Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

“As far as they know.”

“Okay, go to the fucking council. I’m going to hit his daughter.”

“Why? What do you want to—?”

“I’ll make it look like there’s a gang of freaks after all of them. Make it so’s they have to go after whoever’s got a hard-on for them, you understand?”

“No.”

“Look, they need to be fucking scared . I know how to do that. It’s not just killing. When I’m done, they’ll know it’s no job for a few soldiers. And that’s when they’ll turn it over to you.”

“Depends. They could always—”

“An open contract’s garbage, and you know it. How long was Gallo on the street? And Valachi? For their own fucking necks, they’d only want the best . They only put out an open contract when it’s not about them.”

“Nah, Wes. They really wanted Gallo.”

“Sure, but for money , right? He wasn’t coming into their fucking houses after them. It was just business with Gallo—this won’t be.”

“So what? I don’t get this. If...”

“ You going to get them all together, Pet: to explain what they’re up against, tell them what precautions to take. About this, they’ll listen to you. When I get finished, they’ll all show up to listen. And that’s when we end this whole stupid fucking game of us working for them.”

“How you gonna play it ... make it look like someone getting revenge for the Prince?”

“You’re kidding me, right? Carmine taught me. All those swine ever think about is throwing people like us away. They think it’s payback for the Prince, they’ll just stake you out in the cesspool like a slab of beef.”

“If not for the Prince, then...”

“This is gonna be like the freaks of the whole world rising up. They don’t need a reason. It’s going to be like they opened a fucking box and the slime comes squirming out over the rim.”

“You can’t...”

“It’s not hard. I’ve been thinking about it. Just be slick but look sick, that’s all. Get me all the information on the woman. Make sure she’s still there, get everything.”

“Yeah, okay. But I don’t—”

“Pet, this is the right way. I know.”

48/

Wesley went back to the wall, staring into it, until Pet left. He stayed there for three hours without moving. Finally his eyes closed—he took a massive breath and got to his feet. He got up, shaved, and changed into a battered cord jacket and chinos. Sneakers and some black-rimmed glasses completed the student trip. He went to the main library on 42nd Street, and stayed until it was near closing.

Two days later, Wesley drove up the FDR toward the Fifties. It was just past noon and he found a parking place on East 51st, right near the river. He walked the rest of the way to Sutton Place, thinking of another 51st Street—in New York, sometimes the other side of the city was the other side of the world.

He found the address Pet had given him. The old man had told him that the security system was a joke—the people who lived in that neighborhood wanted the kind of class building that wasn’t bristling with electronic devices and rent-a-cops. But there was a doorman, a middle-aged clown dressed in the kind of uniform self-respecting banana republics would have shunned, but suited the kind of humans that dwelled in the building. He didn’t give Wesley a second glance. Wesley took in the doorman’s flat, expressionless face and watched as he sprang to open the door for a tiny dowager. The doorman’s flatness wasn’t professional—he was just an ass-kisser who didn’t waste his talents on non-members.

Wesley saw a sign saying that service deliveries were to be made in the rear, so he walked around to the narrow, super-clean little alley. The service entrance wasn’t guarded, but it was locked. There was another sign telling the tradesmen to ring the bell that was beneath it. Wesley went back to the car and drove home, thinking.

Pet was already inside the garage.

“You got everything?” Wesley asked.

“Yeah. Her husband works on The Street. Leaves about 8:30, comes back between 7:30 and 10:00 every night. No dog. There’s an intercom which lets her ring the guy at the door downstairs if she wants. She’s got all those clubs and things, but she’s home every Wednesday and Thursday morning for sure. They go out together a lot—have parties in there about once a month. No one’s a regular visitor. Getting in’ll be the hard part.”

“I’ll have her father take me in.”

Pet went back to polishing the El Dorado, not asking for explanations.

“That’s the one I want for this,” Wesley told him, nodding at the beige Caddy. “Make it look like somebody rich owns it.”

Pet just nodded.

Wesley took a piece of paper out of his pocket, a news clipping.

“Pet, you know what they’re talking about here?”

The old man quickly scanned the clipping and saw what Wesley wanted. “A letter-bomb? Sure. It’s no big thing. All you need’s a spring to trigger it when the mark opens the flap.”

“Can you make one?”

“Yeah, I can make one. How big?”

“Big enough to blow someone up.”

“The bigger the blast, the bigger the package.”

“Can you get enough inside of a regular letter?”

“If the envelope’s heavy-enough paper, sure.”

“Rich people always write on heavy paper, right?”

“I guess,” the old man said, dubiously.

“You see this column, the Debutante Ball? The third broad down on the line is DiVencenzo’s daughter.”

“So? He’s nothing.”

“Right. But I got his address behind this paper. She should be getting a whole bunch of invitations to stuff now, right? That’s why the weasels pay so much coin ... to get their daughters into the society columns.”

“So?”

“So this particular broad’s gonna get a special invitation from us.”

“How many of their women you gonna hit?”

“Two’s enough, I think. If it’s not... Get the stuff from outside—I’ll meet you back here tonight. And get hold of the kid too, okay?”

49/

11:30 p.m. The three men sat in Wesley’s apartment; the dog was on guard in the garage. Pet had assembled his materials on the workbench. Along with the spring-detonator and the flat-explosive charge, he had a package of hundred-percent rag-content bond paper and envelopes. The stationery was a soft lilac, the fine-line italic script a dark purple. The envelope was so stiff it resisted any attempt at bending. Its deep flap said:

Dr. & Mrs. John I. Sloane III

707 Park Avenue

Penthouse 2

New York City, New York 10028

The three men looked admiringly at the embossed calling cards.

“How come you didn’t get the invitation printed, too, Wes?” the old man asked.

“Amy Vanderbilt says you always handwrite these things.”

“Who?”

“In the library, Pet. There’s not but one way to do these things.”

“She’ll never see the writing, anyway,” the kid put in.

“That’s not the point,” Wesley replied. “What if they got an x-ray thing going, or something else we don’t know about? No risks if you don’t need to, right?”

“Who’s going to write the invitation?”

“None of us can do it, that’s for sure.”

The kid was studying the stationery. “I know an old woman who used to do this,” he said.

“Go to these parties?”

“No, write these invitations. She’s in a nursing home where they put me to work when I was on parole once. Those places are just like the joint, if you’re old. Anyway, she used to make money addressing these things for some rich people—it was part of her job before they said she got too old to work. Then they dumped her into that home. She’s still there.”