Hell's Kitchen

EIGHTEEN

Stupid, he thought.

Pellam pulled the Colt from his waistband, dropping into a crouch.

Hitting the light switch had just announced to the burglar that Pellam had returned. Should’ve left it out.

He remained frozen in the doorway for a long moment, listening for footsteps, for cocking pistols. But he heard nothing.

Making his way slowly through the ransacked apartment, he opened closet doors and looked under the bed. Every conceivable hiding place. The burglar was gone.

He surveyed the damage, walking from room to room. The discount VCR and TV were still there. The Betacam and deck too, sitting out in plain view. Even the most low-tech thieves would have guessed the camera’d be worth a bundle.

And when he saw the camera he understood what had happened. He felt the shock and dismay like the blast of heat from the fire that destroyed Ettie’s building. He dropped to his knees, ripping open the canvas bag where he kept the master videos of West of Eighth.

No…

He rummaged through the bag, hit Eject on the Ampex deck attached to the Betacam. And surveyed the damage. Two tapes were gone. The two most recent – the one in the camera and the one containing footage he’d shot last week and the week before.

The tapes… Who’d known about them? Well, practically everyone he’d talked to about Ettie’s disappearance or who’d seen him with the camera. Ramirez, the elusive Alex. McKennah. Corcoran. Hell, even Ismail and the boy’s mother, Carol and Louis Bailey knew. For that matter, Lomax and the entire fire marshal’s department. Probably the whole West Side.

The Word on the street. Faster than the Internet.

Who? was one question. But why? was just as interesting. Had Pellam inadvertently taped the pyro himself? Or maybe the man who’d hired him? Or had there been some evidence he’d recorded that had escaped Lomax and the investigators?

He had no answers to these questions and as significant as they were to Ettie’s case there was another implication to the missing tapes. In feature films, all the exposed footage was insured – not for the cost of the celluloid itself but for what it cost to shoot and process, which could run to thousands of dollars a foot. If a daily rough of a feature film is destroyed in a fire the muses may weep but at least the producers recoup their money. Pellam, however, hadn’t been able to afford film completion insurance for West of Eighth. He couldn’t recall what was on those twenty or so hours but the interviews might very well have been the heart of his film.

He sat for a moment in a squeaky chair, staring out the window. Then lazily he punched in 911, spoke to a dispatcher. But the tone of the woman’s voice told him that a crime like this was low on the precinct’s priorities. She asked if he wanted some detectives to come over.

Shouldn’t they be volunteering to do that themselves? Pellam wondered. He said, “That’s okay. Don’t want to trouble anybody.”

The woman missed the irony.

“I mean, they will,” she explained.

“Tell you what,” Pellam said, “if he comes back I’ll let you know.”

“You be sure and do that now. You have a good day.”

“I’ll try.”

It was a dusty little office in the fifties, West Side, not far from where he’d sat beside Otis Balm and listened to the hundred-and-three-year-old man tell him about the Hell’s Kitchen of long ago.

“… Prohibition was the most fanciest the Kitchen ever got. I seen Owney Madden, the gangster, many times. He was from England. People don’t know that. We’d follow him ’round the streets. You know why? Not for the gangster stuff. We was just hoping he’d say something so we could hear how English people talked. That was stupid of us ’cause he was also called Owney the Killer and a lot of people around him got shot. But we was young then and, don’t you know, it takes twenty, thirty years of getting by in the world for death to start meaning anything to you.”

Pellam sized up the office, prepared his mental script and then pushed into the office. Inside, the bitter smell of paper filled the air. A fat fly buzzed repeatedly into the dusty window, trying to escape from the heat; the air conditioner was a twin of Louis Bailey’s.

“I’m looking for a Flo Epstein,” Pellam asked.

A woman with serpentine cheeks, hair pulled back in a sharp bun, walked up to the counter. “That’s me.” It was impossible to guess her age.

“How you doing?” Pellam asked.

“Fine, thank you.”

John Pellam – wearing his one and only suit, ten-year-old Armani, relic from former life – held out a battered wallet, which contained a special inspector badge, gold colored, sold at arcades on Forty-second Street for novelty purposes only, and let the woman look at it for as long as she liked. Which turned out not to be very long. She gazed at him eagerly and he could see she was a woman who enjoyed playing the part of witness. Celebrity, Pellam knew, is the most addictive of intoxicants.

