A Bomb Built in Hell

by Vachss, Andrew

  “Who’re you related to that I know?”

  “To Carmine. I’m his son.”

  “So! How do I know this?”

  “Put your hand under the table.”

  Wesley slipped the envelope he had picked up in Cleveland into the old man’s hard-dry hand.

  “Take that someplace and open it up,” he said. “Carmine said you’d show me a building to buy.”

  The old man left the table. He returned within a minute.

  “If you hadn’t brought it back here, I never would have known. Carmine never said anything to me, never described you, nothing—you could’ve left the country with that cash. Carmine told me his son would come here one day with the money. But he told me all this before they took him away the last time. I didn’t know what you’d look like or when you’d be coming.”

  “But you knew I’d come?”

  “Yes. This means Carmine’s dead?”

  “They buried his body.”

  “I understand. You come with me now. I got to set you up until we can get the building.”

  The old man’s car was a dusty black 1959 Ford with a taut ride. He drove professionally, whipping through traffic without giving the appearance of going fast.

  “We’ll talk in the car. Nobody hears then, okay?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I got the building all picked out. It’s on the Slip ... you know where that is?”

  “Over far east, by the river?”

  “Yeah. It used to be a shirt factory, but now it’s nothing. We can get it for about half of this money and use most of the rest to fix it up right.”

  “I’m going to live there?”

  “You and me too, son.”

  “My name’s Wesley.”

  “Pet—my friends call me Pet.”

  “Carmine said Mr. Petraglia.”

  “That was so I could make the decision first, right? You call me Pet. What if you got to call me in a hurry—you gonna say all them syllables?” The old man laughed high up in his dry throat. Wesley nodded in agreement.

  28/

  Petraglia took him to a house in Brooklyn. Its garage led directly into the basement, which was double-locked from the outside.

  “You stay here. Maybe three weeks, maybe a month. Then we’ll be ready to move into the building. There’s a john in the back, plenty of food in the refrigerator, got a TV and a radio. But only play them with the earplugs—nobody knows you’re down here, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not worried that it might take so long?”

  “I been waiting a lot longer than that.”

  “I figured you had to be Inside with Carmine. We got to do something about that paleface shit—a cop could spot you in a second. There’s a sunlamp down here too, and some lotion.”

  “Will the people upstairs hear the toilet flush?”

  “Just me is upstairs and I don’t hear a thing. I’m not really worried about anybody seeing you—I’d just prefer it, you know? You got a PO to report to?”

  “Just you, Pet.”

  The old man smiled and went out, leaving Wesley alone. Wesley dialed his mind back to solitary confinement and did the next nineteen days in complete silence. He kept the radio on and the earplugs in most of the time, listening to the news with careful attention. He watched the TV with the sound off and looked carefully at the styles of clothing, haircuts, and cars; the way people carried themselves. He familiarized himself with how the Yankees were doing and who was mayor and everything else he could think of, since there was no library in Pet’s basement. There was no telephone, and Wesley didn’t miss one.

  29/

  When Petraglia returned to the basement, he found Wesley totally absorbed in the TV’s silent screen, lying perfectly motionless on the floor in what looked like an impossibly uncomfortable position. The old man motioned Wesley to turn the set off, ignoring the pistol which had materialized in the younger man’s hand when he entered the door.

  “How in hell can you lay on the floor like that?”

  “I can do it for three hours,” Wesley assured him.

  “How d’you know that?”

  “I already did it yesterday. I found the piece in the toilet tank.” The old man seemed to understand both Wesley’s gymnastics and his search of the premises and said nothing more about it. They got back into the Ford and drove all the way out to the old shirt factory. It was dark on the FDR, and it was pure pitchblack by the time they turned into the Slip. Every streetlight in the neighborhood seemed to be smashed. The old man pressed the horn ring, but no sound came out—the side of a filthy wall seemed to open up and he drove inside almost without slowing down. Another press on the horn ring and the same door closed silently behind them.

  “This here is the first floor. We’ll use it like a garage, since it used to be a loading bay. You going to live just below this. The rest of the place is empty and it’s like a damn echo chamber. I got the whole place mined—I’ll show you the schematic before we go upstairs—enough stuff to put this building into orbit. We got a phone in the electrical shack on the roof.”

