Oh, no ...
Nestor squinted, orienting himself.
"Car's on the other side of the building. That way." He pointed.
"Let go of me!"
He released her hair but took her firmly by the arm and led her forward. She recalled what he'd said, about being a mercenary soldier. She said, "If you let me go I'll give you eight thousand dollars."
"No."
"I can get it for you right now."
Nestor was walking more slowly now. He seemed to be considering what she was saying. Finally he shook his head. "Not enough."
"Maybe I can get a little more." She thought desperately about where she might get some cash.
"How about fifty?" Nestor said.
"I don't have fifty"
"Forty-five."
Tears in her eyes. "I don't have that. I can get ... maybe twenty. I don't know. From friends maybe ..."
"Forty-three thousand," Nestor said.
"I ..." She shook her head.
"Tell you what," he said. "You give me thirty-nine thousand five hundred and I'll let you live. I'll let you walk away."
More tears. "But I can't get that much."
"Thirty-eight two."
When she glanced at his face, a sick smile on it, she knew that he was just being cruel. He was playing with her, reciting the odd numbers. And whether she had fifty thousand or a hundred he wasn't going to let her go. This was business and the bargain he'd made was with Lee Maisel. Jack Nestor's job was to kill her.
They were on the sidewalk now, deserted except for a homeless guy in the middle of the block. The street was shimmering with a light rain that wasn't so much falling as hanging in the air.
Nestor said, "This way," and tugged her forward. Ahead of them, on Broadway, a few cabs and cars bounded up-and downtown. Maybe she could tear away and sprint the half block to the corner. She'd just charge right into traffic and hope she didn't get hit. Maybe she'd be lucky the same way Randy Boggs was unlucky at Lance Hopper's apartment building and a cop car would be cruising past.
But Nestor's grip was fierce and, besides, he still had his gun in his other hand, hidden inside his jacket.
He stopped at a car. He slipped his pistol in his pocket and reached into his other pocket to get the keys.
"Hey," the drunk called, staggering in their direction. His head drooped forward in his stupor. His clothes were drenched from rain and he looked like a straggly mutt. "Change? For something to eat. You got some change?"
"Shit. Fucking people in this town," Nestor muttered, pulling the keys out of his pocket. He leaned down and said to Rune, "I can feel you, honey. You're thinking the guy comes up and he's going to distract me and then you'll run for it. You think I'm stupid?" He shoved her in the car. "You think I'm not expecting that?"
Nearby now, the homeless man called, "Change, please?"
Jack Nestor, his eyes still on Rune, said to him, "Fuck you, mister."
The drunk suddenly stood up and became completely sober. "Fuck you too, Jack," Randy Boggs said and leapt forward, slamming his fist into Nestor's face.
"RANDY!" RUNE CRIED.
"Run!" Boggs shouted as he grabbed Nestor around the waist and tried to pull him to the sidewalk.
Rune scooted out of the car fast. She hesitated, watching them scuffle. It wasn't a fight--they were wrestling. Boggs was gripping the killer's shoulders, pinning his arms so he couldn't reach his gun. Nestor, blood streaming from his nose, tried to knee Boggs in the groin but couldn't get his leg up without falling over.
"Run, damn it!" Boggs shouted again.
She did. To the nearest corner, to a phone kiosk. Hitting 911 as she watched the men, on the ground now, a dark squirming mass, half in, half out of the street. She told the calm voice of the police dispatcher about the fight, about the gun. By the time she hung up, she heard sirens. Distant, but moving in close. She thought she should go back, distract Nestor, hit him with something. But she didn't move. For some reason an image of Courtney came into her mind and she thought, No, even if Claire's back, I can have some role in the girl's life and it wouldn't be fair to her to risk myself. This was their battle now.
Then Rune saw Nestor break free and scramble away. He had the gun in his hand. Randy leapt back into the street, scrambling beneath a car for cover. Nestor fired two fast shots at him then turned to run just as three blue-and-white police cars squealed around the corner. The officers poured out, shouting like madmen for Nestor to stop, to drop the gun. He fired at their cars twice and turned to run but he slipped and went down on one knee.