“That Detective Lomax was here last time. I like him. He’s kind of sober. Wait, I think I mean somber.”

“Fire marshal,” Pellam corrected. “They’re not detectives.”

Though they have full arrest powers and carry bigger guns and beat the crap out of you with rolls of U.S. coins.

“Right, right, right.” Ms. Epstein’s forehead crinkled at the mistake.

“When we interrogate people together,” Pellam said. “I play good cop. He plays bad cop. Well, marshal. Now this is just a follow-up. You identified the suspect, didn’t you?”

“You gotta be more buttoned up than that.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ve learned enough so I could be a D.A. myself.” Ms. Epstein recited, “What I told Marshal Lomax was, a black woman of approximately seventy years of age came to the premises here and asked for a tenant policy application. I confirmed that the mug shot they showed me was of her. That’s all. I didn’t quote identify any suspects. I’ve been through this a couple times.”

“I can tell.” Pellam nodded. “We sure appreciate intelligent witnesses like you. Now how long was the woman in here?”

“Three minutes.”

“That’s all?”

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

“Depending on the partner and the baby, I’d guess.” Pellam jotted down meaningless scrawls. “She gave you a cash deposit.”

“Right. We sent it all on to the company and they issued the policy.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“No.”

Pellam flipped closed his steno pad. “That’s very helpful. I appreciate your time.” The Polaroid square appeared quickly. “I just want to confirm that this is the woman who came in here.”

“That’s not the mug shot.”

“No. This one was taken in the Women’s Detention Center.”

Ms. Epstein glanced at it and began to speak.

Pellam help up a hand. “Take your time. Be sure.”

She studied the smooth black face, the prison department shift, the folded hands. The stiff salt and pepper hair. “That’s her.”

“You’re positive.”

“Absolutely.” She hesitated. Then laughed. “I was going to say that I’d swear to it in court. But then I guess that’s exactly what I’m going to do, isn’t it?”

“Guess it is,” Pellam confirmed. And kept his face an emotionless mask. The way all good law enforcers learn to do.

That evening – a hot, foggy dusk – found Pellam standing in an alley across from brownstone, New York Post in hand.

He wasn’t paying much attention to the paper. He was thinking: Geraniums?

The nondescript, buff-colored tenement was like a thousand others in the city. The flowers planted in front of it, fiery orange-red, would have fit fine with any other building.

But there?

He’d been standing in the alley for an hour when a door opened and the figure stepped outside, looked up and down the street then started down the stairs. He carried a large shoe box. Pellam tossed the paper aside and began walking as silently as he could along the hot asphalt. He finally caught up with the young man.

Without turning around, Ramirez said, “You been out there for fifty minutes and you got two guns aimed at your back right now. So don’t do nothing, you know, stupid.”

“Thanks for the advice, Hector.”

“What the fuck you doing here, man? You crazy?”

“What’s in the box?”

“It’s a shoe box? What you think’s in it? Shoes.”

Pellam was walking abreast of Ramirez now. He had to move fast to keep up the pace.

“So, what you want?” the young man asked.

“I want to know why you lied to me.”

“I no lie, man. I’m not like no white man. Not like you reporters. Telling white man’s lies.”

Pellam laughed. “What is that crap, the Cubano Lord’s creed? You’ve gotta recite it to get jumped in your crew?”

“Don’t give me no shit. Been a long day.”

They came to the north-south avenue. Ramirez looked up and down and they turned north. After a minute he said, “I don’t believe you. You too fucking much.”

“What?”

“Hanging out in fronta our kickback, man. Nobody does that. Not even the cops.”

“You plant the geraniums yourself?”

“Fuck you. You carrying?”

“A gun?” Pellam asked. “No.”

“Man, you are a crazy fuck. Coming to my kickback without a gun. That how people get blown away. What you mean, I lie to you?”

“Tell me about your aunt, Hector. The one got burned out of the Four-fifty-eight building. She got a new place, I heard.”

Ramirez grinned. “I tell you I look after my family.”

“When did she move?”

“I dunno.”

“Before the fire?”

“Around then. I don’t know exactly.”

“You forgot?”

“Yeah, I fucking forgot. Man, I’m busy, why you don’t go have a fucking talk with Corcoran?

“I already did.”

Ramirez lifted an eyebrow, trying not to look too impressed.

