Manhattan Is My Beat Read online

She said, "Just let me get this straight: You're no closer to finding Mr. Kelly's killer than you were yesterday."

  On Manelli's desk, opening up like a mutant flower, was a piece of deli tissue around a mass of corn muffin. He broke off a chunk and ate it. "How 'bout you give us a day or two to make the collar?"

  "The ...?"

  "To arrest the killer."

  "I just want to know what happened."

  "In New York City, we've got to deal with almost fifteen hundred homicides a year."

  "How many people are working on Mr. Kelly's case?"

  "Me mostly. But there're other detectives checking things out. Look, Ms. Rune ..."

  "Just Rune."

  "What exactly is your interest?"

  "He was a nice man."

  "The decedent?"

  "What a gross word that is. Mr. Kelly was a nice man. I liked him. He didn't deserve to get killed."

  The detective reached for his coffee, drank some, put it down. "Let me tell you the way it works."

  "I know how it works. I've seen enough movies."

  "Then you have no idea how it works. Homicide--"

  "Why do you have to use such big fancy words? Decedent, homicide. A man was murdered. Maybe if you said he was murdered, you'd work harder to find who did it."

  "Miss, murder is only one kind of homicide. Mr. Kelly could have been a victim of manslaughter, negligent homicide, suicide...."

  "Suicide?" Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief. "That's a really bad joke."

  Manelli snapped back, "A lot of people stage their own deaths to look like murder. Kelly could've hired somebody to do it. For the insurance."

  Oh. She hadn't thought of that. Then she asked, "Did he have an insurance policy?"

  Manelli hesitated. Then he said, "No."

  "I see."

  He continued. "Can I finish?"

  Rune shrugged.

  "We'll interview everybody in the building and everybody hanging around on the streets around the time of the killing. We took down every license number of every car for three blocks around the apartment and we'll interview the owners. We're going through all of the deced-- through Mr. Kelly's personal effects. We'll find out if he had any relatives nearby, if any friends have suddenly left town, since most perps--"

  "Wait. Perpetrators, right?"

  "Yeah. Since more of 'em are friends or relatives of, or at least know, the vic. That's the victim. Maybe, we're lucky, we'll get a description of a suspect that'll go something like male Caucasian, six feet. Male black, five eight, wearing dark hat. Really helpful, understand?" His eyes dropped to a notepad. "Then we'll take what ballistics told us about the gun"--he hesitated--"and check that out."

  She jumped on this. "So what do you know about the gun?"

  He was glancing at his muffin; it wouldn't rescue him.

  "You know something," Rune insisted. "I can see it. Something's weird, right? Come on! Tell me."

  "It was a nine-millimeter, mounted with a rubber-baffled silencer. Commercial. Not home-made, like most sound suppressors are." He seemed not to want to tell her this but felt compelled to. "And the slugs ... the bullets ... they were Teflon coated."

  "Teflon? Like with pots and pans?"

  "Yeah. They go through some bulletproof vests. They're illegal."

  Rune nodded. "That's weird?"

  "You don't see bullets like that very often. Usually just professional killers use them. Just like only pros use commercial silencers."

  "Keep going. About the investigation."

  "Then sooner or later, while we're doing all that work, maybe in three or four months, we'll get a tip. Somebody got ripped off by a buddy whose cousin was at a party boasting he iced somebody in a drug robbery or something because he didn't like the way somebody looked at him. We'll bring in the suspect, we'll talk to him for hours and hours and hours and poke holes in his story until he confesses. That's the way it happens. The way it always happens. But you get the picture? It takes time. Nothing happens overnight."

  "Not if you don't want it to," Rune said. And before he got mad she asked, "So you don't have any idea?"

  Manelli sighed. "You want my gut feeling? Where he lived, some kids from Alphabet City needed crack money and killed him for that."

  "With fancy-schmancy bullets?"

  "Found the gun, stole it from some OC soldier-- organized crime--in Brooklyn. Happens."

  Rune rolled her eyes. "And this kid who wanted money enough to kill for it shot the TV? And left the VCR? And, hey, did Mr. Kelly have any money on him?"

