Manhattan Is My Beat

  "To Ohio."

  "No way. I've got an audition next week."

  "Stephanie ..."

  "I'll get you a couple of hundred. I'll stop at the bank. Where'll you be?"

  "How 'bout Union Square Park? The subway entrance, southeast side."

  "Okay. Good. A half hour."

  "Is it safe?" Stephanie asked cautiously.

  "Pretty safe."

  A pause. "I don't want to get beat up or anything. I bruise real easy. And I can't be bruised for my audition."

  As she stepped into the street, Rune heard the man's voice right beside her.

  "You're a hard person to find."

  Panicked, Rune spun around.

  Richard was leaning on a parking meter. The yuppie in him had been exorcized; Mr. Downtown was back. He wore boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt. He also wore a gold hoop in his ear. She noticed that it was a clip-on. He looked tired.

  "You have," he continued, "as FDR said, a passion for anonymity. I called you at the store a couple of times. I was worried about you."

  "I haven't been in for a while."

  "There was this party last night. I thought you might want to go."

  "You didn't ask ... what's her name? Cathy the Amazon?"

  "Karen." He held on to the parking meter and spiraled around it slowly. "We've only had dinner that once. Don't worry about her. We're not going out."

  "That's your business. I don't care."

  "Don't act so possessive."

  "How can I be acting possessive if I tell you I don't care what you do with Cathy/Karen?"

  "What's wrong?" He was frowning. Following her eyes to the short, dark-complected man with curly hair standing two doors away. His back was to them.

  Rune inhaled with a frightened hiss. The man turned and walked past them. It wasn't Pretty Boy.

  She turned back to Richard, trying to focus on him, though what she was seeing was the stupid grin of the plaster statue of Dopey or Sneezy as it disintegrated under the shotgun blast. The gun had been astonishingly loud. Sounded more like a bomb going off.

  Richard took her by the shoulders. "Rune, aren't you listening to me? What's wrong?"

  She backed away, eyes narrowing slowly. "Leave me alone."

  "What?"

  "Stay away from me. Do you want to get hurt? I'm poison. Stay away."

  "What are you talking about?" He reached out and took her hand.

  "No, no!" she shouted. The tears started. She hesitated, then hugged him. "Get away from me! Forget about me! Forget you ever met me!"

  She turned and ran through the crowds of Greenwich Village toward Union Square.

  Waiting under the art-deco steel entrance to the subway, Rune slouched against the cool tile.

  She absently watched a crane, a lopsided T-shaped structure rising above an enormous new housing project on Union Square. It's just a crane, she told herself. That's all it was. Not a tool of the gods, not a huge skeleton of a magic animal. What she saw was just a construction crane. Moving slowly, under the control of a faceless union worker, lifting steel reinforcing rods for workmen in dusty jeans and jackets to install.

  Magic ... hell.

  She thought again about calling Manelli or Dixon.

  But why should they believe her? There was probably an all-points bulletin out on her already, just like there'd been for Roy the cop after he'd stolen the loot in Manhattan Is My Beat. At least she'd had the foresight to get rid of some of the evidence: When she'd stopped by her loft to pick up the check, she'd realized she still had Spinello's accordion envelope and thrown it into the trash. If the cops found her with that, it'd be a sure conviction.

  No, she'd leave town, leave the Side, leave the Magic Kingdom. Go back home. Get a job. Go to school.

  Well, it was damn well about time.

  Time to grow up. Forget quests ...

  She saw Stephanie, her reddish hair glowing in the afternoon sun as she walked through the park. They waved at each other. It seemed ridiculously innocent, Rune thought, as if they were girlfriends meeting for drinks after work to complain about bosses and men and mothers.

  Rune looked around, saw no one suspicious--well, no one more suspicious than you'd normally see in Union Square Park--then joined Stephanie.

  "You're hurt." The woman glanced at her forehead, where Rune had been cut by a piece of glass or plaster.

  "It's okay."

  "What happened?"

  Rune told her.

