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Hells Kitchen

Hells Kitchen

Titel: Hells Kitchen
Autoren: Jeffery Deaver
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all right?”
    “She’s got a broken arm, sprained ankle. No internal injuries we could find. We’re going to run some scans. Brain scans. She hit on her head when she fell. You know, only family members can be in ICU.”
    “Oh,” an exhausted Pellam responded. “I’m her son.”
    The doctor’s eyes remained still for a moment. Then flicked toward Ettie Washington, whose skin was as dark as a mahogany banister.
    “You . . . son?” The blank eyes stared up at him.
    You’d think a doctor working on the rough-and-tumble West Side of Manhattan would’ve had a better sense of humor. “Tell you what,” Pellam said. “Let me sit with her for a few minutes. I won’t steal any bedpans. You can count ’em before I leave.”
    Still no smile. But the man said, “Five minutes.”
    Pellam sat down heavily and rested his chin in his hands, sending jolts of pain through his neck. He sat up and held it cocked to the side.
    Two hours later a nurse pushed briskly into the room and woke him up. When she glanced at Pellam it was more to survey his bandages and torn jeans than to question his presence.
    “Who’all’s the patient here?” she asked in a throaty Dallas drawl. “An’ who’s visitin’?”
    Pellam massaged his neck then nodded at the bed. “We take turns. How is she?”
    “Oh, she’s one tough lady.”
    “How come she isn’t awake?”
    “Doped her up good.”
    “The doctor was talking about some scans?”
    “They always do that. Keep their butts covered. I think she’ll be okay. I was talking to her before.”
    “You were? What’d she say?”
    “I think it was, ‘Somebody burned down my apartment. What kinda blankety-blank’d do that?’ Only she didn’t say blankety-blank.”
    “That’s Ettie.”
    “Same fire?” the nurse asked, glancing at his burnt jeans and shirt.
    Pellam nodded. He explained about Ettie’s jumping out the window. It wasn’t cobblestones she landed on, however, but two days’ worth of packed garbage bags, which broke her fall. Pellam had carried her to the EMS crews and then returned to the building to help get other tenants out. Finally, the smoke had gotten to him too and he’d passed out. He’d awakened in the same hospital.
    “You know,” the nurse said, “you’re all . . . um, sooty. You look like one of those commandoes in a Schwarzenegger movie.”
    Pellam wiped at his face and examined five dirty fingertips.
    “Here.” The nurse disappeared into the hall and returned a moment later with a wet cloth. She paused—debating, he guessed, whether or not to clean him herself—and chose to hand off to the patient. Pellam took the cloth and wiped away until the washcloth was black.
    “You, uh, want some coffee?” she asked.
    Pellam’s stomach churned. He guessed he’d swallowed a pound of ash. “No, thanks. How’s my face?”
    “Now you just look dirty. That is to say, it’s an improvement. Got pans to change. Bah now.” She vanished.
    Pellam stretched his long legs out in front of him and examined the holes in his Levi’s. A total waste. He then spent a few minutes examining the Betacam, which some kind soul had given to the paramedics and had been admitted with him to the emergency room. He gave it his standard diagnostic check—he shook it. Nothing rattled. The Ampex recording deck was dentedbut it rolled fine and the tape inside—the one that contained what was apparently the last interview that would ever be conducted in 458 West Thirty-sixth Street—was unhurt.
    “Now, John, what’re we gonna talk about today? You want to hear more about Billy Doyle? My first husband. That old son of a bitch. See, that man was what Hell’s Kitchen was all about. He was big here, but little everywhere else. He was nothing anywhere else. It was like this place, it’s its own world. Hmm, I got a good story to tell you ’bout him. I think you might like this story. . . .”
    He couldn’t remember much else of what Ettie had told him at their last interview a couple of days ago. He’d set the camera up in her small apartment, filled with the mementos of a seven-decade life, a hundred pictures, baskets, knickknacks, furniture bought at Goodwill, food protected from roaches in Tupperware she could barely afford. He’d set the camera up, turned it on and just let her talk.
    “See, people live in Hell’s Kitchen get these ideas. They get schemes, you know. Billy, he wanted land. He had his eye on a couple of lots over near where the Javits
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