Hells Kitchen

growled. “Fuck that bitch. I say—”
    “Shhhh,” Hatake waved a hand.
    “Do her now! Do the bitch now.”
    Hatake’s face tightened into a glare. “Quiet! Damballah! We gonna do this th’way I say. You hear me, girl? I ain’t kill her. Damballah don’t ask more than what she done.”
    “Okay, sister,” the girl said, her voice hushed and frightened. “Okay. That’s cool. Whatcha saying we do?”
    “Shhhhh,” Hatake hissed again and glanced out the bars, where a lethargic guard lounged out of earshot. “Who gonna see the man today?”
    A couple of the girls lifted their arms. The prostitutes. Criminal Term batched those arraignments and disposed of them early, Hatake knew. It was like the city wanted them back on the street with a minimum of lost time. Hatake looked at the oldest one. “You Dannette, right?”
    The woman nodded, her pocked face remained peaceful.
    “I’ma ask you do something for me. How ’bout that, girl?”
    “Whatchu want me to do?”
    “You talk to yo man when you get into the courtroom.”
    “Yeah, yeah, sister.”
    “Tell him we make it worth his while. After you get out, I wan’ you to come back.”
    Dannette frowned. “You want . . . You want what?”
    “Listen to me. I want you to get back in here. Tomorrow.”
    Dannette had never stopped nodding but she didn’t understand this. Hatake continued, “I want you to get something, bring it in here to me. You know how, right? You know where you hide it? In the back hole, not the front. In a Baggie.”
    “Sure.” Dannette nodded as if she hid things there every day.
    She looked around at the other women. Whatever she was being asked to do was being seconded by everybody.
    “I’ll pay you for this, for coming back again.”
    “You get me rock?” the girl asked eagerly.
    Hatake scowled. It was well-known that she hated drugs, dealers and users. “You a cluckhead, girl?”
    The pocked face went still. “You get me rock?”
    “I give you money,” the huge woman spat out. “You buy whatever you want with it, girl. Fuck up your life, you want. That your business.”
    Dannette said, “What it is you want me to bring you back?”
    “Shhh,” whispered Hatake Imaham. A guard was wandering past the door.

SIX
    “Hell of a visiting room.”
    “Oh, John, am I in the soup?”
    Pellam told Ettie, “Not exactly. But you’re walking around the edge of the bowl, looks like.”
    “It’s good to see you.” They sat across from each other in the fluorescent-lit room. A roach meandered slowly up the wall, past the corpses of his kin crushed to dry specks. Beneath a sign that read NO PHYSICAL CONTACT John Pellam took the bandaged hand of Ettie Washington. The squat uniformed matron nearby looked coldly at this disregard of regulations but didn’t say anything. Pellam said. “Louis Bailey’s going to get you out on bail.”
    Ettie looked bad. She seemed too calm, considering everything that had happened to her. He knew she had a temper. He’d seen it when she talked about her husband—Billy Doyle’s leaving her. And about the time she was fired from her last job. After years working for a jobber in the Fashion District she’d been let go without a single day’s severance. He expected to see her fury at whoever had set the blaze, at the police, at the jailors.He found only resignation. That was a lot more troubling to him than anger.
    She picked at a worn spot on her shift. “The guards’re all saying it’ll go easier if I tell ’em I did it and tell ’em who I hired. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
    Pellam debated for a moment then decided to ask. “Tell me about the insurance policy.”
    “Hell, I didn’t buy any insurance, John. They think I’m a stupid old lady, doing something like that?” She pressed the palm of her good hand against her stiff gray-and-black hair as if fighting off a migraine. “Where I’m gonna get money to buy insurance?” She winced in pain, continued. “I can barely pay my bills, as is. I can’t even do that half the time. Where’m I gonna get money to buy insurance?”
    “You’ve never been in any insurance agencies in the last month?”
    “No. I swear.” Her face was drawn up, as she eyed the guard suspiciously.
    “Ettie, I’ve got to ask you these questions. Somebody recognized you taking out the policy.”
    “That’s their problem,” she said, tight-lipped. “It wasn’t me.”
    “Somebody else saw you at the back door of the building