Death of a Blue Movie Star

The 20th Precinct looked a lot like the New York State unemployment office, except there weren't so many-oras many-writers and actors here. A lot of scuffed Lucite, a lot of typed announcements pinned up on bulletin boards, cheap linoleum, overhead fluorescents. Civilians milling about.

And cops. A lot of big cops.

Handcuffs were heavier than she'd thought. They weren't like bracelets at all. She rested her hands in her lap and wondered if she'd be out of prison in a year.

One of the hit men, a Detective Yalkowsky, deposited her in an orange fiberglass chair, one of six bolted together into a bench.

A woman officer in a ponytail like Rune's, the desk sergeant, asked him, "What've you got here?"

"Attempted grand larceny. Extortion, attempted assault, fleeing, resisting arrest, criminal trespassing-"

"Hey, I didn't assault anyone! And I was only trespassing to get away fromhim. I thought he was a hit man."

Yalkowsky ignored her. "She hasn't made a statement, doesn't want a lawyer. She wants to talk to somebody named Healy."

Rune said,"Detective Healy. He's a policeman."

"Why do you want to see him?"

"He's a friend."

The detective said, "Honey, the mayor could be a friend of yours and you'd still be in deep shit. You tried to extort Michael Schmidt. That's big stuff. You're gonna be potato chips for the newspapers."

"Just give him a call, please?"

The detective hesitated, then said, "Put her in a holding cell until we talk to him."

"A holding cell?" The desk sergeant looked Rune over and frowned. "We don't want to do that."

Rune looked at her concerned face. "She's right, you don't want to do that."

Yalkowsky shrugged. "Yeah, I think we do."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rune and Sam Healy made their way along Central Park West, past the knoll where dog-walkers gathered. Poodles and retrievers and Akitas and mutts tangled leashes and pranced on the dusty ground.

Healy was silent.

Rune kept looking up at him.

He turned and walked into the park. They climbed to the top of a huge rock thirty feet high and sat down.

"Sam?"

"Rune, it isn't that they could've prosecuted you-"

"Sam, I-"

"-they couldn't have made the extortion case, and, yeah, they didn't identify themselves as cops. And somebody found a fake FBI ID, but nobody's connected it to you yet. But what they could have done is shot you. Fleeing felon. If they thought you were dangerous they could have shot."

"I'm sorry."

"I do something risky for a living, Rune. But there are procedures and backup and a lot of things we do to make it less dangerous. But you, you get these crazy ideas about killers and blackmail and you dive right in."

They watched a softball game in the meadow for a minute. The heat was bad and the players were lethargic. Puffs of dust rose up from the yellow grass as the ball skipped into the outfield.

"There were some rumors about Schmidt and this teenage boy in Colorado. I thought Shelly found out about it and was blackmailing him to get the part."

"Did the facts lead you to that conclusion? Or did youimagine that's what happened and shoehorn the facts into your idea?"

"I… I shoehorned."

"Okay."

Rune said, "Sam, I have this notebook at home. I write all kinds of stuff in it. It's sort of like a diary. You know what I have written on the first page?"

" 'I won't grow up'?"

"If I'd thought about it, yeah, it probably would say that. But what I wrote is: 'Believe in what isn't as if it were until it becomes.'"

Crack. Ahome run. The pitcher watched the ball sail toward the portable toilet a hundred feet from home plate.

"Sam, this movie is important to me. I didn't go to college. I worked in a video store. I did store-window design. I worked in restaurants. I've sold stuff on the streets. I don't want to keep doing that forever."

He laughed. "You've got a few years' worth of false starts ahead of you."

"At the film company they treat me like a kid… Well, okay, sometimes Iact like a kid. But I mean, they don't think I'm capable of anything more. I know this film about Shelly is going to work. I can feel it."

"What you did back there, with Schmidt, that wasn't bright."

"He was the last of my suspects. I thought he was the one."

"A suspect doesn't call the cops to-"

"1 know. I was wrong… It's just that, well, I can't point to anything in particular. I just had a, I don't know…"

"Hunch?"

"Yeah. That somebody killed her. And it wasn't this stupid Sword of Jesus."

"I believe in hunches too. But do us both a favor, forget about this movie of yours. Or just tell the story about a girl who got killed and let it go at that. Forget about trying to find the killer. Leave a little mystery in it. People like mystery."

"That's what my name means. In Celtic."

"Your real name?"

"Reality," she said, "is highly overrated. No, I mean 'Rune'."

He nodded and she couldn't tell whether he was sad or angry with her or whether he was just being a silent cowboy.