Manhattan Is My Beat (37 page)

He said, “Your grandfather told me to be careful with this. He said it had his whole life in it.”

Rune glanced at the suitcase. Her palms were moist. “Funny what people consider their whole life, isn’t it?”

“I feel sorry for people who can carry their homes around with them. That’s one of the reasons the church has this residence home. You really feel God at work here.”

They walked to his small office. He bent over the
cluttered desk and sorted through a thick stack of envelopes. He said. “I wished Robert had stayed longer. I liked him a lot. But then, he was independent. He wanted to live on his own.”

Rune decided that she was going to give the church some money. Fifty thousand, she decided. Then, on a whim, upped the ante to a hundred Gs.

He handed her a thick envelope addressed to “Mr. Bobby Kelly.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention … this came for him care of the church a day or so ago. Before I got around to forwarding it, I heard that he’d been killed.”

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.

They looked through the rest of the magazines. In each 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, ‘Power 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 that’s 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 Yvonne would be good. What do you think?”

“It’s as good as anything.”

She looked at the bulky envelope the minister had given her. The return address was the Bon Aire Nursing Home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.

“What’s that?”

“Something Mr. Elliott sent to Mr. Kelly at the church.”

She opened the envelope. Inside was a letter taped to another thick envelope, on which was printed in old, uneven type:
Manhattan Is My Beat
, Draft Script, 5/6/46.

“Oh, look. A souvenir!”

Rune read the letter out loud. “‘Dear Mr. Kelly. You don’t remember me, I’m sure. I’m the nurse on the floor where Mr. Raoul Elliott’s room is. He asked me to write to you and asked if you could forward the package I’m enclosing here to the young girl who came to visit him the other day. He was a little confused as to who she was—maybe she is your daughter or probably your granddaughter—but if you could forward it, we’d be most appreciative.

“‘Mr. Elliot has mentioned several times how nice it was for her to come visit and talk about movies, and I can tell you her visit had a very good effect on him. He put the flower she brought him by his bedside and a couple times he even remembered who gave it to him, which is pretty good for him. Yesterday he got this from his storage
locker and asked me to send it to her. Thank her for making him happy. All best wishes, Joan Gilford, R.N.’“

Richard, driving through commercial Brooklyn, said, “What a great old guy. That was sweet.”

Rune said,” I think I’m going to cry.”

She tore open the envelope.

Richard stopped for a red light. “You know, maybe you can sell it. I heard that an original draft of somebody’s play—Noel Coward, I think—went for four or five thousand at Sotheby’s. What do you think this one’d be worth?”

The light changed and the car pulled forward. Rune didn’t answer right away but after a moment said, “So far it’s up to two hundred and thirty thousand.”

“What?” he asked, smiling uncertainly.

“And counting.”

Richard glanced over at Rune then skidded the car to a stop.

In Rune’s lap were bundles of money. Stacks of wrapped bills. They were larger than modern Federal Reserve notes. The ink was darker, the seals on the front were in midnight-blue ink. The paper wrappers around the stacks were stenciled with
$10,000
in a scripty old-time typeface. Also printed on them was
Union Bank of New York
.

“Thirty-three, thirty-four … Let’s see. Thirty-eight. Times ten thousand is three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Is that right? I’m
so
bad with math.”

“Christ,” Richard whispered.

Cars honked behind them. He glanced in the rear-view mirror, then pulled to the curb, parked in front of a Carvel ice cream store.

“I don’t understand … what …?”

Rune didn’t answer. She ran her hand over the money, replaying the great scene in
Manhattan Is My Beat
where Dana Mitchell is inside the bank and opens the
suitcase of money—the camera cutting between his face and the stacks of bills, which had been lit to glow like a hoard of jewels.

“Raoul Elliott,” she answered. “When he was researching the film he must have found where the loot was hidden. Maybe it
was
buried there….” She nodded back toward the church. “So he donated a bunch back to the church and they built the home for actors. The minister said he’d been very generous to them. Raoul kept the rest and retired.”

Two tough-looking kids in T-shirts and jeans walked by and glanced in the car. Richard looked at them then reached over Rune, locked the door, rolled up the windows.

“Hey,” she protested, “what’re you doing? It’s hot out.”

“You’re in the middle of Brooklyn with four hundred thousand dollars in your lap and you’re just going to sit there?”

“No, as a matter of fact”—she nodded toward the Carvel store—”I was going to get an ice cream cone. You want one?”

Richard sighed. “How ‘bout if we get a safe deposit box?”

“But we’re right here.”

“A bank first?” he asked. “Please?”

She ran her hand over the money again. Picked up one bundle. It was heavy. “After, can we get an ice cream?”

“Tons of ice cream. Sprinkles too, you want.”

“Yeah, I want.”

He started the car. Rune leaned back in the seat. She was laughing. Looking at him, coy and sly.

He said, “You’re looking full of the devil. What’s so funny?”

“You know the story of the Little Red Hen?”

“No, I don’t. How ‘bout if you tell it to me?” Richard turned the old car onto the Brooklyn Bridge and pointed the hood toward the turrets and battlements of Manhattan, fiery in the afternoon sun. Rune said, “It goes like this …”