A Bomb Built in Hell

by Vachss, Andrew

“Is that alley a dead-end?”

  “Yeah. And I can block it ... but don’t hit them here, for Chrissakes.”

  “Put the belt in the airline bag and give it to me. Okay, now block the alley—don’t let any of them run.”

  Pet swung the Caddy smoothly across the alley’s mouth and Wesley was out of the car with the silenced Beretta pointed at all three men before they could move.

  “Freeze! Put your hands where I can see them.”

  “What is this, man? We’re not—”

  “Shut up. You want to make five hundred bucks?”

  The smallest one stepped forward, almost into the gun. “Yeah, man. Yeah, we want to make the money. What we have to do?”

  “Deliver this package for me. Just take it out on the Slip and walk through the jungle to the corner of Henry and Clinton. There’ll be a man waiting for it there—he’s already there. Then come back here and I’ll pay you.”

  “You must think you’re dealing with real fucking chumps, man! You’ll pay us after...”

  Wesley took five hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and held them out in his left hand, extending them toward the smallest one who grabbed hold. Wesley didn’t let go. “Take them and tear them in half. Neatly. Then give me back half.”

  “What the fuck for, man?”

  “That way we’re both covered, right? You come back and by then my man has called and says he got the stuff ... you cop the other half of the bills. I’ll pay you, alright—half of the fucking bills won’t do me no good, and I don’t want no beef with you guys anyway. Okay?”

  “Okay, man, but...”

  “But nothing ... and either all three of you go or it’s no deal.”

  “Why all three?”

  “What if some fucking hijacker rips you off on the way over? You’ll be safer with all three and my stuff’ll be safer, too. But don’t open the fucking bag—it’s booby-trapped with a stick of dynamite.”

  “You must be kidding, man!”

  “You think so, just open it up, sucker ... but get the fuck away from me first.”

  With Wesley still holding the gun on him, the smallest one reached for the bills and carefully ripped them in half, handing half to Wesley. He looked up from his work and saw the glint of metal from the Caddy.

  “Your partner got the drop on us too, huh?”

  Wesley didn’t answer. The smallest one took the airline bag, pocketed the torn bills, and the three junkies walked out of the alley. The Caddy backed up just enough to let them by. They turned toward the Slip. Wesley got in the Caddy and Pet pulled away. Using the night glasses, Wesley could pick out the three walking dead men as they moved toward Clinton Street.

  Pet looked at his watch. “It takes a man about twelve to fifteen minutes to walk a city mile. Those dope fiends ain’t no athletes— should take them about twenty to get to Henry Street.”

  Wesley said nothing—he was still watching the couriers to make sure they wouldn’t split up and force him to go after whoever wasn’t near the bag. Pet wheeled the big car toward the garage. They were inside in seconds and Pet climbed into the newly painted cab. “Still got about five minutes to go—I’m going out driving to make sure that stuff works.”

  “I’ll be your passenger—I want to see if it works, too.”

  The cab was coming up Clinton toward Henry when Pet said, “Seven minutes—that’s enough,” and pressed the radio’s control button.

  Explosion rocked the night. The cab raced toward Henry Street, but by the time they arrived all they got to see were a few dismembered cars and a lamppost lying in the street. There was glass everywhere, reflecting all sorts of once-human colors. Pet turned the cab around quickly and went the wrong way up Clinton to East Broadway and then raced uptown for a couple of minutes. He was back to normal late-night NYC cabbie speed by the time they crossed Grand Street.

  “The miserable hypes must’ve wanted that money bad—they was already at Henry Street.”

  “I guess it worked.”

  “They’ll need blotting paper to find them,” Pet said. “Make sure you set fire to your half of the bills.”

  “I already did.”

  38/

  The morning news linked the Bridge assassination to “mob sources,” and the explosion on Henry Street to “long-simmering political differences between Latin gangs, as yet unidentified.” Eleven people had been reported killed and twenty-one others hospitalized.

  39/

  Hobart Chan smiled to himself as his sable Bentley rolled gently across the mesh grids of the Williamsburg Bridge and into the clogged traffic on Delancey Street. Its air conditioning was whisper-quiet, the FM stereo filled the car’s vast interior with soft string music, its plushy tires transmitted not the slightest vibration to the driver’s seat.

