Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

"But you're so good at what you do, Roy, darling. I would think they'd want you to be commissioner. Why, if I were in charge that's what I'd make you."

Handsome Dana Mitchell walked beside her solemnly. He told her she was a swell gal. He told her what a lucky stiff he was. The camera backed away from them and the two people became insignificant dots in a shadowy black-and-white city.

Rune glanced down at the countertop. "Ohmygod!"

"What?" Stephanie asked, alarmed.

"It's a phone message."

"So?"

"Where's Frankie? Dammit. I'm going to kick his butt…"

"What?"

"He took the message but he just left it here under these receipts." She held it up. "Look, look! It's from Richard. I haven't heard from him since yesterday. He dropped me off on the West Side."

Rune grimaced. "Kissed me on the cheek good-bye."

"Ouch. A cheek-kiss only?"

"Yeah. And after he'd seen me topless."

Stephanie shook her head. "That's not good."

"Tell me about it."

The message read:

Rune-Richard asked you over for dinner tomorrow, at seven, hes cooking. He has a surprise for you and he also said why the hell don't you get a phone. Ha ha but he was kidding

"Yes! I thought he'd given up on me after we went to the nursing home on Sunday."

"Nursing home? Rune, you gotta pick more romantic places for dates."

"Oh, I'm going to! I've got this totally excellent junkyard I go to-"

"No, no, no."

"It's really neat." She fluffed her hair out again. "What should I wear? I have this polka-dot tank top I just got at Second-Hand Rose. And this tiger-skin skirt that's about eight inches wide… What?"

"Tiger skin?"

"Oh, like, it's not real… If you're into rain forests and stuff like that. I mean, it was made in New Jersey-"

"Rune, the problem isn't endangered species."

"Well, what is the problem?"

Stephanie was examining her closely. "Are those glow-in-the-dark earrings?"

"I got them last Halloween," she said defensively, touching the skulls. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

"You like fairy stories, right?"

"Sure."

"You remember Cinderella?"

"Oh, it's the best. Did you know in the real story, the Brothers Grimm story, the mother cut the ugly sisters' heels off with a knife so their feet would fit into the-"

"Rune." Stephanie said it patiently.

"What?"

"Let's think about the Disney version for a minute."

Rune looked at her cautiously. "Okay."

"You remember it?"

"Yeah."

Stephanie walked around Rune slowly, examining her. "You understand what I'm getting at?"

"Oh… a makeover?"

Stephanie smiled. "Don't take it personal. But I think you need a fairy godmother."

Rune wanted slinky.

Stephanie reluctantly indulged her but the expedition to stores that specialized in svelte was a failure. Rune spent a half hour in tiny, hot changing rooms trying on long black dresses and playing with her hair, trying to look like Audrey Hepburn, trying to look slinky. But then the word frumpy crept into her mind and, even though she could strip and look at her flat stomach and thin legs and pretty face, once she thought frump, that killed it. No long dresses today.

"You win," she muttered to Stephanie.

"Thank you" was the abrupt reply. "Now let's get to work."

They walked south, out of the Village.

"Richard likes long and slinky," Rune explained.

"Of course he does," Stephanie replied. "He's a man. He probably likes red and black bustiers and garters too." But she went on to explain patiently that a woman should never buy clothes for a man. She should buy clothes for herself, which will in turn make the man respect and desire her more.

"You think?"

"I know."

"Radical," Rune said.

Stephanie rolled her eyes and said, "We'll go for European."

"Richard's very French-looking. I'd like to get him to change his name."

"To what?"

"It was Francois. Now I'm leaning toward Jean-Paul."

"What does he think about that?"

"Haven't told him. I'm going to wait a few weeks."

"Wise."

SoHo, the former warehouse and manufacturing district adjoining Greenwich Village, was just becoming chic. The area used to be a bastion of artists-in-residence- working painters and sculptors, who were the only people who could legally live in the neighborhood under the city zoning code. But while the city granted permits only to certified artists, it did nothing about controlling the cost of the huge lofts, and as the galleries and wine bars and boutiques moved into the commercial buildings, the residential prices skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands… It was funny how many lawyers and bankers suddenly found they had talent to paint and sculpt.

They passed one clothing store, painted stark white inside. Rune stopped abruptly and gazed at a black silk blouse.

"Love it."

"So do I," Stephanie agreed.

"Can we get it?"

"No."

"Whv not? What's wrong with it?"

"See that tag? That's not the order number. That's the price."

"Four hundred and fifty dollars!"

"Come on, follow me. I know a little Spanish place up the street."

They turned off West Broadway onto Spring and walked into a store that Rune loved immediately because a large white bird sitting on a perch by the door said, "Hello, sucker," to them when they entered.

Rune looked around. She said, "I'm game. But it's not funky. It's not New Wave."

"It's not supposed to be."

After twenty minutes of careful assembly, Stephanie examined Rune with approval and only then allowed her to look in a mirror.

"Awesome," Rune whispered. "You're a magician."

The maroon skirt was long though it was more billowy than slinky. On top she wore a low-cut black T-shirt and over that a lacy see-through blouse. Stephanie picked out some dangly earrings in orange plastic.

"It's not the old me but it's definitely a sort of me."

"I think you're evolving," Stephanie told her.

As the clerk wrapped up the clothes Rune said, "You know the story of the little red hen?"

"Was it on Sesame Street?"

"I don't think so. She was the one who was baking bread, and nobody helped her, except this one animal. I forget what it was. Duck, rabbit. Who knows? Anyway, when the bread was done all the other animals came to the hen and said they wanted some. But she said, 'Haul ass, creeps.' And she only shared it with the one that helped her. Well, when I find the bank money I'm going to share it with you."

"Me?"

"You believe me. Richard doesn't. The police don't."

Stephanie didn't say anything. They stepped outside and returned to West Broadway. "You don't have to do that, Rune," she said finally.

"But I want to. Maybe you can quit the stupid video store and audition full-time."

"Really…"

"No." The Hungarian accent was back. "Don't argue with peasant woman. Very pigheaded… Oh, wait." Rune glanced at a store across the street. "Richard said he's got a surprise for me. I want to get him something."

They ran across Broadway, dodging traffic. Rune stopped, caught her breath, looked in the window. "What do men like?" she asked.

Stephanie said, "Themselves." And they walked inside.

The store seemed futuristic but it may actually have been antique, Rune reasoned, since it reminded her of how her mother described the sixties-gaudy and filled with weird glowing lights and spaceships and planets and a confusion of incense smells: musk, patchouli, rose, san-dalwood.

Rune looked at a black-lit poster of a ship sailing in the sky and said, "Highly retro."

Stephanie looked around, bored.

In the display cases: geodes, crystals, stones, opals, silver and gold, magic wands of quartz wrapped with silver wire, headdresses, meteorites, NASA memorabilia, electronic music tapes, optical illusions. Colored lights broken apart by spinning prisms crawled up and down the walls.