Death of a Blue Movie Star (5 page)

Hell, he’s gonna pee here, the bum thought. They
always
do that. Have beers with their buddies and can’t make it to Penn Station in time so they come into my alley and pee. He wondered how the guy’d feel if the bum walked into
his
living room to take a leak.

But the man didn’t unzip. He paused at the mouth of the alley and peered out over Eighth Avenue, looking for something, frowning.

Wondering what the man was doing here, why he was wearing that wide-brimmed, old-fashioned hat, the bum took another sip of liquor and set the bottle down. It made a clink.

The man whirled around quickly.

“Got a quarter?” the bum asked.

“You scared me. I didn’t know anybody was there.”

“Got a quarter?”

The man fished in his pocket. “Sure. Are you going to spend it on booze?”

“Probably,” the bum said. Sometimes he’d hustle the crowds at the commuter stations by saying, “Help the blind, help the blind…. I want to get blind drunk.” And people gave him more money because he’d made them laugh.

“Well, I appreciate honesty. Here you go.” The man reached down with a coin.

As the bum began to take it he felt his wrist gripped hard by the man’s left hand.

“Wait!”

But the man didn’t wait. Then there was a slight stinging feeling on the bum’s neck. Then another, on the other
side. The man let go of his wrists and the bum touched his throat, feeling two flaps of skin dangling loose. Then saw the razor knife in the man’s hand, the bloody blade retracting.

The bum tried to shout for help. But the blood was gushing fast from the two wounds and his vision was going black. He tried to stand but fell hard to the cobblestones. The last thing he saw was the man reaching into his Lord & Taylor shopping bag, pulling out a red wind-breaker and pulling it on. Then stepping out of the alley quickly as if he were, in fact, late for his commuter train home.

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning Rune was lying in bed—well, a bunk—listening to the sounds of the river. There was a knock on her front door.

She pulled on her jeans and a red silk kimono, then walked to the front of the boat. She opened the door and found she was looking at Shelly Lowe’s back. The actress was examining the water lapping under her feet as she stood on a small gangway painted egg-yolk yellow. She turned and shook her head. Rune nodded at the familiar reaction.

“It’s a houseboat. You live on a houseboat.”

Rune said, “I used to make wisecracks about having water in the basement. But the material’s limited. There aren’t a lot of houseboat jokes.”

“You don’t get seasick?”

“The Hudson River isn’t exactly Cape Horn.” Rune stepped back to let Shelly into the narrow entryway. In the distance, along the roof of the pier to the north, a flash
of color. Red. It reminded her of something disturbing. She couldn’t remember what.

She followed Shelly into the boat.

“Give me a tour.”

The style: nautical suburban ranch, mid-fifties. Downstairs were the living room, kitchen and bath. Up a narrow staircase were two small rooms: the pilot house and bedroom. Outside, a railing and deck circled the living quarters.

The smell was of motor oil and rose potpourri.

Inside, Rune showed her a recent acquisition: a half-dozen Lucite paperweights with flecks of colored plastic chips in them. “I’m very into antiques. These are guaranteed 1955. That was a great year, my mother tells me.”

Shelly nodded with detached politeness and looked around the rest of the room. There was a lot to put politeness to the test: turquoise walls, a painted vase (the scene: a woman in pedal pushers walking a poodle), Lava lamps, kidney-shaped plastic tables, a lampshade made out of Bon Ami and Ajax cleanser cartons, wrought-iron and black-canvas chairs you sank down into like hammocks, an old Motorola console TV.

Also: an assortment of fairy-tale dolls, stuffed animals and shelves filled with old books.

Shelly pulled a scaly, battered Brothers Grimm off the shelf, flipped through and replaced it.

Rune squinted at Shelly, studying her. A thought occurred to her. She laughed. “Know what’s weird? I’ve got a picture of you.”

“Me?”

“Well, sort of. Here, look.”

She took a dusty book from the shelf and opened it up.
Metamorphoses
.

“Some old Roman dude wrote these stories.”

“Roman?” Shelly asked. “As in Julius Caesar?”

“Yeah. Here, look at this picture.”

Shelly glanced at the color plate of a beautiful woman being led out of a dark cave by a man playing a lyre. The caption read:
Orpheus and Eurydice
.

“See, you’re her. Eurydice. You look just like her.”

Shelly shook her head, then squinted. She laughed. “I do, you know. That’s funny.” She looked at the spine of the book. “This is Roman mythology?”

Rune nodded. “It was a sad story. Eurydice died and went down to Hades. Then Orpheus—he was her husband, this musician guy—went to rescue her. Isn’t that romantic?”

“Wait. I’ve heard that story. It was an opera. Didn’t something go wrong?”

“Yeah, those Roman gods had weird rules. The thing is he could take her out of the Underworld as long as he didn’t look back at her. That makes a lot of sense, right? Anyway, he did and that blew the whole thing. Back she went. People think myths and fairy tales have happy endings. But they don’t all.”

Shelly gazed at the picture for a moment. “I collect old books too.”

“What kind?” Rune assumed erotica.

