Manhattan Is My Beat

CHAPTER FOUR

Mr. Kelly's door was open.

Rune stopped in the doorway, stared in shock at the eight people who stood in the room. No one seemed to be moving. They stood or crouched, singly or in groups, like the mannequins she'd seen in the import store on University Place.

Gasping, she rested against the doorjamb. She'd raced back from the pay phone and charged up the stairs. No trouble getting in this time; the cops or the Emergency Medical Service medics had wedged the building door open.

She watched them: six men and two women, some in police uniforms, some in suits.

Her eyes fell on the ninth person in the room and her hands began to tremble.

Oh, no… oh, no…

The ninth person-the man whose apartment it was. Robert Kelly. He sat in an old armchair, arms out-stretched, limp, palms up, eyes open and staring skyward, like Jesus or some saint in those weird religious paintings at the Met. His flesh was very pale-everywhere except his chest. Which was brown-red from all the blood. There was a lot of it.

Oh, no…

Her breath shrank to nothing, short gasps, she was dizzy. Oh, goddamn him! Tony! For making her pick up the tape and see this. Goddamn Frankie Greek, goddamn Eddie for pretending to fix the fucking monitors when all they were really doing was figuring out how to get into a concert for free…

Her eyes pricked with tears. Goddamn.

But then Rune had a curious thought. That, no, no, if this had to happen, it was better that she was there, rather than them. At least she was Mr. Kelly's friend. Eddie or Frankie would've walked in and said, "Wow, cool, a shooting," and it was better for her to be the one to see this, out of respect for him.

No one noticed her. Two men in business suits gave instructions to a third, who nodded. The uniformed cops were crouched down, writing notes, some were putting a white powder on dark things, a black powder on light.

Rune studied the faces of the cops. She couldn't look away. There was something odd about them and she couldn't figure it out at first. They just seemed like everybody else-amused or bored or curious about something. Then she realized: that's what was odd. That there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. They all had a workaday glaze in their eyes. They weren't horrified or sickened by what they were looking at.

God, they seemed just like the clerks in Washington Square Video.

They looked just like me, doing what I do, renting movies eight hours a day, four days a week: just doing the job. The Big Boring J.

They didn't even seem to notice, or to care, that somebody had just been killed.

Her eyes moved around the apartment slowly. Mr. Kelly lived here? Grease-spotted wallpaper sagged. The carpet was orange and made out of thick, stubby strands. The whole place smelled like sour meat. There was no art on the walls: some old-time movie posters in frames leaned against a shabby couch. A dozen boxes were scattered on the floor. It seemed he'd been living out of them. Even his clothes and dishes were stacked in cartons. He must have moved in recently, maybe around the time he'd joined the video club, a month before.

She remembered the first time he'd come into Washington Square Video.

"Can you spell your name?" Rune'd asked, filling out his application.

"Yes, I can," he'd answered, offhand. "I'm of above-average intelligence. Now, do you want me to?"

She'd loved that and they'd laughed. Then she'd taken down the rest of the facts about Kelly, Robert, deposit: cash. Address: 380 East Tenth Street, Apt. 2B. He'd wanted a detective film, and, thinking about the old Dragnet series, she'd said, "All we want is the facts, sir, just the facts."

He'd laughed again.

No credit cards. She remembered thinking that was definitely one thing they had in common.

What were the words? You knew them real well at one time. How did they go?

Rune's eyes were on him now. A dead man who was a little heavy, tall, dignified, seventh-decade balding.

All that the father giveth me, he that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken up our mortal bodies…

What bothered her most, she decided, was the completely still way Mr. Kelly lay. A human being not moving at all. She shuddered. That stillness made the mystery of life all the more astonishing and precious.

I heard a voice from Heaven saying ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sure and certain 1 hope for Resurrection, and the sea shall give up…

The words coming fast now. She pictured her father, laid out by the talented siblings of Charles & Sons in Shaker Heights. Five years before. Rune had a vivid recollection of the man, lying in the satiny upholstery. But that day her father had been a stranger-a caricature of the human being he'd been when alive. With the makeup, the new suit, the smoothed hair, there was something slick and phony about him. He didn't even seem dead: he just seemed odd.

There was something far more real about Mr. Kelly. He wasn't a sculpture, he wasn't unreal at all. And death was staring right back at her. She felt the room tilting and had to concentrate on breathing. The tears tickled her cheeks with a painful irritation.

The Lord be with you and with thy spirit blessed be the name of the Lord…

One of the men near the body noticed her. A short man in a suit, mustachioed. Trimmed black hair flowing away from his center part, held close to his head with spray. His eyes were close together and that made Rune think he was stupid.

"You're one of the witnesses? You're the one called nine one one?"

She nodded.

The man noticed where her eyes were aimed. He stepped between her and Mr. Kelly's body.

"I'm Detective Manelli. You know the deceased?"

"What happened?" Her mouth was dry and the words vanished in her throat. She repeated the question.

