Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

“How d’you know?”

“I go and see here every once in a while—she tells the other old people I’m her grandson. She used to sneak me extra food when I was doing time there.”

“She’ll address this for you?”

“Sure.”

Wesley looked at the kid. “After that, you got to leave her there.”

“No, the fuck I do! They already left her there—she’s already dead as far as the motherfuckers are concerned. She’d never rat me out.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. She don’t care about living anymore anyway—she knows what’s happening ... what happened to her, right? I could fucking tell her why we was doing this and she’d be okay even then. Wesley, she knows I steal; she’s old, but she’s not slow. She’s just doing time.”

“What’s she know about you?”

“Just what she thinks my name is, that’s all. And that I give a fuck about her. She’s not giving that up.”

Wesley looked at Pet. The old man nodded: “When I was Upstate, the only people who you could ever count on visiting you was your mother, or your sister, or your grandmother. What’s she got to gain by giving the kid up? Besides, they’re never going to find that envelope.”

Wesley gave the kid several envelopes and some stationery. “Here’s the address of the broad, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll tell her that I got a job for her, get her to address a whole bunch of them. She’ll never know what’s happening.”

The kid went out the door alone. He was back in ten seconds. “Wes. That dog...”

“I know. Be right there.”

50/

8:00 a.m., Thursday morning. Wesley stood in front of the giant mirror in his bedroom. He had shaved extra carefully; Pet had given him an immaculate haircut and a professional manicure. On his left hand was a heavy white-gold wedding band, on his right a college ring from Georgetown University, 1960. He wore a dark grey, summer-weight, silk-and-mohair suit, a soft green shirt with a spread collar, and a tiny-patterned grey tie with a moderate Windsor knot. He carried a slim attaché case, complete with combination lock and owner’s monogram; the initials were “AS.” Wesley checked the gold-cased watch; it was right on time.

The El Dorado looked as if it had been polished with beige oil, gleaming even in the dim light of the garage.

Wesley was ostentatiously parking right in front of a plug on Sutton Place by 9:30, well within the doorman’s line of sight.

The doorman noted the El D with genuine approval. Too many of the high-class creeps in his building drove those foreign cars for his taste, anyway. He liked the looks of the guy getting out of the car, too. Calm and relaxed, not like those rush-rush faggots who breezed by him like he didn’t exist. And the way the guy parked the hog right in front of the plug and never looked back? That was real class, too.

Wesley smiled at the doorman—they understood each other.

“Will you please ring the Benton suite? Tell them Mr. Salmone is here.”

“Yessir!” snapped the doorman, pocketing Wesley’s ten-dollar bill in the same motion.

The lady in 6-G asked him to repeat the name a couple of times, then to describe the waiting man ... and finally said to allow him up. Wesley walked past the doorman and into the lobby. The elevator cages were both empty. He stepped in, pushed the button, and rode to the sixth floor.

“What about the elevator operator?” Wesley had asked. Pet answered, “No sweat, the cheap motherfuckers fired them both a year ago. They said it was for efficiency, right? But they left a couple of old guys without a job to do it.”

6-G was all the way in the right-hand corner, just as the floor plan had shown. Wesley raised his hand to the bell, but the door was snatched open before he could make contact.

“Who are you?” the woman demanded.

“I’m from your father, Mrs. Benton.”

“He knows better than this. I don’t have anything to say to him.”

“I only need five minutes of your time, Mrs. Benton. It’s just some papers he wants you to sign.”

“I thought I already did that years ago. How come he...?”

“It will only take a moment,” Wesley said, as he gently pushed the door open and stepped past her and into the apartment.

The place was quiet except for the raucous meow of a Persian cat reclining on the velvet sofa. Wesley walked toward the wall-length sofa as though he intended to sit down. The woman followed close behind him at a quicker pace, nervously patting her piled-up hair into place.

“Look! I told my father and I’ll tell you, I—”

Wesley wheeled suddenly and slammed his right fist deep into the woman’s stomach. She grunted and fell to the rug, retching. He slipped the brass knuckles off his hand and knelt beside the woman. She was struggling to breathe, her face a mottled mask of red and white. Wesley reached into his pocket and brought out anaesthetic nose plugs. He inserted them into the woman’s nostrils, put a handkerchief over her mouth, and watched closely until her breathing became slow and measured. He put on the surgeon’s gloves, then carefully removed all his clothing, folding it neatly into the opened attaché case. A thin stream of blood ran out of the corner of the woman’s mouth.

Wesley laid the Beretta on the rug beside the woman, fitted the tube silencer, and doubled-locked the front door. The cat vanished. Pet had told him that the husband was a gourmet, so he knew what to look for.

He found the butcher knives—hollow-ground Swedish steel with rosewood handles—and the portable butcher block on the stove island. He brought the whole set back into the living room.

Wesley gently laid the woman’s head on a couch pillow and placed the butcher block under her neck. When he pulled the pillow out from under her head and tugged back on her hair, the skin of her throat stretched taut, the veins in her neck leaping out against the pale skin. He held the heavy chopping knife poised eighteen inches from her throat and mentally focused on a spot three inches beyond the butcher block. Wesley took a deep breath. The butcher knife flashed down like a jet and blood spurted from the neck arteries. It took three more full-strength blows before the head fell off.

Wesley grabbed the headless body by the ankles and dragged it toward the bedroom, leaving a thick trail of blood and paler fluids. He dumped the body on the bed and left the bedspread to absorb the mess while he went back for the head.

Wesley turned the body over on its back. He spread the woman’s legs as far as they would go, quickly lashing each ankle to a leg of the matching teak bedposts with piano wire so they wouldn’t close during rigor mortis. Then he took the head and pressed it down on the bed, moving it backwards in its trail of fluid until it was squarely between the woman’s legs, staring straight ahead.

Wesley dug his right hand into the gaping neck and worked his fingers until they were completely smeared with blood. He walked to the off-white wall behind the woman’s body and wrote:

WEASELS ... THE WAGES OF DEATH IS SIN! this is the beginning ...

He went looking for the cat and found it under the rolltop desk in the den. Wesley pulled it out, careful at first so as not to be scratched, until he saw its claws had been removed, probably to protect the furniture. He stroked the animal to calm it down. And then pushed it into the den, closing the door behind him.

Wesley entered the Japanese-style bathroom and took a shower; first blazing hot, then icy cold. When he was completely clean and all the blood had gone down the drain, he left the water running as he dried himself with a towel from his attaché case. Then he dressed, first putting the surgeon’s gloves into a plastic bag and returning them to his case.