Manhattan Is My Beat

CHAPTER EIGHT

She'd called Amanda LeClerc but the woman wasn't home to let her into Mr. Kelly's building.

So she had to do it the old-fashioned way. The way Detective Manelli unknowingly suggested.

Breaking and entering.

At the bodega up the street from Mr. Kelly's building she told the clerk, "Two boxes of diapers, please. Put them in two bags."

And paid twenty bucks for one pair of Playtex rubber gloves and two huge boxes of disposable diapers.

"Muchos ninios?" the lady asked.

Rune took the bulgins bags and said, "Si. The Pope, you know?"

The clerk, not much older than Rune, nodded sympathetically.

She walked out of the bodega toward Avenue B. It was already fiercely hot and a ripe, garbagey smell came from the streets. She passed an art gallery. In the window were wild canvases, violent red and black slashes of paint. She smelled steamed meat as she passed a Ukrainian restaurant. In front of a Korean deli was a sign: HOTFOOD $1.50/QTR LB.

Alphabetville…

At Kelly's building Rune climbed the concrete stairs to the lobby. Remembering the man's voice from the intercom. Who was it? She shivered as she stared at the webby speaker.

She tried Amanda once again but there was no answer, so she looked around. Outside there was only one person on the street, a handsome man in his thirties. A Pretty Boy, a thug, from a Martin Scorsese film. He wore a uniform of some kind-like the people who read gas and electric meters do. He sat across the street on a doorstep and read a tabloid newspaper. The headline was about the tourist who'd been knifed in Times Square. The case Detective Manelli was supposed to talk to the captain about. Rune turned back, set the bags down, opened one box of diapers, and stuffed two of the pads under her black T-shirt. She buttoned the white blouse over it. She looked about thirteen months pregnant.

Then she picked up the bags, crimped them awkwardly under her arms, and opened the huge leopard-skin purse, staring into the black hole with a scowl, dipping her hand into the stew of keys, pens, makeup, candy, Kleenex, a knife, old condom boxes, scraps of paper, letters, music cassettes, a can of cheese spread. For five minutes she kept at it. Then she heard the steps, someone coming down the stairs, a young man.

Rune looked up at him. Embarrassed, letting one of the bags of diapers slide to the ground.

Just be a klutz, she told herself; Lord knows you've had plenty of practice. She picked up one of the bags and accidentally on purpose dropped her purse on the ground.

"Need a hand?" the young man asked, unlocking the outer door and pushing it open for her.

Retrieving her purse, stuffing it under her arm. "My keys are in the bottom of this mess," she said. Then, thinking she should take the initiative, she frowned and said quickly: "Wait-you new here? I don't think I've seen you before."

"Uhm. About six months." He was defensive.

She pretended to relax. She walked past him. "Sorry, but you know how it is. New York, I mean."

"Yeah, I know."

"Thanks."

"Yeah." He disappeared down the first-floor hallway.

Rune climbed to the second floor. There was a red sign on the door to Mr. Kelly's apartment. do not enter. crime scene. hypo. The door was locked. Rune set the diapers in the incinerator room and returned to Mr. Kelly's door. She took a hammer and a large screwdriver from her purse. Eddie, from the store, who'd made her promise to forget he'd given her a lesson in burglary, had said the only problem would be the dead bolt. And if there was a Medeco and a metal door frame she could forget it. But if it was just the door tumbler and wood and if she didn't mind a little noise…

Rune put on the Playtex gloves-thinking about fingerprints. They were the smallest size she could find at the bodega but were still too big and flopped around on her hands. She tapped the screwdriver into the crack between the door and the jamb just about where the bolt was. Then looked up and down the hall and took the hammer in both hands. Drew it back like a baseball bat, remembering when she used to play tomboy Softball in high school. She looked around again. The corridor was empty. She swung as hard as she could at the handle of the screwdriver.

And just like at softball, she missed completely. The gloves slipped and with the crack of a gunshot the hammer streaked past the screwdriver and slammed through the cheap paneling of the door.

"Shit."

Trying to pull the hammer out of the thin wood, she worked a large splintery piece toward her. It cracked and fell to the floor.

