Hells Kitchen

least the air was less stifling. The burnt smell was overwhelming but Bailey didn’t seem to mind.
    “Maybe the Foundation moved,” Bailey said.
    “Gets better,” Pellam said. “I asked at the church office. No one there’s ever even heard of a St. Augustus Foundation.” He walked to the dusty window, which was momentarily darkened by the shadow of a crane that was lifting a large piece of sculpture into the open plaza in front of McKennah Tower.
    The statue was wrapped in thick kraft paper and it appeared to be in the shape of a fish. The derrick moved very slowly and he guessed the piece of stone or bronze weighed many tons. Around it workmen cleaned the grounds and tacked up banners and bunting for the Tower’s topping-off ceremony.
    “But there is a St. Augustus Foundation,” Bailey said and shuffled through documents on the bed and found a stack of scorched photocopies bearing the seal of the Attorney General of the state. “It’s been incorporated under the not-for-profit corporation law. It exists. It’s got eight members on the board.”
    Pellam looked over the list. The men and women on the board all lived nearby. He touched one name—at an address on Thirty-seventh Street, a block away. James Kemper.
    “Let’s see what he has to say.” Bailey picked up the phone. But Pellam touched his arm.
    “Let’s pay a surprise visit.”
    But there was no surprise, not to Pellam. Construction was scheduled to begin in two months on the vacant lot where the Mr. Kemper supposedly lived.
    “It’s all fake,” Bailey muttered as they returned to his office.
    “When you called the director—that minister—who did you get?”
    “Answering service.”
    “How do we find out who’s behind it?” Pellam asked. “Without tipping our hand?”
    From the movie business he knew the complexity of incestuous corporate entanglements.
    “It’s a not-for-profit foundation, which’ll make tracingthings a lot harder than with Business Corporation Law companies.”
    In Bailey’s bedroom again Pellam happened to glance down at a paper, also scorched, sitting next to the corporate filings. It was the expert’s report on the handwriting on the insurance application, comparing Ettie’s to the sample.
    He’d asked Ettie about letters she might have written lately, thinking someone might’ve stolen a sample of her handwriting. But he and Ettie both had forgotten about the waiver she’d signed for McKennah’s company—giving permission for the Tower to exceed the Planning & Zoning height limit.
    “It’s McKennah,” Pellam announced. Then, seeing Bailey’s expression, he held up his hand. “I know, you don’t think a top-of-the-line developer like him’d torch a tenement. And he wouldn’t for the insurance. But he would if the whole success of the Tower depends on the tunnel to Penn Station. Newton Clarke—and McKennah’s wife too—told us how desperate he was.”
    “But . . .” Bailey lifted his hands, dismayed. “Why are you bothering? Even if McKennah’s behind the Foundation Ettie still confessed to the arson.”
    “That’s not,” Pellam said, “going to be a problem.”
    “But—”
    “I’ll deal with that. The big question is how do we prove a connection between McKennah and the Foundation.”
    The lawyer’s face grew troubled. “Developers’re geniuses at this sort of thing. And McKennah’s top of the line. We’ll have to trace offshore corporations, doing-business-as statements. . . . It’ll take some time.”
    “How long?”
    “A couple of weeks.”
    “When’s Ettie being sentenced?”
    A pause. “Day after tomorrow.”
    “Then I guess we don’t have a couple of weeks, do we?” Pellam’s eyes were on the construction site across the street. The wrapped sculpture was seated as unceremoniously as a girder. Several passersby gazed at it intently, wondering what it might be. But the workers walked away without tearing off the paper.
    *   *   *
    Wearing the Armani again and crowned with a stolen hard hat cocked over his brow, John Pellam walked matter-of-factly through the lobby of McKennah Tower. This part of the structure was virtually completed and was already occupied by several tenants—including two of McKennah’s development and operating companies and the real estate agency leasing future space in the building.
    Pellam’s saunter told everybody in the office that he belonged here and that no one better delay what was obviously an urgent