A Bomb Built in Hell

1/

Wesley sat quietly on the roof of the four-story building overlooking the East River near Pike Slip. It was 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in August, about eighty-five degrees and still clear-bright. With his back flat against the storage shack on the roof, he was invisible to anyone looking up from the ground. He knew from observation that neither the tourist helicopter nor the police version ever passed over this area.

In spite of the heat, Wesley wore a soft black felt hat and a dark suit; his hands were covered with dark grey deerskin gloves. The breeze blew the ash away from his cigarette. Aware of his habit of biting viciously into the filters, he carefully placed the ground-out butt into his leather-lined side pocket before he got to his feet and stepped back inside the shack.

A soft green light glowed briefly as he entered. Wesley picked up a silent telephone receiver and held it to his ear. He said nothing. The disembodied voice on the phone said, “Yes,” and a dial tone followed at once. So Mansfield was going to continue his habit: Wednesday night at Yonkers, Thursday afternoon at Aqueduct. It never varied. But he always brought a woman to the Big A, so it would have to be tonight. A woman was another human to worry about, another pair of eyes. It increased the odds and Wesley didn’t gamble.

He walked soundlessly down the steps to the first floor. The building was a hundred years old, but the stairs didn’t creak and the lock on the door was virtually unbreakable. The door itself was lead between two layers of stainless steel, covered with a thin wood veneer.

Wesley stepped into a garage full of commonplace cars. The only exception was a yellow New York City taxicab, complete with overhead lights, numbers, a meter, a medallion, and the “crashproof” bumpers that city cabbies use so well.

An ancient man was lazily polishing one of the cars, a beige El Dorado that looked new. He looked up as Wesley entered. Wesley pointed to a nondescript 1973 Ford with New York plates.

“Ninety minutes.”

“Plates okay?”

“Give me Suffolk County.”

Without another word, the old man slipped a massive hydraulic jack under the front of the Ford and started pumping. He had the front end off the ground and the left wheel off before Wesley closed the door behind him.

2/

Wesley took the back staircase to his basement apartment. It was actually two apartments; the wall between them had been broken through so they formed a single large unit. He twisted the doorknob twice to the left and once to the right, then slipped his key into the lock.

A huge Doberman watched him silently as he entered. Its ears had been completely, amateurishly removed, leaving only holes in the sides of its skull. The big dog moaned softly. It couldn’t bark; the same savage who had cut off its ears when it was a pup had cut out its tongue and damaged its larynx in the process. The Doberman still had perfect hearing, and Wesley didn’t need it to bark.

The dog opened its gaping mouth and Wesley put his hand inside. The dog whined softly, as though remembering the emergency surgery Wesley had performed to stop it from choking on its own blood.

Wesley would have killed the human who carved up the dog anyway; dogs weren’t all that he liked to cut, and a practicing degenerate like that automatically attracted the police, even in this neighborhood.

He had ghosted up behind the target, still squatting obliviously before a tiny fire he had built out on the Slip. Wesley sprawled in the weeds like a used-up wino and quickly screwed the silencer onto a Ruger .22 semi-auto.

The first shot sounded like a soft-wet slap, audible for only about fifty feet. It caught the freak in the back of the skull. Wesley stayed prone and pumped three more bullets into the target’s body, working from the chest area upwards.

He was about to leave when he heard the moaning. He thought it might have been a little kid—the freak’s usual prey—and he was about to fade away when the dog struggled to its feet. Wesley went over then; a dog couldn’t identify him.

Wesley still didn’t know why he had risked someone spotting him as he quickly cleaned the dog’s wounds—protecting his hands against the expected attempts to bite that never came—and carried it back to the old building. It wasn’t playing the percentages to do that. But he hadn’t regretted it since. A man would have to kill the dog to get into Wesley’s place, and the Doberman had proved itself very hard to kill that night on the Slip.

The police-band radio hummed and crackled as Wesley showered and shaved. He carefully covered his moderate-length haircut with Vaseline jelly; anyone searching for a grip there would end up with a handful of grease instead.

Wesley changed into heavy cotton-twill work pants that were slightly too baggy from the waist to the thighs, ankle-length work boots with soft rubber soles, and an off-white sweatshirt with elastic concealed around the waistband. The steel-cased Rolex came off his left wrist, to be replaced by a fancy-faced cheap “aviator” watch. A Marine Corps ring with a red pseudo-ruby stone went on his right hand; a thick gold wedding band encrusted with tiny zircons on his left.