  "God! You have to go to the police. You can talk to them. Tell them what happened."

  "Yeah, right. They can place me at two different crime scenes. I'm the number one suspect."

  "But won't the cops find you in Ohio?"

  She gave a faint smile. "They might--if they knew my real name. Which they don't."

  Stephanie smiled back. "True. Oh, here." She handed Rune a wad of bills. "It's about three hundred. That enough?"

  Rune hugged her. "I don't know what to say." She gave Stephanie the check.

  "No, no, this is too much."

  "Little Red Hen, remember? I just need enough to get home on. You keep the rest. Tony'll probably fire you too. Just for helping me."

  "Come on," Stephanie told her. "I'll help you pack and take you to the airport." They started down into the subway. "You think it's safe to go back to your loft?"

  "Emily and Pretty Boy don't know about it. Manelli and that U.S. marshal do, but we can sneak in through the construction site. Nobody'll see us. We can--"

  A chill like ice down her back. She gasped.

  Ten feet away Pretty Boy stepped out from behind a pillar, holding a black pistol. "Don't fucking move," he muttered to Rune.

  Anger on his face, he moved forward toward Rune, not paying any attention to Stephanie. Apparently he didn't even think they were together.

  Rune froze. But Stephanie didn't.

  She stepped past him fast, which caught him completely off guard. Screaming "Rape, rape!" she shoved her palm, fingers stiff and splayed, into his face. His head snapped back and he staggered against the wall, blood pouring from his nose.

  "Fuck," he cried.

  Her self-defense class ...

  Stephanie stepped toward him again. It looked like she was going to kick him this time.

  But Pretty Boy was good too; he knew what he was doing. He didn't try to fight back. He leapt to the side about three steps, out of range, wiped the blood from his mouth and started to raise the pistol toward her.

  Then the arm closed around his neck.

  A passenger--a huge black man--had heard Stephanie's cry and had come up behind their attacker and locked his muscular arm around Pretty Boy's throat. Choking, he dropped the gun and grabbed the man's forearm, trying futilely to break the grip.

  The big man behind him seemed to be enjoying the whole thing. He said cheerfully to Pretty Boy, "H'okay, asshole, leave th'ladies 'lone. You hear me?"

  They ran.

  Stephanie in the lead.

  She must have belonged to a health club--she was moving like a greyhound. If Pretty Boy was there, Rune figured, Emily must be nearby too. Besides, the token seller would've called the cops by then; Rune wanted to get as far away from the station as possible.

  Gasping, running. Following Stephanie as best she could.

  They were two blocks from the subway when it happened.

  At Thirteenth and Broadway a taxi jumped a red light just before it changed.

  Which was the exact moment Stephanie ran into the intersection between two double-parked trucks.

  She didn't have a chance ...

  All she could do was roll onto the hood to keep from getting crushed under the wheels. The driver hit the brakes, which gave a low, wild scream, but still the cab hit her hard. Some part of her body--her face, Rune thought in despair--slammed into the windshield, which turned white with fractures. Stephanie cartwheeled onto the concrete, a swirl of floral cloth and red hair and white flesh.

  "No!" Rune screamed.

&n
bsp; Two women ran up and started tending to her. Rune dropped to her knees beside them. She hardly heard the litany of the cabdriver: "She ran through light, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault."

  Rune cradled Stephanie's bloody head in her arms.

  "You'll be okay," she whispered. "You'll be okay. You'll be okay."

  But Stephanie couldn't hear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Rune stood by the window of the hospital, looking out onto the park.

  It was an old city park on First Avenue. More rocks and dirt than grass, most of the boulders painted with graffiti, tinted red and purple. They seemed to be oozing from the underbelly of the city itself like exposed organs.

  She turned away.

  A doctor walked by, not looking at her. None of them had looked at her--the doctors, the orderlies, the nurses, the candy stripers. She'd given up waiting for a kindly old man in a white jacket to come into the hallway, put his arm around her, and say, "About your friend, don't you worry, she'll be fine."

  The way they do in movies.

