Manhattan Is My Beat

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Florence Hotel, near the Hudson River, was in Hell's Kitchen, west of Midtown.

Rune knew her New York history. At one point this had been one of the most dangerous areas in the city, the home of the Gophers and the Hudson Dusters, murderous gangs that made the Mafia look tame. Most of the dangerous elements had been urban-renewed away when the tunnel to New Jersey was built. But the dregs of some Irish and Latino gangs remained. It was, in short, not a neighborhood to be hanging out in alone at night.

Thanks tons, Richard, she thought.

He'd left her there after dropping her off in front of the Florence, a four-story flophouse with a scarred and peeling facade. She'd started to ask him again what the matter was but then some kind of radar kicked in and she decided it would be a bad move.

"Can't really hang around," he'd told her. "You'll be okav?"

"I'll be fine. Wonder Woman. That's me."

"Gotta meet some people tonight. Otherwise, I'd stay."

She hadn't asked who. Been dying to. But hadn't.

"No, that's fine. You go on."

"You sure?"

"Go on."

Some people…

She watched his car drive away. He gave her a formal wave. She hesitated only a moment before she stepped carefully around the bum who slept in front of the beer-can-filled flower box under the narrow front window. She pushed open the lobby door and stepped inside. The smells were of damp wallpaper, disinfectant, some vague, unpleasant animal scents. The sort of place that made you want to hold your breath.

The clerk looked up at her from behind a Plexiglas security barrier that distorted his features. A thin man, hair slicked back, wearing a dress shirt and rust-colored corduroy pants. The shirt had dark stains, the pants, light.

"Yeah?" he called.

"I'm a social worker from Brooklyn?" Rune said.

"You asking me?"

"I'm telling you who I am."

"Yeah, a social worker."

"I'm trying to find some information about a patient of mine, a man who stayed here for a month or so."

"Don't you call 'em clients?"

"What?"

"We get social workers here all the time. They don't have patients. They have clients."

"One of my clients," she corrected herself.

"You got a license?"

"A license? A driver's license? Look, I'm older than I-"

"No, a social work license."

A license?

"Oh, that. See, I was mugged last week when I was on assignment. In Bedford Stuyvesant. Visiting a client. They took my purse-my other purse, my good purse- and that had my license in it. I've applied for a new one but you know how long it takes to get a replacement?"

"Tell me."

"Worse than a passport. I'm talking weeks."

The man was grinning. "Where'd you go to social work school?"

"Harvard."

"No shit." The smile didn't leave his face. "If there's nothing else, I'm pretty busy." He picked up a National Geographic and flipped it open.

"Look, I have my job to do. I have to find out about this man. Robert Kelly."

The clerk glanced up from his magazine. He didn't say anything. But Rune, even through the scuffed plastic, could see caution in his eyes.

She continued. "I know he stayed here for a while. I think somebody named Raoul Elliott recommended that he come here."

"Raoul? Nobody's named Raoul."

Summoning patience, Rune asked, "Do you remember Mr. Kelly?"

He shrugged.

She continued. "Did he check anything here? A suitcase? Maybe a package in the safe?"

"Safe? We look like the kinda hotel's gotta safe?"

"It's important."

Again, the man didn't respond. Suddenly Rune understood. She'd seen enough movies. She lifted her purse slowly and opened it, reached in and took out five dollars. She slid it seductively toward him. Just like an actor in a movie she'd seen a month or so ago. Harrison Ford, she thought. Or Michael Douglas.

That actor'd gotten results; she got a laugh.

Rune gave the clerk another ten.

"Look, kid. The going rate's fifty for information. That's the way it is all over the city. It's like a union."

Fifty? Shit.

She handed him a twenty. "That's all 1 got."

He took the money. "I don't know nothing-"

"You bastard! I want my money back."

"-except one thing. About your client Kelly. This priest or minister, Father so-and-so, called, I don't know, a couple days ago. He said Kelly'd dropped off a suitcase for safekeeping. He couldn't get him at his apartment and had this as his only other number. This priest figured I might know where Kelly was. He didn't know what to do with the suitcase."

Yes! Rune thought. Remembering the scene in Manhattan Is My Beat where Roy buried the money in a cemetery next to a church!

"Excellent, that's great! You know where the church was? You have any idea?"

"I didn't write nothing down. But I think he said he was in Brooklyn."

"Brooklyn!" Rune's hands were up against the grimy Plexiglas. She leaned forward, bouncing on her toes. "This's awesome!" _s

The man slipped her money into his pocket. "Well, happy day." He opened the magazine again and began reading an article about penguins.

Outside, she found a pay phone and called Amanda LeClerc.

"Amanda, it's Rune. How are you?"

"Been better. Missing him, you know? Robert… Only knew him for a little while but I miss him more than some people I knew for years and years. I was thinking about it. And you know what I thought?"

