Manhattan Is My Beat

Xavier’s Church on Atlantic Avenue. Brooklyn.
    “Oh, and here’s the other one.” She found another slip in her purse.
    It was from Stephanie. She was out of the hospital and feeling a lot better. She’d stop by later.
    “All right!” Rune cried.
    “I’m glad
somebody’s
happy.” Sandra added, “I’m depressed. Not that anybody cares.” She continued to paint her nails carefully.
    “I’ve got to call Richard. We’re taking a trip.”
    “Where?”
    “Brooklyn!”
    “Old folks homes, junkyards … Why am I not surprised? Hey, don’t hug me! Watch the polish!”

     
    Rune got Richard at home.
    This was weird. It was the afternoon. What was he doing home?
    She realized that he hadn’t told her exactly
where
he wrote his boring meet-your-CEO scripts.
    Rune was on the street, calling from the pay phone. “Hey, how come you’re home? I thought you worked for a company. With what’s her name? Too-tall Karen?”
    He laughed again. “I do mostly freelance. I’m sort of an independent contractor.”
    “We need to go to Brooklyn. A church on Atlantic Avenue. Can you drive?”
    He said, “You’re home now?”
    “I’m in my office.”
    “Office?” he asked.
    “My exterior office.”
    “Oh.” He laughed. “A pay phone.”
    “So, can we go?”
    “What’s going on in Brooklyn?”
    She told him about the minister’s message, then added, “I just called him—the priest Amanda found. I sort of told him a white lie.”
    “Which was?”
    “That I’m Robert Kelly’s granddaughter.”
    “That’s not a white lie. It’s a full-fledged lie. Especially to a man of the cloth. You oughta be ashamed. Anyway, I thought you were going to forget about the money.”
    “I did. Forgot completely. It was
him
called me.” She persisted. Said that Mr. Kelly’d been living in a home attached to the church until he found an apartment. And that he’d left a suitcase with the minister for safekeeping. He didn’t want to carry it around until he was settled. It was—are you listening? He said it was too valuable to him to just carry around the streets of the city.”
    Another pause.
    “It’s too crazy,” Richard said.
    She added, “And get this. I asked him if there was a cemetery nearby—like in the movie
Manhattan Is My Beat
. See, Dana Mitchell, the cop, buries the money in a new grave. And there is!”
    “Is what?”
    “A cemetery. Next to the church. Don’t you see? Mr. Elliott told Mr. Kelly about the church and Mr. Kelly went there and dug up the money.”
    “Okay,” he said dubiously. Then he asked, “You’re at your loft?”
    “Will be in five minutes.”
    He said seductively, “You going to be by yourself?”
    “Sandra’s there.”
    “Bummer. Can’t you send her out to buy something?”
    “How ‘bout we go to Brooklyn now. Then we’ll think about some privacy.”
    “I’m on my way.”

     
    Rune reached the stop of the stairs in her loft and stopped.
    “Stephanie!”
    The redhead smiled wanly. She sat in Rune’s half of the loft, on a pile of pillows. She was pale—paler than usual—and she wore a scarf that partially covered a bruise on her neck. There was also large bandage on her temple and an eggplant-colored mark on her cheek.
    “Ohmygod,” Rune blurted out, examining her. “You
do
bruise, don’t you?” She hugged the woman carefully. “You look, well….”
    “I look awful. You can say it.”
    “Not for somebody who got run over by a cab.”
    “Hey, there’s a compliment for you.”
    There was dense silence for a moment. “I don’t know what to say, Steph.” Rune was nervous and she did busywork, straightening up clothes. “I got you involved in this whole thing. I almost got you killed. And it was so stupid—we were running from a federal marshal.”
    “A what?” Stephanie gave a laugh.
    “That guy in the subway, the one you hit—I thought he was working for
them
. But it turned out he was a U.S. marshal. Isn’t that radical? Just like the Texas Rangers.”
    She told Stephanie about Haarte and Emily.
    “I heard something about it on the news, in the hospital,” Stephanie said. “A shooting at this town house. I never guessed you were involved.”
    Rune’s eyes were excited again. “Oh, oh, and talk about adventures … They want me to be the star witness.”
    “Isn’t that scary?”
    “Sure. But I don’t care. I want that bitch to go away for a long time. They killed Mr. Kelly. And they tried to kill me—and you too.”
    “Well,