Hell's Kitchen

by Jeffery Deaver

  Pellam had already decided not to go through the pretense of ordering anything at the bar. He knew there was only one way to handle this and he asked the long-faced man, “You’re Jimmy Corcoran?”

  Of all the things the man might’ve said he offered none of them and surprised Pellam by asking, “You’re Irish?”

  He was, as a matter of fact, on his father’s side. But how could Corcoran tell? He believed his other side was more prominent – a hybrid traceable, so the family legend went, to Wild Bill Hickok, the gunfighter turned federal marshal. It included Dutch and English and Arapahoe or Sioux.

  “Some,” Pellam told him.

  “Yeah, yeah. Thought I could see it.”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  On the table he saw seven shot glasses and a forest of tall-necked beer bottles, too many to count.

  Corcoran nodded, gestured at an empty table in the corner of the bar.

  Pellam glanced at the bartender, man who had that rare talent of being able to look over an entire room and not see a single person in it.

  “You’re not a cop,” Corcoran said, sitting down. This wasn’t a question. “I can tell. It’s like a sixth sense for me.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  Corcoran called out, “Bushy.”

  A moment later a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses appeared. In the far corner of the bar six large hands groped for beers and six voices resumed a heated conversation of which Pellam could hear nothing. Corcoran poured two glasses. The men tapped them together, a dull sound, and they tossed back the liquor.

  “So, you’re the man from Hollywood. The moviemaker.”

  The Word, of course, had gotten around.

  Corcoran grinned and tossed back another drink. He thumped the tabletop with his monstrously large hands, little finger and thumb extended, as if playing a bodhran drum, keeping excellent rhythm. “So where are you from?” he asked.

  “The East Village. I-”

  “Where in Ireland you from?” he said.

  “I was born here,” Pellam told him. “My father was from Dublin.”

  Corcoran halted the percussion. He gave an exaggerated frown. “I’m from Londonderry. You know what that makes us, you and me?”

  “Mortal enemies. So if you know who I m then you know what I want.”

  “Mortal enemies? You’re quick, ain’t you? Well, I don’t know exactly what you want. All’s I know is you’re making a movie here.”

  “The word is,” Pellam said, “you know everything about the Kitchen.”

  A heavy, dull-looking man gazed at Pellam belligerently from the corner table. A black plastic pistol grip protruded from his belt and he kneaded it with fat fingers.

  Pellam said, “I know you run a gang.”

  Laughter from the table.

  “A gang,” Corcoran repeated.

  “Or is it a club?

  “No, it’s a gang. We don’t mind saying it. Do we, boys?”

  “Yo, Jimmy,” was the only response.

  Corcoran busied himself with a metal tin then extracteded a wad of Copenhagen and shoved it into his mouth, further altering the eerie, almost deformed shape of his equine face. “Tell me – what do you think of the Kitchen?” he asked Pellam.

  In all his months here no one – of the thirty or so people he’d interviewed – had ever asked Pellam his opinion of the neighborhood. He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the only ’hood I’ve ever seen that’s getting better, safer, cleaner, and the old-timers here don’t want any goddamn part of that.”

  Corcoran nodded with approval, smiling. “That’s fucking good.” The table got another spanking and he poured two more shots. “Have some more poteen.” He looked out the window and his bony face grew wistful. “That’s good, man. The Kitchen ain’t what it used to be, that’s for certain. My father, he come over the water, was in the forties. ‘Coming over the water,’ that’s what they called it. Had a hell of a time getting work. The docks was the place to work then. Now it’s just a fucking tourist thing but back then the big ships’d come in, cargo and passengers. Only to get a job you had to pay the bosses. I mean, payoff. Big. My pa, he couldn’t get it up to get a job in the union. So he worked day labor. He was always talking about the Troubles, about Belfast and Londonderry. Into all that stuff, the politics, you know. That don’t interest me. Your pa, was he a Sinn Feiner, Republican? Or was he a Loyalist?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How do you feel about independence?”

  “I’m all for it. I stay away from nine-to-five jobs.”

  Corcoran laughed. “I went to Kilmainhan jail one time. You know where that is?”

  “Where hanged the rebels of the Easter Rebellion.”

