"Who?" Rune asked. Then, when he just gave her a wry look, she said, "Hey, forget it. No way. They'll send another Haarte after me."
"Hey, not to worry," Sal said, finishing the coffee. "The Witness Relocation Program, remember? You'll get a whole new identity. You can be anybody you want. You can even make up your own name."
Sal frowned: he must have been wondering why she was laughing.
"Well, what do you think?" Rune called.
She sat sidesaddle, five feet off the ground, on a huge armature that rose phallic and rusty from a complicated tangle of industrial machinery scrap. They were surrounded by piles of pitted chrome and girders, wire, wrecks of trucks, and turbines and gears.
Richard walked around the corner. "Fantastic."
The junkyard was off Seventieth, in commercial Queens. But it was oddly quiet. They looked west, at the huge slash of orange brilliance behind Manhattan, as the sun eased through strips of dark cloud.
"You come here much?" he asked.
"Only for the sunsets."
The light hit the twisted metal and seemed to make the different shades of rust vibrate. A thousand oil drums became beautiful. Spindles of twisted iron became filaments of light and coils of BX cable were glowing snakes. Rune said, "Come on up!"
She was wearing the Spanish outfit once more. Richard climbed up next to her and they walked along the armature to a platform.
They had a magnificent view of the city.
On the platform was an old picnic basket. A bottle of champagne too.
"Warm," Rune apologized, cradling the bottle. "But it looks classy."
When they'd snuck through the fence a half hour ago, Richard had gazed at the Dobermans uneasily and stood paralyzed when one sniffed his crotch. But Rune knew them well and scratched their smooth heads. They wagged their stubby tails, sniffing at the cold macaroni-and-cheese sandwiches Rune had packed in the basket before prancing away on their springy legs.
Rune and Richard ate until dusk. Then she lit a kerosene lantern. She lay back, using the picnic basket as a pillow.
"I got another application to the New School," she told him. "I kind of threw out the one you gave me."
"You going to apply? For real?"
After a moment she asked, "I guess I'd have to take classes, wouldn't I?"
"It's an important part of going to school."
"That's what I figured. I'm not sure I'm going to do it though. I have to tell you." She snuck a furtive glimpse at his face. "See, this guy at the video store, Frankie Greek, remember him? Anyway, his sister just had a baby and she was a window designer and it turns out I can take her job while she's on leave. Only have to work half-days. Leave me free to do other stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"You know, stuff stuff."
"Rune."
"Oh, it'd be a radical job. Very artistic. In SoHo. Discounts for clothes. Slinky dresses. Lingerie."
"You're hopeless, you know that."
"Well, to be totally honest, I already took the job and threw out the other application too." She stared at the two or three stars whose light was bright enough to penetrate the city haze. "I had to do it, Richard. I had to. I was worried that if I got a degree or anything I'd get to be, like, too literal."
"We couldn't have that, could we?"
Then the stars were blocked out completely, as Richard leaned over her, bringing his mouth down slowly on hers. She lifted her head to meet him. They kissed for a long while, Rune astonished that she could be aroused by someone wearing a button-down shirt and Brooks Brothers slacks.
Very slow, it was all very slow.
Though not like slow motion in a film. More like vignettes, frame by frame, the way you'd hit a VCR pause button over and over again to watch a favorite scene.
The way she'd watched Manhattan Is My Beat.
Freeze-frame: The cloth of his collar. His smooth neck. His paisley eyes. The white bandage on her hand.
Freeze-frame: His mouth.
"We going to be safe?" he whispered.
"Sure," Rune whispered. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and handed him the small, crinkly square of plastic.
"Actually," he said, "I meant because we're twenty feet in the air."
"Don't worry," Rune whispered. "I'll hold you real tight. I won't let you fall."
Freeze-frame: She wrapped her arms around him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
"I don't howl."
In the loft Sandra was putting explosive red polish on her toenails. She continued sourly. "That was the deal. Remember? I don't howl when I'm in bed with a guy and you clean up after yourself."