  “What’s an electrical shack? What if someone hears it ring?”

  “The shack is where they used to keep the compressors and the generators for the factory before they closed this place. And the phone don’t ring. It flashes when someone’s calling in—I got a light hooked up. I know what I’m doing, Wesley.” The old man sounded mildly hurt.

  “I know that. Carmine said you were the best.”

  “One of the best is what Carmine would have said, but he didn’t know what was happening out here. The rest are gone and now I am the best.”

  Wesley smiled and, after a second, the old man smiled too. They walked down the stairs to the apartment Pet had fixed up for him, Pet showing the security systems to Wesley as they walked. The walls on the lower level were all soundproofed, but Pet still kept his voice supersoft as he talked.

  “I’ll have a job for you in a couple of weeks. Now remember, there are a couple of rules in this kind of work: One, you never hit a man in his own home or in front of his children. Two, you never hit a man in a house of worship. Three, you only hit the man himself, nobody else.”

  “Whose rules are these?”

  “These are the rules of the people who make the rules.”

  “Then they can fuck themselves—I’m coming for them, too.”

  “I know that. I know what Carmine wanted. I’m just telling you so’s you know how to act in front of them if that ever happens.”

  “What you mean, in front of them?”

  “You never know, right?”

  “I’ll do good work, you understand?”

  “Them, too?”

  “They’re the real ones, right? Rich people?”

  “Yeah, rich people ... very fucking rich people, Wesley.”

  “Good. Now show me the rest.”

  30/

  It took another ninety days for the place to fill up completely to Pet’s satisfaction. The generator he installed would enable the place to run its electrical systems without city power. The freezer held enough for six months, and the old man installed a five-hundred-gallon water tank in the basement and slowly got it filled from outside sources. A gas tank the same size was also added, as was a complete lathe, drill press, and workbench. The chemicals were stored in an airtight, compartmentalized box.

  Pet fixed himself a place to live in the garage. There was still enough room for a half-dozen vehicles.

  Wesley spent the next few weeks practicing; first, inside the place so he knew every inch, especially how to get in and out, even during the daylight. The old man showed him the tunnel he had begun to construct.

  “You can only use this once, Wes. It’ll exit in the vacant lot on the corner of Water Street and the Slip. I’m going to fix it so’s it’s got about two feet of solid ground at its mouth, and plank it up heavy. When you want to split that one time, you hit the depth-charge lever down here
in your apartment ... and the tunnel mouth blows in, okay?”

  Wesley later expanded his investigations, making ever-widening circles away from the factory, but always returning within twelve hours. Pet got him a perfect set of identification. “You can always get a complete bundle in Times Square. Good stuff, too. But the freaks selling it usually roughed it off some poor bastard, maybe totaled him, and it ain’t worth the trouble. I know this guy who makes the stuff from scratch, on government blanks, too.”

  Equipped with paper, Wesley could drive as well as walk. He began to truly appreciate Carmine’s “No Parole” advice.

  When Pet came back one day, Wesley asked him about another kind of practice. “I need to work with the pieces. Where can I do it?”

  “Right here. I got the fourth floor soundproofed. Anyway, with those silencers I got for you, you could blow the wall away and not have anybody catch wise.”

  “What about practicing without the silencers?”

  “What you want to do that for? The pieces’ll just make more noise, that’s all. Even the long-range stuff has silencers now—I’ll show you later.”

  The old man was right. Wesley fired thousands of rounds, making the most minute adjustments before he was satisfied. No one came, no sirens, nothing.

  It was easy to make the adjustments since Pet had the fourth floor all marked off in increments of six inches—ceiling, floors, and walls. Wesley worked out a rough formula: the smaller the caliber, the more accurate the shot had to be. The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug had to be. The closer to the target, the less time you had to get ready. Pet came back late one night, pressed the silent warning system to let Wesley know he was there, and was already making himself a cup of the strong, pasty coffee he especially liked by the time Wesley got to the garage.

  “I got something for you,” the old man said. “It’s a simple one. I think they want to see if I can deliver.”

  “They think it’s you going to be doing it?”

  “Yeah, me and my ‘organization,’ right?”

  “Right. Good. Tell me.”

