Manhattan Is My Beat

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Head bowed at the altar, Rune was motionless. Kneeling. She'd thought she could remember all the words. But they wouldn't come to her and all she could do was repeat over and over again, in a mumbling whisper, "We yield thee praise and thanksgiving for our deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith we were compassed."

After a moment she stood and walked slowly up the aisle toward the back of the sanctuary.

Still whispering, she said to the man wearing black minister's robes, "This is a totally radical church, Reverend."

"Thank you, Miss Kelly."

At the door, she turned and curtsied awkwardly toward the altar. The minister of St. Xavier's glanced at her curiously. Maybe curtsying-which Rune had just seen a character do in some old Mafia movie-was only for Catholics. But so what? she decided. Stephanie was right about one thing: short of devil worship and animal sacrifices, ministers and priests probably aren't all that sensitive about technicalities.

They left the sanctuary.

"Your grandfather didn't mention any children when he stayed with us in our residence. He said his only relative was his sister but she'd died a few years ago."

"Really?" she asked.

"But then," the minister continued, "he didn't talk much about himself. He was a bit mysterious in some ways."

Mysterious…

"Yep," she said after a moment. "That was Grandfather. We used to say that about him. 'Wasn't Grandfather quiet.' All of us would say it."

"All of you? I thought you said there were just two of you. You and your sister."

"Oh, well, I mean all the kids in the neighborhood. He was like a grandfather to them too."

Watch it, Rune told herself. It's a minister you're lying to. And a minister with a good memory.

She followed the man through the rectory building. Filled with dark wood, wrought iron. The small yellow lights added a lot of churchy atmosphere to the place, though maybe they used small-wattage bulbs just to save money. It was very… well, religious here. Rune tried to remember a good movie she'd seen about religion and couldn't think of one. They tended not to have happy endings.

They walked into a large dormitory, newer than the church, though the architecture was the same-stained glass, arches, flowery carvings. She looked around. It was some kind of residence hall for senior citizens. Rune glanced into a room as they passed. Two beds, yellow walls, mismatched dressers. Lots of pictures on the walls. Homier than you'd think. There were two elderly men inside the room. As she paused, looking in, one of the men stood up and said, " 'I am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less, and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.' "

"I'll say you're not in perfect mind," his friend chided. "You've got it all wrong."

"Oh, you think you can do better?"

"Listen to this."

His voice faded as Rune and the minister continued down the corridor.

"How long was Grandfather here?" Rune asked.

"Only four, five weeks. He needed a place to stay until he found an apartment. A friend sent him here."

"Raoul Elliott?" Rune's heart thudded harder.

"Yes. You know Mr. Elliott?"

"We've met once."

So, Elliott had been confused. He hadn't sent Mr. Kelly to the Florence Hotel but here-to the church. Maybe Mr. Kelly was staying in the Florence when he visited the screenwriter and the poor man's mind just confused them.

"Wonderful man," the priest continued. "Oh, he's been very generous to us here at the church. And not only materially… He served on our board too. Until he got sick. A shame what's happened to him, isn't it? That Alzheimer's." The minister shook his head then continued. "But we have so few rooms, Robert didn't want to monopolize one-he wanted to make it available for somebody less fortunate. So he moved into the Hotel Florence for a while. He left the suitcase here, said he'd pick it up when he moved into a safer place. He was worried about break-ins. He said the bag was too important to risk getting stolen."

Rune nodded nonchalantly. Thinking: One million dollars.

She followed him to a storage room. The minister unlocked the door with keys on a janitor's self-winding coil. Rune asked, "Did Grandfather spend much time in the church itself?"

The minister disappeared into the storage room. Rune heard the sound of boxes sliding along the floor. He called, "No. Not much."

"How about the grounds? The cemetery? Did he spend much time there?"

"The cemetery? I don't know. He might have."

Rune was thinking of the scene in Manhattan Is My Beat where the cop, his life ruined, was lying in his prison cell, dreaming about reclaiming his stolen million dollars, buried in a cemetery. She remembered the close-up of the actor's eyes as he wakened and realized that it had just been a dream-the blackness of the dirt he'd been digging up with his fingers becoming the shadows of the bars across his hands as he woke.