  Manelli sighed again. Pulled a file from halfway down the stack on his desk, opened it. He read through it. "Walking-around money. Forty-two dollars. But the perp probably panicked when you showed up and ran off without taking anything."

  "Was the room ransacked?"

  "It didn't appear to be."

  Rune said, "I want to look through it."

  "The room?" The detective laughed. "No way. It's sealed. No one can go in." He studied her face. "Listen up. I've seen that look before.... You break in, it'll be trespassing. That's a crime. And I'd be more than happy to give your name to the prosecutor."

  He broke off another piece of muffin, looked at it. Set it down on the paper. "What exactly do you want?" he asked. It wasn't a dismissal; he seemed just curious. His voice was formal and soft.

  "Did you know he'd rented that movie that was in his VCR eighteen times in one month?"

  "So?"

  "Doesn't that seem odd?"

  "I seen people jump off the Brooklyn Bridge because they think their cat's possessed by Satan. Nothing seems odd to me."

  "But the movie he rented ... get this. It was about a true crime. Some robbers stole a million dollars and the money was never found."

  "When?" he asked, frowning. "I never heard about that."

  "It was, like, fifty years ago."

  Now Manelli got to roll his eyes.

  She leaned forward, said enthusiastically, "But it's a mystery! Don't mysteries excite you?"

  "No. Solving mysteries excites me."

  "Well, this's one that oughta be solved."

  "And it will be. In due time. I gotta get back to work."

  "What about the other witness?" Rune asked. "Susan Edelman? The one who got hit by the car."

  "She's still in the hospital."

  "Has she told you anything?"

  "We haven't interviewed her yet. Now, I really have to--"

  Rune asked, "What'll happen with Mr. Kelly's body?"

  "He doesn't seem to have any living relatives. His sister died a couple of years ago. There's a friend in the building? Amanda LeClerc? She put in a claim for permission to dispose of the body. We'll keep it in the M.E.'s office until that's approved. So. That's all I can tell you. Now, you don't mind, I have to get back to work."

  Rune, feeling an odd mixture of anger and sorrow, stood and walked to the door. The detective said, "Miss?" She paused with her hand on the doorknob. "You saw what happened to Mr. Kelly. You saw what happened to Ms. Edelman. Whatever you feel, I understand. But don't try to help us out. That's a real bastard out there. This isn't the movies. People get hurt."

  Rune said, "Just answer one question. Please, just one?"

  Silence in the small office. From outside: the noise of computer printers, typewriters, voices from the offices around them. Rune asked, "What if Mr. Kelly was a rich banker? Would you still not give a shit?"

  Manelli didn't move for a moment. Glanced at the muffin. Didn't say anything. Rune thought: He thinks I'm a pain in the ass. He sort of likes me but I'm still a pain in the ass.

  He said, "If he was from the Upper East Side? He was a partner in a big law firm? Then I wouldn't be handling the case. But if I was, the file'd still be seventh in my stack."

  Rune nodded at his desk. "Take a look. It's on the top now."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She'd called Amanda LeClerc but the woman wasn't home to let her into Mr. Kelly's building.

  So she
had to do it the old-fashioned way. The way Detective Manelli unknowingly suggested.

  Breaking and entering.

  At the bodega up the street from Mr. Kelly's building she told the clerk, "Two boxes of diapers, please. Put them in two bags."

  And paid twenty bucks for one pair of Playtex rubber gloves and two huge boxes of disposable diapers.

  "Muchos ninos?" the lady asked.

  Rune took the bulgins bags and said, "Si. The Pope, you know?"

  The clerk, not much older than Rune, nodded sympathetically.

  She walked out of the bodega toward Avenue B. It was already fiercely hot and a ripe, garbagey smell came from the streets. She passed an art gallery. In the window were wild canvases, violent red and black slashes of paint. She smelled steamed meat as she passed a Ukrainian restaurant. In front of a Korean deli was a sign: HOT FOOD $1.50/QTR LB.

  Alphabetville ...

  At Kelly's building Rune climbed the concrete stairs to the lobby. Remembering the man's voice from the intercom. Who was it? She shivered as she stared at the webby speaker.

