Hell's Kitchen

FIFTEEN

Lefty came through.

Pellam was in his bitchen, boots off, listening to messages, as he sat on the plywood sheet turning the bathtub into a table. There was one hang-up, then another. Finally Alan Lefkowitz’s mile-a-minute voice was telling him about a party Roger McKennah had planned and that Pellam had only to drop Lefty’s name and he’d be admitted into the “inner sanctum of New York business,” a line the producer actually recited without noticeable irony. Pellam, however, rolled his eyes as he listened to it, kicking his foot against the wall to scare off a wise-ass pigeon that alighted on his window sill.

The lengthy message continued with relevant details, including the orders to dress for the event.

An hour later, Pellam, suitably “dressed” (new black jeans and polished Nokona cowboy boots) strolled out into the suffocating heat and took a subway to the Citicorp building. From there he walked to an address on Fifth Avenue and ducked into the revolving door. Once inside nobody knew that he, unlike most of the other guests, hadn’t arrived via Bentley, Rolls-Royce, or – for the impoverished – the stately yacht of a Lincoln Continental.

“Look, it’s another one.”

The woman spoke breathlessly and the crowd on the top floor of the triplex murmured less in horror than appreciation.

“Oh, man. Look at that. You can see the flames.”

“Where?”

“There. See?”

“Ronnie, go see if someone’s got a camera. Joan, look!”

Pellam eased closer to the window, six hundred feet above the sidewalk on which Cartier, Tiffany and Henri Bendel hawked their wares. He gazed west. Another fire, he noticed with disgust. A building somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, north of Louis Bailey’s block. Occasionally you’d see a lick of flame shooting through a massive cloud of smoke. Rising a thousand feet into the milky sky, it blossomed like the mushroom of an atomic bomb.

“Oh, God,” a woman whispered. “It’s the hospital! Manhattan Hospital.”

Where he and Ettie had been treated, he realized. Where Juan Torres had died.

“You think it’s him? Where is that camera? I want to get a snap. You know who I mean? That crazy man I read about in the Times this morning?”

“Is that the fifth one he’s set? Or the sixth?”

The flames had grown and were now clearly visible.

No cameras materialized and after five minutes the fire became just another part of the scenery. Alone or in groups of two or three the guests turned back to the party.

Pellam continued to watch for a few moments. The silent ballet of the flames, the cloud of gray smoke rising high above Manhattan.

“Hey, how you doing?” The man’s voice was close by, riddled with Long Island lockjaw. “You’re dressed like an artiste. Are you an artiste?”

Pellam turned, found himself standing in front of a drunk, beefy young man in a tuxedo.

“Nope.”

“Ah. Quite a place, isn’t it?” He gestured his groggy head around the two-story living room in the Fifth Avenue penthouse triplex. “Roger’s little abode in the sky.”

“Not too shabby.”

At that moment Pellam caught sight of his quarry across the room. Roger McKennah. Then the real estate developer was lost in the crowd again.

“You know the story?” Pellam’s new friend began laughing drunkenly. Sipped more of his martini.

“The story?” Pellam responded.

The young man nodded enthusiastically but said nothing more.

Pellam prompted, “The one about the priest, the rabbi and the nun?”

The man frowned, shook his head then continued drunkenly and began explaining how the triplex here was latticed with rabbit warrens of rooms McKennah described as dens and parlors and music rooms and entertainment spaces.

“Uh-huh,” Pellam said uncertainly, looking over the crowd for McKennah once more.

“They’re really just bedrooms, see?” the young man told Pellam, spilling vodka on his patent leather shoes. “But there’re fifteen of them and the thing is, Roger McKennah doesn’t have a single friend – I mean, forget fifteen – who’d be willing to endure him long enough to stay overnight.”

The young man shivered with laughter and drank some more of the alcohol that the butt of his mean joke was providing. A blonde in a low-cut red dress cruised past. She caught the eyes of both Pellam and the young man and suddenly the young man vanished as if he were the tail and she, the dog.

Pellam gazed out the window again, at the huge plume of smoke.