Wesley carefully applied a tattoo decal to his left hand, a tri-color design of an eagle clutching a lightning bolt. The legend “Death Before Dishonor” ran right across the knuckles, facing out. The new tattoo looked too fresh, so Wesley opened a woman’s compact that contained soot collected from the building’s roof. He rubbed some gently onto his hand until he was satisfied.

Next, he took an icepick from a long steel cabinet and carefully replaced the thick wooden handle with a much slimmer one. The new handle had a sandpaper-roughened surface and a passage the exact size of the icepick steel right through its middle. The old steel was anchored to the new handle with a four-inch screw at the top. Wesley applied a drop of Permabond to the screw-threads before tightening the new tool.

Laying the icepick on the countertop, Wesley crossed the room to a brightly lit terrarium which held several tiny frogs. The terrarium was too deep to allow the frogs to jump directly out; still, it was covered with a screen as a precaution. Four of the frogs were the color of strawberries; the others were green-and-gold little jewels.

Wesley slowly reached in with a tropical-fish net and extracted one of the green-and-gold frogs. He placed the little creature on a Teflon surface that was surrounded by wire mesh. After immediately replacing the cover of the terrarium, Wesley gently prodded the tiny frog until clear drops stood out visibly on its bright skin. Holding the frog down with a forked piece of flexible steel, Wesley rolled the tip of the icepick directly across the skin of the squirming frog.

He put the icepick aside, returned the frog to its home, replaced the wire screen across the top, and then dropped the Teflon pan in the steel sink. Holding the icepick in one hand, he immediately poured boiling water over the Teflon surface so that the residue ran into the drain. He knew, from extensive tests, that the minute secretions of the Golden Poison-Arrow Frog were almost instantly fatal. The two men he had tested it on were slated to die anyway and the buyer hadn’t been particular about how they exited. A circlet of cork was placed around the tip of the icepick, which was then inserted into the screwdriver pocket of the work pants. Wesley flexed his leg and saw the outline did not show—he wasn’t surprised.

Wesley walked back into the entranceway where the Doberman now reclined. He didn’t bother to see if the dog had food—it knew how to get food or water by pushing one of the levers under the sink. He checked the closed-circuit TV screen above the door, saw that the hallway was empty, and left. The door locked silently behind him.

3/

6:00 p.m. Wesley went up to the garage. The old man was checking tire pressures on the Ford. Wesley noted that the plates had been changed to ones with the characteristic “VI” prefix of Suffolk County. He climbed behind the wheel and slipped a key into a slot hidden beneath the dash. An S&W Airweight dropped into his waiting palm. He pushed the release and examined the opened cylinder—three flat-faced aluminum wadcutters and two steel-jacketed slugs—then snapped it closed and returned it under the dash. He held the pistol in place and turned the key again—the electromagnets re-gripped and the gun disappeared.

The Ford had fifteen coats of carnauba wax on its dusty-appearing flanks; it wouldn’t leave paint smears unless it hit something head on. Even in the nearly airtight garage, the idling engine was as silent as a turbine. Wesley raced the engine, but the volume rose only slightly. He looked questioningly at the old man, who said: “It robs you of some power, but it don’t make no noise. If you want to go and you don’t care about the sound, just pull the lever next to the hood release.”

Wesley pulled the lever with the engine idling and the motor instantly began to rumble threateningly.

“Muffler bypass,” said the old man.

Wesley drove slowly out of the garage’s mouth. The street was empty, as it usually was. The old man would have told him if it were otherwise. He turned onto the FDR Drive, heading for the Triborough Bridge. Traffic was still slow.

The races didn’t begin until 8:05 p.m. Of course, Mansfield would be there early, since the Daily Double window opened about 7:25. Wesley hit the Exact Change lane on the bridge—one less face to remember him or the car, as unlikely as that was. Traffic lightened up as he approached Yankee Stadium and was moving along fairly quickly by the time he spotted the track ahead on the right. He paid the parking-lot attendant $1.25 and nosed the Ford carefully along the outer drive of the lot, looking for the spot he wanted. He found just the place and pointed the front of the Ford back toward the highway.

Just as he was about to get out, a red-faced attendant ran up screaming, “Hey, buddy, you can’t park there!”

Wesley computed the risk of arguing and making himself memorable against the gain of having a safe place to exit from. He immediately rejected the idea of a bribe—nobody bribes parking-lot attendants at Yonkers and any attempt would be remembered. He decided in an instant; either he got the spot he wanted, or he’d wait for another night.

The attendant was a fiftyish clown with an authoritarian face. His wife probably kicked him all over the house; but here in the lot he was boss, and didn’t want an ignorant working stiff like Wesley to forget it.

“Get that fucking car outta that spot!”

