Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

“No soldier’s going to hit you, Pet.”

“It wouldn’t be right. I helped kill the sharks, Wes—I don’t want the little fucking fish to eat my flesh. I’m tired....”

“Your family...?”

“Gone. A long time ago. Carmine was my family, and then you.”

“I still am.”

“Then be family, Wesley.”

“That’s why I came here now.”

“Yeah. What was your mother’s name?” the old man challenged.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you learn enough from me to be proud of that?”

“Yes.”

“I want to stay here, right?”

“I wasn’t thinking about no Potter’s Field, Pop.”

“Or Forest Lawn, either. I don’t want to be buried with trash.”

“You want to know in front?”

“Punk! What do you think I am?”

“I’m sorry ... I’m sorry, old man. I know what you are. You’re the most man I ever knew.”

“That’s okay, Wes. I know why you said that. The same thing as pulling me out of that room, huh? It’s no good anymore, son.”

As if by mutual consent, they walked toward the corner of the garage farthest from the street. The old man calmly seated himself in his good old leather chair, lit a twisted black cigar and inhaled deeply. He smiled up at Wesley.

Wesley screwed the silencer into the Beretta and cocked the piece. He held it dead-level pointed at Pet’s forehead.

“Good-bye, Pop. Say hello to Carmine for me.”

“I will, son. Don’t stay out too late.”

The slug slammed above the bridge of the old man’s nose, precisely at the point where his dark eyebrows just failed to meet. The impact rocked the chair against the wall, and the old man slumped to the floor. Wesley picked him up in his arms. He was carrying the old man’s body toward the door to the first floor when he noticed the deep trench cut into the concrete. He laid the old man on his back in the trench and pressed the still-warm Beretta into his hand. Wesley shoveled the earth back into the trench until it was ten inches from the top. Then he began to mix the new batch of concrete.

It was all finished inside of an hour, the floor now smoothed and drying in the heat of the 3400K spotlights attached to the back beams.

Wesley went over and sat in the old man’s chair. He watched the concrete harden, fingering Pet’s cutoff shotgun.

65/

The kid let himself into the garage the next day, silently and quickly, as he had been taught. For the first time in his memory, the old man wasn’t there. He heard the slightest of sounds and whirled in the opposite direction, hitting the floor, his tiny Colt Cobra up and ready. He saw nothing.

“Too slow, kid.”

“Wesley?” the kid questioned, as the other man emerged from the shadows, now dressed in the outfit he last wore on the roof.

“Yeah. Put the piece down.”

“Where’s Pet?”

“He’s gone home, kid.”

“Like he wanted to in the...?”

“You knew, huh? Good. Yeah, like that. Now it’s just me.”

“And me, right?”

“If you want.”

“What else could I...?”

“It’s different now, kid. We got all of them and there’s something else to work on. You know what?”

“I figure I’ll learn that from you.”

“Where’s your father?”

“My father’s been dead for twenty years. At least that’s what they said.”

“Your mother?”

“She went after him.”

“Who raised you?”

“The State.”

“Okay. From now on, you live here. You handle the cars. Pet taught you, right?”

“Last time I was here he said he taught me all he knew ... and that you’d teach me the rest.”

“The rest of what I know.... And then you...”

“I know.”

“From now on, I’m the outside-man, right? You’re gone—nobody sees you, got it?”

“Yes.”

“You got your stuff?”

“All the weapons are here already, except my carry-piece. All my clothes, too.”

Wesley led the kid to the now-indistinguishable spot on the floor under which the old man lay buried.

“The old man’s there,” he said, pointing.

“Seems like he should have—”

“What? A fucking headstone? A monument? He left his monument on Chrystie Street.”

“I know.”

“Then act like you know.”

The kid turned away without another word. He walked toward the row of waiting cars. “Who fucked up the Ford? It’s too shiny for—”

“Fix it. Fix all of them. You know what to do.”

“You going to do what Pet did?”

“I can’t. I can’t talk to people like that. But for right now I don’t have to.... You know all the systems?”

“Pet showed me last week.”

Wesley faded from the garage, leaving the kid alone.

66/

That same night, Wesley wheeled the Ford down Water Street and onto the FDR toward the Brooklyn Bridge. He met the man with the money from the Mansfield job right in front of City Hall on lower Broadway. The man climbed into the back seat of the Ford and handed twenty-five thousand across to Wesley as the car pulled away.

“You want another job?” the man asked.

“Who, how much time I got, and how much?”

“You hit kids?”

“Same three questions,” Wesley said, flat-voiced. “Answer them or split.”

“It’s not actually a hit—it’s a snatch. You got to—”

“No good.”

“No good? You haven’t even heard —”

“Get lost.”

“Hey! Fuck you, man. I’m not getting out and you’re not blasting me in the middle of fucking Brooklyn either. Now just—”

Wesley pulled a cable under the dash and the back seat of the four-door sedan whipped forward on its greased rails, propelled by twelve 500-pound test-steel springs. The front seat was triple-bolted to reinforced steel beams in the floor—it weighed six hundred pounds. It was exactly like being thrown into a solid steel wall at forty miles per hour.

The man’s entire chest cavity was crushed like an eggshell. Wesley turned and shoved the seat backward with both hands—with the steel springs released from their tension, the seat clicked back into place and the man remained plastered against the plastic slipcover of the front seat. Another quick shove and the dead man was on the floor. Another half-second and he was covered with a black canvas tarp. The whole operation took well under a minute.

Wesley had never turned off the engine. He put the car in gear and moved off. His first thought was to simply drive the car into the garage as it was and let the kid handle the disposal. But then he remembered the kid had to be protected, as Wesley himself had been protected, and he deliberately drove the Ford under the shadows of the Manhattan Bridge. It looked like the kind of car The Man would drive and there was some immediate rustling in the shadows when he pulled in. Too much rustling. Wesley pulled out again and hit the Drive. He rolled along until he came to the Avenue D Projects, and pointed the car down the private path that only the Housing Authority cops were supposed to use. No one challenged the car.

Wesley drove until he saw an unoccupied bench. He stopped the car and got out. Satisfied, he pulled the dead man out and propped him up convincingly on the bench. The man’s head fell down on his crushed chest, but that looked even more like Avenue D after dark was supposed to. He drove out of the Projects without trouble and was back inside the garage in minutes. The kid came out of the shadows with his grease gun—he started to put it down when he saw the Ford.

“Don’t ever put your gun up until you know it’s me ,” Wesley barked at him. “Don’t be looking at the fucking car!”

The kid said nothing.

“It might’ve been seen,” Wesley told him. “I had to use the springs. It’s got to be painted with new plates and maybe some—”