In the hour he’d been here he’d learned a few things about McKennah, much of it like the sniping he’d just heard, none of it particularly helpful. The developer was forty-four. Stocky but fit. His face was a younger, puffier Robert Redford’s. His net worth was rumored to be two billion. Pellam had observed that the developer had a kaleidoscope of expressions; McKennah’s visage flipped from boyish to greedy to demonic to pure ice in a fraction of a second.

In fact the most telling thing that Pellam had learned was that no one really knew much about Roger McKennah at all. His only conclusion was that the developer had some inexpressible quality that drove guests like these – attractive or powerful or obsessed with the attractive or powerful – to pray for invitations to his parties, where they would drink his liquor and think of clever ways to insult him behind his back.

He eased closer to McKennah, who had moved on and was cruising slowly through the crowded room.

A young couple double-teamed the developer by the beluga table.

“Nice, Roger,” the husband said, looking around. “Very nice. Know what this room reminds me of? That place in Cap d’Antibes. On the Point? L’Hermitage. That’s where Beth and I always stay.”

“You know it?” the woman, presumably Beth, asked McKennah. “It’s so wonderful.”

The developer demurred with a faint pout. “ ’Fraid I don’t,” he said, to their delight. Then he added, “When I’m over there I usually stay with the prince in Monaco. It’s just easier. You know.”

“I hear you,” the husband said, hearing nothing really. The couple pasted glazed smiles on their faces, evidence of how snugly their hearts had been nailed by the chubby Roger McKennah.

The substantial crowd milled and hovered over the tables filled with caviar like black snowdrifts and sushi like white jewels, while a tuxedoed pianist played Fats Waller.

“But he didn’t go to Choate,” Pellam overheard someone whisper. “Read it carefully. He gives them money, he lectures there, but he didn’t go there. He went to some parochial school on the West Side. In his old neighborhood.”

“Hell’s Kitchen?” Pellam asked, breaking into the circle.

“That’s it, yes,” responded the woman, whose face-lift was remarkably good.

So, McKennah was a Kitchen pup himself. It must’ve taken years to polish off the rough edges.

Then suddenly Pellam himself became the prey. The crowd had momentarily parted like the Red Sea and McKennah was staring directly at him, fifty feet away. A memory came back to Pellam – the limousine in front of Ettie’s building. It had probably been McKennah’s.

But the developer gave no greeting. And as the crowd swept back together McKennah turned and stepped into a cluster of guests and turned his attention on them like klieg lights on a movie set. Then the developer was moving again, on stage, always questioning, poking, probing.

Ambition’s a bitch, ain’t it?

He was about to follow when, from behind him, a woman’s voice said in a very Northeastern accent, “Howdy, partner.”

Pellam turned to see an attractive blonde woman in her forties, holding a champagne flute. Her eyes were faded, but not from drinking, merely from exhaustion. With a sequined shoe she tapped Pellam’s boot, explaining the greeting.

“Hi,” he said.

Her eyes flitted to McKennah. Pellam followed her gaze. She said, “Which one?”

“I’m sorry?” Pellam asked.

“You a betting man?”

He said, “To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are only two times a man shouldn’t gamble. One, when he can’t afford to lose money. And two, when he can.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Yep, I’m a gambling man,” Pellam said.

“You see those two women. The brunette and the redhead?”

Pellam spotted them easily. They stood by the sweeping staircase, chatting with McKennah. Both in their late twenties, good figures, attractive. The redhead was by far the sexier and more voluptuous. The brunette had a colder face and she seemed distracted, almost bored.

“In about five minutes, Roger’ll disappear upstairs. That’s where the bedrooms are. Five minutes after that, one of those women will follow. Which one do you think it’ll be?”

“Does he know either of them?”

“Probably not. You on?”

Pellam studied the redhead: The extreme V of her neckline, revealing the upper slope of white breasts. Hair tumbling around her shoulders. A seductive smile. And freckles. Pellam loved freckles.

“The redhead,” he said, thinking: Eight months, eight months. Eight goddamn months.

The woman laughed. “You’re wrong.”

“What’re we betting?”

