Manhattan Is My Beat (18 page)

And Rune felt a low jolt in her stomach, a kick. She whispered, “What
about
the money?”

His eyes glazed over again and he said, “What they do here—they’ll do it when the weather’s nice—they put paper on the tables, like tablecloths and we have picnics here. They put nuts in little paper cups. They’re pink and look like tiny upside-down ballet dresses. I don’t know where the tables are. I hope they do that again soon…. Where’s Bips?”

Rune sank back down on her haunches. She smiled. “He’s playing, Mr. Elliott, I’ll look out for him.” They sat in silence for a moment and she asked, “What did Robert Kelly want when he came to visit you a month ago?”

His head nodded toward her and his eyes had a sudden lucidity that startled her.

“Who, Bobby? Why, he was asking me questions about that damn movie.” The old face broke into a smile. “Just like you’ve been doing all afternoon.”

Rune, leaning forward, studying his face, the lines and gnarls. “What exactly did you talk about, you and Bobby Kelly?”

“Your father, Bobby? Oh, the usual. I worked on
Manhattan
with some of the boys.”

“I know you did. What did Bobby ask you about it?”

“Stuff.”

“Stuff?” she asked cheerfully.

Elliott frowned. “Somebody else did too. Somebody else was asking me things.”

Her heart pounded a little faster. “When was that, Mr. Elliott? Do you remember?”

“Last month. No, no, just the other day. Wait, I remember—it was today, little while ago.” He focused on her. “It was a girl. Boyish. Looked a lot like you. Wait, maybe it
was
you.”

He squinted.

Rune felt that he was on the verge of something. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Like the times she and her father would go fishing in rural Ohio, playing the heavy catfish with the frail Sears rods. You could lose them in a wink if you weren’t careful.

“Bobby Kelly,” she tried again. “When he came to visit, what did he ask you about the movie?”

The eyes dropped and the lids pressed together. “The usual, you know. Are you his daughter?”

“Just a friend.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s busy, he couldn’t make it. He wanted me to say hello to you and tell you that he had a great time talking to you last month. You talked, he told me you talked all about … what was it again?”

“That place.”

“What place?”

“That place in New York. The place I sent him. He’d been looking for it for a long time is what he told me.”

Rune’s heart thudded hard. She turned her head and looked directly into his milky eyes.

“He was happy when I sent him there. You should have seen his face when I told him about it. Oh, he was real happy. Where’s Bips?”

“Just playing, Mr. Elliott. I’m looking after him. Where did you send Bobby Kelly?”

“He was real anxious to find it and I told him right off, I’m sure I did.”

“Do you remember now?”

“Oh, one of those places … there are lots of them, you know.”

Rune was leaning forward.
Please try to remember
, she thought.
Please, pleasepleaseplease
… Didn’t say anything.

Silence. The old man shook his head. He sensed the importance of her questions and there was frustration in his eyes. “I can’t remember. I’m sorry.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Sometimes I think I’m going loony. Just loony. I’m feeling pretty tired. I could use a nap.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Elliott.” She tasted her disappointment. But she smiled and patted his arm, then moved away quickly when she felt how thin it was. Thought of her father. “Hey, don’t worry about it.”

Rune stood up, walked behind him and took the white plastic handles of the chair. Undid the brakes. She started to wheel the chair toward the sidewalk. Elliott said suddenly, “The Hotel Florence. Five fourteen West Forty-fourth. At Tenth Avenue.”

Rune froze. She dropped into a crouch next to him, her hand on the frail bone of his arm. “That’s where you sent him?”

“I … I think so. It just came to me.”

“That’s wonderful, Mr. Elliott. Thank you so much.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He touched the spot and seemed to blush.

Richard appeared and stepped up toward them, starting to speak. Rune held up her hand to him. He stopped.

Raoul Elliott said, “I want to take a nap now. Where’s Bips?”

“He’s playing, Mr. Elliott. He’ll be here soon.”

Elliott looked around. “Miss, can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“I lied.”

Rune hesitated. Then said, “Go ahead. Tell me.”

“Bips’s a little shit. I’ve been trying to give him away for years. You know somebody who wants a dog?”

Rune laughed. “I sure don’t. Sorry.”

Elliott looked at the flower, curious again, started to pull off the cellophane wrapping; it defeated him and he set it back on his lap. Rune took the flower from him and opened it up. He held it lightly in his hands. He said, “You’ll come back sometime, won’t you? We have this party when it’s spring. We can talk about movies. I’d like that.”

Rune said, “I’d love to.”

“You’ll say hi to your father for me.”

“Sure, I will.”

The nurse was approaching. The old man’s head sagged against the side of the wheelchair. He breathed slowly. His eyes were not quite completely closed but he was asleep. He started to snore very softly.

Rune looked at him, thinking again how much he resembled her father toward the end of his life. Cancer or AIDS or old age … death’s packaging is all so similar.

