Manhattan Is My Beat (33 page)

“How could I? My fingerprints were all over Spinello’s apartment. I
knew
I was a suspect. I figured out what you were doing.”

“No, you didn’t,” Haarte said. “You’re not that smart.”

Rune remained silent. At least one thing was good, Rune thought. They don’t know about Stephanie.

Suddenly Haarte leapt up from the chair, grabbed Rune’s hair, and jerked her head back so far she couldn’t breathe. She was choking. His face was close to hers. “See, you think it’s better to live. No matter what I do to you. But it isn’t. The only way we could let you live—and we aren’t really inclined to kill you—but the only way we’d
let
you live is if we make it so that you can’t tell anybody about us. Pick us out of a lineup, say.”

He moved a finger slowly down toward her eye. She closed the lid and a moment later felt increasing pain as he pressed hard on her eyeball.

“No!”

His fingers lifted off her face. “There’s a
lot
we could do to you.” His hand massaged the back of her neck. “We could make you a vegetable.” He touched her breasts. “Or a boy.” Between her legs. “Or …”

He released her hair so quickly that she screamed. Emily looked on without emotion.

Rune caught her breath. “Please let me go. I won’t say anything.”

“It’s demeaning to beg,” Emily said.

“I’ll give you the million dollars,” she said.

“What million?” Haarte asked. “From that old movie? That’s bullshit.”

“Oh,” Emily said, laughing, “your secret treasure?”

“I will. I found it!”

Haarte asked cynically, “You did?”

“Sure. Where do you think I’ve been for the past twenty-four hours? After what happened in Brooklyn, you think I’m going to hang around town? Why didn’t I just leave yesterday as soon as you killed Spinello? I didn’t leave because I had a lead to the money.”

Haarte considered this. Rune thought he was genuinely
intrigued. Rune, hands together, was kneading her one remaining silver bracelet. “It’s true, I promise.”

He shook his head. “No, doesn’t make sense.”

“Mr. Kelly
did
have the money. I found it. It’s in a locker at the bus station.”

“That sounds like a scene out of a movie,” Emily said slowly.

“Whatever it sounds like, it’s true.”

They were both sort of believing her now. Rune could tell.

Rune fiddled with the bracelet again. “A million dollars!”

Haarte said to Emily, “It’s old money. How hard to move?”

“Not that hard,” she said. “They’re always finding old bills. Banks have to take ‘em. And the good news is even if they took the serial numbers years ago, nobody’s gonna have the records anymore.”

“You know anybody who could take ‘em?”

“A couple guys. We could probably get seventy, eighty points on the dollar.”

But then Haarte shook his head again. “No, it’s crazy.”

“A million dollars,” Rune repeated. “Aren’t you getting tired of killing people for a living?”

There was a pause. Haarte and Emily avoided each other’s eyes.

The room was sepia, gloomy, lit by two dim lamps. Rune looked out the window. Outside, it was very dark, with only that one cold streetlight nearby. She played nervously with her bracelet, squeezing it.

Haarte and Emily whispered to each other, their heads down. Emily finally nodded and looked up. “Okay, here’s the deal. You give us the names of everyone you’ve told about me and hand over the money, we’ll let
you live. You don’t tell us, I’ll let Haarte here take you downstairs and do whatever he wants.”

Rune thought for a moment. “What will you do with them? Whoever I told?”

Haarte said, “Nothing. As long as there are no police after us. But if there are then we might have to hurt them.”

Rune squeezed the bracelet again several times. Hard. It snapped in half.

She looked up. “You’re lying.”

“Honey—” Emily began.

That’s the trick to lying. Make the person you’re lying to your partner in the lie
.

“But that’s all right,” Rune said matter-of-factly. “Because I was too.” And leapt out of the chair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Emily laughed.

Because Rune might have run toward the front door of the town house or the rear. Or tried for a window. But she didn’t do either. Instead, she rolled toward a small door in the living room.

“Rune,” Emily said patiently, “what do you think you’re doing? That’s a closet.”

And a locked one, at that, Rune learned, tugging on the glass knob.

Haarte looked at Emily. He shook his head at Rune’s stupidity. There was no way out. She’d boxed herself in. Rune glanced back at them and saw with relief that they didn’t have a clue what she really had in mind.

Until Rune jumped for the electric outlet she’d had her eye on for five minutes.

“No!” Emily shouted to Haarte. “She’s going to—”

Rune pushed the two ends of the broken bracelet into the socket.

This bracelet, mon, she be important in your life, very important. Don’t be too fast to give her away
….

There was a fierce white flash and a loud crack. Pure stinging fire poured through her thumb and finger. The lights throughout the town house went out as the fuse popped from the short circuit. She smelled the scorched-meat scent of the burn on her finger and thumb.

Instantly, ignoring the pain, she was on her feet and running. Emily and Haarte, blinded by the flash, were groping toward the doorway. Rune, who’d had her eyes closed when the spark arced, was already thirty feet ahead of them, running cautiously, crouched, toward the front door, her useless right arm cradled in her left hand.

She missed the two steps down, from the hallway to the entry foyer, and fell heavily forward. Her right arm shot out in front of her instinctively, and she felt the searing pain as the burned hand broke her fall. She couldn’t stop the grunt of pain.

