A Bomb Built in Hell

by Andrew Vachss

  Wesley made all the sounds of a panic-stricken man trying to remember to make as little noise as possible. He rolled onto his back and started pushing himself toward 51st Street with his legs, the two-inch Colt now in his right hand.

  The Prince flew out of the darkness in a twisting, spinning series of kick-thrusts, offering a tiny target if Wesley had a knife. He was about eight feet away when he saw the pistol and threw himself flat on his back, already tucking his shoulder under to kick upwards when the x-nosed slug caught him in the chest, pinning him to the ground.

  The noise from the two-incher was deafening—magnified by the bowl, it was cannon-like. The street noises seemed to all stop in unison. Wesley walked slowly toward the Prince, saw he was choking on his own blood—the slug must have caught a lung:

  “A ... million dollars,” the Prince gasped. “A million if you don’t finish me, man. Just...”

  The Prince launched himself off the ground, the knife-edge of his hand extended. Wesley saw it all in slow-motion—he had plenty of time to single-action out another round, slamming the Prince back to earth. Wesley walked up calmly and emptied the pistol. Two shots into the face, which disappeared under the slugs’ impact, and the third into the throat.

  The street noises were getting much louder. Wesley quickly reloaded, pocketing the empties. He scanned the field, looking for the silenced Beretta, but gave it up in a second. Then he pulled the pin on one of the grenades and held it tightly in his right hand—with his left he pulled the Prince’s hands up until they were on either side of what had been his face. He stuffed the grenade into where a mouth should have been and released the lever.

  By the time the blast echoed throughout the city canyon, Wesley was at the perimeter of the site. As he slid under the fence, he saw a crowd of people outside Lynch’s Bar on the corner ... and a squad car. He looked to his left, toward the river, and saw that way was still clear. Wesley threw himself prone and unsnapped the last grenade. He pulled the pin and held it tightly in his right hand. With his left, he aimed the pistol carefully at the big cop trying to hold back the crowd.

  The revolver boomed twice. Wesley was up and throwing the grenade before the crowd started to panic and run. It arced through the night under the streetlights, then exploded in the middle of the crowd. Wesley was running toward Tenth Avenue on the follow-through from his throwing motion. The closest car was at 40th and Twelfth. Wesley knew he only had a minute or two to disappear into the shadows. He kicked his legs high into his chest, trying desperately for a burst of speed that wouldn’t come.

  As he crossed Eleventh Avenue, a cab flashed its lights off and on twice. Wesley turned toward it, the little gun up and ready. He ran toward the driver’s window and was only half surprised to see Pet behind the wheel. He was into the cab and it was heading downtown before Wesley could catch his breath. The cab turned left on 23rd and headed crosstown.

  “What were you doing in the street?” he finally asked Pet.

  “I was cruising Twelfth all night. When the police-band said there was a report of shots fired in the construction site, I figured it might be you. I knew 40th and Twelfth was the closest car, and you wouldn’t be trying to go crosstown to Fifth with all that heat around.”

  “What if I didn’t come out?”

  “I was going in.”

  “After me?”

  “After that Prince motherfucker.”

  The cab hit the FDR Drive and grabbed the service road. They were back onto the Slip and into the garage by 12:15. The police-band was still screaming CODE THREE!

  47/

  The Post had a bylined story on the riot in Times Square the night before. Police theorized that it was a terrorist attack of some kind, probably aimed directly at the “Guardians in Blue.” There was no mention of a man found in the construction site. Pet looked up from the paper at Wesley, who was staring with fixed concentration at a completely blank white wall.

  “There’s nothing in here about the Prince,” the old man said.

  “Why should there be?” Wesley wanted to know. “There wasn’t much left of him.”

  “They always got fingerprints ... dental charts ... something.”

  “With any kind of luck, they won’t get either off him. But some of his freaks probably took him away and buried him.”

  “What do I tell them?”

  “The people?’

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell them he’s gone and you not.”

  “How did I do it?”

  “None of their fucking business, right? You don’t get paid to draw no blueprints—that’s not professional, anyway.”

  “I’ll go downstairs and call them—might as well get this thing on,” Pet said. “There’s going to be a council behind this for sure.

  They won’t admit what they tried to set up, but with the Prince dead, they’ll know I know ... something.”

  “You know where the meet is going to be?”

  “You never know in front. They’ll just meet me on some corner with a car and take me there ... then drop me off when it’s over.”

  “Could I follow them with the cab?”

  “No way. I might be able to do it ... maybe ... but not you. It takes years to be that good with cars.”

  “Could we find out where from someone?”

  “You think this is the fucking movies? Forget it. In forty years doing their work, the only thing like that I ever found out was where Salmone’s daughter lives ... and that was a fucking accident.”

