They talked for another hour until Rune's head began to ache and the cuts on her face began to throb. She said she had to leave. Nicole was sentimental drank and still segued into tears every few minutes but she also would be asleep in a few minutes. She hugged Rune hard and took her number at L&R.

Rune waited for the elevator to take her down to the shiny marble lobby of the building.

Thinking how it was really sad that now with Shelly gone, Rune wouldn't be able to make the movie that would tell everyone about her — about how she was really a serious person, despite what she did for a living, how she wanted to rise above it.

But then she thought: Why not?

Why couldn't she make the film?

Sure she could.

And remembering something that Nicole had said, about the blues, suddenly the title for her film came to mind. She thought about it for a minute and decided that, yes, that was it. Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star.

The elevator arrived. Rune stepped in, rested her face against the cool brass plate holding the buttons and sent the car on its journey to the first floor.

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER SIX

Just look like you know what you're doing and he won't stop you; he'll let you right in.

Life is all a question of attitude, Rune knew.

She was wearing a blue windbreaker. On the back, in white, were the letters ny. She'd stenciled them on that morning with acrylic poster paint. She kept the Sony Betacam on her shoulder as she walked past the uniformed policeman standing in the lobby of Lame Duck Productions. She nodded in a distracted way, cool, a civil servant nod, confident he'd let her pass by.

He stopped her.

“Who're you?” he asked, a guy who looked like — what was his name? — Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver.

“Film unit.”

He looked at her black stretch pants and high-top Keds.

“Never heard of it. What precinct you out of?”

“State police,” she said. “Now, you don't mind, I got five other CSs to do today.”

“What's a CS?” Eddie didn't move.

“Crime scene.”

“CS.” He was nodding. “Shield?” he asked.

Rune reached into her purse and flipped open an ID wallet. On one side was a bright gold badge and on the other was an ID card with a sullen photo of her. It gave her name as Sargant Randolf. (The man who sold her the ID an hour before, in an arcade in Times Square, had said, “Your name's Sargant? My generation, they named kids weird things too. Like Sunshine and Moonbeam.”)

Eddie glanced at it, shrugged. “You gotta use the stairs. Elevator's broke.”