Manhattan Is My Beat Read online

  "What green car?"

  She hesitated. Another good social rule: On a first date don't tell the guy that a killer just tried to run you over at a murder scene.

  "The police mentioned the killer was driving a green car."

  Richard pointed out, "In which case it's gone. The killer left town with his million dollars. So what can you do?"

  "Find him is what I can do. He killed a friend of mine. Anyway, part of that money's mine. And there's this friend of my friend in the building who's going to get deported if she doesn't get some money."

  He said, "Why don't you just go to the police?"

  "Police?" She laughed. "They don't care."

  "Why else?" He was looking at her closely now.

  "All right," she admitted. "Because they'd keep the money.... I know it's out there. I mean, it could be. What you said before ... about the writer making it up. He must've researched the real crime, wouldn't you think?"

  "I'd guess," Richard responded.

  "I mean, isn't that what you do for your novels? Research?"

  "Yeah, sure. Research. A lot of research."

  Rune mused, "Maybe he knows something.... 'Course he wrote the script fifty years ago. Think he's still alive?"

  "Who knows?"

  "How could I find out?"

  He shrugged. "Why don't you ask somebody at the film school at NYU or the New School?"

  It was a good idea. She kissed his ear. "See, you like quests as much as I do."

  "I don't think so. But I also have a feeling I can't talk you out of this, can I?"

  "Nup. You never give up on a quest. Until you succeed or you ..." Her voice trailed off, seeing once again the pale skin of Robert Kelly dotted with his own blood, the green car speeding toward her, Susan Edelman flying into the brick wall. "Well, until you succeed. That's all there is to it."

  She looked at Richard's face, his eyes closed, lips parted slightly. She tried to decide which she liked better, his looking dreamy--he was real good at dreamy--or the intense paisley eyes gazing intensely back at her. Dreamy, she concluded. He wasn't a warrior knight--not an Arthur or Cuchulain or Percival de Gales. No, he was more of a poet-knight. Or a philosopher-knight.

  She heard his breath, steady, slow. How nice, she thought, to feel the warm weight of somebody next to you in sleep. She wanted so badly to lie beside him, feeling him against her whole body.

  But instead of stretching out, she pulled off her Wicked Witch socks and aimed the remote control at the VCR, then watched the movie one more time until the scripty words The End splashed up on the screen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A karate flick was on the monitor.

  Oriental men in black silk trousers sailed through the air, fists hissing like jet planes. Every time somebody got hit, it sounded like a cracking board.

  One of the Chinese actors stepped toward a couple of rivals and spoke in a southern drawl. "Okay, you two, back outa here real slow and you won't get hurt."

  Rune leaned back on the stool in front of the register at Washington Square Video. Squinted at the monitor. "Hey, you hear that? That is completely wild! He sounds just like John Wayne."

  Tony held his blue deli coffee cup and cigarette in one hand and flipped through the Post with the other. He looked up at the screen critically. "And he's going to beat the shit out of those guys in ten seconds flat."

  It took closer to sixty and while he was doing it Rune mused, "You think that's easy? Dubbing, I mean. You think I could get a job doing that?"

  Tony asked, "Don't tease me, Rune. You quitting? ... Or you mean when you get fired?"

  Rune spun her bracelets. "They don't have to memorize their lines, do they? They just sit in a studio and read the script. That'd be so cool--it'd be like being an actress without having to get up in front of people and memorize things."

  Frankie Greek was combing out his shaggy hair with a pick. He rubbed the mustache he'd started a month ago; it looked like a faint smudge of dirt. He stared at the TV screen. "Shit, look at that! He kicked four guys at once." He turned to Rune. "You know, I just found this out. A lot of music in movies, they do it afterward. They add it on."

  "What, you thought they had a band on set?" Rune shut off the VCR. Tony looked at the TV. "Hey, what're you doing?"

  "It stinks," she said.

  "It doesn't stink. It's great."

  "The acting's ridiculous, the costumes are silly, there's no story ..."

  Frankie Greek said, "That's what makes it so, like, you know ..." The end of his sentence got away from him, as they often did. He prowled through the racks to find another film.

