“Okay. After the hit, Israel is going to give you a package. You take what’s in there and go back to New York. You go to Mamma Lucci’s—it’s a restaurant near the corner of Prince and Sullivan Streets, on the south side of Houston. You ask to speak to Mr. Petraglia, okay? And you tell him you Carmine’s son and you came to New York to be with him. You give him the package. He will know who you are. This man, he will show you a building to buy.”
“How am I going to—?”
“Shut up, Wes, just listen. You’ll have the money. After you buy the building, you fix it up the way it needs to be. Pet will live there, too—he’s the last of us, kid, and one of the best. He can do things with cars you wouldn’t believe. And then you’re on your own.”
“What if Israel’s dead when I get there ... or Mr. Petraglia?”
“You got two years, four months, and eleven days to serve. They’ll both live that long. They been waiting for you—they won’t die.”
“But if—”
“If they do, call my wife at that number I gave you and tell her Carmine said to get out of the house, to take a vacation for a couple of weeks and to leave you the key. In the basement, the fourth beam from the door holding up the ceiling is hollow in the middle. Cut it down. There’s fifty thousand dollars in clean bills there. Take it and do it by yourself. But if Israel is in Cleveland, don’t touch the money—just leave it there. My wife has her own money coming, you understand? That’s your case money—it’s safer there than anyplace you could find. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“All right, there’s just one more thing ... you know why you’re going to do this?”
“Yes, Pop, I know why.”
“Who taught you why?”
“You did.”
“And that means you’re my blood, understand? I’m going out ... but you’re going to pay back every last one of the motherfucking swine for me.”
“I will.”
“I know. I waited years for you to come. Remember I told that judge that they couldn’t kill what I stood for? Well, this is perfect revenge. They took my life and buried me ... and I built a bomb right here in hell and it’s going to blow their devil’s hearts right out of their chests.”
“I’ll see you soon, Carmine.”
“I guess you will, son—but make it count for something while you’re out there.”
“Pop, was I just the best of the lot ... or was it that you couldn’t wait any longer?”
“No! You were what I wanted. You are my son ... I could have waited a hundred fucking more years....”
Carmine slumped dead against the Wall.
Wesley walked away. Even though he was known to be the old man’s partner, he was never a suspect. In any event, the autopsy showed an aortic aneurysm. The only thing that confused the doctors was that the burst vessels showed that the old man had been dead for more than thirty minutes when they found him. But medicine is an imperfect science and another dead con wasn’t worth the trouble of a complete investigation.
22/
The young guard came down the tier to Wesley’s cell carrying a piece of paper and a friendly, concerned look on his fat face.
“Listen, kid—you want to go to the old man’s funeral?”
“Yeah ... yessir, I would ... could you fix it?”
“Well, I might be able to if we could really talk, you know?”
“No, sir, but I’m willing to talk with you, sir.”
“Good,” the guard said, walking into Wesley’s cell and lowering his voice. “The old bastard left some money stashed, right?”
“I don’t know, sir. Did he?”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, forget it. Let the fucking rats be his pallbearers.”
Wesley just looked blankly at the guard, thinking that’s what he’d have anyway. He kept looking straight ahead until the guard left in disgust. Wesley had already checked the law and knew he wouldn’t be allowed to attend—he wasn’t a blood relative in any sense recognized by the State.
23/
When he hit the Yard seventeen days later, a slender Latin guy was running the Book, and Carmine’s stash of cigarette cartons was all gone from the loose floorboards in the back of the print shop.
Wesley passed the Latin by without a glance. He wrote off the cigarettes and the Book and the whispers about a man being a pussy if he wouldn’t fight for what was rightfully his.
He did the next years like moving through cold, clear Jell-O. He was able to dodge parole twice by infractions of institutional rules. But the last time, when he only had nine months to go on his sentence, he knew that they were going to parole him to keep him under supervision, no matter what he did. He knew a hundred ways to fuck up the parole hearing, but he didn’t want the additional surveillance that came with getting a “political” label, and he didn’t want the additional time that an assault would bring. He spent several hours talking with Lee until he learned what the older man knew.
Wesley appeared before the Board promptly—unshaven and smoking a cigarette. The Chairman, who was a Reverend, spoke first.
