Hard News (Rune 3)

The street was empty and she strolled casually into the old government-issue building and up to the night guard, cover story and faked credentials all prepared.

In twenty minutes she was out, having exchanged the mop and pail for the bulky manila folder that rested in her bag.

She paused at a phone stand and pretended to make a call while she flipped through the file. She found the address she was looking for and walked quickly back to the subway. After a ten-minute wait she got on board an old Number Four train heading toward Brooklyn.

Rune liked the outer boroughs, Brooklyn especially. She thought of it as caught in a time warp, a place where the Dodgers were always playing and muscular boys in T-shirts sipped egg creams and flirted with tough girls who snapped gum and answered them back in sexy, lazy drawls. Big immigrant families crammed into narrow shotgun tenements argued and made up and laughed and hugged with hearts full of love and loyalty.

The neighborhood that she now slipped into, along with the crowd exiting the subway, was quiet and residential. She paused, getting her bearings.

She had to walk only three blocks before she found the row house. Red brick with yellow trim, two-story, a narrow moat of anemic lawn. Bursts of red covered the front of the building: Geraniums grew everywhere--they escaped from flowerpots, from terra-cotta statues in the shape of donkeys and fat Mexican peasants, from green plastic window boxes, from milk containers. They bothered her, the flowers. Someone who'd appreciate flowers like this was probably a very nice person. This meant Rune would feel pretty guilty about what she was about to do.

Which didn't stop her, however, from walking onto the front porch, dropping a paper bag on the concrete stoop and setting fire to it.

She rang the doorbell and ran into the alley behind the house and listened to the voices.

"Oh, hell ... What? ... Those punks again ... That's it! This time I call the cops.... Don't call the fire department. It's just ..."

Rune raced up the back stairs and through the open kitchen door. She saw a man leaping forward fiercely and stomping on the burning bag, sparks flying, smoke pouring. A chubby woman held a long-spouted watering can, dousing his feet. Then Rune was past them, unnoticed, taking the carpeted stairs two at a time. Upstairs she found herself in a small hallway.

First room, nobody.

Second, nobody.

Third, chaos. Six children were staring out the window at the excitement below them, squealing and dancing around.

They all turned to the doorway as Rune walked into the room and flipped the light switch on.

One of them cried, "Rune!"

"Hi, honey," she said to Courtney. The little girl ran toward her.

A chubby boy of about ten looked at her. "What'sis? Jailbreak?"

"Shh, don't tell anybody."

"Yeah, right, like I'm a snitch. Got a cigarette?"

Rune gave him five dollars. "Forget you--"

"--saw anything. Right. I know the drill."

Rune said to Courtney, "Come on, let's go home."

She pulled

the girl's jacket off a hook and slipped it on her.

"Are we playing a game?" the little girl asked.

"Yeah," Rune said, hustling her out into the corridor, "it's called kidnapping."

THE PRISON YARD WAS SEGREGATED.

Just like the city, Randy Boggs thought, hanging out there at nine the next morning. Just like life. Blacks one side, whites the other, except on the basketball half-court.

The blacks were mostly young. A lot wore do-rags or stockings or they had cornrows. They stood together. Strong, big, sleek.

Yo, homes, quit that noise.