Hell's Kitchen (36 page)

The sidebar in the paper read, “Welcome to the club, Rog.”

Curiously, none of the pictures of the developer showed anything but a matter-of-fact businessman who seemed completely blasé about the prospect of losing several billion dollars. One shot showed him striding cheerfully into his lawyers’ office accompanied by an attractive young woman identified only as his personal assistant. His eyes were on her; hers, on the camera.

The hospital room bristled around Pellam and grew dark for a moment. Pellam slipped a merciful Demerol into his mouth. He washed it down with wine.

When he looked at Ettie he noticed her face was stern. But her expression had nothing to do with mixing alcohol with medicine. She said, “John, you did so much for me. You almost got yourself killed. You should’ve just took off. You didn’t owe me anything.”

Should he say it or not? For the past several months Pellam had been debating. A dozen times he’d been on the verge. Finally, he said, “Oh, but I do, Ettie.”

“You’re looking pretty funny, John. What’re you talking about?”

“I owe you a lot.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, it’s not exactly
my
debt. It’s my father’s.”

“Your
father?
I don’t even know your father.”

“You
did.
You married him.”

After a moment she whispered, “Billy Doyle?”

“He was my natural father,” Pellam said.

Ettie sat completely motionless. It was the only time in all the months that he’d known her that he couldn’t find a trace of any emotion in her face.

“But . . . how?” she finally asked.

Pellam told her what he’d told to Ramirez—about his mother’s confession—her husband being away all the time, her lover, Pellam’s suspect pedigree.

Ettie nodded. “Billy told me he’d had a girlfriend upstate. That’d be your mother. . . . Oh, my. Oh, my.” She thought back, her sumptuous memory unreeling. “He told me that he loved her but she wouldn’t leave her husband. So he left
her
and came down here, to the Kitchen.”

“She said she got one letter from him,” Pellam said. “There was no return address but the postmark was from the general post office—on Eighth Avenue. That’s why I came to the city—to find him. Or at least to find out about him. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to meet him or not. I did some digging in public records and found his wedding license application.”

“To me?”

“To you. And your marriage certificate. It gave the address of the old tenement on Thirty-Sixth.”

“The one we lived in after we got married, sure. Got torn down a few years ago.”

“I know. I asked around the neighborhood and found out that Billy was long gone and that you’d moved up the street. To the 458 building.”

“And you came a-calling. With that camera of yours. Why didn’t you say anything to me, John?”

“I was going to. But then I found out that he’d run out on you. I figured it was the last thing you’d want to do, spend any time talking to me.”

She squinted and looked at his face. “That’s why you remind me of James.”

When Ettie had told him about her son a month ago, Pellam realized
he’d have to spend some time getting used to the idea that he was no longer an only child. He had a sibling, a half-brother.

Ettie, she squeezed his arm. “That Billy Doyle . . . Let’s see, my husband and your father. What’s that make us, you and me, John?”

“Orphans,” Pellam suggested.

“I was never one to chase after a man. When he left I never thought about going after him. Never looked for him. But I’m curious.” A coy smile. “You ever get any clue where he might’ve gone off to?”

Pellam shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve tried all the recorders of deeds in the area. No trace.”

“He talked about going back to Ireland. Maybe he did, who knows?” She added, “There are some of his old friends still around. I see ’em sometimes in some of the taverns. We could maybe talk to some of them if you want. They might’ve heard from him.”

He’d have to think about that. He couldn’t decide. He looked out the window and saw gray and brown and buff tenements next to squat warehouses next to shimmering high-rises next to the blackened bones of razed buildings.

West of Eighth . . .

It occurred to Pellam that Hell’s Kitchen was in some ways just like his search for Billy Doyle: failure not wholly disappointing, hope not wholly desired.

The white apparition of the Southern nurse who’d tended Ettie last week floated into the room and told Ettie she probably ought to leave.

“He’s lookin’ a bit tuckered out,” she said with that rasping Texas drawl of hers. Pellam thought she had freckles but his vision was still pretty blurry. She said. “Honey, don’t you feel like restin’ for a bit?”

“Not really,” Pellam said. Or thought he did. Maybe not. His eyes closed and the glass drooped in his hand. He felt it being taken away, smelled a breath of floral perfume, and then surrendered to sleep.

Readers interesed in oral histories of Manhattan and unable to find John Pellam’s documentary,
West of Eighth,
at their local video stores might wish to read Jeff Kisseloff’s
You Must Remember This.
This excellent oral history of Manhattan contains a section on Hell’s Kitchen, which Pellam found immensely helpful in researching his own book (as did I in writing this one). Pellam also keeps Luc Sante’s
Low Life
and Studs Terkel’s
Talking to Myself
on his bookshelf in his Winnebago.

Jeffery Deaver is an internationally best-selling author of thirteen suspense novels. He’s been nominated for four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and an Anthony Award and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for Best Short Story of the Year. His book
A Maiden’s Grave
was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel
The Bone Collector
is a feature release from Universal Pictures, staring Denzel Washington. His latest books are
The Empty Chair
and
Speaking In Tongues.
He lives in Virginia and California. Readers can visit his website at
www.jefferydeaver.com
.

A
LSO BY
J
EFFERY
D
EAVER

Carte Blanche

Edge

The Burning Wire*

Best American Mystery Stories 2009
(Editor)

The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet
and
The Chopin Manuscript
) (Contributor)

Roadside Crosses**

The Bodies Left Behind

The Broken Window*

The Sleeping Doll**

More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two

The Cold Moon*/**

The Twelfth Card*

Garden of Beasts

Twisted: Collected Stories

The Vanished Man*

The Stone Monkey*

The Blue Nowhere

The Empty Chair*

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil’s Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer*

The Bone Collector*

A Maiden’s Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Hell’s Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

A Century of Great Suspense Stories
(Editor)

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime
(Editor)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(Introduction)

*Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs

**Featuring Kathryn Dance

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2001 by Jeffery Deaver

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-04751-5

ISBN 13: 9780743424035 (eBook)

First Pocket Books printing February 2001

POCKET BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Cover design and illustration by Tony Greco