Hells Kitchen

prompted, “Come on, Newton. Pellam’s a friend.”
    “Okay, okay. . . . Well, nobody’s sure. Couldn’t prove anything. But recently there’ve been some accidents. Some union men—one of them went off the thirtieth floor of a building on Lexington. And a building inspector who hadn’t been willing to pocket money got beaned by a stack of two-by-fours. None of this happened on a McKennah job site, of course, but they all were involved with Mr. McKennah one way or another. Suppliers who tried to extort him—their trucks got hijacked. And yeah, a couple of places were firebombed—sellers who set ridiculously high prices. People who wouldn’t deal. That was Mr. McKennah’scomplaint. He doesn’t mind negotiations. He doesn’t even mind getting bested. But he hates it when people won’t even sit down with him. That’s the most important thing for Mr. McKennah. You don’t have to play fair but you have to play.”
    Pellam recalled the steely eyes of the brunette at the developer’s party. Tough adversary, playing the game. “How’d you find out all of this?”
    “Pellam’s right to be suspicious, Newton.” Bailey turned to him. “But we don’t have to worry. Newton’s sources are impeccable.” More wine sloshed. “And so’s his motive for helping us out here, isn’t it? Pristine.”
    Pellam explained what Jolie had told him and asked, “Exactly how desperate is he?”
    “His casinos have failed big. He’s a step away from bankruptcy. And I mean complete bankruptcy. Apocalyptic bankruptcy.”
    “Now we come to the crux of it, right, Newton?”
    The toupee was adjusted to quell an itching scalp. “Mr. McKennah needs the Tower.” He nodded toward the shaded window, on the other side of which the high-rise soared into the sky. “It’s his last chance,” added the flatlined voice.
    McKennah, Clarke explained, had several tenants lined up for the Tower when it was completed but there was only one lease he really cared about. RAS Advertising and Public Relations was consolidating all of its many operations in one location—fifteen floors in the Tower under a ten-year lease, with generous cost-of-living increases annually. RAS would be paying annual rent of more than $24 million.
    The ad agency employees, however, were upset about their move from midtown and were concernedthat commuting through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen would be dangerous. RAS would sign the lease only if McKennah, at his own expense, built a four-block-long tunnel connecting the building with the Long Island Railroad commuter line in Penn Station, which also had a subway stop.
    The deal was signed and, like a piranha, McKennah’s company began devouring underground rights to build the tunnel. The company negotiated easements to every building on the planned route of the tunnel—except one. A small plot of land on Thirty-seventh Street, directly behind the lot on which Ettie’s building had sat.
    “Odd coincidence,” Bailey explained wryly. “The land was bought by someone just three days before McKennah’s company approached the old owner.”
    “So, somebody had inside information that McKennah needed it. Who?”
    “Jimmy Corcoran,” Bailey said. “How ’bout that?”
    “Corcoran?” Pellam remembered Jacko Drugh’s telling him that Jimmy and his brother were planning some kind of big deal. And he recalled too what Jolie had said—the late-night meetings.
    Corcoran doing a deal with Roger McKennah. . . . Now, that was a bizarre thought.
    Bailey continued. “And Jimmy’s basically extorting McKennah. ’Cause without that parcel, no tunnel. No tunnel, no lease and hello bankruptcy court.”
    “Here’s what the deal is,” Clarke said, finally displaying some animation. “Corcoran owns the land Mr. McKennah needs, right? Well, he’s agreeing to lease it to Mr. McKennah. Only Corcoran insisted on taking a cut of the profits, not a flat fee. He gets one percent ofthe revenues generated by the property. That’s brilliant for Corcoran because it looks like McKennah Tower’s going to be making close to a hundred twenty million in annual rents.”
    “That psychotic punk is going to wind up with one point two million a year,” Bailey said.
    Clarke continued. “Mr. McKennah’s never given anybody a percent of the action before. That’s how desperate he is.”
    Pellam considered this. He said, “Ettie’s building—the one that burned—was right in between the Tower and Corcoran’s