A Bomb Built in Hell

by Vachss, Andrew

  Every night the doors to the individual cells were automatically closed by electricity. Wesley just sat and thought about it for a couple of hours until supper was over. He refused the food when the cart came by his cell and watched the runner smile knowingly at him. The smile convinced Wesley it wouldn’t do any good to ask for another shank to replace the one stolen from him.

  At 8:30, just before the doors were supposed to close, the four men came back. The biggest one, the talker, came forward with a smile.

  “Okay, sweetheart, decision time. Just me, or all of us?”

  Wesley looked frightened and defeated—he had been practicing in his scrap of mirror for an hour.

  “Just you,” he said, voice shaky.

  The other three slapped palms with the biggest one, mumbled something about “seconds,” and ambled off, laughing. They were about fifty feet down the corridor when the cell doors started to slowly close. Wesley knelt down before the big man who unzipped his fly and stepped toward Wesley ... who sprang forward and rammed his head and shoulders into the bigger man’s stomach like a spear. They both slammed backwards into the cell wall, and Wesley whipped his knee up, trying to drive it into the big man’s chest right through his groin. The big man shrieked in pain and slumped and Wesley’s hands were instantly around his throat, thumbs locking the Adam’s apple. Just before the cell doors closed, Wesley stuffed the man’s head into the opening, his hands turning chalk-white with the strain. The three others raced back but were too late; they could only watch as the steel door crushed the big man’s skull as easily as if it were cardboard. Their own screams brought the guards, clubs up and ready.

  12/

  Wesley spent the night in solitary, with a special watch. The special watch reported that he went to sleep promptly at 10:30, and slept right on through the night.

  13/

  Wesley’s new lawyer was from the same brotherhood as the others. He ran the usual babble about pleading guilty to a reduced charge, escaping what the PD always called “the heavier penalties permissible under the statutes.”

  “This could be Murder One, kid, but I think I can get the DA to—”

  “Hold up. How could it be Murder One? I didn’t fucking plan to waste that motherfucker. I was protecting myself, right?”

  “The Law says that if you think about killing someone for even a split-second before you do it, you’re guilty of premeditated murder.”

  “If I hadn’t killed him, he would have taken me off.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Wesley thought it through. He finally concluded that shooting the sergeant in Korea wasn’t premeditated—he didn’t remember thinking about it at all, much less for a whole split-second.

  It was too much to work through right away, so Wesley fell back on the one thing he trusted: waiting. He refused to plead guilty, so he sat for another nine months in the Tombs awaiting trial. Finally, the PD came back with an offer to plead guilty to Manslaughter in exchange for a suspended sentence, running concurrent, on the armed robbery. He was promised a ten-year top.

  Wesley thought about this. He had a lot of time to think, since he was locked in his cell twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day. They gave the prisoners in the isolation unit showers every two weeks, unless they had a court date, and Wesley always used his half-hour of exercise to watch and see if the dead man’s friends were any more loyal than the Marine’s had been.

  He reasoned it out as best as he could. Even if he slid on the homicide, he had robbed the liquor store; he could sit in the Tombs for another couple of years and still pull major time, so he accepted the now-frantic PD’s offer. The thought of going to trial before a jury was making the lawyer lose a lot of sleep.

  The judge asked Wesley, “Were any promises made to you, at this time or at any other time, on which you are relying in your plea of guilty to these charges?” When Wesley answered “Yes,” the judge called a recess.

  The lawyer patiently explained that statements like Wesley’s couldn’t be allowed to appear on the transcript. When Wesley asked why that was, the lawyer mumbled something about a “clean record.” Wesley didn’t get it, and figured he wasn’t going to.

  After a couple of rehearsals, Wesley finally got it straight, said the magic words, and was rewarded with a flat dime in Auburn.

  14/

  He spent the required thirty days on Fish Row and hit the New Line with about forty-five other men. Without friends on the outside, without money in his commissary account, and without any advanced skills in stealing from other prisoners, Wesley resigned himself to doing some cold time. He computed his possible “good time” and reckoned he could be back on the street in six-plus, if he copped a good job inside prison.

  He put his chances at about the same as those of copping a good job on the street.

  The job he wanted was in the machine shop. It wasn’t one of the preferred slots, like the bakery, but the inmate clerk still wanted five packs of cigarettes to get Wesley assigned—otherwise it would be license plates. Wesley had several offers to lend him the packs, at the usual three-for-two-per-week, but he passed, knowing he wasn’t ever going to get his hands on anything of value Inside without killing someone.

