Manhattan Is My Beat

errant—fall for you. The Gods are just letting you down easy. Saying: if they’d meant you to have somebody like Richard, they’d have made you four inches taller and a thirty-six C, or B at least, and given you blond hair.
    But being gay … this was something to think about. Could she deal with it? It’d be hard to own up to but maybe she’d have to admit it. Some things you can’t run from.
    Admitting it, she felt relief flood through her. It explained why she was reluctant to sleep with a man right away—she probably didn’t really
like
sex with men. And if Richard turned her on like an electric current it was probably just because of what she’d realized before—that there was something feminine about him. Sure, that made sense.
    Telling Mother would be hard.
    Maybe she should get a crew cut.
    Maybe she should become a nun.
    Maybe she should kill herself.
    At the corner of Eighth Street, rather than turn toward the subway to get a train to the loft, she turned the other way, to return to the video store.
    She knew what she wanted to do.
    Get a movie. Maybe
It Happened One Night
. As long as I’m going to cry anyway, why not get a movie to go along with it? Ice cream, beer, and a movie. Can’t lose with that combination.
    How about
Gone With the Wind?
    How about
Lesbos Lovers?

     
    Ten minutes later she pushed inside Washington Square Video. Frankie Greek was behind the counter and he was looking totally sheepish.
    Well, he damn well ought to. Fucking up when he took that message from Richard … She was going to give him hell. But, as she looked at him playing nervously with the VCR remote, it seemed there was something else on his mind. He
was
nervous but it wasn’t because of her.
    “Hello, Rune.”
    “What is it, Frankie? Your sister okay?”
    “Yes, she’s fine,” he recited. “She had a baby.”
    “I know. You told us. What’s the matter?”
    “How are you tonight? Doing okay, I hope. Doing good.” A wanna-be rock musician talking like Mister Rogers? Something was really wrong here. “What’s with you?”
    “Nothing, Rune. I heard it was kind of cold out there tonight.” It was like he was in a bad skit on
Saturday Night Live
.
    “Cold. What the hell are you—”
    “Rune?” a man’s deep voice asked.
    She turned. Oh, it was that U.S. marshal. Dixon, she remembered.
    “Hi,” he said.
    “Hey, Marshal Dixon.”
    He laughed. “You make it sound like a sheriff in a bad western. Call me Phillip.”
    She looked at Frankie, paler than Mick Jagger in February. “I saw his badge,” Frankie said.
    “He arrests people who screw up phone messages,” Rune muttered.
    “Huh?”
    “Never mind.”
    “How you doing?” Dixon asked, smiling. Then he frowned, looked at her face. “There’s a little …” He pointed at her cheek.
    She grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed away at a bit of eye makeup.
    “That’s got it,” Dixon said. “Hey, love the outfit.”
    “Really?”
    His eyes swept over it—and, sure enough, she felt a bit of that electric sizzle again. Not as high-voltage as with Richard, but still …
    “I never do drugs,” Frankie Greek said.
    Dixon looked at him curiously.
    “Some musicians do. I mean, you hear about it. But I never have. Some of my songs are about drugs. But that’s, like, just something to write songs about. I stay away from them.”
    “Well, good for you.”
    Rune gave him an exasperated look then said to the marshal, “Anything more on the case?”
    “Naw.” Then he seemed to think he shouldn’t be talking quite so blue-collar and added, “No. No evidence in the Edelman death.” He shrugged. “No prints at the scene. No witnesses. You haven’t seen anything odd lately? Been followed?”
    “No.”
    Dixon nodded. Looked at some videos. Picked one up. Put it down.
    “So,” he said.
    Two “so’s” from two different men in one night. Rune wondered what this one meant.
    “Could I talk to you?” he asked, motioning her to the front of the store.
    “Sure.”
    They stood by the window, next to a distracting cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox.
    “Just thought you’d like to know. I checked out that case you told me about. The Union Bank heist?”
    “You did?”
    He shook his head. “I didn’t find anything. Technically, it’s still open but nobody’s been on the case since the fifties. They only keep murder cases open indefinitely. I tried to find the file but it looks like it was pitched out ten, twenty years ago.”
    “I