Schmidt swung his eyes, forced them back to her face. The two men shifted slightly.
"Now, tell me how much you want."
Oh, hell. No more games, time to leave.
Rune stood up.
Schmidt glanced at her pocket, the tape recorder. His eyes were wide.
The heads of the two hit men swiveled toward her.
Then: Schmidt pushing back, sliding to the ground, yelling, "Get her, get her!"
The diners gasped and pushed back from their tables. Some ducked to the pavement.
The hit men stood quickly, the metal chairs bouncing to the stone ground. She saw guns in their hands.
Screams, people diving to the pavement, drinks falling, salads spinning. Lettuce and tomatoes and croissants flew to the ground.
Rune sprinted to Columbus Avenue and ran north. She glanced behind her. The hit men were closing in. They were in great shape.
You two assholes are surrounded by witnesses! What the hell are you doing?
Her chest was screaming, her feet stung. Rune lowered her head and ran full out.
At Seventy-second Street she looked behind her and couldn't see them any longer. She stopped running and pressed against a chain-link fence around a vacant lot, trying to fill her lungs, her fingers curled tight in the mesh.
A bus pulled into the stop. She stepped toward it.
And the hit men, waiting behind a truck, ran toward her.
She screamed and rolled to the ground, then crawled under a gap in the chain link. She staggered to her feet and sped toward the building across the lot. A school.
A vacant school.
She ran to the door.
Locked.
She turned. They were co
ming at her again, trotting, now looking nonchalant, trying to be inconspicuous. The guns in their hands at their sides.
Nowhere to go except down a long alley. There'd have to be an exit to the street. A door, a window, something.
Rune ran to the end of it. It was a dead end. But there was a rickety door. She threw herself against it. The wood was much more solid than it seemed. She bounced off the thick oak and fell to the ground.
And she knew it was over. The hit men, guns in the open now, looked around cautiously and walked toward her.
Rune got up on her knees and looked for a brick, a rock, a stick. There was nothing. She fell forward, sobbing. "No, no, no ..." They were on top of her. She felt the muzzle of the gun at her neck.
Rune whimpered and covered her head. "No ..."
That was when one of the hit men said, "You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in court."
The 20th Precinct looked a lot like the New York State unemployment office, except there weren't so many--or as 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.