Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

Stephanie caught up with her. "Hey, I don't think we're supposed to be here."

"I feel weird," Rune told her.

"Why?"

"They just destroyed the whole place. And it was so… familiar. I knew it so well from the movie and now it's gone. How could they do it?"

Below them, a second bulldozer lifted a huge steel-mesh blanket and set it on top of a piece of exposed rock. There was a painful hoot of a steam whistle above their heads. The bulldozer backed away. Then two whistles. A minute later the explosives were detonated. A jarring slam under their feet. Smoke. The metal blanket shifted a few feet. Three whistle blasts-the all-clear-sounded.

Rune blinked. Tears formed. "It's not the way it should be."

She stooped and picked up a bit of broken marble from the bank's facade-pinkish and gray, the colors of a trout, smooth on one side. She looked at it for a long time, then put it in her pocket.

"It's not the way it should be at all," she repeated.

"Let's go," Stephanie urged.

The bulldozer lifted the mesh away and began to dig out mouthfuls of the shattered rock.

She'd wrapped it up, the bracelet.

But then walking up to Third Avenue-past the discount clothing stores, the Hallmark shop, the delis- she'd decided the wrapping paper was too feminine. It had a viney pattern that wasn't anything sissier than you'd see in the old Arabian Nights illustrations. But Richard might think they were flowers.

So halfway to his apartment she slipped her hand, with its newly polished nails-pink, not green or blue, for a change-into her bag and tore off the paper and ribbon.

Then, waiting for the light on Twenty-third Street, Rune started to worry about the box. Giving him something in a box, something supposed to be, what was the word?, spontaneous, seemed too formal. Men got scared, you gave them something that was too premeditated.

Goddamn men.

The nails went to work again and opened the box, which joined the crumpled Arabian paper in the bottom of the leopard-skin purse. She held the bracelet up in the light.

Wait. Was it too feminine?

Did it matter? He was a philosopher knight, remember, not the kind killing peasants with a broadsword. Anyway there definitely was something androgynous about him-like Hermaphroditus. And now that she thought about it, Rune decided that was one of the reasons they were so compatible. The male-female, yin-yang was in flux for both of them.

She put the bracelet in her pocket.

See, what it is, I was buying one for me - remember I told you I love bracelets, so what I did was I saw this one, and it looked too masculine for me and I thought, well, it just occurred to me you might…

Rune stopped for the light. She was in front of an Indian store, sitar music and the smell of incense flooded out into the street. The light changed.

See, I got this special deal at a jewelry store I go to. Two for one. Yeah, no shit. Amazing. And I thought: who do 1 know who'd like a bracelet? And, guess what? You won…

Crossing the street.

Then she saw his apartment building a block ahead. She tried to be objective. But was still disappointed. It was a boxish high-rise, squatting in a nest of boxish high-rises, a little bit of suburbia in Manhattan. She couldn't picture her black-clad knight living among tiny widows and salesmen and nurses and med students from NYU.

Oh, well… She continued along the sidewalk and stopped outside his building.

Hey, Richard, would you like a bracelet? If not, no big deal, I could give it to my mother, sister, roommate… But if you'd like it… It's a pretty radical design, don'tcha think? - take a look at it.

Rune stepped away from the building and looked at her reflection in the window.

Oh, a bracelet? Rune, it's fantastic! Put it on me. I'll never take it off.

She polished the silver on her sleeve then dropped it into her pocket again.

Oh, a bracelet. Well, the thing is, I never wear them…

Well, the thing is my girlfriend gave me a bracelet just like this the day she killed herself…

Well, the thing is I'm allergic to silver…

Goddamn men.

Seeing him, with that dark hair and the long French face, that crazy electricity hit her again. She knew her voice was going to shake, and she thought, goddammit, get this under control.

What's best? Flirty, surprised? Seductive? She opted for a neutral "Hi." She stood in his doorway. Neither of them moved.

He gave her one of those scary we're-just-friends looks. He almost seemed surprised to see her. "Rune, hey, how you doing?"

"Great, good… You?"

Hey, how you doing?

"Okay." He nodded and she saw he was definitely uncomfortable. Though he kept the smile on his face. There were major explosions in her. Wanting to vaporize away, wanting to ease her arms around him and never leave. Mostly she wondered what the hell was wrong.

Silence, as an elderly lady with a jutting, sour mouth walked her cairn terrier past, glancing disdainfully at them. Richard said, "So how's the video business?" He looked her up and down. Didn't say a word about the new outfit. Glanced at the earrings. Didn't say anything about them either.

"Good. Okay."

"Well, why don't you come on in."

She followed him inside.

Wait, she thought, looking him over. What's going on? He was wearing a baby-blue button-down shirt, tan chino slacks, and Top-Siders. Ohmygod, Top-Siders! Nothing black, nothing chic. He looked like a yuppie from the Upper East Side.

Then she glanced around his apartment. She couldn't figure it-that somebody who wore black leather and tapped the tops of his beer cans with such elegant fingers could live in a place with white Conran furniture, rock and roll posters on the wall, and a metal sea gull statue.

A copper sea gull?

"Just let me check on something."

He disappeared into the kitchen. Whatever he was cooking smelled great. None of her girlfriends could get that kind of smell out of a kitchen. Lord knew, she never had.

She was examining his bookshelves. Mostly technical books about things she didn't understand. College paperbacks. Stacks of the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly.

He came back into the room. Stood with his arms crossed. "So." Skittish now.

"Uh-huh. So." She couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. Then she blurted out, "I thought, maybe, after dinner, you might want to go for a ride. I found a great place. It's in Queens, a junkyard. I know the owner. He lets me in. It's really radical, like a huge dinosaur graveyard. You can sit up on some of the wrecks-it's not gross dirty, you know, like garbage-and watch the sunset over the city. It's really wild. It's your mega junkyard… Okay, Richard, come on. Tell me what I did to fuck up tonight."

"The thing is-"

"Hi," came the woman's voice from the door.

Rune turned to see a tall woman with long, blond hair walk through the open door. The woman was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and black pumps. She gave Rune a friendly glance, then walked up to Richard and hugged him.

"Rune, this is Karen."

"Uhm, hi," Rune said. Then to Richard, "Your message? About dinner?"

Karen lifted a perfect eyebrow knowingly, took a bottle of wine out of a paper bag, and disappeared tactfully into the kitchen.

"Actually," Richard said delicately, "that was supposed to be Thursday."

"Wait. The message said tomorrow. And the date on it was yesterday."

He shrugged. "I told the guy I talked to-Frankie somebody-I told him Thursday."

She nodded. "And he thought today was Thursday. Goddamn heavy metal. It's destroyed his brain cells… Shit, shit, shit."