Heavy from years of interviewing reluctant witnesses.
From years of kneeling over bodies in their graves of gutters and car seats and SRO hotels.
From seeing what he'd witnessed upstairs.
Rune whispered, "She's dead?"
The other cop was answering, but to Healy. "DCDS."
"What?" Rune asked.
Healy said, "Deceased confirmed dead at scene."
Deceased.
The cop kept speaking to Healy as though Rune weren't there. She thought maybe Healy had introduced her to this somber man. She wasn't sure. She thought she'd heard a name but all she remembered was Homicide. "Looks like torture, strangulation, then mutilation. There was some dismemberment." He shook his head and finally showed some emotion. "What that goddamn business does to people. Porn ... Like any other addiction. Keep having to go for more and more to get a high."
Then Homicide turned to Rune. "Could you tell us what you know, miss?"
A rambling explanation. She did her best and the man's narrow fingers wrote quickly in a small, dime-store notebook. But she stopped quite a bit and had to throw in a lot of "uh's" and "No, waits." She thought she knew the story of Nicole D'Orleans better than this. But a distraction kept intruding.
It was an image of Nicole.
There was some dismemberment....
She told him about her film, how she'd known Shelly, about the film company. Then about how Tommy had been in love with Shelly and she'd dumped him and moved to New York and how he'd been a demolition expert and had stolen explosives from the army--Healy had broken in here with details. And how he must have been so furious at Shelly for leaving him, and so crazy, that he had contrived the idea of the Sword of Jesus and the bombings to cover up his murder. He'd probably figured Shelly and Nicole were lovers and picked her to ritually murder--again from jealousy.
Rune finished the story and gave him a description of Tommy.
The detective's cheap pen danced in blotching ink over the paper. He took it all down, in sweeping handwriting, a man who didn't understand a thing about her documentary, about Nicole, about Shelly, about the movies they made. He wrote without a flicker of emotion on his thin, gray, inflexible face. He wrote down her answers, then looked around.
Homicide waved to a scrawny Hispanic-looking wreck of a man wearing a blue headband to keep his black curls at bay.
Healy asked, "ACU?"
"He was working the crowd. Didn't know we had a positive suspect. I'll send him back with a description."
Homicide nodded to Rune. He walked to the ACU man and they began talking, their heads bent toward the ground. Neither looked in the other's eyes as they spoke.
"He's a cop?" Rune asked, staring at him.
"He's anticrime unit. Undercover. Today's ACU color is blue--see his headband? They wear that so we know he's one of us. After a murder they go into the crowd and eavesdrop, ask questions. Now that we know the suspect's ID, though, he'll just show his shield and interview them."
"Yo, bus is coming through!" a voice shouted. The EMS ambulance eased forward. Healy stepped aside. Rune shouldered the Sony and taped the boxy orange-and-blue truck as it wound through the crowd, carrying Nicole's body to the morgue.
Healy walked with her to the corner. She leaned against an express mailbox and squeezed her eyes shut.
"We were talking together, Tommy and me. I was two feet away from him. As close as you and me ... A man like that, a killer. And he seemed so normal."
Healy was silent, looking back at the revolving lights. Though he wasn't as calm as Homicide had been, not at all. He'd seen her, Nicole, and it shook him. It occurred to Rune that one of the advantages of bomb detail was that you dealt with machines and chemicals more than people.
In a soft voice Rune said, "I was supposed to be there tonight. He wanted me to come too."
"You?"
"He said he was making a film. A legitimate film. Christ, Sam, why did he do it? I just don't understand."
"Guy blows up a dozen people just to cover up killing his girlfriend, then slaughters somebody like that ... I don't have any answers for what makes him tick."
"When did he leave, do they think?"
"There was no postmortem lividity. No rigor mortis. Probably twenty minutes, a half hour before we got here."
"So he's still in town."
"Doubt it. People know him, people can place them together. My bet is he got a car and'll drive to some small airport, then grab a connecting flight to California. Hartford, Albany, White Plains."