“There—she’s over there,” Emily called. “I’ll get her.”

Rune climbed to her feet, hearing the woman’s high heels clattering after her. She couldn’t see Haarte anywhere. Maybe he was down in the basement, changing the fuse.

Rune leapt toward the front door, chilled by panic from the thought of Emily, undoubtedly armed, moving close behind her.

She reached for the top latch on the door. Then stopped, stepped slowly, stepped back against the wall. No! Christ no!

There was a man outside. She couldn’t see clearly through the lacy curtains but she knew it had to be Pretty Boy. Haarte’s and Emily’s partner. The halo of curly hair caught pale light from the street. He seemed to be looking in the window, wondering why the lights had gone off inside.

Rune turned and started toward the back of the house.

Slowly, listening for Emily’s heels and Haarte’s footsteps.

But there was no sound at all. Had they fled? Rune turned the corner and froze. There, only four or five feet away, was Emily, who inched forward, feeling her way along the wall, holding a gun. She’d kicked off her shoes, was silently barefoot.

Rune pressed against the wall. The woman’s head turned, squinting into the gloom. Probably hearing Rune’s shallow breathing. She had a vague image of the woman’s silhouette lifting the gun. Pointing it toward Rune.

She’ll hear my heart beating! She
has
to hear that.

And that it may please thee to preserve all who are in danger by reason of their labor
.

The silenced gun fired with a loud clicking
pop
. There was a fierce slap as the bullet hit the plaster a foot away from Rune’s head.

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord
.

Another shot, closer.

Rune struggled with all her will to remain silent.

Emily turned toward the front door. Rune’s groping fingers grabbed the closest thing she could find—a heavy vase on a pedestal. She raised it and flung it hard toward the woman. It was a solid hit. Emily cried out in a high wail and fell to her knees. The gun disappeared into the shadows. The vase thudded, unbroken, onto the parquet.

“I can’t find the fuses!” Haarte’s voice shouted from very near. “Where the hell is she?”

“Help me!” Emily called.

Haarte walked forward. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

Rune dodged out of his way.

“There!” Emily called. “Beside you!”

“What—” Haarte began, and Rune sprinted down the hallway, heading toward where the back door should be.

Yes! There it was. She could see it. And it didn’t look like anybody was outside.

She heard Haarte’s voice in the front of the house, calling to Emily.

And Rune knew then that it was going to be all right; she could escape. They were nowhere near her and Rune had to spring only twenty feet or so to get to the back door. She slammed the hallway door shut, wedged a chair under the knob, and kept running.

Haarte got to the door in a few seconds and tried to open it but it was tightly blocked.

Rune could see dim light coming through the lace curtains on the back door.

Nothing could stop her now. She’d get outside, into the alley, run like hell. Call 911 from the first phone she found.

Haarte slammed into the door and pushed it open slightly, but the chair still held.

Fifteen feet. Ten.

Another slam.

“Go around, through the kitchen,” Haarte called to Emily.

But their voices were a world away. Rune was at the door. She was safe.

She undid the chain. Turned the latch and then the knob. She swung the door wide and stepped out onto the back porch.

And stopped cold.

Oh, no …

No more than two feet away from her was Pretty Boy. He was startled but not so startled he didn’t lift his pistol like a quick-draw gunslinger and point it directly at her face.

No, no, no …

She leaned back against the doorjamb. Tears streaming down her face. Arms limp, shaking her head. Oh, no … It’s over. It’s over.

But then something odd happened, the sort of thing that happened in the Side, in the magic realm. Rune seemed to go out of her body. She felt as if she died and rose away into the air. Actually wondering—did he shoot me? Am I dead?

Floating away. Completely numb. Sailing up into the air.

And from there, from a cloud hovering over the Side, she looked down and saw:

Pretty Boy putting his arm around her and leading her away from the open back door of the town house, handing her off to another man behind him, a man in a blue jacket that said U.S. MARSHAL on the back, and from there to another man wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest printed with the letters “NYPD.” Passed along again until finally at the end of the line was Detective Manelli, with his close-together eyes, with his funny first name.

Virgil Manelli.

The detective held a finger to his lips to keep Rune quiet, then led her away from the house. She looked back at the line of men clustered around the door. Big men with stony faces, wearing suits of thick blue armor and carrying stubby machine guns.

On the sidewalk, Manelli handed her off one last time—to two medics, who put her on a cot and began hovering over her, pouring ice water on her burnt hand and then wrapping it with bandages.

Rune paid no attention. She kept her eyes on the men around the back door. Then Pretty Boy said into a microphone on his collar, “Subject is clear. Move in, move in, move in!”

Everyone on the stairs, all the knights, charged
into the building, shouting, “Police, police, federal agents …” Flashlights illuminated the interior of the town house.

Rune heard a funny sound. Laughter. She looked at the attendant. But he wasn’t laughing. His partner wasn’t either. She realized that the sound was coming from her.

Delicately, one of the medics asked, “What’s so funny?”

But she didn’t answer. Because from inside the town house came the sound of gunshots. Then calls of “Medic, medic!”

And the men in the ambulance left her while they ran toward the back door with their bags in hand, their stethoscopes flapping around their necks.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX