"Well, good for you."

Rune gave him an exasperated look then said to the marshal, "Anything more on the case?"

"Naw." Then he seemed to think he shouldn't be talking quite so blue-collar and added, "No. No evidence in the Edelman death." He shrugged. "No prints at the scene. No witnesses. You haven't seen anything odd lately? Been followed?"

"No."

Dixon nodded. Looked at some videos. Picked one up. Put it down.

"So," he said.

Two "so's" from two different men in one night. Rune wondered what this one meant.

"Could I talk to you?" he asked, motioning her to the front of the store.

"Sure."

They stood by the window, next to a distracting cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox.

"Just thought you'd like to know. I checked out that case you told me about. The Union Bank heist?"

"You did?"

He shook his head. "I didn't find anything. Technically, it's still open but nobody's been on the case since the fifties. They only keep murder cases open indefinitely. I tried to find the file but it looks like it was pitched out ten, twenty years ago."

"I thought maybe you were investigating it."

"The robbery? Me?" Dixon laughed again. He had a nice smile. Richard, she was thinking, had that mysteri-ousness about him. Something going on under the surface-you couldn't quite believe his smile. Dixon's seemed totally genuine.

He took off his baseball cap, rubbed his hair in a boyish way, put the hat back on.

She said, "I mean, it was kind of a coincidence you were asking about Mr. Kelly and everything."

"Bank robbery'd be the FBI, not the Marshals. I'm involved only 'cause the killer used the kind of bullets a lot of hit men use. We check stuff like that out."

"Teflon," Rune said.

"Oh, you know about that?"

"The police told me. But if you don't care about the robbery then why'd you look up the case?"

He shrugged, looked away. "I dunno. Seemed important to you."

A little tingle. Nothing as high-voltage as with Richard. But it was something. Besides, Richard, who she thought she was in love with, had just been giving her crap about her life, while this guy, almost a stranger, had gone to the trouble to help her with her quest.

Little red hen…

She gave him a coy look, a Scarlett O'Hara look. "That's the only reason you came all the way down here? To tell me about a fifty-year-old case?"

He shrugged, avoided her eyes. "I stopped by your place and you weren't there and I called here and they said sometimes you just hang out and talk about movies with people." He said this as if he'd practiced it. Like a shy boy rehearsing his lines to ask a girl out on a date. Embarrassed. He crossed his arms.

"So you took the chance I'd be here?"

"Right." After a moment he said, "And I'll bet you want to know why."

"Yeah," she said. "I do."

"Well." He swallowed. How could somebody with such a big gun be so nervous? He continued. "I guess I wanted to ask you out. I mean, if you don't want to, forget it, but-"

"Rune," Frankie called, "phone!"

"Wait right there," Rune told Dixon, then added emphatically, "Don't go away."

"Sure. Sure. I won't go anywhere."

She picked up the phone. It was Amanda LeClerc. "Rune, I thought you want to know," the woman said quickly, her accent more pronounced because of her excitement. "Victor Symington's daughter, she over here. I mean, right now. You want to see her?"

Rune glanced at Dixon, who was looking at video boxes. He glanced at the X-rated section, blushed, and looked away quickly.

Rune, debating furious-what should she do?

A man who wanted to ask her out versus the quest.

This was totally unfair.

"Rune?" Amanda said. "I don't think she going to stay too long."

Eyes on Dixon.

Eyes on the Brooklyn Yellow Pages.

Oh, shit.

Into the phone she blurted out, "I'll be right over."

"You had the baby?"

Rune looked up from the building directory, so thick with graffiti she couldn't find the number of Amanda LeClerc's apartment.

Her surprised eyes rested on the surprised face of the young man who'd let her into the apartment building two days before-when she'd been extremely pregnant. Now, she let him open the door for her again and she walked inside.

"I did, thanks," Rune said. "Courtney Madonna Brittany. Six pounds, four ounces."

"Congratulations," he said. He couldn't help but stare down at her belly. "You, uh, feeling okay?"

"Feeling great," Rune assured him. "I just ran out for a minute and forgot my keys."

"Where's your little girl?" he asked.

When you lie, lie with confidence. "She's upstairs. Watching TV."

"Watching TV?"

"Well, she's with her father and he's watching TV. They both like sitcoms… Say, which apartment is Amanda LeClerc in again?"

"Oh, Amanda? On the second floor?"

"Yeah."

"I think 2F."

"Right, right, right." Rune started up the stairs two at a time.

"Don't you think you should take it a little easy?"

"Peasant stock," she called back cheerily.

On the second-floor landing she noticed that there was a piece of plywood over the hole in Mr. Kelly's door. There was also a large padlock on it. The police tape had been replaced. She walked past it.

It'd been hard to turn down Phillip Dixon (he, unlike Richard, was somebody who had no problem with either the word or the concept of "date").

"Rain check?" he'd asked.

"You bet. Hey, you like junkyards?" she'd asked him on her way out the door of the video store.

He hadn't missed a beat. "Love 'em."

Rune now knocked on Amanda's door and the woman called, "Who's there?"

"Me, Rune."

The door opened. "Good. She's upstairs. I talk her inta staying to see you. Didn't want to but she is."

"Has she heard anything from her father?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask her. I just said you were looking for him and it was important."

"What apartment is he in again?"

"Three B."

Rune remembered that Symington lived directly above Mr. Kelly.

Rune climbed the stairs. Amanda's and Mr. Kelly's floor had smelled like onions; this one smelled like bacon. She paused in the hallway. The door to 3B was six inches open.

Rune eased forward, seeing first the hem of a skirt, then two thin legs in dark stockings. They were crossed in a way that suggested confidence. Rune started to knock but then just pushed the door open all the way. The woman on the bed turned to her. She was looking through a stack of papers.

She had high cheekbones, a face glossy with makeup, frosted hair forced into place with a ton of spray. She looks like my mother, Rune thought, and guessed she was in her early forties. The woman wore a plaid suit and she smoked a long, dark brown cigarette. She gazed at Rune then said, "That woman downstairs… she said somebody was looking for my father. Is that you?"

"Yes."

The woman turned away slowly, stubbed out the cigarette, pressing it into an ashtray. It died with a faint crushing sound. She looked Rune up and down. "My, they're getting younger and younger."

"Like, excuse me?"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty. What's that got to do with anything? I just want to ask you a few-"

"What did he promise you? A car? He did that a lot. He was always giving away cars. Or saying he would. Porsches, Mercedes, Cadillacs. Of course then there'd be problems with the dealer. Or the registration. Or something."

"Cars? I don't even-"

"And then it came down to money. But that's life, isn't it? He'd promise a thousand and end up giving them a couple of hundred."

"What are you talking about?" Rune asked.

Another examination. The woman got as far as Rune's striped stockings and clunky red shoes before her face revealed her dismay. She shook her head. "You couldn't… forgive me, but you couldn'tVe charged all that much. What was your price? For the night?"