Manhattan Is My Beat (28 page)

And decided: No police. Not yet.

A few minutes later the cab stopped in front of a light-green-and-brick two-story row house.

The driver said, “That’s forty dollars. And don’t worry about no tip.”

She stood on the sidewalk, hidden behind some anemic evergreens, looking at the row house that was, according to his lawyer’s Rolodex, Victor Symington’s current residence. A pink flamingo stood on one wire leg on the front lawn. A brown Christmas wreath lay next to a croquet mallet beside the stairs. An iron jockey with black features painted Caucasian held a ring for hitching a horse.

“Let’s do it,” she muttered to herself. Not much time. Pretty Boy would be looking for a pay phone just then to call Symington and tell him that he couldn’t stop her and that she was on her way there. It wouldn’t be long before Pretty Boy himself’d show up.

She thought she could handle Symington by himself. But with his strong-arm partner, probably a hothead, there’d be trouble.

She rang the doorbell. She had her story ready and it was a good one, she thought. Rune would tell him that she knew what he and Pretty Boy had done and that she’d given a letter to
her
lawyer, explaining everything and mentioning their names. If anything happened to her, she’d tell him, the letter would be sent to the police.

Only one flaw. Symington wasn’t home. Goddammit. She hadn’t counted on that.

She banged on the door with her fist.

No answer. She turned the knob. It was bolted shut.

Glancing up and down the street. No Pretty Boy yet. She clumped down the gray-painted stairs and walked around to the back door. She passed a quorum of the Seven Dwarfs, in plaster, planted along the side of the building, then found the gate in a cheap mesh fence around the backyard.

At the back door Rune pressed her face against the glass, hands shrouding out the light. It was dark inside. She couldn’t see much of anything.

Part of her said Pretty Boy could be there at any minute.

The other part of her broke out a small windowpane with her elbow. She reached in and opened the door. She tossed the broken glass into the backyard, which was overgrown with thick bright grass. She stepped inside.

She walked through to the living room. “Like, minimal,” she muttered. In the bedroom were one bed, a dresser, a floor lamp. The kitchen had one table and two chairs. Two glasses sat on the retro Formica counter, spattered like a Jackson Pollock painting. A few chipped dishes and silverware. In the living room was a single folding chair. Nothing else.

Rune paused in front of the bathroom. There was a stained glass window in the door. “Oooo, classy poddy,” she muttered. Somebody’s initials on the door. “W.C.” The guy who built the house, she guessed.

She looked through the closets—all of them except the one in the bedroom, which was fastened with a big, new glistening lock. Under the squeaky bed were two suitcases. Heavy, battered leather ones. She pulled them out, starting to sweat in the heat of the close, stale apartment.
She stood up and tried to open a window. It was nailed shut. Why? she wondered.

She went back to the suitcases and opened the first one. Clothes. Old, frayed at the cuffs and collar points. The browns going light, the whites going yellow. She closed it and slid it back. In the second suitcase: a razor, an old double-edged Gillette, a tube of shave cream like toothpaste; a Swiss Army knife; keys; a small metal container of cuff links; nail scissors, toothbrush.

She dug down through the layers.

And found a small, battered brown accordion folder with a rubber band around it. It was very heavy. She opened it. She found a letter—from Weissman, Burkow, Stein & Rubin, P.C.—describing how his savings, about fifty-five thousand, had been transferred to an account in the Cayman Islands. A plane ticket, one-way coach, to Georgetown on Grand Cayman. The flight was leaving day after tomorrow.

Next to it, she found his passport. She’d never seen one before. It was old and limp and stained. There were dozens of official-looking stamps in the back.

She didn’t even look at the name until she was about to put it back.

Wait. Who the hell was Vincent Spinello?

Oh, shit! At Stein’s law firm, when she’d looked through the lawyer’s Rolodex, she’d been so nervous she’d misread the name. She’d seen
Vincent Spinello
and thought
Victor Symington
. Oh, Christ, she’d gotten it all wrong. And she’d even broken the poor man’s window!

All a waste. She couldn’t believe it. The danger, the risk, Pretty Boy … all a waste.

“Goddamn,” she whispered harshly.

Only, wait … The letter.

She opened the letter again. It
was
addressed to Symington and at
this
address. So what was he doing with Vincent Spinello’s passport?

But as she looked at the passport again, the condensed, grim little picture, there was no doubt.
Spinello
was the man she’d seen at Robert Kelly’s apartment. Who was he?

She dug to the bottom of the folder and found out. What made it so heavy was something that was wrapped in a piece of newspaper—a pistol. With it was a small box of cheap cardboard, flecked brown-green. The box, too, was heavy. On the side was printing in what she thought was German. She could make out only one word.
Teflon
.

Oh, God …

Symington—or Spinello—was the man who’d killed Robert Kelly. He and Pretty Boy
had
found the Union Bank robbery money. They’d stolen it and killed him! And the loot was in the closet!