"You've got to call them. Get a description--"
"We can't lock up every airport in the Northeast, Rune. They've got a citywide out on him now but he'll probably make it out of the area. They'll get him when he gets home--where is it? Monterey? The MPs'll be after him too. And theft of government property and interstate flight'll bring in the FBI."
"Oh, Sam." She pressed her head against his chest.
He held her, which made her feel good, but what made her feel even better was that they were standing in front of a half dozen of the guys he worked with and he was still hugging her, not glancing around or making it look like she was just an upset witness. He held her tight and she felt some of the horror shift away to him and she let it go. He knew what to do; he could dispose of it. That was his job.
They walked.
South, into the Theater District, then through the geometric shapes of cold neon in Times Square. Down Broadway. Past a wolf pack of four black kids wearing throwaways, with round heads and shaver-cut streaks in their hair, looking innocent and sour. Past businessmen and businesswomen in running shoes. Past hawkers, past a couple--German or Scandinavian tourists--dressed in nylon running suits, carrying Nikons. Their heads, covered with stringy blond hair, looked around them, their expressions asking, This is New York?
Past the billboards on which the fifty-foot models, reclining sexily, sold liquor and jeans and VCRs, past a porn theater that gave off the smell of Lysol (maybe Shelly or Nicole was performing on screen at that moment). There was no way of knowing what the movies were; the marquee promised only that there were three superhot hits showing.
"You know," Rune said, speaking her first words since they'd started to walk. Her voice snagged. "You know that Thirty-fourth Street used to be the big entertainment strip? All the theaters and burlesque shows. I'm talking turn of the century. A long time ago."
"I didn't know that."
"Times Square's pretty recent."
They walked past a big monument, a statue of a woman in wings and robes. She gazed down at pigeons and a dozen homeless people.
Who was she?
A Greek or Roman goddess?
Rune thought of Eurydice, then of Shelly. A captive in the Underworld. There was no Orpheus and his lyre nearby, though. The only music was from a scratchy rap song on a tinny boom box.
When they came to the Flatiron Building, they stopped.
Rune said, "I should go home."
"You want some company?"
She hesitated. "I don't need--"
"I didn't ask need. I asked want."
Rune said, "Your house?"
"It's small, ugly. But homey."
"Tonight, I think I could go for homey."
"I've got to help with some of the paperwork--you want to meet me there? I'll give you the keys." He wrote down the address. She took the slip of paper and the keys.
"I oughta go pick up some things at my place."
"I shouldn't be any longer than an hour or so. You all right?"
Rune tried to think of something funny and flippant to say, something a tough lady newscaster would sling out. But she just shook her head and gave him an anemic smile. "No, I'm not."
He bent down quickly and kissed her. "You want a cab?"
"I walk, I feel better." He turned away. She said, "Sam ..."
He paused. But there was nothing at all she could think of to say.
In the houseboat Rune stacked up the tapes she'd
shot--the rough footage for Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star--and set them on her shelf, but put the script for the narration in her bag. That was something she could ask Sam about. Tell him to pretend he was in the audience and read it to him.
But not tonight.
In the morning.
That would have to wait till the morning.
She glanced into her purse and saw the script--the one she'd stolen from Arthur Tucker's office. She picked it up, flipped through it. Hell, she'd forgotten all about it. And now that he wasn't a suspect she ought to get it back to him. Mail it anonymously. She tossed it on the table and walked into the bedroom, to her dresser. She packed a skirt, T-shirt, blouse, socks, underwear (no Disney characters, girl; go for the lacy, uncomfortable pair). She added her toothbrush and makeup and began turning out lights.
Rune paused at the living room window, looking out at the lights of the city.
Nicole ...
Of the two--Nicole and Shelly--wasn't Nicole's the more tragic death? she wondered. Rune felt sorrier for her. Shelly, because she was smarter, more talented, an artist, was also the risk-taker. She could choose to walk right to the edge. Hell, she'd chosen to date Tommy. Nicole wouldn't appreciate the risks so much. She was sweet, and--despite her line of work--innocent. She'd do her nails, she'd fuck, she'd dream about opening the shoe store, dream about the advertising executive she could marry. She--
The smell.
