Hells Kitchen

David Letterman had RSVP’d in the affirmative.
    At four-forty-five on Friday afternoon John Pellam pushed open one of the tall brass doors of the Criminal Courts Building and helped Ettie Washington outside then down the few stairs to the wide sidewalk.
    They stood on Centre Street under a clear sky, the late afternoon unusually cool for August. It was the end of the civil servants’ day and hundreds of government workers passed before them on their way home.
    “You doing okay?” he asked the gaunt woman.
    “Fine, John, just fine.” Though she still limped and occasionally winced at the pain from her broken arm when she adjusted her makeshift sling. Pellam noticed that his signature was still the only one on her cast.
    The woman had been released from the lockup without ceremony. She seemed even more frail than the last time Pellam had seen her. The guards were somewhat less antagonistic than on previous visits though Pellam put that down to lethargy, not contrition.
    “Hey, wait a minute,” the voice called from down the sidewalk.
    They turned to see the rumpled man in windbreaker and jeans. He was trotting toward them. “Pellam. Mrs. Washington.”
    “Lomax,” Pellam said, his face an angry mask. Of all the batterings he’d taken in the last few days—bullet streaking across the cheek, the fire, the Irish Mafia—it was the fire marshal’s skinny friend, the man with the roll of quarters, who’d inflicted the most painful damage.
    Lomax paused. He’d stopped Pellam and Ettie as he’d planned but now that he had their attention he wasn’t sure what to do. Finally he extended his hand to Ettie. She took it cautiously He debated about doing the same with Pellam but sensed, correctly, that the gesture would be rejected.
    “I don’t guess anybody came by to apologize,” Lomax said.
    “The President and the First Lady just left,” Pellam said.
    “I thought Lois Koepel’d send flowers,” the fire marshal tried.
    “Maybe FTD was closed.”
    Ettie didn’t participate in the uneasy banter.
    “We made a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry you lost your home.”
    Ettie thanked him, still wary—as she probably had always been around cops and always would be. They talked for a few minutes about how shocking it was that a youth director had been behind the arson.
    “Was a time when nobody would’ve cared what happened in the Kitchen,” Lomax said. “Life’s changing. Slowly. But it’s changing.”
    Ettie said nothing but Pellam knew what herresponse would be. He remembered, almost verbatim, one of her quotes.
    “. . . That fancy building, that tower across the street, it’s a nice one. But whoever’s putting it up, I hope for his sake he doesn’t expect too much. Nothing lasts in the Kitchen, don’t you know? Nothing changes but nothing lasts either.”
    Lomax handed her a card, saying if there was ever anything he could do. . . . Some help finding a new place. Public assistance.
    But Louis Bailey had already found Ettie a new apartment. She told Lomax this.
    “And I don’t really need anything—” she began. But Pellam shook his head and touched her shoulder. Meaning: Let’s not be too hasty here. Bailey was perhaps a bad lawyer but Pellam was confident he could toy with the city’s gears well enough to negotiate a generous settlement.
    Then Lomax was gone and Pellam and Ettie stepped to the curb. Several taxis, seeing a black woman and anticipating a Harlem- or Bronx-bound fare, sped past them.
    This infuriated Pellam though Ettie took it in stride. She winced in pain and Pellam suggested, “Let’s sit for a minute.” He gestured toward a dark green bench.
    “You know what this part of town used to be, John?”
    “No idea.”
    “Five Points.”
    “Don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”
    “When the Gophers were ruling Hell’s Kitchen thisneighborhood was just as dangerous. Maybe worse. Grandpa Ledbetter told me. Did I ever tell you about his gangster scrapbook? He kept all kinds of clippings in it.”
    “I don’t think you ever mentioned that, no.” Pellam looked out over the parks and neoclassical courthouses. “The money you had saved up? In your savings account . . . it was so you could find your daughter, wasn’t it?”
    “Louis told you about her?”
    Pellam nodded.
    “I wasn’t honest with you about that either, John. I’m sorry. But the fact is I said I’d let you interview me because I thought maybe she’d see me on