Manhattan Is My Beat

films. He seemed to know a lot about movies and they’d joked about how scary the Kubrick film was even though it was so brightly lit.
    But apparently he didn’t remember. “Who?”
    She was disappointed that he didn’t get it.
    “It’s Rune. You know—from Washington Square Video. I’m here to pick up the tape.”
    Silence.
    “Hello?” she called.
    Static again. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    “Is this Mr. Kelly?” The voice didn’t sound quite right. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he had a visitor.
    “A minute.”
    “I can come up.”
    A pause. “Wait there,” the voice commanded.
    This was weird. He’d always seemed so polite. He didn’t sound that way now. Must be the intercom.
    Several minutes passed. She paced around the entry-way.
    She was looking outside when, finally, she heard footsteps from inside, coming down the stairs.
    Rune walked to the inner door, peered through the greasy glass. She couldn’t see through it. A figure walked forward slowly. Was it Mr. Kelly? She couldn’t tell.
    The door opened.
    “Oh,” she said in surprise, looking up.
    The woman in her fifties, with olive-tinted skin, stepped out, glanced at her. She made sure the door closed before she left the entryway so Rune couldn’t get inside—standard New York City security procedures when unknown visitors were in the lobby. The woman carried a bag of empty soda and beer cans. She took them out to the curb and dropped them in a recycling bin.
    “Mr. Kelly?” Rune called again into the intercom. “You all right?”
    There was no answer.
    The woman returned and looked over Rune carefully. “Help you?” She had a thick Caribbean accent.
    “I’m a friend of Mr. Kelly’s.”
    “Oh.” Her face relaxed.
    “I just called him. He was going to come down.”
    “He’s on the second floor.”
    “I know. I’m supposed to pick up a videotape. I called five minutes ago and he said he’d be right out.”
    “I just walked past his door an’ it was open,” she said. “I live up the hall.”
    Rune pushed the buzzer and said, “Mr. Kelly? Hello? Hello?”
    There was no answer.
    “I’ma go see,” the woman said. “You wait here.”
    She disappeared inside. After a moment Rune grew impatient and buzzed again. No answer. She tried the door. Then she wondered if there was another door— maybe in the side or in the back of the building.
    She stepped outside. Walked to the sidewalk and then continued on to the alley. The pert yuppie woman was still there, stretching. The only exercise Rune got was dancing at her favorite clubs: World or Area or Limelight (dancing was aerobic and she also built upper-body strength by pushing away drunk lawyers and account execs in the clubs’ co-ed rest rooms).
    No, there was nobody else. Maybe she—
    Then she heard the scream.
    She turned fast and looked at Mr. Kelly’s building. Heard a woman’s voice, in panic, calling for help. Rune believed the voice had an accent—maybe the woman she’d just met, the woman who knew Mr. Kelly. “Somebody,” the voice cried, “call the police. Oh, please, help!”
    Rune glanced at the woman jogger, who stared at Rune with an equally shocked expression on her face.
    Then a huge squeal of tires from behind them.
    At the end of the alley a green car skidded around the corner and made straight for Rune and the jogger. They both froze in panic as the car bore down on them.
    What’s he doing, what’s he doing, what’s he doing? Rune thought madly.
    No, no, no …
    When the car was only feet away she flung herself backward out of the alley. The jogger leapt the opposite way. But the woman in pink hadn’t moved as fast as Rune and she was struck by the side-view mirror of the car. She was thrown into the brick wall of her building. She hit the wall and tumbled to the ground.
    The car skidded onto Tenth Street and vanished.
    Rune ran to the woman, who was alive but unconscious, blood pouring from a gash on her forehead. Rune sprinted up the street to find a pay phone. It took her four phones, and three blocks, before she found one that worked.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Mr. Kelly’s door was open.
    Rune stopped in the doorway, stared in shock at the eight people who stood in the room. No one seemed to be moving. They stood or crouched, singly or in groups, like the mannequins she’d seen in the import store on University Place.
    Gasping, she rested against the doorjamb. She’d raced back from the pay phone and charged up the stairs. No trouble