“Is there any reason why we should parole you at this time?” And Wesley broke into sincere and hearty laughter.
“What is so funny?”
“Man, you got to parole me—I’m nine months short.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to us. We want to know what you’ve done to rehabilitate yourself.”
“I haven’t done a motherfucking thing. But so what? You guys always parole a man who’s less than a year short—that’s the law, right? Anyway, I’m innocent.”
“That’s not the law!” the Reverend proclaimed self-righteously. “Your case will be reviewed like any other.”
“But the guys in the block said...”
“Oh, so that's it. Who’re you going to listen to, this Board or a bunch of prisoners?”
“But I thought...”
“Now we may parole you anyway, but you shouldn’t listen to—”
“See! I knew you were just kidding me, man.”
“This hearing is concluded. Return to your unit!”
The note from the Board said he was being denied parole at this time because of “poor institutional adjustment.”
24/
They let Wesley go on a Tuesday. He was among eight men going home that day, but the only one who wasn’t being paroled. He noticed one already nodding from his morning fix and wondered if the pathetic sucker would find the stuff as easy to score on the street as he had Inside.
The State provided transportation to the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan, a suit, and twenty-five dollars. The factory-reject suit screamed PRISONER! as loudly as black-and-white stripes would have, and Wesley’s dead-white face made sure the impression stayed with any cops who wanted to look. But nobody was looking. Wesley saw at once why Carmine had told him to learn from Lester—the terminal was a swirling river of predators and prey.
He thought about getting some fresh clothes, but he knew Israel wouldn’t care what he looked like.
The Greyhound to Cleveland cost $18.75. Fifteen hours later, Wesley grabbed a cab in Public Square, and he was in front of the King Hotel just before midnight. Wesley watched the whores shriek to passing cars for another fifteen minutes before he went inside, up to the desk clerk.
“I’ve got a message for Israel.”
“He not here, man.”
“I’ll wait.”
The clerk went to the back and, in about ten minutes, a husky man with a blue-black face and a full beard came down the stairs.
“I’m Israel,” the man said. “Come on up to my room.”
They walked upstairs to 717 and went inside. The man motioned Wesley to a chair near the window and pulled a short-barreled pistol from his inside pocket in the same motion. The gun was pointed negligently, only vaguely in Wesley’s direction, but his eyes were locked into Wesley’s face.
“What are you here for?”
“I’m Carmine’s so
n.”
“And...”
“I’m here to pick up what he left.”
“You know what that is?”
“He said Israel would show me.”
“He tell you anything else?”
“That I’d be doing a job of work for you.”
“You know who?”
“No.”
“You care?”
“No.”
“If you’re Carmine’s son, you must know the only color he hates.”
“A cop.”
“Yeah, a cop. A pig-slob dirty motherfucking cop. He—”
“I don’t care what he did. You going to get me everything I need?”
“Which is?”
“A place to stay, some correct clothing, a street map of this town, some folding money to get around with, a couple of good pieces, some tools, some information.”
“I can get all that. Shit, I got all that already.”
“Okay. Show me where I can sleep.”
“You want me to drive the car?”
“What car?”
“He’s a foot patrolman—that’s about the only way you’ll get a shot at him.”
“I work by myself—I’ll think of something.”
25/
It took Israel only a few hours to come up with everything Wesley asked for. Wesley spent an entire day making a silencer for the .357 Magnum and then he decided he couldn’t take a chance with a homemade job and unscrewed the tube with regret. He knew you could only silence a revolver but so much anyway. The pistol was a Ruger single-action—good enough for the first shot, but Wesley had to dry-fire hundreds of rounds before he got the hang of making the piece repeat quickly enough. It reminded him of how the Army taught him to use a .45. They made him drop the hammer endlessly with a pencil jammed down the barrel, so the eraser cushioned the firing pin.
The target patrolled Central Avenue four-to-midnights; his route took him right by the front door of the hotel. Wesley managed to get up on the roof of the tallest building across from the King, but it was no good. The lighting on the street was lousy. And, anyway, the cop always walked with a partner—he wouldn’t be able to tell them apart at that distance.
Wesley went back to Israel and told him he needed two things: a good double-barreled shotgun—a .12 gauge that could handle three-inch shells—and a telephone call.
