Death of a Blue Movie Star

by Jeffery Deaver

  Rune glanced across the street at the huge old art-deco Amsterdam Theater, which was all boarded up, its curvaceous clock stopped at five minutes to three. Of which day of which month of which year? she wondered. Her eye strayed to an alleyway and she caught a flash of motion. Someone seemed to be watching her, someone in a red jacket. Wearing a hat, she believed. Then the stranger vanished.

  Paranoid. Well, this was the place for it.

  Then she walked past dozens of small stores, selling fake-gold jewelry, electronics, pimp suits, cheap running shoes, ID photos, souvenirs, bootleg perfumes and phony designer watches. Hawkers were everywhere, directing bewildered tourists into their stores.

  "Check it out, check it.... We got what you need, and you gonna like what we got. Check it out...."

  One store, the windows painted black, named Art's Novelties, had a single sign in the window. LEISURE PRODUCTS. YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE TO ENTER.

  Rune tried to peek inside. What the hell was a leisure product?

  She kept walking, listing against the weight of the camera, sweat running down her face and neck and sides.

  The smells were of garlic and oil and urine and rotting food and car exhaust. And, brother, the crowds ... Where did all these people come from? Thousands of them. Where was home? The city? The burbs? Why were they here?

  Rune dodged out of the way of two teenage boys in T-shirts and Guess? jeans, walking fast, in an arm-swinging, loping roll, their voices harsh. "Man, mothafuckah be mah boss but he don' own me, man. You hear what I'm sayin', man?"

  "Fuck no, he don' own neither of us."

  "He try that again, man, an' I'll deck him. I mothahfuckin' deck him, man...."

  They passed her by, Rune and her camera, as she taped a visual history of Times Square.

  A place like no other in New York.

  Times Square ...

  But every Magic Kingdom needs its Mordor or Hades and tonight as Rune walked through the place she didn't feel too uneasy. She was on her quest, making her movie. About the bombing but not about the bombing. She didn't have to justify the creepy place to anyone or worry about anybody's shoes but her own and she was careful where she put her feet.

  Behind her, a huge snort.

  Fantastic! Knights!

  Rune turned the camera on two mounted policemen, who sat rod-straight in their saddles, their horses lolling their heads and stomping solid hooves into the piles of granular manure under them.

  "Hey, Sir Gawain!" Rune called. They glanced at her, then decided she wasn't worth flirting with and continued to scan the street with stony gazes that streamed from under the visors of their robin's-egg-blue helmets.

  It was when she looked down from the tall, chestnut horse that she saw the red jacket again. It vanished even more quickly than earlier.

  A chill ran through her, despite the heat.

  Who was it? she wondered.

  No one. Just one of the ten million people in the Magic Kingdom. And she forgot about it as she turned the corner and walked up Eighth Avenue toward the site of the former Velvet Venus Theater.

  Along this stretch she counted six porn theaters and adult bookstores. Some had live dancers, some had peep shows where for a quarter or a token you could watch films in little booths. She stuck the camera through the door and shot a sign (ONLY ONE PERSON PER BOOTH. IT'S THE LAW AND OUR POLICY. HAVE A NICE DAY) until a big guy selling tokens shooed her away.

  She got some good footage of commuters on their way to the Port Authority and their homes in suburban Jersey. Some glanced in the windows; most wore glazed faces. A few businessmen turned quickly into the theaters, not pausing at all, as though a gust of wind had blown them through the door.

  It was then that a humid wind carried a sour stink of burn to her. From the theater, she knew. Rune shut off the camera and strolled up the street.

  Still spooked. The paranoia again. But she still could hear, in her memory, the terrible bang of the explosion. The ground moving under her. Recalling the bodies, the parts of bodies. The terrible aftermath of the bomb and the fire. She glanced back, saw no one watching her.

  She continued along the street, thinking: The press coverage of the event had been good. News at Eleven had devoted ten minutes to the incident and the story had been a hook for a Time magazine article on the trends in adult films ("Hard Times for Hard-Core?") and one in the Village Voice on the conflict the bombing presented to the First Amendment ("Disrespecting Religion and Abridging the Press"). But, as Larry had predicted, those were all spot news stories, hard news. Nobody was doing a human-interest piece on the bombing.

  Come on, Shelly, she thought. You're the key. I need you....

  As she approached the ruins of the theater Rune paused, resting her hand on the yellow police tape. The odor was stronger than the day of the bombing. She almost gagged on the air, thick with the smell of wet, scorched upholstery. And something else--a sickening cardboardy scent. It would have to be the scorched bodies, Rune figured, and tried to force the image out of her thoughts.

  Across the street was another theater. The neon said: THE FINEST IN ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. COOL, COMFORTABLE AND SAFE. Rune assumed that patrons were not much soothed by the illuminated reassurance and that business was slow.

  She turned back to the destroyed theater and was startled by motion. Her first thought: Shit, he's back. Whoever was following her through Times Square.

  A man's face ...

  Panic took her. Just as she was about to turn and run she squinted into the shadows and got a better look at her pursuer. He wore jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker that said NYPD in white letters on the chest. It was Cowboy. The guy from the Bomb Squad.

  She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Tried to steady her shaking hands. He sitting on a folding chair, looking at a white sheet of paper, which he folded and put into his pocket. She saw a thin brown holster on his right hip. Rune lifted the camera and shot a minute or so of tape, opening the aperture wide to get some definition in the gloom.

  He looked at the camera. She expected the man to tell her to get lost. But he merely stood and began walking through the ruined theater, kicking at debris, bending down occasionally to examine something, training his long black flashlight on the walls and floor.

  The image in the viewfinder of the heavy camera faded. Dusk had come quickly--or perhaps she just hadn't noticed it. She opened the lens wide but it was still very dim and she didn't have any lights with her. She knew the exposure was too dark. She shut the camera off, lowered it from her shoulder.

  When she looked again into the building Cowboy was gone.

  Where had he disappeared to?

  She heard a scuttling of noise near her.

  Something heavy fell.

  "Hello?"

  Nothing.

  "Hey?" Rune called again.

  There was no answer. She shouted into the ruins of the theater, "Were you following me? Hey, Officer? Somebody was following me. Was it you?"

  Another sound, like boots on concrete. Nearby. But she didn't know where exactly.

  Then a car engine started. She spun around. Looking for the blue-and-white station wagon, emblazoned with BOMB SQUAD. But she didn't see it.

  A dark car pulled out of an alley and vanished up Eighth Avenue.

  Uneasy once more. No, damn scared, for some reason. But as she looked over the people on Eighth Avenue she saw only harmless passersby. People on their way to the theaters. Everybody lost in their own worlds. Nobody in the coffee shops and bars paid her any mind. A horde of tourists walked past, obviously wondering why the hell their tour guide was leading them through this neighborhood. Another teen, a mean-looking Latino, propositioned her harmlessly and walked on when she ignored him, telling her to have a nice night. Across the street a man in a wide-brimmed hat carrying a Lord & Taylor shopping bag was gazing into the window of an adult bookstore.

  Nobody in a red jacket, nobody spying on her.

  Paranoia, she decided. Just paranoia.

&nbs
p; Still, she shut down the camera, put the cassette into her leopard-skin bag and headed for the subway. Deciding that she'd had enough atmosphere for one night.

  In the alley across the street from what was left of the Velvet Venus a bum sat beside a Dumpster, drinking from a bottle of Thunderbird. He squinted as a man stepped into the alley.

  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 windbreaker 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 Galapagos 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."