A Bomb Built in Hell

by Andrew Vachss

  Pet put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “I never thought she would, kid. She was just being sure they’d never come for you through her.”

  The kid nodded.

  Wesley never changed expression. He abandoned his plans to visit the old lady, snapped his fingers for the dog, and went to his apartment, leaving Pet and the kid alone to plan the building project.

  55/

  Wesley spent the next five days on the top floor, the next four nights on the roof. He read the papers carefully, as he always did. The news carried a small column about the new methadone clinic being opened up on Pike Street. It was directly across from the Projects and only about six blocks away from the factory on Water Street. Wesley felt an overpowering sense of encroachment, as if a stranger had just entered his apartment.

  He went back into his newspaper file, thinking it through. The headlines formed a story-sequence on their own: Addicts Overrun Residential Community ... Citizens Up In Arms Over New Methadone Clinic ... Arrests Triple Near New Clinic, Citizens’ Committee Reports ... Community Group Complains of Lowered Property Values ... Vigilantes Threaten to Burn New Methadone Center.

  Wesley reflected, deep within himself. Cocaine was going way up in price. Methadone didn’t block reaction to Lady Snow, the way it did with heroin. Freebase was the coming thing. Carmine had told him, hundreds of times, that no government policy was ever an accident, but...

  Methadone. A way to register every dope fiend in the country. A way to control habits, supplies, prices ... lives.

  Wesley thumbed through the laboriously titled “Methadone Maintenance Treatment Program of the New York City Health Services Administration: Policy and Procedure Manual,” and finally found what he was looking for on page E-1.

  Although the Program does not consider detoxification as the ultimate goal which defines “success,” some patients do see this as their own, personal objective....

  Wesley had asked the librarian for any official publications on the program, but was bluntly told such information was not public. Three days later, a junkie had met Wesley in front of the Felt Forum and gotten into the Ford.

  “I got it, man,” he had said, handing over the manual. “You got the bread?”

  “Yeah,” Wesley told him, tucking the bills into the junkie’s shirt pocket. “You want to make another fast hundred?”

  “Sure, man. I need—”

  “I know. Just hang on now.”

  Wesley swung the car into the Eighth Avenue traffic stream and took Eighth all the way to 57th. From there, he went crosstown and got on the upper roadway of the 59th Street Bridge. They crossed the bridge in silence, the junkie unaware they were bracketed by Pet in the cab and the kid in the Fleetwood.

  Carmine had told him, “You ever go to a meet with a junkie, you remember two things: One, go with cover; and two, don’t go heeled. Every fucking junkie is a potential rat, and an ex-con, packing, in this state, you’re down for the whole count.”

  The junkie was already nodding off the free cap Wesley had laid on him—his tolerance was for heroin, not Thorazine. He was drifting into unconsciousness as Wesley parked on the bridge between Northern Boulevard and Skillman Avenue in Long Island City, overlooking Sunnyside Yard. The Yard was once the world’s biggest railroad center, but it was largely abandoned now. The only business the neighborhood did was the giant Queens Social Services Center—the city’s euphemism for “Welfare”—on the corner.

  Wesley hauled the junkie out of the car. He leaned them both against the railing. The street was empty. A cab cruised by slowly—Pet at the wheel. The junkie was barely breathing. Wesley had read about people so relaxed that they didn’t die even when falling from great heights. He slammed the icepick into the back of the junkie’s neck and shoved him over the railing in one smooth motion.

  56/

  A big red-white-and-blue sign materialized on Water Street, right across from the factory. It proclaimed the area to be part of the TWO BRIDGES RECLAMATION PROJECT. Wesley figured that the only thing “reclaimed” would be the fat man’s part of the federal expenditures, and that nothing would be torn down or built there for years. Plenty of time. But a methadone clinic was another story—too close and too much trouble.

  Methadone meant government-inspected dope. It meant sales-and-service. And too many greedy people.

  Pet came back later in the day. He told Wesley that the building on Chrystie had been purchased—he and the kid were going to get to work on it right away.

  Wesley just nodded, deep in his problems.

  57/

  The triplex pump was installed without difficulty. It would work to almost unlimited pressures and function for more than sixteen hours straight at top speed. The pump was connected to a simple tubing system with seventy-two tiny outlets in the ceiling. The hydrocyanic acid was easy to obtain. When forced through alcohol it produced a gas much more deadly than the apple-blossom perfume they used to snuff enemies-of-the-state in California.

  The interior rapidly took shape: expensive leather lounge chairs, a wet bar against one wall, a huge blackboard directly opposite, indirect lighting, a highly polished hardwood floor, a large air-conditioning unit prominently displayed in the single window.

  The marks wouldn’t be remotely suspicious of bars across the windows of any building being renovated in that part of town. The entrance to the room was by a pocket-door. But instead of the usual four-inch penetration, this door went two feet into the frame, activating a series of snaplocks with each six inches it moved.

