Hearing in her memory Sam Healy's voice: I've been in ordnance disposal for fifteen years. The thing about explosives is that they're not like guns. You don't have to look the person in the eyes when you kill them. You don't have to be anywhere near.

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER EIGHT

The hotel overlooked Gramercy Park, that trim private garden bordered in wrought iron at the end of Lexington Avenue.

The lobby of the place was all red and gold, with flecked fleur-de-lis wallpaper. Dozens of layers of paint coated the woodwork and the carpet smelled sour-sweet. One of the two elevators was broken — permanently, it seemed.

It was quiet as Rune waited for the elevator to descend to the ground floor. A woman in her fifties, wearing a green-and-gold dress, her face a smooth curve of foundation makeup, watched Rune from under jutting glossy eyelashes. A middle-aged musician with dirty brown hair sat with his foot up on a battered Ovation guitar case and read the Post.

Tommy Savorne's room was on the fourteenth floor, which, it occurred to Rune, was really the thirteenth, because when they built hotels in the thirties and forties they didn't label the thirteenth floor. That had a certain appeal for her. She felt that superstition was something people who were unliteral tended to believe in. And being too literal was a major sin in her bible.

She found the door and knocked.

Chains and latches jangled and the heavy door swung open. A man stood there, sunburned and cute — and looking, yeah, a bit like John Denver. More like a cowboy at a dude ranch. His face was somber. He wore blue jeans and a work shirt. He wore one crew sock; the other dangled from his hand. His hair was shaggy and blond. He was thin.

“Hi, what can I do for you?”

“You're Tommy Savorne?”

He nodded.

“I'm Rune. I knew Shelly. Nicole said you were in town and I just wanted to come by and say I was real sorry about what happened.”

She hadn't been sure what she was going to say after that, but it didn't matter. Tommy gave a nod and motioned her inside.

The room was small, the walls off-white, the carpet gold. She got a whiff of a stale smell — what was it, old food? Aging plaster? Probably just the smell of a prewar hotel going to seed. But Tommy was burning incense — sandalwood — which helped. Two table lamps gave off a salmon glow. He'd been reading a cookbook, one of a dozen of them on the chipped brown-laminate desk.

“Sit down. You want something?” He looked around. “I don't have any liquor. Just soda. Mineral water. Oh, I have some babagounash.”

“What's that, like sassafras? I had this ginseng cola one time. Yuck.”

“It's eggplant dip. My own recipe.” He held up a plastic container of brown-green mash.

Rune shook her head. “I just ate. But thanks. Nothing for me.”