Manhattan Is My Beat

reassured him. He flashed the Polaroid.
    The man shook his head. “All for money. Death of an innocent. And it’s all for money.” He sounded genuinely troubled as he said this. He looked up from the picture. Haarte had learned that Polaroids never show blood the right color; it always looks darker.
    “That bother you?” the man asked Haarte. “Death of an innocent?”
    Haarte said nothing. Innocence or guilt, just like fault and mercy, were concepts that had no meaning to him.
    But the man didn’t seem to want an answer.
    “Here.” The man handed him an envelope. Haarte had received a lot of envelopes like this. He always thought they felt like blocks of wood. Which in a way they were. Money was paper, paper was wood. He didn’t look inside. He put the envelope in his pocket. No one had ever tried to cheat him.
    “What about the other guy you wanted done?” Haarte asked.
    The man shook his head. “Gone to ground. Somewhere in Manhattan. We aren’t sure where yet. We should find out soon. You interested in the job?”
    “New York?” Haarte considered. “It’ll cost more. There’s more heat, it’s more complicated. We’d need backup and we probably should make it look accidental. Or at least set up a fall guy.”
    “Whatever,” the man said lackadaisically, not much interest in the details of Haarte’s craft. “What’ll it cost?”
    “Double.” Haarte touched his breast pocket, where the money now rested.
    A lifted gray eyebrow. “You pick up all expenses? The cost of backup? Equipment?”
    Haarte waited a moment and said, “Add ten points for the backup?”
    “I can go there,” the man said.
    They shook hands and Haarte returned to his own car.
    He called Zane on the radio once more. “We’re on again. This time in our own backyard.”

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Rune got elected to pick up the videotape and her life was never the same after that.
    She argued with her boss about picking up the tape—Tony, the manager of Washington Square Video on Eighth Street in Greenwich Village, where she was a clerk. Oh, she argued with him.
    Rewinding a tape, playing with the VCR, snapping the controls, she stared at the fat, bearded man. “Forget it. No way.” She reminded him how he’d agreed she didn’t have to do pickups or deliveries and that was the deal when he’d hired her.
    “So,” she said. “There.”
    Tony peered at her from under flecked, bushy eyebrows and, for some reason, decided to be reasonable. He explained how Frankie Greek and Eddie were busy fixing monitors or something—though she guessed they were probably just figuring out how to get comped into the Palladium for a concert that night—and so she
had
to do the pickups.
    “I don’t see why I
have
to at all, Tony. I mean, I just don’t see where the have-to part comes in.”
    And right about then he changed his mind about being reasonable. “Okay, here’s where it comes in, Rune. It’s the part where I’m fucking
telling
you to. You know, as your boss. Anyway, whatsa big deal? There’s only one pickup.”
    “That’s like a total waste of time.”
    “Your life is a waste of time, Rune.”
    “Look,” she began, not too patiently, and went on with her argument until he said, “Thin ice, honey. Get your ass outa here. Now.”
    She tried, “Not in the job description.” Only because it wasn’t in her nature to give in too quickly and then she saw him go all still and before he exploded she stood up and said, “Oh, will you just
chill
, Tony?” In that exasperated, sly way of hers that would probably get her fired someday but so far hadn’t.
    Then he’d looked at an invoice and said, “Christ, it’s only a few blocks from here. Avenue B. Guy’s name is Robert Kelly.”
    Oh, Rune thought, Mr. Kelly? Well, that was different.
    She took the receipt, snagging the retro, fake-leopard-skin bag she’d found in a used-clothing store on Broadway. She pushed out the door, into the cool spring air, saying, “All right, all right. I’ll do it.” Putting just the right tone in her voice to let Tony know he owed her one for this. In her two decades on earth Rune had learned that if she wanted to live life the way she did, it was probably a good idea to collect as many obligations from people as she could.

     
    Rune was five two, one hundred pounds. Today she wore black stretch pants, a black T-shirt under an businessman’s Arrow shirt she’d cut the sleeves out of, so it looked like a white pinstripe vest. Black