"Drop the weapon," a metallic voice came over the loudspeaker.
Nestor leapt to the side and lifted the gun again.
The big sparking explosion of a shotgun was like a thunderclap. The killer tumbled backwards. He tried to get up, muttering some distorted words. Something about "pictures," Rune thought. The fat man lay back. His body convulsed once. Then he was still.
TEN SQUAD CARS, WITH LIGHTS FLASHING, WERE PARKED in front of the Network building. Several EMS ambulances were here too and, for some reason, so were two fire trucks. Already the crowd of spectators was large. Rune noted with a laugh to herself that the three news crews on hand to capture the story on tape were all from the competition; no one at the Network seemed to have heard about the incident.
Rune was standing next to Randy Boggs, who leaned against a squad car. His hand and chin were bandaged. Nestor had missed when he'd fired those two shots at him but he'd cut himself in several places during the fight. (He seemed most upset because the ugly tan suit he wore was torn and greasy.) Bradford Simpson had been hit by Nestor's bullet but only in the leg. He'd be all right.
Lee Maisel was in custody.
"How did you get here?" Rune asked Boggs, shaking her head in confusion.
"I went to your houseboat--saw what'd happened there. I'm plenty sorry about that. Did Jack do it?"
"Indirectly." She didn't mention that the actual arsonist was three years old.
Boggs continued. "I just came to the TV station here to see if maybe the guard or somebody could tell me where you were. I saw you and Jack coming out of the back door. Didn't know what was going on but I figured it wasn't good. And that I better do something about it. So I pretended to be a, you know, homeless man so I could get in close."
A detective came up to her and said, "Could you give us a few more details, miss?"
Rune answered, "Can we be alone for a couple minutes? Just him and me? Then I'll tell you everything."
The detective nodded. He walked over to the medical attendants, who were putting Nestor's body on a gurney.
"I thought you'd taken off," Rune told Boggs angrily.
He stared at the ground, not able to return her gaze. "I just went down to Atlanta for a day or two to get my money and then I was coming back. I was going to do that all along--I have some business to take care of here."
"Business?" she asked skeptically.
"I'm giving some of my money to the family of this friend of mine from Harrison. He got himself killed 'cause he was my friend. Anyway, I couldn't leave--remember, Mr. Megler said I had to stay in New York until the case was officially over?"
"When has obeying the law ever meant anything to you?" Rune snapped. "Why didn't you tell me about you and Jack?"
"Was a new suit," he said, studying his torn sleeve. Then he looked up, focused on the flipping lights atop a squad car. "Was the deal I made with him."
"Him?" Rune asked in disbelief. "That son of a bitch?"
"Way I was brought up is you don't snitch."
"He used you!"
"Know that now. Didn't then. Didn't until just a few days ago."
"Didn't you think it was kind of funny that he took you along on this credit card thing then coincidentally somebody gets killed?"
"Not at the time I didn't think so. And then, when I started to think it was a little off, he give me all that money to keep mum. I needed a nest egg. A hundred thousand dollars--where'
d I ever get money like that otherwise? Nowhere I know of."
Rune's head swam with painful emotions. She wanted to slap him, to scream, to grab his thin collar and shake him.
Randy Boggs said, "I'm sorry."
She didn't answer.
"I coulda just left. I'm thinking of going to Hawaii after everything gets settled in court, you know. I coulda just got my money and kept going there."
"Hawaii?" she asked as if he'd said, "Mars."
He nodded. "Buy me a store of some kind. On the weekends I could sit on the beach and drink those drinks that look like pineapples. With umbrellas in them. You could come visit. You like them drinks?"
She didn't answer.
"I wanta give you some money."
Rune said, "Me? Why?"
"It was on account of me that your house got burned down. How's ten thousand?"
"I don't want your money."
"Maybe fifteen?"
"No, forget it."
"Maybe your little girl--"
"She's not my little girl," Rune snapped.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Boggs said, "I'm just trying to tell you I'm sorry."
