Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

"Suicide?" Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief. "That's a really bad joke."

Manelli snapped back, "A lot of people stage their own deaths to look like murder. Kelly could've hired somebody to do it. For the insurance."

Oh. She hadn't thought of that. Then she asked, "Did he have an insurance policy?"

Manelli hesitated. Then he said, "No."

"I see."

He continued. "Can I finish?"

Rune shrugged.

"We'll interview everybody in the building and everybody hanging around on the streets around the time of the killing. We took down every license number of every car for three blocks around the apartment and we'll interview the owners. We're going through all of the deced-- through Mr. Kelly's personal effects. We'll find out if he had any relatives nearby, if any friends have suddenly left town, since most perps--"

"Wait. Perpetrators, right?"

"Yeah. Since more of 'em are friends or relatives of, or at least know, the vic. That's the victim. Maybe, we're lucky, we'll get a description of a suspect that'll go something like male Caucasian, six feet. Male black, five eight, wearing dark hat. Really helpful, understand?" His eyes dropped to a notepad. "Then we'll take what ballistics told us about the gun"--he hesitated--"and check that out."

She jumped on this. "So what do you know about the gun?"

He was glancing at his muffin; it wouldn't rescue him.

"You know something," Rune insisted. "I can see it. Something's weird, right? Come on! Tell me."

"It was a nine-millimeter, mounted with a rubber-baffled silencer. Commercial. Not home-made, like most sound suppressors are." He seemed not to want to tell her this but felt compelled to. "And the slugs ... the bullets ... they were Teflon coated."

"Teflon? Like with pots and pans?"

"Yeah. They go through some bulletproof vests. They're illegal."

Rune nodded. "That's weird?"

"You don't see bullets like that very often. Usually just professional killers use them. Just like only pros use commercial silencers."

"Keep going. About the investigation."

"Then sooner or later, while we're doing all that work, maybe in three or four months, we'll get a tip. Somebody got ripped off by a buddy whose cousin was at a party boasting he iced somebody in a drug robbery or something because he didn't like the way somebody looked at him. We'll bring in the suspect, we'll talk to him for hours and hours and hours and poke holes in his story until he confesses. That's the way it happens. The way it always happens. But you get the picture? It takes time. Nothing happens overnight."

"Not if you don't want it to," Rune said. And before he got mad she asked, "So you don't have any idea?"

Manelli sighed. "You want my gut feeling? Where he lived, some kids from Alphabet City needed crack money and killed him for that."

"With fancy-schmancy bullets?"

"Found the gun, stole it from some OC soldier-- organized crime--in Brooklyn. Happens."

Rune rolled her eyes. "And this kid who wanted money enough to kill for it shot the TV? And left the VCR? And, hey, did Mr. Kelly have any money on him?"

Manelli sighed again. Pulled a file from halfway down the stack on his desk, opened it. He read through it. "Walking-around money. Forty-two dollars. But the perp probably panicked when you showed up and ran off without taking anything."

"Was the room ransacked?"

"It didn't appear to be."

Rune said, "I want to look through it."

"The room?" The detective laughed. "No way. It's sealed. No one can go in." He studied her face. "Listen up. I've seen that look before.... You break in, it'll be trespassing. That's a crime. And I'd be more than happy to give your name to the prosecutor."