Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

Don’t do this for pity, Pellam thought to himself.

And in the end he didn’t. Not at all.

Eight months is, after all, eight months.

He kissed her hard and, when the last deadbolt clicked, he pushed the door eagerly open with his booted foot.

On the west side of Manhattan near the river was a forlorn triangle of a tiny city block that contained seven or eight old buildings.

To the west, where the sun was now setting, were vacant, weedy lots, the highway and, beyond, the brown Hudson River. To the east, across a cobblestoned street, was a low row of apartments, gay bar and a bodega in whose window was a display of filthy pastry, sliced pork and custard. This was the Chelsea district of New York, the bland, harmless cousin of Hell’s Kitchen, which was just to the north.

The tricorner building at the northern-most end of the block ended in a sharp prow. It was a shabby place to call home but the residents had few complaints about their apartments and they didn’t know that there was really only one major problem here, building code violation: Gallons of gasoline, fuel oil, naphtha, and acetone were stored in the basement. The explosive force of these liquids was sufficient to level the building and to do so in a particularly unpleasant way.

This particular apartment was a spartan place and contained minimal furnishings – a chair, cot, two tables and a battered desk covered with tools and rags. There was neither an air conditioner nor a fan. The TV, however, was a thirty-two-inch Trinitron and it sported a remote control that was ten inches long. On this screen at the moment was an MTV music video, the sound off.

Sitting immediately in front of the flickering screen, which he paid little attention to, Sonny was slowly braiding his long blond hair. Without the benefit of a mirror, the task was taking him longer than he wanted. No damn mirror, he thought angrily. Though the problem really was his shaking hands. Damn sweaty , shaking hands.

At one point he looked up – toward but not really at the TV screen – and paused. He leaned toward fifty-five gallon drum filled with acetone and knocked several times, listening to the sonar echo of the thump. It calmed him somewhat.

But not enough.

No one was cooperating!

The incident at the gas station had scared him and fear was a feeling he wasn’t used to. Arson is the safest crime there is for the perp. It’s anonymous, it’s secretive, and most of the evidence is disposed of by God’s own accomplice – the laws of physics. But now people knew what he looked like. And on top of that , he’d heard that that little chicken fag from the building – Alex – had seen him and had tried to deal him to the cops.

And there were still three more fires to go until the big one. He removed the map, now tattered, from his back pocket. He stared at it absently.

Yeah, the gas station was bad. But the most troubling was the fire at the hospital. Because it had given him no pleasure. Fire had always calmed him down. But that one hadn’t. Not a bit. As he’d listened to the screams, cocked his head and heard them mix with the rustling roar of the flames, his hands had kept trembling, his high forehead continued to sweat. Why? he wondered. Why? Maybe because it was a small fire. Maybe because there was only one fire he truly cared about, the one that would star him and the faggot Joe Pellam Buck. Maybe because everybody was after him.

But he had a feeling there was more to the sweat and agitation than that.

His heart stuttered a bit more when he thought that he now had to spend even more time stopping his pursuers – when he could be planning the big fire. Rockin’ and rollin’ with the Antichrist.

Knock, ping. Knock, ping. Like sonar in a submarine movie.

Sonny’s head of half-braided hair leaned against the big drum. He thumped it again with a knuckle. Knock, ping .

A bit calmer now? He thought so. Maybe. Yes.

Sonny finished braiding his hair and spent a half-hour mixing soap and gas and oil. The fumes were very strong – as dangerous as the fire the juice produced – and he could only work in small batches or else he’d pass out. When he was finished he took several incandescent light bulbs and put them on the table. With a diamond-bladed saw he carefully cut through the metal collar where the glass bulb met the screw base. He heard the hiss of air filling the vacuum. He sawed a wedge out – just big enough to let him pour in his magic juice. Not too full. That was the mistake a lot of amateur arsonists made. You had to leave a little air in the bulb. Fire is oxidation; like an animal it needs oxygen to live. He sealed the V-shaped hole with superglue. He made three of these special bulbs.

Caressing the smooth glass, smooth as the skin on a young man’s ass…

His hands began to tremble again and the sweat poured from his face like water from a shower nozzle.

Sonny stood and paced frantically.

Why can’t I calm down? Why why whywhy? His thoughts swirled. They were all after him. They wanted to kill him, stop him, tie him down, take his fire away from him! Alex, the fire marshal, that old faggot lawyer that Pellam kept hanging around. Pellam himself, the Antichrist.

Why wasn’t life ever simple?

Sonny had to lie down on the cot and force himself to imagine what the last fire would be like. The big fire. That seemed to be the only thing now that relaxed him, gave him any pleasure.

He pictured it: A huge space, filled with ten, twenty thousand people. It would be the worst fire in the history of this fiery city. Worse than Triangle Shirtwaist on Washington Square, the worker girls trapped inside the sweatshop because the owners didn’t want them to use the johns during working hours. Worse than the Crystal Palace. Worse than The General Slocum burning in the East River, killing over a thousand immigrant women and children on excursion; in its aftermath the entire German population of the city, too sorrowful to remain in their old neighborhood, relocated en masse to Yorkville on the Upper East Side.

His would outdo them all.

Sonny pictured the flames rolling past him like glowing surf, surrounding the masses, caressing their toes.

Flames rising to their heels. Then their ankles.

Oh, can you see the exquisite flames? Can you feel them?

With these questions in his thoughts he realized he hadn’t calmed. He realized that he’d never be calm again.

The end was closer than he’d thought.

He crawled into the living room, pressed his head against one of the drums.

Knock, ping. Knock, ping.

He’d stayed the night.

Pellam had been operating under well-established protocol, which meant that after they’d wakened at ten last night, starving, thirsty, they went out for omelettes at the Empire Diner on Tenth Avenue and then he’d taken her back to her apartment, where they’d made love once more and lain in bed listening to the sounds of New York at night: sirens, shouts, pops of exhausts or guns, which seemed to grow more and more urgent as the night grew later.

He never even thought of leaving without saying good-bye.

It was Carol who broke the rules.

When he awoke – to Homer Simpson’s loud Siamese wail – she was gone. A moment later the phone rang and through her tinny answering machine speaker he heard Carol’s voice ask if he was still there and explain that she’d had to be at work early. She’d call him later at his apartment. He found the phone and snagged it but she’d already hung up.

Barefoot, in his jeans, Pellam wandered over the scabby hardwood floors, mindful of splinters, toward the bathroom. Thinking that she’d sounded pretty brusque on the phone. But who could guess what that was about? The aftermath of an evening like last night’s was wholly unpredictable. Maybe she’d already convinced herself that Pellam wasn’t going to call her again. Maybe she was seared with Catholic guilt. Or maybe she’d just been sitting across her desk from a hulking eighteen-year-old murderer when she’d called.