Hell's Kitchen

TWELVE

Business was brisk at New York State Supreme Court, Criminal Term.

John Pellam sat in the back of the grubby, crowded courtroom beside Nick Flanagan, the bail bondsman Louis Bailey had hired, round, world-weary man with grime under his nails and a rapid-fire mind that could figure various percentages of bail faster than Pellam could use a calculator.

After the boy’s death Bailey had revised his estimate of the bail upward – to a hundred thousand dollars. According to the usual bond arrangements, Ettie would have to come up with cash or securities worth ten percent of that. Flanagan agreed to post on five and a half percent. He did this grudgingly, revealing either his nature or – more likely – some vast, resented debt owed to Bailey that this was in small part repaying.

Ettie Washington would contribute her savings to the cash deposit – nine hundred dollars. Bailey had arranged through one of his faceless Street Contacts to borrow the rest. Ettie wouldn’t let Pellam put up one penny, not that he had much to contribute.

Pellam was impressed with the dealings Bailey had orchestrated but he wondered if the lawyer’s skills in a courtroom would be equal to his sleight of hand in bars, clerk’s offices and filing departments.

Bailey had also received the handwriting report and the news wasn’t good. Ettie’s bouts of bursitis and arthritis made her handwriting very inconsistent. The signature on the insurance application was, according to the report, “more probably than not that of subject Washington.”

Pellam examined the assistant district attorney, Lois Koepel, a young woman with a sharp jaw, small mouth and a tangle of very unlawyerly hair. She seemed self-assured, brittle and far too young to be handling a murder case.

The clerk muttered, “People of the State of New York versus Etta Wilkes Washington.”

Bailey and, at his urging, Ettie, stood. His eyes were up, hers downcast. The elderly judge reclined along the bench in boredom, his fingertips supporting his temple, which was disfigured by a prominent vein, visible even from the back of the courtroom.

The A.D.A. said, “We’ve amended, Your Honor.”

The judge glanced down at the young woman. “The boy died?”

“Correct, Your Honor.” Not a single S in the sentence and she still managed to sound extremely shrill.

The judge scanned papers. “Ms. Washington,” he droned, “you’re charged with murder in the second degree, manslaughter in the first degree, criminally negligent homicide, arson in the first degree, arson in the second degree, assault in the first degree, criminal mischief in the first degree and criminal mischief in the second degree. Do you understand these charges?”

Startling the first several rows of spectators, Ettie Washington called out firmly, “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t do it!”

The A.D.A.’s ground-glass voice snapped, “Your Honor.”

The judge waved her silent. “Mrs. Washington, you’ve had the charges explained to you, have you not?”

“Yessir.”

“How do you plead to each of these charges?”

Without prompting, she said, “Not guilty, Your Honor.”

“All right. What is the state seeking for bail?”

“Your Honor, the People request Ms. Washington be held without bail in this case.”

Bailey grumbled, “Your Honor, my client is a seventy-two-year-old woman with no resources, no passport and severe injuries. She isn’t going anywhere.”

The A.D.A. droned, “She is charged with murder and arson-”

“I wouldn’t kill that boy!” Ettie shouted. “Never, never!”

“Counsel will instruct his client…” The judge roused himself from his boredom long enough to deliver this lethargic command.

The A.D.A. continued, “We have here a woman accused of a very elaborate scheme to defraud an insurance company, involving premeditation and the hiring of a professional arsonist.”

“Do you have that suspect in custody?”

“We do not, Your Honor. This is the man we believe to be responsible for a series of other fires around the city, resulting in a number of deaths and serious injuries. It seems he’s on some kind of rampage. I’m sure Your Honor’s read about it in the paper.”

“Those fires?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your Honor,” Bailey said, sounding appalled.

“Quiet, counselor.” The judge’s brow furrowed, the most emotion he’d displayed so far.

“We’ve had three fires in two days. The most recent was a subway, and I just heard a report before coming to Your Honor’s courtroom that there was another one.”

Bailey turned slowly and glanced at Pellam. Another fire?

Koepel continued. “At a department store on Eighth Avenue.”

“What happened?” the judge asked.

The A.D.A. continued, “That homemade napalm again, Your Honor. In a women’s clothing department. A clerk just happened to be standing by a fire extinguisher station in the store when it started. She put it out before it did much damage. But it could’ve been a real tragedy.” The A.D.A. fell out of character. She sounded exasperated as she said, “Judge, the police just don’t know what to do. They can’t find this perp. There are no witnesses. These fires just keep appearing. And frankly it’s got everybody on the West Side scared as hell.”

“Your Honor,” Bailey said in the voice of a melodramatic stage actor, “this is the most rampant form of speculation. Why, the month is August. It’s been hot, people’s tempers are flaring-”

“Thank you for the weather report, Mr. Bailey. What’s your point?”

“Copycat crimes.”

“Counselor?” The judge raised an eyebrow at the A.D.A.

“Unlikely. The mixture he uses in his bombs is unusual. It’s like a fingerprint of this particular arsonist. And the press has cooperated in not mentioning the exact substances. We’re sure the same perpetrator is behind them. The defendant’s been completely uncooperative in identifying him and-”

“She’s uncooperative,” Bailey said, echoing Pellam’s thought, “because she doesn’t know who he is.”