Pellam continued, “You also forgot to tell me that she was one of – how many was it? – eight hundred eyewitnesses who saw Joe the Thug kill that guy from Corcoran’s crew.”

“Spear Driscoe and Bobby Frink.”

“So are we all agreed that Corcoran didn’t burn down the building because of your aunt? That’s not a white man’s lie now, is it?”

“Just go away, man. I’m busy.”

“How well you get along with somebody named O’Neil?”

“I don’t know nobody named O’Neil.”

“No? He knows you.”

Ramirez spat out, “What the fuck you talking to him for?” The young man had been playfully irritated a moment ago. Now he was mad.

“Who said I was talking to him?” Pellam touched his ear. “I hear things too. I heard maybe he had some guns. Maybe he was selling some guns.”

Ramirez stopped walking, gripped Pellam’s arm. “What you hear?”

Pellam pulled his arm way. “That you rousted him last week. ’Cause he’s selling hardware to Corcoran.”

Ramirez blinked. Then broke into a huge laugh. “Oh, man.”

“True, or not true?

“Both, man.”

“What do you mean?”

“True and not true.” He started walking again. “Look, I gonna explain this but you keep it to yourself. Otherwise I have to kill you.”

“Tell me.”

Ramirez said, “O’Neil, him and me, we do business. He supplies me. Get’s me good stuff. Glocks, MAC-10s, Steyrs.”

“You beat up your own supplier in public?”

“Fuck yes. Was his idea. He’s mick and I’m spic. You know how long he’d last, Jimmy finds out he was selling to me? Some of Corcoran’s boys, they were getting suspicious so we do some sparring out in public. O’Neil, he took a fall.” Ramirez looked at Pellam closely. He roared with laughter.

“What’s the joke?”

“I can see it in your face, man. You almost believe me.” The young man added, “I can prove it. Yeah, there was guns in the building. I paid for ’ em and O ’Neil left ’em there for me to pick up only I didn’t send nobody over there before the place burned. There was Glocks, Brownings and some pretty little Tauruses I had my heart set on, man. Twelve, thirteen of ’em. You talk to one of your reporter friends. See what the crime scene boys found there. If that’s right then you know I no burn down nothing.”

Pellam pulled a sheet of paper from his back pocket. “Three Glock, four Tauruses, and six Brownings.”

“Man, you good.”

They passed Forty-second Street, once the Tenderloin of New York and now about as dangerous – and interesting – as a suburban strip mall. Pellam asked, “Where’re we going?”

“I’m doing a business deal. And I don’t want you around.”

“Your crew’s in business?”

“Not a crew, man. It’s a club.”

“What kind of business?”

Ramirez lifted the top of the box, revealing a pair of new basketball shoes.

“I got a truckload of ’em.”

“You buy ’em and then you sell ’em, that right?” Pellam asked skeptically.

“Yeah, I buy things and sell ’em. That’s my business.”

“What about the ‘buy’ part? You paid money and took delivery of a shipment of these? Invoice, bill of lading, all that?”

“Yeah, I bought ’em,” Ramirez shot back. “Same way you fucking reporters pay people for your stories. You do that? You pay somebody to tell you things?”

“No, but-”

“ ‘No, but.’ Fuck. You take people’s lives, write about ’em, and don’t pay nobody for them.” He mocked, “Oh, man, who’d do something terrible like that?”

A block later they segued around a Korean vegetable stand. Pellam said, “I need a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Somebody broke into my apartment last night. Can you find out who did it?”

“Why you ask me, you think I do that too?”

“If I thought you did it I wouldn’t be asking you.”

Ramirez considered. “I don’t got real good contacts in the Village, you know.”

“How’d you know I lived in the Village?”

“I said I got no real good contacts. I no say I don’t have any.”

“Ask around.”

“Okay.

“Gracias.”

“Nada.”

They’d walked far north on Ninth Avenue, almost out of the Kitchen. Pellam leaned against a lamppost on the corner while Ramirez disappeared into a tiny bodega. When he came out he was carrying a thick envelope, which he slipped into the pocket of his tight jeans.

There was sudden motion from the alley nearby.

“Shit.” Ramirez spun around, reaching into his jacket.

Pellam dropped into a crouch and stepped toward a parked car for cover.

“Who the fuck’re you?” Ramirez said.

Pellam squinted into the gloomy opening of the alley. The intruder was Ismail.

