Hells Kitchen

didn’t even bother to negotiate. He asked, “How’d you find out about the fire?”
    “The guy who did it, I sorta know him. He’s a hatter. Crazy dude, you know. He gets off burning things.”
    The pyro Bailey had told him about—the one A.D.A. Lois Koepel, whom Pellam already detested, was so eager to track down.
    “He told you who hired him?”
    “Like, not exactly but you can figure it out. From what he told me.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “You, like, don’t need to know it.”
    You, like, know mine.
    “I could give you one,” the boy continued. “But so what? It wouldn’t be real.”
    “Well, I don’t have a hundred thousand bucks. Nowhere near.”
    “Bullshit. You’re, like, this famous director or something. You’re from Hollywood. Of course you got money.”
    In front of them the police cruiser eased down the street again. Pellam thought about tackling the skinny kid and calling the cops over.
    But all it took was one look into Pellam’s eyes.
    “Oh, nice try, you asshole,” the boy shouted. Clutching the precious book under his arm, he burst down the alley.
    Pellam waved futilely at the police car. The two cops inside didn’t see him. Or they ignored the gestures. Then he was racing through the alley, boots pounding grittily on the cobblestones, after the kid. They streaked through two vacant lots behind Ettie’s building and emerged onto Ninth Avenue. Pellam saw the boy turn right, north, and keep sprinting.
    When the kid got to Thirty-ninth Street Pellam lost him. He paused, hands on hips, gasping. He examined the parking lots, the approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel, the rococo tenements, bodegas and a sawdust-strewn butcher shop. Pellam tried a deli but no one in there had seen him. When he stepped out into the street Pellam noticed, a half block away, a door swinging open. The boy sprinted out, lugging a knapsack, and vanished in a mass of people. Pellam didn’t even bother to pursue. In the crowded streets the boy simply turned invisible.
    The doorway the kid had come out of was a storefront, windows painted over, black. He remembered seeing it earlier. The Youth Outreach Center. Inside he saw a dingy fluorescent-lit room sparsely furnished with mismatched desks and chairs. Two women stood talking in the center of the room, arms crossed, somber.
    Pellam entered just as the thinner of the two women lifted her arms helplessly and pushed through a doorway that led to the back of the facility.
    The other woman’s pale, round face was glossy with faint makeup, barely hiding a spray of freckles. She wore her red hair shoulder-length. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties. She wore an old sweatshirt and a pair of old jeans, which didn’t disguise her voluptuous figure. The long-sleeved top, maroon, bore the Harvard crest. Veritas.
    Pellam had a fast memory of the Cubano Lord. Verdad, he recalled.
    Primero con la verdad.
    She glanced up at him with some curiosity as he stepped inside. She glanced at his camera bag. He introduced himself and the woman said, “I’m Carol Wyandotte. The director here. Can I help you?” She adjusted a pair of thick tortoiseshell glasses, a break in the frame fixed with white adhesive tape—shoving the loose glasses back up her nose. Pellam thought she was pretty the way a peasant or farm girl would be. Absurdly, she wore a choker of pearls.
    “A kid left here a minute ago. Blond, grungy.”
    “Alex? We were just talking about him. He ran inside, grabbed his backpack and left. We were wondering what was going on.”
    “I was talking to him down the street. He just ran off.”
    “ Talking to him?”
    Pellam didn’t want to say that the boy knew about the arson. For the youngster’s sake. The Word on the Street traveled far too fast. He remembered the gun in Ramirez’s hand and how the whole world seemed terrified of Jimmy Corcoran.
    “You can,” Carol said dryly, “tell me the truth.” Shoved her glasses onto her nose.
    Pellam cocked an eyebrow.
    “Happens all the time. One of our kids cops a wallet or something. Then somebody comes in, blushing, and says, ‘I think one of your boys “found” my wallet.’”
    Pellam decided she was a smart, rich girl turned social worker. Which was probably a very tough category of person to deal with.
    “Well, he might be a great thief but he didn’t steal anything from me. I’m making a film and—”
    “A reporter?” Carol’s face went ice cold—much angrier than if he’d accused Alex of