Manhattan Is My Beat

From the car that had just driven up, a woman's voice said to Dixon, "Come on, Haarte, you're standing right out here in broad daylight. There could be cops any minute. Let's go!"

Rune stared at the woman; it was Emily. And the car she was driving was the green Pontiac that had tried to run her and the other witness down at Mr. Kelly's apartment.

Wrong place, wrong time…

Phillip-or Haarte-opened the back door of the Pontiac. He shoved Rune inside, tossed her purse and suitcase into the trunk. Haarte got into the backseat with Rune.

"Where to?" Emily asked.

"Better make it my place," he answered calmly. "It's the one with the basement. Quieter, you know."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lost in a forest. Hansel and Gretel. Rune stared at the ceiling and wondered what time it was.

Thinking how fast she'd lost track of the hours.

Just like she'd lost track of her life over the past few days.

It reminded her of the time she was a little girl, visiting some relatives with her parents in rural Ohio. She'd wandered away from a picnic in a small state forest. Strolling for hours through the park, thinking she knew where she was going, where her family's picnic bench was. A little confused maybe but, with a child's confidence and preoccupation, never even considering that she was lost. Never knowing that hours had passed and she was miles away from her frantic family.

Now she knew how lost she was. And she knew, too, how impossible it was to get home again.

Welcome to reality, Richard would've told her.

The room was tiny. A storeroom in the cellar. It had only one window, a small one she couldn't possibly reach, barred with twisty bars of wrought iron. Part of the concrete floor was missing. The dirt beneath was overturned. When Haarte had shoved her into the room she'd noticed that right away: the dug-up dirt. She told herself it was just because he was doing some work down there. Replacing pipes, putting in a new concrete floor.

But she knew it was a grave.

Rune lay on her back and looked at the cold streetlight coming through the unreachable window.

Back-street light.

Light to die by.

There was a sudden metallic snap, and she jumped.

A shuffle of feet outside the door.

A second lock clicked and the door opened. Haarte stood in the doorway. He was cautious. He looked around the room, maybe to see if she'd rigged any traps or found any weapons. Then, satisfied, he nodded for her to follow. Tears of fear pricked in her eyes but she wouldn't let them fall.

He led her up some rickety stairs.

Emily's attention was on her. She was amused, studying Rune like a real estate agent appraising an apartment. When Rune hesitated outside the doorway Haarte pushed her in. Emily didn't seem to like that but she didn't say anything.

No one spoke. Rune felt the tension in the air. Like the scene inside the bank in Manhattan Is My Beat where the cop is staring down the robber. His hand is out, not moving, saying over and over, "Give me the pistol, son. Give it to me." The lighting shadowy and stark, the camera moving in close on the muzzle of the.38.

Would the robber shoot or wouldn't he? You wanted to scream from the tension.

Haarte pushed Rune into a cheap dining-room chair, stared down at her. She whimpered, feeling not the least bit adult.

But then, from somewhere in her mind, an image came. An illustration from one of her fantasy books. Diarmuid. Then another: King Arthur.

She ripped his hand off her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she snarled.

He blinked.

Rune waited a moment, staring into his eyes, then walked slowly to the chair. She adjusted it so she was facing Emily and sat down, then said in a sly, tough, Joan Rivers voice, "Can we talk?"

Emily blinked then laughed. "Just what we had in mind."

Haarte pulled up a chair and sat down too.

Rune kept spi

Emily said, "We need to know who you told about Spinello and about me."

Rune snapped, "You killed Robert Kelly. Why?"

Emily looked at Haarte. He said, "You could say that it was his fault."

"What?"

"He moved into the wrong apartment," Emily said. "We felt bad. I mean, it looks bad for us. To make a mistake like that. Felt bad for him, too, of course."

Rune exhaled in shock. "He was just… You killed him by mistake?"

Haarte continued. "After Spinello testified in the St. Louis RICO cases in January, the U.S. Marshals moved him to New York. Witness protection. They gave him a new identity-Victor Symington-and put him in a place uptown but, well, you saw he was pretty paranoid. He didn't stay where they'd set him up and got the apartment down in the Village. He moved into Apartment 2B. But then he heard there was a bigger apartment available on the third floor. So he moved upstairs. Your friend Kelly moved into Spinello's place."

"The information we had from the people hiring us," Emily said, "was that the hit lived in 2B."

"And, I mean, what can we say?" Haarte reflected. "I checked the directory down in the lobby, but it was so covered up with graffiti, I couldn't read a fucking thing. Besides, Kelly and Spinello looked a lot alike."

"They didn't look a thing alike!" Rune spat out.

"Well, they did to me. Hey, accidents happen."

Rune asked, "Then you came back and tore up his place just for the fun of it?"

Haarte looked insulted. "Of course not. We heard on the news that this Robert Kelly guy'd been killed. That wasn't the hit's new name. So we started to think we'd hit the wrong man. I mean, you interrupted me during the job. We didn't have time to verify it. I checked out the place later and found a picture of Kelly with his sister, letters. They looked legit."

Rune remembered the torn picture. Haarte had probably lost his temper when he'd realized his mistake then ripped up the photo in anger.

He continued. "Witness relocation doesn't do that thorough a job, faking old family pictures. So I figured we'd fucked up. We had to make it right."

Make it right? Rune thought.

"When you came to the store," Rune said, "when you pretended to be that U.S. marshal, Dixon, you said you were part of the homicide team at Mr. Kelly's apartment."

"Fuck, of course I wasn't there." Haarte laughed. "That's the trick to lying. Make the person you're lying to your partner in the lie. I suggested I was there and you just assumed I was."

Rune remembered Mr. Kelly's apartment, looking through his books, finding the clipping, the heat and the stuffiness of the apartment. The horrible bloodstained chair. The torn photo.

Rune closed her eyes. She left overwhelmed with hopelessness. Her big adventure-it was all because of a mistake. There was no stolen bank loot. Robert Kelly was just a bystander-a weird old man who happened to like a bad movie.

"So, honey, we need to know," Emily said impatiently, "who'd you tell about me?"

"Nobody."

"Boyfriends? Girlfriends? You've had plenty of time to talk to people after you ran out of our little party at Spinello's house in Brooklyn."

"You knew where Spinello was all along?" Rune asked. "And you were just using me?"

"Of course," Emily said, "I just had to lead you there, through the bank and the lawyer, so there'd be a trail the police could find. The cops'd see that you were tracking him down, then they'd find him and your body-we were going to make it look like he shot you after you shot him. They'd have their perp. End of investigation. The police're like everybody else. They prefer the least work possible. Once they've found a killer they stop looking for anybody else. On to other cases. You know. So, come on: Who'd you tell?"