Hell's Kitchen (20 page)

Fire points up not down.

Fire climbs, it doesn’t fall.

Sonny gazed at the map.

The hospital had been a good fire, not a great fire. Too many good citizens were vigilant. Too many cops, too many fire marshals. Looking and poking. Everybody ready to dial nine-one-one. Everybody ready to shoot carbon dioxide from extinguishers.

They all took this so fucking seriously.

He was distracted too—by thoughts of the Antichrist cowboy, Pellam. Sonny thought he saw him everywhere. In shadows, in alleys. He’s after me. . . .

He’s
the reason I’m sweating.
He’s
the reason my hands shake.

Sweat poured from Sonny’s brow and soaked his hair. Usually the shade of pale citrus, the strands today were
dark with moisture. His breath came fast and occasionally his tongue would protrude like a pink eel and dampen a parched lip.

A movie theater was next on his list. He’d debated about whether to burn a faggot porno theater or a regular theater. He decided on a regular one.

First, though, he needed some more supplies. Arsonist are lucky because, unlike bombers or snipers, the tools of their trade are completely legal. Still, they have to be careful and Sonny alternated the places where he bought his ingredients, never showing up at the same gas station more frequently than once a month or so. But Manhattan had surprisingly few gas stations—they were mostly in Jersey or on Long Island—and, because he had no car, he could only shop at those stations within walking distance of his apartment.

He was now on his way to the East Village, to a station he hadn’t been to for more than a year. It was a long walk and would be an even longer walk back with the five gallons of gas. But he was afraid to tempt fate by making a purchase any closer to home.

He thought about how many jars of his juice he’d need for a movie theater.

Just one probably.

Sometimes Sonny would crouch for hours outside a building and try to decide how he could burn it down most efficiently. He was very thin, excruciatingly thin, and when he squatted outside Grand Central Station, say, playing the how-many-jars game, people would drop coins at his feet, thinking he was homeless and had
AIDS
or just thinking
That man is so damn thin
and all the time he’d have a thousand dollars in his pocket, be
fit as a fiddle and was merely squatting on the curb enjoying his fantasy about razing the baroque station with as few fires as possible.

Grand Central would require seven fires, he’d decided.

Rockefeller Center, sixteen. The Empire State Building, merely four. The World Trade towers, five each (those crazy Arabs got it all wrong).

Sonny now walked past the gas station, nonchalant, looking carefully for police or fire marshals. He’d seen more squad cars patrolling the streets around stations in the last day. But here he saw none and returned to the station, walking up to the pump furthest from the attendant’s office. He uncapped the can and began to pump.

The sweet smell brought back many wonderful memories.

Sonny had known from the first hour of his first visit to the city eight years ago that he would live and die here. New York! How could he live anywhere else? The asphalt streets were hot, steam flowed like smoke from a thousand manholes, buildings burned daily and no one seemed to pay that fact much mind. This was the only city in the world where somebody would ignite trashcans and cars and abandoned buildings, and passersby would glance at the fire and continue on their way as if flames were just a part of the natural landscape.

He’d come to the city after his release from Juvenile Detention. For a time Sonny worked office jobs—messenger, mail boy, Xerox operator. But for every hour in offices or in his probation counselor’s office Sonny spent two honing his craft, working for landlords and real estate developers and even the Mafia occasionally.
Gasoline, natural gas, nitrates, naphtha, acetone. And his precious juice, created by Sonny himself, virtually patented, adored by him the way Bach loved the keyboard.

Juice. Fire that kisses human skin and won’t let go.

In his first years living in the city, on the West Side, he wasn’t as solitary as he was now. He’d meet people on the job and he even dated some. But he’d soon grown bored with people. Dates became awkward early in the evening and after several hours the only thing they had in common was a persistent desire to be rid of each other’s company. In restaurants he tended to stare at the candles more than his companion’s eyes.

In the end Sonny proved to be his own best friend. He lived alone in small, neat apartments. He ironed his clothing perfectly, balanced his checkbook, attended art films and lectures on nineteenth-century New York, watched
This Old House
and educational specials and sitcoms.

And he lived to watch things burn into exquisite, still ash.

