Hells Kitchen

continued. “She said she never thought anybody’d get hurt. She never wanted anybody to die. I believe her.”
    “She confessed?” Pellam whispered. He hawked hard and spit. Coughed for a moment, spit again. Struggled to catch his breath. “I want to see her, Louis.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    Pellam said, “They threatened her. Or blackmailed her.” He nodded toward Lomax, standing at the curb, talking to his huge assistant. The fire marshal had overheard Pellam but he said nothing. Why should he? He had his pyro. He had the woman who hired him. Lomax seemed almost embarrassed for Pellam at his desperate words.
    Wearily the old lawyer said, “John, there was no coercion.”
    “The bank teller? When the money was withdrawn? Let’s find him.”
    “The teller identified Ettie’s picture.”
    “Did you try the Ella Fitzgerald trick?”
    Bailey fell silent.
    Pellam asked, “What did you find at City Hall?”
    “About the tunnel?” Bailey shrugged. “Nothing. No recorded easements or leases for underground rights beneath Ettie’s building.”
    “McKennah must’ve—”
    “John, it’s over with.”
    A blaring horn sounded across the street. Pellam wondered what it signified. The workers paid no attention. There were hundreds of them still on the job. Even at this hour.
    “Let her do her time,” Bailey continued. “She’ll be safe. Medium-security prison. Protective seclusion.”
    Which meant: solitary confinement. At least that’s what it meant at the Q—San Quentin—according to the California Department of Corrections. Solitary . . . the hardest time there is. People’s souls die in solitary even if their bodies survive.
    “She’ll get out,” Bailey continued, “and it’ll all be over with.”
    “Will it?” he asked. “She’s seventy-two. When will she be eligible for parole?”
    “Eight years. Probably.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Pellam,” the lawyer said. “Why don’t you take some time off? Go on a vacation.”
    Well, he was certainly going to be doing that—though involuntarily. West of Eighth would never be made now.
    “Have you told her daughter?”
    Bailey cocked his head. “Whose daughter?”
    “Ettie’s. . . . Why you looking at me that way?” Pelham asked.
    “Ettie hasn’t heard from Elizabeth for years. She has no idea where the girl is.”
    “No, she talked to her a few days ago. She’s in Miami.”
    “Pellam . . .” Bailey rubbed his palms together slowly. “When Ettie’s mother died in the eighties Elizabeth stole the old woman’s jewelry and all of Ettie’s savings. She vanished, took off with some guy from Brooklyn. They were headed for Miami but nobody knows where they ended up. Ettie hasn’t heard from her since.”
    “Ettie told me—”
    “That Elizabeth owned a bed and breakfast? Or that she was managing a chain of restaurants?”
    Pellam watched hard-hatted workers carrying four-by-eight sheets of drywall on their backs walk around to the back of the Tower. The Sheetrock bent up and down like wings. He said to Bailey, “That she was a real estate broker.”
    “Oh. Ettie told that one too.”
    “It wasn’t true?”
    “I thought you knew. That’s why her motive—the insurance money—troubled me so much. Ettie came to me last year and wanted to hire a private eye to findElizabeth. She thought she was somewhere in the United States but didn’t know where. I told her it could cost fifteen thousand, maybe more, for a search like that. She said she’d get the money. No matter what it took she was going to find her daughter.”
    “So Elizabeth isn’t paying your bill?”
    “My bill?” Bailey laughed gently. “I’m not charging Ettie for this. Of course not.”
    Pellam massaged his stinging eyes. He was remembering the day he met Bailey, in the bar. His uptown branch.
    “You sure you want to get involved in this?”
    He’d thought the lawyer was simply warning him how dangerous the Kitchen was. But apparently there’d been more to his message; Bailey knew Ettie better than Pellam had guessed.
    Pellam wandered to the site of Ettie’s building, looked over it. The land was nearly level. A battered pickup truck pulled to a stop at the curb and two men got out. They walked over to the small pile of rubble and pulled out a chunk of limestone cornice, a lion’s head. They dusted it off and together carted it back to the truck. It was probably on its way to an architectural relics shop downtown, where it’d