“A glass of our host’s champagne. As Mark Twain also said, it’s always better to gamble with somebody else’s money than your own.”

They tapped glasses.

Her name was Jolie and it seemed that she was unaccompanied. He followed her to the window in the corner of the room, where it was quieter.

“You’re John Pellam.”

He gave a perplexed smile.

“I heard somebody mention your name.”

Who? he wondered. It didn’t seem likely that the Word on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen would rise all the way into this stratosphere.

“I saw one of your films,” she said. “About an alchemist. It was very good. I can’t say I completely understood it. But that’s a compliment.”

“Is it?” he asked, looking at her steady, green eyes.

She continued. “Think about Kubrick’s 2001. It’s not a very good movie. So why did it endure? The Blue Danube with the space ship? Anybody could’ve thought of that. The monkeys beating each other up? No. Special effects? Of course not. It was the ending. Nobody knew what the hell it was about. We forget the obvious. We remember the uncertain.”

He laughed. “I do love my ambiguity,” Pellam said, eyes on McKennah. “So, okay, I’ll consider it a compliment.”

“Are you making a film here?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Across the room McKennah glanced around, trying to look casual, then trotted up the stairs.

Maybe he was just going to take a pee, Pellam thought. They hadn’t considered the contingency of a draw. Pellam didn’t care; he was enjoying her company. Jolie had a V-shaped neckline that held its own with the redhead’s very admirably. Pellam even thought he saw a few freckles where the white flesh disappeared beneath black sequins.

“What’s it about?” Jolie asked. “Your new film?”

“It’s not a feature. It’s a documentary. About Hell’s Kitchen.”

“That fire’s an interesting metaphor, isn’t it?” She nodded out the window. There was a faint smile on her face. “It’d be a good motif for your film.” She added cryptically, “Whatever it’s really about.”

“How do you know McKennah?” he asked. Then the words registered: Really about…

Across the room the sullen brunette stubbed out a cigarette and, lifting her slinky skirt a few inches, looked around discreetly. She climbed the stairs in the tracks of the developer.

“Good guess,” Pellam said.

“Wasn’t a guess,” Jolie responded. “I know my husband pretty well. Now get me the champagne you owe me. Get one for yourself too. Then let’s go in there and drink it.” She nodded toward a small den off the main room. And smiled as the piano player launched into Stormy Weather.

“You know, one of our cleaning ladies sells what she finds in our trash cans to the government. IRS, SEC. Competitors, too, I’m sure. Roger has fun putting phoney info in the trash along with Tampax wrappers and condoms.”

“The IRS pays for that?” Pellam asked.

“Yep.”

“So that’d be my tax dollars at work?” Pellam asked.

“You don’t really pay tax, do you?” she seemed surprised. “If you do I’ll give you the name of my accountant.”

They sat in the teak-paneled den, the sounds of the party and the music filtering through the walls. Pellam picked up a picture of McKennah with his arm around a large Mickey Mouse.

“A few years ago,” Jolie said, entranced by the frantic bubbles in her champagne, “he was really into Euro Disney. He took a bad hit there. I told him it was a bad idea. I just couldn’t see French people wearing big black ears.”

“Why are you so cool about what just happened? With your husband?”

“You’re from Hollywood, I assume you know the difference between being cool and acting cool.”

“Touché. How’d you figure the brunette?”

“She was the tougher one. More of a challenge. Roger never takes the easy way. His office is on the seventieth floor of this building. He walks up every one of those flights in the morning.”

“Quite a view,” Pellam said, walking to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He gazed out over dusky Manhattan. Jolie pointed out several buildings that bore McKennah’s name and several more, older ones, that she explained were owned or operated by his companies.

Pellam lifted his hands and pressed the cold glass with his fingers. Because of the faint light in the den his reflection appeared to be an angel floating outside, touching Pellam’s fingertips with its own.

“Your film, it’s about Roger, isn’t it?”

“No. It’s about the old West Side.”

“Then why are you spying on him?”

He said nothing.

Jolie said, “We’re getting divorced, Roger and I.”