Rune said, "I wanted to help you. That was why I did the story in the first place. Everybody told me not to. Everybody told me to forget about you, that you'd killed a man and that you deserved to be in jail."
Boggs said, "I'd appreciate it if you'd consider taking the money."
"Give it to Courtney's mother, Claire. She needs it more than me."
"I'll give her some, sure. But I'll give you some too. How's that?"
Rune slapped the top of the police car. She shook her head then laughed. Boggs was looking around, smiling too, though he didn't know what was funny. She said, "Hell, Randy, no wonder you never made any money-- you give it all away."
"Haven't held on to it too good. That much is true."
She turned to him and said, "I need to do my story again. I'll have to interview you. Will you talk to me? And this time give me the whole story?"
"If I do that will you forgive me?"
She said, "I really don't know."
"Could we go drink beer some time?"
"I don't go out with felons."
"I've done some things that're criminal, I admit that, but I'm not sure I'm a felon exactly."
The detective returned and said to Rune, "Need to get some statements from you both now." He was in his politely firm civil-servant mode.
"Sure," she answered.
He took Boggs aside first and, for the moment, Rune was alone, surrounded by a pool of dull colors on the wet street--reflections from the streetlights, from apartment windows, from the emergency cars. She felt a huge desire to get home, to go back to her houseboat and to Courtney. But, of course, the boat was gone: And the little girl was with her grandmother.
Rune looked at the scene in front of her.
The news crews--at last joined by one from the Network--were busy taping their three-minute segments on the shooting. But they were virtually the only ones left on the street. Like the explosion of the shotgun that killed Jack Nestor the incident had erupted fast and then vanished immediately, pulled into the huge gears of the city and ground up into nothing. But for TV audiences throughout the metro area the events would live on in future newscasts until they were preempted by other stories, which would in turn be replaced by still more after that.
Rune sat down on a doorstep to wait for the detective, and to watch the young reporters, holding their microphones and gazing sincerely into the eyes of their loyal viewers as they tried once again to explain the inexplicable.
chapter 34
WRESTLE WITH IT, FIGHT IT.
Standing in front of Claire's hospital bed, Rune wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and black miniskirt. Beside her was Courtney--who was no longer New Wave preschool. No more black and Day-Glo and studs. She was in her new Laura Ashley cornflower-blue dress and lopsided hair ribbon (it had taken Rune ten minutes to get the red satin to impersonate a bow).
A sharp, sweet smell was in the air. Rune didn't know whether it was disinfectant or medicine or the smell of illness and death. She didn't like it; she hated hospitals.
"Where's your mom?" Rune asked Claire.
"At her hotel," the girl said. "She was with me all night. That's something about mothers, huh? Abuse 'em all you want and they keep coming back for more."
Courtney clumsily set a paper bag on the bed. "I got this for you."
One-handed, Claire shook it open. Out fell a stuffed dinosaur. Courtney made it walk across the bed. "Rune helped me buy it," her daughter told her.
"How'd I guess?" Claire examined the plush face with serious scrutiny. "He's like sensitive and ferocious at the same time. You can really pick them."
Rune nodded absently. "It's a talent."
Fight it. Fight it down ...
Claire didn't look good. She could sit up okay, with some help, but otherwise she was pretty immobile. Her skin was paler than Rune had ever seen it (and Claire was somebody who went as a vampire on Halloween the year before and hadn't bothered with makeup or a costume).
"I won't see in my left eye," she announced matter-of-factly "Ever again."
Rune looked her straight in the good one and was about to offer something sympathetic when Claire moved on to another subject. "I got this job. At a department store. It's kinda bullshit. I have a couple bosses and they're like, 'Well, we'll try you out," And I'm like, 'What's to try?' It's not, like, the best thing in the world but it's working out okay. Like listen to this--I've got health insurance? I got it just before I left to come down here. Man, they're going to get some friggin' bill."
This room was better than the Intensive Care Unit where she'd been for a few days. From here Claire had a view of rolling Jersey hills and the Hudson and, closer to home, one of Rune's favorite hangouts: the White Horse Tavern, the poet Dylan Thomas's hangout, where Rune had spent a number of afternoons and evenings with a literary and artistic crowd.
