Death of a Blue Movie Star

much? Why was he seeing her?
    Because he wanted to make Cheryl, the soon-to-be ex-wife who dated regularly, jealous?
    Because she was sexy?
    Because he liked younger women?
    Because he—
    The phone rang.
    He answered it.
    “‘Lo?”
    “Sam.” It was the 6th Precinct’s ops coordinator, the second in command at the station.
    “Brad. What’s up?”
    “We got another one.”
    “Sword of Jesus?”
    “Yep. Forty-seventh near Eighth. Blew just a while ago.”
    Christ. They were coming more quickly now. Only a day apart on these. “How bad?”
    “Nobody outside the theater but inside it’s a fucking mess.”
    “MO the same?”
    “Seems to be. You get on it. Get on it big.”
    Healy hesitated. Didn’t feel like he wanted to mince words. “I thought you wanted low-profile.”
    There was a second of silence. The ops coordinator hadn’t anticipated that question. “It’s kind of … What it is, it’s kind of embarrassing now.”
    “Embarrassing.”
    “You know. We need a perp in custody. That’s from the mayor.”
    “You got it,” Healy said. “Any witnesses?”
    The response was a bitter laugh. “Parts of ’em, yeah. Those pricks must’ve used a pound of plastic this time.”
    Sam Healy hung up the phone and pulled his blue-jean jacket on. He was all the way out to the elevator when he remembered his pistol. He went back and got it and had to wait three long minutes for the elevator. The door opened. He got in. He looked at his watch. At least the timing was right. Rune would be at work and wouldn’t hear about the bombing until later. He’d have time to finish the postblast and seal the site before she found out.
    It was one problem he’d never had with a girlfriend before: intruding at a crime scene.

     
    Rune, sitting on the subway, thought about men.
    Older men, younger men.
    Her most recent boyfriend, Richard, had been close to her age, just a few years older. Tall, skinny, with that narrow, dark, French face that you found everywhere in straight and gay New York City. (She’d leave him alone in bars to go to the john and come back and find bartenderettes leaning forward, dreamily pouring him free drinks.)
    They were together about six months. She’d enjoyed the time but toward the end she knew it wasn’t going to work. He’d gotten tired of her ideas for dates: picnicking next to the huge air conditioner vents on the roof of a Midtown office building, playing with the Dobermans in her favorite Queens junkyard, wandering through the city looking for the sites of famous gangland rubouts. They talked about getting married. But neither of them was real serious about it. Richard had said, “The thing is, I think I’m changing. I’m not into weird anymore. And you’re …”
    “Becoming weirder?”
    “No, it isn’t that. I think I’d say, you’re becoming more you.”
    Which she took as a compliment. But they still broke up not long afterward. They still talked some on the phone, had a beer now and then. She wished him well though she’d also decided that if he married the tall, blonde advertising account executive he’d been dating their wedding present was going to be the four-foot stuffed iguana she’d seen in a resale shop on Bleecker Street.
    Young, old …
    But, naw, it isn’t the age. It’s the state of mind.
    Her mother had told her—during one of the woman’s pretty much incoherent facts-of-life lectures that ran from ages twelve to eighteen—that there was only one thing that older men would want from her. Rune’s experience, though, was that it was pretty much
all
men who wanted that one thing and older men were a lot safer because you usually could stay up later than them and, if worse came to worst, you usually could scare them into submission by talking about your recent twenty-year-old lover who kept you up all night with sexual acrobatics.
    Not that she was inclined to scare off Healy. Hell, she thought he was totally sexy. She just wished he’d hurry up and get the preliminary pass over with, then get down to some serious moves. Maybe it was out of line, loaning him
Lusty Cousins
. There was a lot of gentleman in him, though, and she wanted to see what was underneath that.
    But what do you do with a sexy gentleman who doesn’t call you?
    The train pulled into the station, and she got off, climbed the steep stairs and began walking west.
    Wondering if there was maybe something weird or Freudian about what she felt for him. Father image, something like