CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Vita’s mother was waiting up when she got home, and she was white with fear and anger. Vita had known she would be. The ensuing conversation was bad – somewhere, Vita thought later, when her tears had dried, between thunderstorm and miniature apocalypse.

‘I can’t be here to watch you, not like at home!’ said her mother, and there were tears in her eyes, too. ‘And you know you’re not strong!’

‘I am!’

Her mother bit her lips together; her face was still wild with residual fear. ‘You’re a child! I told you I was trusting you and Grandpa not to get into trouble – please, Vita, don’t make me regret it! I couldn’t bear it!’

At last the storm abated.

‘Promise me you won’t do it again?’ asked her mother, once she had bathed Vita’s cut, and Vita said, ‘I promise,’ and kissed her mother and ran to her bed before she could be asked to define exactly what it was she was promising.

Vita was in bed and half asleep, with the red book under her pillow, before she remembered Sorrotore’s wallet. She sat bolt upright and listened to the apartment. All was quiet; the only sound was the thrum of the city outside.

She crept down the hall and grabbed her overcoat from its hook. The wallet, when she fished it out, had that faint scent to it: leather, and some kind of perfume; and power.

She pulled out an envelope, folded in half, and a few receipts.

The receipts told her nothing except that Sorrotore had expensive tastes – one was for twelve bottles of Perrier-Jouët 1904 champagne – so she tore open the envelope.

A single sheet of headed writing paper was wrapped around scraps of newsprint.

All of them were news reports about fires: buildings destroyed, across the city.

The covering letter read:

Victor,

Progress on various projects; see enclosed. Keep me updated on your latest. Don’t waste time. Fair Homes is waiting to move in and make the Hudson Castle Hotel a reality.

Yours, in haste,

Westerwicke

She spread out the enclosed press cuttings. They seemed to have no connection to Sorrotore, or to one another. They were all old buildings, and old buildings catch fire easily. Except, she saw, as she read on, that one company seemed to be building on the burned-out spaces, post-fire: Fair Homes Enterprises.

Fair Homes, according to the newsprint, claimed to produce ‘affordable housing for hardworking New Yorkers’. But Vita frowned as the article went on: it seemed the buildings it constructed were all luxury apartments, with doormen and gold-plated swimming pools; the kind of buildings that suggested it was your duty to refrain from being poor.

She read closer. The articles mourned the loss of buildings that had been protected: churches and theatres, places that should have shaped the history of the city. Buildings that took up valuable space in the heart of the most desirable areas.

She stared down at the list. A block of apartments on East 23rd Street had caught fire overnight; one person had been injured, and an elderly man had died later of smoke inhalation. The street name was familiar; had she walked down it? She read on: The Old Hotel, Columbus Avenue, had burned beyond repair.

The name prickled with familiarity. She took her penknife in her fist, flicking at the tweezers with her thumb, thinking, digging backwards in her memory – and then it came to her.

The papers on Sorrotore’s desk.

The Old Hotel had been sold for $200. And now it was gone.

She looked back at the press cuttings, and, slowly, she began to piece it together. Sorrotore bought old buildings, under the names of different companies; he burned them; then Westerwicke built on them.

How many buildings had he promised to save, the way he had promised to save Grandpa’s? How much money, she wondered, were he and Westerwicke making?

Her arms and hands were cold, but her heart was hot. She thought of Dillinger’s glee at his own words: ‘It’s fire you’re playing with …’

A drunk with a pun. And what else had he said? ‘He’s set a date. Next week.’

That was it, then, she thought. That was why Sorrotore wanted Hudson Castle; to burn it to the ground. And she had almost no time at all. ‘Next week’: that could mean any time from Monday, or even Sunday. Today was Wednesday.

She fell asleep with the red book clutched to her chest. Sorrotore went stalking through her dreams, his face bearing ever closer; a cold and unlovely bedfellow.