A Bomb Built in Hell

by Vachss, Andrew

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You got two choices. I could cut you real quiet and just wait for him back here in this room ... or you could go out front and bring him back here with you.”

  “I’ll bring him back. He’d like to go with me. He asked me before. I could—”

  “Just relax. Look at this: you know what this is?”

  He held the Beretta in one hand, the knife still at her throat with the other.

  “I know what it is.”

  “Do the other girls get angry if you take a customer?”

  “Nobody would get mad if I took him. They only take him in here at all because he’s got a real strong friend in the Square.”

  “I know all about his friend—that’s who I work for. I’m here to take the diamond outta that nigger’s ear, you understand?”

  “Why didn’t you just say so, man? I know the score. You don’t need the knife, I’ll—”

  “You wait in the doorway,” Wesley cut her off, pointing. “Right there. When he comes in, you bring him back here with you. You say anything to the fat man, you scream, you do anything, I’ll put a bullet in your spine before you finish.”

  “Okay, okay, stop talking like that. Give me another twenty-five.”

  “For what?”

  “So’s I can go out and tell Harry that you’re paying for another session—that way he won’t bother you. Then I’ll tell him you’re getting cleaned up so he won’t wonder about you being back here, okay?”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  Wesley’s alternative plan was to shoot both the girl and the manager and be waiting at the desk when the black man came in. If she did anything bogus, he’d have the decision made for him. He screwed in the silencer, making sure the girl saw it, gave her another twenty-five dollars, and watched from the doorway as she walked to the desk.

  “Here’s another payment, Harry. Client wants another session.”

  “Good. Make this one shorter, understand?”

  “Sure, Harry, but I want to work him for a tip, too.”

  “Bitch, you work for me, not the fucking customers, understand?”

  “Okay, Harry—I’ll get him out soon.”

  The manager went back to his newspaper. Wesley thought he must have fantastic eyes to read in that dim light. Joanne returned to the room, walking past Wesley, who was still in the doorway.

  “I did it.”

  “I heard. Is he going to freak if the black guy comes back here with you without me leaving yet?”

  “Man, I thought you knew what that guy’s scene was. Harry wouldn’t expect you to come out.”

  “Okay. Just be quiet and wait now.”

  45/

  They sat in silence as the door opened. It wasn’t the black guy. The new customer seemed to know who he wanted and sat down to wait. In a couple of minutes, a tall, thin girl came out of one of the other rooms and he followed her back. It was 10:48.

  The door opened again. It was the black man, wearing a red velour jumpsuit and red shoes with four-inch platform heels. Joanne slipped past Wesley and switched her hips into the front room. The black man looked up as she entered. Joanne smiled and motioned with her hand.

  “Changed your mind?” the black man asked.

  “A girl can, can’t she?”

  The black man followed her back toward the room. Wesley was just walking out of the same doorway. As they moved past him, Wesley wheeled and rammed the silencer viciously into the black man’s kidney. The black man pitched forward into the tiny room, the girl just ahead of him. They went down in a sprawl of bodies. Neither made any effort to get up. The black man was transfixed by the extended barrel of Wesley’s gun.

  “No noise,” Wesley told him.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a quiz show—you give me the right answers and you win a big prize.”

  “Don’t be stupid, man. You know who I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wesley pulled the handcuffs from the webbing belt and walked toward the black man, who extended his wrists as though he’d been through this routine a thousand times. Wesley slammed one cuff over the black man’s right wrist and snapped the other over the girl’s left before she could react.

  “Hey!” she yelped.

  “Shut up. It won’t be for long—I don’t want either of you to move. Now we’ve got about ten minutes for you to tell me what I need to know,” he said to the black man.

  “And what’s that?” the black man said, calm and in control.

  “You going to meet the Prince when you leave here. Where?”

  “Man, you’re not serious!”

  Wesley leveled the piece at the girl’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft-ugly splat! and her body was wrenched backward, almost pulling the black man with her. The top of her head was gone—fluid ran over the opening in her skull. The black man frantically shifted his weight to keep dry.

  “I’m very serious,” Wesley said softly. “The next one’s yours.”

  “Man, don’t do anything like that, listen....”

  Wesley cocked the piece again, held it in both hands pointed at the black man’s upturned face. His facial muscles tightened....

  “Under the Times Clock! On 43rd. Between Seventh and Eighth! Don’t!”

  “What time?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  “Who gets there first?”

  “He does, man. He always—”

  The bullet hit the black man at the bridge of his nose. His death was as soundless as the shot. Wesley shifted the piece to his left hand and squatted by the bodies. He carefully slit each throat and wiped the blade on the velour jumpsuit. He shook talcum powder onto his hands and pulled on a pair of the surgeon’s gloves. Then, still holding the gun, he wiped every surface in the room with the black handkerchief—it took only about forty-five seconds. He knelt by the door to listen; there was still no sound from the front room.