She nodded at the mess Rune had made when she was frantically packing. "I have somebody over, I'm quiet as a mouse. He howls, there's nothing I can do about it. But me, I ask you, am I quiet, or what?"
"You're quiet." Rune bent over and picked up clothes, swept up the broken glass.
"Do I howl?"
"You don't howl."
"So where were you last night?" Sandra asked.
"We went to a junkyard."
"Brother, that boy's got a way to go." Sandra glanced up from her artistic nails, examined Rune critically. "You look happy. Got lucky, huh?"
"Didn't your mother teach you not to pry?"
"No, my mother's the one who taught me how to pry. So, you get lucky?"
Rune ignored her and repacked her clothes, put the books back on the shelf.
She paused. On the floor beside the bookcase was the shattered cassette of Manhattan Is My Beat. Rune picked it up. The loops of opaque tape hung out of the broken plastic reels. She looked at it for a moment. She was thinking of Robert Kelly. Of the movie. About the million dollars of bank loot that was never really there--never there for her to find anyway.
She tossed the cassette into the trash bin. Then glanced at Sandra's side of the loft. She picked up the good-bye note she'd written to her roommate. It was unopened. "Don't you read your mail?" she asked.
The woman glanced at it. "Whatsit? A love note?"
"From me."
"What's it say?"
"Nothing." Rune threw it out too. Then she flopped down on her pillows, staring into the blue-and-white sky. She remembered the clouds in New Jersey floating over the trimmed grounds of the nursing home as she crouched next to Raoul Elliott's wheelchair. They'd seemed like dragons and giants then, the clouds. She stared at them for a long time now. After the horror of the last few days she expected them to look merely like clouds. But, no, they still seemed like dragons and giants.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
An expression of her father's.
She thought about the old screenwriter, Raoul Elliott. Next week she'd go out and visit him again. Bring him another flower. And maybe a book. She could read to him. Stories are the best, he'd said. Rune agreed with him there.
Five minutes later Sandra said, "Shit. I forget. Some geek from that place you work, or used to work, the video store? Looked like a heavy-metal wanna-be."
"Frankie?"
"I don't know. Maybe. He came by with a couple of messages." She read a slip of paper. "One was from this Amanda LeClerc. He said he couldn't understand her too good. She's, like, foreign and he was saying if they come to this country why don't they learn to speak-a the language."
"The point, Sandra?"
"So this Amanda person, she called and said she'd heard from this priest or minister or somebody in Brooklyn...." Sandra, juggling the nail polish, smoothed the wrinkled note.
Rune sat up.
A minister?
Sandra was struggling to read. "Like, I'm really not programmed to be a message center, you know. Yeah, okay. I got it. She said she talked to this minister and he's got this suitcase. It was somebody's named Robert Kelly's."
A suitcase?
"And he doesn't know what to do with it, the minister. But he said it's, like, very important."
Rune screamed, "Yes!" She rolled on her
back, and her legs, straight up in the air, kicked back and forth.
"Whoa, take a pill or something." Sandra handed her the message.
She read it. St. Xavier's Church on Atlantic Avenue. Brooklyn.
"Oh, and here's the other one." She found another slip in her purse.
It was from Stephanie. She was out of the hospital and feeling a lot better. She'd stop by later.
"All right!" Rune cried.
"I'm glad somebody's happy." Sandra added, "I'm depressed. Not that anybody cares." She continued to paint her nails carefully.
"I've got to call Richard. We're taking a trip."
"Where?"
"Brooklyn!"
"Old folks homes, junkyards ... Why am I not surprised? Hey, don't hug me! Watch the polish!"
Rune got Richard at home.
This was weird. It was the afternoon. What was he doing home?
She realized that he hadn't told her exactly where he wrote his boring meet-your-CEO scripts.
Rune was on the street, calling from the pay phone. "Hey, how come you're home? I thought you worked for a company. With what's her name? Too-tall Karen?"
He laughed again. "I do mostly freelance. I'm sort of an independent contractor."
"We need to go to Brooklyn. A church on Atlantic Avenue. Can you drive?"