  Wesley and Pet went over the plans dozens of times; revised them again and again; discussed, modified, refined, changed, sharpened, rejected ... always polishing. The kid was going to have to be used for this one, too; there wasn’t any other way and they’d be shorthanded as it was.

  “Remember, unless everything goes exactly like we expect, the whole thing is off.”

  “Wes, maybe we’ll never got another chance,” Pet said. “So what if we...?”

  “Forget it. There’s a lot more to do now. Stuff I didn’t know about before. This is for Carmine, but there’s a lot left for me and you, after.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought we were just going to take them and—”

  “We are, but I’m not going with them. And ... and you’re not either.”

  “Okay,” the old man said slowly. “Only if everything goes perfect.”

  58/

  Tuesday, 10:33 p.m. Pet’s cab pulled up at the back alley door to the building on Chrystie Street. The ill-tempered Don in the back seat said, “I still don’t see why we couldn’t bring our own cars.”

  “It’s security, Mr. G. This way, you have your own bodyguard with you, but if those freaks are watching your home, they’ll think you’re still there. And they’d never try anything like that on your kids if you was home, right?”

  The Don didn’t answer, but grunted in agreement.

  He waited in the car while Pet rapped three times sharply on the steel slab. The kid opened the door. He wore a shoulder holster with a .45 automatic and carried an M3 grease gun with the stock fully retracted. He saluted Pet, who waved the two waiting men inside. The kid said, “Please be seated and make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. The others will be arriving shortly.” The first-floor room was soundproofed. A large-screen color TV took up most of the space in one corner. “If you want a drink or something to eat, or anything at all,” the kid said, “just ask me, okay?”

  By 11:45, they were all assembled. Salmone had been the last to arrive, as befitted his station in the hierarchy. The kid went outside, changed places with Pet, and drove off in the cab.

  Pet addressed the assembled group. “Gentlemen! We are going upstairs to a room where we can talk and where I can show you the things I’ve discovered about these freaks. They can be hit; but it’s going to cost—”

  Mumbled chorus of:

  “Naturally.”

  “Who gives a fuck?”

  “Whatever it costs!”

>   “—and I have to insist that, for your own protection, I be the only one to talk when we’re upstairs,” Pet continued. “That way there won’t be any need to waste time searching for bugs. You can put your own bodyguards anyplace around the building or inside that you want, but be sure they’re not seen.”

  Salmone immediately took over. “Tony, over here. You and Sal stay by this back door; Johnny, come upstairs with me. Okay? Lenny, have your man take the front door with Sam’s guy. Al, you leave a couple of men on the stairs. I need at least two more men outside the upstairs door. Everybody else comes with us.”

  The men moved silently into position. Pet led the way upstairs. They all filed into the big room. The door slid closed behind them so quietly that it was impossible to judge the depth to which it penetrated into the panel. The air conditioner was the only sound in the room.

  Pet walked to the front of the room and seated himself behind a small desk in front of the blackboard. The others arranged themselves in a loose semi-circle facing him, the bosses seated and the bodyguards standing. There was no hum of conversation—snapping fingers and impatient gestures indicated desires for drinks, cigars to be lighted, and deployment of personnel.

  Pet began to talk. “We got the whole story now. It’s a whole fucking crew of freaks. Long hairs. All on drugs. They call themselves the People’s Harvest of Vengeance, and they got connections to the...”

  As Pet was talking, the kid approached the two men standing outside the back door in the alley. He showed himself clearly, hands spread in the reflected light so the men would relax. There was no sound, but the top of one guard’s head seemed to mushroom from under his hat and he fell heavily to the ground. The kid immediately glanced up toward the roof; the other guard involuntarily followed with his own eyes. The kid was already bringing up his own silenced pistol—the slug caught the second guard full in the chest, killing on contact.

  The kid whistled sharply, craning his neck to throw the sound up to where Wesley knelt on the roof, holding the silenced M16. As the kid pocketed his own weapon, Wesley gently tossed the rifle over the edge of the roof—it sailed flat through the air and into the kid’s arms. Practicing that maneuver had been a bitch. The kid quickly laid down the rifle and opened the back door. Then he dragged the dead men inside. Taking the rifle, he walked quickly through the building until he came to a blank wall. He pulled a lever and a portion of the wall slid out. The kid stepped through the opening and kept walking, until he was near the front of the building, facing the street.

  There was no glass in the big front window, and the backs of the two guards were clearly visible. Secure that their backs were covered, they focused all their attention on the street. They were taking their job seriously—the fear that gripped their bosses had trickled down.

  The kid found the three-foot tripod and felt around in the dark until he located the three mounting holes Pet had drilled deep into the concrete. He assembled the tripod and jammed it into the holes, attached the rifle and sighted along the barrel. There was more than enough light to see by.

  The kid held the rifle steady on the back of the guard to his left, then swung it to his right toward the back of the second man. He did this several times, then adjusted the socket under the tripod’s head so that the rifle stopped dead at the place where he would sight the second man. He tested the socket by slamming the rifle hard to the right—it held solid.

