Death of a Blue Movie Star (9 page)

“Rune—”

“Somebody kills you and it’s a crime. Somebody kills Shelly Lowe and it’s urban renewal. That sucks.”

A Fire Department inspector walked up to them, larger than life in his black-and-yellow gear. “We’re going to have to put supports in before anybody can go up, Sam.”

“I’ve got to do the postblast.”

“Have to wait till tomorrow.”

“I wanted to finish up tonight.”

Rune walked away. “Sure, he wants to take five minutes or so and look for clues.”

“Rune.”

“… then get back to protecting nuns.”

Healy called after her. “Wait.” The voice was commanding.

She kept going.

“Please.”

She slowed.

“I want to ask you some questions.”

She stopped and turned to him and she knew that he could see her thick tears in the swinging glare of the fire-truck lights. She held up a hand. Angrily she said, “Okay, but not tonight. Not now. There’s something I’ve got to do and if I don’t go now I won’t ever. The detectives have my number.”

She thought maybe Healy called something to her. She wasn’t sure; her hearing was, at the moment, a lot worse than his. But mostly she was concentrating on where she was going and had absolutely no idea how she was going to handle what she now had to do.

Nicole D’Orleans, however, had already heard the news.

Rune stood in the doorway of the apartment in a high-rise in the Fifties, watching the woman lean against the doorjamb, exhausted by the weight of sorrow. Her face was puffy. Along with the tears, she’d scrubbed away some of the makeup, but not all. It made her face lopsided.

Nicole straightened up and said, “Like, sorry. Come on in.”

The rooms were cool and dark. Rune smelled leather and perfume and the faint fumes of the vodka that Nicole had been drinking. She glanced at the blotches of modern paintings on the wall, the theatrical posters. She noticed some framed signatures. One looked like it said George Bernard Shaw. Most she didn’t recognize.

They walked into a large room. A lot of black leather, though not kinky the way you’d think a porn star’s apartment would be. More like some millionaire plastic surgeon would have. There was a huge glass coffee table that looked like it was three inches thick. The carpet was white and curled around the toes of Rune’s boots. She saw packed bookshelves and remembered the way she and Shelly had looked through some of Rune’s books just that morning and she wanted to cry. But forced herself not to because Nicole seemed to be pulling up just shy of hysterical.

The woman had her mourning station assembled. A box of Kleenex, a bottle of Stoly, a glass. A vial of coke. She sat down in the nest of the couch.

“I’ve forgotten your name. Ruby?”

“Rune.”

“I just can’t believe it. Those bastards. They’re supposed to be religious but that’s not the way good Christians ought to be. Fuck ’em.”

“Who told you?” Rune asked.

“The police called one of the producers. He called everyone in the company … Oh, God.”

Nicole blew her broad nose demurely and said, “You want a drink? Anything?”

Rune said, “No. I just came by to tell you. I was going to call. But that didn’t seem right—you two seemed close.”

Nicole’s tears were streaming again but they were the sort that don’t grab your breath and her voice remained steady. “You were with her when it happened?” She hadn’t heard Rune’s refusing a drink, or had decided to ignore it, and was pouring Stoly over small, half-melted ice cubes.

“I was in the street, waiting for her. We were going to a party.”

“The AAAF party, sure.”

The memory of which set off another jag of tears.
Nicole handed Rune the drink. She wanted to leave but the actress looked at her with such wet, imploring eyes that she eased into the hissing leather cushions and took the offered glass.

“Oh, Rune … She was one of my best friends. I can’t believe it. She was here this morning. We were joking, talking about the party—neither of us really wanted to go to it. And she made breakfast.”

What should I say? Rune thought. That it’ll be all right? Of course it won’t be all right. That time heals all wounds? Forget about it. No way. Some wounds stay open forever. She thought of her father, lying in a Shaker Heights funeral home years ago. Death changes the whole landscape of your life, forever.

Rune sipped the clear, bitter drink.

“You know what’s unfair?” Nicole said after a moment. “Shelly wasn’t like me. Okay, I do a pretty good job. I’ve got big boobs so men like watching me and I think I know how to make love pretty good. And I like what I do. I make good money. I’ve even got fans send me letters. Hundreds of ’em. But Shelly, she didn’t like the business. It was always like she was carrying around a, you know, burden of some kind. She would’ve done something else if she had a chance. Those religious nuts … It’s not fair they picked her.”

Nicole stared at the bookcases for a moment. “You know, one time we went to this movie about this hooker who was also a blues singer. She had a terrible life, she was so sad…. Shelly said that was her, that’s how her life was. Blue. We saw it twice, and, boy, did we cry.”

Which is what she did now.

Rune set the vodka down and put her arm around Nicole’s shoulders. What a pair
we
are, she thought. But there was nothing like tragedy to bring out sisterliness.

They talked for another hour until Rune’s head began to ache and the cuts on her face began to throb. She said
she had to leave. Nicole was sentimental drunk and still segued into tears every few minutes but she also would be asleep in a few minutes. She hugged Rune hard and took her number at L&R.

