Acid Rock

CHAPTER THREE

«I don't like that kind of music,» said Willie «The Bomb» Bombella.

Morris Edelstein made sure the intercom that connected him to his secretary was off. For a little final security he ran a small metal detector around his office walls again. He locked his telephone in his top desk drawer which was lined with lead, because, as anyone knew, even a dead telephone receiver could be a line for a bug.

«What're you doing?» asked Willie the Bomb.

«Shut up,» said Morris Edelstein.

«You think everyplace is bugged. You'd think your own bathroom was bugged to catch your farts, Mo,» said Willie the Bomb.

«It so happens I found a bug in the hamper last year,» Edelstein replied.

«The feds?»

«No. My ex-wife. But it could have been anything, anyone.»

«You worry a lot, Mo,» said Willie the Bomb, and he placed his two giant hands on his massive belly that stretched the middle of his size eighteen extra-large silk shirt. A small gray fedora topped a craggy face made craggier by a scar across his nose, suffered when an union dispute was settled with baseball bats. Against Willie the Bomb's face, the bat finished second. It broke,

Along with its wielder's left arm and back. When the bat-wielder was released from the hospital, he found out something very strange about his front door lock. It did a funny thing when you turned the key. It took off the front of the house.

Police in St. Louis attributed this to a bomb and questioned Willie the Bomb Bombella at length. But Willie said nothing, on advice of his attorney, Mo Edelstein, who triumphed once again over the unfair police harrassment of his client, reinforcing the constitutional concepts of men like Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton, and making it possible for at least three St. Louis citizens a year to get surprises when they started their cars, opened their front doors, or peeked into unexpected packages.

«I wanna see my lawyer, Mo Edelstein,» were the words used over and over again by Willie the Bomb, who had a good thing going, except for one little flaw. Which was what Edelstein had called him into the office about that morning.

Edelstein locked the metal detector in another drawer and lowered the shades, shutting out what might charitably be called the St. Louis skyline, but more accurately the surviving remnants of a city that went from frontier outpost to slum with barely a pause at civilization.

«First of all, Willie, I am not broaching this subject because I think you like acid rock.»

«I don't like it at all,» said Willie, «but I own a piece of Vampire Records.»

«Which doesn't make you much money, right?»

«It's only a little piece,» said Willie.

«I understand,» said Mo Edelstein. «You're a good client, Willie.»

«Thank you, Mo.»

«And only one thing would make you a perfect client. One small little thing, Willie.»

«What is it, Mo?»

«Do not take offense at this, Willie. Please. But sometimes, Willie, you don't exactly come up with the full bill.»

«I pay often,» said Willie, leaning forward in his seat.

«You do. You do, Willie, you pay very often. You're one of my most-often paying clients, except for those who pay all the time.»

«Nobody's perfect,» said Willie.

«Right,» said Edelstein. «Not even the people who pay you. I do not mean to cast aspersions on your employers or anything.»

«What's an aspersion?»

«A not nice thing, Willie. But you should be a rich man.»

«I'm loyal to the people I work for,» said Willie and his dark brown eyes narrowed.

«I am not suggesting you betray any of your employers, Willie,» said Edelstein, smiling as wide as he could. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead. «I am suggesting a way to make a lot of money. Lots and lots of money. More money, Willie, than you ever made in your whole life.»

«'Cause I wouldn't never betray the people I work for.»

«I know you wouldn't, Willie. That's why I'm giving you this great opportunity. How would you like to make almost a million dollars? Do you know how much that is, Willie?»

Willie the Bomb Bombella's eyes rose. He thought very hard. And what he thought was This man is lying to me.

«It's a lot,» said Willie.

«I'm telling you the truth, Willie. Almost a million dollars. It's waiting out there for you and just a little bit for me. Just what you owe me, Willie. A hundred and twelve thousand dollars.»

Willie's eyes opened wider. He nodded. If there was $112,000 in it for Edelstein, maybe this man was not lying to him. When there was so much money for Edelstein in anything, everything seemed to happen.

«My employers have done me some injustices I can think of,» said Willie.

«No, no. It has nothing to do with them. I have a second cousin who lives on the West Coast …»

«There is nothing worse than blood betraying blood,» Willie interrupted.

«No, no, Willie. Listen to me. He is a funeral director. He buried someone recently and a strange thing happened. There was money in a funeral wreath. It was not his money so he did not keep it.»

Willie's eyes narrowed. This man is lying to me, he thought again.

«He didn't keep it because he was afraid.»

Willie nodded. Edelstein might be telling the truth, he thought.

«But a strange thing happened. A voice on the telephone asked him one night if the money had reached the family of the dead man.»

Willie nodded and Edelstein continued.

«My cousin is smart. He found out what the money was for. The word is open contract.»

