Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

Wesley turned left out of the parking lot, heading for the North Shore. More trouble to kill them than not to. They weren’t about to go to the police. No, they’d lick their wounds, contenting themselves with their punk visions of hot revenge that would never happen. Wesley’s mind flashed back to the clerk in the Roxy Hotel. He banished the thought, concentrating.

70/

The uniformed parking-lot attendant gave him a “Thank you, sir!” and a stamped ticket in exchange for his car keys. Surrendering the keys didn’t make Wesley uncomfortable—he had a second set in his coat pocket. Pet’s book said this wasn’t a membership club. Sure enough, Wesley slid through the huge front door without incident. It was like any other bar. It may have been way upscale, but there must be places to fade into, just like there were in the Hudson River waterfront joints Wesley had grown up in, he thought. The J. Press would hold him unless someone tried to strike up a conversation. The Rolex told him that Norden should have already been there for thirteen minutes, so he went into the large, dimly lit room with the horseshoe-shaped bar looking for a man sitting alone.

There weren’t many. The brunette hostess swayed over to the space Wesley was occupying. She looked like a high-class version of the Times Square hustler, and Wesley tried hard not to catch her eye. She tried just as hard to catch his ... and succeeded. Her smile was bright and professional, and her appraisal of his clothing was so quick as to seem instinctive. Pet had told him that professional speed with a knife has to come from a combination of breeding and practice—he guessed her skill was acquired the same way. She took his order, brought his rye and ginger to him quickly: “Would you like this mixed, sir?”

“No thanks.”

Wesley didn’t pick up any fear-reaction from her at all. He suddenly realized that he must be as foreign to these people as a man from Venus. They weren’t looking for a shark in their swimming pool, so they didn’t see one. Wesley relaxed and smiled and the hostess flashed him a genuine-looking smile in return. That must take a lot of practice , he thought admiringly. He watched her as she glided away, her hips gently swaying, not wiggling like Wesley had expected.

Wesley had the Norden candidates narrowed down to a field of three, but Pet’s written description could have fit any of them. They all looked alike to Wesley anyway. He was about to look for a pay phone when he noticed the hostess bringing a dial phone with a short cord to another patron at the far end of the bar. She smiled and plugged it in somewhere behind the bar. The man immediately picked up the receiver and started talking.

Wesley had left the change from a twenty on the bar. He didn’t want the liquor, but he needed to get the hostess’ attention. So he threw back the rye, hardening his throat ... but it slipped down so smoothly he felt it must have been watered.

The hostess caught his eye before he could raise his hand or his voice. She was in front of him in a flash.

“Could you refill this?” Wesley asked her. “And get me a phone, please?”

“Certainly, sir.”

She was back with both, reduced Wesley’s seventeen dollars down to fourteen, and was gone again, leaving another smile, before Wesley could even crank up his face to respond.

He noted that there was no number on the phone’s dial. Wesley dialed the Sequoia Club direct, and told the professionally nice voice that answered that he would like to have Mr. Norden paged.

“It’ll be just a moment, sir,” the voice told him, and then he heard the mechanism telling him he was on hold. Wesley signaled the hostess. She signaled back “just a minute,” and went out from behind the bar to carry a phone over to a beefy-looking man sitting at a small round table alone in the back.

She bent over further than seemed absolutely necessary to plug in the instrument, but the man was too detached to notice. Wesley watched him pick up the receiver, then he heard “Yes?” in his ear.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Wesley responded.

“Who is this?”

Wesley hung up. He saw Norden speaking into a dead phone for a couple of seconds, then watched as the man gently replaced the receiver. Wesley walked over to Norden’s table—he could get no real sense of the depth of the room and he had to decide between watching the wall behind them or the entrance. He took the second choice and sat down.

Norden looked intently at Wesley: “You’re...?”

“The man on the telephone,” Wesley answered.

“How do I know who you really are?”

“Mr. P. gave me your name and number, you understand?”

“Okay, okay. Look, I don’t want to talk in here.”

“The parking lot?”

“I’ll meet you out there in two minutes.”

“Forget that. We walk out together, or you won’t see me again.”

“I hope you don’t think I would...”

Wesley didn’t answer. He kept both hands flat on top of the little round table, a gesture as incomprehensible to Norden as Wesley’s earlier threat had been. Norden signaled to the hostess, who immediately came over. She gave Wesley an extra-bright smile and took the twenty Norden handed her. She didn’t pretend she was going to make change. Wesley wished he was negotiating with her instead of this weasel.

They hit the outside door, copping a “Goodnight, sir!” to each of them from several different flunkies, and then they were in the lot. When the attendant left with their tickets and Norden’s five-dollar bill (Wesley couldn’t tell if this was for the both of them and paid nothing), Wesley said, “Drive up the road about a half-mile and pull over. I’ll be right behind you and we’ll talk.”

Norden started to answer, and then apparently thought better of it. His white Cadillac Coupe de Ville was easy to follow; Wesley counted 6/10 on his odometer before the Caddy pulled off to the side. It was a wide field that Wesley thought was a farm until he spotted the stone gate, set in about fifty yards from the road. Wesley pulled the Firebird just in front of Norden’s car, then backed up so that the Caddy couldn’t leave first without using reverse.

“Pull up your hood so it looks like I’m helping you with the engine. In case somebody stops,” said Wesley, opening his trunk.

“Who would stop?”

“The cops, right?”

“Not around here, they wouldn’t. Anyway, that’s not important. It’s my wife, she—” Wesley started to say it didn’t matter ... but some almost-dormant instinct told him that this rich man needed to talk or there’d be no contract—“has all the money, really. It used to be alright, but now she’s getting older and crazier and I can’t... Well, look, will you do it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make it look like an accident?”

“No. I’m no mechanic—you’re going to be someplace else at the time. It’ll look like a robbery ... or,” watching his face, “a rape that went wrong ... something.”

“It won’t be painful to her? I wouldn’t want—”

“No pain. She won’t feel a thing. For a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“That’s what it costs for a perfect job. She goes, and I say nothing if I’m caught ... ever.”

“Oh, I know the Code. Mr. Petraglia told me how you all—”

“Then you know how things are,” Wesley cut him off. “Okay. I need half up front in cash, you understand. You know what to do: nothing bigger than fifties, no serial numbers in sequence, no new bills. And don’t fuck with powders or anything; I got the same lights as the feds.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that.... But it’ll be hard to raise that kind of cash without making her suspicious.”