  “The big guy? His daughter?”

  “Yeah. His natural daughter, only she’s changed her name and everything. She lives on Sutton Place in one of those co-ops—married to a lawyer or an accountant or something like that.”

  “Yeah...” Wesley said thoughtfully. “You’re the best now, right? With the Prince gone?”

  “As far as they know.”

  “Okay, go to the fucking council. I’m going to hit his daughter.”

  “Why? What do you want to—?”

  “I’ll make it look like there’s a gang of freaks after all of them. Make it so’s they have to go after whoever’s got a hard-on for them, you understand?”

  “No.”

  “Look, they need to be fucking scared. I know how to do that. It’s not just killing. When I’m done, they’ll know it’s no job for a few soldiers. And that’s when they’ll turn it over to you.”

  “Depends. They could always—”

  “An open contract’s garbage, and you know it. How long was Gallo on the street? And Valachi? For their own fucking necks, they’d only want the best. They only put out an open contract when it’s not about them.”

  “Nah, Wes. They really wanted Gallo.”

  “Sure, but for money, right? He wasn’t coming into their fucking houses after them. It was just business with Gallo—this won’t be.”

  “So what? I don’t get this. If...”

  “You going to get them all together, Pet: to explain what they’re up against, tell them what precautions to take. About this, they’ll listen to you. When I get finished, they’ll all show up to listen. And that’s when we end this whole stupid fucking game of us working for them.”

  “How you gonna play it ... make it look like someone getting revenge for the Prince?”

  “You’re kidding me, right? Carmine taught me. All those swine ever think about is throwing people like us away. They think it’s payback for the Prince, they’ll just stake you out in the cesspool like a slab of beef.”

  “If not for the Prince, then...”

  “This is gonna be like the freaks of the whole world rising up. They don’t need a reason. It’s going to be like they opened a fucking box and the slime comes squirming out over the rim.”

  “You can’t...”

  “It’s not hard. I’ve been thinking about it. Just be slick but look sick, that’s all. Get me all the information on the woman. Make sure she’s still there, get everything.”

  “Yeah, okay. But I
don’t—”

  “Pet, this is the right way. I know.”

  48/

  Wesley went back to the wall, staring into it, until Pet left. He stayed there for three hours without moving. Finally his eyes closed—he took a massive breath and got to his feet. He got up, shaved, and changed into a battered cord jacket and chinos. Sneakers and some black-rimmed glasses completed the student trip. He went to the main library on 42nd Street, and stayed until it was near closing.

  Two days later, Wesley drove up the FDR toward the Fifties. It was just past noon and he found a parking place on East 51st, right near the river. He walked the rest of the way to Sutton Place, thinking of another 51st Street—in New York, sometimes the other side of the city was the other side of the world.

  He found the address Pet had given him. The old man had told him that the security system was a joke—the people who lived in that neighborhood wanted the kind of class building that wasn’t bristling with electronic devices and rent-a-cops. But there was a doorman, a middle-aged clown dressed in the kind of uniform self-respecting banana republics would have shunned, but suited the kind of humans that dwelled in the building. He didn’t give Wesley a second glance. Wesley took in the doorman’s flat, expressionless face and watched as he sprang to open the door for a tiny dowager. The doorman’s flatness wasn’t professional—he was just an ass-kisser who didn’t waste his talents on non-members.

  Wesley saw a sign saying that service deliveries were to be made in the rear, so he walked around to the narrow, super-clean little alley. The service entrance wasn’t guarded, but it was locked. There was another sign telling the tradesmen to ring the bell that was beneath it. Wesley went back to the car and drove home, thinking.

  Pet was already inside the garage.

  “You got everything?” Wesley asked.

  “Yeah. Her husband works on The Street. Leaves about 8:30, comes back between 7:30 and 10:00 every night. No dog. There’s an intercom which lets her ring the guy at the door downstairs if she wants. She’s got all those clubs and things, but she’s home every Wednesday and Thursday morning for sure. They go out together a lot—have parties in there about once a month. No one’s a regular visitor. Getting in’ll be the hard part.”

  “I’ll have her father take me in.”

  Pet went back to polishing the El Dorado, not asking for explanations.

  “That’s the one I want for this,” Wesley told him, nodding at the beige Caddy. “Make it look like somebody rich owns it.”

  Pet just nodded.

  Wesley took a piece of paper out of his pocket, a news clipping.

  “Pet, you know what they’re talking about here?”

  The old man quickly scanned the clipping and saw what Wesley wanted. “A letter-bomb? Sure. It’s no big thing. All you need’s a spring to trigger it when the mark opens the flap.”

  “Can you make one?”

  “Yeah, I can make one. How big?”

