Pellam took the offered bag and read.
Here’s 2 thousand like we agreed. Try and don’t hurt any body. I’ll leave the door open – the one in the back. I’ll give you the rest, after I get the insurance money.
– Ettie.
TWENTY-THREE
Pellam stood uneasily, dropped the oxygen mask onto the sidewalk.
“It’s a forgery,” Pellam said quickly. “It’s all-”
“I’ve already talked to her, Pellam,” Louis Bailey explained. “I’ve been on the phone for ten minutes.”
“With Ettie?”
“She confessed, John,” Bailey said softly.
Pellam couldn’t take his eyes off Sonny’s body. Somehow the sheet – bedclothes of the merely sleeping – made the sight more horrible than the burned flesh itself.
Bailey continued. “She said she never thought anybody’d get hurt. She never wanted anybody to die. I believe her.”
“She confessed?” Pellam whispered. He hawked hard and spit. Coughed for a moment, spit again. Struggled to catch his breath. “I want to see her, Louis.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Pellam said, “They threatened her. Or blackmailed her.” He nodded toward Lomax, standing at the curb, talking to his huge assistant. The fire marshal had overheard Pellam but he said nothing. Why should he? He had his pyro. He had the woman who hired him. Lomax seemed almost embarrassed for Pellam at his desperate words.
Wearily the old lawyer said, “John, there was no coercion.”
“The bank teller? When the money was withdrawn? Let’s find him.”
“The teller identified Ettie’s picture.”
“Did you try the Ella Fitzgerald trick?”
Bailey fell silent.
Pellam asked, “What did you find at City Hall?”
“About the tunnel?” Bailey shrugged. “Nothing. No recorded easements or leases for underground rights beneath Ettie’s building.”
“McKennah must’ve-”
“John, it’s over with.”
A blaring horn sounded across the street. Pellam wondered what it signified. The workers paid no attention. There were hundreds of them still on the job. Even at this hour.
“Let her do her time,” Bailey continued. “She’ll be safe. Medium-security prison. Protective seclusion.”
Which meant: solitary confinement. At least that’s what it meant at the Q – San Quentin – according to the California Department of Corrections. Solitary… the hardest time there is. People’s souls die in solitary even if their bodies survive.
“She’ll get out,” Bailey continued, “and it’ll all be over with.”
“Will it?” he asked. “She’s seventy-two. When will she be eligible for parole?”
“Eight years. Probably.”
“Jesus.”
“Pellam,” the lawyer said. “Why don’t you take some time off? Go on a vacation.”
Well, he was certainly going to be doing that – though involuntarily. West of Eighth would never be made now.
“Have you told her daughter?”
Bailey cocked his head. “Whose daughter?”
“Ettie’s… Why you looking at me that way?” Pelham asked.
“Ettie hasn’t heard from Elizabeth for years. She has no idea where the girl is.”
“No, she talked to her a few days ago. She’s in Miami.”
“Pellam…” Bailey rubbed his palms together slowly. “When Ettie’s mother died in the eighties Elizabeth stole the old woman’s jewelry and all of Ettie’s savings. She vanished, took off with some guy from Brooklyn. They were headed for Miami but nobody knows where they ended up. Ettie hasn’t heard from her since.”
“Ettie told me-”
“That Elizabeth owned a bed and breakfast? Or that she was managing a chain of restaurants?”
Pellam watched hard-hatted workers carrying four-by-eight sheets of drywall on their backs walk around to the back of the Tower. The Sheetrock bent up and down like wings. He said to Bailey, “That she was a real estate broker.”
“Oh. Ettie told that one too.”
“It wasn’t true?”
“I thought you knew. That’s why her motive – the insurance money – troubled me so much. Ettie came to me last year and wanted to hire a private eye to find Elizabeth. She thought she was somewhere in the United States but didn’t know where. I told her it could cost fifteen thousand, maybe more, for a search like that. She said she’d get the money. No matter what it took she was going to find her daughter.”