  But movies're fake.

  Richard's words echoed: They. Aren't. Real.

  No one had stopped to talk to her. If she wanted any information she had to ask the nurses. Again.

  And she'd get the same look she'd gotten two dozen times before.

  No news. We'll let you know.

  She looked out the window once more. Watching for Pretty Boy. Thinking maybe he'd gotten away from the man in the subway and escaped from the cops. Followed the ambulance here.

  Paranoia again.

  But it's not paranoia if they're really after you.

  Hoping that Stephanie had hurt Pretty Boy really bad when she'd hit him. A character in one of her fairy stories, a friendly witch, had told someone never to hope for harm to someone else. Hope for all the good you want but never wish harm on anyone. Because, the witch said, harm's like a wasp in a jar. Once you release it you never know who it's going to sting.

  But now Rune hoped Stephanie had hurt the bastard real bad.

  She wandered up to the nurses' station.

  An older woman with a snake of a stethoscope around her neck finally looked up. "Oh. We just heard about your friend."

  "What? Tell me!"

  "They just took her to Radiology for more scans. She's still unconscious."

  "That's what you were going to tell me? That you don't know anything?"

  "I thought you'd want to know. She'll be back in ICU in forty minutes, an hour. Depending."

  Useless, Rune thought.

  "I'll be back. If she wakes up, tell her I'll be back."

  Oh, please, Pan and Isis and Persephone, let her live.

  Rune stood by the East River, watching the tugs sail upstream. The Circle Line tour boat too. A barge, three or four cabin cruisers. The water was ugly and ripe-smelling. The traffic from the FDR Drive rushed past with a moist, tearing sound, which set her on edge. It sounded like bandages being removed.

  Just an adventure. That's all I wanted. An adventure.

  Lancelot searching for the Grail. Psyche for her lost lover Eros. Like in the books, in the movies. And Rune would be the hero. She'd find Mr. Kelly's killer, she'd find the million dollars. She'd save Amanda and would live happily ever after with Richard.

  O God of heavenly powers, who by the might of thy command, drivest away from men's bodies all sickness and infirmity, be present in thy goodness...

  These were the words she'd said so often during the last week of her father's life that she'd memorized them without trying to.

  Her father, a young man. A handsome man. Who played with Rune and her sister all the time, taught them to ride bicycles, who read them stories, who took them to plays as readily as to ball games. A man who always had time to talk to them, listen to their problems.

  No, fairy stories didn't always have happy endings. But they always had endings that were just. People died and lost their fortunes in them because they were dishonest or careless or greedy. There was no justice in her father's death though. He'd lived a good life and he'd still died badly, slow and messy, in the Shaker Heights Garden Hospice.

  No justice in Mr. Kelly's death.

  No justice in Stephanie's getting hurt. None if she died.

  Please ...

  Speaking out loud now. "With this thy servant Stephanie that her weakness may be banished and her strength recalled."

  Her voice fell to a whisper and then she stopped praying.

  Staring at the ugly river in front of her, Rune took off her silver bracelets one by one and tossed them into the water. They disappeared without any sound that she could hear and she took that as a good sign that the gods who oversaw this wonderful and terrible city were happy with her sacrifice.

  Though when she got to last bracelet, the one that she'd bought for Richard, she paused, looking at the silver hands clasped together. She heard his voice again.

  You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money--which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard--but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it...

  She gripped the bracelet firmly, ready to throw it after the others. But then decided, no, she'd save this one--as a reminder to herself. About how adventures can get friends and family hurt and killed. How quests work only in books and in movies.

  And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is.

  She slipped the last bracelet back on her wrist and slowly returned to the hospital.

  Upstairs, the nurses had changed shifts and no one could find Stephanie. Rune had a terrible moment of panic as one nurse looked at a sheet of paper and found a black space where there should have been a list of patients from Adult Emergency Services who'd gone to Radiology. She felt her hands trembling. Then the nurse found an entry that said Stephanie was still upstairs.

  "I'll let you know," the nurse promised.

