TWENTY-SIX

They drove in silence for eight blocks.

The limo pulled up in front of a dilapidated old building somewhere in the Forties on the far West Side. The paint was scaling. It looked like dirty, white confetti. The wood trim was rotten and piled up against a side door were a dozen trash bags.

McKennah gestured toward it. “Artie.”

The bodyguard opened the limo door, took Pellam’s arm firmly, led him toward the side entrance. He shoved open a door and pushed Pellam forward. They waited as McKennah entered.

Down long, dark corridor. The developer went first. Pellam followed, trailed by Artie, who carried the camera as if it were a machine gun.

Pellam looked around, squinting, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He slipped his hand into his sleeve to grip the handle of the letter opener he’d copped from McKennah’s office. It felt flimsy but Pellam knew from prison what kind of damage even the most delicate of weapons could do.

The corridor was lit by only one low-watt bare bulb. He coughed at the smell of mold and urine. A blur of motion at their feet. McKennah whispered, “Jesus,” as the huge rat passed indifferently in front of them. Pellam ignored it. He gripped the letter opener again. Felt the point against his arm. Waited for reassurance. He felt none.

Then, the noise.

Pellam slowed at the sound of the faint high-pitched wail. It seemed to be a woman’s scream. From TV? No. It was a live, human voice. Pellam felt the hairs on his neck stir.

“Keep going,” McKennah ordered and they continued to the end of the corridor. Then stopped.

The chill keening grew louder and louder.

He shoved the horrible noise out of his thoughts and concentrated on what he was about to do. His legs tensed. This was the moment. His right hand slipped to his left sleeve.

McKennah nodded to Artie once more.

The wailing rose in volume. Two people, maybe three, were howling in pain. The bodyguard pushed Pellam forward roughly. He set his teeth together and stepped forward, pulling the letter opener from his sleeve.

Artie pushed the door open, stepped inside.

He’d slash first at Artie – aiming for his eyes. Then try for the gun. He’d -

Pellam stopped just over the threshold, frozen, gripping the letter opener.

What is this?

He glanced back at the developer and his thug. McKennah impatiently motioned him forward. And, following the tacit order, Pellam began to walk forward – but he did so very carefully; it was hard to maneuver through the sea of babies. Across the room was a pale, obese woman in a stained blue tank top and tan shorts, who sat rocking the loudest of the screamers – the infant they’d heard from the hall. Trying to feed the baby a Frito, the woman stared at them in angry shock. “Who the fuck’re you?”

McKennah nodded toward Pellam then said to his bodyguard. “Okay, give it to him.”

The man handed Pellam his Betacam.

“Do it,” McKennah urged. Pellam shook his head, not understanding.

Half of the babies were in cardboard boxes and the rest wandered or crawled about, playing with broken toys or blocks. On the floor sat plastic bottles of orange diet soda and Coke, some had tipped over and spilled. Two of the children struggled to open one, like young animals trying to crack open a coconut. Ammonia from dirty diapers wafted through the room.

“Who the fuck are you?” the woman repeated, shouting. “You want me to call the cops?”

Roger McKennah said petulantly, “Sure, why don’t you?” To Pellam he said with irritation, “So go ahead. What’re you waiting for?”

He asked, “Go ahead what?”

“Well, what do you think? Play Charles Kuralt. Start filming!” The developer’s temper was starting to fray.

“Fuck you!” the fat woman shouted. “You get out of here.”

One of the babies crawled rapidly over the filthy floor and began playing with Pellam’s boot. He picked up the infant and dusted off his blackened hands and knees, set him on a blanket. “Why don’t you take better care of these kids?”

“Fuck you too.”

Okay. We’ll do it your way. Pellam lifted the Betacam. Started the deck running. “Say, ma’am, you mind repeating that?”

“I’m calling the cops.” But the woman remained seated, ignoring the intruders, and lost herself in an episode of The Young and the Restless on the small TV.

Pellam panned slowly around the room, having no idea what he would ever do with these shots; the squirming infants, the junk food and the raised middle finger of a fat woman hardly made the stuff of oral history.

Looking through the eyepiece, he asked McKennah, “You want to tell me what we’re doing?”

“This’s an unlicensed day care center. Most of the people in the Kitchen can’t afford a licensed one so they drop their kids off at pigsties like this. It’s a disgrace but there’s nothing parents can do if they want to work.”

The woman tossed a handful of corn chips at the feet of one baby who had just started sobbing. Pellam shot the scene.

With robust approval McKennah said, “Stone-cold Pulitzer! Go, go, go!”

Twenty minutes later they were outside, deeply breathing fresher air. Pellam asked, “So, what the hell’s going on?”

He pointed at the building. “I’m trying to wipe those out of New York, places like that. They’re a disgrace… Excuse me, do I see some cynicism? Wondering why Roger McKennah wants to do a good deed? Oh, I’m no Mother Teresa. But that kind of crap doesn’t help anybody. It’s in my interest to have good, cheap day care centers in this neighborhood.”

“Day care?”

“And clean parks and pools. I want parents who can feel safe dropping their kids off and then coming to work in my office buildings. I want teenagers to play basketball on nice courts and swim in clean pools so they don’t mug my tenants at night. Self-interest? Sure. Say what you want, I don’t care. I read Ayn Rand in college and never got over her.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Because I checked you out. You’re doing a documentary on the neighborhood. And you were going to trash me like everybody else does.”

“That’s what you think?”

“I’m tabloid-magnet and I’m fucking sick of it. I want to make sure you tell the whole story. Nobody has an inkling what I’m doing for the neighborhood.”

“Which is what?”

“How ’bout the public park I’m renovating at my personal fucking expense on Forty-fifth Street. And the pool repairs for the Department of Parks and Recreation that I guarantee’ll be finished by the time the schools’re out next year. And the new day care center on Thirty-sixth and the-”

“Wait – on Thirty-sixth and Tenth? On the corner?”

Louis Bailey’s building.

The supposed harem for McKennah’s mistresses.

“Yeah, that’s the place. I’m turning three floors there into the best day care center in the country. The parents show they’re gainfully employed or looking for work and their kids stay for five bucks a day, everything included. Food, games, Montessori tutors, books…”

“And I suppose it was just a coincidence that the building next door burned down? It didn’t have anything to do with the Tower?”

McKennah’s temper flared again. “Listen, you may be a hotshot in Tinseltown but that’s slander! I’ll sue your goddamn ass! I have never in my life torched a building. You can check every one of my projects going back to day one. I’ll go through the list building by building with you.”

“What about the tunnel? You didn’t torch the building to put it in?”

McKennah frowned. “You know about the tunnel?”

“And I know about your deal with Jimmy Corcoran.”

The developer blinked in surprise. Then said, “Well, you sure as hell don’t know too much about it. The tunnel doesn’t go under the lot that burned. There’s a Con Ed substation under there. It jogs west. Under the day care center building – which I happen to own.”