"What's that?"

"That maybe because we weren't so young no more we got to be more closer faster. Sort of like there wasn't a lot of time ahead of us."

"I miss him too, Amanda," Rune said.

"Haven't heard nothing about Mr. Symington."

"He hasn't been back?"

"No. Nobody's seen him. I was asking around."

"Well, I've got good news." She told her about the church and the suitcase.

The woman didn't answer for a moment. "Rune, you really thinking there maybe's some money? They keep coming after me for the rent. I'm trying to find a job. But it's tough. Nobody hires old ladies like me."

"I think we're on the right track."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Start calling churches in Brooklyn. See if Mr. Kelly left a suitcase there. You can go to the library and get a Brooklyn phone book. We've got one at the video store. I'll take A through L. You take M through Z."

"Z? Do any churches start with a Z?"

"I don't know. St. Zabar's?"

"Okay. I'ma start calling first thing in the morning."

Rune hung up. She looked around her. The sun was down now and in this part of the city the bleakness was wrenching. But what she felt was only partly the sorrow of the landscape; the rest was fear. She was vulnerable. Low buildings-a lot of them burned-out or in various stages of demolition-a few auto repair shops, an abandoned diner, a couple of parked cars. Nobody on the street who'd help her if she was attacked. A few kids in gang colors, sitting on steps, sharing a bottle of Colt.45 or a crack pipe. A hooker, a tall black woman on nose-bleed-high heels, leaned against a chain-link fence, arms crossed. Some bums shoring on grates or in doorways.

She felt very disoriented. She was back in Manhattan but she still felt that something separated her from her element, from the Side.

Starting down the street, eyes on the filthy pavement, keeping close to the curb-away from the alleys and the buildings, where muggers and rapists lurk.

Thinking back to Lord of the Rings. Thinking how quests always start off in springtime, with nice weather, good friends around to see you off, hearty food and drink in your pack. But they end up in Mordor-the bleakest of kingdoms, a place full of fire and death and pain.

It seemed to her that someone was following, though when she looked back she could see nothing but shadows.

She worked her way to Midtown and caught a subway. An hour later she was back home, in the loft. No note from Richard. And Sandra was out-a date on Sunday? Totally unfair! Nobody ever had a date on Sunday. Hell. She slipped Manhattan Is My Beat in the VCR and started it once more. The movie was halfway through before she realized that she'd been reciting the dialogue along, with the actors. She'd memorized it perfectly.

Damn scary, she thought. But kept the film running till its end.

Haarte was angry.

It was Monday morning and he was sitting in his town house. Zane had just called and told him that the one witness, Susan Edelman, was about to be released from the hospital and that the other girl, the one with the weird name, was investigating the case harder than the NYPD.

Angry.

Which was a difficult emotion in this business. Haarte wasn't allowed to be angry when he'd been a cop. There was nothing he could do with his anger as a soldier and mercenary. And now-as a professional killer-he found anger to be a liability. A serious risk.

But he was mad. Oh, he was furious.

He was in his town house. Thinking about how messy this fucking job had become. Killing a man ought to be simplicity itself. He and Zane had gotten drunk a month ago, sitting in the bar in the Plaza hotel. They'd both grown maudlin and philosophical. Their job, they decided, was better than most because it was simple. And pure. As they poured down Lagavulin Scotch, Haarte had derided advertising execs and lawyers and salesmen. "They've got complicated, bullshit lives."

Zane had countered, "But that's reality. And reality's complicated."

And he'd answered, "If that's reality you can have it. I want simplicity."

What he meant was that there was a weird kind of ethics at work here. Haarte really believed this. Someone paid him money and he did the job. Or he couldn't do it. In which case he gave the money back or he tried again. Simplicity. Either someone was dead or not.

But this hit wasn't simple anymore. There were too many loose ends. Too many questions. Too many directions it might take. He was at risk, Zane was at risk. And of course the people who'd hired them were at risk too.

The man in St. Louis didn't know exactly what was going on but if he found out he'd be enraged.

And that made Haarte all the angrier.

He wanted to do something. Yet he couldn't decide what. There was the witness in the hospital… There was the weird girl, the one in the video store… He needed to snip some of those loose ends. But, as he sipped his morning espresso, he couldn't decide exactly how to handle it. There are many ways to stop people who're a risk to you. You can kill them, of course. Which is the most efficient way in some cases. And sometimes killing witnesses and meddlers makes the case so much more difficult to investigate that the police put the matter low on their list of priorities. But sometimes killing people does the opposite. It gets the press involved. It galvanizes cops to work even harder.

Killing's one way. But you can also hurt people. Scare them. It doesn't take much physical pain at all to put somebody out of commission for a long, long time. Lose a limb or your eyesight… Often they get the message and develop amnesia about what they saw or what they know. And the cops can't even get you for murder.

