Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“Who’s that?”

“Guy we sometimes do business with. Johnny rents apartments around town and stores things there.” Drugh’s voice dropped. “You know what I’m saying?”

“Well, up to and including the part about renting apartments around town.”

“Shhh, my man. Not a word. Jacko’s putting you on your honor.”

“Fair enough.”

“O’Neil’s trades in guns, doesn’t he? He had a apartment in that building.” He gestured toward Ettie’s tenement. “Oh, yeah, my man. A safe house.” He said this as if every New Yorker ought to have one.

Pellam remembered the burnt guns that the fire investigators had found in the basement.

“The other day Ramirez jacked one of O’Neil’s trucks and had him sucking on a Glock. Told him to keep the armament out of that part of the Kitchen.”

“What’d O’Neil say?”

“What’d he say? He said, ‘Yessir, Mr. Spic. I’ll stop.’ What’d you say you got your pearlies ’round a nine millimeter? So my money’s Ramirez heard about the guns from his auntie, shit a brick and hired that spooky guy to nuke the place.”

Pellam shook his head. So Ramirez had told him some but not all of the story. “Do me favor? Put the word out about Alex? I need to find him.”

“Oh, Jacko’ll keep his eyes peeled for you. I’ll ask around. People talk to me. If there’s a little something in it for me Jacko gets the right answers.”

Pellam reached for his wallet again.

But Drugh shook his head. The young man seemed to grow embarrassed. “Naw, naw, I don’t mean that. You paid me already. What I’m saying, when you make that movie of yours, you keep me in mind, you do that? You give Jacko a call. They made that movie, that State of Grace , they shoulda called me. I mean, there oughta be laws about them using your life and not asking you ’bout it. I mean, fuck, I didn’t wanta be the star or nothing. I just wanted to be in the fucking movie. I’d be good. I know I would.”

Pellam made sure not to smile as he said, “If we ever get to casting, I’ll call you, Jacko. You bet.”

Ettie Washington stared out the window of the Women’s Detention Center.

It was high above her head and the glass was so filthy you couldn’t see through it. But the light was comforting. She was thinking back to Eddie Doyle, remembering how much the two of them liked to be outside, walking around the neighborhood. Saying hi to their neighbors. Her second husband, Harold Washington, didn’t like being indoors either though he was a sitting kind of man. The two of them , when he was home and more or less sober, would sit on the steps and share a bottle. But living by herself Ettie had discovered the pleasure of a good rocking chair and a window. A joy that now seemed to be gone forever.

Mistakes, she was thinking of mistakes she’d made throughout her life. And secrets and lies… Some serious and some not so. How slightly bad things you did grew into very bad things. How the good things you tried to do faded away like smoke.

And she was thinking of Pellam’s face when that bitch in court told everybody about her conviction. Would he ever come to visit her again? she wondered. She guessed not. Why should he? Oh, this thought cut her deeply. But what she felt was pain, not surprise. She’d known all along that he’d be vanishing from her life. He was a man, and men left. Didn’t matter if they were fathers or brothers or husbands. Men left.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

“Mother,” Hatake Imaham cooed, “how you feeling? You feeling good?”

Ettie turned around.

Several of the prisoners were standing behind the large woman. They all approached slowly. Six others stood at the far end of the cell, looking out into the corridor. Ettie couldn’t figure out why they were in a line like that. Then she realized they were blocking the guard’s view of the cell.

A cold feeling pierced her. It was just like the feeling that sliced through her when the two policemen showed up at her door and asked, grim-faced, if her son was Billy Washington. Could they come inside? There was something they had to tell her.

Hatake continued in a calm voice, “You feeling good?”

“I’m okay,” Ettie said, looking uneasily from one woman to another.

“Bet you feeling better than that boy, Mother.”

“What boy?”

“That little boy you killed. Juan Torres.”

“I didn’t do it,” Ettie whispered. She drew back, against the wall. “No, I didn’t do it.”

She looked again toward the door but she was completely hidden by the line of women.

“I know you done it, bitch. You kill that little boy.”

“I didn’t!”

“An eye for an eye.” The large woman stepped closer. She had a cigarette lighter in her hand. The woman next to her, Dannette, had one too. Where had they gotten those? Then understood. Dannette had purposely gotten arrested again and smuggled in the lighters.

Hatake stepped close.

Ettie shrank away then suddenly lunged forward, swinging her cast into Hatake’s face. It connected with her nose, loud thud. The woman screeched and fell back. The other women gasped. No one moved for a moment.

Then Ettie took a deep breath to scream for help and found herself tasting sour cloth. Someone had come up behind her and flipped the gag over her face. Hatake was on her feet, wiping blood from her nose, smiling cruelly.

“Okay, Mother, Okay.” She nodded to Dannette, who lit a cigarette and tossed it onto Ettie’s shift. She tried to kick it off but two other women held her down. She couldn’t move. The ember began to burn through the dress.

Hatake said, “You shouldn’t be smokin’ in here. ’Gainst the rules, Mother. An’ accidents happen. Them lighters, they spill sometimes. Get that stuff inside, that gas, all over you. Burn up yo hair, burn up you face. Sometime it kill you, sometime it don’t.”

Hatake stepped closer and Ettie felt the icy spray of the butane on her scalp and cheek. She closed her eyes, trying to twist away from the women who held her.

“Lemme,” Hatake snapped, snatching the lighter out of Dannette’s hands. She muttered something else but Ettie couldn’t hear it over her own squealing and muttered pleas. There was a snap and a hiss and the huge woman walked closer and closer, holding the lighter like a beacon.

A star can make a movie open.

Open.

The classic, revered Hollywood verb defined as: “to make enough people plunk down their hard-earned bucks on opening weekend so film company execs don’t have to spend all Monday thinking up excuses for their wives, mistresses, bosses and Daily Variety reporters to explain why they’ve just spent millions of other people’s dollars to make a flop.”

Bankable stars can make a movie open.

So can a drop-dead story line.

Nowadays even special effects can do it, particularly if they involve explosions.

But nothing in the universe can make a documentary open. Documentaries might be enlightening or touching or inspiring. They can represent the highest form of movie-making art. But they don’t do what people go to feature films for.

To escape from their lives, to enjoy themselves for a few hours.

Walking through downtown Manhattan, toward the sooty carnival of the courts and prisons, Pellam was reflecting: He had directed four independent films, all of them cult classics, two of them ward winners. He had degrees in film making from NYU and UCLA. He’d written dozens of articles for Cineaste and Independent Film Monthly and he could recite the dialog from most of Hitchcock’s films. His credentials were impeccable.

Of the eighteen studios and production companies he’d approached with the idea for this documentary all had rejected him.