Hell's Kitchen Read online

  Matter-of-factly he said to her, “Your show? On TV? I don’t really believe the FBI does all that stuff. Do you think federal agents give a shit if there are really aliens up there?” He spoke in a soothing voice, though absently. He touched the colorful squares of the map – they reminded him of blocks his mother’d bought him as a child.

  Here.

  He marked another building.

  Here.

  Another.

  He touched several others and marked them with X’s. It’d be a lot of work. But one thing that Sonny didn’t mind was work. Virtue is its own reward.

  Agent Scullery peeked over the gray metallic tape and drummed a loud, panicked dance with her feet.

  “Dear, dear, dear.” Folding the map carefully, he replaced it in his back pocket. The pen went in his breast pocket, diligently retracted. He hated ink on his clothing. Then he walked in a circle around Agent Scullery, who kicked and rolled and mewed.

  In the kitchen he examined the gas oven and stove. It was a top-of-the-line model but Sonny knew about appliances only from his profession. He used his own stove just to heat water for herbal tea. He ate only vegetables and never cooked them; he found the whole idea of heating food abhorrent. He dropped to the immaculate tile floor and pulled open the stove. He had the bimetal gas cutoff valve disabled in five seconds and the gooseneck hose off in ten. The sour scent of the natural gas odorant (the gas itself has no scent) poured into the room. Sweet and bitter and curiously appealing – like tonic water.

  He walked to the front door of the loft and flicked the light switch on then off to see which bulb went on – an overhead one not far away. Sonny climbed onto a chair, reaching up, stretching, cracking the bulb with his wrench and sending the sleet of glass down on his hair and shoulders. The ceilings were high and it was quite a stretch. As he’d struggled to reach the bulb he was sure that tall Agent Scullery was laughing at him.

  But laughter’s in the eye of the beholder, Sonny thought, glaring at her as he returned to his bag, took out the jar of juice and poured it over her blouse and skirt. She writhed away from him.

  He asked, “Who’s laughing now? Hmm?”

  Sonny walked throughout the loft, shutting off the lights, and closing all the drapes. He walked to the front door and stepped into the corridor, leaving the door slightly ajar. In the lobby he jotted down the names of six of the residents in the building.

  A half hour later he was standing in a phone kiosk a block away, half-eaten mango in one hand, the phone crooked under his chin, punching in phone numbers.

  On his fifth try someone answered. “Hello?”

  “Say, is this the Roberts residence?”

  “It’s Sally Roberts, yes.”

  “Oh, hi, you don’t know me. I’m Alice Gibson’s brother? In your building.”

  “Alice, sure. Four-D.”

  “That’s right. She’d mentioned you live there and I just got your number from directory assistance. You know, I’m a little concerned about her.”

  “Really?” The woman’s voice was concerned too.

  “We were talking on the phone a little while ago and she said she was feeling real sick. Food poisoning, she was thinking. She hung up and I tried to call back and there was no answer. I hate to ask but do you think you could go check on her? I’m worried that she passed out.”

  “Of course. You want to give me your number?”

  “I’ll just hold on if you don’t mind,” said Sonny the polite sibling. “You’re too kind.”

  He leaned his head against the aluminum of the kiosk. It left sweat stains. Why all this sweat? He thought again. But it’s hot out. Everybody’s sweating. Not everybody’s hands are shaking though. He pushed that thought away. Think about something else. How ’bout dinner? Okay. What would he have for dinner tonight? he wondered. A ripe tomato. A good Jersey one. They were hard to find. Salt and a little -

  This was weird. The sound of the massive explosion reached him through the phone before he heard it live. Then the line went dead as the kiosk shook hard under the wave of the blast. Typical of natural gas explosions there was a blue-white flare and very little smoke as the windows imploded from the inrush of oxygen then immediately exploded outward from the force of the combustion.

  Fire draws more than it expands.

  Sonny watched for a moment as the flames spread to the top floor of the late Agent Scullery’s apartment. The tarred roof ignited and the smoke turned from white to gray to black.

