Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

She felt very disoriented. She was back in Manhattan but she still felt that something separated her from her element, from the Side.

Starting down the street, eyes on the filthy pavement, keeping close to the curb--away from the alleys and the buildings, where muggers and rapists lurk.

Thinking back to Lord of the Rings. Thinking how quests always start off in springtime, with nice weather, good friends around to see you off, hearty food and drink in your pack. But they end up in Mordor--the bleakest of kingdoms, a place full of fire and death and pain.

It seemed to her that someone was following, though when she looked back she could see nothing but shadows.

She worked her way to Midtown and caught a subway. An hour later she was back home, in the loft. No note from Richard. And Sandra was out--a date on Sunday? Totally unfair! Nobody ever had a date on Sunday. Hell. She slipped Manhattan Is My Beat in the VCR and started it once more. The movie was halfway through before she realized that she'd been reciting the dialogue along with the actors. She'd memorized it perfectly.

Damn scary, she thought. But kept the film running till its end.

Haarte was angry.

It was Monday morning and he was sitting in his town house. Zane had just called and told him that the one witness, Susan Edelman, was about to be released from the hospital and that the other girl, the one with the weird name, was investigating the case harder than the NYPD.

Angry.

Which was a difficult emotion in this business. Haarte wasn't allowed to be angry when he'd been a cop. There was nothing he could do with his anger as a soldier and mercenary. And now--as a professional killer--he found anger to be a liability. A serious risk.

But he was mad. Oh, he was furious.

He was in his town house. Thinking about how messy this fucking job had become. Killing a man ought to be simplicity itself. He and Zane had gotten drunk a month ago, sitting in the bar in the Plaza hotel. They'd both grown maudlin and philosophical. Their job, they decided, was better than most because it was simple. And pure. As they poured down Lagavulin Scotch, Haarte had derided advertising execs and lawyers and salesmen. "They've got complicated, bullshit lives."

Zane had countered, "But that's reality. And reality's complicated."

And he'd answered, "If that's reality you can have it. I want simplicity."

What he meant was that there was a weird kind of ethics at work here. Haarte really believed this. Someone paid him money and he did the job. Or he couldn't do it. In which case he gave the money back or he tried again. Simplicity. Either someone was dead or not.

But this hit wasn't simple anymore. There were too many loose ends. Too many questions. Too many directions it might take. He was at risk, Zane was at risk. And of course the people who'd hired them were at risk too.

The man in St. Louis didn't know exactly what was going on but if he found out he'd be enraged.

And that made Haarte all the angrier.

He wanted to do something. Yet he couldn't decide what. There was the witness in the hospital.... There was the weird girl, the one in the video store.... He needed to snip some of those loose ends. But, as he sipped his morning espresso, he couldn't decide exactly how to handle it. There are many ways to stop people who're a risk to you. You can kill them, of course. Which is the most efficient way in some cases. And sometimes killing witnesses and meddlers makes the case so much more difficult to investigate that the police put the matter low on their list of priorities. But sometimes killing people does the opposite. It gets the press involved. It galvanizes cops to work even harder.

Killing's one way. But you can also hurt people. Scare them. It doesn't take much physical pain at all to put somebody out of commission for a long, long time. Lose a limb or your eyesight ... Often they get the message and develop amnesia about what they saw or what they know. And the cops can't even get you for murder.

You can also hurt or kill someone close to the person you want to stop, their friends or lovers. This works very well, he'd found.

What to do?

Haarte stood up and stretched. He looked at his expensive watch. He walked into his kitchen to make another cup of espresso. The thick coffee made Zane agitated. But Haarte found it calmed him, cleared his head.

Sipping the powerful brew.

Thinking: What was supposed to be simple had become complicated.

Thinking: Time to do something about that.

There she was, up ahead.

Haarte had waited for her there, an alley, for a half hour.

Walking down the street in her own little world.