Hell's Kitchen

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 was 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.

And then they’d found that the grocery store was part of a gourmet chain that charged $2.39 for a can of black beans, the laundry charged three dollars to wash a blouse, and as for the restaurant, it had a dress code and the limos parked out in front created a terrible traffic jam.

Pellam now made a mental note about the workers, wondered why they were surveying in the alley across the street. He wondered too why they’d been working at ten o’clock at night.

“I think we should call your daughter,” Pellam said.

“I already did,” Ettie said and looked at her cast in surprise – as if it had just materialized on her arm. “I had a long talk with her this morning. She’s sending money to Louis for his bill. She wanted to come tomorrow but I was thinking I’ll need her more ’round the trial.”

“I’m voting that there won’t even be a trial.”

The bejeweled guard examined her watch. “Okay. Come on, Washington.”

“I just got here,” Pellam said coolly.

“An’ now you just be leavin’.”

“A few minutes,” he said.

“Time’s up. Move it! And you, Washington, hustle.”

Pellam lowered his eyes to the guard’s. “She’s got a sprained ankle. You want to tell me how the hell’s she supposed to hustle?”

“Don’t want lip from you, mister. Less go.”

The door swung open, revealing the dim hallway, in which a sign was partially visible. PRISONERS SHALL NO

“Ettie,” Pellam said, grinning. “You owe me something. Don’t forget.”

“What’s that?”

“The end of the story about Billy Doyle.”

Pellam watched the woman tuck away her despair beneath a smile. “You’ll like that story, John. That’ll be a good one in your film.” To the matron she said, “I’m coming, I’m coming. Give an old lady a break.”