She drew back again, aiming at the screwdriver, but then she noticed that the hole she'd made was large enough to get her hand through. She reached in, found the door lock and the dead bolt, and got it open. Then pushed the door wide. She stepped inside and closed the door quickly.

And she froze.

Bastards!

A tornado had hit the place. The explosive clutter of disaster. Goddamn bastards, goddamn police! Every book was on the floor, every drawer open, the couch slashed apart. The boxes dumped out, clothing scattered. One bald spot in the mess: under Kelly's floor lamp, next to the chair with its dark, horrible stain and the small bullet holes with spiny brown tufts of upholstery stuffing sprouting outward. Whoever had ransacked the room had stood there-or even sat in the terrible chair!-under the light and examined everything, then thrown it aside.

Bastards.

Her first thought had been: The police did this? And she was ready to cab it right back to the police station and give Virgil Manelli hell, the narrow-eyed son of a bitch, but she remembered the detective's neat desk, his brisk haircut and trimmed mustache. And she decided that someone else had done it. A window was open and the fire escape was right outside the sill. Anybody could've broken in. Hell, she had.

But it wasn't druggies either: the VCR and clock radio were still here.

Who had it been? And what were they looking for?

For an hour, Rune browsed through the mountains of Mr. Kelly's life. She looked at everything-almost everything. Not the clothes. Even with the gloves on, they were too spooky to touch. But the rest she studied carefully: books, letters, the start of a diary-only three entries from years ago, revealing nothing except the weather and his sister's health-boxes of food the bold roaches were already looting, bills, receipts, photos, shoeboxes.

As she sifted carefully through everything, she learned a bit about Mr. Robert Kelly.

He'd been born in 1915 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He'd come to New York in 1935. Then moved to California. He'd volunteered for the Army Air Corps and served with the Ninth Air Force. A sergeant, supervising ordnance. In some of his letters (he'd used the words "Dearest Sister" or "Darling Mother," which made Rune cry) he'd written about the bombs that were loaded into the A-20 airplanes on their raids against occupied France and Germany. Sometimes he'd write his name in chalk on the 500-pounders. Proud that he was helping win the war.

She found pictures of him in performances in the USO for soldiers in someplace called East Anglia. He seemed to be a sad-faced stand-up comic.

After the war there seemed to be a five-year gap in his life. There was no record of what he'd done from 1945 until 1950.

In 1952 he'd married a woman in Los Angeles and had apparently begun a series of sales jobs. Insurance for a while, then some kind of machinery that had something to do with commercial printing. His wife had died ten years ago. They'd had no children, it seemed. He was close to his sister. He took early retirement. Somehow he'd ended up back here in the New York area.

Most of what she found was simply biographical. But there were several things that troubled her.

The first was a photograph of Mr. Kelly with his sister-their names were on the back-taken five years before. (He looked exactly the same as he had last week and she decided he was the sort that aged early, like her own father, and then seemed frozen in time in their later years.) What was odd about the picture was that it had been torn into pieces. Kelly himself hadn't done it, since one square had been lying on the dried bloodstain. It had been torn by the ransackers.

The other thing that caught her attention was an old newspaper clipping. A bookmark in a battered copy of a Daphne du Maurier novel. The clipping, from the New York Journal American, dated 1948, read, Movie Tells True Story of Gotham Crime. It was underlined and asterisks were in the margin.

Fans of the hit film Manhattan Is My Beat, now showing on Forty-second Street, may recognize on the silver screen the true story of one of New York's finest…

Footsteps sounded outside the door. Rune looked up. They passed by but she thought they'd slowed. A chill of panic touched her spine and wouldn't leave. She remembered where she was, what she was doing. Remembered that Manelli had warned her not to come here.

Remembered that the killer was still at large.

Time to leave…

Rune slipped the clipping into her bag and stood. She looked at the door, then at the window, and decided the fire escape was the choice of pros. She walked to the window and flung the curtain aside.

Jesus my Lord!

She stumbled backward as the man on the fire escape, his face a foot away from her, screamed.

Not a gasp or shout but a gut-shaking scream. She'd scared the hell out of him. He'd been standing outside on the fire escape, peering cautiously through the window. Now he backed away slowly, nearly paralyzed with terror, it seemed, easing step by step up the peeling black-enameled metal. Then he turned and sprinted up toward the third floor.