  Rune looked over the store: the stained gray industrial carpet, the black strings--left over from promotional cards--hanging down from the air-conditioning, the faded red-and-green holiday tinsel that was stuck to the walls with yellowing glue. "I was at a video store on the Upper East Side and it was a lot classier than here."

  Tony looked around. "What do you want? We're like the subway. We serve a valuable function. Nobody gives a shit we're classy, not classy."

  Rune checked out two movies to a young man, one of the Daytime People, she called them. They'd rent movies during the day; they worked at night--actors, waiters, bartenders, writers. At first she'd envied them their alternative lifestyles but after she got to thinking about it-- how they were always bleary-eyed or hung over and seemed dazed, smelled like they hadn't brushed their teeth--she decided aimlessness like that depressed her. People would be better off going on quests, she concluded.

  She returned to her previous topic and said to Tony, "That place uptown? The video store? They had all these foreign films and ballets and plays. I'd never heard of most of them. I mean, it's like you go in there ask for Predator Cop, this alarm goes off and they throw you out."

  Tony didn't look up from Dear Abby. "Got news, babe: Predator Cop makes us money. Master-fucking-piece Theatre doesn't."

  "Wait, is that a real movie?" Frankie said. "Master... What?"

  "Jesus Christ," Tony muttered.

  Rune said, "I just think we could doll the place up some. Get new carpet. Oh, maybe we could have a wine-and-cheese night."

  Frankie Greek said, "Hey, I could get the band to come down. We could play. Some Friday night. And, like, how's this? You could put a camera on us, put some monitors in the front window. So people, the ones outside'd notice us and they'd come in. Cool. How's that?"

  "It sucks, that's how it is."

  "Just an idea." Frankie Greek slipped a new cassette into the VCR.

  "Another one?" Rune said, watching the credits.

  "No, no. This is different," Frankie said. He showed Tony the cover.

  "Now you're talking." Tony folded up the newspaper and concentrated on the screen. Patient as a priest with a novitiate, he said, "Rune, you know who that is? It's Bruce Lee. We're talking classic. In a hundred years people'll still be watching this."

  "I'm going to lunch," she said.

  "You don't know what you're missing."

  "Bye."

  "Be back in twenty."

  "Okay," she called. Adding, once she was outside, "I'll try."

  Richard's idea about the film school was a good one. But she didn't actually need to go to the film department itself.

  She stopped at the Eighth Street Deli, which did a big business selling overpriced sandwiches to rich NYU students and professors.

  She paused on her way inside, looked around. This was the deli where that guy with the curly hair--the one she sorta recognized/sorta didn't--had ducked into yesterday. She wondered again if he'd been checking her out.

  Thinking, You've got yourself more secret admirers? First Richard, now him. Never rains but ...

  Get real, she reminded herself, and walked up to the counterman, who said, "Next ... oh, hi."

  "Hey there, Rickie," Rune said.

  He was working his way through school. He was an NYU junior, a film major, and he could have been Robert Redford's younger brother. When Ru
ne first started working at WSV, she'd spent a ton of money and many hours here, talking to Rickie about films--and hoping he'd ask her out. They'd remained good friends even after Rickie introduced her to his live-in boyfriend.

  She lifted the cello-wrapped apple pie for him to see, opened it, began eating. He handed her usual--coffee with milk, no sugar. They talked about movies for five minutes, while he made tall sandwiches out of roast beef and turkey and tongue. Rickie knew a lot of heavy-duty stuff about movies and even though he always said "film" or "cinema," never "movies," he didn't get obnoxious about it. She finished the pie and he refilled her coffee.

  "Rickie," Rune asked, "you know anything about a film called Manhattan Is My Beat?"

  "Never heard of it."

  "Came out in the late forties."

  He shook his head. Then she asked, "Is there like an old film museum at your school?"

  "We've got a library. Not a museum. The public library's got that arts branch up at Lincoln Center. MOMA's probably got an archive but I don't think they let just anybody in."

  "Thanks, love," she said.

  "Hey, I don't make the rules. Start working on a grant proposal or get a letter from your grad school adviser and they'll let you in. But that's pretty heady stuff. Experimental films. Indies. What do you need to know?"

