks."
"Yeah?" Stephanie's sullen eyes flashed with a splinter of interest then the lids lowered again. The brush went back into her purse. Rune decided Stephanie would be a Washington Square Video employee for thirty days max. She could get just as boring work in restaurants and the pay would be three times as good. "Why would women rent gay films?"
"Way I figure it," Rune said, "it's that the guys in gay films look a lot better than guys in straight films, you know, they're really hunks, cut. Work out, take care of themselves. Straight films, you see a lot of flab ... I've heard."
Stephanie, glancing with boredom at the adult section, said, "Lesbians are out of luck, sounds like."
"Naw, naw, that's another good market. We've got, let's see, Girls on Girls, Lesbos Lovers, Sappho Express ... But it's mostly men rent those. There're more girlfriends over in the West Village. Not so many here."
Rune walked back to the counter, fluffed her hair out with her fingers. Stephanie looked at it, said, "That's an interesting effect, with the colors. How did you do it?"
"I don't know. It just kind of happened." Trying to figure if her comment was a compliment. Rune didn't think so. Interesting. That's a bitch of a word. Interesting.
"You have any freaks come in?"
Rune said, "Depends on what you mean. There's a guy knows every line--even the TV and radio broadcasts--in Night of the Living Dead. Then this lawyer told me he and his wife rent Casablanca after they have sex. And I can look up in the computer and tell you that they must be having problems. There's this one guy, Mad Max, he's real creepy and always rents slasher films. Those stupid things like Halloween and Friday the 13th, Part 85, you know."
"Sexist bastards," Stephanie said, "that's who makes those films."
"But turns out he's a social worker for a big hospital uptown and volunteers for Meals on Wheels, things like that."
"Seriously?"
"I keep telling you ... a video store is a great education."
Stephanie said, "You have a boyfriend?"
"I'm not sure," Rune said. She decided this was a pretty accurate statement.
"Is Rune your real name?"
"For now it is."
A queue formed--and Rune walked Stephanie through the check-out procedure.
"I can't believe this is your first day. You're a born clerk," Rune told her.
"Thanks loads," Stephanie drawled. "Don't tell Tony, but what I'm hoping is I'll meet som
e producers or casting agents here. I want to be an actress. Just a dry spell right now. I haven't auditioned for a month."
"What about all those casting calls in L.A.?"
"A casting call doesn't mean you get the part. L.A. is yucky. New York's the only place to be."
"I knew I liked you," Rune said, and rented The Seven Samurai, Sleeping Beauty, and Lust Orgy to a pleasant, balding businessman.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The rivers are moats, the buildings are parapets...
Wait, is that right? What exactly is a parapet?
Anyway ...
The buildings are parapets. The stone, pitted and stained with age and cloudy water. Dripping. Slick stalactites and stalagmites. Dark windows with bars on the dungeons. We're riding down, down, down ... The hooves of our horses muted by the cold brick. Down into the secret entrance that leads under the moat, out of the Magic Kingdom, out of the Side.
Richard guided the old Dodge into the Holland Tunnel and headed for New Jersey.
"Isn't it wild?" Rune asked. The orange lights flashed by, the gassy sweet smell of exhaust flowing into the car.
"What?"
"There is probably a hundred feet of water and yuck on top of us right now. That's really something."
He looked dubiously up at the yellowing ceiling of the tunnel, above which the Hudson River was flowing into New York Harbor.
"Something," he said uneasily.
It was his car, the Dodge they were in. This was pretty odd. Richard lived in Manhattan and he actually owned a car. Anybody who did that had to have a pretty conventional side to them after all. Paying taxes and parking and registration fees. This bothered her some but she wasn't really complaining. It turned out that the nursing home where the writer of Manhattan Is My Beat lived was forty miles from the city and she couldn't afford to rent wheels for this part of her quest.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing."
And they drove through the rest of the claustrophobic yellow tunnel in silence. Rune was careful; when men got moody, it could be a real pisser. Put them with their buddies, let 'em get drunk and snap their jocks and throw footballs or lecture you about Bunuel or how airplane wings work and they were fine. But, holy St. Peter, something serious comes up--especially with a woman involved--and they go all to pieces.