  He wiped his hands on a napkin. Then he opened the map and carefully drew check through the circle that had marked the loft. He pitched the mango out and started back to his apartment, walking quickly, in the opposite direction from all the spectators, noting their excitement and wishing they knew they had him to thank.

  “How you feeling, Mother?”

  “How she feeling?” a voice called across the cold cement floor. “How she doing?”

  Ettie Washington lay on the cot, legs tucked up under her. She opened her eyes. Her first thought: the memory that her clothes had been a problem. Always concerned that she looked nice, always ironing her dresses and blouses and skirts. But here, in the Women’s Detention Center in downtown Manhattan, where they let you wear street clothes – minus belts and laces, of course – Ettie Washington had had no clothes.

  When they’d brought her from the hospital all she had on was her pale blue robe with dots on it, open up the back. No buttons, just ties. She was dreadfully embarrassed. Finally one of the guards had found her a simple dress, a prison shift. Blue. Washed a million times. She hated it.

  “Hey, Mother, you hear me? You feeling okay?”

  A large black form hovered over her. A hand stroked her forehead. “She feel hot. Mebbe got a fever.”

  “God gonna watch over that woman,” came another voice from the far side of the detention center.

  “She be okay. You be okay, Mother.” The large woman, in her forties, shrank down on her knees next to Ettie, who squinted until she could see the woman clearly.

  “How’s yo arm?”

  “It hurts,” Ettie responded. “I broke it.”

  “That quite a cast.” The brown eyes took in John Pellam’s signature.

  “What’s your name?” Ettie asked her, struggling to sit up.

  “No, no, Mother, you stay lying down. I’m Hatake Imaham, Mother.”

  “I’m Ettie Washington.”

  “We know.”

  Ettie tried again to sit. She felt helpless, weaker than she already was, on her back.

  “No, no, no, Mother, you stay there. Don’t get up. They brung you in like a sacka flour. Them white fuckers. Dropped you down.”

  There were two dozen cots, bolted to the floor. The mattresses were an inch thick and hard as dirt. She might as well have been lying on the floor.

  Ettie had a vague memory of the cops moving her here from the hospital room. She’d been exhausted and doped up. They used a paddy wagon. There was nothing to hold onto and it seemed to her that the driver had taken turns fast – on purpose. Twice she’d fallen off the slick plastic bench and often she banged her broken arm so badly it brought tears to her eyes.

  “I’m tired,” she said to Hatake and looked past the huge woman to the other occupants of the cell. The detention center was a single large room, barred and painted beige. Like many Hell’s Kitchen residents Ettie Washington knew something about holding cells. She knew that most of these women would be in here for pissy crimes, who-cares crimes. Shoplifting, prostitution, assault, fraud. (Shoplifting was okay because it helped you feed your family. If you were a prostitute – Ettie hated the term “ ho ” – it was because you couldn’t get a job doing decent work for decent pay; besides at least you were working and not on the dole. Assault – well, whaling on your husband’s girlfriend? What’s wrong with that? Ettie’d done it herself once or twice. And as for ripping off the welfare system – oh, please. Trees ripe for the picking…)

  Ettie had a taste for some wine. Wante
d some badly. She’d snuck a hundred dollars into her cast but it didn’t look like anybody here was connected enough to get her a bottle. Why, these’re just girls, here, most of ’em babies.

  Hatake Imaham stroked Ettie’s head once more.

  “You lie right there, Mother. You be still and don’t you worry ’bout nothing. I’ma look out for you. I’ma get you what you need.”

  Hatake was a huge woman with cornrows and dangling, beaded African hair – exactly the way Elizabeth had worn it the day she left New York City. Ettie noticed that the holes in Hatake’s ear lobes were huge and she wondered about the size of the earrings that had stretched the skin so much. She wondered if Elizabeth wore jewelry like that. Probably. The girl had an ostentatious side to her.

  “I’ve gotta make a phone call,” Ettie said.

