Hells Kitchen

that night. Just before the fire.”
    “I go in the back door usually. A lot of times I do that—if I’ve been to the A&P. It’s a shortcut. Saves me some steps.”
    “Do all the tenants have keys to the back?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose so.”
    “You locked it behind you?”
    “It locks by itself. I think I heard it close.”
    Ettie was often digressive. One thought brought up ten others. One question could lead via a colorful stream of consciousness to a different time and place. Pellam noted that today, though, her responses were succinct, cautious.
    The guard had tolerated Pellam’s hand upon Ettie’s arm long enough. “No contact,” she snapped. Pellam sat back. The guard’s nose was pierced three times with gold studs and each ear sprouted ten or twelve small rings. Her belligerence suggested that she was waiting for someone to ridicule the jewelry.
    “Louis Bailey,” Pellam asked Ettie. “You think he’s a good lawyer?”
    “Oh, he’s good. He’s done stuff for me before. I hired him six, eight months ago, for this social security problem I had. He did an okay job. . . . That guard over there keeps looking at us with an evil eye, John. She’s too jaunty for my taste. Sticking pins in her nose.”
    Pellam laughed. “This witness told me she saw some men in the alley just before the fire. Did you see them when you got home from the store?”
    “Sure.”
    “Who was it?”
    “Nobody I recognized. Some boys from the neighborhood. They’re always there. You know, it’s an alley. Where kids always hang out. Did fifty years ago. Do now. Some things never change.”
    Pellam remembered what Sibbie’s son had told her—what earned him the slap in the face. He asked Ettie, “Were they from the gangs?”
    “Could be. I don’t know much about them. They leave us alone pretty much. . . . And maybe there were some of those workers too. From that big buildingthey’re putting up across the street. You know, with those telescopes they have. For surveying. Yeah, I’m sure I saw some of them in the alley. I remember ’cause they wear those plastic helmets. Some of them were those men who came around with the petition we signed.”
    Pellam remembered Ettie telling him about the high-rise, how the locals had greeted the huge project with such excitement. Roger McKennah, as famous as Donald Trump, was building a glitzy skyscraper in Hell’s Kitchen! His company had sent representatives out into the ’hood, asking residents in the blocks around the high-rise to sign waivers so that the building could go five stories higher than the zoning laws allowed. In exchange for their approval of the variance he pledged that the building would feature new grocery stores and a Spanish restaurant and a twenty-four-hour laundry. Ettie had signed, along with most of the other residents.
    And then they’d found that the grocery store was part of a gourmet chain that charged $2.39 for a can of black beans, the laundry charged three dollars to wash a blouse, and as for the restaurant, it had a dress code and the limos parked out in front created a terrible traffic jam.
    Pellam now made a mental note about the workers, wondered why they were surveying in the alley across the street. He wondered too why they’d been working at ten o’clock at night.
    “I think we should call your daughter,” Pellam said.
    “I already did,” Ettie said and looked at her cast in surprise—as if it had just materialized on her arm. “I had a long talk with her this morning. She’s sendingmoney to Louis for his bill. She wanted to come tomorrow but I was thinking I’ll need her more ’round the trial.”
    “I’m voting that there won’t even be a trial.”
    The bejeweled guard examined her watch. “Okay. Come on, Washington.”
    “I just got here,” Pellam said coolly.
    “An’ now you just be leavin’.”
    “A few minutes,” he said.
    “Time’s up. Move it! And you, Washington, hustle. ”
    Pellam lowered his eyes to the guard’s. “She’s got a sprained ankle. You want to tell me how the hell’s she supposed to hustle?”
    “Don’t want lip from you, mister. Less go.”
    The door swung open, revealing the dim hallway, in which a sign was partially visible. PRISONERS SHALL NO
    “Ettie,” Pellam said, grinning. “You owe me something. Don’t forget.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The end of the story about Billy Doyle.”
    Pellam watched the woman tuck away her despair beneath a smile. “You’ll