Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“The IRS pays for that?” Pellam asked.

“Yep.”

“So that’d be my tax dollars at work?” Pellam asked.

“You don’t really pay tax, do you?” she seemed surprised. “If you do I’ll give you the name of my accountant.”

They sat in the teak-paneled den, the sounds of the party and the music filtering through the walls. Pellam picked up a picture of McKennah with his arm around a large Mickey Mouse.

“A few years ago,” Jolie said, entranced by the frantic bubbles in her champagne, “he was really into Euro Disney. He took a bad hit there. I told him it was a bad idea. I just couldn’t see French people wearing big black ears.”

“Why are you so cool about what just happened? With your husband?”

“You’re from Hollywood, I assume you know the difference between being cool and acting cool.”

“Touché. How’d you figure the brunette?”

“She was the tougher one. More of a challenge. Roger never takes the easy way. His office is on the seventieth floor of this building. He walks up every one of those flights in the morning.”

“Quite a view,” Pellam said, walking to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He gazed out over dusky Manhattan. Jolie pointed out several buildings that bore McKennah’s name and several more, older ones, that she explained were owned or operated by his companies.

Pellam lifted his hands and pressed the cold glass with his fingers. Because of the faint light in the den his reflection appeared to be an angel floating outside, touching Pellam’s fingertips with its own.

“Your film, it’s about Roger, isn’t it?”

“No. It’s about the old West Side.”

“Then why are you spying on him?”

He said nothing.

Jolie said, “We’re getting divorced, Roger and I.”

Pellam continued to stare at the lights of the city. Was this a setup? Was she spying on him? Hollywood made you paranoid for your job; Hell’s Kitchen, your life.

But he had a vague sense that he should trust her. He recalled the look in her eyes when she saw the brunette lift her skirt and start up the stairs. Pellam had worked with many actresses, some of them excellent, but very few had enough command of the Method to summon up that kind of pain.

“There’s talk about you,” Jolie McKennah said.

In the distance the fire on the West Side had been mostly extinguished. Still, you could see a hundred lights from the emergency vehicles, flashing like lasers in a tawdry disco.

“Did he say anything?” Pellam didn’t know whether nodding at the ceiling, where McKennah was bedding the tough brunette, was appropriate.

“No, but he knows about you. He’s been watching you.”

“So, why are we here? Talk to me.”

She sipped then smiled mournfully. “We never had any secrets, Roger and I. None. It got to the point where I even knew his girlfriends’ bra sizes. But then something happened.”

“Attrition?”

“That’s good, Pellam. Yes, exactly. Little by little things got worn down. We haven’t been in love for a long time. Oh, ages. But we were close and we were friends. But then that went away. That friendship part. He began lying to me. That broke the rules. We decided to get divorced.”

He decided to get divorced, she meant.

“And you feel betrayed.”

She considered refuting this. But she said, “Yes, I felt betrayed.”

He was gazing out the window, past his reflection. “The arson on Thirty-sixth Street? Some of the men who work for his company were nearby that building just before the fire.”

This got her attention.

“So, you’re a crusader, are you?”

“Not hardly. I just want to know who was behind it.”

“I don’t think Roger would ever do anything like that.”

“ ‘Think.’ ”

He could see she wasn’t sure. She held the champagne beneath her nose and inhaled. “You find me attractive?”

“Yes.” It was true and had nothing to do with the glacial eight months.

“You want to make love to me?”

“Another time, another place, yes, I would.”

This satisfied her. How fragile is our vanity and how recklessly we wear it for all to crush.

“Tell me what you’re really after and maybe I can help you.”

And maybe she can cut me off at the knees.

“Ah, you’re hesitating,” she continued. “Think I’ll report back to him. Think I’m a spy?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought you were a gambling man.”

“The stakes’re high.”

“How much? One billion? Two?”

“Ten years of an old woman’s life.”

She hesitated. “I don’t have any power over him anymore. Not like I did.” She nodded toward the party but the gesture was aimed like a sniper rifle at all the brunettes and redheads and blondes in the room. “And I’ll never get that back. He’s won, hands down, in that arena – the bedroom, our home. So I have to hurt him the only way I still can. In his business.”

He said, “That woman I mentioned. She was a tenant in the building that burned down. She’s been arrested for the arson and she didn’t do it.”

“Washington’s her name,” Jolie said. “I read bout that. An insurance scam or something.”

Pellam nodded. “Did your husband burn the place down?”

Jolie thought for a long moment, staring again at the needlepoint bubbles. “Not the old Roger. No, he wouldn’t. The new Roger… all I can say is he’s become a stranger. He doesn’t talk to me anymore. He’s just not the same man I married. I will tell you he’s been going out a couple times a week. At night. He’s never done that before – I’m mean, not without telling me. And he’s never lied to me about it. He’ll get a phone call then leave.”

“You know who’s calling?”

“I did that star 69 thing on the phone. To dial back the call that just came in? It was a law firm. Not one that I’ve ever heard of before.”

“What was the name?”

“Pillsbury, Millbank & Hogue,” she said. Pellam heard an edge in the woman’s otherwise controlled voice. It quavered. She continued. “The chauffeur drops him off on Ninth Avenue and Fiftieth. He meets someone, some man. The meetings are secret.”

“The chauffeur,” Pellam asked delicately, “could he be more informative?”

“He’d be willing to,” she said. “But Roger makes sure he leaves after he drops him off.”

Pellam jotted down the name of the firm and the address.

She said, “You know, he has good qualities. He gives money to charities.”

So presumably do some serial killers. At least those who need write-offs.

Jolie took his glass from the table and sipped it. Hers was empty. Pellam said, “What you just told me could cost him a lot. And it could cost you a lot too.”

“Me?”

“The divorce? Isn’t he going to be paying you settlement, alimony?”

Laughter. “You dear man, why you really do pay taxes, don’t you? Let’s just say, I’ve looked out for myself. Whatever happens to Roger won’t affect me in any fiscal way.”

Pellam glanced down at her taut, tanned skin. Eight months. A hell of a long time.

“To another time, another place,” she said, lifting the glass.

He remained at the window for a moment, gazing at the radiant buildings of Manhattan, then stepped toward the door, while outside, reflected in the window, Pellam’s angel also turned, lowered his ghostly arms and faded into the night above the city.

Fire points up not down.

Fire climbs, it doesn’t fall.

Sonny gazed at the map.

The hospital had been a good fire, not a great fire. Too many good citizens were vigilant. Too many cops, too many fire marshals. Looking and poking. Everybody ready to dial nine-one-one. Everybody ready to shoot carbon dioxide from extinguishers.