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know. I’ll do it right now.”

Wesley climbed back into the Ford and pressed the ignition-disconnect button with his knee. The starter screamed, but the engine stayed dead. “Shit! Now the fucking thing won’t even start!” Wesley sounded frightened of the attendant’s possible anger; but the clown, having established his power, relaxed.

“S’alright, probably just the battery. Maybe it’ll start after the races.”

“Goddamn! I’ll call a garage ... but I’ll miss the...”

“Oh, hell. Leave it there,” said the clown, magnanimously.

And Wesley did. He walked toward the back gate, paid his $2.25, got a large token in exchange, slipped it into the turnstile, and passed inside. Wesley bought a program at a booth that offered programs 75¢ in huge letters across its top. He gave the man three quarters, took the program and a tiny pencil from a cardboard box on the counter, and turned to leave.

The man’s voice was loud and obnoxious. “Hey, sport, it’s a dime for the pencil!”

Wesley never changed expression; he reached in his jacket pocket for another dime and paid the man. Outside, he moved toward the track, looking for the target. He had plenty of time; Mansfield was a known railbird, and he’d be glued to the finish line before the first race went off. The mob guys usually sat up in the Clubhouse and had flunkies bet for them, but Mansfield liked to see the action up close.

That didn’t make things easier for Wesley, just different.

He drifted away from two old ladies on the rail. Experience taught him that the elderly were the most observant, next to children. At 7:30, Wesley went to the $2 Win window and bought five tickets on the Number Five horse, Iowa Boy. The jerk just in front of him screamed, “The Six horse, ten times,” and threw down his hard-earned twenty bucks as though he had just accomplished something.

Wesley drifted over to the Double window and saw Mansfield just turning away with a stack of tickets in his manicured hands. Probably wheeled the Double, Wesley thought to himself, watching to see if anyone else was paying attention.

No point following Mansfield. Wesley went to the men’s room. It was filled with the usual winos, misfits, and would-be high rollers, all talking loudly and paying attention to nobody but themselves. Too crowded; it would have to be outside after all. Wesley had watched Mansfield for three weeks and time was getting short. The sucker might be leaving for the Coast any day now, and that would end the contract; Wesley could only operate in New York.

Back trackside, Wesley saw Mansfield in his usual spot, right against the rail. Iowa Boy was parked out for most of the race but closed like a demon and paid $16.80. From the way Mansfield tore up his tickets and threw them disgustedly into the air, Wesley concluded that the fucking loser was running true to form. It wasn’t really dark enough yet, but Wesley knew that Mansfield always stayed to the bitter end. The fool liked to bet the Big Triple in the ninth race. When he went into the men’s room, Wesley followed right behind, but as he had expected, it was impossible to work there.

The crowd kept getting denser and more excited. Wesley hoped for a hotly contested race to really get the crowd moaning with that sexual roar—the one amateur sociologists mistake for greed—when the horses come around the paddock turn for the final time. The seventh race had a few real dogs running—a couple of hopefuls up from Freehold and a couple more on the way down. The tote board showed a possible payoff of almost a grand on a deuce if you coupled the right nags—there was a lot of money bet. Mansfield had gone to the $20 Exacta window, so he’d have something to think about this race for sure.

This kind of thing would be better worked with a partner, but Wesley didn’t work with partners. He had been down twice on felonies and had noticed that not many men who worked in teams went to prison alone.

Wesley pressed right behind Mansfield, but the target never noticed. He may have been a top professional on his home ground, but at the track Mansfield’s nose was wide open with a jones for Lady Luck.

The crowd started screaming as soon as the pace car pulled away with the gate, and got louder and louder. A pacer named E.B. Time was trying to go wire-to-wire at 35-1, and the crowd was berserk. At the paddock turn, the roar swelled and all eyes were glued to the track. The horses thundered down the stretch, with the drivers whipping the nags and bouncing up and down in the carts as though the race hadn’t been decided in the Clubhouse hours before. Wesley slipped the icepick from the screwdriver pocket and held it parallel to his right leg, point down.

Five horses hit the wire together as Wesley slammed the poison-tipped icepick deep into Mansfield’s kidney. The crowd screamed “PHOTO!,” straining forward to see the board.

Mansfield slumped against the rail, which kept him from falling completely down as the weight of Wesley’s body pressed against him. The icepick was back in Wesley’s pocket a microsecond after doing its work. Wesley backed through the crowd, which was still trying to see who the winner was.