As the gasoline can filled with tender, rosy liquid he found himself thinking again about Pellam. The tall, black-clad angel of death. The Antichrist. The moth frying itself to death against the bulb that so attracts him.

Ah, Pellam . . . Isn’t it astonishing how our lives have become so entwined? Like the strands of a wick. Isn’t it odd how fate works that way? You’re looking for me and I’m looking for you. . . . Will you be my mate forever? We’ll lie together in a bed of fire, we’ll turn into pure light, we’ll be immortal. . . .

Three gallons. As he glanced at the pump gauge he happened to look past it and he focused on the attendant,
who was stepping quickly back inside the tiny cashier stand.

Three and a third gallons . . .

Sonny left the nozzle in the can, stepped toward the attendant’s stand, saw the man on the phone. He returned to the pump.
Hmm.
Problem here. Problem.

What do we do?

As the three squad cars rolled silently into the station the police officers found Sonny standing motionless, looking uncertainly toward the attendant station, the pump nozzle in his hand.

Problem . . .

“Excuse me, sir,” a cop’s voice called. “I wonder if you could hang that pump up and come over here?”

The police climbed out of the cars.

Five of the six cops had their hands on their pistol grips.

“What’s the problem, officer?”

“Just hang that up, that nozzle. Okay? Do it now.”

“Sure, officer. Sure.”

He shoved the high-test nozzle back into the pump.

“You have some ID on you, sir?”

“I didn’t do anything. I don’t even have a car. What do you want to give me a ticket for?” He fished into his pocket.

“Just step over here, sir. And if we could see some ID.”

“Okay, sure. Did I do something wrong?” Sonny didn’t move.

“Now, sir. Step over here now.”

“Yessir. I’d be happy to.”

“Oh, Christ, no!” a heavily accented voice shouted from behind him. Sonny was surprised it had taken the
station attendant so long to notice. “The gas! The
other
line’s the one turned on.”

Sonny smiled. When he’d seen the police cars in the reflection of the pump he’d dropped the open gas hose on the ground and grabbed the high-test hose—the one he’d dutifully hung up, as ordered. At least twenty gallons of gas had poured out onto the apron and was flowing toward the cops and their car, invisible on the black asphalt.

In an split second, before a single officer could draw his gun, Sonny had his lighter out. He flicked it. A small flame burned on the end. He crouched down.

“Okay, mister,” one cop said, holding up his hands. “Just put that down. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

For a moment no one moved. But then, in a snap, they all knew it was coming. Maybe Sonny’s eyes, maybe his smile . . . maybe something else gave it away. The six cops turned, fleeing from the deadly pool.

Sonny was on a dry patch of asphalt, though when he touched the flame to the flowing river of gasoline he leapt back fast, like a roach. The fireball was huge. He grabbed the container and fled.

A huge whoosh as the flames swept under the police cars, igniting them. The fiery river continued past them, flowing down Houston Street, roaring, sending a black cloud rolling into the sky. Screams, horns, collisions, as cars stopped and backed away from the flames.

Sonny got a half-block away and couldn’t help himself. He paused and turned to watch the chaos. He was at first disappointed that the main tank didn’t go up but then he grew philosophical and simply enjoyed the fire for what it was.

Thinking:

Fire is not energy but a creature that lives and grows and reproduces; it’s born and it dies. It can out-think anyone.

Fire is the messenger of change.

The sun is fire and the sun is not even particularly hot.

Fire eats the dirt of men. Fire is the most blind justice.

Fire points toward God.

“Hey, mister, you got yourself a famous lawyer working for you. He sued the Port Authority and won. You ever hear of anybody suing the city and winning?”

The man sitting at Louis Bailey’s desk rose the instant Pellam entered the room. It was the green-jacket handicapper from yesterday. The man with a lock.

“Cleg, please,” Bailey said, self-effacing.

“And tell him about the time you sued Rockefeller.”

“Cleg.”

The skinny guy seemed to have forgiven Pellam for not taking his tip about the horses. He said, “Rockefeller stole this guy’s invention and Louis took him to court.
He
caved too. Louis scared the bejeebers out of him. Hey, sir, you look like a cowboy. Anybody ever tell you that? You ever ride broncos? What is that exactly, a bronco? I just know about the O.J. one. The white truck, I mean.”

