Hell's Kitchen

by Jeffery Deaver

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Shaving,” Pellam answered.

  “Try a razor. They work better than machetes.” The lawyer then added, “I heard there was a shooting last night. Somebody from Jimmy Corcoran’s gang was killed.”

  “That right?”

  “Pellam-”

  “I don’t know anything about it, Louis.”

  “There were supposedly two men involved. One white, one Hispanic.”

  “ ‘Latino,’ ” Pellam corrected. “You’re not supposed to say Hispanic.” He dropped the Polaroid onto the desk. “Take a look.”

  The lawyer’s gaze remained on Pellam for a moment longer.

  “Yesterday I showed that picture to Flo Epstein. At the insurance agency.” He held up his hands. “No intimidation. Just snapshots.”

  Bailey examined the photo. “Wine? No? You sure?”

  Pellam continued, “I took a picture of Ettie at the Detention Center. I showed it to the Epstein woman and asked if it was Ettie.”

  “And?”

  “She said it was.”

  “Well.” Bailey examined the picture. Squinted. Picked it up and laughed. “Say, this is very good. How’d you do it?”

  “Morphing. Computer graphics at my post-production lab.”

  The photo was the Polaroid that Pellam had taken of Ettie at WDC, body, hair, hands, dress. The face, however, was that of Ella Fitzgerald. Pellam had had the two images assembled by computer and then had taken a Polaroid of the result.

  “Encouraging,” the lawyer said. Though Pellam thought he wasn’t as encouraged as he ought to be.

  Pellam pulled open the door of the tiny refrigerator. Jugs of wine. No water, no soft drinks, no juice. He looked up. “What’s eating you, Louis?”

  “That poker game I told you about? With the fire marshal?”

  “It didn’t happen?”

  “Oh, it did.”

  Pellam took the slip of paper Bailey offered with an unsteady hand.

  Dear Louis;

  I did what we talked about and got a game together with Stan, Sobie, Fred and the Mouse, remember him? Been years. I lost you sixty bucks but Stan let me take a bottle of Dewar’s, almost full, so I’ll drop it off sometime after its not so almost full any more.

  Here’s what I found and I think you might not like it. Lomax found a passbook Washington didn’t tell any one about. Grand total inside of over Ten Thousand. And guess what. She took out 2 Gs the day before the fire. Also they say your a prick because you didn’t list the $ on her financial disclosure statement for the bail motion. But mostly they’re happy cause it gooses they’re case.

  Joey

  Ten thousand?

  Pellam was stunned. Where on earth had Ettie got that much money? She’d never mentioned any savings to him. When Bailey’d asked what she could contribute to the bail bondsman she said maybe eight, nine hundred, tops. He remembered the other day too. She’d said she couldn’t have bought the insurance policy from Flo Epstein’s agency because she didn’t have the money.

  He looked out the window, watching the bulldozer demolishing what was left of Ettie’s building. A worker with a sledgehammer was pounding a star-point chisel into a scorched stone bulldog to break it apart.

  He heard Ettie’s voice:

  “… I’m trying and recall how many buildings were on this block. I’m not sure. They were all tenements like this one. But they’re mostly gone now. This one was built by an immigrant in 1876. Heinrik Deuter. German man. You know those bulldogs out front? The ones on either side of the steps. He had a stone carver come and carve those because he had a bulldog when he was a boy in Germany. I met his great-grandson a few years back. People say it’s sad they pull down these old places to build new ones. Well, I say so what? A hundred years ago they tore down other buildings to build these, right? Things come and things go. Just like people in your life. And that’s just the way it works.”

  Pellam said nothing for a long while. He picked up a large skeleton key from Bailey’s desk, studied the brass intently then replaced it. “How’d the police find out about the account?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did the teller identify her as the woman who took out the money?”

  “I have a call in to somebody in the department to find that out. They’ve frozen the account.”

  “This is bad, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. It sure is.”

  The phone rang. It was an old-fashioned bell, the sound jarring. Bailey picked it up.

  Pellam watched a car cruise slowly past. Again he heard the thump of bass notes from that hip-hop song. It must have been number one on the rap chart. “… the Man got a message just for you, gonna smoke your brothers and your sisters too.”

