Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

"And closing her eyes, she waved her magic wand three times. There appeared as if from thin air a gown of silk and lace, stitched with golden and silver thread. And for her feet…"

Rune recited this from memory as she walked along University Place. She paused, crumpled up the New School application, and three-pointed it into a trash basket.

She glanced at herself in a mirror hanging in a wig shop. The lipstick was fine and the blusher on the cheekbones was fun to do and easy. Thank you, Stephanie. The eyes had been okay-at least before the tears'd turned her into a raccoon.

Rune took another sip of Miller-from her third can-wrapped in a paper bag. She'd bought a six-pack at a deli up the street but had somehow managed to drop three cans within the past two blocks.

A couple holding hands walked past.

Rune couldn't help staring at them. They didn't notice. They were in love.

" 'Oh, dear,' Cinderella's fairy godmother said, 'coachmen. What's the good of turning a pumpkin into a coach if you have no coachmen to drive you? Ah-ha, mice…'"

Rune turned back to the mirror, teased her hair with her fingers, and stepped back to look at the results.

She thought: I don't look like Cinderella at all. I look like a short whore.

Her shoulders sagged and she dug into her bag. Found a Kleenex and scrubbed the rest of the makeup off her face, combed her hair back into place.

She pulled off the orange earrings, which Karen the girls' basketball champ had loved so much, and dropped them into her purse.

What was wrong? Why was it so hard to get men interested in her?

She considered everything.

I'm not tall and blond, true.

I'm not beautiful. But I'm not dog-ugly either.

Maybe she was a lesbian.

Rune considered this.

It seemed possible. And it explained a lot. Like why she got hit on by men but never proposed to-they could sense her orientation probably. (Not that she wanted to get married necessarily-but she did want the chance to say, "Lemme think about it.")

No, she just wasn't the sort men went for. That was probably all part of it, maybe the way the Gods made you the way you were. They might make you short and cute, a little like Audrey Hepburn, but not enough to make men-real men, chivalrous men, Gary Grant men, knights errant-fall for you. The Gods are just letting you down easy. Saying: if they'd meant you to have somebody like Richard, they'd have made you four inches taller and a thirty-six C, or B at least, and given you blond hair.

But being gay… this was something to think about. Could she deal with it? It'd be hard to own up to but maybe she'd have to admit it. Some things you can't run from.

Admitting it, she felt relief flood through her. It explained why she was reluctant to sleep with a man right away-she probably didn't really like sex with men. And if Richard turned her on like an electric current it was probably just because of what she'd realized before-that there was something feminine about him. Sure, that made sense.

Telling Mother would be hard.

Maybe she should get a crew cut.

Maybe she should become a nun.

Maybe she should kill herself.

At the corner of Eighth Street, rather than turn toward the subway to get a train to the loft, she turned the other way, to return to the video store.

She knew what she wanted to do.

Get a movie. Maybe It Happened One Night As long as I'm going to cry anyway, why not get a movie to go along with it? Ice cream, beer, and a movie. Can't lose with that combination.

How about Gone With the Wind?

How about Lesbos Lovers?

Ten minutes later she pushed inside Washington Square Video. Frankie Greek was behind the counter and he was looking totally sheepish.

Well, he damn well ought to. Fucking up when he took that message from Richard… She was going to give him hell. But, as she looked at him playing nervously with the VCR remote, it seemed there was something else on his mind. He was nervous but it wasn't because of her.

"Hello, Rune."

"What is it, Frankie? Your sister okay?"

"Yes, she's fine," he recited. "She had a baby."

"I know. You told us. What's the matter?"

"How are you tonight? Doing okay, I hope. Doing good." A wanna-be rock musician talking like Mister Rogers? Something was really wrong here. "What's with you?"

"Nothing, Rune. I heard it was kind of cold out there tonight." It was like he was in a bad skit on Saturday Night Live.

"Cold. What the hell are you-"

"Rune?" a man's deep voice asked.

She turned. Oh, it was that U.S. marshal. Dixon, she remembered.

"Hi," he said.

"Hey, Marshal Dixon."

He laughed. "You make it sound like a sheriff in a bad western. Call me Phillip."

She looked at Frankie, paler than Mick Jagger in February. "I saw his badge," Frankie said.

"He arrests people who screw up phone messages," Rune muttered.

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"How you doing?" Dixon asked, smiling. Then he frowned, looked at her face. "There's a little…"

He pointed at her cheek.

She grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed away at a bit of eye makeup.

"That's got it," Dixon said. "Hey, love the outfit."

"Really?"

His eyes swept over it-and, sure enough, she felt a bit of that electric sizzle again. Not as high-voltage as with Richard, but still…

"I never do drugs," Frankie Greek said.

Dixon looked at him curiously.

"Some musicians do. I mean, you hear about it. But I never have. Some of my songs are about drugs. But that's, like, just something to write songs about. I stay away from them."

"Well, good for you."

Rune gave him an exasperated look then said to the marshal, "Anything more on the case?"

"Naw." Then he seemed to think he shouldn't be talking quite so blue-collar and added, "No. No evidence in the Edelman death." He shrugged. "No prints at the scene. No witnesses. You haven't seen anything odd lately? Been followed?"

"No."

Dixon nodded. Looked at some videos. Picked one up. Put it down.

"So," he said.

Two "so's" from two different men in one night. Rune wondered what this one meant.

"Could I talk to you?" he asked, motioning her to the front of the store.

"Sure."

They stood by the window, next to a distracting cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox.

"Just thought you'd like to know. I checked out that case you told me about. The Union Bank heist?"

"You did?"

He shook his head. "I didn't find anything. Technically, it's still open but nobody's been on the case since the fifties. They only keep murder cases open indefinitely. I tried to find the file but it looks like it was pitched out ten, twenty years ago."

"I thought maybe you were investigating it."

"The robbery? Me?" Dixon laughed again. He had a nice smile. Richard, she was thinking, had that mysteri-ousness about him. Something going on under the surface-you couldn't quite believe his smile. Dixon's seemed totally genuine.

He took off his baseball cap, rubbed his hair in a boyish way, put the hat back on.

She said, "I mean, it was kind of a coincidence you were asking about Mr. Kelly and everything."

"Bank robbery'd be the FBI, not the Marshals. I'm involved only 'cause the killer used the kind of bullets a lot of hit men use. We check stuff like that out."

"Teflon," Rune said.

"Oh, you know about that?"

"The police told me. But if you don't care about the robbery then why'd you look up the case?"

He shrugged, looked away. "I dunno. Seemed important to you."

A little tingle. Nothing as high-voltage as with Richard. But it was something. Besides, Richard, who she thought she was in love with, had just been giving her crap about her life, while this guy, almost a stranger, had gone to the trouble to help her with her quest.