Hell's Kitchen

“I hope he got caught and went to jail,” Pellam said.

“Oh, yeah, he did. But that’s not my point. What I’m saying is there were eighty-seven people killed in that fire. The biggest arson murder in U.S. history. And I was on the ID team. See, it was a problem – because they were dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Right. Most of the women didn’t have purses on them and the men’d left their jackets, with their wallets, hanging on the chairs. So we didn’t know who was who. What we did was we laid all the bodies out and then we’re thinking, Jesus, we can’t have eighty-seven families walk up and down the street and look at this. So we took Polaroids of them. A couple shots of each body. And put it in this notebook for the families to look at. I was the one who handed the book to every mother or father or brother or sister whose kids were at Happy Land that night. I’m never going to forget that.”

He covered up the body and looked up. “One guy did all that. One guy with a fucking dollar’s worth of gasoline. I just wanted to tell you I’m putting a call to the D.A. to move Ettie Washington out of protective isolation.”

Pellam began to speak. But Lomax, fatigue in every move, stood and walked to the second body. He said, “She killed a kid. Every prisoner in Detention knows that by now. I give her a day or two. At best.”

He crouched down and pulled the sheet off.

TWENTY-ONE

The shades were down in Bailey’s office.

Maybe to stave off the heat, Pellam guessed. Then he realized that the blackout must’ve been at the request of the nervous man who sat forward on a rickety chair across from the lawyer. He was continually adjusting his position and looking around the room as if a hitman were sighting on his back from across the street.

Pellam paid no attention to the visitor. To the lawyer he said, “I found Alex but the pyro got to him first.”

“The Eagleton fire?” Bailey asked, nodding knowingly.

“Yep.”

“He’s dead?”

Pellam shrugged. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he just took off. I don’t know. There were unidentified bodies.”

“Oh, my God,” offered the visitor. He looked like the sort who’d be wringing his hands if they weren’t gripping the seat of the chair so desperately.

Pellam then told the lawyer what Lomax had said about protective custody.

“No!” Bailey whispered. “That’s bad. She won’t last an hour in general population.”

“Goddamn blackmail,” Pellam muttered. “Can you stop him from doing it?”

“I can delay it is all. But they’ll release her. The D.A.’ll agree in an instant if they think it’ll pressure her into giving up the arsonist.” He jotted a note on a piece of sunbleached foolscap and turned his attention to the nervous man who sat before him. He was ski

Newton Clarke rose slightly and shook Pellam’s hand with a sopping palm, then deflated himself back to his cracked Naugahyde roost. He never held Pellam’s eye for more than a second.

“Newton here has a few interesting things to tell us. Start over, why don’t you? Some wine, Pellam? No? You’re such an abstainer. Okay, Newton, talk to us. Tell us where you work.”

“Pillsbury, Milbank & Hogue.”

“Roger McKe

“Right.”

Newton’s job, it seemed, was in the managing attorney’s office.

Bailey explained, “They’re the ones who handle scheduling, make calendar calls and so on, filings. You get the picture. They’re not lawyers. Newton could be, right? With everything you know about the law.” A glance at Pellam. “But he wants an honest profession.”

Clarke smiled uneasily. His eyes flicked to the window as a passerby cast a hurried shadow on the dusty blinds.

Bailey swilled more wine. “Give us your take on Roger McKe

“Well, for one thing, he knows everything that goes on in the Kitchen.”

“Like Santa Claus, is he? Making his list… Don’t you worry, Newton, your mission here’s safe. We’ll give you bushy eyebrows and a fake nose when you leave.”

Clarke forced his shoulders back and sat up straight. He offered a humorless laugh. “Jesus, Louis, his building’s right across the street. We should’ve met someplace safe.”

“Zurich, Grand Cayman?” Bailey asked with uncharacteristic acid. “Now what about McKe

The man told his story. Newton indeed had a clerk’s personality. Organized, precise, detailed. The kind of documentary interviewee, Pellam decided, who seemed perfect but whose testimony he could use only in small doses; for all his accuracy Clarke spoke without a bit of passion or color. We’ll take robust lies over the pale truth any day, Pellam had come to believe.

“Should I-?”

“From the begi

“Okay, okay. Well, Mr. McKe

“Then he hocked all nine and came into Manhattan. One building on Twenty-fourth Street. Nobody was in that part of town then. It was a bum location. The city – the high-class commercial districts – went south to the Empire State Building and it stopped until you got to W ll Street. But he bought this building and what happened but New York Life bought it from him. Fast and with cash. He took that money and bought two more buildings, then three, then six. Then he built one. His first. Then he bought two more. And kept going. Now he’s got sixty or seventy throughout the Northeast.”

Pellam was losing patience. He asked, “Was he ever co

“That’s my boy,” Bailey said, nodding toward Pellam. “Good movie-maker. Gets right to the proverbial chase scene.”

Clarke responded, “Well…”

But the words deflated as soon as they were spoken and Bailey prompted, “Come on, Newton. Pellam’s a friend.”

“Okay, okay… Well, nobody’s sure. Couldn’t prove anything. But recently there’ve been some accidents. Some union men – one of them went off the thirtieth floor of a building on Lexington. And a building inspector who hadn’t been willing to pocket money got beaned by a stack of two-by-fours. None of this happened on a McKe

Pellam recalled the steely eyes of the brunette at the developer’s party. Tough adversary, playing the game. “How’d you find out all of this?”

“Pellam’s right to be suspicious, Newton.” Bailey turned to him. “But we don’t have to worry. Newton’s sources are impeccable.” More wine sloshed. “And so’s his motive for helping us out here, isn’t it? Pristine.”

Pellam explained what Jolie had told him and asked, “Exactly how desperate is he?”

“His casinos have failed big. He’s step away from bankruptcy. And I mean complete bankruptcy. Apocalyptic bankruptcy.”