Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“She denies it all, of course,” Bailey said, dismissingly, as if a denial were as foremsically useful as the fly walking on the bar beside them. “Now, let’s talk practicalities. The arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow. The A.D.A.’s making rumblings about a postponement. You know what the arraignment is? That’s where-”

“I know what it is,” Pellam said. “What’s the bail situation?”

“I don’t think it’ll be too high. I’ll talk to some bailbondsmen I know. She’s a good risk, not being very mobile. And it’s not a homicide.”

“Mr. Bailey,” Pellam began.

The lawyer held up a hand. “Louis, please.” Louie . Bailey growled the name and for a moment he became the Damon Runyon character he aspired to be.

“You’ve done this before?” Pellam asked. “Cases like this?”

“Ah.” Bailey leaned his head back, touched a flabby jowl and caught Pellam’s gaze with eyes suddenly clear and focused. “I’ve seen you studying me. My bargain-cellar tie. My frayed cuffs. My Men’s Shack suit. Notice the plaid’s a bit mismatched? I wore out the original pants a year ago and got the closest I could find. And you’ve been gentlemanly enough not to mention my liquid brunch.”

He pointed to his right hand – an otherwise dramatic gesture he managed to underplay. “This’s a class ring from New York Law School. That’s not NYU, by the way. Big difference. And I went at night while I served process during the day. And graduated somewhere to the left of the middle of my class.”

“I’m sure you’re a fine lawyer.”

“Oh, of course I’m not,” Bailey snorted a laugh. “But so what? This isn’t an Upper East Side case. It’s not a SoHo or Westchester case. For those, you need a good lawyer. This is a Hell’s Kitchen case. Ettie’s poor, she’s black, the facts are against her and the jury’ll’ve found her guilty before they’re even empaneled. The law’s irrelevant.”

“What is relevant?”

“The gears,” he whispered, the theatricality filling his voice like sump water.

Pellam didn’t feel like playing straight man. He remained silent. A car drove past slowly. A BMW convertible. Even inside the bar you could hear the raw bass beat of a popular rap song Pellam had heard several times before on neighborhood radios.

“It’s a white man’s world, now don’t be blind…”

The car cruised on.

“The gears,” Bailey continued, teasing his olive. “Here’s what I mean: the first thing you learn about the Kitchen is that anybody can kill you, for any reason. Or for no reason. That’s a given. So what can you do to stay alive? Well, you can make it an inconvenience to kill you. You stay away from alleys when you walk down the street, you don’t make eye contact, you dress down, you stay close to people on street corners, you drop the names of union bosses or cops from Midtown South in bars like this one… You see what I’m saying? You gum up the gears. If it’s too much trouble to kill you, maybe, just maybe they’ll go on to someone else.”

“And Ettie?”

“Everybody – the A.D.A., the cops, the press – they take the path of least resistance. If something clogs up the gears of the case they’ll go fishing for somebody else. Find themselves another jim-dandy suspect. That’s the only thing we can do for Ettie. Gumming gears.”

“Then let’s give them another suspect. Who else’d have a motive? The owner, right? For the insurance.”

“Possibly. I’ll check the deed and find out what the owner’s insurance situation is.”

“Why else would somebody burn a building?”

“Kids do it for kicks. That’s number one in the city. Number two, revenge. So and so is sleeping with somebody’s wife. Squirt a little lighter fluid under his door, presto. Lot of perps set fires to cover up other crimes. Rape murders especially. Burglary. Welfare fraud, like I said. Vanity fires – the mailroom boy sets a fire in the office and then puts it out himself. He’s a hero… Then in the Kitchen we see a lot of landmark torchings – the city gives old buildings this special status ’cause they’re historical. Generally if a landlord owns an old building that doesn’t make money because it’s too expensive to maintain he tears it down and builds a more profitable one. But landmarked buildings can’t be torn down – they’re protected. So what happens? Lord have mercy, there’s a fire. What a coincidence! He’s free to build whatever he wants. If he doesn’t get caught.”

“Was Ettie’s building landmarked?”

“I don’t know. I can find out.”

The way Bailey emphasized the last sentence explained a little bit more about how gears got gummed up. Pellam slipped his wallet out of his back pocket, set it on the bar.

The lawyer’s face broke into a ginny smile. “Oh, yessir, that’s how it works in Hell’s Kitchen. Everybody’s a sellout. Maybe even me.” The smile faded. “Or maybe I just have a high price. That’s ethics around here – when it takes a lot to buy you.”

A police car shot past the window with its lights going but its siren off. For some reason the silent passage made its mission seem particularly harrowing and urgent.

Then Bailey grew very somber, so suddenly that Pellam guessed the second – or was it third? – Beefeater had kicked in with a stab of melancholy. He touched Pellam’s arm in a fatherly way and you could see reluctant shrewdness through the haze in his eyes. “There’s something I want to say.”

Pellam nodded.

“You’re sure you want to get involved in this? Wait. Before you answer, let me ask you something. You’ve talked to a lot of people around here? For your movie?”

“Ettie mostly. But also a couple dozen others.”

Bailey nodded, examining Pellam’s face up close, scanning it. “Well, people in the Kitchen’re easy to approach. They’ll pass you a quart of malt liquor and never wipe the bottle when you hand it back. They’ll sit on doorsteps with you for hours. Sometimes you can’t shut ’em up.”

“That’s what I’ve found. True.”

“That puts you right at ease, right?”

“Does. Yep.”

“But it’s just talk,” Bailey said. “It doesn’t mean they accept you. Or trust you. And don’t ever think you’ll hear anybody’s real secrets. They won’t tell ’em to somebody like you.”

“And what are you telling me?” Pellam asked.

The lawyer’s shrewdness became caution. There was a pause. “I’m telling you it’s dangerous here. Very dangerous. And getting more dangerous. There’ve been a lot of fires lately, more than normal. Gangs… shootings.”

The Times Metro section was full of shooting stories. Kids smuggling guns into grade school. Innocent people were gunned down in cross fires or by crazed snipers. Pellam had stopped reading the papers his second week in town.

“This is a rough time in the Kitchen.”

As opposed to when? Pellam wondered.

Bailey asked him, “Are you really sure you want to get involved?” As Pellam started to speak the lawyer held up a hand. “Are you sure you want to go where this might take you?”

Pellam answered the question with one of his own. “How much?” He tapped his wallet.

Bailey dipped again back into his alcohol haze. “For everything?” Shrugged. “I’ll have to find a cop to sneak me the arson report, the name of the insurance agent, anything else they have on her. The landlord and deed’re public records but it takes weeks if you don’t, you know-”

“Grease the gears,” Pellam muttered.

“I’d say a thousand.”

Pellam wondered what the real object of the bargaining was: abstract morality or his own gullibility.