Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Another cop stood next to Healy. He wore a light suit that was mostly polyester, and he stood with the tired, unrushed posture of a government worker. Thin, humorless. His eyelids were heavy from fatigue and boredom.

Heavy from years of interviewing reluctant witnesses.

From years of kneeling over bodies in their graves of gutters and car seats and SRO hotels.

From seeing what he'd witnessed upstairs.

Rune whispered, "She's dead?"

The other cop was answering, but to Healy. "DCDS."

"What?" Rune asked.

Healy said, "Deceased confirmed dead at scene."

Deceased.

The cop kept speaking to Healy as though Rune weren't there. She thought maybe Healy had introduced her to this somber man. She wasn't sure. She thought she'd heard a name but all she remembered was Homicide. "Looks like torture, strangulation, then mutilation. There was some dismemberment." He shook his head and finally showed some emotion. "What that goddamn business does to people. Porn… Like any other addiction. Keep having to go for more and more to get a high."

Then Homicide turned to Rune. "Could you tell us what you know, miss?"

A rambling explanation. She did her best and the man's narrow fingers wrote quickly in a small, dime-store notebook. But she stopped quite a bit and had to throw in a lot of "uh's" and "No, waits." She thought she knew the story of Nicole D'Orleans better than this. But a distraction kept intruding.

It was an image of Nicole. There was somedismemberment… She told him about her film, how she'd known Shelly, about the film company. Then about how Tommy had been in love with Shelly and she'd dumped him and moved to New York and how he'd been a demolition expert and had stolen explosives from the army-Healy had broken in here with details. And how he must have been so furious at Shelly for leaving him, and so crazy, that he had contrived the idea of the Sword of Jesus and the bombings to cover up his murder. He'd probably figured Shelly and Nicole were lovers and picked her to ritually murder-again from jealousy.

Rune finished the story and gave him a description of Tommy.

The detective's cheap pen danced in blotching ink over the paper. He took it all down, in sweeping handwriting, a man who didn't understand a thing about her documentary, about Nicole, about Shelly, about the movies they made. He wrote without a flicker of emotion on his thin, gray, inflexible face. He wrote down her answers, then looked around.

Homicide waved to a scrawny Hispanic-looking wreck of a man wearing a blue headband to keep his black curls at bay.

Healy asked, "ACU?"

"He was working the crowd. Didn't know we had a positive suspect. I'll send him back with a description."

Homicide nodded to Rune. He walked to the ACU man and they began talking, their heads bent toward the ground. Neither looked in the other's eyes as they spoke.

"He's a cop?" Rune asked, staring at him.

"He's anticrime unit. Undercover. Today's ACU color is blue-see his headband? They wear that so we know he's one of us. After a murder they go into the crowd and eavesdrop, ask questions. Now that we know the suspect's ID, though, he'll just show his shield and interview them."

"Yo, bus is coming through!" a voice shouted. The EMS ambulance eased forward. Healy stepped aside. Rune shouldered the Sony and taped the boxy orange-and-blue truck as it wound through the crowd, carrying Nicole's body to the morgue.

Healy walked with her to the corner. She leaned against an express mailbox and squeezed her eyes shut.

"We were talking together, Tommy and me. I was two feet away from him. As close as you and me… A man like that, a killer. And he seemed so normal."

Healy was silent, looking back at the revolving lights. Though he wasn't as calm as Homicide had been, not at all. He'd seen her, Nicole, and it shook him. It occurred to Rune that one of the advantages of bomb detail was that you dealt with machines and chemicals more than people.

In a soft voice Rune said, "I was supposed to be there tonight. He wanted me to come too."

"You?"

"He said he was making a film. A legitimate film. Christ, Sam, why did he do it? I just don't understand."

"Guy blows up a dozen people just to cover up killing his girlfriend, then slaughters somebody like that… I don't have any answers for what makes him tick." "When did he leave, do they think?" "There was no postmortem lividity. No rigor mortis. Probably twenty minutes, a half hour before we got here." "So he's still in town."

"Doubt it. People know him, people can place them together. My bet is he got a car and'll drive to some small airport, then grab a connecting flight to California. Hartford, Albany, White Plains."

"You've got to call them. Get a description-" "We can't lock up every airport in the Northeast, Rune. They've got a citywide out on him now but he'll probably make it out of the area. They'll get him when he gets home-where is it? Monterey? The MPs'll be after him too. And theft of government property and interstate flight'll bring in the FBI."

