“Now we come to the crux of it, right, Newton?”

The toupee was adjusted to quell an itching scalp. “Mr. McKennah needs the Tower.” He nodded toward the shaded window, on the other side of which the highrise soared into the sky. “It’s his last chance,” added the flatlined voice.

McKennah, Clarke explained, had several tenants lined up for the Tower when it was completed but there was only one lease he really cared about. RAS Advertising and Public Relations was consolidating all of its many operations in one location – fifteen floors in the Tower under a ten-year lease, with generous cost-of-living increases annually. RAS would be paying annual rent of more than $24 million.

The ad agency employees, however, were upset about their move from midtown and were concerned that commuting through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen would be dangerous. RAS would sign the lease only if McKennah, at his own expense, built a four-block-long tunnel connecting the building with the Long Island Railroad commuter line in Penn Station, which also had a subway stop.

The deal was signed and, like a piranha, McKennah’s company began devouring underground rights to build the tunnel. The company negotiated easements to every building on the planned route of the tunnel – except one. A small plot of land on Thirty-seventh Street, directly behind the lot on which Ettie’s building had sat.

“Odd coincidence,” Bailey explained wryly. “The land was bought by someone just three days before McKennah’s company approached the old owner.”

“So, somebody had inside information that McKennah needed it. Who?”

“Jimmy Corcoran,” Bailey said. “How ’bout that?”

“Corcoran?” Pellam remembered Jacko Drugh’s telling him that Jimmy and his brother were planning some kind of big deal. And he recalled too what Jolie had said – the late-night meetings.

Corcoran doing a deal with Roger McKennah… Now, that was a bizarre thought.

Bailey continued. “And Jimmy’s basically extorting McKennah. ’Cause without that parcel, no tunnel. No tunnel, no lease and hello bankruptcy court.”

“Here’s what the deal is,” Clarke said, finally displaying some animation. “Corcoran owns the land Mr. McKennah needs, right? Well, he’s agreeing to lease it to Mr. McKennah. Only Corcoran insisted on taking a cut of the profits, not a flat fee. He gets one percent of the revenues generated by the property. That’s brilliant for Corcoran because it looks like McKennah Tower’s going to be making close to a hundred twenty million in annual rents.”

“That psychotic punk is going to wind up with one point two million a year,” Bailey said.

Clarke continued. “Mr. McKennah’s never given anybody a percent of the action before. That’s how desperate he is.”

Pellam considered this. He said, “Ettie’s building – the one that burned – was right in between the Tower and Corcoran’s property.”

“Right,” Bailey confirmed.

“So McKennah needs it to finish the tunnel. It’s the last piece.”

“So it seems,” the lawyer said.

“What about this?” Pellam mused. “He cuts a deal with the owner – the St. Augustus foundation – so they let him build the tunnel. Only McKennah finds out he can’t dig under the building. Maybe it’s too old, maybe it’s not stressed right. So he hires the pyro to burn the place down and make it look like Ettie did it. McKennah gets his tunnel and the Foundation can put up a new building.”

Clarke shrugged. “All I can say is what I said before. I’ve never seen him this desperate.”

Pellam asked, “What exactly happens if the Tower fails?”

“A dozen banks’ll call Mr. McKennah’s loans. They’re personally guaranteed,” Clarke whispered, as if disclosing a social disease. “He’ll go bankrupt. He owes a billion five more than he’s got.”

“Hate it when that happens,” Pellam said.

Bailey asked Clarke, “You find anything at the office about granting underground rights to the property that burned?”

“Nothing, no. But McKennah always plays things close to his chest. The partners’re always complaining that he never keeps them informed.”

Bailey grimaced. “Never easy, is it? Well, all right, Newton, back you go to the salt mines.”

Clarke hesitated then, eyes on the dusty, scuffed floor.

“What?” Pellam asked him.

But when he spoke it was to Bailey. He said, “He hurts people, Mr. McKennah does. He screams at them and he fires them when they don’t do exactly what he wants even if it turns out later he was wrong. He has temper tantrums. He gets even with people.” Finally the eyes swung toward Pellam momentarily. “Just… be careful. He’s a very vindictive man. A bully.”

Cloaked as a warning, the man’s words meant something else. They meant: Forget the name Newton Clarke.

He stood and left hurriedly, his disco boots making virtually no noise on the linoleum.

“So, we’ve got a motive,” Pellam said.

“Greed. The Old Faithful of motives. One of the best.” Bailey refilled his glass. He lifted the shade, looked out at the construction site.

Pellam said, “We’ve got to find out if McKennah has the underground rights to the land below Ettie’s building. The head of the Foundation could tell you. Father… whatever his name is. Did he ever call you back?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Let’s try him again.”

But Bailey was shaking his head. “I don’t think we should trust him. But I can find out.”

“Cleg?” Pellam asked. The skinny horseman, armed with his liquor bottles.

“No,” Bailey said, reflecting. “I’ll do this one myself. We should meet back here at, say, eight?”

“Sure.”

Bailey looked up and found Pellam’s eyes on him. “Thought I treated him a little harshly? Newton?”

Pellam shrugged. “I’ve finally nailed down your secret. How you clog up gears, Louis.”

“Have you now?”

“You cultivate debts.”

The lawyer sipped wine and chuckled, nodding. “I learned a long time ago about the power of debt. What’s the one thing that makes a man powerful, a president, a king, a corporate executive? That people owe him – their lives, their jobs, their freedom. That’s the secret. A man who knows how to milk debt is the man who can keep power the longest of anyone.”

The dull ice cubes clinked on the surface of the lemon-colored wine.

“And what does Clarke owe you?”

“Newton? Oh, in crass terms, about thirty-thousand dollars. He used to be a broker. He came to me with a real estate investment partnership idea a few years ago and I plunked down a chunk of my life savings. I found out later it was all phoney. The U.S. Attorney and the SEC caught him and I lost the money.”

“And this is how he’s paying you off?”

“As far as I’m concerned, information is negotiable tender. Tough luck that none of his other creditors feel that way.”

“How long till he pays you off?”

Bailey laughed. “Oh, he probably has. Ages ago. But he doesn’t believe it, of course. And he never will. That’s the marvelous thing about debts. Even after you repay them, they never really go away.”

No one paid any attention to the young worker as he wheeled the 55-gallon drum of cleaning fluid up the ramp to the apartment building. It was seven-thirty, dusk, but Thirty-sixth Street was lit up like a carnival, workers scurrying to get McKennah Tower ready for the topping-off ceremony.

Wearing white overalls, Sonny rested the dolly carrying the drum on the floor and in front of the door. He glanced at the tarnished sign, Louis Bailey, Esq. He listened and heard nothing. Then he knocked several times and when there was no answer he easily picked the lock – a talent that he didn’t possess when he entered Juvenile Detention but that he had with him when he left – and then wheeled the drum inside.

Sonny was a worried man now. The Eagleton fire had galvanized the police and fire department. He’d never seen so many cops and marshals on the West Side. They were practically stopping cars on the street and frisking drivers. They were getting close and he had to stop them. A rough drawing of him had made the dinnertime news.