The minister emerged with a suitcase. He set it on the floor. "Here you go."

Rune asked. "You want me to sign a receipt or anything?"

"I don't think that'll be necessary, no."

Rune picked it up. It was as heavy as an old leather suitcase containing a million dollars ought to be. She listed against the weight. The minister smiled and took the case from her. He lifted it easily and motioned her toward the side door. She walked ahead of him.

He said, "Your grandfather told me to be careful with this. He said it had his whole life in it."

Rune glanced at the suitcase. Her palms were moist. "Funny what people consider their whole life, isn't it?"

"I feel sorry for people who can carry their homes around with them. That's one of the reasons the church has this residence home. You really feel God at work here."

They walked to his small office. He bent over the cluttered desk and sorted through a thick stack of envelopes. He said. "I wished Robert had stayed longer. I liked him a lot. But then, he was independent. He wanted to live on his own."

Rune decided that she was going to give the church some money. Fifty thousand, she decided. Then, on a whim, upped the ante to a hundred Gs.

He handed her a thick envelope addressed to "Mr. Bobby Kelly."

"Oh, I forgot to mention… this came for him care of the church a day or so ago. Before I got around to forwarding it, I heard that he'd been killed."

Rune stuffed it under her arm.

Outside, he set the suitcase on the sidewalk for her. "Again, my sympathies to your family. If there's anything I can do for you, please call me."

"Thank you, Reverend," she said. Thinking: You just earned yourself two hundred thousand.

Little Red Hen…

Rune picked up the suitcase, walked to the car.

Richard eyed the bag curiously. She handed it to him, then patted the hood of his Dodge. He lifted the bag and rested it on the car. They were on a quiet side street but heavy traffic swept past at the corner. Superstitiously they both refused to look at the scuffed leather bag. They gazed at the single-story shops-a rug dealer, a hardware store, a pizza place, a deli. The trees. The traffic. The sky.

Neither touched the suitcase, neither said anything.

Like knights who think they've found the Grail and aren't sure they want to.

Because it would mean the end of their quest.

The end of the story. Time to close the book, to go to bed and wake up for work the next morning.

Richard broke the silence. "I didn't even think there'd be a suitcase."

Rune stared at the patterns of the stains on the leather. The elastic bands from a dozen old airline claim checks looped through the handles. "I had some moments myself," she admitted. She touched the latches. Then stepped back. "I can't do it."

Richard took over. "It's probably locked." He pressed the buttons. They clicked open.

"Wheel… of… Fortune," Rune said.

Richard lifted the lid.

Magazines.

The Holy Grail was magazines and newspapers.

All from the 1940s. Time, Newsweek, Collier's. Rune grabbed several, shuffled through them. No bills fluttered out.

"A million ain't going to be hidden inside of Time," Richard pointed out.

"His whole life?" Rune whispered. "Mr. Kelly told the minister his whole life was in here." She dug to the bottom. "Maybe he put the money into shares of Standard Oil or something. Maybe there's a stock certificate."

But, no, all the suitcase contained was newspapers and magazines.

When she'd gone over every inch of it, pulled up the cloth lining, felt along the moldy seams, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. "Why?" she mused. "What'd he keep these for?"

Richard was flipping through several of them. He was frowning. "Weird. They're all from about the same time. June 1947."

The laughter startled her, it was so abrupt. She looked at Richard, who was shaking his head.

"What?"

He couldn't stop laughing.

"What is it?"

Finally he caught his breath. His eyes were squinting as he read a thumbed-down page. "Oh, Rune… Oh, no…"

She grabbed the magazine. An article was circled in blue ink. She read the paragraph Richard pointed at.