Pellam continued to stare at the lights of the city. Was this a setup? Was she spying on him? Hollywood made you paranoid for your job; Hell’s Kitchen, your life.

But he had a vague sense that he should trust her. He recalled the look in her eyes when she saw the brunette lift her skirt and start up the stairs. Pellam had worked with many actresses, some of them excellent, but very few had enough command of the Method to summon up that kind of pain.

“There’s talk about you,” Jolie McKennah said.

In the distance the fire on the West Side had been mostly extinguished. Still, you could see a hundred lights from the emergency vehicles, flashing like lasers in a tawdry disco.

“Did he say anything?” Pellam didn’t know whether nodding at the ceiling, where McKennah was bedding the tough brunette, was appropriate.

“No, but he knows about you. He’s been watching you.”

“So, why are we here? Talk to me.”

She sipped then smiled mournfully. “We never had any secrets, Roger and I. None. It got to the point where I even knew his girlfriends’ bra sizes. But then something happened.”

“Attrition?”

“That’s good, Pellam. Yes, exactly. Little by little things got worn down. We haven’t been in love for a long time. Oh, ages. But we were close and we were friends. But then that went away. That friendship part. He began lying to me. That broke the rules. We decided to get divorced.”

He decided to get divorced, she meant.

“And you feel betrayed.”

She considered refuting this. But she said, “Yes, I felt betrayed.”

He was gazing out the window, past his reflection. “The arson on Thirty-sixth Street? Some of the men who work for his company were nearby that building just before the fire.”

This got her attention.

“So, you’re a crusader, are you?”

“Not hardly. I just want to know who was behind it.”

“I don’t think Roger would ever do anything like that.”

“ ‘Think.’ ”

He could see she wasn’t sure. She held the champagne beneath her nose and inhaled. “You find me attractive?”

“Yes.” It was true and had nothing to do with the glacial eight months.

“You want to make love to me?”

“Another time, another place, yes, I would.”

This satisfied her. How fragile is our vanity and how recklessly we wear it for all to crush.

“Tell me what you’re really after and maybe I can help you.”

And maybe she can cut me off at the knees.

“Ah, you’re hesitating,” she continued. “Think I’ll report back to him. Think I’m a spy?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you were a gambling man.”

“The stakes’re high.”

“How much? One billion? Two?”

“Ten years of an old woman’s life.”

She hesitated. “I don’t have any power over him anymore. Not like I did.” She nodded toward the party but the gesture was aimed like a sniper rifle at all the brunettes and redheads and blondes in the room. “And I’ll never get that back. He’s won, hands down, in that arena – the bedroom, our home. So I have to hurt him the only way I still can. In his business.”

He said, “That woman I mentioned. She was a tenant in the building that burned down. She’s been arrested for the arson and she didn’t do it.”

“Washington’s her name,” Jolie said. “I read bout that. An insurance scam or something.”

Pellam nodded. “Did your husband burn the place down?”

Jolie thought for a long moment, staring again at the needlepoint bubbles. “Not the old Roger. No, he wouldn’t. The new Roger… all I can say is he’s become a stranger. He doesn’t talk to me anymore. He’s just not the same man I married. I will tell you he’s been going out a couple times a week. At night. He’s never done that before – I’m mean, not without telling me. And he’s never lied to me about it. He’ll get a phone call then leave.”

“You know who’s calling?”

“I did that star 69 thing on the phone. To dial back the call that just came in? It was a law firm. Not one that I’ve ever heard of before.”

“What was the name?”

“Pillsbury, Millbank & Hogue,” she said. Pellam heard an edge in the woman’s otherwise controlled voice. It quavered. She continued. “The chauffeur drops him off on Ninth Avenue and Fiftieth. He meets someone, some man. The meetings are secret.”

“The chauffeur,” Pellam asked delicately, “could he be more informative?”

“He’d be willing to,” she said. “But Roger makes sure he leaves after he drops him off.”

Pellam jotted down the name of the firm and the address.

She said, “You know, he has good qualities. He gives money to charities.”

So presumably do some serial killers. At least those who need write-offs.

Jolie took his glass from the table and sipped it. Hers was empty. Pellam said, “What you just told me could cost him a lot. And it could cost you a lot too.”

