The intercom crackled. There was a pause. Then a voice said, "Yes?"

"Mr. Kelly?"

"Who is it?" the staticky voice asked.

"Here's Johnnyyyyyyy," she said, trying to impersonate Jack Nicholson in The Shining. She and Mr. Kelly had talked about horror films. He seemed to know a lot about movies and they'd joked about how scary the Kubrick film was even though it was so brightly lit.

But apparently he didn't remember. "Who?"

She was disappointed that he didn't get it.

"It's Rune. You know-from Washington Square Video. I'm here to pick up the tape."

Silence.

"Hello?" she called.

Static again. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Is this Mr. Kelly?" The voice didn't sound quite right. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe he had a visitor.

"A minute."

"I can come up."

A pause. "Wait there," the voice commanded.

This was weird. He'd always seemed so polite. He didn't sound that way now. Must be the intercom.

Several minutes passed. She paced around the entry-way.

She was looking outside when, finally, she heard footsteps from inside, coming down the stairs.

Rune walked to the inner door, peered through the greasy glass. She couldn't see through it. A figure walked forward slowly. Was it Mr. Kelly? She couldn't tell.

The door opened.

"Oh," she said in surprise, looking up.

The woman in her fifties, with olive-tinted skin, stepped out, glanced at her. She made sure the door closed before she left the entryway so Rune couldn't get inside-standard New York City security procedures when unknown visitors were in the lobby. The woman carried a bag of empty soda and beer cans. She took them out to the curb and dropped them in a recycling bin.

"Mr. Kelly?" Rune called again into the intercom. "You all right?"

There was no answer.

The woman returned and looked over Rune carefully. "Help you?" She had a thick Caribbean accent.

"I'm a friend of Mr. Kelly's."

"Oh." Her face relaxed.

"I just called him. He was going to come down."

"He's on the second floor."

"I know. I'm supposed to pick up a videotape. I called five minutes ago and he said he'd be right out."

"I just walked past his door an' it was open," she said. "I live up the hall."

Rune pushed the buzzer and said, "Mr. Kelly? Hello? Hello?"

There was no answer.

"I'ma go see," the woman said. "You wait here."

She disappeared inside. After a moment Rune grew impatient and buzzed again. No answer. She tried the door. Then she wondered if there was another door- maybe in the side or in the back of the building.

She stepped outside. Walked to the sidewalk and then continued on to the alley. The pert yuppie woman was still there, stretching. The only exercise Rune got was dancing at her favorite clubs: World or Area or Limelight (dancing was aerobic and she also built upper-body strength by pushing away drunk lawyers and account execs in the clubs' co-ed rest rooms).

No, there was nobody else. Maybe she-

Then she heard the scream.

She turned fast and looked at Mr. Kelly's building. Heard a woman's voice, in panic, calling for help. Rune believed the voice had an accent-maybe the woman she'd just met, the woman who knew

Mr. Kelly. "Somebody," the voice cried, "call the police. Oh, please, help!"

Rune glanced at the woman jogger, who stared at Rune with an equally shocked expression on her face.

Then a huge squeal of tires from behind them.

At the end of the alley a green car skidded around the corner and made straight for Rune and the jogger. They both froze in panic as the car bore down on them.

What's he doing, what's he doing, what's he doing? Rune thought madly.

No, no, no…

When the car was only feet away she flung herself backward out of the alley. The jogger leapt the opposite way. But the woman in pink hadn't moved as fast as Rune and she was struck by the side-view mirror of the car. She was thrown into the brick wall of her building. She hit the wall and tumbled to the ground.

The car skidded onto Tenth Street and vanished.

Rune ran to the woman, who was alive but unconscious, blood pouring from a gash on her forehead. Rune sprinted up the street to find a pay phone. It took her four phones, and three blocks, before she found one that worked.

Mr. Kelly's door was open.

Rune stopped in the doorway, stared in shock at the eight people who stood in the room. No one seemed to be moving. They stood or crouched, singly or in groups, like the mannequins she'd seen in the import store on University Place.

Gasping, she rested against the doorjamb. She'd raced back from the pay phone and charged up the stairs. No trouble getting in this time; the cops or the Emergency Medical Service medics had wedged the building door open.

She watched them: six men and two women, some in police uniforms, some in suits.

Her eyes fell on the ninth person in the room and her hands began to tremble.

Oh, no… oh, no…

The ninth person-the man whose apartment it was. Robert Kelly. He sat in an old armchair, arms out-stretched, limp, palms up, eyes open and staring skyward, like Jesus or some saint in those weird religious paintings at the Met. His flesh was very pale-everywhere except his chest. Which was brown-red from all the blood. There was a lot of it.

Oh, no…

Her breath shrank to nothing, short gasps, she was dizzy. Oh, goddamn him! Tony! For making her pick up the tape and see this. Goddamn Frankie Greek, goddamn Eddie for pretending to fix the fucking monitors when all they were really doing was figuring out how to get into a concert for free…

Her eyes pricked with tears. Goddamn.

But then Rune had a curious thought. That, no, no, if this had to happen, it was better that she was there, rather than them. At least she was Mr. Kelly's friend. Eddie or Frankie would've walked in and said, "Wow, cool, a shooting," and it was better for her to be the one to see this, out of respect for him.

No one noticed her. Two men in business suits gave instructions to a third, who nodded. The uniformed cops were crouched down, writing notes, some were putting a white powder on dark things, a black powder on light.

Rune studied the faces of the cops. She couldn't look away. There was something odd about them and she couldn't figure it out at first. They just seemed like everybody else-amused or bored or curious about something. Then she realized: that's what was odd. That there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. They all had a workaday glaze in their eyes. They weren't horrified or sickened by what they were looking at.

God, they seemed just like the clerks in Washington Square Video.

They looked just like me, doing what I do, renting movies eight hours a day, four days a week: just doing the job. The Big Boring J.

They didn't even seem to notice, or to care, that somebody had just been killed.

Her eyes moved around the apartment slowly. Mr. Kelly lived here? Grease-spotted wallpaper sagged. The carpet was orange and made out of thick, stubby strands. The whole place smelled like sour meat. There was no art on the walls: some old-time movie posters in frames leaned against a shabby couch. A dozen boxes were scattered on the floor. It seemed he'd been living out of them. Even his clothes and dishes were stacked in cartons. He must have moved in recently, maybe around the time he'd joined the video club, a month before.

She remembered the first time he'd come into Washington Square Video.

"Can you spell your name?" Rune'd asked, filling out his application.

"Yes, I can," he'd answered, offhand. "I'm of above-average intelligence. Now, do you want me to?"