“Yo, cuz,” the boy said, glancing uncertainly at the Latino. The boy stepped forward uncertainly.

Ramirez glanced at him like he was a roach. “Man, you come up on people like that… I thinking I oughta cap you ass.”

Ismail’s cautious eyes swept the sidewalk.

To Pellam he said, “You know him?”

“Yeah. He’s a friend of mine.”

A faint grin seemed to cross the boy’s face.

“A friend of yours?” Ramirez spat out. “Why you want a little moyeto like that for a friend?”

“He’s okay.”

“He okay?” Ramirez muttered. “He come sneaking up on me again, he gonna be one dead okay friend of yours.”

“Hey, Ismail, how come you’re not at the Outreach Center?”

“Dunno. Just hanging.”

“Hear anything about your mother and sister?”

He shook his head, eyes slipping from Ramirez’s scowl to Pellam’s face. And for a moment Ismail seemed just like any other child. Shy, uneasy, torn between fear and yearning. It hurt Pellam to see this vulnerability. The street defiance was somehow easier to take. He thought about Carol Wyandotte’s assessment. She was wrong. It was’t too late for him. There had to be some hope.

Pellam crouched down. “Do me favor. Go on back to the Outreach Center. Get some sleep. You eat anything?”

He shrugged.

“Did you?” Pellam persisted.

“I ’jacked some beer,” he said proudly. “Me and a homie, we drank that.”

But Pellam couldn’t smell any liquor on the boy’s breath. Childish bravado.

Pellam gave him five dollars. “Go to McDonald’s.”

“Yeah! Hey, you come by and see me, Pellam? I show you some good shit. We play basketball, I know all the moves!”

“Yeah, I’ll come by.”

The boy turned to leave.

Ramirez called out brusquely, “Hey, punk…”

Ismail stopped, looked back cautiously.

“You got big feet?”

The round, dark face stared up at him.

“I ask you a question. You got big feet.”

“Dunno.” He looked down at his tattered sneakers.

“Here.” Ramirez tossed the box of basketball shoes toward the boy. He caught it awkwardly. Looked inside.

His eyes went wide. “Shit. Be Jordan Air Pumps. Shit.”

“They no fit now, not too good,” Ramirez said, “but maybe, you don’t sneak up on people, you live long enough to grow inta them. Now you do what he tell you.” Nodding at Pellam. “Get the fuck outa here.”

When he was gone Ramirez said to Pellam, “Let’s go celebrate my deal.” He tapped the pocket where the fat, white envelope rested. “You drink tequila?”

“Mescal I drink. Sauza I drink. Margaritas ’re disgusting.”

Ramirez exhaled a derisive laugh, as he always seemed to do when somebody stated the obvious, and started off down the street, impatiently gesturing Pellam after him. Plans for the evening had apparently been made.

They split the worm.

Ramirez hacked the poor thing apart with an honest-to-God West Side Story switchblade as they sat in a smokey little Cuban-Chinese restaurant near Columbus Circle.

Pellam told him about location scouting in Mexico, where he’d spent hours with the off-duty gaffers and grips and stunt people, bragging about their psychedelic experiences ingesting fat white mescal worms. “I never felt anything though.”

“No, man,” Ramirez protested. “These guys, they fuck up you mind.” And downed his portion of the worm.

After they finished two plates of tamales each they strolled outside. Ramirez stopped at a package store and bought another fifth of mescal.

Working their way downtown, Ramirez said, “Man, here it’s Saturday night and I no got a woman. That sucks.”

“That waitress at the bar. She was flirting with you.”

“Which one?”

“The Hispanic one.”

“Her?” He scoffed. Then he frowned. “Hey, Pellam, lemme give you some advice. No say ‘Hispanic.’ ”

“No?”

“That’s no good no more.”

“Tell me what’s politically correct. I’d like to hear it from somebody who says ‘mick’ and ‘nigger’.”

“That’s different, man.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Just is Ramirez announced. Then he continued. “Whatever country somebody come from that’s what you say. Dominican. Puerto Rican. I’m Cubano. If you gotta use one word say ‘Latino.’ ” Ramirez took a hit from the bottle. He began reciting, “ ‘Apostol de la independencia de Cuba guia de los pueblos… Americanos y paladin de la dignidad humana.’ You speak Spanish?”

“A little. Not enough to understand whatever the hell you just said.”

“Those words, they on the statute of Jose Marti on Sixth Avenue. Central Park. You ever seen it?”

