Hells Kitchen

Augustus? . . Well, check it out. And call me. And I mean in three minutes. And Tony, did I tell you, I’m budgeting one point three million for the dock job.”
    McKennah hung up. “He’ll call back. So, that’s my part of the deal. Now it’s your turn. Who’s the fucking spy who’s leaking my secrets?”
    Pellam said, “When I was over at the Tower a little while ago, taking that tour of your office?”
    “Tour,” the developer said wryly.
    Pellam continued. “I noticed one of the secretaries in the rental office. Kay Haggerty? I saw her nameplate.”
    The flash in McKennah’s eyes explained that voluptuous Miss Haggerty was more than a secretary.
    “Kay?” McKennah asked. “What about her? She’s a nice kid.”
    “She may be. But she’s also your leak.”
    “Impossible. She’s a hard worker. And I’ve . . .” He groped for a euphemism. “I trust her completely. Why d’you think she’d be spying on me?”
    “Because she’s Jimmy Corcoran’s girlfriend. I saw herlast week in the 488 Bar and Grill. She was sitting on his lap.”
    *   *   *
    The location scout turned filmmaker paced high in the midtown sky, looking out Roger McKennah’s perfectly clean windows.
    His Nokona boots silently pressed their narrow silhouettes into the lush blue carpet. It seemed to him that here, seventy stories above the streets, the air was rarified. He felt breathless but he supposed that wasn’t altitude or corporate power but just the residue of smoke in his lungs from the fire at Bailey’s.
    Flanked by a billionaire and his ruthless associate, Pellam paced. Minutes passed like days then finally the telephone chirped.
    The developer dramatically snagged the phone from its cradle the way he probably always did when others were present. He listened, then put his palm over the mouthpiece and looked at Pellam.
    “Got ’em.”
    He jotted a note and hung up. Showed it to Pellam. “This name mean anything to you?”
    Pellam stared at the paper for a long moment. “I’m afraid it does,” he said.

TWENTY-SEVEN
    “Yo, look, man. Her, she the bitch work at that place fo’ kids.”
    “Man, don’t be talking ’bout her that way. She okay. My brother, he all fucked up and he stay there a month. Was a cluckhead. Got hisself off rock, you know what I’m saying?”
    “This nigger say she a bitch. All y’all think that be a okay place but all kinda shit go on there. Why you dissing me?”
    “I ain’t dissing you. I just saying she ain’t no bitch. Got a minda her own. And look out for people is what I’m saying.”
    Carol Wyandotte sat on the pungent creosote-soaked pilings overlooking the murky Hudson and listened to the young men lope past on their way south. Where were they headed? It was impossible to tell. To jobs as forklift operators? To direct an independent film like John Singleton or young Spike Lee. To pull on throwaways, take a box cutter and mug a tourist in Times Square.
    When she heard the exchange she thought, as she’dsaid recently to John Pellam, Oh, he doesn’t mean “bitch” that way.
    But apparently he did.
    Anyway, who was she to say anything? Carol had been wrong before about the people whose lives she’d wedged her way into.
    She sat on this pier under a torrid sun and looked at the ships cruising up and down the Hudson. Tugs, a few pleasure boats, a yacht. A ubiquitous Circle Line cruise ship, painted in the colors of the Italian flag, moved slowly past. The tourists on board were still excited and eager for scenery; but then their voyage had just begun. How enthusiastic would they be, hot and hungry, in three hours?
    One thing was different about Carol Wyandotte today. She had pulled up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, revealing rather pudgy arms. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d appeared bare-armed in public. Already a slight blush of sunburn covered her skin. She looked down and turned her right arm over, gazing at the terrible mass of scars. She rubbed her hand absently over this ruined part of her body then buried her eyes in the crook of her arm and let the tears soak the skin.
    The car door slammed some distance away and by the time she counted, obsessively, to fifty she heard footsteps rustling through the grass. They hesitated then continued. When she reached seventy-eight in her count she heard the voice. It was, of course, John Pellam’s. “Mind if I join you?”
    *   *   *
    “The property was willed to a charity years ago,” Carol told