When the car was only feet away she flung herself backward out of the alley. The jogger leapt the opposite way. But the woman in pink hadn't moved as fast as Rune and she was struck by the side-view mirror of the car. She was thrown into the brick wall of her building. She hit the wall and tumbled to the ground.
The car skidded onto Tenth Street and vanished.
Rune ran to the woman, who was alive but unconscious, blood pouring from a gash on her forehead. Rune sprinted up the street to find a pay phone. It took her four phones, and three blocks, before she found one that worked.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mr. Kelly's door was open.
Rune stopped in the doorway, stared in shock at the eight people who stood in the room. No one seemed to be moving. They stood or crouched, singly or in groups, like the mannequins she'd seen in the import store on University Place.
Gasping, she rested against the doorjamb. She'd raced back from the pay phone and charged up the stairs. No trouble getting in this time; the cops or the Emergency Medical Service medics had wedged the building door open.
She watched them: six men and two women, some in police uniforms, some in suits.
Her eyes fell on the ninth person in the room and her hands began to tremble.
Oh, no ... oh, no ...
The ninth person--the man whose apartment it was. Robert Kelly. He sat in an old armchair, arms outstretched, limp, palms up, eyes open and staring skyward, like Jesus or some saint in those weird religious paintings at the Met. His flesh was very pale--everywhere except his chest. Which was brown-red from all the blood. There was a lot of it.
Oh, no ...
Her breath shrank to nothing, short gasps, she was dizzy. Oh, goddamn him! Tony! For making her pick up the tape and see this. God damn Frankie Greek, god damn Eddie for pretending to fix the fucking monitors when all they were really doing was figuring out how to get into a concert for free ...
Her eyes pricked with tears. Goddamn.
But then Rune had a curious thought. That, no, no, if this had to happen, it was better that she was there, rather than them. At least she was Mr. Kelly's friend. Eddie or Frankie would've walked in and said, "Wow, cool, a shooting," and it was better for her to be the one to see this, out of respect for him.
No one noticed her. Two men in business suits gave instructions to a third, who nodded. The uniformed cops were crouched down, writing notes, some were putting a white powder on dark things, a black powder on light.
Rune studied the faces of the cops. She couldn't look away. There was something odd about them and she couldn't figure it out at first. They just seemed like everybody else--amused or bored or curious about something. Then she realized: that's what was odd. That there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. They all had a workaday glaze in their eyes. They weren't horrified or sickened by what they were looking at.
God, they seemed just like the clerks in Washington Square Video.
They looked just like me, doing what I do, renting movies eight hours a day, four days a week: just doing the job. The Big Boring J.
They didn't even seem to notice, or to care, that somebody had just been killed.
Her eyes moved around the apartment slowly. Mr. Kelly lived here? Grease-spotted wallpaper sagged. The carpet was orange and made out of thick, stubby strands. The whole place smelled like sour meat. There was no art on the walls: some old-time movie posters in frames leaned against a shabby couch. A dozen boxes were scattered on the floor. It seemed he'd been living out of them. Even his clothes and dishes were stacked in cartons. He must have moved in recently, maybe around the time he'd joined the video club, a month before.
She remembered the first time he'd come into Washington Square Video.
"Can you spell your name?" Rune'd asked, filling out his application.
"Yes, I can," he'd answered, offhand. "I'm of above-average intelligence. Now, do you want me to?"
She'd loved that and they'd laughed. Then she'd taken down the rest of the facts about Kelly, Robert, deposit: cash. Address: 380 East Tenth Street, Apt. 2B. He'd wanted a detective film, and, thinking about the old Dragnet series, she'd said, "All we want is the facts, sir, just the facts."
He'd laughed again.
No credit cards. She remembered thinking that was definitely one thing they had in common.
What were the words? You knew them real well at one time. How did they go?
Rune's eyes were on him now. A dead man who was a little heavy, tall, dignified, seventh-decade balding.
All that the father giveth me, he that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken up our mortal bodies...