  “It was, you know, weird being there. Walking on the same stones they walked on. I cried. I don’t mind admitting it neither.” Corcoran smiled wanly, shook his head. He sipped his liquor then scooted back slightly in the chair.

  It was pure instinct that saved Pellam’s wrists.

  Corcoran leapt to his feet, grabbed a chair and brought it down on the tabletop in a hissing arc, just as Pellam shoved himself back into the wall.

  “You fucker!” he screamed. “Cock-sucking fucker!” He slammed the chair into the table again. The legs met the oak tabletop and cracked with a noise loud as twin gunshots. Fragments of glass and a mist of smoky whisky showered through the air.

  “You come here to my home, to spy on me…” His words were lost in a stew of rage. “You want my fucking secrets, you fucking tinker…”

  Pellam crossed his arms. Didn’t move. Gazed calmly back into Corcoran’s eyes.

  “Aw, Jimmy, come on,” a voice from the corner called. It was the man Pellam had noticed when he walked in, the smallest of the crew. Monkey Man.

  “Jimmy…”

  “It’s the liquor talking,” the man offered.

  “Look, mister, maybe you better-” another started to say.

  But Corcoran didn’t even notice them. “You come into my fucking home, into my neighborhood and ask questions about me. I heard what you was doing. I know. I know everything. You think I don’t? What kind of stupid asshole are you? It’s fuckers like you that’ve ruined this place. You took the Kitchen away. We was here first, all you fuckers come with your cameras and look at us like fucking insects.”

  Pellam stood up, dusted glass off his shirt.

  Corcoran broke the remaining legs on the chair with another fierce blow. He leaned forward and screamed, “What gives you the right!”

  “He didn’t mean nothing, Jimmy,” Monkey Man said calmly. “I’m sure he didn’t. He’s just asking a few questions’s all he’s doing.”

  “What gives him the right?” Corcoran shrieked. He tossed another chair across the room. The bartender found more glasses that desperately needed polishing.

  “Have a drink, Jimmy,” someone said. “Just be cool.”

  “Don’t any of you cock-sucking tinkers say a fucking word!” The gun appeared in Corcoran’s hand like a black snake striking.

  The table fell silent. No one moved. It was as if their bodies were somehow wired to the trigger.

  “Hey, Jimmy, come on,” Monkey Man whispered. “Sit yourself down now. Let’s not do nothing stupid.”

  Corcoran found a glass on the floor, walked to the bar and snagged a new bottle. He slammed it down in front of Pellam, poured it to the brim with Bushmills. Enraged, he snarled, “He’s going to take a drink with me and he’s going to apologize. If he does that I’ll let him go.”

  Pellam lifted his hands, smiled pleasantly. To the bartender. “Okay. But make it a soda.”

  Just like in Shane. Alan Ladd orders a soda pop for Joey. Pellam had loved that movie. He’d seen it twenty times. In school his friends wanted to be Mickey Mantle; Pellam dreamed of being the director, George Stevens.

  “Soda?” Corcoran whispered.

  “Pepsi. No, make it a Diet Pepsi.”

  The bartender stepped toward his
refrigerator. Corcoran spun, lifting the gun toward the terrified man. “Don’t you fucking dare. This faggot’s drinking whisky and he’s-”

  All a blur, leather spun through the air and suddenly Corcoran was on the ground, face down, his right arm extended straight up, wrist and pistol twisted in Pellam’s hands.

  Damn, not bad. Pellam hadn’t been sure he could remember the move. But it came back to him just fine. From his stuntman days, when he was doing battle gags on the set of some Indochina flick fifteen years ago. He’d learned a few martial arts tricks from the fight choreographer.

  Pellam lifted the gun from the Irishman’s grip and pointed it toward each of the six frozen thugs. He didn’t let go of Corcoran’s wrist.

  No one moved.

  “Fucker,” Corcoran wheezed. Pellam twisted harder. “Oh, shit. You’re dead, man, you’re…”

  A little harder.

  “All right, fucker. All right!”

  Pellam released the wrist and pressed the muzzle of the gun against Corcoran’s forehead.

  Pellam said, “What a mouth you got on you. King of the Kitchen, huh? You know everything? Then you know I was gonna offer you five hundred bucks to find out who torched that building on Thirty-sixth Street. That’s what I was doing here. And what do I get? A pissing contest with a teenager who needs a bath.” He pointed the gun at Monkey Man, who raised his hands. Pellam asked him, “Would you please get me that Pepsi now?”