Rune dropped to her knees and looked at the padlock on the closet. Leaned close, squinting. Pulled it, rattled the solid lock.

Then she froze. At the sound of a door opening then closing.

Was it the front or the back door? She couldn’t tell. But she knew one thing. It was either Pretty Boy or Symington. And she knew something else: they both wanted her dead.

Rune gave one last tug at the closet door. It didn’t move a millimeter.

Footsteps inside now. Nearby. If he finds me here, he’ll kill me! She stuffed the accordion envelope into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

A creak of floorboards

No, no …

She thought they were in the front of the apartment. In the living room, which wasn’t visible from where she was. She could probably get out the back without being
seen. She glanced into the corridor fast, then ducked back into the bedroom. Yep, it was empty.

Rune took a breath and ran from the bedroom.

She slammed right into Victor Symington’s chest.

He gasped in terror, stepped back, the ugly hat falling from his head. In reflex he lunged out and slugged her hard in the stomach, doubling her over. “Oh, God,” she wheezed. A huge pain shot through her chest and jaw. Rune tried to scream but her voice was only a whisper. She dropped to the floor, unable to breathe.

Symington, furious, grabbed her by the hair and spun her around. Dropped to his knees. His hands smelled of garlic and tobacco. He began to search her roughly.

“Are you with them?” he gasped. “Who the fuck are you?”

She couldn’t answer.

“You are, aren’t you? You’re working for them!” He lifted his fist. Rune lifted an arm over her face.

“Who?” she managed to ask.

He asked, “How did you …”

He stopped speaking. Struggling to catch her breath, Rune looked up. Symington was staring at the doorway. Someone stood there. Pretty Boy? Rune blinked, rolled to her knees.

No … Thank you, thank you, thank you … It was his daughter, Emily.

Rune was so grateful to see the woman that it wasn’t until a second later that she wondered: How’d Emily find the place? Had she
followed
me here?

Wait, something is wrong.

Symington let go of Rune, backed up.

Emily said, “How did we find you, you were going to ask? Haarte has some good contacts.”

Haart? Rune wondered. “Who’s Heart?” she asked.

“Oh, no, it’s Haarte?” Symington whispered. Then he nodded hopelessly. “I should’ve guessed.”

“What’s going on?” Rune demanded.

Symington was looking at Emily with an imploring expression on his face. “Please …”

Emily didn’t respond.

He continued. “Would it do any good to say I have a lot of money?”

“The money!” Rune said. “He killed Mr. Kelly and stole his money!”

Both Symington and Emily ignored her.

“Is there
anything
I can do?” Symington pleaded.

“No,” Emily said. And took a pistol from her pocket. She shot him in the chest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The way he fell is what saved Rune.

The gun was small but the impact knocked Symington backward and he slammed into the pole of the floor lamp, which fell against the bathroom door, sending a shower of glass into the hallway.

Emily danced out of the way of the splinters, which gave Rune a chance to sprint into the bedroom. But the woman recovered fast. She fired the gun again and Rune heard a terrible stereo sound of noises: the blasts of the gun behind her, the crash of the bullets slamming into the plaster wall inches from her head.

Then—with another punch of breathtaking pain— she dove through the bedroom window.

Hands covering her face, shards of glass flying around her, trailing the window shade, she rolled onto more sad evergreens and dropped onto the grass, coming to rest against one of the plaster dwarfs. Panting, she lay on the lawn. The smell of dirt and damp grass enveloped
her. She could hear birds squabbling in the trees overhead.

And then the air around her exploded. A dwarf’s face disintegrated into white splinters and dust. On the street, fifty feet away, Rune caught a glimpse of a man with shotgun. She couldn’t see his face but she knew it was Pretty Boy—Heart probably, the one Symington mentioned. Or Heart’s partner. He and Emily were working together…. She didn’t know who they were exactly or why they wanted to kill Symington but she didn’t pause to consider those questions. She rolled under another plant, then scrabbled to her feet. Clutching her purse, she sprinted into the backyard. Then clambered over the chain-link fence.

And then she ran.

Behind her, from Symington’s yard, came a shout. A second shotgun blast. She heard the hiss of something over her head. It missed and she turned, down an alley. Kept running.

Running until her vision blurred. Running until her chest ignited and she couldn’t breathe another ounce of air.

Finally, miles away it seemed, Rune stopped, gasping. She doubled over. Sure she was going to be sick. But she spit into the grass a few times and remained motionless until the nausea and pain went away. She trotted another block but pulled up with a cramp in her side. She slipped into another backyard—behind a house with boarded-up windows. She crawled into a nest of grass between a smiling Bambi and another set of the Seven Dwarfs, then lay her head on her purse, thinking she’d rest for ten, fifteen minutes.

When she opened her eyes a huge garbage truck was making its mournful, behemoth sounds five feet away from her. And it was dawn.