  "I need to find the screenwriter."

  "What studio made it?"

  "Metropolitan."

  He nodded. "Good old Metro. Why don't you just call 'em up and ask?"

  "They're still around?"

  "Oh, they're like everybody else nowadays, owned by some big entertainment conglomerate. But, yeah, they're still around."

  "And somebody there'd know where the writer is now?"

  "Be your best bet. Screen Writers Guild probably won't give out any information about members. Hell, I were you, I wouldn't even call; I'd just go pay 'em a visit."

  Rune paid. He charged her a nickel for the pie. She winked her thanks. Then said, "Can't afford to fly out to L.A."

  "Take a subway, it's cheaper."

  "You need a hell of a lot of transfers," Rune said.

  "The Manhattan office, darling."

  "Metro has an office here?"

  "Sure. All the studios do. Oh, the East Coast office wants to rip the throat out of the West Coast office and vice versa but they're still part of the same company. They're that big building on Central Park West. You must've seen it."

  "Oh, like I ever go uptown."

  Awesome.

  The corporate office building of the Entertainment Corporation of America, proud owner of Metropolitan Pictures.

  Forty stories overlooking Central Park. A single company. Rune couldn't imagine having twenty stories of fellow workers above you and twenty stories below. (She tried to imagine forty stories of Washington Square Video, filled with Tonys and Eddies and Frankie Greeks. It was scary.) She wondered if all the Metro employees ate together in a single cafeteria? Did they all go on a company picnic, taking over Central Park for the day?

  Waiting for the guard to get off the phone, she also wondered if someone would see her and think she was an actress and maybe pull her onto a soundstage and throw a script into her hand....

  Though as she flipped through the company's annual report she realized that that probably wouldn't be happening because this wasn't the filmmaking part of the studio. The New York office of Metro did only financing, licensing, advertising, promotion, and public relations. No casting or filming. But that was all right; her life was a little too busy just then for a career change that'd take her to Hollywood.

  The guard handed her a pass and told her to take the express elevator to thirty-two.

  "Express?" Rune said. Grinning. Excellent!

  Her ears popped in the absolutely silent, carpeted elevator. In twenty seconds she was stepping off on the thirty-second floor, ignoring the receptionist and walking straight to the ceiling-to-floor window that offered an awesome view of Central Park, Harlem, the Bronx, Westchester, and the ends of the earth.

  Rune was hypnotized.

  "May I help you?" the receptionist asked three times before Rune turned around.

  "If I worked here I'd never get any work done," Rune murmured.

  "Then you wouldn't be working here very long."

  Reluctantly she pried herself away from the window. "This is the view you'd have if you flew to work on a pterodactyl." The woman stared. Rune explained, "That's a flying dinosaur." Still silence. Try being adult, Rune warned herself. She smiled. "Hi. My name's Rune. I'm here to see Mr. Weinhoff."

  The receptionist looked at a chart on a clipboard. "Follow me." She led her down a quiet corridor.

  On the walls were posters of some of the studio's older movies. She paused to touch the crisp, wrinkled paper delicately. Farther down the hall were posters of newer films. The ads for movies hadn't changed much over the years. A sexy picture of the hero or heroine, the title, some really stupid line.

  He was looking for peace, she was looking for escape. Together, they found the greatest adventure of their lives.

  She'd seen the action movie that line referred to. And if the story had been their greatest adventure, well, then those characters'd been leading some totally bargain-basement lives.

  Rune paused for one last aerial view of the Magic Kingdom, then followed the receptionist down a narrow hallway.

  Betting herself that Mr. Weinhoff's would be one totally scandalous office. A corner one, looking north and west. With a bar and a couch. Maybe he'd be homesick for California so what he'd insisted they do to keep him happy was to put a lot of palm trees around the room. A marble desk. A leather couch. A bar, of course. Would he offer her a highball? What was a highball exactly?

  They turned another corner.

  She pictured Weinhoff fat and wearing a three-piece checkered suit, smoking cigars and talking like a baby to movie stars. What if Tom Cruise called while she was sitting in his office? Could she ask to say hello? Hell, yes, she'd ask. Or Robert Duvall! Sam Shepard? Oh, please, please, please ...