  It faded. When he looked back he saw that Louis Bailey was holding the phone absently. He tried to replace it. Needed to do it twice to seat the receiver in its cradle. “My God,” he whispered. “My God.”

  “What, Louis? Is it Ettie?”

  “There was a fire on the Upper West side a half hour ago.” He took a deep breath. “The insurance agency. Two employees were killed. Flo Epstein was one of them. It was him, Pellam. Somebody recognized him. It was that young man from the gas station. He used that napalm of his. He burned them both to death. Jesus Lord…”

  Pellam exhaled, stunned at the news. He was thinking: The pyro had followed him there, to the agency. He’d been to Pellam’s apartment earlier and broken in, stolen the tapes. Then he’d followed him uptown. That’s probably why he hadn’t killed Pellam in his apartment. He was using him to find witnesses.

  “It was three minutes. You having sex it’s nothing, you having a baby, it’s an eternity.”

  And if you’re burning to death…

  Bailey said, “She’d signed an affidavit about identifying Ettie. That’s admissible. What she told you about the ginned-up picture isn’t. It’s hearsay.”

  Pellam looked out Bailey’s window at a square of earth near where Ettie’s building used to stand, illuminated by sunlight shining ruddy and immaculate through a clear sky. It occurred to Pellam now that because the building was gone, sunlight would shine on places that hadn’t been lit for more than a hundred years. This recaptured brilliance seemed to Pellam to alter both the present and the past, as if the ghosts of thousands of Hell’s Kitchen residents long gone to bullets and disease and hard lives were once again at risk.

  “You want to plead her, don’t you?” Pellam asked the lawyer.

  He nodded.

  Pellam said, “You’ve wanted to all along, haven’t you?”

  Bailey steepled his fingers, his pale wrists jutting from dirty white cuffs. “A plea bargain is considered a win here in the Kitchen.”

  “What about the innocent ones?”

  “This doesn’t have a damn thing in the world to do with guilt or innocence. It’s like Social Security or selling your blood for booze or food money. Pleading in exchange for a reduced sentence – it’s just something that makes life a little easier in the Kitchen.”

  “If I hadn’t been involved,” Pellam said, “you would’ve gone ahead, right? And plead her?”

  “A half hour after they arrested her,” Bailey responded.

  Pellam nodded. He said nothing as he walked outside and started down the sidewalk. The backhoe lifted a shovelful of rubble from the wreckage of Ettie’s building – chunks of the hand-carved bulldog mostly – and dropped it unceremoniously into the Dumpster at the curb.

  “Things come and things go. And that’s just the way it works.”

  There was nothing to do but ask. Straight out.

  Pellam watched Ettie walk stiffly into the visitor’s room at the Woman’s Detention Center. Her dim smile faded and she asked, “What is it, John?” Her eyes narrowed at the streak on his face. “What happened…” But her voice faded as she studied his expression.

  “The police found the bank account.”

  “The…?”

  “The o
ne in Harlem. The savings account with ten thousand in it.”

  The old woman shook her head vehemently and touched her temple with her good hand, the ring finger of which had been broken long ago and had set badly. Her face shone with contrition for maybe a second. Then she spat out, “I didn’t tell anybody about my savings. How the fuck’d they find it?” She was drawn and secretive now.

  “You didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t tell the court or your bail bondsman. You didn’t tell Louis. That doesn’t look good.”

  “There’s no reason for the world to know everything about a woman,” she snapped. “Her man takes her things away, her children take things away, everybody takes and takes and takes! How’d they find out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bitterly she asked, “Well, so what I’ve got some money?”

  “Ettie…”

  “It’s my damn business, not theirs.”

  “They say that you – or somebody – made a withdrawal just a day before the fire.”

  “What? I didn’t take anything out.” Her eyes were wide with alarm and anger.

  “Two thousand.”

  She rose and limped in a frantic circle as if she were about to charge into the streets in search of the stolen cash. “Somebody robbed me? My money! Somebody told ’em ’bout my money! Some Judas did that.”