  The man hesitated then walked to the bar. The bartender had materialized again and his corporeal form looked on the verge of death. He stared at red-faced Corcoran, who raged, “Get him the fucking drink, you asshole.”

  In a quavering voice the bartender said, “I, uhm… The thing is, We don’t have…”

  “A Coke’ll be fine,” Pellam said, pointing the Smith & Wesson at the fat man at the table. “Just toss that piece on the floor, would you?”

  “Do it,” Corcoran grumbled.

  The gun hit the floor. Pellam kicked it into the corner.

  The bartender asked in a trembling voice, “Was that Diet you wanted, sir?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Yessir.” The bartender opened the can, nearly dropped it. With steady hands Monkey Man poured the soda into a glass and carried it to Pellam.

  “Thank you.” He drank it down and set the empty glass on the table, backed toward the door, wiped his face with a napkin the man had provided as well.

  Corcoran rose to his feet and, turning his back to Pellam, returned to the table. The lanky Irishman sat down again, snagged a Bud and began talking a mile a minute, cheerful as could be. He banged the beer bottle to punctuate for emphasis, lecturing colorfully about the Easter Rebellion and the Black ’n’ Tans and the hunger strike of ’81 – as if, in his mind, Pellam was already gone.

  Pellam unloaded the gun, tossed the bullets into the ice tray under the bar and the gun into the corner with the other one, then stepped outside into a truly blistering heat.

  Thinking: August in New York City. Man.

  THIRTEEN

  Standing in the ugly, concrete park across the street from the Javits Center.

  Wondering if the man would show or not?

  Or more to the point, Pellam reflected, if he does show, will he shoot me?

  He studied this part of Hell’s Kitchen, where even the blaring sun couldn’t mute the bleakness. Here, in the valley between the Javits Center and the towering gray aircraft carrier – the Intrepid, converted into a floating war museum – the blocks were stubbly lots and one-story buildings long abandoned or burnt-out, a graveyard of chopped cars, razor-wire-topped fences, weeds, old boilers and factory machinery melting into rust.

  After ten minutes of hypnotically studying the boat and barge river traffic on the Hudson he heard a cheerful voice call out, “Hey, you crazy fuck.”

  Well, the man had showed.

  And no gunshots. So far.

  The man was walking toward him through heat ripples rising from the concrete. Despite the temperature he still wore the long black leather jacket. And he still looked like a monkey.

  He slipped the cigarette he held into his mouth and muttered, “Jacko Drugh.”

  “John Pellam.”

  They shook hands. “You got some balls, Pellam, giving me the high sign right under Jimmy C’s nose.” He said this with the boisterousness of a born loser.

  Drugh was exactly the sort of fish he’d gone trolling for at the 488 Bar and Grill. His point in going there wasn’t to get information from Jimmy Corcoran, who was exactly the petty little weasel he’d expected, if somewhat more psychotic. No, he’d been after a snitch. “You looked like somebody I could trust.”

  Read: buy.

  “Ah, sure. Jacko’s somebody you can trust. To point, my man. Up to a point.”

  Pellam offered a slight smile. And slipped him the five hundred, the amount they’d agreed to when Pellam announced it in the bar and Drugh had handed him a soggy napkin with the name of this park on it when he’d brought Pellam the soft drink.

  Drugh didn’t look at the money. He shoved the wad into his pocket with the air of someone who’s rarely, if ever, cheated.

  “So, your boss? Is he going to try to kill me?” Pellam asked.

  “Don’t know, do I? Any other time, you’d already be swimming in Hell Gate in four different GLAD bags. But lately, the old J.C.’s playing stuff close to his chest. He don’t do mucha the wild stuff no more. Which I don’t know why. Thought it was a woman at first but Jimmy don’t usually go nuts over pussy. Least not rump-bunny like that Katie you seen him with. So, I dunno. Maybe he’ll forget about you. Hope so. For your sake. If he wants you dead you’ll be dead and there’s nothing you can do ’bout it. I mean, you could leave the state. But that’s all.”

  They sat on a bench. The heat made his back itch fiercely. Pellam sat forward. Drugh finished his cigarette and lit another.

