A Bomb Built in Hell

by Vachss, Andrew

  “I know it. I know it now, anyway.”

  “I waited for you, for Carmine’s son, all those fucking years because I had a reason, you know? We’d either get all of them or they’d get us. Or both ... all the same, right? And that was all ... all I care about was in that room. I can’t even drive anymore, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I know, Pet. But...”

  “There ain’t no ‘but’ behind this, Wes. If I go out now they’ll hit me. And what’s worse, they’ll fucking know I was involved in that whole thing. They’ll know there was other people. They’ll know, and they’ll smell around and sooner or later...”

  “I know.”

  “I was going to go out hard, you know? Take some of them with me. But there’s none of them really left ... except a few new guys we couldn’t ever get close to. And the soldiers, the button-men, you know ... they...”

  “No soldier’s going to hit you, Pet.”

  “It wouldn’t be right. I helped kill the sharks, Wes—I don’t want the little fucking fish to eat my flesh. I’m tired....”

  “Your family...?”

  “Gone. A long time ago. Carmine was my family, and then you.”

  “I still am.”

  “Then be family, Wesley.”

  “That’s why I came here now.”

  “Yeah. What was your mother’s name?” the old man challenged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you learn enough from me to be proud of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to stay here, right?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about no Potter’s Field, Pop.”

  “Or Forest Lawn, either. I don’t want to be buried with trash.”

  “You want to know in front?”

  “Punk! What do you think I am?”

  “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry, old man. I know what you are. You’re the most man I ever knew.”

  “That’s okay, Wes. I know why you said that. The same thing as pulling me out of that room, huh? It’s no good anymore, son.”

  As if by mutual consent, they walked toward the corner of the garage farthest from the street. The old man calmly seated himself in his good old leather chair, lit a twisted black cigar and inhaled deeply. He smiled up at Wesley.

  Wesley screwed the silencer into the Beretta and cocked the piece. He held it dead-level pointed at Pet’s forehead.

  “Good-bye, Pop. Say hello to Carmine for me.”

  “I will, son. Don’t stay out too late.”

  The slug slammed above the bridge of the old man’s nose, precisely at the point where his dark eyebrows just failed to meet. The impact rocked the chair against the wall, and the old man slumped to the floor. Wesley picked him up in his arms. He was carrying the old man’s body toward the door to the first floor when he noticed the deep trench cut into the concrete. He laid the old man on his back in the trench and pressed the still-warm Beretta into his hand. Wesley shoveled the earth back into the trench until it was ten inches from the top. Then he began to mix the new batch of concrete.

  It was all finished inside of an hour, the floor now smoothed and drying in the heat of the 3400K spotlights attached to the back beams.

  Wesley went over and sat in the old man’s chair. He watched the concrete harden, fingering Pet’s cutoff shotgun.

  65/

  The kid let himself into the garage the next day, silently and quickly, as he had been taught. For the first time in his memory, the old man wasn’t there. He heard the slightest of sounds and whirled in the opposite direction, hitting the floor, his tiny Colt Cobra up and ready. He saw nothing.

  “Too slow, kid.”

  “Wesley?” the kid questioned, as the other man emerged from the shadows, now dressed in the outfit he last wore on the roof.

  “Yeah. Put the piece down.”

  “Where’s Pet?”

  “He’s gone home, kid.”

  “Like he wanted to in the...?”

  “You knew, huh? Good. Yeah, like that. Now it’s just me.”

  “And me, right?”

  “If you want.”

  “What else could I...?”

  “It’s different now, kid. We got all of them and there’s something else to work on. You know what?”

  “I figure I’ll learn that from you.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “My father’s been dead for twenty years. At least that’s what they said.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She went after him.”

  “Who raised you?”

  “The State.”

  “Okay. From now on, you live here. You handle the cars. Pet taught you, right?”

  “Last time I was here he said he taught me all he knew ... and that you’d teach me the rest.”

  “The rest of what I know.... And then you...”

  “I know.”

  “From now on, I’m the outside-man, right? You’re gone—nobody sees you, got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got your stuff?”

  “All the weapons are here already, except my carry-piece. All my clothes, too.”

  Wesley led the kid to the now-indistinguishable spot on the floor under which the old man lay buried.

