Death of a Blue Movie Star (6 page)

She hurried along the highway. The river water gave
off its rotten-ripe smell, riding on the humidity that the clouds—now covering the sky—had brought. The day became still. Several church bells chimed. It was exactly noon.

Rune twisted through the gap in the chain link and walked slowly up to the pier. It rose three stories above her and the facade was weathered down to the bare wood in many places. She could make out part of the name of the shipping line across the top, in a dark blue paint that she associated with old-fashioned trains.
America
was one word. And she saw, or thought she did, a faint blue star.

The twelve-foot wooden doors looked imposing but were off their track and Rune easily slipped through a seam into the darkness.

It was ratty and spooky inside. At one time these piers had been the places from which the great liners had sailed to Europe. Then they’d been used for cargo ships until Brooklyn and New Jersey docks took over most of that business. Now, they were mostly just relics. A barge half the size of a football field had appeared one day, moored next to Rune’s houseboat, while she’d been at the studio. But that was the only commercial shipping traffic in the neighborhood.

Rune had been to this particular pier a couple of times since she’d docked the boat along this stretch of river. She’d stroll around, imagining what the luxurious liners of the nineteenth century must’ve been like. She also wondered if some of the ships had dropped off contraband (gold bullion was a front-runner) that had never been found. Pirates, she knew, had sailed the Hudson River, not far from here. She wasn’t surprised that she found no chests of gold. The only salvage was empty cardboard boxes, lumber and big pieces of rusty machinery.

After she’d decided there was no plunder Rune would come occasionally to picnic with friends on the roof and
watch the giants in the clouds play above the city until they disappeared over Brooklyn and Queens. Sometimes she’d come just to be by herself and feed the gulls.

In the portion of the pier farthest into the water there were warrens of rooms. These had been offices and the off-loading docks and were boarded up now. Whatever light snuck in did so through the grace of the carpenters’ sloppy nailing. This portion of the pier contained the rickety staircase that led up to the roof.

And this portion of the pier was what she now slipped into. Rune eased through the back of the pier and started toward the stairs slowly. At the foot of the stairwell the floor of the pier had given way; a ragged hole three feet across led down into darkness. Water lapped. The smell was sharp and foul. Rune stared through the gloom at the hole and edged slowly past it.

She listened carefully on her way up but there was no sound other than distant traffic and the water on the pilings and the wind that meant the storm would hit pretty soon. Rune paused at the top landing. She pulled the white tear gas canister from her pocket and pushed the door open.

The roof was empty.

She stepped outside, then walked carefully along the rotting tar paper and gravel, testing each square in front of her. At the edge, she walked back toward the front of the building to the spot where she thought she’d seen the guy.

Rune stopped and looked down at her feet.

Okay, so it’s
not
my imagination. She was looking at footprints in the tar. They were large—a man’s shoe size. And were smooth, like conservative business shoes, not sneakers or running shoes. But aside from that, nothing. No cigarette ash, no discarded bottles. No cryptic messages.

As she stood there a sprinkling of rain began and she
hurried back to the stairs. She started down slowly, reaching out with her foot to find the flooring in the dimness.

A noise.

She paused on the second-floor landing. Stepped through an open doorway into the dark, abandoned office. Her hand gripped the tear gas canister firmly. Her pupils, contracted from the brightness, couldn’t take in enough light to see anything.

But she could hear. Rune froze.

He’s here!

Someone was in the room.

Nothing specific told her—no popping boards, no whispers, no shuffles of feet. The message was transmitted maybe by a smell or maybe by some sixth-sense radar.

The wave came back with a message: Whoa, honey, he’s big and he’s pretty damn close.

Rune didn’t move. The other figure didn’t either though twice she heard the air of his breath across his teeth. Her eyes became accustomed to the dark and she looked for a target and slowly lifted the tear gas.

Her hands began to quiver.

No, not one but two of them.

And they were ghosts.

Two pale forms. Humanlike, vague, undefined. They both stared at her. One held a thick, white billy club.

She aimed the canister at them. “I’ve got a gun.”

“Shit,” a man’s voice said.

The other voice, also male, said, “Take the wallet. Take
both
wallets.”

Her vision was improving. The apparitions turned into two naked, crew-cut men in their mid-thirties. She began to laugh when she saw what the club was; it was now considerably smaller.

“Sorry,” she said.

“This isn’t a mugging?”

“Sorry.”

Heavy-duty indignation. “Well, I just want you to know you scared the living hell out of us. For your information, this room happens to be reserved.”

Rune asked, “How long have you been here?”

“Too long, apparently.”

“For the last hour or so?”

The anger became giddy relief. One of the men nodded toward his friend and said, “He’s good but he’s not
that
good.”

The other, more sober: “Forty-five minutes?”

“Closer.”

Rune asked, “Did you hear anybody come down from the roof?”

“Yeah, I did. Fifteen minutes ago. Then you go up, then you come down. Grand Central Station today.”

“Did you see him?”

“We
were
a little busy….”

Rune said, “Please? It’s important.”

“We thought he was cruising but we weren’t sure. You have to be kind of careful.”

Sure. No telling what kind of degenerate you’ll meet while having sex in deserted piers.

“So we kept mum.”

“What did he look like?”