He said, "You're home now?"
"I'm in my office."
"Office?" he asked.
"My exterior office."
"Oh." He laughed. "A pay phone."
"So, can we go?"
"What's going on in Brooklyn?"
She told him about the minister's message, then added, "I just called him--the priest Amanda found. I sort of told him a white lie."
"Which was?"
"That I'm Robert Kelly's granddaughter."
"That's not a white lie. It's a full-fledged lie. Especially to a man of the cloth. You oughta be ashamed. Anyway, I thought you were going to forget about the money."
"I did. Forgot completely. It was him called me." She persisted. Said that Mr. Kelly'd been living in a home attached to the church until he found an apartment. And that he'd left a suitcase with the minister for safekeeping. He didn't want to carry it around until he was settled. It was--are you listening? He said it was too valuable to him to just carry around the streets of the city."
Another pause.
"It's too crazy," Richard said.
She added, "And get this. I asked him if there was a cemetery nearby--like in the movie Manhattan Is My Beat. See, Dana Mitchell, the cop, buries the money in a new grave. And there is!"
"Is what?"
"A cemetery. Next to the church. Don't you see? Mr. Elliott told Mr. Kelly about the church and Mr. Kelly went there and dug up the money."
"Okay," he said dubiously. Then he asked, "You're at your loft?"
"Will be in five minutes."
He said seductively, "You going to be by yourself?"
"Sandra's there."
"Bummer. Can't you send her out to buy something?"
"How 'bout we go to Brooklyn now. Then we'll think about some privacy."
"I'm on my way."
Rune reached the stop of the stairs in her loft and stopped.
"Stephanie!"
The redhead smiled wanly. She sat in Rune's half of the loft, on a pile of pillows. She was pale--paler than usual--and she wore a scarf that partially covered a bruise on her neck. There was also large bandage on her temple and an eggplant-colored mark on her cheek.
"Ohmygod," Rune blurted out, examining her. "You do bruise, don't you?" She hugged the woman carefully. "You look, well...."
"I look awful. You can say it."
"Not for somebody who got run over by a cab."
"Hey, there's a compliment for you."
There was dense silence for a moment. "I don't know what to say, Steph." Rune was nervous and she did busywork, straightening up clothes. "I got you involved in this whole thing. I almost got you killed. And it was so stupid--we were running from a federal marshal."
"A what?" Stephanie gave a laugh.
"That guy in the subway, the one you hit--I thought he was working for them. But it turned out he was a U.S. marshal. Isn't that radical? Just like the Texas Rangers."
She told Stephanie about Haarte and Emily.
"I heard something about it on the news, in the hospital," Stephanie said. "A shooting at this town house. I never guessed you were involved."
Rune's eyes were excited again. "Oh, oh, and talk about adventures ... They want me to be the star witness."
"Isn't that scary?"
"Sure. But I don't care. I want that bitch to go away for a long time. They killed Mr. Kelly. And they tried to kill me--and you too."
"Well, I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty of cops to look out for you."
Rune wandered to the bookcase, replaced some of the books she'd packed to take home. "I called the video store. They told me you quit."
"That Tony," Stephanie said, "what an asshole. I couldn't deal with him--not the way he treated you."
Rune grinned coyly. "So, you want a hundred thousand dollars?"
"What?"
Rune told her about the minister. "Little Red Hen, remember? You believed in me. If there really is any money, you'll get some of it."
Stephanie laughed. "You think there is?"
"I'm not sure. But you know me."
"Optimist," Stephanie supplied.
"You got it. I--"
Plop.
Rune cocked her head. She heard the sound again. A drip. Soft. Plop.
She glanced at where it was coming from--Sandra's side of the apartment.
"You don't really have to give me anything, Rune."
"I know I don't have to. But I want to."
Plop, plop.
Damn! Sandra'd spilled her nail polish. There was a big red stain on the floor.
"Jesus, Sandra!"
