Hells Kitchen

Bulky medical equipment and supplies dangled from his belt and filled his pockets. “Breathe it in. Come on, big guy. Keep going.”
    The technician wrote on a clipboard then looked intoPellam’s eyes with a thin flashlight and took his blood pressure.
    “Looking good,” the high voice confirmed.
    The memory of the horrible fire returned. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
    “Him? ’Fraid so. Didn’t stand a chance. But it’s a blessing, believe me. I’ve had burn cases before. Better for him to’ve gone fast than deal with sepsis and skin grafts.”
    He looked over at the body lying on the ground nearby, a sheet draped over it.
    The task of giving the bad news about Louis Bailey to Ettie was looming in his mind when a hand descended to Pellam’s shoulder and a figure crouched beside him.
    “How you feeling?” the man asked.
    Pellam wiped smoke tears from his eyes. His vision was a blur. Finally the face came into focus. In a shocked whisper he said, “You’re here. You’re okay.”
    “Me?” Louis Bailey asked.
    “That’s not you. I thought it was you.” Pellam nodded toward the body.”
    Bailey said. “It was almost me. But it’s him—the pyro.”
    “The arsonist?”
    The lawyer nodded. “The fire marshal said he was rigging a trap—to get us both, I’d imagine.”
    “I turned the light switch on and set it off,” Pellam whispered. He coughed hard for a moment.
    “The son of a bitch should’ve unplugged the lamp first,” a voice growled. It was Lomax. He walked up to the two men. “Pyros eventually get careless. Like serial killers. After a while the lust takes over and they stop worrying about details.” He nodded toward the bag. “He had all thewindows in your office closed. There was no ventilation and an open drum of that napalm crap he makes. He passed out from the fumes. Then you got here, Mr. Lucky, and turned on the light. Ka-boom.”
    “Who was he?” Pellam asked.
    The fire marshal held up a badly scorched wallet in a plastic bag.
    “Jonathan Stillipo, Jr. Oh, we heard about him. Goes by the nickname of Sonny. Did juvenile time for torching his mother’s house in upstate New York—of course, it just happened that his mother’s boyfriend was locked in the bedroom upstairs. Fits the classic pyro mold. Momma’s boy, loner in school, sexual conflicts. Did vanity fires in college—you know, sets a fire then puts it out for the heroics. He’s been burning for fun and profit ever since. He was on our list to talk to about the recent fires but he went underground a while ago and we didn’t have any leads. We found this in his back pocket. You can still read some of it.”
    Pellam looked at a scorched map of the city. Circles around X s marked the sites of the recent fires: the subway on Eighth Avenue, the department store. Two of the X s weren’t circled and Pellam assumed those were the targets to be. One was Bailey’s building. And the other was the Javits Center.
    “My God,” Bailey whispered. The convention hall was New York’s largest.
    Lomax said, “There’s a fashion exhibition scheduled for tomorrow. Twenty-two thousand people would’ve been inside. Would have been the worst arson in world history.”
    “Well, he’s dead,” Pellam said. He added, “I guess he won’t be able to testify about who hired him.”
    Then he caught the glance that passed between Bailey and the fire marshal.
    “What, Louis?” Pellam asked.
    Lomax motioned to a uniformed policeman, who walked up and handed him a plastic bag.
    “This was in his wallet too.”
    The bag contained a sheet of paper. The plastic made a crinkling sound that Pellam found disturbing. It reminded him of the flames he’d just doused. He thought of Sonny’s shaking body. Of the smell.
    Pellam took the offered bag and read.
    Here’s 2 thousand like we agreed. Try and don’t hurt any body. I’ll leave the door open—the one in the back. I’ll give you the rest, after I get the insurance money.
    -Ettie.

TWENTY-THREE
    Pellam stood uneasily, dropped the oxygen mask onto the sidewalk.
    “It’s a forgery,” Pellam said quickly. “It’s all—”
    “I’ve already talked to her, Pellam,” Louis Bailey explained. “I’ve been on the phone for ten minutes.”
    “With Ettie?”
    “She confessed, John,” Bailey said softly.
    Pellam couldn’t take his eyes off Sonny’s body. Somehow the sheet—bedclothes of the merely sleeping—made the sight more horrible than the burned flesh itself.
    Bailey