  Rune stood at the window for a long time again, then heard a voice asking for her.

  She turned. Froze. The doctor was very young and he had a mournful expression on his face. It seemed that he hadn't slept in a week. Rune wondered if he'd ever told anyone before that a patient had died. Her breath came fast. She gripped the bracelet maniacally.

  "You're a friend of the woman hit by the cab?" he asked.

  Rune nodded.

  He said, "She's transitioned from a deteriorating status."

  Rune stared at him. He stared back, waiting for a response.

  Finally he tried again. "She's in a stable situation."

  "I--" She shook her head, his words not making sense to her.

  "She'll be okay," the doctor said.

  Rune started to cry.

  He continued. "She has a concussion. But there isn't much blood loss. Some bad contusions."

  "What's a contusion?"

  "A bruise."

  "Oh," Rune said softly.

  Stephanie, who didn't want to get bruised for her audition.

  She asked him, "Is she awake?"

  "No. She won't be for a while."

  "Thank you, doctor." She hugged him hard. He endured this for a moment then retreated wearily back through the swinging doors.

  At the nurses' station Rune asked for a piece of paper and a pen.

  Rune wrote:

  Steph:

  I'm leaving. Thanks for everything. Don't come near me, don't try to contact me. I'll only get you hurt again. Love, R.

  She handed the note to the nurse. "Please give this to her when she wakes up. Oh, and please tell her I'm sorry."

  Running again.

  Looking behind her, as often as she looked forward. Past garbage cans, litter on the street, puddles. Past the fake, gaudy gold of the Puck Building in SoHo, surrounded by the sour smell of the fringe of the Lower East Side. Running, running. Rune felt the trickle of sweat down her back and sides, the
pain in her feet as they slammed on the concrete through the thin soles of her cheap boots.

  Air flooded into her lungs and stung her chest.

  A block from her loft Rune pressed against the side of a building and looked behind her. No one was following. It was just a peaceful, shabby street. She checked out the street in front of her loft: No police cars, even unmarked ones. Familiar shadows, familiar trash, the same broken-down blue van that had been there for days, plastered with parking tickets. She waited until her pounding heart calmed.

  If Emily and Pretty Boy found out about her place, would they come here? Probably not. They'd know the police would be staking it out. Besides, they were probably gone themselves. She'd been the fall guy they needed; their job was done. They'd probably left town.

  Which is what I'm going to do. Right now.

  Round on the ends and hi in the middle, it's O-Hi-O.

  Rune walked around the block then snuck through the plywood fence of the construction site. Workers in hard hats came and went.

  She walked past them quickly, into her building. She started up in the freight elevator, smelling the grease and paint and solvents. She was already sick--from exhaustion and fear--and the scents turned her stomach even more.

  The elevator clanked to a stop at the top floor. She unhooked the chain guard and stepped out. No sounds from the loft upstairs. But there was a chance somebody was there. She called, "Rune? It's me. Are you home?" No response. "It's your friend Jennifer. Rune!"

  Nothing.

  Then up the stairs, slowly, peering out of the opening in the floor. The empty loft stretched out around her. She raced to her side of the loft, grabbed one of the old suitcases she used for a dresser, opened it. She walked around the room, trying to decide what to take.

  No clothes. No jewelry--she didn't own much other than her bracelets. She picked some pictures of her family and the friends she'd met in New York. And her books--twenty or so of them, the ones she'd never be able to replace. She considered the videos--Disney, mostly. But she could get new copies of those.

  Rune noticed the tape of Manhattan Is My Beat. She picked it up and flung it angrily across the room. It crashed into a table, shattering several glasses. The cassette itself broke apart too.

  She found a pen and paper. She wrote:

  Sandra, it's been radical rooming with you. I've got the chance to go to England for a couple years. So if anyone comes looking for me, you can tell them that's were I am. I'm not sure where but I think I'll be somewhere near London or Edinborow. Hope your jewelry makes it big, your designs are really super and if you ever sell it in London I'll buy some. Good lox, Rune.