“It’s an untamed horse,” Pellam said.

“Well, how ’bout that,” Cleg said, astonished—a handicapper who’d just discovered a different kind of horse. He took more gear-greasing envelopes from Bailey and left the office.

“He’s quite a fellow” was all that Pellam could offer.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Bailey said ambiguously. Then he opened that morning’s paper. Slapped it. “Look at this.” The front page story was about a fire at a gas station in the Village. “That’s our boy.”

“The pyro?” Pellam asked.

“They’re pretty sure. Almost got him but he got away. Seriously injured two cops and three pedestrians. Almost a million dollars in damage.”

Pellam examined the picture of the devastation.

Bailey swallowed a mouthful of wine. “This is turning into a nightmare. There’s a public uproar. The Police Department and the Attorney General are under incredible pressure to get this guy. They think that he’s gone nuts. Like Ettie switched him on and he won’t shut off now. It’s become a citywide crusade to stop him.”

Pellam bent wearily over the paper. There was a sidebar that included a map of Hell’s Kitchen. Tiny drawings of flames marked the spots of the fires. They were in a pattern, it seemed—a semicircular shape north of Ettie’s building.

Bailey found a slip of paper, handed it to Pellam. “That’s the insurance agency where Ettie got the policy. The woman who sold it is a Florence Epstein.”

“What’d she say?”

Bailey looked at Pellam with a significance that escaped him completely.

“I’m sorry?” Pellam tried.

“I can’t talk to her. I’m Ettie’s attorney of record.”

“Oh, I get it. But I can.”

Bailey sighed. “Well, yes, but . . .”

“But what?”

“You know, sometimes . . . well, with that black outfit of yours, you look a little intimidating. And you don’t smile a lot.”

“I’ll be charm itself,” Pellam said. “As long as she’s not lying.”

“If there’s any hint of intimidation . . .”

“Do I look like the sort who intimidates?”

Bailey was suddenly very uncomfortable and he changed the subject. “Here. I went to the library.” He set some clippings down in front of Pellam.

“You went yourself? You didn’t bribe some librarian to bring them to you?”

“Ha.” Bailey was too busy wrestling the seal off a new wine bottle to smile. “Some back-grounders about Roger McKennah.”

Pellam shuffled through the clippings.

Business Week
offered:

The best part of the prior decade for McKennah was the late eighties—when the market cindered, the boom went bust and careers ‘Chappaquidicked’ (a popular McKennahism) throughout Wall Street. Yet that was when he had shone the brightest.

New York
magazine:

 . . . Roger McKennah, the self-confessed megalomaniac, marched into third-world sections of the New York metro area and strewed them with affordable (and profitable) housing projects. He is also credited with revitalizing real estate investment trusts and with prying a good portion of midtown out of foreign hands and returning it to local
developers. Notable for his wit as well as his lifestyle and business acumen, it was McKennah who coined the term “vulturing”—spotting deals going bad and grabbing them out from under receivers and trustees.

From baroquely metaphorical
People:

Anyone—a Trump, a Zeckendorf, a Helmsley—could ride the crest of prosperity. But only a genius like Roger McKennah dared answer the call of ‘surf’s up’ when the only place to hang ten was in the tunnel of the wave.

Pellam put the articles aside.

“Makes him greedy and smart but hardly an arsonist,” Bailey commented.

“Then I better tell you about my date last night.”

“The party at his place?”

“The caviar was a bit too warm. But I had champagne with his wife.”

Bailey was delighted. Fraternizing with the enemy was probably an important technique for gear-cloggers. “And?”

“She wants to sink him like the
Titanic.”

Pellam told the lawyer about McKennah’s clandestine meetings and the calls to and from the law firm.

“Pillsbury, Millbank?” Bailey asked.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what she said.

Bailey pulled a huge volume of Martindale Hubbell Lawyers Directory off his shelf and flipped it open. He found a listing of the firm. He read carefully, nodding. “I think I can get to somebody there.”