  “They let you but not now.” The woman touched her good arm, squeezed it gently.

  “Some son of a bitch took away my pills,” Ettie complained. “One of the guards. I need ’em back.”

  Hatake laughed. “Honey, them pills, they ain’t even in this building no more. They sold an’ gone. Mebbe we see what we can find, us girls. Something help you. Bet it hurts like the devil’s own dick.”

  Ettie almost said that she had some money and could pay. But she knew instinctively to keep the money secret for the time being. She said, “Thank you.”

  “You lie back. Get some rest. We look out for you.”

  Ettie closed her eyes and thought of Elizabeth. Then she thought of her husband Billy Doyle and she thought of, finally, John Pellam. But he was in her thoughts for no more than five seconds before she fell asleep.

  “Well?”

  Hatake Imaham returned to the cluster of women on the far end of the cell.

  “That bitch, she the one done it. She guilty as death.” Hatake didn’t claim to be a real mambo but it was well known in the Kitchen that she did possess an extra sense. And while she hadn’t had much success laying on hands to cure illness everyone knew that she could touch someone and find out their deepest secrets. She could tell that the hot vibrations radiating off Ettie Washington’s brow were feelings of guilt.

  “Shit,” one woman spat out. “She burn that boy up, she burn up that little boy.”

  “The boy?” another asked in an incredulous whisper. “She set that fire in the basement, girl – didn’t you read that? On Thirty-sixth Street. She coulda killed the whole everybody in that building.”

  “That bitch call herself a mother,” a skinny woman with deep-set eyes growled. “Fuck that bitch. I say-”

  “Shhhh,” Hatake waved a hand.

  “Do her now! Do the bitch now.”

  Hatake’s face tightened into a glare. “Quiet! Damballah! We gonna do this th’way I say. You hear me, girl? I ain’t kill her. Damballah don’t ask more than what she done.”

  “Okay, sister,” the girl said, her voice hushed and frightened. “Okay. That’s cool. Whatcha saying we do?”

  “Shhhhh,” Hatake hissed again and glanced out the bars, where a lethargic guard lounged out of earshot. “Who gonna see the man today?”

  A couple of the girls lifted their arms. The prostitutes. Criminal Term batched those arraignments and disposed of them early, Hatake knew. It was like the city wanted them back on the street with a minimum of lost time. Hatake looked at the oldest one. “You Dannette, right?”

  The woman nodded, her pocked face remained peaceful.

  “I’ma ask you do something for me. How ’bout that, girl?”

  “Whatchu want me to do?”

  “You talk to yo man when you get into the courtroom.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sister.”

  “Tell him we make it worth his while. After you get out, I wan’ you to come back.”

  Dannette frowned. “You want… You want what?”

  “Listen to me. I want you to get back in here. Tomorrow.”

  Dannette had never stopped nodding but she didn’t understand this. Hatake continued, “I want you to get something, bring it in here to me. You know how, right? You know where you hide it? In the back hole, not the front. In a Baggie.”

  “Sure.” Dannette nodded as if she hid things there every day.

  She looked around at the other women. Whatever she was being asked to do was being seconded by everybody.

  “I’ll pay you for this, for coming back again.”

  “You get me rock?” the girl asked eagerly.

  Hatake scowled. It was well-known that she hated drugs, dealers and users. “You a cluckhead, girl?”

  The pocked face went still. “You get me rock?”

  “I give you money,” the huge woman spat out. “You buy whatever you want with it, girl. Fuck up your life, you want. That your business.”

  Dannette said, “What it is you want me to bring you back?”

  “Shhh,” whispered Hatake Imaham. A guard was wandering past the door.

  SIX

  “Hell of a visiting room.”

  “Oh, John, am I in the soup?”

  Pellam told Ettie, “Not exactly. But you’re walking around the edge of the bowl, looks like.”

