Manhattan Is My Beat

Rune stuffed it under her arm.

Outside, he set the suitcase on the sidewalk for her. "Again, my sympathies to your family. If there's anything I can do for you, please call me."

"Thank you, Reverend," she said. Thinking: You just earned yourself two hundred thousand.

Little Red Hen…

Rune picked up the suitcase, walked to the car.

Richard eyed the bag curiously. She handed it to him, then patted the hood of his Dodge. He lifted the bag and rested it on the car. They were on a quiet side street but heavy traffic swept past at the corner. Superstitiously they both refused to look at the scuffed leather bag. They gazed at the single-story shops-a rug dealer, a hardware store, a pizza place, a deli. The trees. The traffic. The sky.

Neither touched the suitcase, neither said anything.

Like knights who think they've found the Grail and aren't sure they want to.

Because it would mean the end of their quest.

The end of the story. Time to close the book, to go to bed and wake up for work the next morning.

Richard broke the silence. "I didn't even think there'd be a suitcase."

Rune stared at the patterns of the stains on the leather. The elastic bands from a dozen old airline claim checks looped through the handles. "I had some moments myself," she admitted. She touched the latches. Then stepped back. "I can't do it."

Richard took over. "It's probably locked." He pressed the buttons. They clicked open.

"Wheel… of… Fortune," Rune said.

Richard lifted the lid.

Magazines.

The Holy Grail was magazines and newspapers.

All from the 1940s. Time, Newsweek, Collier's. Rune grabbed several, shuffled through them. No bills fluttered out.

"A million ain't going to be hidden inside of Time," Richard pointed out.

"His whole life?" Rune whispered. "Mr. Kelly told the minister his whole life was in here." She dug to the bottom. "Maybe he put the money into shares of Standard Oil or something. Maybe there's a stock certificate."

But, no, all the suitcase contained was newspapers and magazines.

When she'd gone over every inch of it, pulled up the cloth lining, felt along the moldy seams, her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. "Why?" she mused. "What'd he keep these for?"

Richard was flipping through several of them. He was frowning. "Weird. They're all from about the same time. June 1947."

The laughter startled her, it was so abrupt. She looked at Richard, who was shaking his head.

"What?"

He couldn't stop laughing.

"What is it?"

Finally he caught his breath. His eyes were squinting as he read a thumbed-down page. "Oh, Rune… Oh, no…"

She grabbed the magazine. An article was circled in blue ink. She read the paragraph Richard pointed at.

Excellent in his role is young Robert Kelly, hailing from the Midwest, who had no intention of acting in films until director Hal Reinhart spotted him in a crowd and offered him a part. Playing Dana Mitchell's younger brother, who tries unsuccessfully to talk the tormented cop into turning in the ill-gotten loot, Kelly displays striking talent for a man whose only experience onstage has been a handful of USO shows during the War. Moviegoers will be watching this young man carefully to see if he will be the next member of the great Hollywood dream: the unknown catapulted to stardom.

They looked through the rest of the magazines. In one, Manhattan Is My Beat was reviewed and, in each, Robert Kelly was mentioned at least several times. Most gave him kind reviews and forecast a long career for him. Rune, too, laughed. She closed the suitcase and leaned against the car. "So that's what he meant by his whole life. He told me the movie was the high point of his life. He must never have gotten any other parts."

Stuffed in one of the magazines was a copy of a letter written to Mr. Kelly from the Screen Actors Guild. It was dated five years before.

She read it out loud. " 'Dear Mr. Kelly: Thank you for your letter of last month. As a contract player, you would indeed be entitled to residual payments for your performance in the film Manhattan Is My Beat. However, we understand from the studio, which is the current owner of the copyright to the film, that there are no plans for its release on videotape at this time. If and when the film is released, you will be entitled to your residuals as per the contract.'"

Rune put the letter back. "When he told me he was going to be rich-when his ship came in-that's what he meant. It had nothing to do with the bank robbery money."

"Poor guy," Richard said. "He'd probably be getting a check for a couple hundred bucks." He looked up and pointed behind her. "Look."

The sign on the dormitory read St. Xavier's home for actors and actresses. "That's what he was doing here. It had nothing to do with the money. Kelly just needed a place to stay."

Richard pitched the suitcase into the backseat. "What do you want to do with them?"

She shrugged. "I'll give them to Amanda. I think they'd mean something to her. I'll make a copy of the best review for me. Put it up on my wall."

They climbed into the car. Richard said, "It would have corrupted you, you know."

"What?"

"The money. Just like the cop in Manhattan Is My Beat. You know the expression, Tower tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely'?"

Of course I've never heard of it, she thought. But told him, "Oh, sure. Wasn't that another one of Stallone's?"

He looked at her blankly for a moment then said, "Well, translated to capitalistic terms, the same truth holds. The absoluteness of that much money would have affected your core values."

Mr. Weird was back-though this time in Gap camouflage.

Rune thought about it for a minute. "No way. Aladdin didn't get corrupted."

"The guy with the lamp? You trying to make a rational argument by citing a fairy tale?"

She said, "Yeah, I am." "Well, what about Aladdin?"

"He wished for wealth and a beautiful princess to be his bride, and the genie gave him all that. But people don't know the end of the story. Eventually he became the sultan's heir and finally got to be sultan himself." "And it was Watergate. He got turned into a camel." "Nope. He was a popular and fair leader. Oh, and radically rich."

"So fairy tales may not always have happy endings," he said like a professor, "but sometimes they do." "Just like life."

Richard seemed to be trying to think about arguing but couldn't come up with anything. He shrugged. "Just like life," he conceded.

As they drove through the streets of Brooklyn, Rune slouched in the seat, put her feet on the dash. "So thatfs why he rented the film so often. It was his big moment of glory."

"That's pretty bizarre," Richard said. "I don't think so," she told him. "A lot of people don't even have a big moment. And if they do, it probably doesn't get put out on video. I'll tell you-if I got a part in a movie, I'd dupe a freeze-frame of me and put it up on my wall."

He punched her playfully on the arm. "What?"

"Well, you saw the film, what, ten times? Didn't you see his name on the credits?"

"He had just a bit part. He wasn't in the above-the-title credits." "The what?"

"That's what they call the opening credits. And the copy we watched was the bootleg. I didn't bother to copy the cast credits at the end when I made it."

"Speaking of names, are you ever going to tell me your real name?"

"Ludmilla."

"You're kidding."

Rune didn't say anything.

"You are kidding," he said warily.

"I'm just trying to think up a good name for somebody who'd do window displays in SoHo. I think Yvo

"It's as good as anything."