“So Elizabeth isn’t paying your bill?”
“My bill?” Bailey laughed gently. “I’m not charging Ettie for this. Of course not.”
Pellam massaged his stinging eyes. He was remembering the day he met Bailey, in the bar. His uptown branch.
“You sure you want to get involved in this?”
He’d thought the lawyer was simply warning him how dangerous the Kitchen was. But apparently there’d been more to his message; Bailey knew Ettie better than Pellam had guessed.
Pellam wandered to the site of Ettie’s building, looked over it. The land was nearly level. A battered pickup truck pulled to a stop at the curb and two men got out. They walked over to the small pile of rubble and pulled out a chunk of limestone cornice, a lion’s head. They dusted it off and together carted it back to the truck. It was probably on its way to an architectural relics shop downtown, where it’d be priced at a thousand bucks. The men looked over the site, saw nothing else of interest and drove off.
Bailey called, “Let it go, Pellam. Go on home. Let it go.”
The Eighth Avenue subway line offers no service for the time being, due to police action.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Riders are advised…
John Pellam considered waiting but like most passengers on the Metropolitan Transit Authority he knew that fate was the essential motorman of his journeys; he decided to walk downtown to a cross street where he could catch an Eastbound bus to his apartment.
He disembarked from the grimy subway car and climbed up the stairs of the station into the city.
West of Eighth Avenue, stores had closed and mesh gates covered windows.
Dusk was long past and the sky was filled with a false sunset – the radiance of city lights from river to river. This fiery canopy would last until dawn.
“Yo, honey how ’bout a date?”
West of Eighth, children had been put to bed. Men had eaten their hot meals and were sitting in their scruffy armchairs, still aching from the hard routine of their jobs at UPS or the Post Office or warehouses or restaurants. Or they were groggy from their hours upon hours in bars, where they’d squandered the day talking endlessly, arguing, laughing, wondering how love and purpose had eluded them so completely throughout their lives. Some of them were in those bars again now, having returned after an evening meal with a silent wife and noisy children.
In tiny apartments women washed plastic dishes and marshaled children and brooded about the cost of food and marveled with painful desire at the physiques and the clothing and the dilemmas of the people in TV shows.
It was a night like a hot stone but here the old buildings weren’t wired for air conditioners. The hum of fans filled most apartment and some not even that.
“I’m sick. I’m tryin’ to get a job. I am, man.”
West of Eighth, clusters of people sat on doorsteps. Dots of cigarettes moved to and from lips. Lights from passing cars reflected amber in quart beer bottles, which rang against the concrete stoops with ever-changing tones as their contents emptied. Conversation was just loud enough to rise above the rush of traffic on the West Side Highway, thousands of cars fleeing the city, even at this late hour.
“Give me quarter for some food. Got a cigarette. Have a good night anyway. God bless.”
In the windows of tenements lights flickered, the emanations of TV, and often the hue was not blue but the pale gray of black-and-white sets. M
any windows were dark. In some there was only glaring light from a bare blub and a motionless head was framed in the window, looking out.
“You want rock, ice, meth, scag, sens, blow, you want you want you want? You want a lotto ticket, you got a quarter you got a dollar you want some pussy? Yo, I got AIDS, I homeless. Excuse me, sir. Gimme your motherfucking wallet…”
West of Eighth, young men loped down the street in their gangs. They were invincible. Here they’d live forever. Here bullets would pass through their lean bodies and leave their hearts intact. They glided along the sidewalk, carrying with them their own soundtrack.
It’s a white man’s world, now don’t be blind.
You open you eyes and whatta you find?
The Man got a message just for you -
Gonna smoke your brothers and your sisters too.
It’s a white man’s world.
It’s a white man’s world…
One crew saw another across the street. Boom boxes were turned down. Glances exchanged. Then signs flew back and forth. Palms up, fingers spread. At some point bravado would become dissing. If that happened guns would appear and people would die.
West of Eighth, everyone was armed.