  “It’s good to see you.” They sat across from each other in the fluorescent-lit room. A roach meandered slowly up the wall, past the corpses of his kin crushed to dry specks. Beneath a sign that read NO PHYSICAL CONTACT John Pellam took the bandaged hand of Ettie Washington. The squat uniformed matron nearby looked coldly at this disregard of regulations but didn’t say anything. Pellam said. “Louis Bailey’s going to get you out on bail.”

  Ettie looked bad. She seemed too calm, considering everything that had happened to her. He knew she had a temper. He’d seen it when she talked about her husband – Billy Doyle’s leaving her. And about the time she was fired from her last job. After years working for a jobber in the Fashion District she’d been let go without a single day’s severance. He expected to see her fury at whoever had set the blaze, at the police, at the jailors. He found only resignation. That was a lot more troubling to him than anger.

  She picked at a worn spot on her shift. “The guards’re all saying it’ll go easier if I tell ’em I did it and tell ’ em who I hired. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Pellam debated for a moment then decided to ask. “Tell me about the insurance policy.”

  “Hell, I didn’t buy any insurance, John. They think I’m a stupid old lady, doing something like that?” She pressed the palm of her good hand against her stiff gray-and-black hair as if fighting off a migraine. “Where I’m gonna get money to buy insurance?” She winced in pain, continued. “I can barely pay my bills, as is. I can’t even do that half the time. Where’m I gonna get money to buy insurance?”

  “You’ve never been in any insurance agencies in the last month?”

  “No. I swear.” Her face was drawn up, as she eyed the guard suspiciously.

  “Ettie, I’ve got to ask you these questions. Somebody recognized you taking out the policy.”

  “That’s their problem,” she said, tight-lipped. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Somebody else saw you at the back door of the building that night. Just before the fire.”

  “I go in the back door usually. A lot of times I do that – if I’ve been to the A &P. It’s a shortcut. Saves me some steps.”

  “Do all the tenants have keys to the back?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “You locked it behind you?”

  “It locks by itself. I think I heard it close.”

  Ettie was often digressive. One thought brought up ten others. One question could lead via a colorful stream of consciousness to a different time and place. Pellam noted that today, though, her responses were succinct, cautious.

  The guard had tolerated Pellam’s hand upon Ettie’s arm long enough. “No contact,” she snapped. Pellam sat back. The guard’s nose was pierced three times with gold studs and each ear sprouted ten or twelve small rings. Her belligerence suggested that she wa
s waiting for someone to ridicule the jewelry.

  “Louis Bailey,” Pellam asked Ettie. “You think he’s a good lawyer?”

  “Oh, he’s good. He’s done stuff for me before. I hired him six, eight months ago, for this social security problem I had. He did an okay job… That guard over there keeps looking at us with an evil eye, John. She’s too jaunty for my taste. Sticking pins in her nose.”

  Pellam laughed. “This witness told me she saw some men in the alley just before the fire. Did you see them when you got home from the store?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody I recognized. Some boys from the neighborhood. They’re always there. You know, it’s an alley. Where kids always hang out. Did fifty years ago. Do now. Some things never change.”

  Pellam remembered what Sibbie’s son had told her – what earned him the slap in the face. He asked Ettie, “Were they from the gangs?”

  “Could be. I don’t know much about them. They leave us alone pretty much… And maybe there were some of those workers too. From that big building they’re putting up across the street. You know, with those telescopes they have. For surveying. Yeah, I’m sure I saw some of them in the alley. I remember ’cause they wear those plastic helmets. Some of them were those men who came around with the petition we signed.”

  Pellam remembered Ettie telling him about the high-rise, how the locals had greeted the huge project with such excitement. Roger McKennah, as famous as Donald Trump, was building a glitzy skyscraper in Hell’s Kitchen! His company had sent representatives out into the ’hood, asking residents in the blocks around the high-rise to sign waivers so that the building could go five stories higher than the zoning laws allowed. In exchange for their approval of the variance he pledged that the building would feature new grocery stores and a Spanish restaurant and a twenty-four-hour laundry. Ettie had signed, along with most of the other residents.