  The speech seemed too prepared, as if she’d planned an excuse if the money was found. More conspiracies, Pellam thought wearily. Under Ettie’s shrunken frown Pellam turned away and gazed out the window. He wondered if she was accusing him. Was he the Judas? He asked finally, “Where’s the passbook?”

  “In my apartment. It got burnt up, I guess. How can somebody take my money just like that? What am I going to do?”

  “The police froze the account.”

  “What?” Ettie cried.

  “Nobody can take any more money out.”

  “I can’t get my money?” she whispered. “I need that. I need every penny of my money.”

  Why? Pellam wondered. What for?

  He asked, “You didn’t use that money for bail. Don’t look that way, Ettie. I’m just telling you what they’re saying. That it’s suspicious.”

  “They think I paid it to the firebug man?” She gave a sour laugh.

  “Reckon they do,” Pellam said after a moment.

  “And you think that too.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Ettie walked to the window. “Somebody betrayed me. Somebody betrayed me good.” The words were bitter and she couldn’t hold Pellam’s eye when she said this. Again Ettie remained still as stone. Then her head rose inches, just enough for her to gaze at the dimly lit windowsill. “Leave me alone now, please. I’d as soon not see anybody. No, don’t say anything, John. Please, just leave.”

  When the got him this time, they frisked him carefully.

  Oh, man, not now. I don’t need this now.

  Pellam had just walked into his apartment building lobby in the East Village, lost in his doubts about Ettie and her secret money, when six hands grabbed him from behind and slammed him against the wall.

  Last time, with Ramirez, the Irishmen had been content to slug him once and forgo a search for wild west pistols. Now, they turned his pockets inside out and, satisfied that he was unarmed, spun him around.

  Little Jacko Drugh was accompanied by a tall man vaguely resembling Jimmy Corcoran and a third one, a redhead. The lobby wasn’t that big a space but it offered plenty of room for three guys to beat the crap out of him.

  The look in Drugh’s eye told him this wasn’t his idea and Pellam had some sympathy for the young man.

  Let’s see. What scene would this be? Toward the end of Act Two in your standard Hollywood action/adventure script. The good gunfighter gets blindsided by the cattle baron’s boys. The heroic reporter gets nailed by the oil company security guards. The commando gets set up and kidnapped by the enemy.

  Score one for the bad guys – setting up the hero for his triumphant return. And audiences love it when their boy goes down hard.

  “I’d invite you up,” Pellam said, wincing at the vice grips on his arms, “but I don’t really want to.”

  The taller of the thugs – probably Corcoran’s brother – drew back a fist but Drugh shook his head. Said to Pellam, “Jimmy heard what happened last night. Seany McCray taking it on himself to wax Ramirez. Heard you were playing second for the spic… Anyway, like you maya heard, Jimmy don’t want no excitement, too much attention in the Kitchen right now. So he ain’t going to kill you and Ramirez, like he probably ought. But youse took out one of our boys so we gotta come and do something about it. There’s gotta be some, you know, payback.”

  “Wait, why me?” Pellam asked. “What about Ramirez?”

  “Well, what it is is Jimmy don’t want to start nothing, no crew wars, so he figured everybody’d be happier we play Mike Tyson on you.”

  “Not everybody,” Pellam muttered. “I’m not real crazy about the idea.

  “Yeah, well, that’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Jacko don’t make the rules.”

  And I just paid five C-notes to this guy. Damn.

  “Look, you want me to apologize, I will. I’m sorry.”

  Redhead said, “Sorry don’t count for shit.” He stepped forward. Pellam turned to face him but Drugh held up an arm to stop his fellow gangster.

  “Hold up. He’s Jacko’s. Isn’t he now?” Five-foot-two Drugh turned to face Pellam.

  Who relaxed considerably. He understood now. That’s why Jacko’d volunteered. It’d be like O’Neil and Ramirez. A sham. Drugh’d pull punches, Pellam’d take a fall and it’d all be over with in three minutes. He knew how to fake-fight – from his stuntman days. Pellam shook free of the other two Irishmen and stepped forward. “Okay, you want some, you got it.” He lifted his arms, making fists.