Rune waited for the elevator to take her down to the shiny marble lobby of the building.

Thinking how it was really sad that now with Shelly gone, Rune wouldn’t be able to make the movie that would tell everyone about her—about how she was really a serious person, despite what she did for a living, how she wanted to rise above it.

But then she thought: Why not?

Why
couldn’t
she make the film?

Sure she could.

And remembering something that Nicole had said, about the blues, suddenly the title for her film came to mind. She thought about it for a minute and decided that, yes, that was it.
Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star
.

The elevator arrived. Rune stepped in, rested her face against the cool brass plate holding the buttons and sent the car on its journey to the first floor.

CHAPTER SIX

Just look like you know what you’re doing and he won’t stop you; he’ll let you right in.

Life is all a question of attitude, Rune knew.

She was wearing a blue windbreaker. On the back, in white, were the letters
NY
. She’d stenciled them on that morning with acrylic poster paint. She kept the Sony Betacam on her shoulder as she walked past the uniformed policeman standing in the lobby of Lame Duck Productions. She nodded in a distracted way, cool, a civil servant nod, confident he’d let her pass by.

He stopped her.

“Who’re you?” he asked, a guy who looked like—what was his name?—Eddie Haskell on
Leave It to Beaver
.

“Film unit.”

He looked at her black stretch pants and high-top Keds.

“Never heard of it. What precinct you out of?”

“
State
police,” she said. “Now, you don’t mind, I got five other CSs to do today.”

“What’s a CS?” Eddie didn’t move.

“Crime scene.”

“CS.” He was nodding. “Shield?” he asked.

Rune reached into her purse and flipped open an ID wallet. On one side was a bright gold badge and on the other was an ID card with a sullen photo of her. It gave her name as Sargant Randolf. (The man who sold her the ID an hour before, in an arcade in Times Square, had said, “Your name’s Sargant? My generation, they named kids weird things too. Like Sunshine and Moonbeam.”)

Eddie glanced at it, shrugged. “You gotta use the stairs. Elevator’s broke.”

Rune climbed to the third floor. The scorched smell assaulted her again and turned her stomach. She stepped through the door into what had been an office. She lifted the heavy camera and started shooting. The scene wasn’t what she expected, wasn’t like in the movies where you see a little smoke damage, chairs knocked over, broken glass.

This was pure destruction.

Whatever furniture was in the room had been blown to shreds of wood and metal and plastic. Nothing was recognizable except a blistered file cabinet that looked as if a huge fist had slammed into it. The acoustical tile on the ceiling was gone, wires hung down and the floor was a frozen black sea of paper, trash and chunks of debris. The walls were crisp bubbles of blackened paint. Heat still rose from piles of damp black cloth and papers.

She panned slowly.

This is where Shelly Lowe’s life ended. This is how it ended. In flames, and—

A voice behind her asked, “What do you think?”

The camera drooped and she shut it off.

She turned and saw Sam Healy, standing in another
doorway, sipping coffee from a blue deli cup. She liked that. Asking what he’d asked, rather than “What the hell’re you doing here?” Which is probably what he should’ve been asking.

Rune said, “I think it looks like Hades, you know, the Underworld.”

“Hell.”

“Yeah.”

Healy nodded toward the hallway. “Why’d he let you up here?”

“I reasoned with him.”

Healy walked up to Rune and spun her around slowly, looking at the letters on her back. “Cute. What’re you, impersonating a bus driver?”

“Just shooting some tape.”

“Ah. Your documentary.”

She looked at a small suitcase on the floor next to him. “What’re you doing here? I thought the word was, keep your distance. Remember the
word?
”

“I’m just a grunt. I collect the evidence. What the D.A. does with it is his business.”

She looked at a number of plastic bags sitting next to his attaché case. “What kind of evidence’ve you—”

Another voice cut through the room. “That’s her.”

Eddie the cop.

It was that kind of emphasis on
her
that Rune had heard before. It usually came from teachers, her parents and bosses.

Rune and Healy looked up. Eddie was with another man, heavyset. He looked familiar. Yeah, that was it—at the first bombing, the theater: Brown Suit.

“Sam.” He nodded at Healy, then said to Rune, “I’m Detective Begley. I understand you’re with the New York State Police. Could we see your ID again, please?”

Rune frowned. “I never said that. I said I wanted to do some tapes
of
the state police. For the news.”

Eddie shook his head. “She showed me a shield.”

“Miss, you know it’s a crime to have a badge?”

“It’s a crime for
some
people to have a badge.”

Healy said, “Artie, she’s with me. It’s okay.”

“Sam, she can’t go flipping shields around.” Begley turned to her. “Either open your bag or we’ll have to take you to the precinct.”

“The thing is …”

Eddie took the leopard-skin bag and handed it to Begley. He rummaged through the dull-clinking carnival of junk. He searched for a minute or two, then grimaced and dumped the contents out on the floor. There was no badge.