  Pellam stroked, “So, you’re the one really in charge, right?”

  Drugh shrugged. “Some of the time.”

  “You’re a lot cooler than he is.”

  The downward glance and smile bespoke considerable mutiny in the ranks. Pellam guessed that either Drugh or Corcoran would be dead within six months. Pellam decided the smart money was on Corcoran as survivor.

  “We don’t got things like capos and shit, you know. But I’m number two, yeah. And I stand in for Jimmy a lot. ’Specially when he loses his head. His brother’s a lightweight. The elevator don’t stop at every floor.” Reflecting, Drugh added, “But I’m careful. I know the line. See, Jimmy’s crazy fuck a lot of the time. But when he’s not, he looks out for his people. And he’s got a fuck of a lot of friends.” Drugh looked him over. “You don’t got an accent. You didn’t come over.”

  “No, I was born here.”

  “You know the Emerald Underground?”

  “No.”

  “See, somebody comes over from Ireland and there’s this, you know, network of people look out for ’em till they get on their feet. Jimmy, he does a lot for ’em. He’s got ’em job lined up and an apartment ’fore they’re outa customs at JFK. Men in construction, girls in bars or restaurants. Making good money too. He arranges marriages for the card, loans people money.”

  “Keeping some for himself.”

  “Oh, Jimmy’s a businessman, isn’t he?”

  Drugh was gazing at the black Javits Center, functional and boxy – as if it were still in a packing crate. He laughed. It became a cough and as if this reminded him it was time for another cigarette he lit one. “You really making a movie?”

  “Yep.”

  “I never knowed anybody done that before. I like movies. You see State of Grace?”

  “Sean Penn and Gary Oldman. Ed Harris. Good movie.”

  “It was about us,” he said proudly.

  “Which one played you?” Pellam asked. Joking. The movie had been about a gang in Hell’s Kitchen but it was fictional.

  “A guy I’d never heard of,” Drugh resp
onded, dead serious.

  There was silence for a moment. Then both men knew the social pleasantries were over. Time for business. Pellam lowered his voice. “Okay, the arson on Thirty-sixth Street. There’re some rumors that Jimmy was behind it.” He was recalling what Hector Ramirez had told him.

  “Jimmy?” Drugh asked. “Where’d you hear that shit? Naw. He don’t burn the old buildings.”

  “What I heard was there was a witness living there, this woman. Jimmy wanted to get even with her for testifying.”

  Drugh nodded but it was a gesture of dismissal. “Oh that? You mean when Spear Driscoe dropped cap on Bobby Frink. That whosie whatsis spic lady saw it. Carmella Ramirez? Well, sure she was a witness and sure she testified. But Driscoe was so wasted on the old Black Jack that he waxed Bobby in the front of a corner deli on Saturday night. There was like ten witnesses. Even if the spic lady hadn’t talked, there was no way Spear wasn’t gonna go play with the jiggaboos in Attica for ten to fifteen.”

  Pellam vamped. “But I’ve heard that Corcoran’s burned buildings before.”

  “Sure. But not the old places. The new ones. We all do that. Fuck, it’s like they take our homes away, whatta they expect? The Cubano Lords and us, we bombed that new place, that office building on Fiftieth Street.”

  “Ramirez did that?”

  “Sure. ’Bout the only thing we agree on. And me too, my man. Oh, Jacko throws a good cocktail, he does. But see, it’s okay.” Drugh said this earnestly. “We used to have the whole west side. From Twenty-third up to Fifty-seventh. It was ours. Man, we don’t got nothing left now. We’re defending our homes is all we’re doing. From spics and niggers and real estate assholes. People who’re from east of Eighth.” Drugh pulled long on his cigarette. “Naw, naw, Jimmy didn’t burn that place. I know.”

  “Why’re you so sure?”

  “Jacko knows. See, J.C.’s got something going.”

  “Something?”

  Drugh explained that Jimmy Corcoran and his brother had bought some property and were involved in a big business deal. “Something gonna make him million bucks or so he says. The last thing Jimmy’s gonna do is draw attention to the Kitchen by burning buildings. J.C.’d definitely ice anybody torching places in the neighborhood. He and Tom, that’s his brother, don’t want no, you know, uhn…” His thoughts failed him.