  Wesley slipped down the corridor. As he entered the front room he saw the clock over the desk said 11:20; his own watch said that was a couple of minutes fast. The fat man at the desk looked up as Wesley approached.

  “Just about to call you, buddy.”

  Wesley fired. The first slug caught the fat man in the chest; his head dropped to the desk. The second bullet entered the top of his head. Wesley was about to walk out the door when he remembered the Marine and put another bullet into the fat man’s left ear socket. Even in the thin-walled parlor, the shots were virtually soundless. Wesley exchanged clips, then carefully pocketed the spent casings.

  46/

  Wesley turned right on 43rd. He noticed the clock in the package store said 11:23; his Rolex tallied with this, and he slowed a bit. The still-assembled piece was now tucked into his belt. By sharply drawing a breath, he could pull it free without trouble.

  He lay back in the shadows until he saw 11:29 on his watch, then mentally counted to fifteen and started to walk up the right-hand side of the block toward the Times Building. The big digital clock read 11:31, and he saw the Prince standing underneath, legs spread and arms extended. His left hand gripped his right wrist and Wesley could see the diamond-flash.

  One hundred feet. The Prince was focused on him now, but the Wesley he had seen was a tourist geek in a Hawaiian shirt. Wesley padded softly forward on the dark street—the silenced piece wasn’t accurate over more than forty feet.

  Fifty feet. Suddenly, the Prince spun and was running up the street almost before Wesley even saw the movement. Wesley sprinted after him. The silenced pistol cut into his groin, but he didn’t slow—if the Prince got to contact one of his freaks, the whole thing would be over.

  The Prince wasn’t used to running—by the corner of 43rd and Eighth, Wesley was only about ten yards behind. His target glanced west for a split-second, then, seeming to understand that he was running out of cesspool in that direction, he turned north on Eighth and dashed across 44th toward the Playbill Bar. Wesley hit the bar seconds behin
d the Prince, spotted him trying for the phone booth to the left of the door, brought the gun up just as the Prince saw him and dove for the Eighth Avenue door.

  Wesley backed out of the 44th Street door and hit Eighth just in time to see the Prince flying up Eighth, this time on the west side of the street. The street was clogged with people and the Prince was better at moving through human traffic, but he couldn’t disappear and Wesley was too close for him to stop and get help.

  The Prince dashed into the custard stand on 49th and Eighth and immediately exited out the side door. He tore up the side street toward the river. Wesley was close enough now but running too fast to get a clear shot. The Prince looked back quickly without breaking stride and jumped the fence that enclosed the parking lot between 49th and 50th. He was halfway across the lot, heading toward Polyclinic Hospital, when Wesley stopped, braced himself, and fired—but the Prince was bobbing and weaving and the shot missed. Wesley clawed his way over the fence and set himself for another shot, but the Prince seemed to sense this and veered sharply left just before the hospital entrance, steaming up 50th toward Ninth with Wesley again close behind.

  The Prince turned right again at Ninth, just slightly ahead of Wesley, who could now run faster with his gun out. Between 50th and 51st was a construction site, partially excavated. The expensively painted sign read something about YOUR TAX DOLLARS. The Prince was over the fence and into the site in a heartbeat. He looked back and couldn’t see Wesley. For the first time since he’d been spooked, the Prince felt a quick jolt of fear to go with the adrenalin.

  Wesley had seen the Prince’s move and had rushed up 50th, instead of going up Ninth. He was into the site before the Prince.

  The streetlights didn’t penetrate the excavation—it was the same kind of soft-dull darkness Wesley remembered from Korea. He lay prone in the weeds, listening. It was a simple equation: the Prince had to be close to kill, and Wesley didn’t have the luxury of shooting from a distance.

  Wesley could hear the street noises above him, but they were normal—no one knew they were down there.

  He heard the kind of tearing sound grass makes when it’s pushed against the way it normally grows. He forced himself not to relax. He could lie there for hours without moving, and the Prince couldn’t come up on him without getting blown away. But he didn’t have a long time. If the Prince got out of the site, he’d have a hundred freaks surrounding the place.

  Wesley focused, blocking out everything but the sounds of movement. As soon as he picked them up, he fired twice in that direction. The silenced bullets were only slightly amplified by the depression in the ground—Wesley heard them whine close to the earth. The movement had been about fifty yards away from him when he fired. It all depended on how close the Prince was now.

  The next movement was closer. Wesley fired three times, as fast as he could pull the trigger. The site was a bowl of quiet inside the street noises. Wesley started to move around as if in a panic, making it clear where he was. He heard another movement about twenty yards away. The Prince was probably moving the grass with a stick. He looked hard for the diamond-flash but it was black out there—he guessed the target had made the sacrifice.

  Wesley pulled the trigger rapidly. The whine faded to a dry, audible click! as the firing pin hit air. “Fuck!” Wesley said in a voice just past a whisper and full of panic. He viciously threw the gun at a spot about ten feet away and sprang to his feet, the now-unarmed assassin lost without his weapon.

  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.