Manhattan Is My Beat

to last through a siege. Like her mother’s pantry, she thought. With its provisions of flour, yellowing boxes of raisins and oatmeal and cornstarch. The colored cans. Green, Del Monte. Red, Campbell’s. Only here, the difference was that everything was new. Just like the furniture.
    Emily’s voice was softer as she said, “I didn’t mean to suggest anything. What I said before. Ever since our mother died, Father’s been, well, a little unstable. He’s had a series of young friends. At least he waited until she died to turn adolescent again.” She shook her head. “But a murder … So maybe he’s in danger.” The cigarette paused halfway to her mouth, then lowered.
    Rune told her, “I guess he’s okay. I mean, I don’t know that he isn’t. He sure didn’t hang around for very long after the man downstairs was killed.”
    “What happened?”
    Rune told her about Robert Kelly’s death.
    “Why do you think my father saw it happen?”
    “What it was, I came back here to pick up something after Mr. Kelly was killed. And I was in the apartment downstairs—”
    “How did you know him, this Mr. Kelly?”
    “He was a customer at the store where I work. We were sorta friends. Anyway, I saw your father. And he saw me in the apartment. He was terrified. That was weird—
me
scaring anybody.” She laughed. “But the way I figure it, the day Mr. Kelly was killed your father was hanging out on his fire escape. He saw the killer come out of the apartment after he killed Mr. Kelly. I think your father got a look at the killer.”
    Emily shook her head. “But why would he run, just seeing you?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he couldn’t see me too clearly and thought I was the killer who’d come back to destroy some evidence or something.”
    Emily was looking down at the fake Oriental carpet. “But the police haven’t called me”—she nodded again— “which must mean you haven’t told them about him.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Rune’s eyes drifted away. “The thing is, I don’t like police.”
    Emily watched her carefully for a moment more. Then said probingly, “But that’s not exactly
the
thing, is it? There’s something else.”
    Rune looked away. Trying to be cool and poised. It wasn’t taking.
    “Well, all I know is that I’m worried about my father,” Emily said. “He can be exasperating at times but I still love him. I want to find him. And it sounds like you do too. Why won’t you tell me?”
    Then, from somewhere, Rune managed to find an adult gaze. She slapped it on her face and gave Emily a woman-to-woman smile. “I have this feeling you’re not telling me everything either.”
    The woman hesitated. She inhaled and blew a fat stream of smoke away from them. “Maybe I’m not.”
    “I’ll show you mine if you …”
    Emily didn’t want to smile. But she did. “Okay, the truth?” She looked around the apartment. “I’ve never been here before. This is the first time. I haven’t been in
any
of his apartments for the past year…. Isn’t that an awful thing to say?”
    Rune said nothing. Emily sighed. She was looking much
less
adult than she had. “We had a fight. Last summer. A bad one.”
    There was silence.
    Then she smiled at Rune. A bleak lifting of her mouth. Trying to make light. The smile faded. “He ran away from home. Isn’t that silly?”
    “Your father ran away from home? Like, that’s radical.”
    Emily asked, “Are your parents still alive?”
    “My mother is. She’s in Ohio. My father died a few years ago.”
    “Did you get along with them when you were at home?”
    “Pretty good, I guess. My mom is a sweetheart. My dad … I was sort of his favorite. But don’t tell my sister I said that. He was really, really cool.”
    Emily looked at her with a cocked head. “You’re lucky. My father and I fought a lot. We always have. Even when I was young. I’d have a boyfriend and Dad wouldn’t like him. He wasn’t from the right kind of family, he didn’t make enough money, he was Jewish, he was Catholic … I fought back some but he was my father and fathers have authority. But then I grew up and after my mother died a few years ago, something odd happened. The roles switched.
He
became the child. He’d retired, didn’t have much money. I’d married a businessman and I was rich. He needed a place to stay and he moved in with us.
    “But I didn’t do it right. Suddenly
I
had the power,
I
could dictate. Just the opposite of the way it was