Hells Kitchen

of the bar six large hands groped for beers and six voices resumed a heated conversation of which Pellam could hear nothing. Corcoran poured two glasses. The men tapped them together, a dull sound, and they tossed back the liquor.
    “So, you’re the man from Hollywood. The movie-maker.”
    The Word, of course, had gotten around.
    Corcoran grinned and tossed back another drink. He thumped the tabletop with his monstrously large hands, little finger and thumb extended, as if playing a bodhran drum, keeping excellent rhythm. “So where are you from?” he asked.
    “The East Village. I—”
    “Where in Ireland you from?” he said.
    “I was born here,” Pellam told him. “My father was from Dublin.”
    Corcoran halted the percussion. He gave an exaggerated frown. “I’m from Londonderry. You know what that makes us, you and me?”
    “Mortal enemies. So if you know who I am then you know what I want.”
    “Mortal enemies? You’re quick, ain’t you? Well, I don’t know exactly what you want. All’s I know is you’re making a movie here.”
    “The word is,” Pellam said, “you know everything about the Kitchen.”
    A heavy, dull-looking man gazed at Pellam belligerently from the corner table. A black plastic pistol grip protruded from his belt and he kneaded it with fat fingers.
    Pellam said, “I know you run a gang.”
    Laughter from the table.
    “A gang,” Corcoran repeated.
    “Or is it a club?
    “No, it’s a gang. We don’t mind saying it. Do we, boys?”
    “Yo, Jimmy,” was the only response.
    Corcoran busied himself with a metal tin then extracteded a wad of Copenhagen and shoved it into his mouth, further altering the eerie, almost deformed shape of his equine face. “Tell me—what do you think of the Kitchen?” he asked Pellam.
    In all his months here no one—of the thirty or so people he’d interviewed—had ever asked Pellam his opinion of the neighborhood. He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the only ’hood I’ve ever seen that’s getting better, safer, cleaner, and the old-timers here don’t want any goddamn part of that.”
    Corcoran nodded with approval, smiling. “That’s fucking good.” The table got another spanking and he poured two more shots. “Have some more poteen.” He looked out the window and his bony face grew wistful. “That’s good, man. The Kitchen ain’t what it used to be, that’s for certain. My father, he come over the water, was in the forties. ‘Coming over the water,’ that’s what they called it. Had a hell of a time getting work. The docks was the place to work then. Now it’s just a fucking tourist thing but back then the big ships’d come in, cargo and passengers. Only to get a job you had to pay the bosses. I mean, payoff. Big. My pa, he couldn’t get itup to get a job in the union. So he worked day labor. He was always talking about the Troubles, about Belfast and Londonderry. Into all that stuff, the politics, you know. That don’t interest me. Your pa, was he a Sinn Feiner, Republican? Or was he a Loyalist?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “How do you feel about independence?”
    “I’m all for it. I stay away from nine-to-five jobs.”
    Corcoran laughed. “I went to Kilmainhan jail one time. You know where that is?”
    “Where hanged the rebels of the Easter Rebellion.”
    “It was, you know, weird being there. Walking on the same stones they walked on. I cried. I don’t mind admitting it neither.” Corcoran smiled wanly, shook his head. He sipped his liquor then scooted back slightly in the chair.
    It was pure instinct that saved Pellam’s wrists.
    Corcoran leapt to his feet, grabbed a chair and brought it down on the tabletop in a hissing arc, just as Pellam shoved himself back into the wall.
    “You fucker!” he screamed. “Cock-sucking fucker!” He slammed the chair into the table again. The legs met the oak tabletop and cracked with a noise loud as twin gunshots. Fragments of glass and a mist of smoky whisky showered through the air.
    “You come here to my home, to spy on me. . . . ” His words were lost in a stew of rage. “You want my fucking secrets, you fucking tinker . . .”
    Pellam crossed his arms. Didn’t move. Gazed calmly back into Corcoran’s eyes.
    “Aw, Jimmy, come on,” a voice from the corner called. It was the man Pellam had noticed when he walked in, the smallest of the crew. Monkey Man.
    “Jimmy . . .”
    “It’s the liquor talking,” the man offered.
    “Look, mister,