  He returned to the clerk’s office, expecting to get the plate-shop assignment and preparing to keep a perfectly flat face anyway. But the slip the clerk handed him said “Machine Shop” on top.

  “How come I got the shop I wanted?” Wesley asked.

  “You bitching about it?” the clerk responded.

  “Maybe I am—you said it cost five packs.”

  “It does cost five packs—your ride is paid for.”

  “Who paid?”

  “Whadda you care?”

  “I got something for the guy who paid,” Wesley said, quiet-voiced. “You want me to give it to you instead?”

  “Carmine Trentoni, that’s who paid, wiseass ... now take your beef to him. I got work to do.”

  It took Wesley a couple of days to find out who Trentoni was without asking too many questions, and almost another week before he could get close enough to him to speak without raising his voice. Trentoni was on the Yard with three of his crew, quietly playing cards and smoking the expensive cigars that the commissary carried at ridiculous prices. Wesley waited until the hand was finished and came up slowly, his hands open and in front of him.

  “Could I speak with you a minute?” he asked.

  Trentoni looked up. “Sure, kid, what’s on your mind?”

  “This: I’m not a kid. Not your kid, not anybody’s. I killed a man in the House over that. I haven’t got the five packs to pay you back now. If you want to wait for them, okay. If not, you won’t see me again.”

  Trentoni looked dazed; then he looked vicious ... and then he laughed so hard the tower guard poked his rifle over the wall, as if the gun could see what was going on and report back to him. The other three men had been silent until Carmine broke up, and then they all joined in. But it was obvious they didn’t know what they were supposed to be laughing at.

  Carmine got to his feet—a short, heavily built man of about fifty-five whose once-black hair had turned grey some years ago. He motioned to Wesley to follow him along the Wall, away from the game. He deliberately turned his back on the younger man and walked quickly until he was about a hundred feet away from anyone else.

  Wesley followed at a distance; he knew nothing ever happened on the Yard unless there was a cover-crowd or a man went psycho, but he couldn’t understand the laughter either. Carmine wheeled to face Wesley, his mouth ugly with scorn.

  “Punk! Filthy, guttersnipe punk! Raised in garbage so it’s only fucking garbage you understand, huh? Yeah, I sent the five packs to that weasel of a clerk, but what I want from you, kid, is nothing! You get that? Carmine Trentoni wants nothing from you and he gave you the five packs for free, no payback. Can your punk mind understand that?”

  The vehemence of Trentoni’s speech knocked Wesley back
, but his habits had been formed way before that day, so he just asked, “Why?”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why: I know why you’re here, which is more than you know, right? I know what happened in the House. I laid those five fucking packs on the clerk because I wanted to. And if you try and pay them back, I’ll rip the veins outta your punk throat ... you got that?”

  “Yes.”

  Wesley turned and walked to his cell, not looking back. It took him another ten days to learn that Carmine was serving three life sentences, running wild, for three separate gang murders, committed more than twenty years ago. He had stood mute at his trial, refusing to even acknowledge the judge and his own court-appointed attorney. At the sentencing, the judge asked if he had anything to say for himself. Carmine faced the judge with a pleasant smile.

  “You can’t kill what I stand for.”

  He had never elaborated on that statement, not even to the questioning reporters to whom most prisoners were anxious to talk. He had never appealed the convictions and had ignored parole hearings for which he was later scheduled.

  He ran the prison Book, but he wouldn’t shark cigarettes or do anything else for money. The rumors were that he had killed twice more while in prison, but nobody really knew who the killer of the two unrelated victims was. They had been found in their cells, one stabbed and one burned to a crisp—there had been no evidence, no witnesses, no indictment.

  15/

  Wesley listened until he had heard enough, then he went looking for Carmine. He found him standing in a corner of the Yard, taking bets. Wesley waited until Carmine had finished operating and then walked over. At a silent signal, Carmine’s men stepped off to give him room.

  “There’s something I want to say to you.”

  Carmine just looked frozen-faced, staring through Wesley to someplace else.

  “Thank you for the cigarettes. You’re a real man and I’m sorry for what I thought of you.”

  Carmine’s face broke into a huge grin and he slapped Wesley heavily on the biceps. “Okay, okay, that’s good—I was right about you!”

