"A date? I haven't heard that word for a long time. It sounds, I don't know, like Swahili. I'm not used to it."

True, she supposed. Really chic people don't ask other chic people out on dates. They just go places together. Still, there was a certain commitment involved in the concept. So she said, "Date, date, date. There. Now you're used to it. So you can ask me out."

"We just spent the night together-"

"On separate futons," she pointed out.

"-and you want a date?"

"I want a date."

"How about dinner?" he asked.

"That's good."

"Okay. I asked you on a date. We'll go out. You happy?"

"It's not a date yet. You have to tell me when. And I mean exactly. Not a month, not a week."

"I'll call you."

"Oh, that? Are you kidding? Are men genetically programmed to say those three little words? Gimme a break."

He looked around helplessly. "I don't have my Day-timer here."

He'd call her and he had a Daytimer. This was scary. Richard was rapidly losing his appeal.

"Never mind," she said cheerfully.

"Okay, how about tomorrow?" he asked. "I know I'm not doing anything tomorrow."

Not too eager now-watch it. "I guess."

"Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"You can come here. I'll cook."

"I thought you didn't cook."

She said, "I don't cook well. But I do cook. We'll save the Four Seasons for a special occasion." She looked at her wrist. She wore two watches. They'd both stopped working. "What time do you have?"

"Eight."

"Shit, I have to go," Rune said, slipping off her T-shirt.

She could sense Richard watching her thin body, eyes sweeping up and down. She turned to him, wearing only her Bugs Bunny panties. "So, what are you staring at?" Put her hands on her hips.

And got him to blush.

Yes! Score one for me.

"Glad you don't shop at Frederick's of Hollywood," he said.

A good recovery. This boy had potential.

As she dressed, Richard asked, "What's the hurry? 1 didn't think your store opened until noon."

"Oh, I'm not going to work," she said. "I'm going to the police."

'Miss Rune," Detective Manelli said, "we are investigating the case."

She looked at his organized desk. Here-not standing in front of a corpse-he seemed like an insurance agent. The close-together eyes weren't so noticeable; they moved quickly, surveying her, and she decided he might be smarter than she'd thought. His first name was Virgil. She looked at the nameplate twice to make sure she'd read it right.

She nodded at the file open on his desk, the one he'd been reading. "But that's not his case.

Mr. Kelly's, I mean."

He took a breath, let it out. "No, it's not."

"Which one is his?" she asked stridently. "How far down is it?" She gestured at the stack of folders.

The captain-the one she'd met in Mr. Kelly's apartment-breezed in. He glanced down with a splinter of recognition but didn't say anything to her.

"They want to hear today," he told Manelli. "About the tourist killing."

"They'll hear today," Manelli said wearily.

"You got anything?"

"No."

"The mayor. You know. The Post. The Daily News."

"I know."

The captain looked at Rune once again. He left the office.

"We're doing everything according to procedures," Manelli told her.

"Who's the tourist?"

"Somebody from Iowa. Knifed in Times Square. Don't start with me on that."

She said, "Just let me get this straight: You're no closer to rinding Mr. Kelly's killer than you were yesterday."

On Manelli's desk, opening up like a mutant flower, was a piece of deli tissue around a mass of corn muffin. He broke off a chunk and ate it. "How 'bout you give us a day or two to make the collar?"

"The…?"

"To arrest the killer."

"I just want to know what happened."

"In New York City, we've got to deal with almost fifteen hundred homicides a year."

"How many people are working on Mr. Kelly's case?"

"Me mostly. But there're other detectives checking things out. Look, Ms. Rune…"

"Just Rune."

"What exactly is your interest?"

"He was a nice man."

"The decedent?"

"What a gross word that is. Mr.Kellywas a nice man. I liked him. He didn't deserve to get killed."

The detective reached for his coffee, drank some, put it down. "Let me tell you the way it works."

"I know how it works. I've seen enough movies."

"Then you have no idea how it works. Homicide-"

"Why do you have to use such big fancy words? Decedent, homicide. A man was murdered. Maybe if you said he was murdered, you'd work harder to find who did it."

"Miss, murder is only one kind of homicide. Mr. Kelly could have been a victim of manslaughter, negligent homicide, suicide…"

"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 vie. 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?"