  She tried Amanda once again but there was no answer, so she looked around. Outside there was only one person on the street, a handsome man in his thirties. A Pretty Boy, a thug, from a Martin Scorsese film. He wore a uniform of some kind--like the people who read gas and electric meters do. He sat across the street on a doorstep and read a tabloid newspaper. The headline was about the tourist who'd been knifed in Times Square. The case Detective Manelli was supposed to talk to the captain about. Rune turned back, set the bags down, opened one box of diapers, and stuffed two of the pads under her black T-shirt. She buttoned the white blouse over it. She looked about thirteen months pregnant.

  Then she picked up the bags, crimped them awkwardly under her arms, and opened the huge leopard-skin purse, staring into the black hole with a scowl, dipping her hand into the stew of keys, pens, makeup, candy, Kleenex, a knife, old condom boxes, scraps of paper, letters, music cassettes, a can of cheese spread. For five minutes she kept at it. Then she heard the steps, someone coming down the stairs, a young man.

  Rune looked up at him. Embarrassed, letting one of the bags of diapers slide to the ground.

  Just be a klutz, she told herself; Lord knows you've had plenty of practice. She picked up one of the bags and accidentally on purpose dropped her purse on the ground.

  "Need a hand?" the young man asked, unlocking the outer door and pushing it open for her.

  Retrieving her purse, stuffing it under her arm. "My keys are in the bottom of this mess," she said. Then, thinking she should take the initiative, she frowned and said quickly: "Wait--you new here? I don't think I've seen you before."

  "Uhm. About six months." He was defensive.

  She pretended to relax. She walked past him. "Sorry, but you know how it is. New York, I mean."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "Thanks."

  "Yeah." He disappeared down the first-floor hallway.

  Rune climbed to the second floor. There was a red sign on the door to Mr. Kelly's apartment. DO NOT ENTER. CRIME SCENE. NYPD. The door was locked. Rune set the diapers in the incinerator room and returned to Mr. Kelly's door. She took a hammer and a large screwdriver from her purse. Eddie, from the store, who'd made her promise to forget he'd given her a lesson in burglary, had said the only problem would be the dead bolt. And if there was a Medeco and a metal door frame she could forget it. But if it was just the door tumbler and wood and if she didn't mind a little noise...

  Rune put on the Playtex gloves--thinking about fingerprints. They were the smallest size she could find at the bodega but were still too big and flopped around on her hands. She tapped the screwdriver into the crack between the door and the jamb just about where the bolt was. Then looked up and down the hall and took the hammer in both hands. Drew it back like a baseball bat, remembering when she used to play tomboy softball in high school. She looked around again. The corridor was empty. She swung as hard as she could at the handle of the screwdriver.

  And, just like at softball, she missed completely. The gloves slipped and with the crack of a gunshot the hammer streaked past the screwdriver and slammed through the cheap paneling of the door.

  "Shit."

  Trying to pull the hammer out of the thin wood, she worked a large splintery piece toward her. It cracked and fell to the floor.

  She drew back again, aiming at the screwdriver, but then she noticed that the hole she'd made was large enough to get her hand through. She reached in, found the door lock and the dead bolt, and got it open. Then pushed the door wide. She stepped inside and closed the door quickly.

  And she froze.

  Bastards!

  A tornado had hit the place. The explosive clutter of disaster. Goddamn bastards, goddamn police! Every book was on the floor, every drawer open, the couch slashed apart. The boxes dumped out, clothing scattered. One bald spot in the mess: under Kelly's floor lamp, next to the chair with its dark, horrible stain and the small bullet holes with spiny brown tufts of upholstery stuffing sprouting outward. Whoever had ransacked the room had stood there--or even sat in the terrible chair!--under the light and examined everything, then thrown it aside.

  Bastards.

  Her first thought had been: The police did this? And she was ready to cab it right back to the police station and give Virgil Manelli hell, the narrow-eyed son of a bitch, but she remembered the detective's neat desk, his brisk haircut and trimmed mustache. And she decided that someone else had done it. A window was open and the fire escape was right outside the sill. Anybody could've broken in. Hell, she had.

  But it wasn't druggies either: the VCR and clock radio were still here.

  Who had it been? And what were they looking for?