Willie's eyes narrowed.

«An open contract. You've heard of a contract on someone's life?» Edelstein paused and laughed nervously. «Of course you have. Well, this is the sort of contract where anyone can fill it and collect the money. See?»

This man is lying to me or setting me up or is a fool. No, thought Willie, Edelstein is no fool.

«You mean you get paid after the job?»

«Right.»

«What if no one wants to pay you?»

«I don't think that would happen. Already more than $100,000 has been thrown around for failures. Real money. My second cousin wasn't the only person this happened to. Other funeral directors had the same thing happen. Most of them aren't as smart as my cousin. He got a phone number.»

Willie watched Edelstein take a piece of paper from the center desk drawer.

«You get financial details from that number,» Edelstein said.

«Did you call this number, Mo?»

«That is not my sort of thing, Willie. I've got to stay here to protect you in case there is any trouble. I should not even tell you that the girl's name is Vickie Stoner, she is nineteen, and she will be at an acid rock concert in Massachusetts in two days, if she is still alive.»

Willie blinked. «Let me get this straight. I am supposed to try to do a job on somebody who might not be alive for someone I never saw for money I do not get until the hit is good. Is that what you are telling me, Mo?»

«A million dollars, Willie. A million dollars. Can you think of a million dollars?»

Willie tried to think of a million dollars. He thought of it in cars, in ready cash, in owning pieces of companies, but he could not imagine it. Another thought was crowding it out. This man may be crazy.

«I'm not crazy, Willie,» said Edelstein. «If it weren't so strange, why would so much be offered? A million dollars, Willie.»

Willie looked at the piece of paper in Edelstein's hand. «How come there's ten numbers?»

«Area code.»

«I do not know this area code.»

«Chicago.»

«Why is it you know the girl's name?»

«My cousin.»

«Give me your phone,» said Willie, taking the piece of paper from Edelstein's hand.

«No, Willie. Not from here. We don't want that. We don't want our defense lawyer to be connected, because he has to stay free in case something goes wrong. We want to be able to say, 'I want my attorney, Mo Edelstein,' not, 'Guard, I have a message for Inmate 79312.' That's what we want, Willie.»

«We want you to come with us,» said Willie.

«No, no. That's what we don't want,» yelled Edelstein.

«That is what we want,» said Willie. As they left the office for a street phone, Mo Edelstein took two Maalox and a Seconal. After the phone conversation, he popped a Nembutal. He was still nervous, so he took a Librium.

«You know, if they put booze in a pill, Mo, you'd be an alcoholic,» said Willie the Bomb.

Edelstein's face eased somewhat as he watched Willie the Bomb load his Lincoln Continental. Edelstein's curiosity was aroused. Here was a man with an IQ that probably never saw the high side of retarded, but when it came to making and setting bombs, knowing what they would do and how they would do it, Bombella was the Michelangelo of the blast.

Bombella sensed this newfound respect and although he had never before explained how he did things, he did so for Edelstein. He knew Edelstein would never use his trade secrets. Edelstein could do more, Willie knew, with a briefcase than Al Capone with a thermonuclear warhead.

Going east and north from St. Louis, Willie explained that nothing he had in the car was illegal until he put it together.

«Almost anything that'll burn can be made into a bomb,» Willie explained. «What a bomb is, is really a very fast fire with not enough place to go fast enough.»

«That is the most brilliant explanation I have ever heard of a bomb,» said Edelstein. «Brilliant in its simplicity.»

«Now there are two basic ways to use one. One is to use it to send something else into the hit or another is to make the hit part of this very fast burning fire. Now, take a car for instance. Most of these guys go putting it in the engine. Do you know why?»

«No,» said Edelstein.

«Cause they only know how to hook up to the ignition and they don't want no one to see the wires. Right in the engine they put it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You know why it doesn't. It doesn't cause there's a frigging fire wall between the driver and the engine and all you get sometimes is blowing off some poor guy's legs.»

«Incompetent,» said Edelstein, who secretly despised prosecutors who did not give him a good professional battle.

«Yeah, that,» said Bombella, knowing from the tone of the voice that incompetence was something not nice. «Now the place to put a bomb is under the seat. You use a mechanical device that works on pressure, maybe eighty pounds pressure tops, no more.»

«But who weighs that little?»

«Some guys slide in and you get the torso.»

«But some torsos must weigh less, especially women's,» Edelstein said.

«The brake does it. The brake drives the body into the seat, so you're guaranteed your blast at the first stop.»

«Brilliant,» said Edelstein. «But then why did you use the ignition last May.»

«I didn't do the job last May,» said Bombella.

«Funny,» said Edelstein. «That's what you told me then too.»

