Hells Kitchen

cool and acting cool.”
    “Touché. How’d you figure the brunette?”
    “She was the tougher one. More of a challenge. Roger never takes the easy way. His office is on the seventieth floor of this building. He walks up every one of those flights in the morning.”
    “Quite a view,” Pellam said, walking to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He gazed out over dusky Manhattan. Jolie pointed out several buildings that bore McKennah’s name and several more, older ones, that she explained were owned or operated by his companies.
    Pellam lifted his hands and pressed the cold glass with his fingers. Because of the faint light in the den his reflection appeared to be an angel floating outside, touching Pellam’s fingertips with its own.
    “Your film, it’s about Roger, isn’t it?”
    “No. It’s about the old West Side.”
    “Then why are you spying on him?”
    He said nothing.
    Jolie said, “We’re getting divorced, Roger and I.”
    Pellam continued to stare at the lights of the city. Was this a setup? Was she spying on him? Hollywood made you paranoid for your job; Hell’s Kitchen, your life.
    But he had a vague sense that he should trust her. He recalled the look in her eyes when she saw the brunette lift her skirt and start up the stairs. Pellam had worked with many actresses, some of them excellent, but very few had enough command of the Method to summon up that kind of pain.
    “There’s talk about you,” Jolie McKennah said.
    In the distance the fire on the West Side had been mostly extinguished. Still, you could see a hundredlights from the emergency vehicles, flashing like lasers in a tawdry disco.
    “Did he say anything?” Pellam didn’t know whether nodding at the ceiling, where McKennah was bedding the tough brunette, was appropriate.
    “No, but he knows about you. He’s been watching you.”
    “So, why are we here? Talk to me.”
    She sipped then smiled mournfully. “We never had any secrets, Roger and I. None. It got to the point where I even knew his girlfriends’ bra sizes. But then something happened.”
    “Attrition?”
    “That’s good, Pellam. Yes, exactly. Little by little things got worn down. We haven’t been in love for a long time. Oh, ages. But we were close and we were friends. But then that went away. That friendship part. He began lying to me. That broke the rules. We decided to get divorced.”
    He decided to get divorced, she meant.
    “And you feel betrayed.”
    She considered refuting this. But she said, “Yes, I felt betrayed.”
    He was gazing out the window, past his reflection. “The arson on Thirty-sixth Street? Some of the men who work for his company were nearby that building just before the fire.”
    This got her attention.
    “So, you’re a crusader, are you?”
    “Not hardly. I just want to know who was behind it.”
    “I don’t think Roger would ever do anything like that.”
    “‘Think.’”
    He could see she wasn’t sure. She held the champagne beneath her nose and inhaled. “You find me attractive?”
    “Yes.” It was true and had nothing to do with the glacial eight months.
    “You want to make love to me?”
    “Another time, another place, yes, I would.”
    This satisfied her. How fragile is our vanity and how recklessly we wear it for all to crush.
    “Tell me what you’re really after and maybe I can help you.”
    And maybe she can cut me off at the knees.
    “Ah, you’re hesitating,” she continued. “Think I’ll report back to him. Think I’m a spy?”
    “Maybe.”
    “I thought you were a gambling man.”
    “The stakes’re high.”
    “How much? One billion? Two?”
    “Ten years of an old woman’s life.”
    She hesitated. “I don’t have any power over him anymore. Not like I did.” She nodded toward the party but the gesture was aimed like a sniper rifle at all the brunettes and redheads and blondes in the room. “And I’ll never get that back. He’s won, hands down, in that arena—the bedroom, our home. So I have to hurt him the only way I still can. In his business.”
    He said, “That woman I mentioned. She was a tenant in the building that burned down. She’s been arrested for the arson and she didn’t do it.”
    “Washington’s her name,” Jolie said. “I read about that. An insurance scam or something.”
    Pellam nodded. “Did your husband burn the place down?”
    Jolie thought for a long moment, staring again at the needlepoint bubbles. “Not the old Roger. No, he wouldn’t. The new