Rune glanced at Dixon, who was looking at video boxes. He glanced at the X-rated section, blushed, and looked away quickly.
Rune, debating furious-what should she do?
A man who wanted to ask her out versus the quest.
This was totally unfair.
"Rune?" Amanda said. "I don't think she going to stay too long."
Eyes on Dixon.
Eyes on the Brooklyn Yellow Pages.
Oh, shit.
Into the phone she blurted out, "I'll be right over."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"You had the baby?"
Rune looked up from the building directory, so thick with graffiti she couldn't find the number of Amanda LeClerc's apartment.
Her surprised eyes rested on the surprised face of the young man who'd let her into the apartment building two days before-when she'd been extremely pregnant. Now, she let him open the door for her again and she walked inside.
"I did, thanks," Rune said. "Courtney Madonna Brittany. Six pounds, four ounces."
"Congratulations," he said. He couldn't help but stare down at her belly. "You, uh, feeling okay?"
"Feeling great," Rune assured him. "I just ran out for a minute and forgot my keys."
"Where's your little girl?" he asked.
When you lie, lie with confidence. "She's upstairs. Watching TV."
"Watching TV?"
"Well, she's with her father and he's watching TV. They both like sitcoms… Say, which apartment is Amanda LeClerc in again?"
"Oh, Amanda? On the second floor?"
"Yeah."
"I think 2F."
"Right, right, right." Rune started up the stairs two at a time.
"Don't you think you should take it a little easy?"
"Peasant stock," she called back cheerily.
On the second-floor landing she noticed that there was a piece of plywood over the hole in Mr. Kelly's door. There was also a large padlock on it. The police tape had been replaced. She walked past it.
It'd been hard to turn down Phillip Dixon (he, unlike Richard, was somebody who had no problem with either the word or the concept of "date").
"Rain check?" he'd asked.
"You bet. Hey, you like junkyards?" she'd asked him on her way out the door of the video store.
He hadn't missed a beat. "Love 'em."
Rune now knocked on Amanda's door and the woman called, "Who's there?"
"Me, Rune."
The door opened. "Good. She's upstairs. I talk her inta staying to see you. Didn't want to but she is."
"Has she heard anything from her father?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask her. I just said you were looking for him and it was important."
"What apartment is he in again?"
"Three B."
Rune remembered that Symington lived directly above Mr. Kelly.
Rune climbed the stairs. Amanda's and Mr. Kelly's floor had smelled like onions; this one smelled like bacon. She paused in the hallway. The door to 3B was six inches open.
Rune eased forward, seeing first the hem of a skirt, then two thin legs in dark stockings. They were crossed in a way that suggested confidence. Rune started to knock but then just pushed the door open all the way. The woman on the bed turned to her. She was looking through a stack of papers.
She had high cheekbones, a face glossy with makeup, frosted hair forced into place with a ton of spray. She looks like my mother, Rune thought, and guessed she was in her early forties. The woman wore a plaid suit and she smoked a long, dark brown cigarette. She gazed at Rune then said, "That woman downstairs… she said somebody was looking for my father. Is that you?"
"Yes."
The woman turned away slowly, stubbed out the cigarette, pressing it into an ashtray. It died with a faint crushing sound. She looked Rune up and down. "My, they're getting younger and younger."
"Like, excuse me?"
"How old are you?"
"Twenty. What's that got to do with anything? I just want to ask you a few-"
"What did he promise you? A car? He did that a lot. He was always giving away cars. Or saying he would. Porsches, Mercedes, Cadillacs. Of course then there'd be problems with the dealer. Or the registration. Or something."
"Cars? I don't even-"
"And then it came down to money. But that's life, isn't it? He'd promise a thousand and end up giving them a couple of hundred."
"What are you talking about?" Rune asked.
Another examination. The woman got as far as Rune's striped stockings and clunky red shoes before her face revealed her dismay. She shook her head. "You couldn't… forgive me, but you couldn'tVe charged all that much. What was your price? For the night?"
"You think I'm a hooker?"
"My father called them girlfriends. He actually brought one to Thanksgiving dinner once. At my house! In Westchester. Lynda with a y. You can imagine that scene. With my husband and children?"
"I don't even know your father."
The woman frowned, wondering if Rune might be telling the truth. "Maybe there's some misunderstanding here."
"I'll say there is."
"You're not…"
"No," Rune said. "I'm not."
A faint laugh. "I'm sorry…" The woman extended her hand. "My name's Emily Richter."
"I'm Rune." She reluctantly shook it.
"First name?"
"And last."
"Actress?"
"Sometimes."
"So, Rune, you really don't know my father?"
"No."
"And you're not here for any money?"
Not exactly, she thought. She shook her head.
Emily continued. "What do you want to see me about?"
"Do you know where he is?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. He just vanished."
"I know he did."
Emily examined Rune's face carefully. The woman had probing eyes and Rune looked away. Emily said, "And I have a feeling you know why."
"Maybe."
"Which is?"
"I think he witnessed a murder."
"That man who was killed in the building?" Emily asked. "I heard about that. It was downstairs, wasn't it?"
"Right."
"And you think Father saw it happen?"
Rune walked farther into the apartment. She sat down on a cheap dining room chair. She glanced around the place. It was very different from Mr. Kelly's. She couldn't figure out why at first. Then she realized. This was like a hotel room, furnished by one phone call to a store that sold everything: pictures, furniture, carpet. A lot of light wood and metallic colors and laminate. Coordinated. Suburban tack.
What did it remind her of? Ohmygod, Richard's place…
Emily lit another cigarette.
Rune glanced into the kitchen. She saw enough food 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."