"Oh, Sam." She pressed her head against his chest. He held her, which made her feel good, but what made her feel even better was that they were standing in front of a half dozen of the guys he worked with and he was still hugging her, not glancing around or making it look like she was just an upset witness. He held her tight and she felt some of the horror shift away to him and she let it go. He knew what to do; he could dispose of it. That was his job.

They walked.

South, into the Theater District, then through the geometric shapes of cold neon in Times Square. Down Broadway. Past a wolf pack of four black kids wearing throwaways, with round heads and shaver-cut streaks in their hair, looking innocent and sour. Past businessmen and businesswomen in running shoes. Past hawkers, past a couple-German or Scandinavian tourists-dressed in nylon running suits, carrying Nikons. Their heads, covered with stringy blond hair, looked around them, their expressions asking, This is New York?

Past the billboards on which the fifty-foot models, reclining sexily, sold liquor and jeans and VCRs, past a porn theater that gave off the smell of Lysol (maybe Shelly or Nicole was performing on screen at that moment). There was no way of knowing what the movies were; the marquee promised only that there were three superhot hits showing.

"You know," Rune said, speaking her first words since they'd started to walk. Her voice snagged. "You know that Thirty-fourth Street used to be the big entertainment strip? All the theaters and burlesque shows. I'm talking turn of the century. A long time ago."

"I didn't know that."

"Times Square's pretty recent."

They walked past a big monument, a statue of a woman in wings and robes. She gazed down at pigeons and a dozen homeless people.

Who was she?

A Greek or Roman goddess?

Rune thought of Eurydice, then of Shelly. A captive in the Underworld. There was no Orpheus and his lyre nearby, though. The only music was from a scratchy rap song on a tinny boom box.

When they came to the Flatiron Building, they stopped.

Rune said, "I should go home."

"You want some company?"

She hesitated. "I don't need-"

"I didn't askneed. I askedwant."

Rune said, "Your house?"

"It's small, ugly. But homey."

"Tonight, I think I could go for homey."

"I've got to help with some of the paperwork-you want to meet me there? I'll give you the keys." He wrote down the address. She took the slip of paper and the keys.

"I oughta go pick up some things at my place."

"I shouldn't be any longer than an hour or so. You all right?"

Rune tried to think of something funny and flippant to say, something a tough lady newscaster would sling out. But she just shook her head and gave him an anemic smile. "No, I'm not."

He bent down quickly and kissed her. "You want a cab?"

"I walk, I feel better." He turned away. She said,

"Sam…"

He paused. But there was nothing at all she could think of to say.

In the houseboat Rune stacked up the tapes she'd shot- the rough footage forEpitaph for a Blue Movie Star-and set them on her shelf, but put the script for the narration in her bag. That was something she could ask Sam about. Tell him to pretend he was in the audience and read it to him.

But not tonight. In the morning.

That would have to wait till the morning. She glanced into her purse and saw the script-the one she'd stolen from Arthur Tucker's office. She picked it up, flipped through it. Hell, she'd forgotten all about it. And now that he wasn't a suspect she ought to get it back to him. Mail it anonymously. She tossed it on the table and walked into the bedroom, to her dresser. She packed a skirt, T-shirt, blouse, socks, underwear (no Disney characters, girl; go for the lacy, uncomfortable pair). She added her toothbrush and makeup and began turning out lights.

Rune paused at the living room window, looking out at the lights of the city.

Nicole…

Of the two-Nicole and Shelly-wasn't Nicole's the more tragic death? she wondered. Rune felt sorrier for her. Shelly, because she was smarter, more talented, an artist, was also the risk-taker. She could choose to walk right to the edge. Hell, she'd chosen to date Tommy. Nicole wouldn't appreciate the risks so much. She was sweet, and-despite her line of work-innocent. She'd do her nails, she'd fuck, she'd dream about opening the shoe store, dream about the advertising executive she could marry. She-

The smell.

Rune sensed it suddenly, though she understood in that instant that she had been aware of it for a long time, ever since she'd returned to the houseboat. It had a familiarity about it, but a scary one. Like the sweet-sick chemical scent that bothers you an instant before you remember it's the smell of a dentist's office.

Cleanser? No. Cologne? Maybe. Perfume.

Rune's thoughts began jumping, and she didn't like where they arrived.

Incense! Sandalwood.

The smell of Tommy Savorne's apartment.

She thought: Run, or get the tear gas?

Rune turned fast toward the front door.

But Tommy got there first, and leaned up against it. He was smiling when he locked the latch.