He had already wiped the icepick and tossed it softly into the grandstand shadows when he heard the first tentative scream. He knew Mansfield had been dead before he hit the ground. The poison on the tip would make sure the sucker had no luck that night. A knife did more damage, but sometimes they got stuck in the victim. Wesley was out of the gate and already shifting the Ford into drive when he heard the sirens. By that time, thousands of losers were leaving too.

4/

The towel he had previously soaked with kerosene completely removed the decal-tattoo before he was out of the parking lot. Wesley drove the Ford back across the Triborough, but turned toward Queens instead of Manhattan. Just before the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, he pulled the car over to the side, where a red Chevy sat with its hood up and no driver in sight. Wesley got out of the Ford, quickly removed his jacket, stuffed both rings and the watch into the pocket, and left it on the front seat. He reached back in and turned off the Ford’s engine, pulling the key out of the ignition. He entered the Chevy, grabbed a new jacket from the front seat, reached in the pocket and put on the gold Accutron and the sterling ID bracelet he found there. The jacket fit perfectly.

Wesley slammed down the hood of the Chevy and got back inside. The Ford’s ignition key started the Chevy immediately, and he pulled it off the shoulder and onto the road. As he glanced back in the rearview mirror, he saw the Ford cutting across traffic to the left-hand lane.

Wesley took the BQE to Roosevelt Avenue and turned right, followed it to Skillman and took that street right across Queens Boulevard to the upper roadway of the 59th Street Bridge. He crossed the bridge and took Second Avenue all the way to the Lower East Side, and then slid into the maze of ugly narrow streets near the Slip.

As he turned onto Water Street, he pushed the horn ring. No sound came from the horn, but the door of the garage opened quickly and quietly, closing the same way behind him as soon as he was inside.

The old man stood in the shadows holding a sawed-off shotgun. As soon as he saw Wesley climb out of the car, he put the gun back into its rack. He was already wiping down the Chevy by the time Wesley closed the basement door behind him.

Wesley walked up the back stairs without a sound, automatically checking the security systems as he approached his apartment. He reflected ruefully on how much all this protection had cost. The lack of obvious luxury depressed him sometimes, and he thought about the ugly chain of inevitability that had set him up in business for himself.

5/

Seventeen years old and facing a judge for at least the tenth time. Only this time Wesley wasn’t a juvenile and couldn’t expect another vacation in the upstate sodomy schools. It was the same old story—a gang fight, with the broken and bloody losers screaming “assault and robbery” at the top of their punk lungs. Cops always waited until the fights were over before moving in to pick up the survivors. They arrived with sirens and flashing lights, so that anyone even slightly disposed to physically resist arrest would have more than enough time to get in the wind instead. Wesley had taken a zip-gun slug in the leg, and couldn’t limp off quickly enough.

It was the summer of 1952, before heroin was discovered as the governmental solution to gang fighting, and with the Korean War to occupy the attention of the masses.

Wesley was waiting in the sentencing line—they had all pleaded guilty; Legal Aid didn’t know what to do with any other plea. He was standing next to a stubby black kid who had ended his engagement to a neighborhood girl with a knife. The black kid was in a talkative mood; he’d been this route before, and he wasn’t expecting anything but the maximum worst.

“Man, the motherfucking judge throwin’ nickels and dimes like he motherfucking Woolworth’s!”

Wesley kept his eyes straight ahead and wondered if there was a way out of the courtroom. But even as his eyes flew around the exits and measured the fat-bellied bailiff, he knew he wouldn’t have any place to go but back to the block ... just to keep building a sin for himself, as he had been doing ever since he could remember. The State’s “training schools” hadn’t trained him to do anything but time. Prison was as inevitable in his future as college was for three other defendants he saw waiting: well-dressed young men, accompanied by parents, friends, and lawyers, who were awaiting disposition on a burglary charge. They’d cop probation or a suspended sentence. Wesley wondered why his gang always fought people just like themselves when it was really privileged weasels like those kids that they hated.

The Legal Aid lawyer ran over, excited, his chump face all lit up. Probably worked a great deal for me to make license plates for twenty years, thought Wesley, who’d been “represented” by the same firm since he was a little kid. The lawyer grabbed him by the sleeve and motioned him to step over to the side.

“Would you like to beat this rap completely?”

“I already pleaded guilty, man.”

“I know that; I know that ... but the judge is going to throw a Suspended at anyone over seventeen who agrees to join the Army. What do you say?”

“How many years would I have to be in the Army?”

“Four years, but—”

“How much time will I cop with this beef?” Wesley interrupted.

“With your record, I’d say five to fifteen.”

“Sign me up,” Wesley told him.

