Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

"West of Fort Laramie. And Bomber Patrol."

"Hey, you know your films. Hal's still around, I haven't talked to him in twenty years, I guess."

"Is he in New York?"

"No, he's on the West Coast. Where, I have no idea. Dana and Charlotte are dead now. The exec producer on the project died about five years ago. Some of the other studio people may be alive but they aren't around here. This is no business for old men. I'm paraphrasing Yeats. You know your poetry? You studying poets in school?"

"Yeah, all of them, Yeats, Erica Jong, Stallone."

"Stallone?"

"Yeah, you know, Rambo."

"Your school teaches some strange things. But education, who understands it?"

Rune asked, "Isn't there anybody in New York who worked on the film?"

"Whoa, darling, the spirit is willing but the mind is weak." Weinhoff pulled out a film companion book. And looked up the movie. "Ah, here we go. Hey, here we go. Manhattan Is My Beat, 1947. Oh, sure, Ruby Dahl, who could forget her? She played Roy's fiancee."

"And she lives in New York?"

"Ruby? Naw, she's gone. Same old story. Booze and pills. What a business we're in. What a business."

"What about the writer?"

Weinhoff turned back to the book. "Hey, here we go. Sure. Raoul Elliott. And if he was credited as the writer, then he really wrote it. All by himself. I know Raoul. He was an old-school screenwriter. None of this pro-wrestling for credits you see now." In a singsong voice Weinhoff said, " 'I polished sixty-seven pages of the tenth draft so I get the top credit in beer-belly extended typeface and that other hack only polished fifty-three pages so he gets his name in antleg condensed or no screen credit at all.' Whine, whine, whine... Naw, I know Raoul. If he got the credit he wrote the whole thing--first draft through the shooting script."

"Does he live in New York?"

"Ah, the poor man. He's got Alzheimer's. God forbid. He'd been in a home for actors and theatrical people for a while. But last year it got pretty bad; now he's in a nursing home out in Jersey."

"You know where?"

"Sure, but I don't think he'll tell you much of anything."

"I'd still like to talk to him."

Weinhoff wrote down the name and address for her. He shook his head. "Funny, you hear about students nowadays, they don't want to do this, they don't want to do that. You're--I pegged you right away, I don't mind saying--you're something else. Talking to an old yenta like me, going to all this trouble just for a school paper."

Rune stood up and shook the old man's hand. "Like, I think you get out of life what you put into it."

All right. I'm two hours late, she thought.

She wasn't just hurrying this time; she was sprinting. To get to work! This was something she'd never done that she could ever remember. Tony's voice echoing in her memory. Back in twenty, back in twenty.

Along Eighth Street. Past Fifth Avenue. To University Place. Dodging students and shoppers, running like a football player, like President Reagan in that old movie of his. The one without the monkey.

No big deal. Tony'll understand. I was on time this morning.

Them's the breaks.

He's not going to fire me for being a measly two hours late.

A hundred twenty minutes. The average running time for a film.

How could he possibly be upset? No way.

Rune pushed into the store and stopped cold. At the counter Tony was talking to the woman who was apparently her replacement, showing her how to use the cash register and credit card machine.