Death of a Blue Movie Star (Rune 2)

"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.

She asked them again how many men they were going to put on the case but they just looked at her blankly and told her they were sorry for her troubles.

And then they confiscated the tear gas.

After cleaning up, putting hydrogen peroxide on the scrapes and digging a new tear gas canister out from under the sink, Rune went to L&R Productions.

"'ey, what've we got 'ere?" Bob asked, examining her face.

She wasn't about to tell him that the injuries might have to do with her movie--since it was L&R's Betacam that would be at risk if she got machine-gunned down on the street.

"Guy hassled me. I beat the crap out of him."

"Uh-huh," Bob said skeptically.

"Listen, after work, I need to borrow the camera again. And some lights."

Bob, in a lecturing mood, said to her, "You know what this is, Rune?" Rubbing the large video camera as if it were a blonde's rump.

"Larry said it was okay. I've used it before."