Tonight, though, faces turned way, the volume cranked up again and the crews moved in separate directions, surrounded by a tempest of music.
It’s a white man’s world. It’s a white man’s…
Lovers grappled in cars and beside the sunken roadbed of the old New York Central Railroad, near Eleventh Avenue, men dropped to their knees before other men.
It was midnight now. Young dancers hurried home from the topless clubs and peep shows. Broadway actors and actresses too, just as tired. Among the stoopsitters, cigarettes were stubbed out, good nights were said, beer bottles were left on the sidewalk, soon to be scavenged.
Sirens wailed, glass broke, a voice called out in ornery madness.
Time to be off the streets.
It’s a white man’s world. It’s a white man’s world…
West of Eighth, men and women lay in their cheap beds, listening to the song as it floated through the streets outside their window or thudded into their bedrooms from neighboring apartments. The music was everywhere but most didn’t pay it any attention. They lay exhausted and hot, staring at their murky ceilings as they thought: My day begins again in so few hours. Let me get some sleep. Please, just cool me off, and let me get some sleep.
TWENTY-FOUR
“You missin’ a tooth, man. Don’t you know how to fight?”
“It was three to one,” Pellam told Hector Ramirez.
“So?”
Noon, the next day, Ramirez was sitting on the doorstep of the Cubano Lords’ kickback, smoking.
“It’s hot,” Pellam said. “You got any beer?”
“Man, do I got beer. What kind you want?”
“Any kind. Long as it’s cold.”
Ramirez rose, motioned him toward the front door of their apartment. He nodded at his bruised face. “Who did it?”
“Some of Corcoran’s boys. They heard about us the other night? With McCray? And drew straws to see who it’d be more fun to beat the crap out of, you or me. I won.”
“Hey, I ice somebody for you, you want. Or do some kneecaps? I do that for you, man. I got no problem doing that.”
“That’s okay,” Pellam said.
“It no problem.”
“Maybe next time.”
Ramirez shrugged as if Pellam were crazy. He pushed through the doorway. Pellam noticed a young Latino man standing in the shadows of the alcove, a gun in his belt.
He spoke in Spanish to Ramirez, who barked a phrase back. He looked at Pellam’s face and laughed. Pellam wanted to believe it was in admiration.
Ramirez knocked on the door to a ground floor apartment and, when there was no answer, unlocked and pushed it open. He let Pellam precede him.
The apartment was large and comfortable, filled with new furniture. A couch was still in its plastic wrapping. In the kitchen were stacks of cases of food and bags of rice. One bedroom was filled with five sheet-covered mattresses. The other bedroom was packed with cartons of liquor and cigarettes. Pellam didn’t bother to ask where the merchandise had come from.
“So, you want a Dos, Tecate?”
“Dos.”
Ramirez took two beers from the fridge. Rested them against the counter, cracked the tops off with a single blow from his palm. Passed one to Pellam, who drank down nearly half.
The room was sweltering. There were two air conditioners in the front and back windows but they weren’t running. Through the shaded windows blew hot, dusty air and the heat was like a liquid.
Ramirez found a shoe box sitting on a table in the kitchen. He took out a pair of athletic shoes and began lacing them up. They were similar to the pair he’d given to Ismail the other day. “Hey, man. Take one.”
“What’s the penalty for receiving stolen?” Pellam asked.
“Fuck, I found ’em.” He bounced, looking down with approval.
“I’m not the running-shoe type.”
“No, you the cowboy-boot type. Man, why you wear those fucking boots? They no hurt you feet? So, what you doing here, Pellam? Why you come visit me?”
“I’m leaving town,” Pellam said. “Came to get my gun.”
“I hear, that moyeta, she say she do it. Man, she your friend. That gotta be tough for you. But nobody oughta burn the old places here. That no good.”
Ramirez was getting the shoelaces even, the tautness just right. He stood slowly, savoring the feel of the shoes. He bounced on his toes again then came down on his heels. He feinted right then left then leapt into a layup, his fingers knocking flakes of white paint off the ceiling.