“No.”

“Ah,” he said, sneering. “How you can miss it? It thirty-feet high. His horse, it up on two legs and Marti is staring down Sixth Avenue. He look kind of funny, like he no trust nobody.”

“Who was he? Marti?”

“You don’t know?”

Art fims aside, history in Hollywood is pretty much limited to very unhistorical Westerns and war movies.

“He fought the Spanish to get them out of Cuba. He was this poet. He got exiled when he was fifteen or sixteen and he travel all over the world to fight for Cuban independence. He live here in New York for a long time. He was a great man.”

“You ever been back to Cuba?”

“Back? I never been there.”

“Never? You’re kidding.”

“No, man. Why I go there? Havana got traffic jams and slums and dust, it got las muchachas and las cerveza. It got hombres embalaos on ganja. Crack too now probably. It just like New York. I want a vacation, I go to Nassau with a beautiful girl and gamble. Club Med.”

“It’s your home.”

“Not my home, man,” he said sternly. “Was my grandfather’s home. Not mine… There this guy at a warehouse I use sometimes, Señor…” Ramirez stretched the word out to work contempt into his voice. “Buñello. Loco, this viejo. Look at him – he want everybody call him ‘Señor.’ ‘I have to live in los Estados Unidos for now. But I am Cubano,’ he say. ‘I was exiled.’ Oh, man, I gonna punch him out he say that one more time. He say, ‘We all going back someday. We all going to sit on sugar plantations and be rich again and have los moyetos, you know, blacks, do all the work for us.’ Puto. Man, my father couldn’t wait to get out.”

“Your father, was he a revolutionary?”

“Mi padre? No. He come here in fifty-four. You know what they call us then? Latinos who come to America? They call us ‘summer people in winter clothes.’ He was a kid when he left. His family, they live in the Bronx. He was in a gang too.”

“You mean a club.”

“Back then crews, they was different. You move into a new neighborhood, you go one-on-one with the leader. You know, you got it up from the shoulders – you fought with your fists. Until you do that, you was nobody. So while the fidelistos were burning plantations and shooting batistianos my father, he was in this circle of punks and fighting this big puto on a Hundred Eighty-sixth Street. Got the crap beat out of him. But, after, they all went to drink cervezas and rum nd he was jumped in. They give him name. They call him, ‘Manomuerto.’ That was the day he prove his heart. That’s what they say. ‘Proving your heart.’ Su corazón.”

“Where’s your father now?”

“Left six, seven year ago. Went to work one morning, sent my brother Piri home with half his pay envelope and say he call sometime. But he never call.” Hector Ramirez laughed loud. “Who know? Maybe he in Havana.”

A bunch of tiny worms were taking tie-dyed trips in Pellam’s brain. He hadn’t had that much really, five or six shots.

Okay, maybe more.

And, okay, maybe there was something psychedelic about the little critters.

As the two men plunged further into the dark heart of the Kitchen he realized Ramirez was talking to him.

“What?”

“Man, I asked you what the fuck you really doing here?”

“What am I doing? I’m drinking tequila with a criminal.”

“Hey, you think I’m a criminal? I got a conviction?”

“I’m told you do.”

He thought for a moment. “An’ who told you??”

“Word on the street,” Pellam muttered ominously.

“You no answering my question. What’re you doing here?”

“My father,” Pellam answered, surprising himself with his candor.

“You father. Where you father? He live here?”

“Not any more.” Pellam turned his eyes north, where easily a million lights glimmered with different types of brightness. He took the bottle back. “I worked on this film a few years ago. To Sleep in a Shallow Grave.”

“I never hear of it.”

“It was about a woman who comes home and finds her father may not have been her father. I was just scouting locations but I rewrote part of the script too.”

“Her mother, she a puta?”

“No, just had an affair. She was lonely.”

Ramirez took the bottle, swallowed a mouthful, nodded at Pellam to keep going.

He said, “My mother lives upstate. Little town called Simmons. No, you never heard of it. I went to see her, this was two Christmases ago.”

“You buy her a present?”

“Of course I did. Let me finish my story.”

“Good you remembered her. Always do that, man.”

“Let me finish. We drove out to see my father’s grave like we always do when I’m there.” Another sip. Then another. “We get out to the grave and she’s crying.”

They were deep into the Kitchen now and turned into the stinking cobblestoned alleyway that led to Ramirez’s kickback.