“Medium build. But otherwise I have no idea.” Turning to his companion: “Do you? … No, we don’t have any idea.”

Rune said, “Did you see what he was wearing? A jacket?”

“A red windbreaker. Hat, an old-fashioned one. Dark slacks, I think,” one voice said.

“Tight.” From the other.

“You
would
notice that.”

Rune said, “Well, thanks.”

As she left she heard them whispering. Something
about not exactly being in the mood anymore. “Well, you can
try
.”

She started the descent to the first floor.

Feeling her thudding heartbeats slow.

Rune laughed.
This room is reserved
. Why didn’t they pick a more romantic—

He got her from behind.

At the foot of the stairs, as she was stepping carefully around the hole, the hand grabbed her ponytail and jerked her backward. She saw a gloved hand, holding a razor box cutter, start for her neck. She grabbed his wrist and dug in hard with her short nails. It deflected the knife and for a moment they grappled for it. She knew if she let go of the banister she’d fall but there was no other way to get the tear gas with her other hand; it was deep in her pocket.

Rune released her grip and as she tumbled into her attacker she grabbed the canister and, without aiming, pushed the button. A cloud sprayed out between them, blinding them both. She cried out in pain as the attacker spun away, hands over his face.

But he didn’t let go and Rune felt herself being pulled backward. Eyes shut, she reached out but grabbed only air and fell in panic and confusion. Her breath exploded from her lungs as she hit the floor hard on her back. She twisted onto her stomach, then was up on one knee, scrabbling away from him. The man bent down quickly and gripped her around the neck. He wasn’t strong. But he had surprise on his side—and desperation. He kicked her in the chest, again knocking her windless. She curled into a ball, gasping. Vaguely she saw his blurry form groping for the razor knife. She smelled old wood and salt water and motor oil and rot, and she tasted salt—maybe her tears, maybe blood.

Christ, her eyes stung. Like alcohol.

She too began looking for her weapon, slapping her hand on the floor, trying to find the canister of tear gas.

He gave up on the knife and looked at the floor near them. Then he grabbed her by the collar and dragged her toward the jagged black opening that led down to the Hudson. A roar was in her ears. He pushed her head, then her shoulders into the hole. He gripped her belt and she started to go in.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rune lashed out with her boot and came close to catching his groin but her aim was bad. She hurt him only slightly and he just grunted angrily and drove a fist into her back.

She gave a faint scream. Tears ran. The rotten, fishy scent of the water rose from the water and choked her.

He kicked boards into the hole to widen it; they fell into darkness. He pushed her farther and farther in.

It was so dark beneath her!

She got a hand on the banister and held tight. But this was just a minor inconvenience; he kicked her hand and easily broke her grip.

I’ll swim … But can I see the light of the surface? What if there’s no way to swim out from underneath, what if there’s just a pipe that goes a hundred feet down?

He dropped to his knees and took her by the hair with one hand, then reached out with the other toward the edge of the hole to get a good grip and fling her into it.

“Hell-o? Ohmygod!”

A man’s voice.

The attacker froze.

“Jesus, what’s going on?” the other man, from upstairs, asked. They’d either given up on their tryst or finished it and had come to investigate the noise.

The man let go of Rune and glanced up the stairs. She twisted away from him, as he leapt back, panicking. She rolled away from the foot of the stairs. When the attacker turned back toward her, reaching forward, what he was looking at wasn’t Rune but a tiny hissing nozzle.

The stream of tear gas caught him in the nose.

Breathe it, sucker, breathe!

The man gasped, covered his eyes and took a wild swipe at her. Rune fired again. He stumbled past her, shoved her hard into the hole that led to the river and then ran into the warehouse.

His pounding footsteps faded, then vanished.

Rune pulled herself from the hole and collapsed onto the floor, frozen. She pressed her eyes shut against the terrible pain. Her nose and throat burned violently. She rested her face against the wooden floor as her breathing calmed and she smelled grease, felt the coolness of fresh air returning.

“Oh, my God,” one of the men said. They were dressed now. “Are you all right? Who
was
he?”

They helped her to her feet.

“Did you get a look at him?” she asked.

“No, just saw that jacket.”

“It was red,” his friend answered. “Like I said. Oh, and the hat.”

“You have to call the police…. What’s that smell? It’s terrible.”

“Tear gas.”

A pause. “Just who
are
you?”

Rune rose to her feet slowly, thanked them. Then stumbled through the warehouse out into the daylight.

When she got to a pay phone she called the police. They showed up pretty quickly. But, as she’d expected, there wasn’t much they could do. She didn’t have a detailed description of the attacker. Probably white male, medium build. No hair color, no eye color, no facial characteristic. A red windbreaker, like in
Don’t Look Now
—that scary movie based on the Daphne du Maurier story. Which Rune deduced neither of the responding cops had seen or read, judging by the blank look on their faces.

They said they’d check into it, though they weren’t happy that she’d had a canister of CS-38, which was illegal in the city.

“You have any idea why he’d want to do it?”

She supposed it might have something to do with her movie and the porn theater and the Sword of Jesus. She told them this and the look on their faces told her that, as far as they were concerned, the case was already a dead end. They flipped their notebooks closed and said they’d have a patrol car cruise past occasionally.