«Now for a car I don't like to use no material like metal shards, nails, or a hand grenade kind of thing. I like a clean explosion. Especially in the summer, when the windows are up for air conditioning. The whole car acts like a casing.»

«Brilliant,» said Edelstein.

«The air pressure created is amazing. It'd take off someone even without breaking 'em up. Just by the concussion.»

«Brilliant,» said Edelstein.

«I could make a bomb out of a pack of cards,» said Bombella. «You see that tree there? I could take it off exactly where you want it and land it where you want it. You could put a home plate anywheres near that tree and I'd get you a strike.»

«Can you throw a curve?» asked Edelstein, jesting.

«Nah. I can't do that yet,» said Willie, after thinking a moment. «But if it was a wet day with some heavy air and if we had a good wind, maybe eighteen to twenty-three miles an hour, and it was kind of a good-shaped tree like a young maple, and you let me put the plate where I wanted, I might be able to get a strike on a curve.»

«You're beautiful, Willie.»

They drove leisurely, and a day and a half later neared Pittsfield, Mass., the general area of the rock festival where Vickie Stoner was to show up.

«Is this the right way?» Edelstein said.

«A little detour I was told about when I made that phone call,» Bombella said. Outside Pittsfield, Willie stopped the Continental near a large sign that read Whitewood Cottages. He went to a mailbox and took out a package that looked like a rolled magazine. The computer printed name on it said «Edelstein.»

«I'm not supposed to be involved like this,» said Edelstein when Willie returned to the car. «What's in the package.»

«It's supposed to be money and a note.»

«I'll read the note to you,» said Edelstein.

«I can read,» said Willie. And he could. Edelstein watched the lips move as Willie the Bomb formed words. Edelstein tried to get a peek at the letters pasted on the paper, but Willie defensively shielded the note.

«Count the money,» said Willie, tossing the package to Edelstein and slipping the note into his pocket.

«Fifty thousand,» said Edelstein.

«A lot of money,» said Willie. «Give it to me.»

«It's half of what you owe me,» said Edelstein.

«I'll give you everything at the music show. There'll be some money there for us.»

«And then perhaps I might sort of leave cause you don't really need me, right, Willie. I'd only get in the way.»

«Right,» said Willie glumly. «You want to see something really great in the way of bombs?»

«What is it?» asked Edelstein suspiciously.

As they passed a country store, Willie suggested Edelstein get a jar of Prosco homemade pickles and, as he suspected, Edelstein couldn't open the bottle. They drove on through Pittsfield with Willie refusing to stop for lunch and Edelstein eyeing the pickles sitting there unopened between them.

«I could blow the top off that jar,» boasted Willie, as they sped down Route 8 to North Adams.

«Really?»

«Bet your ass I could. I could blow it clean off without even a crack in the glass.»

«Do it now, Willie. I'm starved.»

Willie pulled over to the gravel shoulder of the road, reached into the back seat of the car and from under a magazine removed the bomb made of playing cards. Into its side he pressed a penlike device and where it protruded he very carefully wrapped a straightened paper clip into a coil.

«Get out of the car,» said Willie and when Edelstein had stretched himself outside the car, Willie handed him the jar of pickles. «Hold this in your left hand.»

Edelstein took it in both hands.

«Left hand,» said Willie, and Edelstein took the jar in his left hand.

Willie thought a moment, then said, «Put the pickles on the rock over there.»

When Edelstein had and returned to the car, Willie gave him the bomb.

«Now do this just right,» he said. «Put the part with the paperclip on top of the jar, then walk back. Don't wait. It will start when I start the car.»

«Brilliant. How does that work?»

«Just do it,» said Willie, and Edelstein scampered back to the rock, his shoes spitting gravel behind him.

He gingerly dropped the bomb on the jar and ran back to the car.

«Okay. Start it, genius. I'm hungry.»

«You didn't put the clip against the top of the jar.»

«How could you see?»

«I know. Watch. I'll start the car and nothing will happen,» and Willie turned the ignition and sure enough the jar of pickles and the bomb were there.

«Well, I'll be. You're a genius.»

Edelstein went back to the jar of pickles, picked up the bomb, and even though it wouldn't balance that way, pressed the paperclip against the metal top of the jar.

And within an instant his stomach was filled with pieces of pickles and glass shards and the metal jar cap. So was what was left of his face.

The glass shards spit, cracking into the side of the car and even making a nick in the windows. They shouldn't have.

«Trigging Prosco pickles,» said Willie the Bomb Bombella. «They're subcontracting out their jars again to those cheapie manufacturers.»

And he drove off along the road toward the rock concert, where he hoped to be able to cash in on the million dollar open contract himself. The $50,000 in his pocket had been for a side job. As the note had said: «Kill Edelstein. He talks too much.»