Rune sensed it suddenly, though she understood in that instant that she had been aware of it for a long time, ever since she'd returned to the houseboat. It had a familiarity about it, but a scary one. Like the sweet-sick chemical scent that bothers you an instant before you remember it's the smell of a dentist's office.
Cleanser? No. Cologne? Maybe. Perfume.
Rune's thoughts began jumping, and she didn't like where they arrived.
Incense! Sandalwood.
The smell of Tommy Savorne's apartment.
She thought: Run, or get the tear gas?
Rune turned fast toward the front door.
But Tommy got there first, and leaned up against it. He was smiling when he locked the latch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She fought him.
Knees, elbows, palms ... everything Rune remembered about self-defense from a tape she'd watched over and over again because the black-belt tae kwon do instructor was so cute.
But she didn't get anywhere.
Tommy was very drunk--she realized why Warren Hathaway had thought he was older and why he'd been so winded as she'd chased him from the Pink Pussycat theater. And she was able to dodge away from his groping hands.
She grabbed a pole lamp and hit him so hard it made the flesh on his arm shake. But even though it made him uncoordinated, the liquor also anesthetized him, and Tommy just grunted, knocked the pole aside, then swiped his forearm across her face. She went to the floor hard. She tried for the tear gas but he slung her bag across the room.
"Bitch." He grabbed her by the ponytail and pulled her over to a straight-back chair, then shoved her down into it and wound brown doorbell wire around her wrists and ankles.
"No!" she screamed. The wire dug into her flesh and hurt terribly.
He sat back on his heels, rocking slowly, and studied her. His hair was greasy. The tiny crevices and cracks in his fingers were stained dark red, like Chinese crackle pottery, his shirt was stained with sweat and his jeans were dark with black shapes that Rune knew were Nicole's blood.
He leered at her. "Was she good?"
"What do you want?"
"Was it worth it?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Making love to Shelly. You were her girlfriend, weren't you? You and Nicole both were." His eyes were unfocused. "She slept with Nicole--I've seen the movies. I could see in her face how much she liked it! Did she like it with you too? Did you enjoy it?" Tommy squinted, then asked calmly, "Will you think about it while you die?"
"I didn't take Shelly away from you. I hardly knew her. I just--"
He opened his bag and took out a long knife. There were dark stains on the wooden handle. Something else was in his hand: a videocassette. He looked at Rune's TV set and VCR, started them both and, after three tries, slipped the tape in. A crackle, then a hum, and the screen became a fuzzy black-and-white.
He watched the set, almost incidentally, as he began mumbling, reciting a mantra. "Way I see it, pornography is art. What is art exactly? It's creation. The making of something where there was nothing before. And what does pornography show? Fucking. The act of creation." He tried to find the fast forward on her VCR but couldn't. He turned back to her. "When I figured that out it was like a revelation. A religious experience. You write about fucking and it's not real. But with movies ... you can't fake it. You are watching, like, the whole act of creation in front of you. Fucking amazing."
"Oh, God, no." Rune, staring at the screen, began to cry.
Watching:
Nicole, hanging from the rack.
Nicole, twisting, futilely, away from the swinging whip.
"... but with film, it's so different. The artist can't lie. No way. I mean it's all right there. You've got the beginning of life right in front of you...."
Nicole, begging with her eyes, maybe screaming through the gag.
Nicole, crying tears that sloughed off her makeup in brown and black stripes across her face.
Nicole, closing her eyes, as Tommy walked forward with a knife.
"... also religious. In the beginning God created... See, created. That's a fucking wild coincidence, wouldn't you say? God and the artist. And pornography brings it all together...."
Nicole, dying.
Rune surrendered to her sobbing.