  The rifle was sighted into the spine of the first guard, just above his waist. Both men were roughly the same height, so it was even easier than they had planned—the kid only had to adjust for lateral movement. He focused hard until the first guard’s back was the only thing in his vision, then slowly squeezed the trigger. As the first guard slumped, the kid slammed the rifle hard to the right, simultaneously pulling the trigger so that the shot came when the barrel was pointing directly at the second guard.

  The kid checked to be sure the street was quiet, then he began to drag the bodies inside. A faint rustling from the shadows sent him springing cat-footed into the alley. On autopilot, he slid his knife between the ribs of a wino who’d made the error of stirring in his alcoholic sleep.

  Wesley crawled from the roof into what was once a ventilation shaft, holding the dog on a short lead. When they reached the corridor leading to the top floor, Wesley could just make out the two men. They were standing alertly, listening for any sound, not talking. And clearly visible to the dog. Wesley unsnapped the lead.

  The Doberman shot down the corridor, as quiet as cancer, its claws never slipping on the roughened floor, hitting the nearest guard like a 90-pound razorblade and bearing him silently to the ground. The other guard whirled. He screamed once before the silenced Beretta took him down. The dog ripped out the first guard’s throat and flew down the stairs ... his charge carried both men coming up the stairs back down—they all tumbled to the second floor, landing in a mess of blood and screams. The kid was working his way up the stairs with a machete, hacking a path toward Wesley, who had switched to a similar weapon.

  It was over in seconds. The place was as silent as the tomb it had become. Not a sound penetrated the upstairs chamber where Pet was holding forth.

  Wesley snapped “Stay!” at the now-calm dog, and sprang over the bodies to the first floor. He took out a plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes and flipped the single tiny toggle switch. A red light flashed on Pet’s desk, readily visible to most of the assembled men.

  “Relax!” Pet called out. “That just means we’re giving off too much static electricity and we could get monitored. I’m going to spray this stuff on the floor around your chairs—it’ll just take a second. Remember: please don’t talk.”

  Pet walked into the midst of the mobsters. When he reached the back wall near the bar, he began to spray a heavy silicon mixture all over the floor, always being careful, although not obviously so, to spray the area he had just vacated. He seemed to run out of spray when he got to his own area, and took another can off his desk to continue. The whole operation took less than a minute. When he was finished, he pushed a wide, flat button under his desk with his knee and quickly resumed his sentence:

  “So like I said, the scumbags can be wasted, but it’s got to be in Times Square, where they hole up. I’ll need at least twenty soldiers. Good ones. It’s going to splash all over the papers. I know it’s not what you want, but there’s no choice. Those hippies are psycho, and they’ll rip up every one of your...”

  The hissing of the hidden jets was masked by the hum of the air conditioner. Cyanide is colorless, but the dim lighting would have prevented identification in any case.

  After about ten seconds, Salmone took a deep breath and hissed, “Gas!” He leaped from his chair toward the door and fell flat on his face—the surface was as slippery as Teflon. One of the bodyguards clawed his way to a window and battered it frantically with his gun butt—the bars held firm. One of the fat dons swam his way through the grease to the door—it held against all six bullets from his pistol. In another five seconds all the men in the room were on their knees or flattened. Only Salmone remembered what he had lived for. He held his breath and carefully leveled his fallen bodyguard’s pistol at Pet ... but the old man was as safe behind the steel-lined desk as he would have been outside the room.

  The door popped open. Wesley and the kid stepped through the slot wearing gas masks with oxygen backpacks. They skidded over to Pet, got a good grip—his part of the floor wasn’t slippery. The kid pulled Pet toward the door and closed it behind him, leaving Wesley inside. He slapped the portable oxygen mask onto the old man’s face and started the compressor. Pet still had a feeble pulse, but his skin was bluish and bloated. Wesley had told the kid you could beat cyanosis with oxygen and adrenalin—the kid found the vein in the old man’s arm, slapped on the Velcro tourniquet, and pumped in five cc’s.

  Inside the room, Wesley was hacking his way through tons of flesh with the machete as the triplex continued to pump its deadly fumes. It t
ook almost five minutes before he was sure. He pounded three times on the door. It opened enough to show the kid, holding the grease gun. Wesley held up his left fist and the kid slid the door the rest of the way open. Wesley stepped out. The old man was already sitting up.

  “I fucking forgot to hold my breath after I hit the fucking switch.... How the fuck could I...?”

  “Shut up!” the kid told him angrily.

  Wesley and the kid carried the old man downstairs. When they got to the first floor, Wesley and the old man sat down to wait until the kid returned with the car. Wesley said, “Guard!” to the dog and went all the way back upstairs to the big room.

  He shut off the pump and reconnected it to another tank. He threw the switch again and the triplex started throwing raw gasoline all over the building at two hundred gallons per minute. Wesley took a mass of putty-colored substance out of a plastic pouch and carefully molded it to the side of the pump, running a thin trail of the same stuff to a wooden box about ten feet away.