Manhattan Is My Beat

diapers, please. Put them in two bags.”
    And paid twenty bucks for one pair of Playtex rubber gloves and two huge boxes of disposable diapers.
    “
Muchos niños?
“ the lady asked.
    Rune took the bulgins bags and said, “
S
í. The Pope, you know?”
    The clerk, not much older than Rune, nodded sympathetically.
    She walked out of the bodega toward Avenue B. It was already fiercely hot and a ripe, garbagey smell came from the streets. She passed an art gallery. In the window were wild canvases, violent red and black slashes of paint. She smelled steamed meat as she passed a Ukrainian restaurant. In front of a Korean deli was a sign: HOT FOOD $1.50/QTR LB.
    Alphabetville …
    At Kelly’s building Rune climbed the concrete stairs to the lobby. Remembering the man’s voice from the intercom. Who was it? She shivered as she stared at the webby speaker.
    She tried Amanda once again but there was no answer, so she looked around. Outside there was only one person on the street, a handsome man in his thirties. A Pretty Boy, a thug, from a Martin Scorsese film. He wore a uniform of some kind—like the people who read gas and electric meters do. He sat across the street on a doorstep and read a tabloid newspaper. The headline was about the tourist who’d been knifed in Times Square. The case Detective Manelli was supposed to talk to the captain about. Rune turned back, set the bags down, opened one box of diapers, and stuffed two of the pads under her black T-shirt. She buttoned the white blouse over it. She looked about thirteen months pregnant.
    Then she picked up the bags, crimped them awkwardly under her arms, and opened the huge leopard-skin purse, staring into the black hole with a scowl, dipping her hand into the stew of keys, pens, makeup, candy, Kleenex, a knife, old condom boxes, scraps of paper, letters, music cassettes, a can of cheese spread. For five minutes she kept at it. Then she heard the steps, someone coming down the stairs, a young man.
    Rune looked up at him. Embarrassed, letting one of the bags of diapers slide to the ground.
    Just be a klutz, she told herself; Lord knows you’ve had plenty of practice. She picked up one of the bags and accidentally on purpose dropped her purse on the ground.
    “Need a hand?” the young man asked, unlocking the outer door and pushing it open for her.
    Retrieving her purse, stuffing it under her arm. “My keys are in the bottom of this mess,” she said. Then, thinking she should take the initiative, she frowned and said quickly: “Wait—you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
    “Uhm. About six months.” He was defensive.
    She pretended to relax. She walked past him. “Sorry, but you know how it is. New York, I mean.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Yeah.” He disappeared down the first-floor hallway.
    Rune climbed to the second floor. There was a red sign on the door to Mr. Kelly’s apartment. DO NOT ENTER. CRIME SCENE. NYPD. The door was locked. Rune set the diapers in the incinerator room and returned to Mr. Kelly’s door. She took a hammer and a large screwdriver from her purse. Eddie, from the store, who’d made her promise to forget he’d given her a lesson in burglary, had said the only problem would be the dead bolt. And if there was a Medeco and a metal door frame she could forget it. But if it was just the door tumbler and wood and if she didn’t mind a little noise…
    Rune put on the Playtex gloves—thinking about fingerprints. They were the smallest size she could find at the bodega but were still too big and flopped around on her hands. She tapped the screwdriver into the crack between the door and the jamb just about where the bolt was. Then looked up and down the hall and took the hammer in both hands. Drew it back like a baseball bat, remembering when she used to play tomboy softball in high school. She looked around again. The corridor was empty. She swung as hard as she could at the handle of the screwdriver.
    And, just like at softball, she missed completely. The gloves slipped and with the crack of a gunshot the hammer streaked past the screwdriver and slammed through the cheap paneling of the door.
    “Shit.”
    Trying to pull the hammer out of the thin wood, she worked a large splintery piece toward her. It cracked and fell to the floor.
    She drew back again, aiming at the screwdriver, but then she noticed that the hole she’d made was large enough to get her hand through. She reached in, found the