Manhattan Is My Beat

good.
    “Show me,” Stephanie persisted.
    Rune hesitated, then held up her hand and slowly opened the bandaged fingers. “The piece of stone. From the Union Bank Building. My souvenir. The one I picked up when you were with me that day down in Wall Street.”
    “Now, what were you going to do with it?”
    “Throw it at you,” Rune responded. “Smash your goddamn face.”
    “Why don’t you just toss it over there.” Lucy Zane held the silenced gun very steadily on Rune’s chest.
    Rune pitched the stone away.
    Just as Richard climbed the stairs and said, “Hi.”
    He froze, seeing the gun in Stephanie’s hand. “What is this?”
    Stephanie waved him in. “Okay. Just stand there.” She backed up so that she could keep them both covered. She held the gun out straight. It was small and its black metal gleamed in the sunlight. The short cylinder of the silencer was dark too.
    Her voice now had an edge to it. “I don’t have much time. Who’d you tell about me, Rune? And what did you tell them? I want to know. And I mean now.”
    “Let him go.”
    Richard said, “What the hell is this? Are you two joking?”
    Stephanie’s left hand went out toward him. Palm up. The nails were done in careful purple-pink. “Shut up, asshole. Just shut up.” To Rune: “
What
did you tell them?”
    “God,” Richard whispered, looking at Rune.
    Rune sank back into the cushions, put her hands over her eyes, sobbing. “No, no … I don’t give a shit about you or Emily or anybody. I won’t testify. I’ll tell them it wasn’t Emily or you. Mr. Kelly’s dead! Spinello’s dead! Just leave us alone.”
    Stephanie said patiently, “Maybe I’ll consider that. You have to understand, Rune. I like you. I really do. You’re … charming. And I was really touched you were going to give me some of that ridiculous money. That almost choked me up. But you have to tell me. This’s just business.”
    “All right … I didn’t tell anybody anything about you.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s true! All I did was write about you in my diary. I mentioned you and Emily.” She sat back, hand in her lap, small, defeated. “I thought you were my friend. I described you and wrote how nice you were to help me buy some clothes.”
    If this choked her up too, Stephanie’s expression didn’t show it.
    “Where is it?” the woman asked. “The diary. Let me have it and I’ll let you go. Both of you.”
    “Promise?”
    “I promise.”
    Rune debated then walked to her suitcase, rummaged through it. “I can’t find it.” She looked up, frowning. “I thought I packed it.” She opened her leopard-skin bag, looked through that too. “I don’t know. I … oh, there it is. On the bookcase. The second shelf.”
    Stephanie eased over to the bookcase. Touched a notebook. “This one?”
    “No, the one next to it. On its side.”
    Stephanie pulled the book off the shelf and flipped it open. “Where do you mention—”
    An explosion. The first bullet broke a huge chunk out of the blue-sky wall and sent fragments of cinder block raining through the room.
    The second shattered a panel of glass in the ceiling.
    The third tore apart a dozen books, which pitched through the air like shot birds.
    The fourth caught Stephanie squarely in the chest as she was turning, shocked, mouth open, toward Rune.
    There may even have been a fifth shot. And a sixth. Rune wasn’t sure. She had no idea how many times she pulled the trigger of the gun—the one that Rune had pulled from the accordion folder she’d thrown away earlier—tossed into the trash can beside her bed.
    All Rune saw was the smoke and dust and paper flecks and clouds and blue sky of concrete and broken glass flying through the loft around Stephanie—beautiful, pale Stephanie, who spiraled to the floor.
    And all Rune heard was a huge ringing roar from the gun. Which, after a few seconds, as Richard scrambled from the floor and started toward her, was replaced by an animal’s mad screaming she didn’t even know was coming from her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
     
    Head bowed at the altar, Rune was motionless.
    Kneeling. She’d thought she could remember all the words. But they wouldn’t come to her and all she could do was repeat over and over again, in a mumbling whisper, “We yield thee praise and thanksgiving for our deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith we were compassed.”
    After a moment she stood and walked slowly up the aisle toward the back