Andrew Vachss: A Bomb Built in Hell

Trentoni looked dazed; then he looked vicious ... and then he laughed so hard the tower guard poked his rifle over the wall, as if the gun could see what was going on and report back to him. The other three men had been silent until Carmine broke up, and then they all joined in. But it was obvious they didn’t know what they were supposed to be laughing at.

Carmine got to his feet—a short, heavily built man of about fifty-five whose once-black hair had turned grey some years ago. He motioned to Wesley to follow him along the Wall, away from the game. He deliberately turned his back on the younger man and walked quickly until he was about a hundred feet away from anyone else.

Wesley followed at a distance; he knew nothing ever happened on the Yard unless there was a cover-crowd or a man went psycho, but he couldn’t understand the laughter either. Carmine wheeled to face Wesley, his mouth ugly with scorn.

“Punk! Filthy, guttersnipe punk! Raised in garbage so it’s only fucking garbage you understand, huh? Yeah, I sent the five packs to that weasel of a clerk, but what I want from you, kid , is nothing! You get that? Carmine Trentoni wants nothing from you and he gave you the five packs for free, no payback. Can your punk mind understand that?”

The vehemence of Trentoni’s speech knocked Wesley back, but his habits had been formed way before that day, so he just asked, “Why?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why: I know why you’re here, which is more than you know, right? I know what happened in the House. I laid those five fucking packs on the clerk because I wanted to. And if you try and pay them back, I’ll rip the veins outta your punk throat ... you got that?”

“Yes.”

Wesley turned and walked to his cell, not looking back. It took him another ten days to learn that Carmine was serving three life sentences, running wild, for three separate gang murders, committed more than twenty years ago. He had stood mute at his trial, refusing to even acknowledge the judge and his own court-appointed attorney. At the sentencing, the judge asked if he had anything to say for himself. Carmine faced the judge with a pleasant smile.

“You can’t kill what I stand for.”

He had never elaborated on that statement, not even to the questioning reporters to whom most prisoners were anxious to talk. He had never appealed the convictions and had ignored parole hearings for which he was later scheduled.

He ran the prison Book, but he wouldn’t shark cigarettes or do anything else for money. The rumors were that he had killed twice more while in prison, but nobody really knew who the killer of the two unrelated victims was. They had been found in their cells, one stabbed and one burned to a crisp—there had been no evidence, no witnesses, no indictment.

15/

Wesley listened until he had heard enough, then he went looking for Carmine. He found him standing in a corner of the Yard, taking bets. Wesley waited until Carmine had finished operating and then walked over. At a silent signal, Carmine’s men stepped off to give him room.

“There’s something I want to say to you.”

Carmine just looked frozen-faced, staring through Wesley to someplace else.

“Thank you for the cigarettes. You’re a real man and I’m sorry for what I thought of you.”

Carmine’s face broke into a huge grin and he slapped Wesley heavily on the biceps. “Okay, okay, that’s good—I was right about you!”

They shook hands. And from that day on, Wesley went every place Carmine did. The first thing Wesley did was quit his job in the machine shop. Carmine had told him:

“What you wanna work in the fucking machine shop for? I’ll tell you. One, you think you’ll learn something useful for when you’re back on the bricks. This is one-hundred-percent wrong, Wes—the only thing you can make in that stinking place is a shank, and you can buy a fine one for ten packs. You think they’ll let you join the fucking union when you get out? Okay, now, number two, you think you going to impress the Parole Board, right? Wrong—you don’t want a fucking parole.”

“ Who don’t want a fucking parole?”

“You don’t, and I’ll tell you why: what you going to do when you get out? You going to work in a gas station, push a garment rack? Gonna wash cars, kiss ass ... what?”

“I’m going to—”

“— steal .”

“Yeah,” Wesley acknowledged. “I guess that’s what I’ll be doing, all right.”

“You know why?” Carmine challenged.

Wesley smiled, but it wasn’t the icy twisting of his lips that he used on guards. He knew the old man was trying to hand out his last will and testament while he was still alive.

“Why, Pop?”

“Pop! You little punk; I could still kick your ass.”

“I know you could, old man.”

And Carmine realized what Wesley had already learned, and smiled too.

“ This is why. Because you a man, a white man, in America, in 1956. And that means you either starve, steal, or kiss ass.”

“Is that only for white men, Carmine?”

“No. That is for any man. I called you a white man because that’s what you are, a white man. But never underestimate any man— humans come in five colors, Wes, and the only color I hate is Blue.”

“For cops?”

“For cops, and for the kind of feeling you get on Christmas, when you know the only motherfucking way your kid’s going to get presents is if you go out and hit some citizen in the head.”

“So why don’t I want a parole?”

“Because you gonna steal, kid—and you don’t need no faggot parole officer sticking his nose into your face every time you breathe. Come out clean and then do what you have to do.”

“It’s a lot more time that way.”

“So what? People like us do nothing but time. On the street, in the joint ... it’s all the same. Either place, you can think, you can learn....”

“Like I am now?”

“Yeah, like you are now.”

16/

Another year passed—a year of Carmine sharing his income, his stash, his smokes, and his experience. Wesley paid the closest attention, especially to what seemed like the contradictions.

He saw the old man smile serenely at the shank-riddled body of what had been a human being carried from the cell block to the prison morgue. “Now that’s a nice way for a rat to check out of this hotel.”

But when Carmine told Wesley that his mother must have been Italian because Wesley for sure had some Italian blood ... and Wesley told him he didn’t know who his mother was, the old man’s eyes filled with tears and he awkwardly put his arm around Wesley’s shoulder. A passing con looked at this like he knew something, but the younger man just wrote the con’s name on the blackboard in his mind and suffered through the embrace without moving.

“You never underestimate,” Carmine told him. “Only buffoons underestimate!”

“What do you mean?”

“That nigger you killed in the House. He never looked in your eyes or he would’ve looked for another girlfriend. He took it easy, and he paid hard, right?”

“Right. Why you call him a nigger?”

“He was a fucking nigger. And Lee is a black man , see? There ain’t no words that fit everyone, except rich people—they’re all fucking swine.”

“Why?”

“Because we want what they got and they don’t want to share. Period. That’s why you went to Korea, right? To fight their fucking wars.”

“Would Lee get hot if he heard you call another guy a nigger?”

“No ... or if he did he wouldn’t show it. A man who shows his anger is a fool and fools don’t live long. Revenge is dessert. First you eat the meal, no matter how fucking bad it tastes. Always, always remember that. My patience is always one second longer than my enemy thinks it is.”