“Me?”

“The divorce? Isn’t he going to be paying you settlement, alimony?”

Laughter. “You dear man, why you really do pay taxes, don’t you? Let’s just say, I’ve looked out for myself. Whatever happens to Roger won’t affect me in any fiscal way.”

Pellam glanced down at her taut, tanned skin. Eight months. A hell of a long time.

“To another time, another place,” she said, lifting the glass.

He remained at the window for a moment, gazing at the radiant buildings of Manhattan, then stepped toward the door, while outside, reflected in the window, Pellam’s angel also turned, lowered his ghostly arms and faded into the night above the city.

Fire points up not down.

Fire climbs, it doesn’t fall.

Sonny gazed at the map.

The hospital had been a good fire, not a great fire. Too many good citizens were vigilant. Too many cops, too many fire marshals. Looking and poking. Everybody ready to dial nine-one-one. Everybody ready to shoot carbon dioxide from extinguishers.

They all took this so fucking seriously.

He was distracted too – by thoughts of the Antichrist cowboy, Pellam. Sonny thought he saw him everywhere. In shadows, in alleys. He’s after me…

He’s the reason I’m sweating. He’s the reason my hands shake.

Sweat poured from Sonny’s brow and soaked his hair. Usually the shade of pale citrus, the strands today were dark with moisture. His breath came fast and occasionally his tongue would protrude like a pink eel and dampen a parched lip.

A movie theater was next on his list. He’d debated about whether to burn a faggot porno theater or a regular theater. He decided on a regular one.

First, though, he needed some more supplies. Arsonist are lucky because, unlike bombers or snipers, the tools of their trade are completely legal. Still, they have to be careful and Sonny alternated the places where he bought his ingredients, never showing up at the same gas station more frequently than once a month or so. But Manhattan had surprisingly few gas stations – they were mostly in Jersey or on Long Island – and, because he had no car, he could only shop at those stations within walking distance of his apartment.

He was now on his way to the East Village, to a station he hadn’t been to for more than a year. It was a long walk and would be an even longer walk back with the five gallons of gas. But he was afraid to tempt fate by making a purchase any closer to home.

He thought about how many jars of his juice he’d need for a movie theater.

Just one probably.

Sometimes Sonny would crouch for hours outside a building and try to decide how he could burn it down most efficiently. He was very thin, excruciatingly thin, and when he squatted outside Grand Central Station, say, playing the how-many-jars game, people would drop coins at his feet, thinking he was homeless and had AIDS or just thinking That man is so damn thin and all the time he’d have a thousand dollars in his pocket, be fit as a fiddle and was merely squatting on the curb enjoying his fantasy about razing the baroque station with as few fires as possible.

Grand Central would require seven fires, he’d decided.

Rockefeller Center, sixteen. The Empire State Building, merely four. The World Trade towers, five each (those crazy Arabs got it all wrong).

Sonny now walked past the gas station, nonchalant, looking carefully for police or fire marshals. He’d seen more squad cars patrolling the streets around stations in the last day. But here he saw none and returned to the station, walking up to the pump furthest from the attendant’s office. He uncapped the can and began to pump.

The sweet smell brought back many wonderful memories.

Sonny had known from the first hour of his first visit to the city eight years ago that he would live and die here. New York! How could he live anywhere else? The asphalt streets were hot, steam flowed like smoke from a thousand manholes, buildings burned daily and no one seemed to pay that fact much mind. This was the only city in the world where somebody would ignite trashcans and cars and abandoned buildings, and passersby would glance at the fire and continue on their way as if flames were just a part of the natural landscape.

He’d come to the city after his release from Juvenile Detention. For a time Sonny worked office jobs – messenger, mail boy, Xerox operator. But for every hour in offices or in his probation counselor’s office Sonny spent two honing his craft, working for landlords and real estate developers and even the Mafia occasionally. Gasoline, natural gas, nitrates, naphtha, acetone. And his precious juice, created by Sonny himself, virtually patented, adored by him the way Bach loved the keyboard.