“This is, as I was saying, very elaborate scheme to perpetrate a vicious crime, resulting in a child’s death. And in light of her prior fraud conviction, we-”

“What?” the lawyer asked.

“Are you objecting, Mr. Bailey?”

“No, Your Honor, I’m not objecting.”

“Because if you’re objecting, it’s misplaced. There’s no jury here. There are no evidentiary issues.”

“I’m not objecting. What prior conviction?” He glanced at a mute Ettie, whose eyes were downcast.

Pellam was sitting forward.

“Well, Ms. Washington’s felony conviction for fraud and extortion six years ago. Arson was threatened in that case too, Your Honor.”

She has a record? An arson threat? Pellam’s memory fast-forwarded through his many conversations with Ettie. This had never come up on the tapes. Not even a hint. His thumb and forefinger rubbed together heatedly.

Bailey’s head turned to Ettie but her eyes remained downcast. “This is the first I’ve heard of it, Your Honor.” He whispered something to Ettie, who shook her head and said nothing.

“Well,” the A.D.A. said, “that’s not the state’s problem.”

“True, Mr. Bailey,” the judge said. The vein on his flushed temple seemed to change course. He wanted to move on to the other cases on his calendar. “Your knowledge of your client’s history is hardly relevant. Can we wrap this up?”

“On the motion,” Koepel hissed, “the people request the suspect be held without bail.”

The judge reclined in his tall black chair. “Bail denied.” He banged the gavel with a sound like gunshot.

“We got outflanked.”

Louis Bailey stood beside Pellam on the sidewalk beside the Criminal Courts Building. An odd smell – sour – filled the hot August air.

The lawyer gazed down absently at his feet. His navy blue sock sported a hole but the green one looked almost new. “I should’ve seen it coming. The A.D.A. pulled a fast one. She kept requesting a delay in the arraignment. She hinted that if I agreed she’d be more likely to go along with a bail reduction.”

Pellam was nodding. “A technical legal strategy called lying.”

“Ah, that’s old news. But the sick thing is that she was just delaying until the boy died. Put her in a better spot to ask for a no-bail order.”

Our public servants, Pellam thought. God bless ’em. He asked, “You didn’t know about her conviction?”

“No. She never mentioned it.”

“News to me too. How bad is it?”

“Well, they can’t use it in her trial. Unless she takes the stand and I won’t let her do that. But it’s just…”

“Troubling,” Pellam muttered.

Bailey sought a better word but settled for echoing, “Troubling.”

They each looked at the black-and-gray County Court building across the street. Their gazes took in a somber discussion between a keen-faced, dark-suited lawyer and his dumpling of a gloomy client. As it happened, Pellam’s eyes were fixed on the lawyer; Bailey’s, the man he represented. Two bailiffs sat down near them and began eating cold noodles with sesame paste. The courthouse was three blocks from Chinatown. That was the smell, Pellam understood: overused vegetable oil.

“I’m worried about her, Louis. Can you get her into protective custody?”

“Nobody’s doing me any favors. Not until the pyro’s caught.”

Pellam tapped his wallet.

“I’ve got no connection with the Department of Corrections. If I can do anything, it’ll have to be the old-fashioned way. A noticed motion. Order to show cause.”

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t think they’ll buy it but I can try.” His eyes watched a huge cluster of pigeons in a frenzy over a scrap of hotdog bun a businessman had thrown onto the ground.

“Level with me,” Bailey said.

Pellam cocked an eyebrow.

“The bail situation threw you, didn’t it? You were pretty upset.”

“I don’t want her to spend any more time in jail,” Pellam said.

“I don’t either but it’s not the end of the world.” After a moment he asked, “What exactly is this all about?”

“What?-”

Bailey said, “I’m asking what’re you doing here, Pellam.”

“She’s an innocent woman in jail.”

Bailey said, “So’re, say, twenty percent of the people in there.” He nodded toward the detention center. “That’s old news too. Why’re you playing detective, what’s your stake in this whole thing?”

Pellam looked out over busy Centre Street. Courthouses, government buildings… Justice at work. He thought of an ant farm. Finally he said, “If she goes to jail, my film’s worthless. Three months of work down the tubes. And I’ll end up probably thirty, forty thousand in hock.”

The lawyer nodded. Pellam supposed that this commercial motive wouldn’t sit too well with Bailey, who may have been a worldly gear-greaser but was also a friend of Ettie’s. But that was all Pellam was willing to say to the lawyer on the subject.

Bailey said, “I’ll get started on the protective custody order. You want to come back to the office?”

“Can’t. I’ve got to meet somebody about the case.”

“Who?”

“The worst man in the city of New York.”

Seven men stared silently at him.

T-shirts dusty with cigarette ash. Long hair, dark from dirt and sweat. Black crescents under fingernails in need of a trim. Pellam thought of a word from his adolescence, word that’d been used to describe the black-leather-jacket element at Walt Whitman High in Simmons, New York: Greasers.

A young woman sat on one man’s lap. He had a long, bony face and gangly arms. He swatted the girl on her taut butt and she scooted off with a resentful scowl. But she snagged her purse and left quickly.

Pellam glanced at each of the seven. They all stared back though only one – slightly built, curly-haired, resembling a monkey – returned his gaze with anything that resembled a flicker of sobriety and intelligence.

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.