6/

And it went just like that. The judge made a big, fat, stupid speech about the opportunity to serve your country, while Wesley wondered if the Army gave you time off for good behavior. His next stop was a recruiting booth, where they finally removed the handcuffs.

Basic training was at Fort Gordon. Wesley didn’t like the heat in Georgia and he didn’t like the loudmouth sergeant and he didn’t like the gung-ho clowns. But it wasn’t prison. When his unit got transferred to Fort Bragg for infantry training, conditions didn’t improve. But Wesley was already trained to do his own time and he didn’t have anyone to complain to anyway.

He qualified Expert with the M1, the only non-hillbilly to do so. This was immediately noted and praised by the New York contingent, which had already clashed with the Southerners. But the city-breds were too used to fighting each other to mount any kind of sustained drive. Tension was generally discharged in beery brawls, with no one seriously injured.

Wesley stayed away from all that, and hoped like hell he wouldn’t get shipped to Korea.

7/

Camp Red Cloud was right near the northern border and the scene of many of the war’s worst battles. Wesley was assigned there and attached to a special hunter-killer squad. Because he rarely spoke, he was considered stupid and therefore, according to Army standards, highly reliable. He became the team’s sniper; again, the only city kid to be so assigned.

The only thing Wesley paid any attention to was his sergeant telling him that every time they went out on patrol, the zips were the only thing keeping him from coming back.

The sergeant was a lifer and respected by everyone for his ability to make an excellent living in a lousy situation. Unfortunately, the sergeant didn’t realize what a good listener Wesley was.

During a heavy firefight near Quon Ti-Tyen, Wesley’s company realized they were going down the tubes unless they retreated, fast. The ROTC lieutenant had already fallen, and the sergeant was in command. But the sergeant wasn’t thinking about retreat; he kept screaming at the men to advance.

It only took Wesley a piece of a second to realize that it was the sergeant who was keeping him from returning to the safety of the base, and he pumped four rounds from his M1 into the lifer’s back with the same lack of passion that had served him during his time in a sniper’s roost.

Nobody saw the killing; it was just another body in a whole mess of bodies. Wesley shouted “RETREAT!” at the top of his lungs. He was the last man to pull out, a fact which later won him the Bronze Star from a grateful government.

8/

Two months later, Wesley was hit in the leg with a ball bearing from a Claymore mine that wiped out the three men just ahead of him. Sent down to South Korea for surgery, he recovered perfectly— just in time to take advantage of an R&R in Japan.

Wesley stayed away from the Japanese whores. He couldn’t understand how they could feel anything but hate for the American soldiers, and he knew what he would do if their positions were reversed. The crap games didn’t interest him either; gambling never had.

He was sitting quietly in an enlisted man’s bar when four drunken Marines came in and started to tear up the place. Wesley slid toward the door. He was trying to get out when he was grabbed by one of the Marines and belted in the mouth. The Marine saw Wesley falling to the floor and turned his attention back to the general brawl ... Wesley came off the floor as fast as he went down and smashed a glass ashtray into the back of the Marine’s neck. At the courts martial, he couldn’t explain how the ashtray had gotten into his hand or why he had reacted so violently.

9/

Wesley pulled an Undesirable discharge, but, in consideration of his excellent combat record and his medal, he was simply separated from the service without stockade time added on. The first thing he did was to go visit the Marine in the hospital.

The Marine was paralyzed from the neck down; he caught Wesley’s eye across the room. He was lying face up on a special bed, with tubes running out of his lower body into various bottles and machines. Wesley walked up close until he was sure the Marine could see him. They were alone in the semi-private room; the Marine’s roommate was getting physical therapy in the pool.

“You know who I am?” Wesley asked, not sure yet.

“Yeah, I know who you are—you’re the man I’m going to kill.”

“You not going to kill anybody, cripple.”

“Oh, it won’t be me, punk. But I got a lot of good buddies who know what you did to me.”

Wesley grabbed the pillow from the next bed and held it tightly over the Marine’s face. It was strange to see a man struggle with only his neck muscles. It didn’t last long. Wesley replaced the pillow, pulled the Marine’s lids down over his bulging eyes, and walked quietly out of the hospital.

Nobody saw him leave. The Marine was listed as suffocating to death in his sleep.

10/

Stateside, Wesley took the .45 he had smuggled back from Korea and went for a walk late Saturday night. He entered the liquor store on Tenth Avenue and 21st Street and showed the clerk the piece. The clerk knew the routine and emptied the cash register even as he was kicking the silent alarm into action, but Wesley was out the door with the money before the police arrived.

He found a hotel on 42nd Street near Eighth and checked in with his military duffel, his gun, and $725 from the holdup. A few hours later, the room’s door opened—Wesley grabbed for his pistol, but the shot that blasted the pillow out from under his face froze him.

