Andrew Vachss - A Bomb Built in Hell

11/

Wesley sat in the Tombs for two weeks until his “free” lawyer finally appeared. In what sounded like an instant replay of years ago, the lawyer told him that a guilty plea would get him about ten years behind his record, and all that. Wesley said okay—a trial was out of the question.

On the way back from the brief talk with his lawyer, Wesley was stopped by four black prisoners who blocked his path.

“Hey, pussy! Where you goin’?”

Wesley didn’t answer—he backed quickly against the wall and wished he had his sharpened bedspring with him. He watched the blacks the way he had watched North Koreans. They were in no hurry—guards never came onto the tier anyway.

“Hey, boy, when you lock in tonight, I goin’ to be with you. Ain’t that nice?”

Wesley didn’t move.

“An’ if you don’t go for that, then we all be in with you ... so I don’t want no trouble when I come callin’, hear?”

They all laughed and turned back to their cells. Wesley walked carefully to his own cell and reached for the bedspring under his bunk. It was gone.

Every night the doors to the individual cells were automatically closed by electricity. Wesley just sat and thought about it for a couple of hours until supper was over. He refused the food when the cart came by his cell and watched the runner smile knowingly at him. The smile convinced Wesley it wouldn’t do any good to ask for another shank to replace the one stolen from him.

At 8:30, just before the doors were supposed to close, the four men came back. The biggest one, the talker, came forward with a smile.

“Okay, sweetheart, decision time. Just me, or all of us?”

Wesley looked frightened and defeated—he had been practicing in his scrap of mirror for an hour.

“Just you,” he said, voice shaky.

The other three slapped palms with the biggest one, mumbled something about “seconds,” and ambled off, laughing. They were about fifty feet down the corridor when the cell doors started to slowly close. Wesley knelt down before the big man who unzipped his fly and stepped toward Wesley ... who sprang forward and rammed his head and shoulders into the bigger man’s stomach like a spear. They both slammed backwards into the cell wall, and Wesley whipped his knee up, trying to drive it into the big man’s chest right through his groin. The big man shrieked in pain and slumped and Wesley’s hands were instantly around his throat, thumbs locking the Adam’s apple. Just before the cell doors closed, Wesley stuffed the man’s head into the opening, his hands turning chalk-white with the strain. The three others raced back but were too late; they could only watch as the steel door crushed the big man’s skull as easily as if it were cardboard. Their own screams brought the guards, clubs up and ready.

12/

Wesley spent the night in solitary, with a special watch. The special watch reported that he went to sleep promptly at 10:30, and slept right on through the night.

13/

Wesley’s new lawyer was from the same brotherhood as the others. He ran the usual babble about pleading guilty to a reduced charge, escaping what the PD always called “the heavier penalties permissible under the statutes.”

“This could be Murder One, kid, but I think I can get the DA to—”

“Hold up. How could it be Murder One? I didn’t fucking plan to waste that motherfucker. I was protecting myself, right?”

“The Law says that if you think about killing someone for even a split-second before you do it, you’re guilty of premeditated murder.”

“If I hadn’t killed him, he would have taken me off.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Sure you do.”

Wesley thought it through. He finally concluded that shooting the sergeant in Korea wasn’t premeditated—he didn’t remember thinking about it at all, much less for a whole split-second.

It was too much to work through right away, so Wesley fell back on the one thing he trusted: waiting. He refused to plead guilty, so he sat for another nine months in the Tombs awaiting trial. Finally, the PD came back with an offer to plead guilty to Manslaughter in exchange for a suspended sentence, running concurrent, on the armed robbery. He was promised a ten-year top.

Wesley thought about this. He had a lot of time to think, since he was locked in his cell twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day. They gave the prisoners in the isolation unit showers every two weeks, unless they had a court date, and Wesley always used his half-hour of exercise to watch and see if the dead man’s friends were any more loyal than the Marine’s had been.

He reasoned it out as best as he could. Even if he slid on the homicide, he had robbed the liquor store; he could sit in the Tombs for another couple of years and still pull major time, so he accepted the now-frantic PD’s offer. The thought of going to trial before a jury was making the lawyer lose a lot of sleep.

The judge asked Wesley, “Were any promises made to you, at this time or at any other time, on which you are relying in your plea of guilty to these charges?” When Wesley answered “Yes,” the judge called a recess.

The lawyer patiently explained that statements like Wesley’s couldn’t be allowed to appear on the transcript. When Wesley asked why that was, the lawyer mumbled something about a “clean record.” Wesley didn’t get it, and figured he wasn’t going to.

After a couple of rehearsals, Wesley finally got it straight, said the magic words, and was rewarded with a flat dime in Auburn.

14/

He spent the required thirty days on Fish Row and hit the New Line with about forty-five other men. Without friends on the outside, without money in his commissary account, and without any advanced skills in stealing from other prisoners, Wesley resigned himself to doing some cold time. He computed his possible “good time” and reckoned he could be back on the street in six-plus, if he copped a good job inside prison.

He put his chances at about the same as those of copping a good job on the street.

The job he wanted was in the machine shop. It wasn’t one of the preferred slots, like the bakery, but the inmate clerk still wanted five packs of cigarettes to get Wesley assigned—otherwise it would be license plates. Wesley had several offers to lend him the packs, at the usual three-for-two-per-week, but he passed, knowing he wasn’t ever going to get his hands on anything of value Inside without killing someone.

He returned to the clerk’s office, expecting to get the plate-shop assignment and preparing to keep a perfectly flat face anyway. But the slip the clerk handed him said “Machine Shop” on top.

“How come I got the shop I wanted?” Wesley asked.

“You bitching about it?” the clerk responded.

“Maybe I am—you said it cost five packs.”

“It does cost five packs—your ride is paid for.”

“Who paid?”

“Whadda you care?”

“I got something for the guy who paid,” Wesley said, quiet-voiced. “You want me to give it to you instead?”

“Carmine Trentoni, that’s who paid, wiseass ... now take your beef to him. I got work to do.”

It took Wesley a couple of days to find out who Trentoni was without asking too many questions, and almost another week before he could get close enough to him to speak without raising his voice. Trentoni was on the Yard with three of his crew, quietly playing cards and smoking the expensive cigars that the commissary carried at ridiculous prices. Wesley waited until the hand was finished and came up slowly, his hands open and in front of him.

“Could I speak with you a minute?” he asked.

Trentoni looked up. “Sure, kid, what’s on your mind?”

“This: I’m not a kid. Not your kid, not anybody’s. I killed a man in the House over that. I haven’t got the five packs to pay you back now. If you want to wait for them, okay. If not, you won’t see me again.”