  For an hour, Rune browsed through the mountains of Mr. Kelly's life. She looked at everything--almost everything. Not the clothes. Even with the gloves on, they were too spooky to touch. But the rest she studied carefully: books, letters, the start of a diary--only three entries from years ago, revealing nothing except the weather and his sister's health--boxes of food the bold roaches were already looting, bills, receipts, photos, shoeboxes.

  As she sifted carefully through everything, she learned a bit about Mr. Robert Kelly.

  He'd been born in 1915 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He'd come to New York in 1935. Then moved to California. He'd volunteered for the Army Air Corps and served with the Ninth Air Force. A sergeant, supervising ordnance. In some of his letters (he'd used the words "Dearest Sister" or "Darling Mother," which made Rune cry) he'd written about the bombs that were loaded into the A-20 airplanes on their raids against occupied France and Germany. Sometimes he'd write his name in chalk on the 500-pounders. Proud that he was helping win the war.

  She found pictures of him in performances in the USO for soldiers in someplace called East Anglia. He seemed to be a sad-faced stand-up comic.

  After the war there seemed to be a five-year gap in his life. There was no record of what he'd done from 1945 until 1950.

  In 1952 he'd married a woman in Los Angeles and had apparently begun a series of sales jobs. Insurance for a while, then some kind of machinery that had something to do with commercial printing. His wife had died ten years ago. They'd had no children, it seemed. He was close to his sister. He took early retirement. Somehow he'd ended up back here in the New York area.

  Most of what she found was simply biographical. But there were several things that troubled her.

  The first was a photograph of Mr. Kelly with his sister--their names were on the back--taken five years before. (He looked exactly the same as he had last week and she decided he was the sort that aged early, like her own father, and then seemed frozen in time in their later years.) What was odd about the picture was that it had been torn into pieces. Kelly himself hadn't done it, since one square had been lying on the dried bloodstain. It had been torn by the ransackers.

  The other thing that caught her attention was an old newspaper clipping. A bo
okmark in a battered copy of a Daphne du Maurier novel. The clipping, from the New York Journal American, dated 1948, read, Movie Tells True Story of Gotham Crime. It was underlined and asterisks were in the margin.

  Fans of the hit film Manhattan Is My Beat, now showing on Forty-second Street, may recognize on the silver screen the true story of one of New York's finest....

  Footsteps sounded outside the door. Rune looked up. They passed by but she thought they'd slowed. A chill of panic touched her spine and wouldn't leave. She remembered where she was, what she was doing. Remembered that Manelli had warned her not to come here.

  Remembered that the killer was still at large.

  Time to leave ...

  Rune slipped the clipping into her bag and stood. She looked at the door, then at the window, and decided the fire escape was the choice of pros. She walked to the window and flung the curtain aside.

  Jesus my Lord!

  She stumbled backward as the man on the fire escape, his face a foot away from her, screamed.

  Not a gasp or shout but a gut-shaking scream. She'd scared the hell out of him. He'd been standing outside on the fire escape, peering cautiously through the window. Now he backed away slowly, nearly paralyzed with terror, it seemed, easing step by step up the peeling black-enameled metal. Then he turned and sprinted up toward the third floor.

  She guessed he was in his late sixties. He was balding, with a face that was tough and pocked and gray. Not the kind of face that should be screaming.

  Her heart was pounding from the shock of the surprise. Her legs felt rubbery. She stood up slowly and pushed her head out the window.

  Squinting, she watched him--his fat belly taut above hammy pumping legs--as he climbed through the window directly above Kelly's apartment. She heard his footsteps walking heavily and quickly overhead. She heard a door slam.

  Rune hesitated, then walked to the front door, knelt down, and looked out through the crack. Coming down the stairs: scuffed shoes, baggy fat-man's pants, and suit jacket tight around the arms. Then his tough, pocked face, under a brown hat.

  Yes, it was him, the man from the fire escape. He walked very quietly. He didn't want to be heard.

  He's leaving, thank you, God....

  His face was the color of cooked pork; sweat glistening on his forehead.

  ... thank you, thank you, thank--

  Then he stopped and looked at the door to Mr. Kelly's apartment for a long while. No, it's okay. He thinks I've left. He won't try to come inside.