Savorne watched the tape with sad, hungry eyes. "I really loved Shelly," he said in his slurred voice. "When she left me I died. I couldn't believe that she'd actually gone. I didn't know what to do. I'd wake up and there would be the whole day ahead of me without her, hours and hours without her. I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed. At first I hated her. Then I knew she was sick. She'd gone crazy. And I knew it wasn't all her fault. No, it was other people too: people like Nicole. People like you. People who wanted to seduce her."
"I didn't seduce her!"
Rune's words didn't register. Tommy set up his camcorder, then he paused. "I'm tired. I'm so tired. It's hard. People don't understand how hard it is. It's like working in a slaughterhouse, you know? I'll bet those guys get tired of it sooner or later. But they can't quit. They've got a job to do. That's how I feel."
He switched the lights on. The sudden brilliance made Rune scream.
"When they die," he said softly, "part of me dies too. But nobody understands."
He looked at her and touched her face. Rune smelled the metallic scent of blood. Tommy said, "When you die, part of me will die. It's what an artist has to go through.... There was one night ..." He seemed to forget his train of thought. He sat down, his hand on the small camera, staring at the floor. Rune squirmed. The wire was thin but it didn't give.
He finally recalled his thought. "There was one night, we were living in Pacific Grove then. Not far from the beach. It was a weird night. We'd been doing okay with the movies, making some good money. I was directing then. We were watching a rough cut, Shelly and me, and what usually happened was she got turned on watching herself and we'd have a wild time. Only this time, something was wrong. I put my arms around her and she didn't respond. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me in this eerie way. She looked like she'd seen her own death. It wasn't long after that she left me.
"I spent hours and hours thinking about it. Seeing her that way, the expression on her face ..." He gazed at Rune, a sincere face, intense. A man talking about important things. "And I finally understood. About sex and death--that they're really the same."
He was lost in a memory for a moment, then he focused on Rune, almost surprised to see her. He dug the vodka bottle out of his bag and took anot
her hit. He smiled. "Let's make a movie."
Tommy turned on the camera and focused it at Rune.
The sweat from the heat of the lights ran down from his eye sockets and he made no attempt to wipe it away.
Rune was sobbing.
He caressed the knife. "I want to make love to you."
He stepped forward and rested the blade on Rune's forearm.
He pressed it in and cut a short stroke.
She screamed again.
Another cut, shorter. He looked at it carefully. He'd made a cross.
"They like this," he explained. "The customers. They like little details like this."
He lifted the knife to her throat.
"I want to make love to you. I want to make love to--"
The first shot was low and wide. It took out a lamp.
Tommy was spinning, looking around, confused panic in his eyes.
The second was closer. It snapped past his head, like a bee, and vanished through the window, somewhere into the dark plain of the Hudson.
The third and fourth caught him in the shoulder and head, and he just dropped, collapsing, slumping from the waist, like a huge bag of grain dumped off a truck.
Sam Healy, breathing hard, his service Smith & Wesson still pointed at the man's head, walked up slowly. His gun hand was shaking. His face was pale.
"Oh, Sam," Rune said, sobbing. "Sam."
"You all right?"
Tommy had fallen against Rune, his head resting on her foot. She was trying to pull away. She said, panicky, through her tears, "Get him away! Get him off me. Please, get him off!"
Healy kicked him over, made sure he was dead, then began undoing the bell wire. "God, I'm a lousy shot." He was trying to joke but she could hear the quaver in his voice.
When Rune was free, she fell against his chest.
He kept repeating, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."
"He was going to kill me. He was going to tape it. What he did to Nicole, he was going to do that to me."
Healy was speaking into a Motorola walkie-talkie. "Two-five-five to Central."
"Go ahead, Two-five-five."
"I have a DCDS on houseboat in the Hudson River at Christopher. Send Homicide, an EMS bus, and a tour doctor from the ME's office."
"Roger, Two-five-five. Just the DCDS? You have injuries too?"
Healy turned to Rune, and asked, "You all right? You need a medic?"
Death of a Blue Movie Star Page 21