You can also hurt or kill someone close to the person you want to stop, their friends or lovers. This works very well, he'd found.

What to do?

Haarte stood up and stretched. He looked at his expensive watch. He walked into his kitchen to make another cup of espresso. The thick coffee made Zane agitated. But Haarte found it calmed him, cleared his head.

Sipping the powerful brew.

Thinking: What was supposed to be simple had become complicated.

Thinking: Time to do something about that.

There she was, up ahead.

Haarte had waited for her there, an alley, for a half hour.

Walking down the street in her own little world.

He wondered about her. Haarte often wondered about the people he killed. And he wondered what there was about him that could study people carefully and learn about them for the sole purpose of ending their lives. This fact or that fact, which somebody might find interesting or cute or charming, could in fact be the linchpin of the entire job. A simple fact. Shopping at this store, driving this route to work, fucking this secretary, fishing in this lake.

A half-block away she paused and looked in a storefront window. Clothes. Did women always stop and look at clothes? Haarte himself was a good dresser and liked clothes. But when he went shopping it was because a suit had worn out or a shirt had ripped, not because he wanted to amuse himself by looking at a bunch of cloth hanging on racks in a stuffy store.

But this was a fact about her that he noted. She liked to shop-window-shop at least-and it was going to work out for the best. Because farther up the street, a block away from the store she was examining, he noticed a construction site.

He crossed the street and jogged past her. She didn't notice him. He looked over the site. The contractor had rigged a scaffolding around a five-story building that was about to be demolished. There were workmen in the building but they were on the other block and couldn't even see this street. Haarte walked underneath the scaffold and stepped into the open doorway. He looked at the jungle of wires and beams inside the chill, open area of what had been the lobby. The floor was littered with glass, conduit, nails, beer cans.

Not great but it would do.

He glanced up the street and saw the girl disappear into the clothing store.

Good.

He pulled latex gloves out of his pocket and found a piece of rope, cut a 20-foot length with the razor knife he always kept with him. Then he went to work with the rope and several lengths of pipe. Five minutes later, he was finished. He returned to the entryway of the building and hid in the shadows.

Long to wait? he wondered.

But, no, it turned out. Only four minutes.

Strolling down the street, happy with her new purchase, whatever it was, the girl was paying no attention to anything except the spring morning as she strolled along the sidewalk.

Twenty feet away, fifteen, ten…

She started under the scaffolding and when she was directly opposite him he said, "Oh, hey, miss!"

She stopped, gasped in fright. Took a deep breath. "Like, you scared me," she said angrily.

"Just wanted to say. Be careful where you're walking. It's dangerous 'round here."

He said nothing else. She squinted, wondering if she'd seen him before. Then she looked from his face to the rope he held in his hand. Her eyes followed the rope out the doorway along the sidewalk. To the Lally column she stood beside.

And she realized what was about to happen. "No! Please!"

But he did. Haarte yanked the rope hard, pulling the column out from underneath the first layer of scaffolding. He'd loosened the other columns and removed the wood blocks from under them. The one that the rope was tied to was the only column supporting the tons of steel and two-by-eights that rose for twenty feet above the girl.

As she cried in fear her hands went up, fingers splayed. But it was just an automatic gesture, pure animal reflex-as if she could ward off the terrible weight that now came crashing down on her. The commotion was so loud that Haarte never even heard her scream as the wood and metal-like huge spears-tumbled over her, sending huge clouds of dust into the air.

In ten seconds, the settling was over. Haarte ran to the column and undid the rope. He tossed it into a Dumpster. Then he pulled off the latex gloves and left the construction site, careful to avoid the spreading pool of blood migrating outward from the mound of debris in the center of the sidewalk.

The man stood at the top of the stairs, turning three hundred sixty degrees around the girl's loft.

Any notes? Any diaries? Any witnesses?

He was wearing a jacket with a name stitched on it, Hank. Below the name he himself had stenciled Dept. of Public Works. Meter Reading Service.

The Meter Man turned back to the loft. Walked along the bookshelves, pulled out several books, and flipped through them.

There had to be something here. She'd looked like a scavenger. The sort who doesn't throw anything away. And, fuck, it looked like she hadn't.

He got to work: Looking through all the books, papers, all the shit. Stuffed animals, scraps of notes, diaries… Shit, she wasn't the least bit organized. This was gonna take forever. His urge was to fling everything around the room, rip open the suitcases, cut open mattresses. But he didn't. He worked slowly, methodically. This was against his nature. If you're in a hurry, do it slowly. Somebody told him that and he always remembered it. One of the guys he worked for, a guy now dead-dead not because he got careless but dead because they were in a business where you sometimes got dead and that was all there was to it.

You're in a hurry, do it slowly.

Carefully looking through the cushions, boxes, bookcases.

A box stuffed into the futon was labeled magic crystals. Inside were pieces of quartz. "Magic." He whispered the word as if he'd never said it before, as if it were Japanese.

Jesus. I'm in outer fucking space.

He found a cassette labeled Manhattan Is My Beat and picked it up, set it down.

Then: footsteps.

Shit. Who the hell was this?

Giggling. A woman's voice: "Not here, come on. No, wait!"

He reached into his pocket and wrapped his hand around his pistol.

A twentyish woman, in a white bra and dress bunched around her waist, stopped at the top of the stairs. She looked at him. He looked at her tits.

"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded. Pulling the cloth halfheartedly up to her chest.

"Who're you?" he asked.

The way he asked it she said, "Sandra," immediately.

"You're her roommate?"

"Rune? Yeah, I guess."

He laughed. "You guess? How long you known her?"

"Not, you know, long."

– He took in this information carefully, noted her body language. If she was dangerous, innocent. If she'd ever killed anyone. "How long is 'you know long'?"

"Huh?"

"How the fuck long've you known her?"

"A couple of months is all. What the hell're you doing here?"

A man, late twenties, blond, jockish, came up the stairs. He squinted, then stepped up beside Sandra.

The Meter Man ignored him.

She said, "Like, what're you doing here?"

He finished looking through the bookcase. Jesus, he didn't want to have to flip through every book. There must've been five hundred of them.

"Hey," the blond man called, "the lady asked you a question."

Sounded like a line from a really bad movie. The Meter Man loved movies. He lived alone and spent every Saturday afternoon at the Quadriplex near him.

He squinted. "What was it? The question?"

"What're you doing here?" she asked uneasily.

He pointed to his chest. "I read meters."

"You can't just come in here," the young man said. Sandra tried to shush him-not concerned so much about the words themselves as the attitude. But the boy waved her off. "You can't enter without permission. It's trespassing. That's actionable."

"Oh. Actionable. What's that mean?"

"That she can sue your ass."

"Oh. Actionable. Well, we had reports of a leak."

"Yeah, what leak?" Sandra asked. "Who reported it?"

The Meter Man grinned at her, looked at her chest again. Nice tits. And she wasn't ugly. Just needed some color and to get rid of that punky makeup. And why a white bra like old ladies wear? He shrugged. "I dunno. Somebody downstairs complained."

"Well, I don't see a leak," she said. "So why don't you leave?"

"You haven't had any water damage lately?"

"Why's a meter reader interested in repairs and leaks?" From Sandra's horny companion.

The Meter Man glanced out the window. It really was one fucking incredible view. He looked back. "When there's a leak you can tell by looking at the meter. That makes sense, don'tcha think?"

"Were you looking through Rune's stuff?"

"Naw, I was looking for the meter."

Sandra said, "Well, it's not up here. So why don't you leave?"

"Why don't you say please?"

The blond jock did it just like Redford or Steve McQueen or Stallone would've. He stepped in front of Sandra. Crossed his arms in his Polo shirt and said, "The lady wants you to leave."

Professional or not? The meter man debated. That side gave in, the way it usually did. He said, "If she's a lady why's she fucking an asshole like you?"

The blond smiled, shaking his head, stepping forward. Tensing the muscles that came from the magic of Nautilus machines. "You're outa here."

It turned out not to be that much fun and the Meter Man decided it hadn't been worth the unprofessional part. Oh, mixing it up with a guy who knew what he was doing… that would've been one thing. Going a few rounds. Really getting a chance to trade knuckles. But this fucking yuppie… Christ.

They did a little scuffling, a little push-pull. Saying that stuff you said in street fights "Why, you motherfucker…" That sort of thing.

Then the Meter Man got bored and decided he couldn't risk being there any longer, and who knew who. this pair had called. He broke free and got Blondie once in the solar plexus, then once in the jaw.

Zap, that was it. Two silent punches. The guy went to his knees. More nauseated than hurt, which is what gut punches do. Probably the first fight the guy had been in ever.

Shit, he's going to-

The guy puked all over the floor.

"Jesus, Andy," Sandra said. "That's gross."

Meter Man helped Andy to his feet. Eased him down on the bed.

Okay, enough fun, he thought. Time to get professional again. He said to Sandra, "Here's the deal-I'm from a collection agency. Your friend owes a couple thousand on her credit card and she's been dodging us for a year. We're tired of it."

"That sounds like Rune, sure. Look, I don't know where she is. I haven't heard-"

He held up his hand. "You fucking tell anybody you saw me here, I'll do the same thing to you." He nodded at the young man, who lay on his back, moaning, his arm over his eyes.

Sandra shook her head. "I won't say anything."

As he walked out, Sandra said, "You fight good." She let the dress slip, revealing her breasts again. The Meter Man tugged the dress back up, smiled, said, "Tell your boyfriend he should always keep his left up. He's a defense kinda guy."