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better care of Ettie—make sure she gets pain pills, change her bandages. But they couldn’t care less, of course.”
    “Guess not.”
    Over Pellam’s sour coffee and Bailey’s martini the lawyer gave his assessment of the case. Pellam was trying to gauge the man’s competence. From the man’s mouth came no statutes, case citations or court rules. Pellam reached a vague conclusion that he’d have preferred someone more outraged and, if not smarter, at least chronologically closer to law school.
    Bailey sipped the drink and said, “What’s this film of yours about?”
    “An oral history on Hell’s Kitchen. Ettie’s my best source.”
    “The woman can tell her stories, that’s for sure.”
    Pellam folded his hands around the hot mug. The bar was freezing. A bitter wind shot from a sputtering air conditioner above the door. “Why’d they arrest her? Lomax wouldn’t tell me anything.”
    “Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, they’ve found some stuff.”
    “Stuff.”
    “And it’s not good. A witness saw her entering the basement just before the fire. It started down there, next to the boiler. She’s got a key to the back door.”
    “Don’t all the tenants?”
    “Some do. But she was the one seen opening the door five minutes before the fire started.”
    “I met somebody at the building yesterday,” Pellam said. “She told me she saw some people in the alley. Just before the fire. Three or four men. She couldn’t describe them any better than that.”
    Bailey nodded and jotted a few sentences in a battered leather notebook embossed with initials not his own.
    “She couldn’t have done it,” Pellam said. “I was there. She was on the stairs above me when it started.”
    “Oh, they don’t think she actually started the fire. They think she opened the basement door and let a pyro in.”
    “A professional arsonist?”
    “A pro, yeah. But a psycho too. A guy’s been working in the city for a few years. The M.O.’s that he mixes gas with fuel oil. Just the right proportion. He knows what he’s doing. See, gas alone’s too unstable so he adds oil. The fire takes a little longer to get going but it burns hotter. Then—get this—he also adds dish detergent to the mix. So the stuff sticks to clothes and skin. Like napalm. Burning-for-bucks guys, I mean, pure for-hire stuff, they wouldn’t do that. And they don’t set fires when there’re people around. They don’t want anybody to get hurt. This guy likes it. . . . The fire marshals andthe cops’re worried. He’s getting crazier. There’s pressure on ’em from above to get him.”
    “So Lomax thinks she hired him,” Pellam mused. “What about the fact that she was almost killed too?”
    “The A.D.A.’s speculating she tried to get to her apartment so she’d have an alibi. There was a fire escape outside her window. Only the timing got screwed up. They also think she planned it when you were coming over so you could confirm she was there.”
    Pellam scoffed. “She wouldn’t hurt me.”
    “But you were early, weren’t you?”
    Pellam finally said, “A few minutes, yeah.” Then: “But everybody’s missing one thing. What’s her motive supposed to be?”
    “Ah, yes. The motive.” As he’d done several times before Bailey paused and organized his thoughts. He drained his martini and ordered another. “Full jigger this time, Rosie O’Grady. Don’t let those massive olives lure you into cheating. Last week Ettie bought a tenant’s insurance policy for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
    Pellam sipped from the cup then pushed it away from him. The vile taste in his mouth was only partly the coffee. “Keep going.”
    “It’s a declared-value policy. Ever hear of that? It means she pays a high premium but if the apartment is destroyed the insurer pays off whether she’s got Chippendale furniture or orange crates inside.”
    “Pretty damn obvious. Buying a policy then burning the building the next month.”
    “Ah, but the police