Hells Kitchen

billboardthat he’d seen at a dozen times on his way to interview Ettie. An ad for McKennah Tower. He noticed that beneath the slick picture of the building were bullet-points of features. The 60-story structure would be computer-controlled (a “smart” building), would have a ten-thousand-square-foot public atrium, automated pneumatic waste removal, custom landscaping, a five-thousand-seat Broadway theater, a gourmet restaurant, boutiques, high-R-value insulation, water-conserving toilets, self-programming elevators . . .
    He was, however, less impressed with this than he was with the facts that weren’t quite so public, the facts Louis Bailey had told him: the labyrinthine deals McKennah had cut with City Hall, P&Z, the Board of Assessment, the Landmark Preservation Commission, the MTA, the Department of Revenue, the unions, the Clinton Community Association, the West Side Democratic Club—the deals in which every inch of the building had been bought, sold or liened in exchange for tax abatements and promises of contracts and public works renovations and sidewalk improvements and employment and oh yes hard cash pressed into very eager hands call them contributions or call them what you will. The actual construction of the monumental edifice was a dull anticlimax to the deal-making that resulted in its building.
    Maybe someday he’d do a documentary on a high-rise like this.
    Skyscraper would be the title.
    Buy the companion book.
    Pellam turned away from the Tower and walked into Louis Bailey’s building. He was surprised to find the door unlocked and partway open—the rooms inside, hecould see, were dark. Pellam squinted and saw Bailey’s form hunched over the desk. The lawyer’s head was resting on a law book and Pellam thought, Hell, passed out drunk. He smelled wine.
    And something else. What? Cleanser? Something strong and chemical.
    “Hey, Louis,” Pellam called, “rise and shine. How ’bout a little light?”
    He flipped up the wall switch.
    The explosion was very soft, not much more than the pop of a plastic bag, but the sphere of liquid flame that leapt out of the lamp was huge.
    Jesus!
    The fiery liquid splashed over the desk and enveloped the lawyer, who jerked back in a hideous, writhing gesture. His face and chest were masses of white flame, and from his throat came an animal’s desperate scream. He fell behind the desk and began to thrash, his heels making loud thuds on the floor as his hands tried manically to beat the flames away.
    Looking for a blanket or towel to beat out the flames, Pellam ran into the bedroom. By the time he found an old quilt smoke had completely filled the office, thick vile smoke, burnt-meat smoke.
    “Louis!” Pellam flung the blanket over the lawyer but it ignited immediately and just added to the growing mass of fire. Pellam grabbed the phone and hit 911. But the line went dead; the flames had melted the cord. Pellam dropped the set and ran into the hallway, hit the fire alarm on the wall and grabbed the old-fashioned canister extinguisher. He charged back into the office and turned the tank upside down, firing a hissing stream of water at the flames.
    As he stood dousing the fire ghastly smoke encircled him, slipped into Pellam’s lungs. He began choking and his vision filled with black pebbles. He kept blasting away with the extinguisher, covering the black mass of Bailey’s quivering body with the gray water.
    The desk and a bookcase were still on fire and Pellam turned the extinguisher toward them. The flames were shrinking. But the room continued to grow black with the thick smoke.
    Pellam spit the black crud from his mouth, dropped the empty extinguisher and staggered back toward the door to find another one. Outside, a dozen people were fleeing the building. He tried to call out to them but he couldn’t. He felt himself starting to suffocate. He fell to the floor. The air was a little better down here but it was still filled with smoke and the stench of broiling death.
    His lungs began to give out. He turned, stumbled toward the door. A fireman appeared.
    “In here,” Pellam said. And passed out on the floor.
    *   *   *
    Pellam sucked hard on the mask, the dizziness from smoke replaced by the dizziness from pure oxygen.
    A dozen emergency lights flashed around him. Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars. Piercing white light. And red and blue.
    “You’re okay,” encouraged the EMS attendant, a young man with a faint blond moustache.