The nurse nodded to her and took the chair, wheeled it down the path. The flower fell to the sidewalk. The nurse picked it up and set it on his lap again.

A dense shadow of a cloud that Rune thought looked just like a dragon rearing up on its sturdy hind legs passed over them. She turned to Richard. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s get back to the Side.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Florence Hotel, near the Hudson River, was in Hell’s Kitchen, west of Midtown.

Rune knew her New York history. At one point this had been one of the most dangerous areas in the city, the home of the Gophers and the Hudson Dusters, murderous gangs that made the Mafia look tame. Most of the dangerous elements had been urban-renewed away when the tunnel to New Jersey was built. But the dregs of some Irish and Latino gangs remained. It was, in short, not a neighborhood to be hanging out in alone at night.

Thanks tons, Richard, she thought.

He’d left her there after dropping her off in front of the Florence, a four-story flophouse with a scarred and peeling facade. She’d started to ask him again what the matter was but then some kind of radar kicked in and she decided it would be a bad move.

“Can’t really hang around,” he’d told her. “You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Wonder Woman. That’s me.”

“Gotta meet some people tonight. Otherwise, I’d stay.”

She hadn’t asked who. Been dying to. But hadn’t.

“No, that’s fine. You go on.”

“You sure?”

“Go on.”

Some people
…

She watched his car drive away. He gave her a formal wave. She hesitated only a moment before she stepped carefully around the bum who slept in front of the beer-can-filled flower box under the narrow front window. She pushed open the lobby door and stepped inside. The smells were of damp wallpaper, disinfectant, some vague, unpleasant animal scents. The sort of place that made you want to hold your breath.

The clerk looked up at her from behind a Plexiglas security barrier that distorted his features. A thin man, hair slicked back, wearing a dress shirt and rust-colored corduroy pants. The shirt had dark stains, the pants, light.

“Yeah?” he called.

“I’m a social worker from Brooklyn?” Rune said.

“You asking me?”

“I’m telling you who I am.”

“Yeah, a social worker.”

“I’m trying to find some information about a patient of mine, a man who stayed here for a month or so.”

“Don’t you call ‘em clients?”

“What?”

“We get social workers here all the time. They don’t have patients. They have clients.”

“One of my clients,” she corrected herself.

“You got a license?”

“A license? A driver’s license? Look, I’m older than I—”

“No, a social work license.”

A license?

“Oh, that. See, I was mugged last week when I was on assignment. In Bedford Stuyvesant. Visiting a client. They took my purse—my other purse, my good purse— and that had my license in it. I’ve applied for a new one but you know how long it takes to get a replacement?”

“Tell me.”

“Worse than a passport. I’m talking
weeks
.”

The man was grinning. “Where’d you go to social work school?”

“Harvard.”

“No shit.” The smile didn’t leave his face. “If there’s nothing else, I’m pretty busy.” He picked up a
National Geographic
and flipped it open.

“Look, I have my job to do. I have to find out about this man. Robert Kelly.”

The clerk glanced up from his magazine. He didn’t say anything. But Rune, even through the scuffed plastic, could see caution in his eyes.

She continued. “I know he stayed here for a while. I think somebody named Raoul Elliott recommended that he come here.”

“Raoul? Nobody’s named Raoul.”

Summoning patience, Rune asked, “Do you remember Mr. Kelly?”

He shrugged.

She continued. “Did he check anything here? A suitcase? Maybe a package in the safe?”

“Safe? We look like the kinda hotel’s gotta safe?”

“It’s important.”

Again, the man didn’t respond. Suddenly Rune understood. She’d seen enough movies. She lifted her purse slowly and opened it, reached in and took out five dollars. She slid it seductively toward him. Just like an actor
in a movie she’d seen a month or so ago. Harrison Ford, she thought. Or Michael Douglas.

That actor’d gotten results; she got a laugh.

Rune gave the clerk another ten.

“Look, kid. The going rate’s fifty for information. That’s the way it is all over the city. It’s like a union.”

Fifty? Shit.

She handed him a twenty. “That’s all I got.”

He took the money. “I don’t know nothing—”

“You bastard! I want my money back.”

“—except one thing. About your
client
Kelly. This priest or minister, Father so-and-so, called, I don’t know, a couple days ago. He said Kelly’d dropped off a suitcase for safekeeping. He couldn’t get him at his apartment and had this as his only other number. This priest figured I might know where Kelly was. He didn’t know what to do with the suitcase.”

Yes! Rune thought. Remembering the scene in
Manhattan Is My Beat
where Roy buried the money in a cemetery next to a church!

“Excellent, that’s great! You know where the church was? You have any idea?”

“I didn’t write nothing down. But I think he said he was in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn!” Rune’s hands were up against the grimy Plexiglas. She leaned forward, bouncing on her toes. “This’s awesome!”

The man slipped her money into his pocket. “Well, happy day.” He opened the magazine again and began reading an article about penguins.