Excellent in his role is young Robert Kelly, hailing from the Midwest, who had no intention of acting in films until director Hal Reinhart spotted him in a crowd and offered him a part. Playing Dana Mitchell's younger brother, who tries unsuccessfully to talk the tormented cop into turning in the ill-gotten loot, Kelly displays striking talent for a man whose only experience onstage has been a handful of USO shows during the War. Moviegoers will be watching this young man carefully to see if he will be the next member of the great Hollywood dream: the unknown catapulted to stardom.

They looked through the rest of the magazines. In one, Manhattan Is My Beat was reviewed and, in each, Robert Kelly was mentioned at least several times. Most gave him kind reviews and forecast a long career for him. Rune, too, laughed. She closed the suitcase and leaned against the car. "So that's what he meant by his whole life. He told me the movie was the high point of his life. He must never have gotten any other parts."

Stuffed in one of the magazines was a copy of a letter written to Mr. Kelly from the Screen Actors Guild. It was dated five years before.

She read it out loud. " 'Dear Mr. Kelly: Thank you for your letter of last month. As a contract player, you would indeed be entitled to residual payments for your performance in the film Manhattan Is My Beat. However, we understand from the studio, which is the current owner of the copyright to the film, that there are no plans for its release on videotape at this time. If and when the film is released, you will be entitled to your residuals as per the contract.'"

Rune put the letter back. "When he told me he was going to be rich-when his ship came in-that's what he meant. It had nothing to do with the bank robbery money."

"Poor guy," Richard said. "He'd probably be getting a check for a couple hundred bucks." He looked up and pointed behind her. "Look."

The sign on the dormitory read St. Xavier's home for actors and actresses. "That's what he was doing here. It had nothing to do with the money. Kelly just needed a place to stay."

Richard pitched the suitcase into the backseat. "What do you want to do with them?"

She shrugged. "I'll give them to Amanda. I think they'd mean something to her. I'll make a copy of the best review for me. Put it up on my wall."

They climbed into the car. Richard said, "It would have corrupted you, you know."

"What?"

"The money. Just like the cop in Manhattan Is My Beat. You know the expression, Tower tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely'?"

Of course I've never heard of it, she thought. But told him, "Oh, sure. Wasn't that another one of Stallone's?"

He looked at her blankly for a moment then said, "Well, translated to capitalistic terms, the same truth holds. The absoluteness of that much money would have affected your core values."

Mr. Weird was back-though this time in Gap camouflage.

Rune thought about it for a minute. "No way. Aladdin didn't get corrupted."

"The guy with the lamp? You trying to make a rational argument by citing a fairy tale?"

She said, "Yeah, I am." "Well, what about Aladdin?"

"He wished for wealth and a beautiful princess to be his bride, and the genie gave him all that. But people don't know the end of the story. Eventually he became the sultan's heir and finally got to be sultan himself." "And it was Watergate. He got turned into a camel." "Nope. He was a popular and fair leader. Oh, and radically rich."

"So fairy tales may not always have happy endings," he said like a professor, "but sometimes they do." "Just like life."

Richard seemed to be trying to think about arguing but couldn't come up with anything. He shrugged. "Just like life," he conceded.

As they drove through the streets of Brooklyn, Rune slouched in the seat, put her feet on the dash. "So thatfs why he rented the film so often. It was his big moment of glory."

"That's pretty bizarre," Richard said. "I don't think so," she told him. "A lot of people don't even have a big moment. And if they do, it probably doesn't get put out on video. I'll tell you-if I got a part in a movie, I'd dupe a freeze-frame of me and put it up on my wall."

He punched her playfully on the arm. "What?"

"Well, you saw the film, what, ten times? Didn't you see his name on the credits?"

"He had just a bit part. He wasn't in the above-the-title credits." "The what?"

"That's what they call the opening credits. And the copy we watched was the bootleg. I didn't bother to copy the cast credits at the end when I made it."

"Speaking of names, are you ever going to tell me your real name?"

"Ludmilla."

"You're kidding."

Rune didn't say anything.

"You are kidding," he said warily.

"I'm just trying to think up a good name for somebody who'd do window displays in SoHo. I think Yvonne would be good. What do you think?"

"It's as good as anything."

She looked at the bulky envelope the minister had given her. The return address was the Bon Aire Nursing Home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.

"What's that?"

"Something Mr. Elliott sent to Mr. Kelly at the church."

She opened the envelope. Inside was a letter taped to another thick envelope, on which was printed in old, uneven type: Manhattan Is My Beat, Draft Script, 5/6/46.

"Oh, look. A souvenir!"

Rune read the letter out loud. " 'Dear Mr. Kelly. You don't remember me, I'm sure. I'm the nurse on the floor where Mr. Raoul Elliott's room is. He asked me to write to you and asked if you could forward the package I'm enclosing here to the young girl who came to visit him the other day. He was a little confused as to who she was-maybe she is your daughter or probably your granddaughter-but if you could forward it, we'd be most appreciative.

" 'Mr. Elliot has mentioned several times how nice it was for her to come visit and talk about movies, and I can tell you her visit had a very good effect on him. He put the flower she brought him by his bedside and a couple times he even remembered who gave it to him, which is pretty good for him. Yesterday he got this from his storage locker and asked me to send it to her. Thank her for making him happy. All best wishes, Joan Gilford, R.N.' "

Richard, driving through commercial Brooklyn, said, "What a great old guy. That was sweet."

Rune said, "I think I'm going to cry."

She tore open the envelope.

Richard stopped for a red light. "You know, maybe you can sell it. I heard that an original draft of somebody's play-Noel Coward, I think-went for four or five thousand at Sotheby's. What do you think this one'd be worth?"

The light changed and the car pulled forward. Rune didn't answer right away but after a moment said, "So far it's up to two hundred and thirty thousand."

"What?" he asked, smiling uncertainly.

"And counting."

Richard glanced over at Rune then skidded the car to a stop.

In Rune's lap were bundles of money. Stacks of wrapped bills. They were larger than modern Federal Reserve notes. The ink was darker, the seals on the front were in midnight-blue ink. The paper wrappers around the stacks were stenciled with $10,000 in a scripty old-time typeface. Also printed on them was Union Bank of New York.

"Thirty-three, thirty-four… Let's see. Thirty-eight. Times ten thousand is three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Is that right? I'm so bad with math."

"Christ," Richard whispered.

Cars honked behind them. He glanced in the rear-view mirror, then pulled to the curb, parked in front of a Carvel ice cream store.

"I don't understand… what…?"

Rune didn't answer. She ran her hand over the money, replaying the great scene in Manhattan Is My Beat where Dana Mitchell is inside the bank and opens the suitcase of money-the camera cutting between his face and the stacks of bills, which had been lit to glow like a hoard of jewels.

"Raoul Elliott," she answered. "When he was researching the film he must have found where the loot was hidden. Maybe it was buried there…" She nodded back toward the church. "So he donated a bunch back to the church and they built the home for actors. The minister said he'd been very generous to them. Raoul kept the rest and retired."

Two tough-looking kids in T-shirts and jeans walked by and glanced in the car. Richard looked at them then reached over Rune, locked the door, rolled up the windows.

"Hey," she protested, "what're you doing? It's hot out."

"You're in the middle of Brooklyn with four hundred thousand dollars in your lap and you're just going to sit there?"

"No, as a matter of fact"-she nodded toward the Carvel store-"I was going to get an ice cream cone. You want one?"

Richard sighed. "How 'bout if we get a safe deposit box?"

"But we're right here."

"A bank first?" he asked. "Please?"

She ran her hand over the money again. Picked up one bundle. It was heavy. "After, can we get an ice cream?"

"Tons of ice cream. Sprinkles too, you want."

"Yeah, I want."

He started the car. Rune leaned back in the seat. She was laughing. Looking at him, coy and sly.

He said, "You're looking full of the devil. What's so funny?"

"You know the story of the Little Red Hen?"

"No, I don't. How 'bout if you tell it to me?" Richard turned the old car onto the Brooklyn Bridge and pointed the hood toward the turrets and battlements of Manhattan, fiery in the afternoon sun. Rune said, "It goes like this…"