Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

Stephanie glanced at the last inch of hot dog, then pitched it into a garbage can. She wiped her hands and mouth with a thin napkin.

They descended into Wall Street. A white luminescence shone through the milky clouds, but the Street, with its narrow, packed rows of dark office buildings, was gloomy.

Rune said, "They shot the movie at the old Union Bank Building itself--that's were the actual robbery took place. The bank went bust years ago and the building was sold. It's been a bunch of things since then. Last year some company bought it and made a restaurant out of the ground floor."

Stephanie said, "Can we get some coffee there? I need some coffee."

Rune was excited, walking ahead of her, then slowing and falling back into step. "Isn't this too much? Walking the same streets the actors did forty years ago? Maybe Dana Mitchell stopped right here and put his foot up on that fire hydrant to tie his shoe."

"Maybe."

"Oh, look!" Rune gripped her arm. "There, the corner! That's where the robber fired a shot as the cops were closing in after the alarm went off. It's a great scene." She ran toward the corner, dodged past a young woman in a pink suit, and pressed back against the marble as if she were under fire. "Stephanie! Get down! Get under cover!"

"You're crazy," Stephanie said, walking slowly to the wall.

Rune reached forward. "You want to get shot? Get down!"

She pulled Stephanie, laughing, into a crouch. Several passersby had heard her. They looked around, cautious. Stephanie, pretending she didn't know Rune, whispered, "You're out of your mind!" Looking at the crowd, speaking louder: "She's out of her mind."

Rune's eyes were bright. "Can you imagine it? The bank's around the corner. And ... Listen!" A jackhammer sounded in the distance. "A machine gun! The robber's got a machine gun, an old tommy gun. He's blasting away at us. Okay, it's right around the corner and he's got a hostage and a million dollars. I've got to save him!"

Stephanie laughed and tugged at Rune's arm. Playing along now. "No, no don't go, it's too dangerous."

Rune adjusted an invisible hat, eased her shoulders back. "Nobody gets killed on my beat." And turned the corner.

Just in time to see a bulldozer shovel what had been one of the floors of the Union Bank Building into a huge Dumpster.

"No ..." Rune stopped in the middle of the congested sidewalk. Several businesspeople bumped into her before she stepped back. "Oh, no." Her hand went to her mouth.

The demolition company had taken down most of the building already. Only part of one wall remained. The stubby dozer was shoveling up masses of shattered stone and wood and metal.

Rune said, "How could they do it?"

"What?"

"They tore it down. It's gone."

Rune stepped away from Stephanie, her eyes on the men who worked the clanking jackhammers. They stood on the edge of the remaining wall, forty feet up, and dug apart the masonry at their feet. She glanced up the street, then walked slowly across it, to the plywood barricade that shut out pedestrians from the demolition site.

She couldn't look through the peepholes cut by the workers; they were at a six-footer's level. So she walked into the site itself through the open chain-link gate. A huge ramp of earth led down to the foundation where the truck holding the Dumpster idled. There was a resounding crash as the tons of rubble dropped into the steel vessel.

Stephanie caught up with her. "Hey, I don't think we're supposed to be here."

"I feel weird," Rune told her.

"Why?"

"They just destroyed the whole place. And it was so ... familiar. I knew it so well from the movie and now it's gone. How could they do it?"

Below them, a second bulldozer lifted a huge steel-mesh blanket and set it on top of a piece of exposed rock. There was a painful hoot of a steam whistle above their heads. The bulldozer backed away. Then two whistles. A minute later the explosives were detonated. A jarring slam under their feet. Smoke. The metal blanket shifted a few feet. Three whistle blasts--the all-clear--sounded.

Rune blinked. Tears formed. "It's not the way it should be."

She stooped and picked up a bit of broken marble from the bank's facade--pinkish and gray, the colors of a trout, smooth on one side. She looked at it for a long time, then put it in her pocket.

"It's not the way it should be at all," she repeated.

"Let's go," Stephanie urged.