  Chan preferred to drive himself into the city each day, although he could have quite easily afforded a chauffeur. It wasn’t the expense that stopped him, nor the paranoia that seemed to haunt the Occidental gangsters of his acquaintance. There were many trustworthy young Chinese boys coming over from Hong Kong every day. Good boys, not filled with the ancestor-worship crap that those born in Chinatown still seemed infected with. He used a number of them in his business. But there was just something so ... perfect about the cloistered luxury of driving in his steel-and-leather cocoon right past all the degenerates and bums that filled the area along Forsythe, Chrystie, and—Chan’s favorite—the Bowery. Something wonderful that the corpulent little man loved with a deep, private passion. He never missed an opportunity to make this soul-satisfying drive. As he crossed the bridge, the J train rumbled by in the opposite direction.

  Hobart Chan was a firm believer in community control. Until he came from San Francisco seventeen years ago, the Cubanos controlled prostitution in Chinatown by a tacit agreement with the Elders. But his willingness to promote a homicidal war between the Cuban and Chinese factions finally resulted in a change of ownership. Hobart Chan had run a lot of risks. But that was in the past. The risks were over, the gusanos were back dealing cocaine in Miami where they belonged, and the flesh business was never better.

  Chan sometimes thought longingly about Times Square, but always concluded by writing off the idea. There was more money to be made there, true, and Chan was no stranger to the packaging and sale of human degeneracy ... but something about the cesspool frightened him. Chan told himself that he was a businessman and a good businessman didn’t take unnecessary risks. So he remained content with the significant cash that annually funneled into his Mott Street offices.

  The only flicker of worry that ever crossed Chan’s mind was about his new competition. Not all the young Chinese from Hong Kong wanted to work for the established organization and he had been receiving threatening messages from some of the younger thugs. But Hobart Chan was too much a master of the art of extortion to fall victim to it himself. The new kids had no base outside of Chinatown, and they certainly weren’t going to attack him inside his own territory.

  As the big car crossed Grand Street, Chan decided he would drive down to the Bowery today. The sight of dozens of pathetic humans in various states of decomposition, all running toward his car with filthy rags to “clean” his windshield in grateful exchange for whatever coins he wished to bestow, did more for him than even his occasional visits to his own merchandise. He thought of his humble origins in Hong Kong: the forged birth certificate that cost his father seven years of indentured servitude to enable the young Chan to enter the land of promise, the bloody-vicious mess in San Francisco, his eventual—and, in Chan’s mind, inevitable— rise to power in his world.

  As the Bentley approached Houston Street, Chan automatically slowed down. He never wanted to make the turn west on this light—it was the best corner for the display of bums. Once he had thrown a dollar into the street after some of the lowlife had attempted to clean his windshield and had watched fascinated as they groveled in the street for the single piece of paper. Hobart Chan fancied all the bums knew his car and t
hat they fought among themselves to see which of them would have the privilege of serving him each morning. Although it was difficult to imagine such human waste actually fighting for anything.

  The bum that approached the car was younger than most, although no less degenerated. Chan mused on the theory that the entire race would someday find itself right down here on the Bowery as the youngish bum industriously cleaned the windshield and the side mirror with a foul rag. The bum was about thirty or thirty-five; it was hard to tell under the dark stubbly beard and the rotted hat. This bum even carried a pint of what looked like white wine in his hand, holding on to it with a death grip. Chan thought it somehow strange that a bum who already had a bottle would still work to clean windshields like this. Somehow it seemed even more debasing than usual, if that was possible.

  The bum quickly finished and looked beseechingly at Hobart Chan. The fat man’s jade-ringed finger touched the power-window switch and the glass zipped down on its greased rails. As Chan extended the crisp dollar bill, the mouth of the bum’s wine bottle seemed to fly open and the wine gushed out all over the flesh merchant. His face twisted into an ugly mass and he drew back his left hand to slap the bum when he noticed that the wine smelled like gasoline.

  That was the last conscious thought printed on his brain as the bum tossed a flaming Zippo lighter into the front seat and was off running with the same motion.

  There was a brief sound like heavily compressed air being released, then the flames enveloped the interior of the big car. Chan screamed like a mad beast and ripped at the door handle, but the door was stuck. He frantically pushed against the door but the flames held him prisoner ... for another second or so, until they reached the gas tank.

  The only witnesses to Wesley’s departure were the bums.

