"I thought-"
"That we'd go with it?"
"I guess."
A brittle nail leveled at Rune's face like a bright red dagger. "This is the big time. You keep forgetting that. We don't run a story untilit's completely buttoned up." She walked stridently through the newsroom on her clattering heels while employees moved quickly but unobtrusively as far out of her way as they could.
18
Downstairs, in the lobby, Rune surveyed the job and didn't like what she saw.
A directory of residents, containing over a hundred names.
"Help you?" The doorman's accent seemed to be Russian. But then Rune decided she didn't know what a Russian accent sounded like; the man – wearing an old gray uniform shiny on the butt – might have been Czech or Rumanian or Yugoslavian or even Greek or Argentine. Whatever his ethnic origin, he was big and snide and unfriendly.
"I was just looking at the directory."
"Who you wanna see?"
"Nobody really. I was just-"
He smiled slyly as if he'd just caught on that three-card monte games were rigged. "I know. They done that before."
"I'm a student."
"Yeah, student." He worked a spot on the inside of his mouth with his tongue.
"How long you worked here?" she asked.
"Six months. I just came over here. This country. Lived with my cousin for a while."
"Who worked here before you?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. How would I know? You make good money doing it? You know what I'm saying?"
"What do you mean? I'm a student."
"I've heard it all. You think I haven't heard it?"
"I'm an art student. Architecture. I-?"
"Yeah." The smile was staying put. The tongue foraged. "What you make?"
"Make?" Rune asked.
"How much you sell them for?"
"What?"
"The names." He nodded. "You sell them to companies send everybody that junk mail. No junk mail in my country. Here! It's everywhere."
"What I'm doing is I'd like to talk to some people who live here. About the design of their apartments."
A nod joined the smile.
There was nothing worse than being accused of something -you hadn't done – even if you were doing something you shouldn't've been doing.
She rummaged for a minute in the dark recesses of her bag until she came up with a stiff bill. A twenty. Hot out of the ATM. She handed it to him.
Zip. It vanished into his pocket.
"How much you make?"
Another twenty joined its friend.
"Ah." He walked off, pressing his hand to the pocket that held the crisp, non-reimbursable bills and Rune turned back to her task.
The smart thing would have been to find out which rows of apartments looked out over the courtyard where Lance Hopper had been shot but she didn't know how soon the Slavic-Ruskie South American capitalist would be back to suck up another bribe. So she started at the top left of the directory. From Myron Zuckerman in IB she speed wrote straight down to Mr., or Ms., L. Peters in 8K.
Twenty minutes later, the doorman returned, just as she finished.
"Still studying?" he asked snidely.
"I just finished."
"So tell me, yeah, which company you with? One of the big ones? Am I right?"
"It's a big one," Rune said.
"Is in Jersey, right?"
"How'd you guess?"
"I've been around. I seen a lot. You can't fool me."
"I wouldn't even try."
Scorching pain roamed around in her back. The inside of her ear was sweating. Her voice had gone from low soprano to throaty alto and she'd have to clear her windpipe with a stinging snap every few minutes. Rune had been sitting in her cubicle at the studio, speaking into a phone, for nearly eight hours straight.
Hello I'm a producer forCurrent Eventsthe news program Mr Zuckerman Norris Williams Roth Gelinker we're doing a segment about the Lance Hopper killing you probably remember the man killed in the courtyard of your building several years ago I'm hoping you can help me what I'm looking for is…
It was late, edging beyond eight o'clock. Past bedtime for Courtney. The little girl sat at Rune's feet, tearing scheduling sheets into the shape of Easter bunnies.
… How long have you lived in apartment 3B, 3C, 3D, 3E, 3F…?
"Rune, bunny."
Whispering, hand over mouthpiece: "Beautiful, honey. I'm on the phone. Make a momma Easter bunny now."
"Thatis the mommy."
"Then make a daddy."
Rune's poll of the tenants so far:
One was Miss Breckman. Eight had unlisted numbers. Twenty weren't home when she called. Thirty-three had moved into their apartments after Hopper's death. Eighteen hadn't been home the night of the killing (or said they hadn't). Nineteen were home but didn't see anything related to the murder (or said they didn't).
That left twelve on her list.
A bad number. If there'd been only three she would've called them. Twenty, she'd have given up and gone home to sleep. But twelve…
Rune sighed and stretched, hearing some remote bone protest with a pop.
Courtney yawned and tore a bunny in half with fidgety glee.
Quitting time, Rune thought. I'm going home. Then she thought of Sutton's raspy, bitchy voice and fuming eyes and she picked up the phone.
Which was fortunate because when she asked Mr Frost, 6B, if he knew anything about the Lance Hopper killing he paused for only a moment then responded, "Actually… I saw it happen."
"You put that in a bottle and you've got yourself something," she said.
Rune had walked into the apartment, right past the elderly man who'd opened the door, and stepped up to a glass case. Inside was an elaborate model of a ship – not a rigged clipper ship or man-of-war but a modern cargo ship. It was four feet long. She said, "Audacious."
"Thank you. I've never made ships in bottles. To tell you the truth, I don't like hobbies."
She introduced herself.
"Bennett Frost," he said. He was about seventy-five years old. He wore a cardigan sweater with a moth hole on the shoulder and cheap gray pants. He was balding and had dark moles on his face and head. He leaned forward, a vestigial bow, as he shook her hand. He held it for a moment longer than one normally would have and looked at her closely. The touch and the examination, though, were not sexual. He was appraising her. When he was done he released her hand and nodded at the glass case.
"TheMinnesota Princess. Odd name, don't you think, for a ship that spent most of her time in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic? My very first ship. No, I shouldn't say that. My veryfirst profitable ship. Which is, I suppose, better than my first ship. I named herMinnesota because I was born there."
He walked into the large apartment. Rune studied the squarish ship. The deck was covered with tiny boxes. Then she followed him. In the cluttered living room she noticed suitcases.
"You going on a trip?"
"I have a place in Bermuda. Haiti was my favorite.
The Oloffson – what a hotel that was. Not true any longer, of course. I never used to go to British colonies but you know how things are elsewhere." He looked at her with slits of eyes, a shared secret. She nodded.
His eyes fell on her camera.
"You have a press pass or something?"
She showed him her Network ID. He scanned her up and down again, a CAT scan of her soul. "You're young."
"Younger than some. Older than others."
He gave that a curly smile and said, "Iwas young when I got started in business."
"What did you do?"
He gazed at the model. "That was my contribution to the shipping industry and the aesthetics of the sea. She isn't beautiful; she isn't a stately ship."
"I think she looks pretty nifty."
Frost said, '"And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill/But O for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.' Tennyson. Nobody knows poetry anymore."