Hells Kitchen

property.”
    “Right,” Bailey confirmed.
    “So McKennah needs it to finish the tunnel. It’s the last piece.”
    “So it seems,” the lawyer said.
    “What about this?” Pellam mused. “He cuts a deal with the owner—the St. Augustus foundation—so they let him build the tunnel. Only McKennah finds out he can’t dig under the building. Maybe it’s too old, maybe it’s not stressed right. So he hires the pyro to burn the place down and make it look like Ettie did it. McKennah gets his tunnel and the Foundation can put up a new building.”
    Clarke shrugged. “All I can say is what I said before. I’ve never seen him this desperate.”
    Pellam asked, “What exactly happens if the Tower fails?”
    “A dozen banks’ll call Mr. McKennah’s loans. They’re personally guaranteed,” Clarke whispered, as if disclosing a social disease. “He’ll go bankrupt. He owes a billion five more than he’s got.”
    “Hate it when that happens,” Pellam said.
    Bailey asked Clarke, “You find anything at the office about granting underground rights to the property that burned?”
    “Nothing, no. But McKennah always plays things close to his chest. The partners’re always complaining that he never keeps them informed.”
    Bailey grimaced. “Never easy, is it? Well, all right, Newton, back you go to the salt mines.”
    Clarke hesitated then, eyes on the dusty, scuffed floor.
    “What?” Pellam asked him.
    But when he spoke it was to Bailey. He said, “He hurts people, Mr. McKennah does. He screams at them and he fires them when they don’t do exactly what he wants even if it turns out later he was wrong. He has temper tantrums. He gets even with people.” Finally the eyes swung toward Pellam momentarily. “Just . . . be careful. He’s a very vindictive man. A bully.”
    Cloaked as a warning, the man’s words meant something else. They meant: Forget the name Newton Clarke.
    He stood and left hurriedly, his disco boots making virtually no noise on the linoleum.
    “So, we’ve got a motive,” Pellam said.
    “Greed. The Old Faithful of motives. One of the best.” Bailey refilled his glass. He lifted the shade, looked out at the construction site.
    Pellam said, “We’ve got to find out if McKennah has the underground rights to the land below Ettie’s building. The head of the Foundation could tell you. Father . . . whatever his name is. Did he ever call you back?”
    “No, he didn’t.”
    “Let’s try him again.”
    But Bailey was shaking his head. “I don’t think we should trust him. But I can find out.”
    “Cleg?” Pellam asked. The skinny horseman, armed with his liquor bottles.
    “No,” Bailey said, reflecting. “I’ll do this one myself. We should meet back here at, say, eight?”
    “Sure.”
    Bailey looked up and found Pellam’s eyes on him. “Thought I treated him a little harshly? Newton?”
    Pellam shrugged. “I’ve finally nailed down your secret. How you clog up gears, Louis.”
    “Have you now?”
    “You cultivate debts.”
    The lawyer sipped wine and chuckled, nodding. “I learned a long time ago about the power of debt. What’s the one thing that makes a man powerful, a president, a king, a corporate executive? That people owe him—their lives, their jobs, their freedom. That’s the secret. A man who knows how to milk debt is the man who can keep power the longest of anyone.”
    The dull ice cubes clinked on the surface of the lemon-colored wine.
    “And what does Clarke owe you?”
    “Newton? Oh, in crass terms, about thirty-thousand dollars. He used to be a broker. He came to me with a real estate investment partnership idea a few years ago and I plunked down a chunk of my life savings. I found out later it was all phoney. The U.S. Attorney and the SEC caught him and I lost the money.”
    “And this is how he’s paying you off?”
    “As far as I’m concerned, information is negotiabletender. Tough luck that none of his other creditors feel that way.”
    “How long till he pays you off?”
    Bailey laughed. “Oh, he probably has. Ages ago. But he doesn’t believe it, of course. And he never will. That’s the marvelous thing about debts. Even after you repay them, they never really go away.”
    *   *   *
    No one paid any attention to the young worker as he wheeled the 55-gallon drum of cleaning fluid up the ramp to the apartment building. It was seven-thirty, dusk, but Thirty-sixth Street was lit up like a carnival, workers scurrying to get