Andrew Vachss - Hard Candy

A cop's voice. "You! Inside! What do you want? You can't get out!"

The bullhorn fired back. A measured, unexcited voice. A machine talking through a machine. "I want a helicopter to take us to the airport. I want a fucking 747 to take us to Cuba. You got that, pigs?"

"Crazy bastard thinks it's 1969," the Prof said.

"Let the kids go!" the cop shouted back. "Let the kids go and we'll get you the plane."

"Dumb-ass motherfucker forgot the ransom." The Prof shook his head sadly.

The camera held steady on the school. The field reporter read from a list of famous people whose kids were inside. Tomorrow's judges, politicians, mobsters. The seeds Wesley wanted to burn out of the ground.

"You! Inside!" The cop on the bullhorn again. "We've got the plane for you! Waiting at the airport! Let the hostages go and we'll send in some police officers to take their place! Unarmed!"

The monster's voice cracked back. "Bring more cops! You need more cops! Lots of cops!"

"Oh shit!" the Prof muttered, no questions left.

Camera panned to the SWAT team. Riflemen with scopes. Cops in riot gear- helmets with faceplates, flak jackets, pump shotguns. A cauldron coming to a boil.

The announcer's professional voice came through, just the trace of a tremble inside.

"There's a man on the roof! Get the camera on him."

A man standing there in jungle fatigues, field cap hiding his eyes, gloves on his hands.

The rented truck exploded. A greenish cloud filled the screen. Bursts of machine-gun fire ripped. Screams and shouts from everywhere. The announcer held his ground.

"The unknown man on the roof has apparently detonated the explosion in the terrorists' truck here on the ground…the crowd is taking cover. A squad of policemen has gone around to the back of the school to try and gain access to the roof. The darkness you see on your screen isn't your picture…apparently some type of gas has been released from the truck…we're about five hundred yards from the scene…the gas is lifting…we don't know how many terrorists are left inside."

The camera focused on the lone madman.

"The man on the roof is lighting something. It looks like a torch. He's holding it high above his head…he…oh my God…he looks like some bizarre Statue of Liberty…he's…"

The dynamite exploded in Wesley's hand and the screen went blank.

WE STAYED THERE until late that night. Flipping channels, checking the radio. Every report made a liar out of the previous one. Seventy-five kids dead. A hundred. Two hundred. School security guards machine-gunned. Grenade tossed into the administration office. One of the surviving kids said he heard explosions, gunfire. Then a voice on the PA system telling all the students to get into the gymnasium. A man was standing at the podium, dressed in military fatigues. They all filed inside. The man put some stuff around the door seams. Dropped duffel bags in all the corners. One of the kids screamed. The man raked the row with the machine gun. The kids shut up after that. The ones still alive. The man was shouting at the cops through the bullhorn. Then he ran out. Everything started to blow up. The kid talked in a mechanical voice from his hospital bed. You could hear his doctors arguing with the cops in the background.

The cops were combing through the human wreckage. So far, they hadn't found a single terrorist.

"You think Wesley's going to Hell?" I asked the Prof. He believes in that stuff.

"If he is, the Devil better be ready."

"Amen."

THE COPS HIT Train's operation. Found what they were looking for. Morehouse broke the story. Lily led the team of social workers debriefing the kids. The FBI Pedophile Task Force was in on it. Even Interpol.

I called Morehouse.

"Congratulations on your scoop."

"Yeah, man." He sounded sad, the sun gone from his voice.

"What's wrong?"

"The little girl? The one that needed to go to the psycho ward?"

"Yeah?"

"She went out a window. While the cops were breaking down the front door."

"She's on the loose?"

"It was the top floor, man."

"It's not your fault- she was gone anyway."

"Sure."

THE PACKAGE arrived a couple of weeks later. A nine-by-twelve flat envelope. Thick with paper inside. Routed from my Jersey P0 box, the one I use for mercenary stings. Max handed it to me in the warehouse.

I slit it open. A single sheet of paper. Neatly typed letters. "Put on a pair of gloves before you open the next envelope. Burn this part."

I did.

A dozen sheets of single-spaced typing. On a typewriter they'd never find. Each page numbered. Written in blood so icy it ran clear. My hands trembled. I lit a cigarette.

My name is Wesley. You never knew me. None of you did. But you know my work. I killed my first human in 1967 .

He gave the lieutenant's name. Where it happened.

Four rounds in the chest. M-16. I killed two men in that prison you put me in.

Dayton and another guy I hadn't known about.

When I got out of prison, I started killing people for money.

Names, places, dates, calibers. The dope dealer even the Marielitos and Santeria couldn't protect. A blowgun with a poisoned dart. An ice pick in the kidney in the middle of a racetrack crowd. The list went on for pages.

Marco Interdonanto. Car bomb. Carlos Santamaria Ramos. At La Guardia. A spring bomb in a coin locker .

The one where the whole crowd died along with him.

Tommy Brown. I cracked his skull with a lead pipe and set fire to the house.

Near the end, I got to the part he left me in his will.

I killed somebody named Mortay. It was a contract from a man named Julio. He works for Don Torenelli. I shot him with a.38 Special, then I dropped a grenade on his face. I killed a man named Robert Morgan. In a playground in Chelsea. A rifle shot from the roof The same contract. Julio wouldn't pay me. He said it was the don's orders. So I hit Torenelli's daughter on Sutton Place. I cut off her head and stuffed it in her cunt. I wrote 2 on the wall. It was a message. They didn't listen.

Then he listed the other hits. Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island.

Torenelli put out a contract on me for revenge. I shot him on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. A.220 Remington with a night scope. Then I killed Julio. I killed a man named Train. I blew up a car on Wards Island with him in it. A man named Morrison hired me to do it. On Long Island. He tried to get out of paying me, so I killed him too. With a.357 magnum, wad cutters. Two in the chest, one in the face. He owed and he had to pay.

All my life, I worked for the same people. They had different names, but they were all the same. All bosses. Generals. I was a soldier.

I have no love in me for any of you. You have no love for me. You don't need my story. Why doesn't matter. What I did, you did it. You did it to me, I did it to you. I'm tired. I'm tired of all this. I'm not a man. I don't know what I am, but I wasn't born to be it. So I'm dying to be it. What I am.

I have no friends and I have no fear. I only stopped because I got tired. You could never have stopped me.

I worked for my money. That's what I did. They didn't pay me. So I made them pay. They didn't listen to my warnings. So I'm leaving them one last warning. I don't know where I'm going and I don't care. But they better not send anyone after me.

If you're reading this, you're a cop. Some kind of cop. I'm not leaving you this as a favor. It's my last chance to tell you how much I hate you.

Pray to your fucking gods that I'm the last one. But you know I'm not. There's more coming. You do things to us, we grow up and we do things to you.