“She’s got a confession to make, she tells me. It turns out she doesn’t think her husband was my father after all.”

“Man, that was one big fucking surprise.”

“Benjamin – her husband, the man I thought was my father – was away a lot. Traveled all the time. They had a fight about it, he went off on a trip. She took this lover. After a while he leaves. Ben comes home. They patch things up. She’s pregnant, can’t tell what day it happened, you know. But she’s pretty sure it’s not Ben’s. She’d been brooding about it ever since he died. Telling me or not, I mean. Finally she finally broke down and did.”

“Fuck up you mind, hearing that. So why you come here?”

“I wanted to find out about him. My real father. Didn’t want to meet him. But I wanted to know who he was, what he did for a living, maybe find a picture of him.”

“He still here?”

“Nope. Long gone.” He explained how he’d found the man’s last known address but he’d left that building years before and there were no other leads. Pellam had contacted the vital statistics departments in the five boroughs of New York City and all the nearby counties of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. No response.

“Gone, huh? Just like my padre.”

Pellam nodded.

“So why you stay?”

“I thought I’d do a movie about Hell’s Kitchen. His neighborhood. He lived here for a while.” Pellam held up the bottle. “Well, here’s to your padre, the son of a bitch.” He drank from it.

“Here’s to both of ours. Wherever the fuck they are.”

Pellam was just handed the bottle back when he felt, for the second time in several days, the chill of metal on his neck. This time, too, it was a gun muzzle.

Ramirez rated three thugs, Pellam only one.

“Fuck,” the Latino spat out as two of them gripped his shoulders and the third frisked him carefully, taking his automatic pistol and his knife. Another grabbed the mescal bottle and flung it into the alley.

“Only spic faggots drink this shit.”

Pellam heard the bottle crash.

Grinning, Ramirez nodded to the man who’d spoken, said to Pellam, “This is Sean McCray. I no know why he here. Most Saturday nights he got a date – at home with his dick.”

Which earned Ramirez a fist. It slammed into his jaw. He staggered under the blow.

Pellam recognized McCray from the table in Corcoran’s bar the other day. He’d been sitting near Jacko Drugh.

“I remember him,” Pellam said.

Which, for some reason, earned Pellam a fist too, though he got slugged in the belly. He doubled over, gasping, breathless. His minder, large man in a black leather coat like Drugh’s, dragged him to the middle of the alley, dropped him in a pile, turned back to Ramirez.

The young Latino struggled, tried to kick one of them. But they just started beating him. When they stopped, Ramirez gasped, “Man, you stupid fucking micks.” He seemed more exasperated than anything else by their behavior.

“Shut up.”

McCray leaned close. “I had a little talk with O’Neil. He told me you two were in business together. Which I can’t say surprised me.”

Another one of the men said, “Tell him what happened. To O’Neil.”

“Oh, the swim?” offered Pellam’s minder.

“Yeah.”

McCray said, “O’Neil went for a fucking swim in the Hudson, next to the QE2. Ain’t come up yet.”

Ramirez shook his head. “Oh, that’s brilliant. You cap the only gun dealer in the Kitchen… Jimmy buys from him too, you know. Now we all gonna go buy shit up in Harlem and East New York and the niggers gonna rob you blind. Oh, you soooo fucking smart. Jimmy don’t know you did it, I bet. Man, you fuck this one up.” He spit blood.

A moment’s silence from the thugs. One of them eyed McCray uneasily.

“Shit,” Ramirez spat out. “You know what happens if you kill me? Sanchez takes over and fucking wipes you out. We’ve got MAC-10s and Uzis. We got Desert Eagles.”

“Oh, we’re fucking scared.”

“And when Corcoran find you started a war, if Sanchez don’t nail your ass, Jimmy going to. Just get the fuck outa here.”

“Man, you got a mouth on you, Ramirez.”

“You fuck-”

McCray swung hard and caught Ramirez’s jaw again with a glancing blow. Pellam struggled to get up and got a booted foot in the belly. He dropped to the ground, clutching his stomach, moaning.

The Irishmen laughed.

“Your girlfriend here, he’s not feeling so good, Hector.”

Pellam’s guard gripped his collar firmly and the three around Ramirez wrestled him into an alcove.

“Why’n’t you piss on him?” one of them asked.

“Shut up,” McCray barked. “This ain’t a game.”

