Hells Kitchen

to Jacko. It’s Ramirez did it. Hector el spic-o. Guarantee it.”
    “But his aunt lived there.”
    “Aw, she was probably gonna move. Or get evicted, more likely. Spics never pay their rent. That’s a true fact, it is. I’ll bet he’s already got her a better place.”
    He was right, Pellam recalled. Ramirez had.
    “I know it’s him. See, Ramirez rousted Johnny O’Neil.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Guy we sometimes do business with. Johnny rents apartments around town and stores things there.” Drugh’s voice dropped. “You know what I’m saying?”
    “Well, up to and including the part about renting apartments around town.”
    “Shhh, my man. Not a word. Jacko’s putting you on your honor.”
    “Fair enough.”
    “O’Neil’s trades in guns, doesn’t he? He had a apartment in that building.” He gestured toward Ettie’s tenement. “Oh, yeah, my man. A safe house.” He said this as if every New Yorker ought to have one.
    Pellam remembered the burnt guns that the fire investigators had found in the basement.
    “The other day Ramirez jacked one of O’Neil’s trucks and had him sucking on a Glock. Told him to keep the armament out of that part of the Kitchen.”
    “What’d O’Neil say?”
    “What’d he say? He said, ‘Yessir, Mr. Spic. I’ll stop.’ What’d you say you got your pearlies ’round a nine millimeter? So my money’s Ramirez heard about the guns from his auntie, shit a brick and hired that spooky guy to nuke the place.”
    Pellam shook his head. So Ramirez had told him some but not all of the story. “Do me a favor? Put the word out about Alex? I need to find him.”
    “Oh, Jacko’ll keep his eyes peeled for you. I’ll ask around. People talk to me. If there’s a little something in it for me Jacko gets the right answers.”
    Pellam reached for his wallet again.
    But Drugh shook his head. The young man seemed to grow embarrassed. “Naw, naw, I don’t mean that. You paid me already. What I’m saying, when you make that movie of yours, you keep me in mind, you do that? You give Jacko a call. They made that movie, that State of Grace, they shoulda called me. I mean, there oughta be laws about them using your life and not asking you ’bout it. I mean, fuck, I didn’t wanta be the star or nothing. I just wanted to be in the fucking movie. I’d be good. I know I would.”
    Pellam made sure not to smile as he said, “If we ever get to casting, I’ll call you, Jacko. You bet.”
    *   *   *
    Ettie Washington stared out the window of the Women’s Detention Center.
    It was high above her head and the glass was so filthy you couldn’t see through it. But the light was comforting. She was thinking back to Eddie Doyle, remembering how much the two of them liked to be outside, walking around the neighborhood. Saying hi to their neighbors. Her second husband, Harold Washington, didn’t like being indoors either though he was a sitting kind of man. The two of them, when he was home and more or less sober, would sit on the steps and share a bottle. But living by herself Ettie had discovered the pleasure of a good rocking chair and a window. A joy that now seemed to be gone forever.
    Mistakes, she was thinking of mistakes she’d made throughout her life. And secrets and lies . . . Some serious and some not so. How slightly bad things you did grew into very bad things. How the good things you tried to do faded away like smoke.
    And she was thinking of Pellam’s face when that bitch in court told everybody about her conviction. Would he ever come to visit her again? she wondered. She guessed not. Why should he? Oh, this thought cut her deeply. But what she felt was pain, not surprise. She’d known all along that he’d be vanishing from her life. He was a man, and men left. Didn’t matter if they were fathers or brothers or husbands. Men left.
    Footsteps sounded behind her.
    “Mother,” Hatake Imaham cooed, “how you feeling? You feeling good?”
    Ettie turned around.
    Several of the prisoners were standing behind the large woman. They all approached slowly. Six others stood at the far end of the cell, looking out into the corridor. Ettie couldn’t figure out why they were in a line like that. Then she realized they were blocking the guard’s view of the cell.
    A cold feeling pierced her. It was just like the feeling that sliced through her when the two policemen showed up at her door and asked, grim-faced, if her son was Billy Washington. Could they come