She guessed he was in his late sixties. He was balding, with a face that was tough and pocked and gray. Not the kind of face that should be screaming.

Her heart was pounding from the shock of the surprise. Her legs felt rubbery. She stood up slowly and pushed her head out the window.

Squinting, she watched him-his fat belly taut above hammy pumping legs-as he climbed through the window directly above Kelly's apartment. She heard his footsteps walking heavily and quickly overhead. She heard a door slam.

Rune hesitated, then walked to the front door, knelt down, and looked out through the crack. Coming down the stairs: scuffed shoes, baggy fat-man's pants, and suit jacket tight around the arms. Then his tough, pocked face, under a brown hat.

Yes, it was him, the man from the fire escape. He walked very quietly. He didn't want to be heard.

He's leaving, thank you, God…

His face was the color of cooked pork; sweat glistening on his forehead.

… thank you, thank you, thank-

Then he stopped and looked at the door to Mr. Kelly's apartment for a long while. No, it's okay. He thinks I've left. He won't try to come inside.

Thank…

The man stepped closer. No… It's all right, she told herself again. He thinks that once he went upstairs I climbed out onto the fire escape and got away through the alley.

… you.

Another step, as cautious as Don Johnson closing in on a dozen drug dealers in Miami Vice. The man paused, a foot away.

Rune was afraid to lock the dead bolt or put the chain on; he'd hear her. She pressed her palms against the door, pushing as hard as she could. The man walked directly to it, then stopped, inches away. The thin wood-hell, she'd whacked right through it herself-was all that protected her. Rune's small muscles trembled as she pressed against the door.

Which is when the screwdriver slid out of her pocket. In horror, she watched it fall-as if it were in slow motion. It was a scene from a Brian DePalma movie. She grabbed at the tool, caught it, then fumbled it… No!

She reached down fast and managed to snag the screwdriver an inch above the oak slats of the floor.

Thank you …

Frozen in position, like the game of statue she played as a kid, Rune listened to the man's labored breathing. He hadn't heard anything.

He'd have to know she left. He'd have to!

She slipped the screwdriver back into her pocket, but as she did so, she brushed the claws of the hammer, which was hooked into the waistband of her pants. The tool fell straight to the floor, its head bouncing twice with echoing slams.

"No!" she shouted in a whisper. Planting her feet on the opposite wall, leaning hard into the door, Rune ducked her head, waiting for the fist that she knew would slam through the cheap wood, clawing for her hair, her eyes. She'd be dead. Just like Robert Kelly. It would only be a matter of minutes, seconds, and she would die.

But, no… He turned and ran down the stairs.

Finally Rune stood, staring at her shaking hands and remembering some movie she'd seen recently where the teenage hero had escaped from some killer and had stood frozen, gazing at his quivering hands; Rune had groaned at the cliche. But it wasn't a cliche at all. Her hands were trembling so badly she could hardly open the door. She peered out, hearing sounds of chatting voices and far-off TVs. Children's squeals.

Why had he run? she wondered. Who was he? A witness? The killer's accomplice?

The killer?

Rune-every muscle shaking-walked fast to the incinerator room, scooped up the diapers, and hurried down the stairs. Two women on the landing nodded at her, preoccupied with their conversation.

Rune started past them, head down. But then she paused and in an exasperated voice said, "People don't know how to behave anymore. They don't know a thing about it, do they?"

The women looked at her, smiling in polite curiosity.

"That guy a minute ago? He almost knocked me over."

"Me too," one woman said. Her gray hair was in pink curlers.

"Who is he?" Rune asked, breathing hard, leaning against the banister.

"That's Mr. Symington. In 3B. He crazy." The woman didn't elaborate.

So he lived here. Which meant he probably wasn't the killer. More likely a witness.

"Yeah," the woman's friend added, "move up there last month."

"What's his first name?"

"Victor, I think. Something like that. Never says hello or nothing."

"So what?" the curler woman said. "He's nobody you'd want to talk to anyway."

"I don't know," Rune said indignantly. "I'd have a couple things to tell him."

The curler woman pointed to the box of diapers. "Greatest invention ever was."