  “The old man’s there,” he said, pointing.

  “Seems like he should have—”

  “What? A fucking headstone? A monument? He left his monument on Chrystie Street.”

  “I know.”

  “Then act like you know.”

  The kid turned away without another word. He walked toward the row of waiting cars. “Who fucked up the Ford? It’s too shiny for—”

  “Fix it. Fix all of them. You know what to do.”

  “You going to do what Pet did?”

  “I can’t. I can’t talk to people like that. But for right now I don’t have to.... You know all the systems?”

  “Pet showed me last week.”

  Wesley faded from the garage, leaving the kid alone.

  66/

  That same night, Wesley wheeled the Ford down Water Street and onto the FDR toward the Brooklyn Bridge. He met the man with the money from the Mansfield job right in front of City Hall on lower Broadway. The man climbed into the back seat of the Ford and handed twenty-five thousand across to Wesley as the car pulled away.

  “You want another job?” the man asked.

  “Who, how much time I got, and how much?”

  “You hit kids?”

  “Same three questions,” Wesley said, flat-voiced. “Answer them or split.”

  “It’s not actually a hit—it’s a snatch. You got to—”

  “No good.”

  “No good? You haven’t even heard—”

  “Get lost.”

  “Hey! Fuck you, man. I’m not getting out and you’re not blasting me in the middle of fucking Brooklyn either. Now just—”

  Wesley pulled a cable under the dash and the back seat of the four-door sedan whipped forward on its greased rails, propelled by twelve 500-pound test-steel springs. The front seat was triple-bolted to reinforced steel beams in the floor—it weighed six hundred pounds. It was exactly like being thrown into a solid steel wall at forty miles per hour.

  The man’s entire chest cavity was crushed like an eggshell. Wesley turned and shoved the seat backward with both hands—with the steel springs released from their tension, the seat clicked back into place and the man remained plastered against the plastic slipcover of the front seat. Another quick shove and the dead man was on the floor. Another half-second and he was covered with a black canvas tarp. The whole operation took well under a minute.

  Wesley had never turned off the engine. He put the car in gear and moved off. His first thought was to simply drive the car into the garage as it was and let the kid handle the disposal. But then he remembered the kid had to be protected, as Wesley himself had been protected, and he deliberately drove the Ford under the shadows of the Manhattan Bridge. It looked like the kind of car The Man wo
uld drive and there was some immediate rustling in the shadows when he pulled in. Too much rustling. Wesley pulled out again and hit the Drive. He rolled along until he came to the Avenue D Projects, and pointed the car down the private path that only the Housing Authority cops were supposed to use. No one challenged the car.

  Wesley drove until he saw an unoccupied bench. He stopped the car and got out. Satisfied, he pulled the dead man out and propped him up convincingly on the bench. The man’s head fell down on his crushed chest, but that looked even more like Avenue D after dark was supposed to. He drove out of the Projects without trouble and was back inside the garage in minutes. The kid came out of the shadows with his grease gun—he started to put it down when he saw the Ford.

  “Don’t ever put your gun up until you know it’s me,” Wesley barked at him. “Don’t be looking at the fucking car!”

  The kid said nothing.

  “It might’ve been seen,” Wesley told him. “I had to use the springs. It’s got to be painted with new plates and maybe some—”

  “I know what to do,” the kid interrupted.

  Wesley went back to his own place.

  67/

  It wasn’t that hard to find humans who wanted problems disposed of and expected to pay for the service, but it was hard on Wesley. All the talking, the bargaining, the bullshit.

  It wasn’t like before, when Pet had fronted it off. He tried the Times Square bars first, but even among all those freaks he couldn’t mesh. The way they looked at him, the way they moved aside when they saw him coming ... it all told him his face was still too flat and his eyes still too focused.

  The stubby blonde hustler was working her way down the end of the long bar, her flesh-padded hips gently bumping anyone who looked remotely like he’d go for a minimal financial investment. When she got to Wesley, he turned and tried a smile.

  “Sit down,” he told her. “Have a drink.”

  “Aw ... look, baby, I got to go to the little girl’s room. Order me a Pink Lady and I’ll be right back.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the truth came to Wesley. He went back out into the night.

