Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

Documentary filmmakers should never intrude. But off camera a surprised Pellam asked, “He did time?”

But just then Ettie shifted in her chair and looked up, turned her head. Pellam remembered that Florence Besserman, Ettie’s friend from the third floor, had come to the door unexpectedly. The tape went blank. She’d never finished the story about Billy Doyle’s criminal history and Pellam had agreed to come back – on the night of the fire, as it had turned out – to record the details. Pellam now rewound the tape to the beginning and found what he’d been looking for. Not Ettie but some footage of pretty, pudgy Anita Lopez, apartment 2A, who spoke in her machine-gun voice, her fireengine-red nails flying everywhere, despite Pellam’s reminders to keep her hands still.

“… Sí, sí , we got gangs. Just like what you see in the movies. They got guns, they get into trouble, they drink, they got cars. Boom-boom, these big speakers. Ai ! So loud. Used to be the Westies. They gone now. What we got is we got the Cubano Lords, they is the big gang now. They got a apartment and they don’t mind if everybody know where. I tell you. On Thirty-ninth, between Ninth and Tenth. Oh, they scare me. Don’t say nothing to nobody I told you. Please.”

Pellam shut the VCR off. He dropped to his knees and inventoried the canvas bag, which contained everything an astute documentarian ought to have: the Betacam, the Ampex deck, the Nicad battery pack, two extra cassettes, a cardioid mike with sponge wind guard, steno notebook, pens. And a Colt Peacemaker single-action pistol. Five of the six chambers loaded with.45-caliber shells. The rosewood grip was battered and sweat-stained.

He was thinking of what his mother had told him just before he’d left the placid town of Simmons, N.Y., en route to Manhattan last May. “That’s a crazy city down there, New York is. You keep an eye out, Johnny. You just never know.”

Pellam had lived long enough to understand that, no, you never did.

He walked west along the sweltering concrete of Thirty-ninth Street. On doorstep sat a heavy woman, holding a long, dark cigarette and rocking a dilapidated baby carriage. She read el diario .

“ Buenos días ,” Pellam said.

“ Buenas tardes .” The woman’s eyes swept over Pellam, examining the jeans, the black jacket and white T-shirt.

“I wonder if you could help me.”

She looked up, exhaled as if she were smoking.

“I’m making a movie about Hell’s Kitchen.” He held up the camera bag. “About the gangs here.”

“ No gangs aquí .”

“Well, some of the young people. Teenagers. I didn’t mean to say ‘gang.’ ”

“ Faltan gangs. No gangs.”

“Somebody told me about the Cubano Lords.”

“ Es un club.”

“Club. They have a clubhouse here, right? Un apartmento ? I heard it was on this street.”

“ Buenos muchachos . No shit happen ’round here. They make sure of that.”

“I’d like to talk to them.”

“Nobody come here, nobody bother us. They good hombres .”

“That’s why I want to talk to them.”

“And look at las calles .” She waved her hand up and down the street. “They clean, or what?”

“Could you give me the name of who’s in charge? Of the club?”

“I don’t know none of them. You no hot in that jacket?”

“Yeah, I am. I heard they hang out around here.”

She laughed and returned to the paper.

Pellam left her and crisscrossed the neighborhood – over to the river and back again, skirting the squat, black Javits Convention Center. He didn’t find what he was looking for (which is what? he wondered. A half-dozen young men standing around like George Chakiris and the Sharks in West Side Story ?).

A young Latino family walked toward him – the couple in tank tops and shorts, a teen girl in a short tight dress. They lugged a cooler and blankets and toys and lawn chairs. Dad’s day off, they were headed for Central Park, Pellam guessed. He was watching the family vanish toward the subway when he saw the man on top of the building.

He was about Pellam’s age, a few years younger maybe. Latino. He wore close-fitting jeans and a T-shirt, brilliantly white. He stood on the roof of a tenement, looking down, with dark eyes that even from this distance seemed to beam displeasure.

The man leapt from one building to another and was directly above him. Pellam could see only a silhouette. He was making his way east, along the roofs of the tenements.

Pellam turned and headed in the same direction. He paused at the corner, lost sight of the young man. Then, a sudden flash of white disappeared into a crowd of workers along Tenth Avenue. Crossing the street fast, Pellam tried to follow but the man had vanished. How the hell had he done that? He asked the workers if they’d seen anyone but they claimed that hadn’t seen anybody and the alley they stood in front of – the only place the man could have escaped – was blind. Barred windows. No doors. No exit.

Pellam gave up and returned to Thirty-sixth Street, wandering toward the charred remains of Ettie’s building.

It wasn’t the noise that warned him but its absence; some raucous hammering from the construction site across the street suddenly dulled, the sound absorbed by the young man’s body and clothing. Without even looking sideways at the running footsteps Pellam set the bag down and reached inside. He hadn’t yet found the Colt when a piece of metal – a pistol barrel, he guessed – touched the back of his neck.

“The alley,” the voice said in a melodic, Spanish accent. “Lessgo.”

His thick brows were knitted together and beneath them his lids dipped slightly as if he was nursing a deep grudge.

They stood in the alley behind Louis Bailey’s building, on greasy cobblestones. The smell of rotten vegetables and rancid oil filled the heavy air. Pellam stood, crossed his arms, glancing down at the tiny black automatic pistol.

Then he studied his captor again. A pink, leathery scar traversed the man’s forearm. It was recent. On his hand, in the Y between his thumb and forefinger, was a blurred tattoo in the form of a dagger. Pellam lived in L.A.; he recognized a crew insignia when he saw one.

Pellam asked, “ Habla inglés ?”

The man looked down into the bag. Keeping the automatic trained on Pellam’s chest he bent down and lifted the Betacam partially out.

“Appreciate your leaving that alone. It’s-”

“Shut up.”

The man didn’t find the Colt. He lowered the camera, stood up.

“You’re a Cubano Lord,” Pellam said.

He was as tall as Pellam. Most Latinos he knew were shorter. “I’ve been looking for you,” Pellam said.

“Me?”

“One of you.”

“Why?”

“To have a talk.”

His eyebrows twitched in surprise. “You talking now.”

“I’m doing a film on Hell’s Kitchen. I want to talk to some of the people in gangs. Or is it a club?”

“The other day, what you doing?”

“The other day?”

“What you looking for? Talking to people? On the street here. You taking pictures. What you do that for?”

Pellam remained silent.

The young man let a disgusted sigh ease from his lungs. “You gonna say we did it? You gonna say we torch that building?”

“I’m making a film. I-”

The terse young man’s brows nestled closer. “There a TV news show here. In the city. Latino station. You never hear of it, I know. They slogan is ‘ Primero con la verdad .’ You believe in that? Is la verdad siempre primero with you? The truth?” Arms crossed again, he lifted a hand to his chin and with a callous thumb rubbed a short, deep scar below his mouth. “You some kind of reporter ? You some kind of Geraldo?”