Hells Kitchen

McKennah Tower ready for the topping-off ceremony.
    Wearing white overalls, Sonny rested the dolly carrying the drum on the floor and in front of the door. He glanced at the tarnished sign, Louis Bailey, Esq. He listened and heard nothing. Then he knocked several times and when there was no answer he easily picked the lock—a talent that he didn’t possess when he entered Juvenile Detention but that he had with him when he left—and then wheeled the drum inside.
    Sonny was a worried man now. The Eagleton fire had galvanized the police and fire department. He’d never seen so many cops and marshals on the West Side. They were practically stopping cars on the street and frisking drivers. They were getting close and he had to stop them. A rough drawing of him had made the dinnertime news.
    Shaking hands, sweaty face.
    And tears. He was so frustrated and frightened that once or twice on the way over here, wheeling the drumup Ninth Avenue from his apartment, he’d found himself crying.
    Walking into the office and parking the drum beside the lawyer’s desk. The young man then sat down in the swivel chair. Fake leather, he thought disdainfully. Agent Scullery—a bit shorter and a lot deader than she’d been when she looked down at him like a squirrel—had had much better taste in interior designs. Still, the office pleased him. There was plenty of paper. He’d never burned a lawyer’s office and he thought that it would go up very fast because there was sooo much paper.
    Sonny pulled a few books off the shelf, flipped them open. Looked down at the gray blocks of type. He had no idea what these particular words meant. Sonny used to read books all the time (though he preferred his mother’s reading to him). But that was years ago and he realized now that they no longer interested him. He wondered why that was. He couldn’t remember when he’d last read a book. Years ago. What was it?
    The book drooped in his hand. . . .
    Yes, he remembered. It was a true story. About the Ringling Brothers circus fire in Hartford in 1944. More than a hundred and fifty people were killed when the big top burned in a matter of minutes. The bandleader played Stars and Stripes Forever— the traditional circus disaster march—to warn all the performers and workers of the blaze but they hadn’t been able to save that many people. Sonny remembered particularly the story of Little Miss 1565, who died in the crush of the audience trying to escape. She was clearly recognizable but no one ever claimed the body.
    Why, Sonny thought when he finished the book, didn’t he feel the least bit bad about the girl?
    He stopped brooding and returned to his task.
    On the desk he noticed Pellam’s name and phone number written on a piece of yellow paper. The Midnight Cowboy Joe Buck faggot Antichrist . . . Sonny’s hands began to shake again—the sweat was already peppering his forehead—and he felt the urge to cry once more.
    Stop it stop it stopit stopstopstop itttttt!
    He had to pause for a moment until he calmed. Get to work. Keep busy. He unscrewed the lightbulb from the old lawyer’s desk lamp and carefully opened his knapsack, taking out one of his special light bulbs, heavy and fat with the slick, milky juice. He rested it carefully on the desk and then turned to the oil drum and took his wrench from his overall pocket. He began to work the lid off.

TWENTY-TWO
    Sparks flew high above his head, cascading off the top of McKennah Tower, an eighth of a mile into the air. He could see a dozen tiny suns of welders’ arcs.
    Thinking about Carol Wyandotte, remembering how he’d seen this same astonishing building on his way to her apartment, the night he’d stayed over.
    He’d just returned from the Youth Outreach Center, looking for her. But she’d already left for the night. Her assistant said that Carole had been in court all day. One of the kids staying at the YOC there had pulled a knife on an undercover cop during a buy-and-bust operation and Carole had spent six hours with the A.D.A. trying to convince them that he’d just been scared, he hadn’t really intended to murder the officer.
    It hadn’t been a good day for her and she’d been pretty upset, the assistant told him. She’d left no message for Pellam at the YOC. And there’d been none on his machine at home.
    Pellam was returning to Louis Bailey’s office, to meet the lawyer as planned. He looked down from the crown of the Tower and once again examined the