Hells Kitchen

him, hugging her knees to her chest.
    “And then got transferred to the Outreach Center. I was working in the main office then and saw those three lots on the books of the charity—the ones at 454, 456 and 458 Thirty-sixth. Then I noticed McKennah’s surveying team working in the block where the Tower is now. I asked around and heard a rumor he was going to build. That neighborhood was a nightmare then. But I knew what was coming. I knew the value of those three lots’d skyrocket in a couple of years. Of course, none of the board of the charity would dare even set foot in the Kitchen; they had no clue what was going on. So I went to them and said we had to dump them fast because there’d been some reporters doing stories about teenage hookers and pushers and homeless squatting in the buildings.”
    “And they believed you?”
    “Oh, you bet. All I had to say was that if the media got hold of the fact that the YOC owned them, the publicity’d be devastating. They were horrified at the thought of bad press. They all are—rabbis, priests, philanthropists, CEOs, doesn’t matter. They’re all cowards. So the board dumped the lots at a sacrifice.” She laughed. “The broker called it a ‘fire sale’ price.”
    “You bought them yourself?”
    She nodded. “With drug money my ex and I’d stashed away. I set up the phoney St. Augustus Foundation. Learned how to do that when I was a legal secretary in Boston. I also knew I couldn’t tear down the building because it was landmarked. So I just held it. Then I met Sonny.”
    “How?”
    “He stayed at the YOC for a couple years after his time in Juvenile Detention for burning down his mother’s house and killing his mother’s boyfriend.”
    “And,” Pellam continued, “you also knew Ettie.”
    “Sure,” the woman confessed. “I was her landlord. I had copies of her rent checks and of her handwriting. I sent this black woman who looked sort of like her to get the insurance application. Paid her a few hundred dollars. I used my master key to get into Ettie’s apartment while she was out shopping. I found her passbook.”
    Pellam looked over the flat, grassy land around them. “And you took the money out of her account?”
    “The same woman who got the insurance application made the withdrawals. And the note they found on Sonny’s body? About Ettie? He was just supposed to plant it at one of the fires so the police would find it. I forged that too.”
    “But why? You can’t take any money out of the foundation.”
    She laughed. “Ah, Pellam. You’re so Hollywood. You think every crook has to steal ten million bucks worth of gold, or a hundred million in bonds. Like in a Bruce Willis movie. Life’s more modest than that. No, with the garage, the Foundation’d make a good profit and I’d hire myself as executive director. I could make seventy, eighty thousand a year without the Attorney General batting an eye. Add some petty cash, an expense account, and there’d still be enough money left to actually give some away to the poor folks in Hell’s Kitchen.”
    She offered a grim smile. “Not contrite enough for you, am I?” The wolf eyes were like pale ice. “Pellam, you know the only times I’ve cried, I mean, really cried, in the past year? Five minutes ago, thinking about you. And the morning after we spent the night together. After I stole those tapes from your apartment I took the subway to work. I sat in the car and cried and cried. Iwas almost hysterical. I thought what kind of life I might’ve had with somebody like you. But it was too late then.”
    A car drove past and they heard a powerful bass beat from the radio’s speakers. That song again. It’s a white man’s world . . . . Slowly the beat faded.
    Pellam stared at the woman’s horribly scarred arms. He found himself saying, “But you didn’t cry for Ettie, did you?”
    “Oh, that’s the point, Pellam,” Carol said bitterly. “Cry for Ettie Washington? All she could ever be is a victim. God gave her that role. Hell, half the people in this city are victims and the other half are perpetrators. That’s never going to change, Pellam. Never, never, never. Haven’t you caught on yet? It doesn’t matter what happens to Ettie. If she didn’t go to jail for this she’d go to jail for something else. Or she’d get evicted and move into the shelter. Or onto the street.”
    She wiped her eyes. “That boy who’s following you around, Ismail? The one you think you can