Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

81/

The next morning, the Firebird slipped out of the garage and made its way up Water Street and then over to the FDR. Wesley followed the Drive to the 59th Street Bridge and crossed into Queens; he took Northern Boulevard through Long Island City, Woodside, and Jackson Heights, watching the neighborhoods change past his eyes.

He crossed Junction Boulevard and into Corona. By the time he reached 104th Street, it was as much a slum as anything Wesley had seen in Manhattan. A young black man, built like a human fire hydrant with huge tattoos on his arms, crossed in front of Wesley’s windshield. He glanced into the Firebird and caught Wesley’s eye. He’s going to do the same thing as I am , Wesley thought, but the black man’s expression never changed.

Wesley crossed 114th, passed Shea Stadium, and followed the signs to the Whitestone Bridge. As the Firebird climbed over the bridge, Wesley saw LaGuardia Airport on his left. He threw two quarters into the exact-change basket and followed the signs to Route 95 North.

Wesley saw the giant crypt they called Co-Op City on his right and thought about dynamite. It’d take a fucking nuclear attack , he thought. Anyway, it was full of old people, and they couldn’t breed anymore.

Wesley kept driving at a sedate fifty-five until he saw the signs for Exit 8. He turned off then; right to North Avenue and then right again, driving through downtown New Rochelle. Moving aimlessly, guided by something he didn’t understand but still trusted, Wesley drove past Iona College on his right and then turned right on Beechmont. He followed this up a hill surrounded by some lavish houses until he reached a long, narrow body of water.

This was Pinebrook Boulevard and Wesley noted the NO THRU TRUCKING signs near the large 30 m.p.h. warnings. He followed Pinebrook until he reached Weaver Street. A furrier’s truck passed him, doing at least forty-five. He turned left and followed the street to Wilmot Road, then he ran across a pack of long-haired white kids with SCARSDALE ENVIRONMENTAL CORPS lettered on their T-shirts, aimlessly hanging around an open truck with a bunch of earth-working tools in its bed. Wesley saw a light-green Dodge Polara police car, its discreet white lettering tastefully proclaiming its functions and duties. Wesley saw St. Pius X Church just ahead and turned left onto Mamaroneck Road. He drove steadily down this road until he saw a sprawling, ultra-modern structure on his left. He swung the car between the gates and motored slowly toward the entrance. The sign told Wesley all he needed to know: HOPEDALE HIGH SCHOOL.

The kids hanging around the campus hardly glanced at the cheap-shit Firebird. They sat on polished fenders of exotic cars and looked at Wesley briefly. They were creatures from another planet to him. But he didn’t need that excuse....

It took fifty-five minutes to get back into Manhattan and only another twenty to get into the garage. The kid was waiting for him. “I went to your place to see if the dog wanted to go upstairs and run around,” he said. “I couldn’t even get in the door.”

“I know—he’s like me. This time, I’ll take him with me.”

“What do you need?” the kid asked.

“I need a refrigerator truck with some very professional lettering on the sides. I need a dual exhaust system on it and flex-pipe connectors to reach them from the back up into the box.”

“Who’s gonna be in the box?”

“They all are, this time. Now listen to me; there’s a lot more. I need a two-hundred-gallon tank with a high-speed inlet valve, and I need a mushroom of plastic explosive from the roof down ... so everything in the truck explodes toward the ground, not up into the air. I need fifty hundred-pound bars of pure nickel and I need about twenty of those pressure bottles they keep helium in. Now listen: buy this stuff if you can. If you got to steal it, leave anyone you find right there. This is the last time and it’s got to be perfect.”

“I’ll get it all, Wesley.”

“And find out when school opens each day at Hopedale High—it’s a 914 area code—and class hours, if you can. The Westchester Library’ll have a floor plan of the building, too.”

It took the kid almost five weeks to assemble all the equipment. Inside the garage stood a huge white refrigerator truck with PASCAL’S FINEST BEEF FROM ARGENTINA lettered in a flowery, blood-red script. The tank was installed inside. Wesley and the kid screwed off the top, laid it on its side on the floor of the truck, and carefully loaded in the nickel bars.

“With the meat shortage, those assholes won’t think nothing strange about a rich man ordering a lot of beef,” Wesley said. “This is what we do now, we extract the carbon monoxide and fill the tanks, then we—”

“Just from the truck’s exhaust?”

“That crap is only seven percent carbon monoxide—we need pure stuff.”

“I guess seven percent can snuff you all right,” the kid said. “Like when those kids checked out together ... in their car?”

“Yeah, but not quick enough ... and it don’t work in the open air. When we play the right stuff over the pure nickel inside a pressurized tank at exactly fifty degrees centigrade, we get perfect nickel carbonyl, right? That’s one million times as potent as cyanide. It’ll work in open air and it has an effective range of about five miles if there’s no wind. But the explosion’s got to be light—we might blow this stuff all up in the air and the extra heat would screw things up, okay?”

“You want a steady fifty degrees centigrade, right?”

“Yeah,” Wesley confirmed. “Can you get this truck to reach it and hold it?”

“Sure. That’s only about one-hundred-and-twenty-two Fahrenheit—I looked it up. These rigs work both ways—they can heat as well as cool ... no problem.”

“Okay,” Wesley said, “here’s the deal. Under pressure, this gas’ll set up in about ten minutes ... enough to fill the big tank after the small tanks of carbon monoxide are emptied. I need the explosive so that when I blast it all open, it’ll mushroom low . It gets too high, it won’t do the job for us. This is a nice, heavy gas—it should stay low.”

“How you know it’ll work?”

“We’re going to test it first. In one of the small tanks with just a small piece of the nickel. We’ll stuff it into this,” he said, holding up the pressure tank for the miniature blowtorch. “You’ll be with me on the test. And then that’s all, right?”

The kid was already silently at work and didn’t answer.

82/

Two days later, the experiment was ready. The cab pulled out—Wesley driving, the kid in the back. The kid was dressed in chinos and a blue denim work shirt. He carried a duffel bag over his shoulder. In his pocket was a roll of bills totaling $725. It was 11:15 p.m. when the cab pulled up past the corner of Dyer and 42nd. The kid stepped quickly out of the back seat and walked toward the Roxy Hotel.

The kid looked nervous as he approached the desk clerk, a grey, featureless man of about sixty. The kid pulled a night’s rent from the big roll—the .45 automatic was clumsily stuck into his belt, not completely covered by his tattered jacket. The clerk gave him a key with 405 on it and the kid turned to climb the stairs without a word.

Wesley entered the hotel just as the kid disappeared up the stairs. He wore his night clothing, the soft felt hat firmly on his head. Under the hat was a flat-face gas mask of the latest Army-issue type. It had replaceable charcoal filters which could be inserted in the front opening and could withstand anything but nerve gas for up to thirty-five minutes. It was held on top of Wesley’s head by elastic straps and was invisible from the front. Wesley approached the clerk, whose hand was already snaking toward the telephone.