On the way out of the hotel, Wesley looked at the desk clerk, very carefully. The clerk was used to this; as a professional rat, he was also used to threats of vengeance from everyone who walked past him in handcuffs.

But Wesley didn’t say anything at all.

The night court set bail at ten thousand dollars, and the judge asked if he had any money for a bondsman. Wesley said, “I’ve got around seven hundred dollars,” and the arresting officer called him a smart punk and twisted the handcuffs hard behind his back.

11/

Wesley sat in the Tombs for two weeks until his “free” lawyer finally appeared. In what sounded like an instant replay of years ago, the lawyer told him that a guilty plea would get him about ten years behind his record, and all that. Wesley said okay—a trial was out of the question.

On the way back from the brief talk with his lawyer, Wesley was stopped by four black prisoners who blocked his path.

“Hey, pussy! Where you goin’?”

Wesley didn’t answer—he backed quickly against the wall and wished he had his sharpened bedspring with him. He watched the blacks the way he had watched North Koreans. They were in no hurry—guards never came onto the tier anyway.

“Hey, boy, when you lock in tonight, I goin’ to be with you. Ain’t that nice?”

Wesley didn’t move.

“An’ if you don’t go for that, then we all be in with you ... so I don’t want no trouble when I come callin’, hear?”

They all laughed and turned back to their cells. Wesley walked carefully to his own cell and reached for the bedspring under his bunk. It was gone.

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?”

“Kid, they was the worst. Used to be you couldn’t be in crime in New York unless you was Jewish. The Irish came after them, and then we came after the Irish. And now it’s time to bury us, too.”

“Who’s next?”

“The Blacks, the Latins ... who knows? Maybe the fucking Chinese. But it’ll all end the same. Greedy, stupid bastards.”

“Then I couldn’t...”

“No, kid, there’s no place for you. Even if I recommended you, you’d just be a soldier in someone’s fucked-up army. But I’ve been thinking a long time. And before I check out of here, I’ll tell you what you can do.”

17/

The next two years went by the same way. Carmine ran the Book as he always did—fairly—and his customers were never lured away by promises of bigger payoffs elsewhere. Too often, those bigger payoffs were a shank planted in some sucker’s chest. Besides, Carmine was the old, established firm and prisoners are a conservative lot.

Dayton was big trouble from the day he hit the Yard. A tall, over-muscled motorcycle freak, he gorilla’ed off a couple of young kids easily enough. This immediately gave him some highly inflated ideas about prison reality. The older cons just shook their heads and predicted a quick death for him, but Dayton stayed alive through a strange combination of strength, skill, and stupidity.

Dayton bet fifty packs with Carmine on the Yankees in the 1960 Series and lost. He passed Carmine and Wesley on the Yard the next day and strolled over to them. “You looking for your fifty packs, old man?”

“Do I have to look for them?”

“Nah ... don’t look for them, because I’ll cut your throat first.”

Wesley stayed relaxed—he heard this kind of bullshit threat every day on the Yard and Carmine could handle the ticket-sellers in his sleep. But before he turned his head away, Dayton leaned over Carmine, whispered: “And just so you’ll know...” and slapped him viciously across the face.

The next thing Wesley remembered was the hack’s club smashing into the back of his head for the third time—he woke up in the hospital. He opened his eyes and saw Carmine staring down at him.

“You okay, kid?” the old man asked.

“Yeah. Is he dead?”

“He will be in about an hour.”

“I didn’t kill him?”

“No, thank the Devil, you didn’t.”

“I will as soon as I get out of here.”

“Be too late then, you stupid punk!”

“What ... why’d you say that, Carmine? Pop, I did it for you.”

“The fuck you did. You did it for you, right? You couldn’t stand the profile of being partners with the kind of old man who’d take a slap in the face from a buffoon. So you try to snuff him right on the Yard. Stupid ... stupid fucking kid.”

“Listen, Carmine, I...”

“No, you listen, Wesley. You never lose your temper or someday you lose your head. Now this is only a minor beef you got—fighting on the Yard, no weapons, no sneaking up, right? You gonna get thirty days in the Hole behind it and a black tab on your jacket, but so what? You take him off like you tried to and you never get outta here ... never.”

“So what?”

“So what? Don’t be a fucking punk, so what! You got a lot to do.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when you get out the Hole. And while you’re there, be thinking about this—that cocksucker was twice as big as you, but you almost dropped him anyway, because you took him by surprise with hot anger. If you took him in his sleep with cold anger, what you think would have happened?”