The detective, watching her face, probably trying to figure out where she fit on the spectrum of relationships, said, "That's what we're trying to find out. Did you know him?"

She nodded. She couldn't see the body; her eyes fell to a small metal suitcase stenciled with the words crime scene unit. They fixed on the case, wouldn't let go.

"The tape. I was supposed to pick up the tape. For my job."

"Tape? What tape?"

She pointed to a plastic bag with blue letters, WSV, printed on it. "That's my store. He rented a movie yesterday. I was supposed to pick it up."

"You have some ID?"

She handed Manelli her real driver's license and her employee discount card. He jotted down some information. "You have a New York address?"

She gave it to him. This he wrote down too. Handed back the cards. He didn't seem to think she was involved. Maybe in his line of work you got a feel for who was a real killer.

In a soft voice Rune said, "I was the one who rented the tape to him. It was me. Yesterday." She whispered manically, "I just saw him yesterday. I… He was fine then. I talked to him just a few minutes ago."

"You talked to him?"

"I just called on the intercom."

"You're sure it was him?" the detective asked.

She felt a thud in her chest. Recalling that the voice sounded different. Maybe it was the killer she'd talked to. Her legs went weak. "No, I'm not."

"Did you recognize the voice?"

"No. But… it didn't sound like Mr. Kelly. I didn't think anything about it. I don't know-I thought maybe I woke him up or something."

"The voice? Young, old, black, Hispanic?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I couldn't tell."

"You were outside? Did you see anything?"

"I was in the alley. This green car tried to run us down."

"Us?" Manelli repeated. "You and the woman from next door?"

"Right."

"What kind of car was it?"

"I don't know."

"Dark green or light?"

"Dark."

"Tags?"

"What?" Rune asked.

"The license plate number. You notice it?"

"He was trying to run me down, the driver."

"You didn't see the number, you mean?"

"That's what I mean. I didn't see it."

"How 'bout the state?" the detective asked.

"No."

He sighed. "You see the driver?"

"No. There was too much glare."

Another man in a suit came up to them. He smelled of bitter cigarettes. "Whatta we got?"

Manelli said to him, "Here's what it looks like, Captain. This lady comes to pick up a videotape. She calls on the intercom and we think the perp answers. Probably after he does the vie."

Does the vic. Rune stared at the detective, furious at the callousness.

"Pops him three in the chest. No defensive wounds, so it happened fast. He never even tried to dodge. And one in the TV."

"The TV?"

Rune followed their eyes. The killer had shot out the TV set. A spidery fracture surrounded a small black hole in the upper right. It was, she noticed, a very old, cheap set.

Manelli continued. "Then this neighbor up the hall-" He looked at his notebook. "Amanda LeClerc. She comes upstairs and finds him dead."

"Nobody hears anything?" the captain asked.

"No. Not even the shots… Okay, then the killer or his backup's in a car in the alley. He bolts and takes out one witness."

And nearly me too, Rune thought. As if they care.

Manelli consulted his notebook again. "Name's Susan Edelman. Lives next door." He nodded toward the building where Rune had seen the jogger stretching.

"Ice her?" the captain asked.

Ice… do… These people had no respect for human beings.

"No," Manelli said. "But Edelman's in no shape to say anything. Not for a while."

Rune remembered the woman lying on the greasy cobblestones of the alley. Blood on her pink jogging suit. Remembered feeling guilty that she'd put down the poor woman for being a yuppie, for being pert.

"This young lady"-Nodding at Rune-"saw the car too. Says she didn't see much."

"Yeah?" the captain asked. "You get a look at the perp?"

"The what?"

"Perp."

Rune shook her head. "I speak English. It's my native language."

"The driver."

"No."

"How many people were in the car?" the captain continued.

"I don't know. There was glare. I told him that."

"Yeah," the captain said doubtfully. "Some people think there's glare when they just don't want to see anything. But you don't hafta worry. We take care of witnesses. You'll be safe."

"I wasn't a witness. I didn't see anything. I was getting out of the way of a car that was trying to run me over. It's a little distracting…"

Her eyes strayed again to the corpse; she found she'd eased to the side of the slow detective. Finally she forced herself to look away. She glanced up at Manelli.

"The tape," she said.

"What?"

"Can I get the tape? I'm supposed to take it back to where I work."

She saw the cover for the cassette. Manhattan Is My Beat.

Manelli walked over to the VCR and pushed eject. A clatter of the mechanism. The tape eased out. Manelli motioned to a crime-scene cop, who walked over. The detective asked, "Whatta you think? Can she have it?"

"One of my biggest fears." The crime-scene officer's latex-gloved hand lifted the cassette out of the VCR; he looked it over.

"What's that?" Manelli asked the officer.

"I rent Debbie Does Dallas and get hit by a bus before I can return it. My widow gets a bill for two thousand bucks for some sleazy porn and-"

Rune said angrily, "That's not what he rented and I don't think you should joke."