"After TV," her friend said.

Rune said, "Well, sure," and started down the stairs.

She ran into Amanda on the street corner.

"Look," the woman said. She'd been to Hallmark and had bought a fake silver picture frame. Inside she'd put a picture of her and Mr. Kelly. It was at Christmas and they were in front of a skinny pine tree decorated with a few lights and tinsel. There was still a smear of adhesive on the glass from the price tag.

"It's totally cool," Rune said, and started to cry once more.

"You have babies?" Amanda was looking at the diapers.

"Oh. Long story. You want them?"

A faint laugh. "Did that years and years ago."

Rune pitched them out. "I've got a question. What do you know about Victor Symington?"

"That guy live upstairs?"

"Yeah."

Amanda shrugged. "Not so much. He been in the building for maybe six weeks. A month. He never say hi, never say how you doing. I no like him so much. I mean, why not say good morning to people? What's so hard about that? You tell me what's so hard."

"You said Mr. Kelly never talked about his life much?"

"No, he didn't."

"Did he mention anything about a bank robbery? Or a movie called Manhattan Is My Beat?"

"You know, I think he say something about that movie. Yeah. A couple times. He was real happy he find it. But he never say anything about a bank robbery."

"Are you going to have a funeral for him? I talked to the police and they said you wanted to bury him."

The woman nodded. Rune thought: This is what you think of when somebody says a "handsome" woman. Amanda wasn't beautiful. But she was ageless and attractive. "He has no family," Amanda said. "I have a friend, he cuts grass at Forest Lawn. Maybe I can work something out with him to get Mr. Kelly buried there. That's a nice place. If I can stay here in the U.S., I mean. But I no think that going to happen."

Rune whispered to her, "Don't give up just yet."

"What?"

"I think Mr. Kelly was about to get a lot of money."

"Mr. Kelly?" Amanda laughed. "He never said anything about that to me."

"I can't say anything for certain. But 1 think I'm right. And I think this Symington knows something about it. If you see him, will you let me know? Don't say anything to him." She gave the woman the number of the video store. "Call me there."

"Sure, sure. I call you."

Rune watched the skepticism surface on her face.

"You don't believe me, do you?" she asked Amanda.

The woman shrugged. "Believe that Mr. Kelly was going to get some money?" She laughed again. "No, I no think so. But, hey, you find it, you let me know," she said. Looked at the picture once more. "You let me know."

Once upon a time…

Walking west toward Avenue A. Rune looked up and down the street for Symington. Gone.

The heat was bad. City heat, dense heat, wet heat. She didn't feel like hurrying but she also didn't want to get into a shouting match with Tony so she broke one of her personal rules and hurried to work.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom huge and powerful and filled with many wonders, there was a princess. A very small princess who no one took seriously…

She continued along the sidewalk, feeling exhilarated. She'd met her first black knight-a pock-faced man in his sixties, wearing an ugly brown hat-and escaped from him without being broads worded to death.

Oh, she was a beautiful princess though she was too short to be a model. A beautiful princess-and would be a lot more beautiful when her hair grew out. Then one day the princess became very sad because a terrible dragon hilled a hind old man and stole his secret treasure. A secret treasure that he'd promised to give her part of and that'd also save the bacon of a friend of his who was getting hassled by the creeps at Immigration and Naturalization.

Third Avenue. Broadway. University Place.

So the beautiful princess herself set out to find the dragon. And she did and she slayed him, or slew him, or at least bagged his ass so he'd have to hang around Attica for twenty-five to thirty years. She got the treasure of gold, which she split with the friend and they both netted a cool half million.

Rune walked into the video store, watching Tony inhale the breath that would come out as "Where the fuck've you been?"

"Sorry." Rune held up her hands to pre-empt him. "It's been one of those mornings."

She stepped behind the counter and logged onto the register so fast that she didn't notice, across the street, the man she'd thought of as Pretty Boy, the one in the meter-reader jacket, slide into a booth in the coffee shop. He continued to watch her, just like he'd been watching her as he'd followed her from the building on Tenth Street where they'd hit the old man.

Rune grabbed a handful of tapes, started to reshelve them. Thinking:

And the princess lived happily ever after.