Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

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."

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 ninios?" 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: HOTFOOD $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. hypo. 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.