Hospitals were pretty icky but here at least you got a view and sunlight and history.
Claire was talking about her mother's house in Boston and how weird it was that nobody in the neighborhood wore black leather or had shaved heads and how she hadn't met any musicians or short-story writers but the one guy she met who she liked was a salesman. Wasn't that the craziest thing you ever heard?
"Crazy."
Rune nodded and tried to listen. The muscles in her abdomen clenched against the crawly feeling, like she was possessed by a space creature that was getting ready to burst out of her. Fight it down.... Fight it!
Then Claire was into a travelogue, telling Rune and Courtney about Boston--Faneuil Hall and Cambridge and Chinatown and the lofts and antique stores around South Street Station. "There's this one really, really neat place. It sells old bathtubs that must be three feet deep."
Rune nodded politely, and a couple times said, "Wow, that's interesting," in an uninterested way, which Claire seemed to take as encouragement to keep rambling. Rune found she was holding Courtney's hand tightly. The little girl squirmed.
Fight it....
Rune didn't say much about Boggs or Maisel or the Current Events story. Just the bare bones. Claire must have known Rune was the reason she'd been shot and Rune wanted to steer clear of that. Not that she was racked with guilt--you could also say that Claire got hurt because she'd abandoned her daughter. But that got into the way gods or fate or nature worked and if you started thinking too much about cause and effect, Rune knew, it'd drive you nuts.
There was silence for a minute. Then Rune said, "I bought Court a new dress." Nodding at the little girl.
"Look, Mommy."
Claire twisted her body as far as she could so the un-bandaged eye got a good look at the dress, and the way the young woman's damaged face blossomed with love as she looked at her little girl clearly answered the single scorching question that had been consuming Rune since Claire had returned.
When she
considered it now, of course, she realized there really had never been any chance that Courtney could stay with her and she was mad at herself for hoping things might turn out otherwise. After all, she'd read The Snow Princess. She knew how it ended. This business about fairy stories having happy endings--that was bullshit. Sometimes people melt. People go away. People die. And we're left with the stories and the memories, which, if we're lucky, will be good stories and good memories and then we get on with our life.
Claire was reaching forward, awkwardly, across the bed with her good arm, saying, "Did you miss me, honey?"
"Uh-huh." Courtney let go of Rune's hand and tried to climb onto the bed. Rune boosted her up.
Rune said, "So you're going back to Boston, huh? The two of you?"
Claire said, "Yeah, like, we'll live at my mom's until I can get some money saved up but apartments are cheap there. It shouldn't take me much time."
Fight it....
Rune swallowed. "You want, I can keep Courtney with me until you get settled. We're pretty good buddies, huh?"
The little girl was playing with the dinosaur and didn't hear what Rune said. Or didn't want to. In any case she didn't answer. Claire shook her head. "I kind of want her with me. You know how it is."
"Sure."
"Look, Rune, I never said it but I like really, really appreciate what you did. It was a pretty bad thing, just leaving like that. A lot of people wouldn't have done what you did."
"True, they wouldn't," Rune said.
"I owe you."
"Yeah, you do. You owe me."
"The doctor says I can be transferred to Boston in a couple of days. And, guess what?"
Rune's face burned. "A couple of days?"
"I'm gonna take an ambulance, like, the whole way. Is that cool, or what? My mom's paying for it."
And with that Rune realized it was no good fighting it anymore. She'd lost. She took a deep breath and said, "Well, ciao, you guys."
"Aw, come on," Claire said, "stay for a while. Check out the doctors. There's this cute one. Curly hair you won't believe."
Rune shook her head and started for the door.
"Rune," Courtney said suddenly, "can we go to the zoo?"
Pausing to hug the girl briefly, she managed, somehow, to keep her voice steady and to hold back the tears for the time it took her to say, "Before you leave, honey, we'll go to the zoo. I promise."
Rune remained steady and calm for the few seconds it took her to say this and walk out the door.