  68/

  Inside the warehouse, Wesley went through all the papers the old man had left. He found a fine-ruled notebook with a black plastic cover. The first page said CLIENTS and each succeeding page was devoted to a single individual: name, addresses, phone numbers (business and home), and a lot of other miscellaneous information. He also saw prices next to each name:

  LEWISTON, PETER .... $25K+

  RANDOLPH, MARGARET .... $40K

  It took Wesley a long time to go through the book, figuring which people he had already worked for—he had never known names except when it was absolutely necessary to the job. Slowly and carefully, he extracted enough data to put it together that many of the names were jobs they had never done. Had Pet kept a list of potentials?

  The only area codes Wesley saw next to the phone numbers were 516, 914, 203, and 201. Long Island, Westchester, northern New Jersey, southern Connecticut. The seven digit numbers Wesley assumed were 212—within the five boroughs.

  The next night, Wesley prepared to try all the 516 numbers. He didn’t take the Ford—it was too nondescript, an obvious prowler’s machine. The El Dorado was a little too hard to miss. He couldn’t drive the cab like Pet and make it seem like he belonged behind the wheel, although the kid could.

  Finally, he settled on the Firebird—a chocolate-brown 1970 model with a worked-over undercarriage and very sticky radial tires. He checked the electromagnets, releasing the Airweight, and returned it under the dash. He put six rolls of dimes and five rolls of quarters in the glove compartment and stashed a rectangular metal box full of equipment in the console between the seats.

  Wesley took the Brooklyn Bridge to the BQE, connecting to the Long Island Expressway. He was wearing a dark blue J. Press summer-weight suit with a light, blue knit shirt, no tie. It all fit well with the car, as did the complete set of credit cards (“You can’t fucking beat that American Express Gold for impressing the rollers, Wes. Any sucker can cop the Green, but the Gold is for high-class faggots. The Man sees that, he figures you not the right guy to roust.”) that matched his counterfeit driver’s license and registration.

  He kept the car at the speed limit all the way to Exit 40. From there it was only a mile or so to the giant Gertz parking lot. He picked out one of the outdoor payphone booths near the back. The area was empty except for a gang of kids listening to their car radios, all tuned to the same station. It was loud, but it wouldn’t disturb conversation inside the booth.

  Wesley quickly swept the booth with the tiny scanner Pet had showed him how to use—it was clean. A quick twist removed the mouthpiece, and Wesley inserted the flat metal disc with its network of printed circuits and perforations which exactly matched the original. Voiceprints were getting to be as much of a problem as fingerprints.

  The first number was a busy signal; the second, no answer. The third was in Hewlett Harbor. A soft-voiced woman picked up the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Could I speak with Mr. Norden, please?” Wesley asked politely.

  “May I tell him who is calling?”

  “Mr. Petraglia.”

  The phone was silent for almost thirty seconds—Wesley was going to give it forty-five and then hang up—when a clipped, hard voice came on the line: “Do you think it was wise to give your name like that?”

  “Would you have come to the phone otherwise?” Wesley replied.

  “You’re not...”

  “I’m his brother. In the same business. He told me to call you.”

  “Well, I still have the problem, but time is getting...”

  “This is all the talking I do on the phone. Tell me where to meet you.”

  “Can you be at the Sequoia Club in an hour? You know where it is?”

  “In one hour.”

  “Listen! How will I know you? Do you—?”

  “Just go in the back and sit down,” Wesley told him. “I’ll find you.”

  “Look, I—”

  Wesley replaced the receiver, first exchanging his voice-alteration disk for the stock item. The shiny chrome of the phone coin box picked up fingerprints perfectly—Wesley knew smearing them was as good as wiping them, but he took the extra second to do a thorough job with his handkerchief. A man wearing gloves in the summer making a phone call would be too much for even a Nassau County cop to pass up. On the other hand, you could see their orange-and-blue squad cars coming a hundred yards away.

  Pet’s book had all the information about the Sequoia, and Wesley had thoroughly checked it out on a street map of Norden’s area before driving out to the Island. He dialed his mind to dismiss all the information he had memorized on the first two people he had called, focusing on what he knew about Norden. There wasn’t much, except the price was the highest in the 516 section: $100K. And a code: “P/ok,” which Wesley took to mean that Norden had used this service previously and had paid off without incident.