Pellam noticed a hand-lettered sign on the wall next to a poster advertising a Corvette, on which a bikini-clad model reclined.
Your standing in the Crib of the Cubano Lords.
Either you be a Friend or you be fucked.
Ramirez followed his eyes. He said, “Yeah, yeah. You gonna say we spelled ‘you’re’ wrong.”
“No, I’m gonna say that’s a hell of a poster.”
“You play basketball?” Ramirez asked.
“A little.”
Pellam’s last games had been one-on-one against a man in a wheelchair and Pellam lost six, won two. It was a shame he wasn’t going to have a chance to play with Ismail; he probably could’ve beaten the boy.
“I go down to the Village today, play half-court. Some big moyetos down there. Man, those niggers, they can play… You come with me.”
“Thanks but I’m out of here,” Pellam said.
“For good, you mean?”
Nodding. “Picking up my truck and heading back to the Coast. Need some work. Got some people I owe money to gonna be knocking on my door in about sixty days.”
“You want me to talk to ’em? I can-”
Pellam wagged a finger. “Uh-uh.”
Ramirez shrugged, lifted the corner of the linoleum in the kitchen and pulled up a floorboard. He lifted out Pellam’s Colt and tossed it to him. “Man, you crazy, carry that old thing. I’ll get you a nice Taurus. That a sweet piece. You like that. Bam, bam, bam. A man need a fifteen-shot clip nowadays.”
“I don’t have as much of a call for one as you do.”
As he replaced the flooring Ramirez said, “I no watch TV much but I turn on you movie, Pellam, when it come on. When that gonna be?”
“I’ll let you know,” Pellam muttered.
The door pushed open and a young Latino man stepped inside, gazing suspiciously at Pellam. He walked over to Ramirez and whispered in his ear. The man nodded and his young associate left.
Pellam started toward the door. Ramirez said, “Hey, maybe you don’t wanna go so fast. He got some news for you.”
“Who is he?”
“My brother.” He nodded after the young man who’d just left.
“News?”
“Yeah. You wanna know who brok
e into you apartment?”
“I know who broke in. The pyro. The kid who got burnt up. I figured I must’ve got him on tape when I was shooting the building the day after the fire.”
Ramirez bounced again on his pristine shoes and shook his head. “You wrong man. You dead wrong.”
“Yo, cuz.”
“Hey, Ismail.”
Pellam stood in front of the Youth Outreach Center. The air was hot, dusty, filled with a glaring shaft of sunlight reflected off a nearby building.
“Wassup, homes?”
“Not much,” Pellam answered. “Wassup with you?”
“Hangin’, you know how it is. Whatchu got there?”
“A present.”
“All right, cuz.” The boy stared at the large shopping bag with huge eyes. Pellam handed it to him. The boy opened it up and pulled out the basketball. “Yo, you all right, Pellam! This be fine! Yo, homes, lookit!”
Two other young boys, a little older, came over and admired the ball. They passed it back and forth.
“How is it here?” Pellam nodded at the YOC storefront.
“Ain’t so bad. They don’t dis you so much. But what it is they make you sit an’ listen to these hatters, like priests and counselors, don’t know shit. They tell you stuff. Talking at you, wearing yo’ ear off, axing you things they don’t know ’bout.” He offered an adult shrug. “But, fuck, that life, ain’t it?”
Pellam couldn’t argue with that.
“An’, man, that Carol bitch,” he whispered, looking around. “Don’t go messing with her. She ax me why I be comin’ in at three this morning. Give me all kindsa shit. I tell that bitch what she can do.”
“Did you now?”
“Hell’s yeah… Well, I tried. But there ain’t no talking to that woman, cuz.”
“Why were you out at three a.m.?”
“I was-”
“Just hangin’.”
“That straight, Pellam.” He said to his homies, “Let’s get a game up.” They disappeared toward an alley, happy as ten-year-old boys the world over.
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