Hell's Kitchen

TWENTY-EIGHT

The story was big.

The suicide of the youth center director who’d hired the mad pyromaniac… This was the classic stuff of the New York Post and Geraldo.

The Live at Five broadcast showed the Coast Guard cutters and the tiny blue police boats searching New York Harbor for Carol Wyandotte’s body. The Associated Press got the most dramatic shot, which featured Ellis and Liberty Islands in the background s they lifted the woman’s body from the water. Pellam saw the picture in the New York Times. Her eyes were closed. He remembered how pale they were, as pale as her skin after all those hours in the cold water.

Wolf eyes…

The charges against Ettie were dropped. That part of the story was almost nonnews, except for a bite that brought the tabloids into play: Roger McKennah owned a piece of property right next to the building she’d lived in, the one that had burned. Everybody was eager to developer-bash, of course, but even the most zealous scoop-hog couldn’t find any tie linking him and the arson. One network even ran a glowing story about McKennah’s installing a high-tech day care facility in the neighborhood (the news account featuring a lurid videotape of an illegal day care center on Twelfth Avenue – dramatic footage that McKennah himself had somehow procured).

The bulk of the reporting devoted itself to the gala topping-off ceremony at McKennah Tower on Saturday. Good news: although former President Bush, Michael Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio would be unable to attend, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Rudolph Guiliani, Madonna, Geena Davis, Barbara Walters and David Letterman had RSVP’d in the affirmative.

At four-forty-five on Friday afternoon John Pellam pushed open one of the tall brass doors of the Criminal Courts Building and helped Ettie Washington outside then down the few stairs to the wide sidewalk.

They stood on Centre Street under a clear sky, the late afternoon unusually cool for August. It was the end of the civil servants’ day and hundreds of government workers passed before them on their way home.

“You doing okay?” he asked the gaunt woman.

“Fine, John, just fine.” Though she still limped and occasionally winced at the pain from her broken arm when she adjusted her makeshift sling. Pellam noticed that his signature was still the only one on her cast.

The woman had been released from the lockup without ceremony. She seemed even more frail than the last time Pellam had seen her. The guards were somewhat less antagonistic than on previous visits though Pellam put that down to lethargy, not contrition.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the voice called from down the sidewalk.

They turned to see the rumpled man in windbreaker and jeans. He was trotting toward them. “Pellam. Mrs. Washington.”

“Lomax,” Pellam said, his face an angry mask. Of all the batterings he’d taken in the last few days – bullet streaking across the cheek, the fire, the Irish Mafia – it was the fire marshal’s skinny friend, the man with the roll of quarters, who’d inflicted the most painful damage.

Lomax paused. He’d stopped Pellam and Ettie as he’d planned but now that he had their attention he wasn’t sure what to do. Finally he extended his hand to Ettie. She took it cautiously He debated about doing the same with Pellam but sensed, correctly, that the gesture would be rejected.

“I don’t guess anybody came by to apologize,” Lomax said.

“The President and the First Lady just left,” Pellam said.

“I thought Lois Koepel’d send flowers,” the fire marshal tried.

“Maybe FTD was closed.”

Ettie didn’t participate in the uneasy banter.

“We made a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry you lost your home.”

Ettie thanked him, still wary – as she probably had always been around cops and always would be. They talked for a few minutes about how shocking it was that a youth director had been behind the arson.

“Was a time when nobody would’ve cared what happened in the Kitchen,” Lomax said. “Life’s changing. Slowly. But it’s changing.”

Ettie said nothing but Pellam knew what her response would be. He remembered, almost verbatim, one of her quotes.

“… That fancy building, that tower across the street, it’s a nice one. But whoever’s putting it up, I hope for his sake he doesn’t expect too much. Nothing lasts in the Kitchen, don’t you know? Nothing changes but nothing lasts either.”

Lomax handed her a card, saying if there was ever anything he could do… Some help finding a new place. Public assistance.

But Louis Bailey had already found Ettie a new apartment. She told Lomax this.

“And I don’t really need anything-” she began. But Pellam shook his head and touched her shoulder. Meaning: Let’s not be too hasty here. Bailey was perhaps a bad lawyer but Pellam was confident he could toy with the city’s gears well enough to negotiate a generous settlement.

Then Lomax was gone and Pellam and Ettie stepped to the curb. Several taxis, seeing a black woman and anticipating a Harlem- or Bronx-bound fare, sped past them.

This infuriated Pellam though Ettie took it in stride. She winced in pain and Pellam suggested, “Let’s sit for a minute.” He gestured toward a dark green bench.

“You know what this part of town used to be, John?”

“No idea.”

“Five Points.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”

“When the Gophers were ruling Hell’s Kitchen this neighborhood was just as dangerous. Maybe worse. Grandpa Ledbetter told me. Did I ever tell you about his gangster scrapbook? He kept all kinds of clippings in it.”

“I don’t think you ever mentioned that, no.” Pellam looked out over the parks and neoclassical courthouses. “The money you had saved up? In your savings account… it ws so you could find your daughter, wasn’t it?”

“Louis told you about her?”

Pellam nodded.

“I wasn’t honest with you about that either, John. I’m sorry. But the fact is I said I’d let you interview me because I thought maybe she’d see me on TV down in Florida, or wherever she is. She’d see me and give me a call.”

“You know, Ettie, that confession to Lomax was a nice try.”

The woman looked in her purse and extracted a handkerchief. Pellam remembered that she washed them in perfumed water and let them dry on a thin string above the bathtub. She wiped her eye. “That was the one thing that hurt me so much – that you’d be thinking I lied to you. Or I tried to hurt you.”

“Never thought that for a second.”

“You should’ve,” Ettie scolded. “That was the whole point. You should’ve gone home to California like you were supposed to. And stayed out of harm’s way. You should’ve gone and you should’ve stayed gone.”

“You thought that if you confessed then the killer’d give up, wouldn’t try to hurt me again. It’s the same thing Billy Doyle did: confessing so your brother wouldn’t get killed.”

“What he did gave me the idea,” she explained. “See, I knew I wasn’t the one who hired that psycho to burn down the building. But somebody did and they were still out there. And as long as you kept poking around that somebody was gonna try and hurt you.”

Ettie gazed at the elaborate verdigris crown of the Woolworth building, sprouting gargoyles. Finally she said, “They took so much away from me, John. My Billy Doyle got taken away by his own nature. And some crazy man with a gun took my Frankie. And Elizabeth got taken off by some fancy man. Even my neighborhood – the developers and rich people’re taking it. I didn’t want ’em to take you too. I couldn’t’ve stood that. I thought, Hell, I’ll be out of jail in a few years. Then maybe you’ll still want to talk to me, keep putting me on tape and listening to my stories. Oh, maybe you wouldn’t and I’d’ve understood that. But I’d rather you were alive and well.” She laughed a frail laugh. “That was the little bit I wanted to save for myself. See, sometimes you can fool ’em. Oh, yes, yes, sometimes you can. I’m tired. I think I’d like to be getting home now.”

Pellam strode into the street, directly into the path of an empty cab, which squealed to a halt a foot from him. Pellam escorted Ettie forward, past three burly men hurrying a manacled prisoner toward the courts. The prisoner was the only one of the quartet who nodded respectfully at the elderly woman. Ettie nodded back. They climbed into the cab.

The Pakistani driver looked at Pellam, inquiring silently about their destination.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” Pellam answered.

He blinked.

Pellam repeated it but the cabby just shook his head.

“Thirty-Fourth Street and Ninth Avenue,” Pellam said.

His sunken eyes gazed at Pellam a moment longer, then he stabbed the meter and they clattered off madly through the busy streets.