  They shook hands. And from that day on, Wesley went every place Carmine did. The first thing Wesley did was quit his job in the machine shop. Carmine had told him:

  “What you wanna work in the fucking machine shop for? I’ll tell you. One, you think you’ll learn something useful for when you’re back on the bricks. This is one-hundred-percent wrong, Wes—the only thing you can make in that stinking place is a shank, and you can buy a fine one for ten packs. You think they’ll let you join the fucking union when you get out? Okay, now, number two, you think you going to impress the Parole Board, right? Wrong—you don’t want a fucking parole.”

  “Who don’t want a fucking parole?”

  “You don’t, and I’ll tell you why: what you going to do when you get out? You going to work in a gas station, push a garment rack? Gonna wash cars, kiss ass ... what?”

  “I’m going to—”

  “—steal.”

  “Yeah,” Wesley acknowledged. “I guess that’s what I’ll be doing, all right.”

  “You know why?” Carmine challenged.

  Wesley smiled, but it wasn’t the icy twisting of his lips that he used on guards. He knew the old man was trying to hand out his last will and testament while he was still alive.

  “Why, Pop?”

  “Pop! You little punk; I could still kick your ass.”

  “I know you could, old man.”

  And Carmine realized what Wesley had already learned, and smiled too.

  “This is why. Because you a man, a white man, in America, in 1956. And that means you either starve, steal, or kiss ass.”

  “Is that only for white men, Carmine?”

  “No. That is for any man. I called you a white man because that’s what you are, a white man. But never underestimate any man— humans come in five colors, Wes, and the only color I hate is Blue.”

  “For cops?”

  “For cops, and for the kind of feeling you get on Christmas, when you know the only motherfucking way your kid’s going to get presents is if you go out and hit some citizen in the head.”

  “So why don’t I want a parole?”

  “Because you gonna steal, kid—and you don’t need no faggot parole officer sticking his nose into your face every time you breathe. Come out clean and then do what you have to do.”

  “It’s a lot more time that way.”

  “So what? People like us do nothing but time. On the street, in the joint ... it’s all the same. Either place, you can think, you can learn....”

  “Like I am now?”

  “Yeah, like you are now.”

  16/

  Another year passed—a year of Carmine sharing his income, his stash, his smokes, and his experience. Wesley paid the closest attention, especially to what seemed like the contradictions.

  He saw the old man smile serenely at the shank-riddled body of what had been a human being carried from the cell block to the prison morgue. “Now that’s a nice way for a rat to check out of this hotel.”

  But when Carmine told Wesley that his mother must have been Italian because Wesley for sure had some Italian blood ... and Wesley told him he didn’t know who his mother was, the old man’s eyes filled with tears and he awkwardly put his arm around Wesley’s shoulder. A passing con looked at this like he knew something, but the younger man just wrote the con’s name on the blackboard in his mind and suffered through the embrace without moving.

  “You never underestimate,” Carmine told him. “Only buffoons underestimate!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That nigger you killed in the House. He never looked in your eyes or he would’ve looked for another girlfriend. He took it easy, and he paid hard, right?”

  “Right. Why you call him a nigger?”

  “He was a fucking nigger. And Lee is a black man, see? There ain’t no words that fit everyone, except rich people—they’re all fucking swine.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want what they got and they don’t want to share. Period. That’s why you went to Korea, right? To fight their fucking wars.”

  “Would Lee get hot if he heard you call another guy a nigger?”

  “No ... or if he did he wouldn’t show it. A man who shows his anger is a fool and fools don’t live long. Revenge is dessert. First you eat the meal, no matter how fucking bad it tastes. Always, always remember that. My patience is always one second longer than my enemy thinks it is.”

  “What are you waiting for now?” Wesley asked.

  “Just to die, kid. There’s nothing out there for me. In here, those people take care of my family, and after I go they’ll keep doing it. I’m going to die the way I lived: with a closed mouth. Those people appreciate that—they have to. But if I was to go out there they’d expect things of me that I won’t do anymore.”

  “Like what?”

  “To respect them.”

  “You don’t...”

  “Not no more. Our thing is dead, Wes—it’s dead and fucking buried. There’s no organization, no mob, no fucking Mafia or whatever the asshole reporters want to call it. It used to be a blood thing, but now it’s just criminals, like the Jews used to be.”

  “Jews used to be big criminals?”