Thursday night. Wesley had been in the hotel for four weeks without going outside more than once. The patrolman and his partner turned off Euclid and started walking up Central toward 55th. Israel came up to Wesley’s room and knocked softly.
“They’ll be out front in five to ten minutes.”
“Sound like a real nigger on the phone.”
“Don’t worry about a thing, man—I am a real nigger.”
Israel picked up the phone and deliberately dialed the police emergency number. When the Central Exchange answered, they heard: “Lawd have mercy! Po-leece! Dem niggahs got dat nice detective an’ his friend bleedin’ in da street! They gonna kill ‘em—they all crazy! You got to... What? Right next to dat Black Muslim place on Superior. Dey gonna... No, ah cain t hang on, ah got to...”
Israel rang off just as Wesley passed by his door with the shotgun under a brown raincoat. The barrels had been sawed off down to fourteen inches, and the gun fit comfortably.
The two officers walked by the front entrance to the hotel, past the winos and the junkies and the hustlers and the whores and the idlers and the vermin. Mr. Murphy and Mr. and Mrs. Badger and Miss Thing ... all waiting on Mr. Green. Business as usual.
Wesley stepped out of the doorway and brought up the shotgun, pulling the wired-together triggers simultaneously. Both cops were blown backwards against a parked car. Wesley had two shots from the Ruger into each of them before the sea of people could even start to disappear. Wesley didn’t know which cop was his target. He walked over to what was left of them and placed the barrel of the piece against the right eye of one and pulled the trigger—the back of the cop’s head went flying out in a swirling disc of bloody bone. Wesley did the same to the other cop and stepped back quickly into the hotel lobby. It was empty—even the desk clerk was gone.
As he walked calmly up the stairs, Wesley wiped down the guns. He left them on the bed in his room, picked up the envelope lying there, and stuffed it deep into his belt over the tailbone. Then he grabbed the waiting airline bag and climbed out the window. The fire escape took him within six feet of the next building. He climbed across and took the next fire escape to the roof. He went down the other side into the shadows on 55th and got into a parked cab whose lights immediately went on.
As the cab motored serenely toward Burke Airport, Wesley noted with satisfaction that the meter already read $3.10, just in case.
26/
Wesley caught the 2:30 a.m. flight to LaGuardia, walked all the way across the huge parking lot and down to Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. It took him more than an hour, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He grabbed an IRT Elevated on Roosevelt and changed at 74th Street for an E train, which took him right into the Port Authority. He lit a cigarette with the airline ticket stub and checked his pocket for the stub he had picked up from the cabdriver in Cleveland—half of a roundtrip bus ticket between Port Authority and Atlanta, Georgia.
Inside Port Authority, he bought a copy of the Daily News, drank some prison-tasting orange juice, and watched the degenerates parade until it was almost ten in the morning. Then he took a cab uptown to 60th Street and, with the expensive leather suitcase he had purchased and carefully scuffed up, checked into the Hotel Pierre. He was not asked to pay in advance; the suit Israel had picked out for him in Cleveland easily passed muster.
In the hotel bathroom, he examined the envelope for the first time. It held two-hundred-twenty-thousand dollars in hundreds. The tightly packed bills looked used and the serial numbers were not sequential.
27/
Wesley settled his bill at the Pierre. They never even glanced at the hundred-dollar notes. The hotel was far more expensive than others he could have used, but the guidebook he’d read in prison said the Pierre wasn’t the kind of joint where the night clerk would be on the police payroll. Wesley took a cab to the corner of Houston and Sixth, paid the driver and threw a half-buck tip. He walked north until he saw the cab circle back and re-enter traffic. Then Wesley turned around and headed for Mama Lucci’s.
It was 4:15 in the afternoon, but the restaurant was evening-dark. Wesley didn’t know what Petraglia looked like, except that he’d be old. He walked to a table near the back, deliberately selecting a seat with his back to the door, and waited for the waiter to take his order. Wesley ordered spaghetti and veal cutlet Milanese and asked if Mr. Petraglia was there yet.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do.”
“Who’re you, a cop?”
“I’m from the Board of Health.”
The waiter laughed and left the table. In about ten minutes an ancient old man sat down silently across from Wesley. His voice was so soft Wesley had to lean forward to catch all of the words.
A Bomb Built in Hell Page 5