Juice. Fire that kisses human skin and won’t let go.

In his first years living in the city, on the West Side, he wasn’t as solitary as he was now. He’d meet people on the job and he even dated some. But he’d soon grown bored with people. Dates became awkward early in the evening and after several hours the only thing they had in common was a persistent desire to be rid of each other’s company. In restaurants he tended to stare at the candles more than his companion’s eyes.

In the end Sonny proved to be his own best friend. He lived alone in small, neat apartments. He ironed his clothing perfectly, balanced his checkbook, attended art films and lectures on nineteenth-century New York, watched This Old House and educational specials and sitcoms.

And he lived to watch things burn into exquisite, still ash.

As the gasoline can filled with tender, rosy liquid he found himself thinking again about Pellam. The tall, black-clad angel of death. The Antichrist. The moth frying itself to death against the bulb that so attracts him.

Ah, Pellam… Isn’t it astonishing how our lives have become so entwined? Like the strands of a wick. Isn’t it odd how fate works that way? You’re looking for me and I’m looking for you… Will you be my mate forever? We’ll lie together in a bed of fire, we’ll turn into pure light, we’ll be immortal…

Three gallons. As he glanced at the pump gauge he happened to look past it and he focused on the attendant, who was stepping quickly back inside the tiny cashier stand.

Three and a third gallons…

Sonny left the nozzle in the can, stepped toward the attendant’s stand, saw the man on the phone. He returned to the pump. Hmm. Problem here. Problem.

What do we do?

As the three squad cars rolled silently into the station the police officers found Sonny standing motionless, looking uncertainly toward the attendant station, the pump nozzle in his hand.

Problem…

“Excuse me, sir,” a cop’s voice called. “I wonder if you could hang that pump up and come over here?”

The police climbed out of the cars.

Five of the six cops had their hands on their pistol grips.

“What’s the problem, officer?”

“Just hang that up, that nozzle. Okay? Do it now.”

“Sure, officer. Sure.”

He shoved the high-test nozzle back into the pump.

“You have some ID on you, sir?”

“I didn’t do anything. I don’t even have a car. What do you want to give me ticket for?” He fished into his pocket.

“Just step over here, sir. And if we could see some ID.”

“Okay, sure. Did I do something wrong?” Sonny didn’t move.

“Now, sir. Step over here now.”

“Yessir. I’d be happy to.”

“Oh, Christ, no!” a heavily accented voice shouted from behind him. Sonny was surprised it had taken the station attendant so long to notice. “The gas! The other line’s the one turned on.”

Sonny smiled. When he’d seen the police cars in the reflection of the pump he’d dropped the open gas hose on the ground and grabbed the high-test hose – the one he’d dutifully hung up, as ordered. At least twenty gallons of gas had poured out onto the apron and was flowing toward the cops and their car, invisible on the black asphalt.

In an split second, before a single officer could draw his gun, Sonny had his lighter out. He flicked it. A small flame burned on the end. He crouched down.

“Okay, mister,” one cop said, holding up his hands. “Just put that down. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

For a moment no one moved. But then, in a snap, they all knew it was coming. Maybe Sonny’s eyes, maybe his smile… maybe something else gave it away. The six cops turned, fleeing from the deadly pool.

Sonny was on a dry patch of asphalt, though when he touched the flame to the flowing river of gasoline he leapt back fast, like a roach. The fireball was huge. He grabbed the container and fled.

A huge whoosh as the flames swept under the police cars, igniting them. The fiery river continued past them, flowing down Houston Street, roaring, sending a black cloud rolling into the sky. Screams, horns, collisions, as cars stopped and backed away from the flames.

Sonny got a half-block away and couldn’t help himself. He paused and turned to watch the chaos. He was at first disappointed that the main tank didn’t go up but then he grew philosophical and simply enjoyed the fire for what it was.

Thinking:

Fire is not energy but a creature that lives and grows and reproduces; it’s born and it dies. It can out-think anyone.

Fire is the messenger of change.

The sun is fire and the sun is not even particularly hot.

Fire eats the dirt of men. Fire is the most blind justice.

Fire points toward God.