  They turned one more corner and stopped beside a battered Pepsi machine. The receptionist nodded. "There." She turned around.

  "Where?" Rune asked, looking around. Confused.

  The woman pointed to what Rune thought was a closet, and disappeared.

  Rune stepped into the doorway, next to which a tiny sign said S. WEINHOFF.

  The office, about ten feet by ten, had no windows. It wasn't even ten by ten really, because it was stacked around the perimeter with magazines and clippings and books and posters. The desk--chipped, cigarette-burned wood--was so cluttered and cheap that even the detective with the close-together eyes would've refused to work at it.

  Weinhoff looked up from Variety and motioned her in. "So, you're the student, what's the name again? I'm so bad with names."

  "Rune."

  "Nice name, I like it. Parents were hippies, right? Peace, Love, Sunshine, Aquarius. All that. Can you find a place to sit?"

  Well, she got one thing right: he was fat. A ruddy nose and burst vessels in his huge cheeks. A great Santa Claus--if you could have a Jewish Santa. No checkered suit. No suit at all. Just a polyester shirt, white with brown stripes. A brown tie. Gray slacks.

  Rune sat down.

  "You want coffee? You're too young to drink coffee, you ask me. 'Course my granddaughter drinks coffee. She smokes too. God forbid that's all she does. I don't approve, but I sin, so how can I cast stones?"

  "No, thanks."

  "I'll get some, you don't mind." He stepped into the corridor and she saw him making instant coffee at a water dispenser.

  So much for the highballs.

  He sat back down at his desk and said to her, "So how'd you hear about me?"

  "I called the public relations department here?" Her voice rose in a question. "See, I'm in this class--The Roots of Film Noir, it's called--and I'm writing this paper. I had some questions about a film and they said they had somebody on staff who'd b
een around for a while...."

  "'Around for a while,' I like that. That's a euphemism is what that is."

  "And here I am."

  "Well, I'll tell you why they sent you to me. You want to know?"

  "I--"

  "I'll tell you. What I am is the unofficial studio historian at Metro. Meaning I've been here nearly forty years and if I were making real money or had anything to do with production they'd've fired my butt years ago. But I'm not and I don't so I'm not worth the trouble to boot me out. So I hang around here and answer questions from pretty young students. You don't mind, I say that?"

  "Say it all you want."

  "Good. Now the message said--do I believe it?-- you've got some questions about Manhattan Is My Beat?"

  "That's right."

  "Well, that's interesting. You see a lot of students or reporters interested in Scorsese, Welles, Hitch. And you can always count on Fassbinder, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola. Three, four years ago we got calls about Cimino. That Heaven's Gate thing. Oh, we got calls! But I don't think anybody's ever done anything about the director of Manhattan Is My Beat. Hal Reinhart. Anyway, I digress. What do you need to know?"

  "The movie was true, wasn't it?"

  Weinhoff's eyes crinkled. "Nu, that's the whole point. That's why it's such a big-deal movie. It wasn't shot on sets, it was based on a real crime, it didn't cast Gable, Tracy, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Gary Cooper, or any of the other sure-draw stars. You understand? None of the actors that'd guarantee that a film, no matter it was a good film, it was a bad film, that a film opened, you know what I mean, opened?"

  "Sure." Rune's pen sped across the pages of a notebook. She'd bought it a half hour before, had written Film Noir 101 on the cover, then smeared the ink with her palm to age it, like a master forger. "It means people go to see it no matter what it's about."

  "Right you are. Now, Manhattan Is My Beat was probably the first of the independents."

  "Why don't you hear about it nowadays?"

  "Because it was also the first of the bad independents. You've seen it?"

  "Four times."

  "What, you also tell your dentist to drill without novocaine? Well, if you saw it that many times, you know it didn't quite get away from the melodrama of the big studio crime stories of the thirties. The director, Reinhart, couldn't resist the shoeshine boy's mother falling downstairs, the high camera angles, the score hitting you over the head you should miss a plot twist. So other films got remembered better. But it was a big turning point for movies."