18/

The thirty days in the box wasn’t so bad. Carmine had books and cigarettes smuggled in by the runners. The guards transmitted the daily messages from Carmine. His notes were always instructions.

practice not moving a muscle until you can do it all the time between meals

practice breathing so shallow your chest don t move

think about the person you hate most in the world and smile

the head plans the hands kill the heart only pumps blood

Wesley burned all the notes and flushed them down the lidless toilet. Carmine was waiting for him when he returned to the tier. The old man’s juice had kept his cell for him.

“What’ll I do now?” Wesley asked.

“Right now?”

“When I get out.”

“Damn, kid, didn’t you think about nothing else all the time you were down?”

“Yeah, everything you wrote me.”

“Can you do it?”

“Just about.”

“That’s not good enough. You got to get it perfect.”

“Why am I learning all this?”

“For your career.”

“Which is?”

“Killing people.”

“Which people?”

“Look, Wes, how many men you already killed?”

“Three, I guess.” Wesley told him about the sergeant and the Marine, all the time wondering how Carmine knew it was more than one.

“How many felony convictions you got?”

“A few, I guess. There’s this beef, which was really two, and a couple before when I was a juvenile, and the Army thing ... I don’t even know.”

“You know what ‘The Bitch’ is?”

“No.”

“Habitual Offender. In this state you get three felony drops and they make you out to be ‘dangerous to society’—it’s a guaranteed Life for the third pop. Understand what I’m telling you, Wes? The next time you fall, you fall for life. Whether it’s a lousy stickup for fifty bucks or a dozen homicides, you get the book. And killing people pays a lot more than sticking up liquor stores.”

“What about banks?”

“Forget it. You got the fucking cameras taking your picture, you got the fucking federales on your case for life, and you got to work with partners.”

“That’s no good?”

“How many partners you got?”

“Just you.”

“That’s one too many, but I won’t ever make the bricks anyway. Make me the last motherfucking human you trust with all your business. You gonna meet all kinds of people, but don’t ever let anyone see your heart or your head. Just your hands, if you have to.”

“How do I do this?”

“I’ll give you the names to get started: who to contact, how to do it without getting into a cross. After a couple a jobs, you’ll have all the work you want.”

“What’re the rules?”

“You can say ‘yes,’ you can say ‘no’ ... but you can’t say ‘yes’ and then not hit the person they point to. And you say nothing to anyone ... no matter what. That’s all.”

“What else, Pop?”

“Cold: you got to be cold right on through. And you got to show me you are that cold before we go any further with this.”

“I am.”

“Okay. Now listen, because we don’t got a lot of time. Dayton has a partner; another stupid animal ... but he wants me and he thinks he’s being slick by not moving right on me, okay? His name’s Logan, and he locks in 7-Up. Ice him—and don’t let me even guess how you did it.”

Carmine started talking about the cigarettes bet on the football season and Wesley understood the subject was dropped. He would have to pick it up himself if he wanted to continue the conversation. Ever.

19/

It took Wesley five weeks to learn that Logan was a Milky Way freak. Another three to get the hypodermic needle and syringe from the prison hospital. Two weeks more to steal a pinch of rat poison from the maintenance crew. Just buying would have been quicker—all of those items were for sale Inside—but he understood Carmine expected him to act completely alone.

The only risk was getting into the commissary area without being seen. Wesley took all but four of the Milky Ways. Those he carefully injected with his mixture of strychnine and water, then painstakingly smoothed over the tiny holes the needle left in the dark wrappers.

The next morning, as he walked past Logan—who was on the end of the commissary line—Wesley muttered, “No more fucking Milky Ways for two weeks,” hoping they wouldn’t be all gone by the time Logan got to the front.

They weren’t. About 4:05 a.m. the whole tier woke up to Logan’s screaming. By the time the hacks got there with the inmate nurse, he was turning blue. They rushed him off to the hospital on a stretcher.

Logan held on through the night and even rallied slightly the next day. The poisoning had not been discovered, because the greedy sucker had eaten all four candy bars before going to sleep. It was too late to pump his stomach and they wouldn’t be doing an autopsy on a live body.

Wesley walked by the hospital a dozen times that day, but it was never empty enough. Just before supper line, he slipped inside and saw that the hack was in the bathroom, probably moving his lips as he read a porno magazine confiscated from a convict. Wesley pulled the needle-pointed file he’d bought for ten packs from a guy in the machine shop from under his shirt and wrapped the handle in a rag pulled from his belt. Logan never looked up at Wesley’s soundless approach, and only grunted sharply as the spike slammed into the left side of his chest, right up to the hilt. His hands flew up and grabbed the file’s handle.

