Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

Pellam gazed out the window again, at the huge plume of smoke.

In the hour he’d been here he’d learned a few things about McKennah, much of it like the sniping he’d just heard, none of it particularly helpful. The developer was forty-four. Stocky but fit. His face was a younger, puffier Robert Redford’s. His net worth was rumored to be two billion. Pellam had observed that the developer had a kaleidoscope of expressions; McKennah’s visage flipped from boyish to greedy to demonic to pure ice in a fraction of a second.

In fact the most telling thing that Pellam had learned was that no one really knew much about Roger McKennah at all. His only conclusion was that the developer had some inexpressible quality that drove guests like these – attractive or powerful or obsessed with the attractive or powerful – to pray for invitations to his parties, where they would drink his liquor and think of clever ways to insult him behind his back.

He eased closer to McKennah, who had moved on and was cruising slowly through the crowded room.

A young couple double-teamed the developer by the beluga table.

“Nice, Roger,” the husband said, looking around. “Very nice. Know what this room reminds me of? That place in Cap d’Antibes. On the Point? L’Hermitage. That’s where Beth and I always stay.”

“You know it?” the woman, presumably Beth, asked McKennah. “It’s so wonderful.”

The developer demurred with a faint pout. “ ’Fraid I don’t,” he said, to their delight. Then he added, “When I’m over there I usually stay with the prince in Monaco. It’s just easier. You know.”

“I hear you,” the husband said, hearing nothing really. The couple pasted glazed smiles on their faces, evidence of how snugly their hearts had been nailed by the chubby Roger McKennah.

The substantial crowd milled and hovered over the tables filled with caviar like black snowdrifts and sushi like white jewels, while a tuxedoed pianist played Fats Waller.

“But he didn’t go to Choate,” Pellam overheard someone whisper. “Read it carefully. He gives them money, he lectures there, but he didn’t go there. He went to some parochial school on the West Side. In his old neighborhood.”

“Hell’s Kitchen?” Pellam asked, breaking into the circle.

“That’s it, yes,” responded the woman, whose face-lift was remarkably good.

So, McKennah was a Kitchen pup himself. It must’ve taken years to polish off the rough edges.

Then suddenly Pellam himself became the prey. The crowd had momentarily parted like the Red Sea and McKennah was staring directly at him, fifty feet away. A memory came back to Pellam – the limousine in front of Ettie’s building. It had probably been McKennah’s.

But the developer gave no greeting. And as the crowd swept back together McKennah turned and stepped into a cluster of guests and turned his attention on them like klieg lights on a movie set. Then the developer was moving again, on stage, always questioning, poking, probing.

Ambition’s a bitch, ain’t it?

He was about to follow when, from behind him, a woman’s voice said in a very Northeastern accent, “Howdy, partner.”

Pellam turned to see an attractive blonde woman in her forties, holding a champagne flute. Her eyes were faded, but not from drinking, merely from exhaustion. With a sequined shoe she tapped Pellam’s boot, explaining the greeting.

“Hi,” he said.

Her eyes flitted to McKennah. Pellam followed her gaze. She said, “Which one?”

“I’m sorry?” Pellam asked.

“You a betting man?”

He said, “To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are only two times a man shouldn’t gamble. One, when he can’t afford to lose money. And two, when he can.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Yep, I’m a gambling man,” Pellam said.

“You see those two women. The brunette and the redhead?”

Pellam spotted them easily. They stood by the sweeping staircase, chatting with McKennah. Both in their late twenties, good figures, attractive. The redhead was by far the sexier and more voluptuous. The brunette had a colder face and she seemed distracted, almost bored.

“In about five minutes, Roger’ll disappear upstairs. That’s where the bedrooms are. Five minutes after that, one of those women will follow. Which one do you think it’ll be?”

“Does he know either of them?”

“Probably not. You on?”

Pellam studied the redhead: The extreme V of her neckline, revealing the upper slope of white breasts. Hair tumbling around her shoulders. A seductive smile. And freckles. Pellam loved freckles.

“The redhead,” he said, thinking: Eight months, eight months. Eight goddamn months.

The woman laughed. “You’re wrong.”

“What’re we betting?”

“A glass of our host’s champagne. As Mark Twain also said, it’s always better to gamble with somebody else’s money than your own.”

They tapped glasses.

Her name was Jolie and it seemed that she was unaccompanied. He followed her to the window in the corner of the room, where it was quieter.

“You’re John Pellam.”

He gave a perplexed smile.

“I heard somebody mention your name.”

Who? he wondered. It didn’t seem likely that the Word on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen would rise all the way into this stratosphere.

“I saw one of your films,” she said. “About an alchemist. It was very good. I can’t say I completely understood it. But that’s a compliment.”

“Is it?” he asked, looking at her steady, green eyes.

She continued. “Think about Kubrick’s 2001 . It’s not a very good movie. So why did it endure? The Blue Danube with the space ship? Anybody could’ve thought of that. The monkeys beating each other up? No. Special effects? Of course not. It was the ending . Nobody knew what the hell it was about. We forget the obvious. We remember the uncertain.”

He laughed. “I do love my ambiguity,” Pellam said, eyes on McKennah. “So, okay, I’ll consider it a compliment.”

“Are you making a film here?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Across the room McKennah glanced around, trying to look casual, then trotted up the stairs.

Maybe he was just going to take a pee, Pellam thought. They hadn’t considered the contingency of a draw. Pellam didn’t care; he was enjoying her company. Jolie had a V -shaped neckline that held its own with the redhead’s very admirably. Pellam even thought he saw a few freckles where the white flesh disappeared beneath black sequins.

“What’s it about?” Jolie asked. “Your new film?”

“It’s not a feature. It’s a documentary. About Hell’s Kitchen.”

“That fire’s an interesting metaphor, isn’t it?” She nodded out the window. There was a faint smile on her face. “It’d be a good motif for your film.” She added cryptically, “Whatever it’s really about.”

“How do you know McKennah?” he asked. Then the words registered: Really about …

Across the room the sullen brunette stubbed out a cigarette and, lifting her slinky skirt a few inches, looked around discreetly. She climbed the stairs in the tracks of the developer.

“Good guess,” Pellam said.

“Wasn’t a guess,” Jolie responded. “I know my husband pretty well. Now get me the champagne you owe me. Get one for yourself too. Then let’s go in there and drink it.” She nodded toward a small den off the main room. And smiled as the piano player launched into Stormy Weather .

“You know, one of our cleaning ladies sells what she finds in our trash cans to the government. IRS, SEC. Competitors, too, I’m sure. Roger has fun putting phoney info in the trash along with Tampax wrappers and condoms.”