  The cab pulled up at the far end of the alley and Wesley caught it at a dead run—he dove into the back seat and began wiping his hands with the damp towels there. Pet turned toward Houston and took the main drag to Sixth Avenue. He followed Sixth Avenue north and wound his way through the Village until he got to Hudson Street. Pet followed Hudson to Horatio, where he parked the cab and both men got out. They climbed into the black Ford— the kid slipped from behind the Ford’s wheel and into the front of the cab. He was wearing a chauffeur’s cap today, but no belt. The Ford swung uptown, Wesley in the front seat, Pet driving.

  “That epoxy stuff is perfect, Pet. It sealed the door like cement.”

  “I told you it would. Even with a few coats of wax on the doors it’ll always work.”

  “I could have sat there and pumped slugs into him for days— nobody sees nothing down there.”

  “They paid for him to die by fire, right?”

  “Yeah,” Wesley mused. “I wonder where those kids got all that money.”

  40/

  Wesley was lying on his back on his kitchen floor, his hands working under the sink, when he heard the soft buzz from the console near the front door. The dog soundlessly trotted into position to the left of the narrow door. Wesley flipped on the TV monitor and saw Pet coming down the long corridor. Only Pet knew how to set off the buzzer, but he wanted to make sure the old man was alone. Satisfied, he hissed at the dog to get its attention. Wesley said “okay” in a hard, flat, deliberate voice. The dog tolerated Pet alone, but would attack him as quickly as anyone else in Wesley’s presence.

  Wesley pushed the toggle switch forward and the door slid away, leaving an opening large enough for a man to get through sideways. Pet came in and the door closed tightly behind him. The old man looked at the assorted tools spread over the kitchen floor.

  “What you up to?”

  “I’m fixing the dog’s food. He gets it by pushing this here lever, and water by pushing the other one. I got about a fifty-day supply and I’m going to fix it so’s he gets poison on the last one.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “If I don’t come back one time, he’ll run out of food sooner or later and he’ll starve to death. He don’t deserve to go out like that.”

  “I could come in here and feed him for you.”

  “That’s what you will do before the last day, if you’re around then.”

  “Maybe you can read minds.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “There’s a job order out with my name on it.”

  “The same people?”

  “Yeah. That’s their way. I’ve done too many jobs for them and now I get thrown in against another organization like mine. The winner gets to keep working for them and the loser don’t. They don’t trust nobody. They want to be sure the top independents don’t get together, you know?”

  “That’s what Carmine said it would be like. He said if I got real good, that’s what they’d do.”

  “Yeah, only Carmine knows these weasels. He’s way ahead of them. Even if they get me, you still on the street and they won’t be expecting a fucking thing.”

  “Why you making out a will, old man?”

  “You ever hear of the Prince?”

  “Yeah. I have. So?”

  “That’s their man for this one. He’d never come in here after me, even if he knew where I was. But if I want to work, they’ll give me a job in the cesspool, and he’s like a fish in the water there.”

  “You’re not supposed to know about the order out for you?”

  “No.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Nobody. But I put it together easy enough. They got a job for me in Times Square. Only thing it can mean, they got the Prince on the case. They never told me where to hit a mark before, but they got some bullshit story about only being able to get this guy when he comes outta one of them massage parlors. They must think I’m a Hoosier.”

  “And you not?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Carmine always said if you ready to die, you’re dangerous, but when you looking to die, you’re nothing to worry about.”

  “I ain’t looking to die, but that fucking pit is impossible to work in. And if I turn down this job, they’ll just hit me when I show my face on the street anytime ... I can’t stay in here forever.”

  “You ever think about just retiring or something?”

  “And do what? Go fishing in fucking Miami? I’ll retire the same way Carmine did—the same way you going to—but I’d like to fucking retire this Prince cocksucker before I do.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I only saw him once. He’s a fucking giant stick. About six-four, maybe a hundred twenty pounds, with hair like that Prince Valiant in the comics. That’s where he got the name. Diamonds all over the place—wristwatch, ID bracelet, cufflinks, belt buckle, everything. He’s got monster hands, about twice as big as mine. His skin’s dead white, like yours was when you got out. Like he’s never been out in the daytime. Probably hasn’t.”

  “Can you get close?”

  “No way. He’s got that cesspool wired. Nothing goes down from 40th to 50th, Broadway to the Hudson, that he don’t know about. Every fucking freak on the street reports to him.”

  “He should be easy to spot, right?”

  “Sure. But he’d have me spotted first.”

  “He don’t know me.”

  “No, but so what? You want to hit him alone?”

  “He’s just a man.”

  “If that’s all he was, I wouldn’t be worried about this. He’s a fucking freak, I told you. Only a freak could live down there like he does.”