Rune turned the corner and stopped. There was her roommate in her thick white bra and black panty hose, eyes staring at the apex of the glass ceiling. She lay on her futon. The bullet hole in her chest was a tiny dark dot. The stain wasn't nail polish. It was the blood that was trickling down her arm and onto the floor.
Stephanie stood up and pointed the gun at Rune. She said, "Come on back over here, love. Let's have a little talk."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"You're Haarte's partner," Rune whispered.
She nodded. "My name's Lucy Zane," the woman said coldly. "Haarte and I worked together for three years. He was the best partner I ever had. And he's dead. Thanks to you."
"Then who's Emily?"
"Just backup. We use her sometimes for jobs on the East Coast."
Rune, sitting down on the cushions, shaking her head. Everything floating in front of her--a big soup. Richard, the money, Pretty Boy, Emily, and Haarte. Robert Kelly. She felt the slamming of her heart in her chest as the hopelessness arose again. And she lowered her face into her hands. Whispering: "Oh, no, oh, no."
She was too numb for tears. Not even looking up, she said, "But your job at the video store? How'd you get the job?"
"How do you think? I fucked Tony."
"I hope it was disgusting," Rune spat out.
"Was. But it didn't last long. A minute or two."
"But you were my friend.... You helped me get the clothes.... Why? Why'd you do that?"
"I got close to you so we could set you up. Haarte and I killed two U.S. marshals in St. Louis. That put a lot of heat on us. And we fucked up the Spinello hit in the Village. So we needed a fall guy. Well, fall girl. You got elected. Almost worked too."
"Too bad the cab had good brakes," Rune said coldly.
"We're lucky sometimes. Even people like me."
Rune shook with anger and fear.
Stephanie continued. "I heard from Emily. The judge denied her bail request. But she said to say hello. She hopes you and I'd have a nice visit. And I think we will. Now, there's one thing I've got to know. Did
you tell the cops or marshals anything about me?"
A click and a grind sounded behind them. Rune's eyes flashed for a second.
Richard.
Stephanie glanced at the sound, then turned back to Rune.
"Tell me," she said. "And I'll let you go."
"Bullshit." Rune scrabbled away into the cushions as if they'd protect her from the black gun.
"I'll let you go," the woman said. "I promise."
"I'm the only witness. How can you let me go? You have to kill me." She looked at the clouds outside the loft, the dragons, the giants, the trolls, marching past, miles high, not caring a bit for what was going on down on earth.
The grinding started again. The elevator was coming up.
"You must've told them about me after the accident. Did the marshal I hit in the subway think I was part of them? Did you tell them my name?"
"It's not real."
"No, but I've used it before. I can be traced through it."
Chains, clinking chains. And the grind of metal on metal. Another loud click, a scrape.
"Who's coming to visit, Rune?"
"I don't know."
Stephanie glanced at the stairway. Then back at Rune. She said, "So, what do you have in your hand."
Rune couldn't believe that the woman had seen her. Oh, she was good. She was very good.
"Show me," Stephanie persisted.
Rune hesitated, then held up her hand and slowly opened the bandaged fingers. "The piece of stone. From the Union Bank Building. My souvenir. The one I picked up when you were with me that day down in Wall Street."
"Now, what were you going to do with it?"
"Throw it at you," Rune responded. "Smash your goddamn face."
"Why don't you just toss it over there." Lucy Zane held the silenced gun very steadily on Rune's chest.
Rune pitched the stone away.
Just as Richard climbed the stairs and said, "Hi."
He froze, seeing the gun in Stephanie's hand. "What is this?"
Stephanie waved him in. "Okay. Just stand there." She backed up so that she could keep them both covered. She held the gun out straight. It was small and its black metal gleamed in the sunlight. The short cylinder of the silencer was dark too.
Her voice now had an edge to it. "I don't have much time. Who'd you tell about me, Rune? And what did you tell them? I want to know. And I mean now."
"Let him go."
Richard said, "What the hell is this? Are you two joking?"
Stephanie's left hand went out toward him. Palm up. The nails were done in careful purple-pink. "Shut up, asshole. Just shut up." To Rune: "What did you tell them?"