A Bomb Built in Hell

by Andrew Vachss

  It was shadowy black on the waterfront as Wesley sighted in. He picked up a man and a woman in the scope, lying on the grass just off the river. The range was almost a mile and Wesley carefully dialed in the right magnification until he could see the man clearly. The nightscope worked to perfection; the man looked like he was in a spotlight against a dark background. The crosshairs focused on the man’s upper chest, then on his face, and then on to his left eye. Yes ... there. With such a high-speed, low-density bullet, a chest shot wasn’t a sure kill.

  Wesley thought about the books he had read on triangulation and he concluded that it would be possible for the cops to learn where the bullets had been fired from. He came to another conclusion: so what?

  Pet was waiting in the garage.

  “I got a kid—a good, standup kid. A State kid, you know? He’ll bring a launch alongside the FDR. I’ll be in the Caddy, pulled over like I got engine trouble. You can be into the launch in thirty seconds, and he’ll bring you back about a mile upriver from there ... and I’ll be waiting again.”

  “He’ll see my face.”

  “You trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “He won’t remember you.”

  “Him, too?”

  “No. We’ll need him again—he’s one of us, I think. But I got something for him anyway.”

  “Can you find out which night he’ll be on the Bridge? Can you find out where I can shoot from?”

  “I already got the last information. But you got to go over every single night until he shows. Even trying to get more information would tip him.”

  “When do we start?”

  “You ready tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “You only get one shot....”

  “I haven’t thought about that.”

  “Why not, Wes?”

  “Tunnel vision’s better for night work.”

  35/

  The battleship-grey Fleetwood purred northbound on the FDR. Then its engine began to miss and sputter. Pet pulled over to the side, went around to the front, and lifted the hood. The kid came quietly out of the shadows.

  “Here, Mr. P.”

  “I see you, kid—I seen you when I pulled in. Stay back further next time, right?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. P., I will.”

  “Okay, come here, kid, quick! I got something for you.”

  As the kid approached, Pet pulled a heavy metal-and-leather belt off the back seat of the Caddy. He motioned the kid forward and circled his waist with the belt. The front of the belt was a steel-tongued clamp which Pet fastened.

  “Try to get it open,” Pet said.

  The kid did try, hard, but he couldn’t budge the clasp.

  “It’s full of plastic explosive, radio-controlled ... with this,” said Pet, holding up a small transmitter. “You understand?”

  The kid’s face didn’t move a muscle—he just nodded.

  “It won’t go off no matter how hard it’s hit, even with a bullet, and it will go off even if it’s wet.”

  Pet slapped the kid lightly on the cheek, smiled, and winked at him like a father sending his son up to bat in a Little League game.

  The trip to Welfare Island took only about three minutes. Wesley set up the bipod in the soft mud about a quarter-mile from the bridge. Pet told him it was possible to get even closer, but then he would be shooting almost straight up. Wesley already knew that depth perception is influenced by perspective and he agreed to the quarter-mile shot. He used the hand-level with the glowing needle to get the bipod perfectly straight, set up the rig, and sighted in toward the middle of the Bridge. It took another fifteen minutes before he was completely satisfied. The kid was good; he knew not to smoke, not to talk. They waited until 3:15 a.m. and split when nobody showed. Pet met them at the right spot, and Wesley went back to get some sleep.

  On the way back to the Slip, Wesley asked if the Island was really the best vantage point. “What about that Butler Lumber Millworks building on the Queens side?”

  “I already checked it out, Wes. We’d have to leave about a half a dozen people there if we tried it. We don’t know what night the man’s gonna come, and that ain’t the kind of stunt you can pull twice.”

  Wesley just nodded, not surprised.

  36/

  By the ninth time out, Wesley could set the bipod and rig up in seconds instead of minutes. The kid was smoother, too. He had a pair of night glasses with him and he was scanning the Queens side every thirty seconds, pausing just long enough to refocus each time. At 1:05, he blew a sharp puff of air in Wesley’s direction. Wesley immediately swung the scope toward the Queens end and saw the figure of a human walking toward the center of the Bridge at moderate speed. Maybe he’s a jumper, he thought ... but another puff of breath told him that someone was also approaching from the other side. Wesley never took his eye off the first man.

  He watched with extreme care as the two men met in the middle ... and smoothly switched positions, so that the man on the left was now the man from Queens. A nice touch. Both men had their backs to the girders and were invisible from the Bridge itself.

  Wesley sighted in carefully, not knowing how much time he’d have. A foghorn sounded somewhere up the river, but the island was quiet. The Harbor Patrol had passed more than an hour ago, and they hadn’t even bothered to sweep Wesley’s area with their spotlights—although Wesley and the kid were well concealed against the possibility.

  The target’s eyes were shielded by his hat. Wesley sighted in on the lower cheek, figuring the bullet to travel upwards to the brain. He watched for the man’s lips to stop moving—he’d be less likely to move his head if he was listening instead of talking. In between breaths, Wesley squeezed the trigger so slowly that the ear-splitting cccrrack! was a mild shock—the target was falling forward before the sound reached the bridge. The capo ducked down in anticipation of another shot, but Wesley and the kid were on the move ... halfway across the river to Manhattan before the bodyguards got fifty feet toward the middle of the bridge.

  When they landed, Pet quickly unhooked the kid’s belt, saying, “You were a man.”

  The kid just nodded. The outfit disappeared into the false bottom of the Caddy’s back seat and Pet had the big machine running toward Harlem in seconds. They caught the 96th Street turnaround and were back in their own territory in fifteen minutes.

  “The kid had me covered good,” Wesley told Pet, after they’d dropped him off. “He said there was a car on the Queens side that we could swim to if they hit the boat.”

  “Yeah,” Pet replied. “He’s the goods. And I don’t think he did it for the money, you know?”

  37/

  It was 2:10 in the morning as they turned into the factory block. Just before they got to Water Street, Wesley noticed a trio of men huddled in an alley’s mouth.

  “Cops?” he asked.

  “Junkies,” Pet answered. “Dirty fucking junkies. They going to bring the motherfucking cops, though—they got no cover. We’ll have to clear them the fuck outta here soon. How’d it go?”

  “I hit him. That was all I could see—I didn’t want to stay around. Would that belt’ve worked?”

  “Blow a six-foot hole in concrete.”

  “What’s the range for the transmitter?”

  “About a mile and a half ... maybe two miles.”

  “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, m
an. 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 that 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.