  “Big enough to blow someone up.”

  “The bigger the blast, the bigger the package.”

  “Can you get enough inside of a regular letter?”

  “If the envelope’s heavy-enough paper, sure.”

  “Rich people always write on heavy paper, right?”

  “I guess,” the old man said, dubiously.

  “You see this column, the Debutante Ball? The third broad down on the line is DiVencenzo’s daughter.”

  “So? He’s nothing.”

  “Right. But I got his address behind this paper. She should be getting a whole bunch of invitations to stuff now, right? That’s why the weasels pay so much coin ... to get their daughters into the society columns.”

  “So?”

  “So this particular broad’s gonna get a special invitation from us.”

  “How many of their women you gonna hit?”

  “Two’s enough, I think. If it’s not... Get the stuff from outside—I’ll meet you back here tonight. And get hold of the kid too, okay?”

  49/

  11:30 p.m. The three men sat in Wesley’s apartment; the dog was on guard in the garage. Pet had assembled his materials on the workbench. Along with the spring-detonator and the flat-explosive charge, he had a package of hundred-percent rag-content bond paper and envelopes. The stationery was a soft lilac, the fine-line italic script a dark purple. The envelope was so stiff it resisted any attempt at bending. Its deep flap said:

  Dr. & Mrs. John I. Sloane III

  707 Park Avenue

  Penthouse 2

  New York City, New York 10028

  The three men looked admiringly at the embossed calling cards.

  “How come you didn’t get the invitation printed, too, Wes?” the old man asked.

  “Amy Vanderbilt says you always handwrite these things.”

  “Who?”

  “In the library, Pet. There’s not but one way to do these things.”

  “She’ll never see the writing, anyway,” the kid put in.

  “That’s not the point,” Wesley replied. “What if they got an x-ray thing going, or something else we don’t know about? No risks if you don’t need to, right?”

  “Who’s going to write the invitation?”

  “None of us can do it, that’s for sure.”

  The kid was studying the stationery. “I know an old woman who used to do this,” he said.

  “Go to these parties?”

  “No, write these invitations. She’s in a nursing home where they put me to work when I was on parole once. Those places are just like the joint, if you’re old. Anyway, she used to make money addressing these things for some rich people—it was part of her job before they said she got too old to work. Then they dumped her into that home. She’s still there.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “I go and see here every once in a while—she tells the other old people I’m her grandson. She used to sneak me extra food when I was doing time there.”

  “She’ll address this for you?”

  “Sure.”

  Wesley looked at the kid. “After that, you got to leave her there.”

  “No, the fuck I do! They already left her there—she’s already dead as far as the motherfuckers are concerned. She’d never rat me out.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. She don’t care about living anymore anyway—she knows what’s happening ... what happened to her, right? I could fucking tell her why we was doing this and she’d be okay even then. Wesley, she knows I steal; she’s old, but she’s not slow. She’s just doing time.”

  “What’s she know about you?”

  “Just what she thinks my name is, that’s all. And that I give a fuck about her. She’s not giving that up.”

  Wesley looked at Pet. The old man nodded: “When I was Upstate, the only people who you could ever count on visiting you was your mother, or your sister, or your grandmother. What’s she got to gain by giving the kid up? Besides, they’re never going to find that envelope.”

  Wesley gave the kid several envelopes and some stationery. “Here’s the address of the broad, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll tell her that I got a job for her, get her to address a whole bunch of them. She’ll never know what’s happening.”

  The kid went out the door alone. He was back in ten seconds. “Wes. That dog...”

  “I know. Be right there.”

  50/

  8:00 a.m., Thursday morning. Wesley stood in front of the giant mirror in his bedroom. He had shaved extra carefully; Pet had given him an immaculate haircut and a professional manicure. On his left hand was a heavy white-gold wedding band, on his right a college ring from Georgetown University, 1960. He wore a dark grey, summer-weight, silk-and-mohair suit, a soft green shirt with a spread collar, and a tiny-patterned grey tie with a moderate Windsor knot. He carried a slim attaché case, complete with combination lock and owner’s monogram; the initials were “AS.” Wesley checked the gold-cased watch; it was right on time.

  The El Dor
ado looked as if it had been polished with beige oil, gleaming even in the dim light of the garage.

  Wesley was ostentatiously parking right in front of a plug on Sutton Place by 9:30, well within the doorman’s line of sight.

  The doorman noted the El D with genuine approval. Too many of the high-class creeps in his building drove those foreign cars for his taste, anyway. He liked the looks of the guy getting out of the car, too. Calm and relaxed, not like those rush-rush faggots who breezed by him like he didn’t exist. And the way the guy parked the hog right in front of the plug and never looked back? That was real class, too.