  Drugh’s first swing nearly knocked him out. The bony fist slammed viciously into Pellam’s jaw. He blinked and flew back, his head slamming into the brass mailboxes. Drugh followed up with a left to the gut. Pellam went down on his knees, retching.

  “Goddamn-”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Drugh muttered. He joined his hands together and brought them down hard on Pellam’s neck. In two seconds Pellam was flat on the filthy tiles.

  Drugh’s coup de grace was a work-booted foot slamming into his kidney and gut. Jesus…

  “You don’t got no gun now, you asshole,” Drugh recited, as if he’d been working on the line all day. He was a far worse actor than Pellam had suspected. “You’ve fucked with the wrong people.”

  Pellam rose to his knees, swung at Drugh, missing completely and took three hard blows to the belly.

  The little man whispered in Pellam’s ear: “How’m I doing?”

  Pellam couldn’t speak. He was close to vomiting.

  Drugh whispered: “Hit me back. It’s looking too fake.”

  Pellam crawled away from him, struggled to his feet. He spun around and swung hard. He connected, a weak glancing blow to the man’s cheek.

  Drugh blinked in surprise and screamed, “You fucking prick!” Redhead and the other one held Pellam while Drugh rained blows into his belly and face. Pellam simply gave up, he held his hands over his face and dropped to the floor again.

  “Not so hot shit now,” the redhead said. He was laughing.

  “Way to go, Jacko.”

  Then Drugh had his gun in his hand and he pressed the muzzle against Pellam’s face. Pellam, thinking how he’d never really trusted the trigger cogs in guns. They could be notoriously edgy. The little bantam leaned closer, whispered, “See, you get me that part in a movie, I can do my own fighting and everything. I don’t need no stuntmen. An’ I got my own gun too.”

  Pellam groaned.

  “Shoot him in the foot or knee or something, Jacko.”

  “Yeah. Fuck up his hand. Boom, boom.”

  Drugh seemed to be debating “Naw, he’s had enough. These fucking queers from Hollywood, they can’t take shit.�
��

  Drugh leaned forward once again, whispered, “What it is, that kid Alex you wanted to know about? He’s staying at the Eagleton Hotel on Ninth Avenue. Room 434.”

  Pellam mumbled something that Drugh took to be, ‘’Thank you,” though the phrase shared only one word with that expression of gratitude.

  Drugh gave him a friendly kick in the ribs as a farewell and then vanished with the others. “Hey, Tommy,” he said to Redhead, “you remember that scene in that movie I was telling you about?… Wht the fuck movie you think I mean?…”

  The door swung shut. Pellam spit the loose tooth from his mouth. It rattled around on the tile floor for what seemed like minutes before it finally spun to silence.

  TWENTY

  It was just as a horde of bleary French tourists was checking into the tawdry hotel on the West Side that the elevator returned as summoned to the ground floor. And then it opened its doors.

  “Mon dieu!”

  The flaming liquid inside the car melted through its plastic container and spilled like a fiery tidal wave into the lobby.

  “Jesus!” somebody screamed.

  “Oh, shit…”

  The flames appeared almost magically as the liquid ran along the floor and ignited the carpet, the chairs, the gold-flecked wallpaper, the fake rubber trees, the tables.

  Alarms begin detonating with harsh baritone ringing – old-fashioned bells that make one think immediately of lifesaving systems vastly outdated. Screams filled the tattered halls. People began to flee.

  More frightening than the flames was the smoke, which filled the hotel instantly as if it were pumped in under high pressure. The electricity simply stopped and, amid the palpable smoke, nighttime filled the lobby and corridors. Even the ruby exit signs grew invisible.

  And sounding above all of the screams and ringing and alarms was a frantic pedal tone – the howl of fire.

  The Eagleton Hotel was about to die.

  The flames consumed the cheap carpet and turned it from green to black in seconds. The flames boiled plastic as easily as it puckered skin. The fire ran up the walls, melting plaster like butter. The flames spit out smoke thick as muddy water and suffocated a half-dozen foreign guests trapped in an alcove without an exit.