Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“Then he hocked all nine and came into Manhattan. One building on Twenty-fourth Street. Nobody was in that part of town then. It was a bum location. The city – the high-class commercial districts – went south to the Empire State Building and it stopped until you got to W ll Street. But he bought this building and what happened but New York Life bought it from him . Fast and with cash. He took that money and bought two more buildings, then three, then six. Then he built one. His first. Then he bought two more. And kept going. Now he’s got sixty or seventy throughout the Northeast.”

Pellam was losing patience. He asked, “Was he ever connected with an arson?”

“That’s my boy,” Bailey said, nodding toward Pellam. “Good movie-maker. Gets right to the proverbial chase scene.”

Clarke responded, “Well…”

But the words deflated as soon as they were spoken and Bailey prompted, “Come on, Newton. Pellam’s a friend.”

“Okay, okay… Well, nobody’s sure. Couldn’t prove anything. But recently there’ve been some accidents. Some union men – one of them went off the thirtieth floor of a building on Lexington. And a building inspector who hadn’t been willing to pocket money got beaned by a stack of two-by-fours. None of this happened on a McKennah job site, of course, but they all were involved with Mr. McKennah one way or another. Suppliers who tried to extort him – their trucks got hijacked. And yeah, a couple of places were fire-bombed – sellers who set ridiculously high prices. People who wouldn’t deal . That was Mr. McKennah’s complaint. He doesn’t mind negotiations. He doesn’t even mind getting bested. But he hates it when people won’t even sit down with him. That’s the most important thing for Mr. McKennah. You don’t have to play fair but you have to play .”

Pellam recalled the steely eyes of the brunette at the developer’s party. Tough adversary, playing the game. “How’d you find out all of this?”

“Pellam’s right to be suspicious, Newton.” Bailey turned to him. “But we don’t have to worry. Newton’s sources are impeccable.” More wine sloshed. “And so’s his motive for helping us out here, isn’t it? Pristine.”

Pellam explained what Jolie had told him and asked, “Exactly how desperate is he?”

“His casinos have failed big. He’s step away from bankruptcy. And I mean complete bankruptcy. Apocalyptic bankruptcy.”

“Now we come to the crux of it, right, Newton?”

The toupee was adjusted to quell an itching scalp. “Mr. McKennah needs the Tower.” He nodded toward the shaded window, on the other side of which the highrise soared into the sky. “It’s his last chance,” added the flatlined voice.

McKennah, Clarke explained, had several tenants lined up for the Tower when it was completed but there was only one lease he really cared about. RAS Advertising and Public Relations was consolidating all of its many operations in one location – fifteen floors in the Tower under a ten-year lease, with generous cost-of-living increases annually. RAS would be paying annual rent of more than $24 million.

The ad agency employees, however, were upset about their move from midtown and were concerned that commuting through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen would be dangerous. RAS would sign the lease only if McKennah, at his own expense, built a four-block-long tunnel connecting the building with the Long Island Railroad commuter line in Penn Station, which also had a subway stop.

The deal was signed and, like a piranha, McKennah’s company began devouring underground rights to build the tunnel. The company negotiated easements to every building on the planned route of the tunnel – except one. A small plot of land on Thirty-seventh Street, directly behind the lot on which Ettie’s building had sat.

“Odd coincidence,” Bailey explained wryly. “The land was bought by someone just three days before McKennah’s company approached the old owner.”

“So, somebody had inside information that McKennah needed it. Who?”

“Jimmy Corcoran,” Bailey said. “How ’bout that?”

“Corcoran?” Pellam remembered Jacko Drugh’s telling him that Jimmy and his brother were planning some kind of big deal. And he recalled too what Jolie had said – the late-night meetings.

Corcoran doing a deal with Roger McKennah… Now, that was a bizarre thought.

Bailey continued. “And Jimmy’s basically extorting McKennah. ’Cause without that parcel, no tunnel. No tunnel, no lease and hello bankruptcy court.”

“Here’s what the deal is,” Clarke said, finally displaying some animation. “Corcoran owns the land Mr. McKennah needs, right? Well, he’s agreeing to lease it to Mr. McKennah. Only Corcoran insisted on taking a cut of the profits, not a flat fee. He gets one percent of the revenues generated by the property. That’s brilliant for Corcoran because it looks like McKennah Tower’s going to be making close to a hundred twenty million in annual rents.”

“That psychotic punk is going to wind up with one point two million a year,” Bailey said.

Clarke continued. “Mr. McKennah’s never given anybody a percent of the action before. That’s how desperate he is.”

Pellam considered this. He said, “Ettie’s building – the one that burned – was right in between the Tower and Corcoran’s property.”

“Right,” Bailey confirmed.

“So McKennah needs it to finish the tunnel. It’s the last piece.”

“So it seems,” the lawyer said.

“What about this?” Pellam mused. “He cuts a deal with the owner – the St. Augustus foundation – so they let him build the tunnel. Only McKennah finds out he can’t dig under the building. Maybe it’s too old, maybe it’s not stressed right. So he hires the pyro to burn the place down and make it look like Ettie did it. McKennah gets his tunnel and the Foundation can put up a new building.”

Clarke shrugged. “All I can say is what I said before. I’ve never seen him this desperate.”

Pellam asked, “What exactly happens if the Tower fails?”

“A dozen banks’ll call Mr. McKennah’s loans. They’re personally guaranteed,” Clarke whispered, as if disclosing a social disease. “He’ll go bankrupt. He owes a billion five more than he’s got.”

“Hate it when that happens,” Pellam said.

Bailey asked Clarke, “You find anything at the office about granting underground rights to the property that burned?”

“Nothing, no. But McKennah always plays things close to his chest. The partners’re always complaining that he never keeps them informed.”

Bailey grimaced. “Never easy, is it? Well, all right, Newton, back you go to the salt mines.”

Clarke hesitated then, eyes on the dusty, scuffed floor.

“What?” Pellam asked him.

But when he spoke it was to Bailey. He said, “He hurts people, Mr. McKennah does. He screams at them and he fires them when they don’t do exactly what he wants even if it turns out later he was wrong. He has temper tantrums. He gets even with people.” Finally the eyes swung toward Pellam momentarily. “Just… be careful. He’s a very vindictive man. A bully.”

Cloaked as a warning, the man’s words meant something else. They meant: Forget the name Newton Clarke.

He stood and left hurriedly, his disco boots making virtually no noise on the linoleum.

“So, we’ve got a motive,” Pellam said.

“Greed. The Old Faithful of motives. One of the best.” Bailey refilled his glass. He lifted the shade, looked out at the construction site.

Pellam said, “We’ve got to find out if McKennah has the underground rights to the land below Ettie’s building. The head of the Foundation could tell you. Father… whatever his name is. Did he ever call you back?”