  “It’s a pawnshop on Lenox Avenue, near 131st Street. The guy who runs it is a front for them. He’s making good coin where he is, but he’s a greedy fuck—started selling dope out of the place, and The Man got him. It’s about a hundred years in the can for what they nailed him with; he rolled over like a dog. He don’t really know all that much yet, so they’re leaving him out there to get more. He’s also got an undercover working for him—right in the shop.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A cop, from the CIB; a Puerto Rican kid, he looks like, but he’s a cop for sure. Supposed to be a stockboy or something like that, but he uses that phone too much ... and he’s not placing bets.”

  “The cop, too?”

  “Maybe more—the beat bulls are getting paid off by this creep, and they keep a close watch on his store so’s he won’t get taken off.”

  “Can we get him over here some night?”

  “Forget that! The first rule is that nothing gets done down here. We got to protect this territory completely. No dope fiends, no freaks, no fucking nothing. This is the safe house, right? No, he’s got to be hit right in his shop.”

  “Why not at his house, where he lives?”

  “Too much pressure on the boys, then. The Muslims have been giving this rat bastard hell because they know he’s dealing. We make it look like they did it.”

  “A white man in Harlem?”

  “You thinking about him or you?”

  “Me.”

  “Good. You ever use dynamite?”

  “Just grenades. In the Army.”

  “Same stuff. You light it, you throw it, and you get the fuck outta the way, right?”

  “They might get out, too.... No, wait a minute ... are they both up front in the place?”

  “Usually the cop is in the back—but if he thinks you from the People he’ll drift up just to be able to testify against you later.”

  “Doesn’t this guy know who his contact is?”

  “No. He’s a small-time weasel—any fucking hood comes in there with a ‘Message from the Boys’ and this faggot’ll listen, you know?”

  “Okay, when does the cop leave the place at night?”

  “The guy we want opens up around ten. And his cop helper gets there around noon. They work a long day, close up around eleven at night. We’ll take the cab—it cost me twenty-eight large, but they’ll never find it in this city.”

  31/

  Wednesday night, 9:10 p.m. A yellow medallion cab rolled up in front of the pawnshop on Lenox, the old man at the wheel. Pet slid the cab down about four doors from the target and pulled out a newspaper. He poked a small hole in the middle of the paper with a sharp pencil, adjusted his rearview mirror until he was satisfied. He slipped the cab into gear and rested his left foot lightly on the brake—the rear brake lights did not go on.

  Wesley climbed out of the back of the cab. He was dressed in a steel-grey sharkskin one-button suit with a dark grey shirt and light grey tie. His shoes flashed like black mirrors in rhyme-time with the gross white Lindy Star on his right pinky; his watchband matched his cufflinks, which matched his tie clip; his snapbrim fedora was pearl grey. He carried a small, round cardboard hatbox.

  The bells above the door tinkled as Wesley entered. The shop was empty of customers and the pawnbroker was up front in the cage.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No, I can help you, pal. I got a message from the Boys—they want you to take this package and...”

  The Puerto Rican drifted toward the front as Wesley’s voice trailed off.

  “Who’s this?” Wesley challenged.

  “Oh, this is Juan, my stockboy. He’s okay; he knows the score.”

  “Get him over here—I want to see his face.”

  Juan walked smiling toward the front of the cage. Wesley brought the 9mm Beretta out of the hatbox. The silencer made it seem six feet long, but Juan caught two slugs in the chest before he had a chance to wonder about it or make a move (“Always take the hard man first—it’s tougher on your guts that way, but if you take the soft man first, you won’t be fucking alive to feel good behind it,” Carmine had told him years ago) and Wesley immediately turned the gun on the other man who flung his hands into the air. Wesley said, “Open the cashbox!” so the target would relax, and blew away the side of his face as the man bent toward the drawer.

  Wesley put the hatbox down on the floor, clicked the snap-fuse open, and wheeled toward the door. He flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED and set the spring lock behind him as he went out. He was into the back seat of the cab in another second and Pet had pulled smoothly away before Wesley could get the “Eight seconds!” out of his mouth. They caught the first light and were buried in the traffic at 125th and Lenox when they heard the explosion. Traffic stalled. Everyone tried to figure out where the noise had come from, but the cop, who empathized with any white man’s desire to get the hell of out Harlem before dark, waved them through.