But Shelly said, “Plays mostly. In high school I was president of the drama club. A thespian.” She laughed. “Whenever I tell somebody in the Industry—I mean, the porn business—tell them that, they say something like, ‘What’s that, a dyke with a speech problem?”’ She shook her head. “My profession’s got a pretty low common denominator.”

Rune clicked on an ultraviolet light. A black-light poster of a ship sailing around the moon popped out into three dimensions. It was next to purple-and-orange tie-dye hangings. “I mix my eras. But you don’t want to get too locked in, do you now? Never be too literal. That’s my motto.”

“Avoid it at all costs.” Shelly had climbed up to the
pilot house and was pulling the whistle cord. There was no noise. “Can you take this thing out for rides?”

“Naw, it doesn’t drive,” Rune said. “Oh, no wait, I’m supposed to say
she
. She doesn’t drive.”

“Drive?”

“Well, sail or whatever. There’s a motor, but it doesn’t work. My old boyfriend and I were driving up along the Hudson and we found it—I mean,
her
—moored near Bear Mountain. She was for sale. I asked the owner to take me out for a spin and he said the motor didn’t work so we went out for a tow. We did a lot of haggling and when he agreed to throw in the Formica dining room set I had to get it.”

“You pay to dock it here?”

“Yep. You pay the Port Authority. They still run the docks even though they don’t have much ship traffic anymore. It’s pretty expensive. I don’t think I can stay here forever. But it’ll do for now.”

“Is it safe?”

Rune pointed out one of the picture windows. “That’s still a working pier so this whole area’s chained off. The security guards and I are friends. They keep an eye out. I give them good Christmas presents. It’s really neat, owning a house. And there’s no grass to mow.”

Shelly gave her another wan smile. “You’re so … enthusiastic. And you actually live on a houseboat in Manhattan. Amazing.”

Rune’s eyes sparkled. “Come here. I’ll show you what’s amazing.” She walked out onto the small gray-painted deck. She clung to a railing and dipped her foot into the opaque oily water.

“You going swimming?” Shelly asked uncertainly.

Rune closed her eyes. “You know that I’m touching the exact same water that’s lapping up on the Galápagos Islands, and in Venice, and in Tokyo and Hawaii and Egypt? It’s so neat. And—I haven’t figured this out yet—it may
very well be the same water that splashed against the
Nina, Pinta
and
Santa Maria
and against Napoleon’s ships. The same water they used to wash away the blood after Marie Antoinette got the axe…. I’m guessing that it might be…. That’s the part I’m not too clear on. Does water, like, die? I remember something from science class. I think it just keeps recirculating.”

Shelly said, “You have quite an imagination.”

“I’ve been told that before.” Rune jumped back on deck. “Coffee? Something to eat?”

“Just coffee.”

They sat in the pilot house. Rune was putting peanut butter on her toast while Shelly sipped black coffee. The woman may have been a celebrity in the flesh trade but today she looked just like a Connecticut housewife. Jeans, boots, white blouse and a thin, light blue sweater, the arms tied around her neck.

“Find the place okay?” Rune asked.

“Wasn’t hard. I would’ve called first but you didn’t give me a number.”

“I don’t have a phone. When I tried to get one the New York Bell guys drove up, laughed and left.”

A moment passed and Shelly said, “I’ve been thinking about the film. Even after you agreed to the final cut approval I didn’t want to do it. But something happened that changed my mind.”

“The bombing?”

“No,” Shelly said. “What happened was I had a bad fight with one of the guys I work for. I don’t want to go into the details but it brought a lot of things into focus. I realized how sick I was of the business. I’ve been in it too long. It’s time to leave. If I can get some legitimate publicity, if people can see that I’m not a bimbo, maybe it’ll help me get legitimate jobs.”

“I’ll do a good job. I really will.”

“I had a feeling about you.” The pale blue laser beams
of her eyes fired out. “I think you’re just the person who could tell my story. When can we start?”

Rune said, “How’s now? I’ve got the day off.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got some things to do now but why don’t you meet me this afternoon, around, let’s say, five? We can do a couple hours of work. Then tonight there’s a party this publisher’s giving. Most of the companies publishing skin magazines are also into adult films and video. There’ll be a lot of people from the business there. Maybe you could talk to them.”

“Excellent! Where do you want to do the filming?”

She looked around the room. “How’s here? I feel very comfortable here.”

“It’s going to be a great interview.”

Shelly smiled. “I may even be honest.”

After Shelly’d left, Rune was at the window. She caught another glint of red from the roof of the pier across the spit of slick water.

And she remembered the color.

The same as the jacket or windbreaker of the person she’d seen—or thought she’d seen—in Times Square, following her.

She went into her bedroom and dressed.

Five minutes later the red was still there. And five minutes after that she was on her way toward the pier, running low, crouched like a soldier. Around her neck was a big chrome whistle, the kind football referees use. She figured she could get 120 decibels easy and scare the hell out of anybody looking to give her trouble.

Which was fine for skittish attackers. For the others Rune had something else. A small, round canister. It contained 113 grams of CS-38 military tear gas. She felt its comfortable weight against her leg.