One look told Wesley that Logan was gone. With his own fingerprints all over the murder weapon.

20/

Wesley caught the supper line near the end, picked up his tray, and sat down at his usual place with Carmine. He looked down deliberately into the pseudo-chicken and mashed potatoes until Carmine followed his gaze. Wesley drew an X across the top of the mashed potatoes with his fork and the old man grunted in acknowledgment.

The word was down the grapevine by the time they returned to the block for lockup after supper. The rec room buzzed with the news, but that was soon replaced by an almost-murderous argument over which TV show to watch. Wesley and Carmine faded back toward the rear of the large room.

“You crazy fuck. Why’d you stick him?”

“He was going to get better.”

“Clean?”

“His prints are the only ones.”

“Why’d you only fix a couple of the bars?”

“Didn’t want anybody else to get it. He was at the end of the line. I knew he’d buy up all four of them if anyone else got there first.”

“That’s half-smart, kid. Sometimes, you can be too slick. Now if you’d done every bar in the place, there would’ve been no way for the fucking swine to get off the hook.”

“Sure, but if more than one guy went, they’d do a big investigation, right?”

“So what? What do they find? Nothing about you. And why’d you give him such a light dose that he could get up behind it?”

“I didn’t know how much to use.”

“Then you shouldn’t have used that stuff at all.”

“It was all I had.”

“No, Wes—you had the library.”

“The library?”

“There’s a lot of things in books they never meant us to know, you understand me?”

“Like what you said about the history books—that the winners write the stories after they win the wars?”

“Not just that—I’m talking about facts. How you make a bomb, what’s inside of a poison, how you fix guns, how much money a politician makes, what the fucking laws say....”

“There’s things you can’t learn from books.”

“Sure. Now you talking like a real chump. What ‘things’? You learning these things, kid?”

“In here? Sure.”

“You ever listen to Lester when he talks?”

“That fucking skinner. Who’d listen to that freak?”

“You would, if you had any sense. You think you’ll never be tracking a man in Times Square? You think people like Lester ain’t all over the place? If you going to run in the jungle, you’d better know all the animals.”

“How come you don’t study him?”

“I have studied him, Wes. But I don’t get too near, because I have to live in here the rest of my life. I can’t let motherfuckers think I’m changing my game after all these years or they get ideas. But if I was going out, I wouldn’t just be studying Lester, I’d be studying every freak, every maniac, every sick-ass in this joint, until I knew exactly what makes them run. And I’d use it on the street. Why you think the shrinks are always studying Lester? Anything the Man wants to know, you got to figure is worth knowing too, right?”

“How do I make him talk?”

“You don’t need to make him talk. Just forget your fucking image and listen—he’ll do all the talking you’ll ever want.”

“What about Logan?”

“Who’s that?”

21/

Another long year passed. With Wesley in the library, in the blocks, on the Yard ... listening and learning to say nothing, except when forced. And spending as much time as possible with Carmine, because the old man was obviously hanging on by a fine thread.

The Yard was nearly empty one dirty, grey morning. Carmine had told Wesley to meet him at their spot by 8:30, and Wesley stayed in the shadows until he saw the old man’s bulk come around the corner of the administration building.

“Morning, Pop.”

“I got no more time, Wes, so you listen to me as good as you ever did. I’m checking out of here. Maybe this morning, maybe tonight....”

“You’re not—”

“Shut up,” came the fierce whisper, “and listen: I made out my will and you the beneficiary. Sit down with me here against the Wall.”

The two men hunkered down against the wet wall. Wesley was stone-cold quiet, because he saw the old man wasn’t going to get up again.

“You got to remember all this, Wes—you can't be writing it down. When you wrap up you go to Cleveland, that's in Ohio. Take the bus in, but fly out, understand? And not from the big airport—that's Hopkins. They got a little commuter airline, like for businessmen, so be sure you got a suit on ... Israel, he'll fix you up with that. Anyway, if the wheels come off, remember you want Burke Airport. It's right on the lake—just tell any cabbie and they'll know.

“Okay, now when you get to Cleveland, you go to the King Hotel, that's at 55th and Central. You go there between midnight and two in the morning and you tell the Desk Clerk you got a message for Israel.”

“Like the country?”

“Yeah, like the country—but Israel is a man, a black man. You tell him you are Carmine’s son and you’re there to pick up what Carmine left. He’ll give you the name of someone to hit, and on this one you can’t say ‘no,’ you understand? You can’t say ‘no.’ ”

“I won’t.”

“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 son.”

“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.

“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.