The technician cleared his throat, kept an awkward grin on his face. He didn't apologize. He said, "Thing is, look at the TV. You know, him shooting it out? Maybe it's a coincidence but I'd say we better dust this tape pretty careful. Maybe the perp looked at it. And we do that, well, I'll tell you I wouldn't run it through my VCR with powder on it. This shit'll gum up anything."

Rune said, "You can't just take our tape."

She didn't care about Washington Square Video's inventory. No, what bothered her was that the cops were keeping the one thing that connected her to Robert Kelly. Stupid, she thought. But she wanted that tape.

"We can actually. Yeah."

"No, you can't. It's ours. And I want it."

The captain was irritated with her but Manelli, even if he too was pissed off, was trying to remain civil-servant polite. He said, "Why don't we go downstairs? You're not supposed to be here anyway."

Rune glanced one last time at Robert Kelly, then followed the detective into the hall, which was hot and filled with the smells of dust and mold and cooking food. They walked down the stairs.

Outside, leaning on an unmarked police car, Manelli said to her, "About the tape-we've gotta keep it. Sorry. Your boss wants to complain, have him or his lawyer call the corporation counsel. But we gotta. Might be evidence."

"Why? You think the killer watched the movie?" she asked.

The detective said, "He may have picked it up to see if it was worth taking."

"And then shot the TV because it wasn't?"

The detective said, "Maybe."

"That's crazy," Rune said.

"Murder's crazy."

She was remembering the pattern the blood made on Mr. Kelly's chest.

He asked, "Tell me true. How well did you know him?"

Rune didn't answer for a moment. She wiped her eyes and nose with the tail of her shirt-vest. "Not well. He was a customer is all."

"You couldn't tell us anything about him?"

Rune started to say, sure, but then realized that, no, she couldn't. Everything she thought she knew, which was a lot, she'd iust made up: the wife who was dead of cancer, the children who'd moved away, a distinguished military career in the Pacific, a job in the garment district, a totally cool retirement party he still talked about ten years later. In the past few years he'd met a group of retirees in the East Village, getting to know them over the months at the A &P or Social Security or one of the shabby drugstores or coffee shops on Avenues A or B. Gradually-he'd have been shy about it-he would've suggested getting together for a game of bridge or a trip to Atlantic City to play the slots or saved their money to hear a rehearsal at the Met.

These were scenes she could picture perfectly. Scenes from movies she'd seen a dozen times.

Only none of it was true.

All she could tell this cop was that Kelly, Robert, deposit: cash, wore suits and ties even in retirement. He liked to laugh. He was polite. He had the courage to eat in restaurants by himself on holidays.

And he was a lot like her.

Rune said to the cop, "Nothing. I don't really know a thing."

The detective handed her one of his cards. "And you really didn't see anything?"

"No."

He accepted this. "All right. You think of something, call me. Sometimes that happens. A day or two goes by and people remember things."

When he'd turned away and started up the stairs she said, "Hey."

He paused, looked back.

"You get the asshole that did this, that would be a real good thing, you know?"

"That's why I do what I do." He continued up the stairs.

The Crime Scene cop passed him and walked outside, carrying his metal suitcase. Rune glanced at him, started to walk away, then turned back. He looked at her, then away as he continued to his station wagon.

She called to him, "Oh, one thing. For your information, Mr. Kelly didn't rent dirty movies. For some reason-don't ask me why-he liked movies about cops."

How big a problem was it?

Haarte considered this, walking quickly toward the subway.

The day was plenty cool-nothing like a muggy spring day around the Mississippi River when they'd gotten Gittleman-but he was sweating like crazy. He'd ditched the exterminator coveralls-they were toss-aways, standard procedure after a job-but he was still hot.

He reflected on what'd happened. Part of it was bad luck but he was also at fault. For one thing, he'd decided against hiring local backup because the vie wasn't being minded by the marshals or anybody else. So there was just Zane and him for both surveillance and shooting. Which had worked fine for the St. Louis hit. But here he should've known that some innocents might show up. New York was a big fucking city. More people, more bystanders.

Then, he decided, he'd sent Zane down the alley too early. He just wasn't thinking. So they hadn't had any warning about whoever that girl was who showed up and rang the buzzer, which happened just as Haarte was about to shoot. The vie had risen from his chair and seen Haarte. Haarte had shot him. The old guy had fallen on the remote control and the sound on the TV had gone way up. So Haarte had shot the TV set out too. Which made another loud noise and filled the apartment with a gassy, smoky smell.

Then the girl called on the intercom again. She sounded concerned. And a moment later there was a call from another woman.

Grand Central Station, Jesus…

He knew they were suspicious and that they'd be coming upstairs to check on the vie at any minute.

So Haarte decided to split up. He'd told Zane to get back to Haarte's apartment. He'd go by surface transportation. It wasn't a moment too soon. As he climbed out the fire escape window on the east side of the building he'd heard the scream. Then Zane took off and Haarte jumped into the alley and disappeared.

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."