Pellam, retching, got up on his knees.

“He’s gonna puke,” his minder called, laughing.

But they lost interest in Pellam and concentrated on pounding on Ramirez. He fought hard but he was no match for the burly Irishmen and finally he dropped to his knees. McCray looked up and down the alley, nodded to his lieutenant, who pulled the hammer back on his pistol, aimed it down at the Latino. The other two stepped away. One squinted.

Ramirez sighed and stopped struggling. He gazed back at his killer, calm, shook his head. “Cristos… Okay, so go ahead and do it.” He smiled at McCray.

No choice, Pellam thought, consoling himself. No choice at all. He gave up on the fake retching and rose into crouch, knocked his minder’s hand away then swept the Colt Peacemaker from his back waistband, cocking the single-action gun with his thumb. He fired toward the shooter’s leg, which kicked out sideways under the impact of the large slug. The man dropped his gun, twisting away, screaming in pain, falling to the cobblestones.

Pellam’s guard went for his own pistol but the barrel of the Peacemaker caught him in the nose with a loud crack. Pellam ripped the Glock from the screaming man’s fingers as he backed away, hands up, “No, man, no, don’t. Please!”

McCray had leapt for cover, sprinting for a Dumpster. The other Irishman, near Ramirez, started to turn but the Latino decked him with a solid fist in the chest. Three fast blows. He cried out and dropped onto his back, gasping for breath and vomiting.

Pellam slipped behind a corner and fired another shot – toward but not at McCray – aiming for the brick at his feet, worried about bullets flying through the populated neighborhood. The shot drove the Irishman further behind the Dumpster.

The thug with the gunshot was screaming, “Oh, God, oh, shit. My leg, my leg!”

Everybody ignored him. Pellam’s minder had vanished, running down an offshoot of the alley. McCray and the remaining Irishman were firing blindly at Ramirez, who was pinned down, looking for cover as best he could behind a pile of trash bags.

“Yo,” Pellam called, ducking as a bullet from McCray snapped past him. He tossed the black automatic to Ramirez, who caught it one-handed, pulled the slide and fired several covering shots. The man who’d been hit kept sobbing, hands over his face, crawling an inch at a time toward his comrades.

Ramirez gave a whoop and laughed loud. He was an excellent shot and the Irishmen could only peek out for a second or two and fire a careless shot before ducking back.

The gunfire lasted for no more than thirty seconds. Pellam didn’t fire again. He was sure there’d be sirens filling the night, whipsawing lights. A hundred cops. But he heard nothing from the streets around them.

It was, of course, Hell’s Kitchen. What was a little gunplay?

A hand reached out from behind the brick wall and grabbed the wounded man. He disappeared. A few minutes later the three Irishmen were stumbling out of the alley. A car started and squealed away.

Pellam stood, still struggling for breath. Ramirez too, laughing. He checked the clip in the gun and slipped it into his pocket, retrieved his own automatic.

“Son of a bitch,” Ramirez said.

“Let’s get-”

The gunshot was deafening. Pellam felt a hot, searing pain on his cheek.

Ramirez spun and fired from his hip, three times, four, hitting the man – Pellam’s minder – who’d returned and fired from the shadows of the alley. The man flew backwards.

Hands shaking, Pellam watched the body twitch as he died.

Ramirez asked urgently, “Jesus, man, you okay?”

Pellam lifted his hand to his cheek. Touching a strip of exposed flesh. Looked at the blood on his fingers.

It stung like pure hell. But that was good. He remembered from his stuntman days that numbness was bad, pain was good. Whenever a gag went bad and a stuntman complained of numbness, the stunt coordinators got nervous in a big way.

In the distance, the first siren.

“Listen,” Pellam said desperately, “I can’t be found here.”

“Man, it was self-defense.”

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t be found with a gun.”

Ramirez frowned then nodded knowingly. Then looked toward Ninth Avenue. “Here’s what you do, man. Just go out to the street, walk slow. Like you out shopping. Cover up that.” He pointed toward the wounded cheek. “Get some bandages or something. Stay on Eighth or Ninth, go north. Remember: Walk slow. You be invisible, you walk slow. Gimme your piece. We got a place to keep ’em.”

Pellam handed over the Colt.

Ramirez said, “I thought you said you weren’t carrying.”

“White man’s lie,” Pellam whispered, and vanished down the alley.