Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“Ettie’s friend. The writer.”

“Filmmaker.” They shook hands.

The portly man touched his coif of long gray hair, which was thinning reluctantly. He wore a white shirt and wide, emerald-colored tie. His gray suit was one size off in both directions – the pants too big, the jacket too small.

“I’d like to talk to you about her case,” Pellam said.

“It’s too hot in here.” Bailey stacked the copied papers on the desk and wiped his forehead. “The A.C.’s misbehaving. How about we retire to my other office? I’ve got a branch up the street.”

Another branch? Pellam thought. And said, “Lead the way.”

Louis Bailey waved toward the doughy woman bartender. He said nothing to her but she waddled off to fix what must have been the lawyer’s usual. In a brogue she called to Pellam, “Whatcha want?”

“Coffee.”

“Irish?”

“Folgers,” he replied.

“I meant with whisky?”

“I meant without.”

Bailey continued. “So. The scans came back negative. The MRI or whatever. She’ll be fine. They’ve moved her to Women’s Detention Center.”

“I tried to visit her yesterday. They wouldn’t let me. Lomax, that fire marshal, wasn’t much help.”

“They usually aren’t. If you’re on our side of the fence.”

Pellam said, “I finally found a cop who told me she’d hired you.”

With an awkward squeak the door opened and two dark-suited young men entered, looked around with dismay and left. Bailey’s uptown office – the abysmal Emerald Isle Pub – was not the sort of place for a business brunch.

“Can I see her?” Pellam asked.

“Now that she’s in detention we can work that out, sure. I’ve talked to the A.D.A.”

“The…?”

“Assistant District Attorney. The prosecutor. Lois Koepel’s her name. She’s not bad, not good. She’s got an attitude. Jewish thing, I think. Or woman’s thing. Or a young thing. I don’t know which is worse. I threatened her with an order to show cause, they don’t take better care of Ettie – make sure she gets pain pills, change her bandages. But they couldn’t care less, of course.”

“Guess not.”

Over Pellam’s sour coffee and Bailey’s martini the lawyer gave his assessment of the case. Pellam was trying to gauge the man’s competence. From the man’s mouth came no statutes, case citations or court rules. Pellam reached a vague conclusion that he’d have preferred someone more outraged and, if not smarter, t least chronologically closer to law school.

Bailey sipped the drink and said, “What’s this film of yours about?”

“An oral history on Hell’s Kitchen. Ettie’s my best source.”

“The woman can tell her stories, that’s for sure.”

Pellam folded his hands around the hot mug. The bar was freezing. A bitter wind shot from a sputtering air conditioner above the door. “Why’d they arrest her? Lomax wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, they’ve found some stuff.”

“Stuff.”

“And it’s not good. A witness saw her entering the basement just before the fire. It started down there, next to the boiler. She’s got a key to the back door.”

“Don’t all the tenants?”

“Some do. But she was the one seen opening the door five minutes before the fire started.”

“I met somebody at the building yesterday,” Pellam said. “She told me she saw some people in the alley. Just before the fire. Three or four men. She couldn’t describe them any better than that.”

Bailey nodded and jotted a few sentences in a battered leather notebook embossed with initials not his own.

“She couldn’t have done it,” Pellam said. “I was there. She was on the stairs above me when it started.”

“Oh, they don’t think she actually started the fire. They think she opened the basement door and let a pyro in.”

“A professional arsonist?”

“A pro, yeah. But a psycho too. A guy’s been working in the city for a few years. The M.O.’s that he mixes gas with fuel oil. Just the right proportion. He knows what he’s doing. See, gas alone’s too unstable so he adds oil. The fire takes a little longer to get going but it burns hotter. Then – get this – he also adds dish detergent to the mix. So the stuff sticks to clothes and skin. Like napalm. Burning-for-bucks guys, I mean, pure for-hire stuff, they wouldn’t do that. And they don’t set fires when there’re people around. They don’t want anybody to get hurt. This guy likes it… The fire marshals and the cops’re worried. He’s getting crazier. There’s pressure on ’em from above to get him.”

“So Lomax thinks she hired him,” Pellam mused. “What about the fact that she was almost killed too?”

“The A.D.A.’s speculating she tried to get to her apartment so she’d have an alibi. There was a fire escape outside her window. Only the timing got screwed up. They also think she planned it when you were coming over so you could confirm she was there.”

Pellam scoffed. “She wouldn’t hurt me.”

“But you were early, weren’t you?”

Pellam finally said, “A few minutes, yeah.” Then: “But everybody’s missing one thing. What’s her motive supposed to be?”

“Ah, yes. The motive.” As he’d done several times before Bailey paused and organized his thoughts. He drained his martini and ordered another. “Full jigger this time, Rosie O’Grady. Don’t let those massive olives lure you into cheating. Last week Ettie bought a tenant’s insurance policy for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Pellam sipped from the cup then pushed it away from him. The vile taste in his mouth was only partly the coffee. “Keep going.”

“It’s a declared-value policy. Ever hear of that? It means she pays a high premium but if the apartment is destroyed the insurer pays off whether she’s got Chippendale furniture or orange crates inside.”

“Pretty damn obvious. Buying a policy then burning the building the next month.”

“Ah, but the police love obvious crimes, Mr. Pellam. So do juries. New Yorkers don’t do well with subtleties. That’s why clever bad guys get away with murder.” The martini arrived and Bailey hovered over the glass, like a child eyeing a present on Christmas morning. “On top of that, women are prime suspects in insurance fraud and welfare scams. See, if you’re a welfare mom and your place burns down you get moved to the top of the list for a nicer place. Happens everyday. The fire marshal saw a woman, an insurance policy and a suspicious fire. Bingo, his job’s done.”

“Somebody’s setting her up. Hell, if it was insurance, why burn the whole building? Why not just her own apartment?”

“Less suspicious. Anyway, this pyro goes for the most damage he can. She just happened to hire him . Probably didn’t even know what he was going to do.”

Pellam, a former independent filmmaker and script writer, often thought of life as a series of storylines. There seemed to be some holes in this one. “Okay, they must’ve sent the insurance policy to her. What did Ettie say when she saw it?”

“The agency claims she picked up the application, filled it out, mailed it back. They forwarded it to the home office. Her approved copy of the policy’d just been mailed from the headquarters the day before the fire so she never received it.”

“Then the agent or clerk could testify that it wasn’t Ettie,” Pellam pointed out.

“The clerk identified her picture as the woman who picked up the application.”

Pellam, long suspicious of conspiracy theories, felt a plot worthy of an Oliver Stone movie at work. “What about the premium check?”

“Paid in cash.”

“And Ettie says?” Pellam asked.