Hells Kitchen

past, as if the ghosts of thousands of Hell’s Kitchen residents long gone tobullets and disease and hard lives were once again at risk.
    “You want to plead her, don’t you?” Pellam asked the lawyer.
    He nodded.
    Pellam said, “You’ve wanted to all along, haven’t you?”
    Bailey steepled his fingers, his pale wrists jutting from dirty white cuffs. “A plea bargain is considered a win here in the Kitchen.”
    “What about the innocent ones?”
    “This doesn’t have a damn thing in the world to do with guilt or innocence. It’s like Social Security or selling your blood for booze or food money. Pleading in exchange for a reduced sentence—it’s just something that makes life a little easier in the Kitchen.”
    “If I hadn’t been involved,” Pellam said, “you would’ve gone ahead, right? And plead her?”
    “A half hour after they arrested her,” Bailey responded.
    Pellam nodded. He said nothing as he walked outside and started down the sidewalk. The backhoe lifted a shovelful of rubble from the wreckage of Ettie’s building—chunks of the hand-carved bulldog mostly—and dropped it unceremoniously into the Dumpster at the curb.
    “Things come and things go. And that’s just the way it works.”
    *   *   *
    There was nothing to do but ask. Straight out.
    Pellam watched Ettie walk stiffly into the visitor’s room at the Woman’s Detention Center. Her dimsmile faded and she asked, “What is it, John?” Her eyes narrowed at the streak on his face. “What happened . . .” But her voice faded as she studied his expression.
    “The police found the bank account.”
    “The . . . ?”
    “The one in Harlem. The savings account with ten thousand in it.”
    The old woman shook her head vehemently and touched her temple with her good hand, the ring finger of which had been broken long ago and had set badly. Her face shone with contrition for maybe a second. Then she spat out, “I didn’t tell anybody about my savings. How the fuck’d they find it?” She was drawn and secretive now.
    “You didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t tell the court or your bail bondsman. You didn’t tell Louis. That doesn’t look good.”
    “There’s no reason for the world to know everything about a woman,” she snapped. “Her man takes her things away, her children take things away, everybody takes and takes and takes! How’d they find out?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Bitterly she asked, “Well, so what I’ve got some money?”
    “Ettie . . .”
    “It’s my damn business, not theirs.”
    “They say that you—or somebody—made a withdrawal just a day before the fire.”
    “What? I didn’t take anything out.” Her eyes were wide with alarm and anger.
    “Two thousand.”
    She rose and limped in a frantic circle as if shewere about to charge into the streets in search of the stolen cash. “Somebody robbed me? My money! Somebody told ’em ’bout my money! Some Judas did that.”
    The speech seemed too prepared, as if she’d planned an excuse if the money was found. More conspiracies, Pellam thought wearily. Under Ettie’s shrunken frown Pellam turned away and gazed out the window. He wondered if she was accusing him. Was he the Judas? He asked finally, “Where’s the passbook?”
    “In my apartment. It got burnt up, I guess. How can somebody take my money just like that? What am I going to do?”
    “The police froze the account.”
    “What?” Ettie cried.
    “Nobody can take any more money out.”
    “I can’t get my money?” she whispered. “I need that. I need every penny of my money.”
    Why? Pellam wondered. What for?
    He asked, “You didn’t use that money for bail. Don’t look that way, Ettie. I’m just telling you what they’re saying. That it’s suspicious.”
    “They think I paid it to the firebug man?” She gave a sour laugh.
    “Reckon they do,” Pellam said after a moment.
    “And you think that too.”
    “No. I don’t.”
    Ettie walked to the window. “Somebody betrayed me. Somebody betrayed me good.” The words were bitter and she couldn’t hold Pellam’s eye when she said this. Again Ettie remained still as stone. Then her head rose inches, just enough for her to gaze at the dimly lit windowsill. “Leave me alone now, please. I’d as soonnot see anybody. No, don’t say anything, John. Please, just leave.”
    *   *   *
    When the got him this time, they frisked him carefully.
    Oh, man, not now. I don’t need this now.
    Pellam had just