A Bomb Built in Hell (17 page)

He was all the way down to eighty-eight when a dull, booming roar rose out of Pike Street and swept across town toward the river in thundering waves. A much larger explosion followed—the sound deeper, resonating at a different harmonic. All the sounds that followed were indistinguishable from the general madness that engulfed every noise within it.

Surviving spectators said that the roof of the building had literally jumped into the air. Then the entire front of the building had simply vanished in smoke. TV programs were interrupted with horror-struck announcers saying there was nothing but rubble where the center had been. Seven different precincts responded to the fire calls. Squad cars stopped all traffic on the street until well past dark.

A roving reporter interviewed a long-haired young man just back from gunner duty on a helicopter in Vietnam; he asked if the young man had ever seen anything like that before. The machine-gunner just shrugged: “Sure. There's more bodies here, that's all.”

The papers were full of estimated body counts, and the FBI was invited to participate in the case by an anguished mayor. In spite of the fire trucks, the ruins smoldered for several days—water pressure was low in the area, because of all the open hydrants. The blast had blown several buildings completely apart and had thrown death-dealing chunks of concrete and steel as far as a hundred yards. One hundred and nine individuals were known dead by the third day of counting, with identification of some not yet complete.

The mayor dismissed persistent rumors that the bombing was the work of some group opposed to a methadone clinic in their neighborhood. “There have been minor incidents elsewhere, but the people of my city know they can always get a redress of their grievances at City Hall.”

The
News
's “Inquiring Photographer” did a street survey on reactions to the explosion. The results were never printed.

At least six political groups anonymously claimed credit for the bombing, calling it everything from “bringing imperialistic war home to the pigs,” to “a manifesto written in dynamite.” None was taken too seriously by anyone but the FBI, which was already counting the increased budget appropriations.

Every columnist had his favorite candidate, although
“terrorists” remained the front-runner. Rumors of a cult surfaced occasionally, but never gained much momentum.

There was a mass funeral for the “methadone victims.” Many of the families of the dead declined the privilege.

Wesley returned to the roof to think.

S
eeing that the old man didn't want to talk, Wesley walked through the garage and into his own area. The Mansfield job was the first they had done strictly for the money. Their employers were fundamentally unchanged despite recent events—regrouped, cautious, but with the same limited ways of carving out their unique monopolies. Because they thought the old man died in the gas attack, Wesley negotiated with them directly.

He had handled the Mansfield negotiations just like Carmine had taught him: No questions, just a price. Half up front, with the rest on completion. The people who ordered his death were the kind of men who routinely substituted their paranoia for proof.

Wesley stripped off all the clothing he had worn on the job and stuffed it into a large paper bag. The jewelry came off, too, to be filed with hundreds of similar articles. The incinerator would later claim all the clothing—part of the cost of doing business.

After a quick shower, Wesley dressed again and headed for the firing range on the fourth floor. He carefully sighted in and calibrated the new M16s Pet had
bought from a warrant officer at Fort Dix. A few missing guns from the overall inventory were automatically charged against the manufacturer, who was, in turn, building the guns so far below the specifications agreed to in the government contract that protesting the slight extra charge was unthinkable.

Wesley was able to obtain all the military ordnance he wanted, and everyone's illusions were preserved … even down to the two boots who thought they were delivering the M16s to a government agent who was going to run a “spot check” to make sure they worked well enough to protect our boys in whatever jungle they would be fighting in that year.

Wesley always disassembled each weapon and rebuilt it to the correct specs, using the manual as a guide. He remembered throwing away his own rifle in Korea when he finally got his hands on a solid, reliable Russian AK-47—nobody in his outfit was carrying Army-issue by then. They all had sidearms, which were supposed to be only for officers. They threw away the cumbersome grenade-launchers (“Lost in combat, sir!”) and even copped the Russian knives when they could loot a body unobserved.

Something about all that had puzzled Wesley, and he finally decided to ask the smartest guy in the outfit about it. Morty was a short, wiry-haired Brooklyn boy who always had his face in a book.

“They want us to win this war, right?”

“This isn't a war, Wes. It's a police action.”

“When the police go into action in my neighborhood, it
is
war.”

“What I mean is, Congress hasn't declared war on the North Koreans,” Morty explained, patiently. “It's the United Nations that's doing this.”

“It's the North Koreans against the South Koreans, right?”

“So …?”

“So why don't we let them settle their own beef?”

“Because of Communism, Wes. The North Koreans are controlled by the Reds, and they want to take over the whole fucking world. If we don't stop them here, we'll have to fight them in America eventually.”

“And we own the South Koreans, right?”

“No. Nobody ‘owns' them. What the South Koreans want is to be free.”

“So why don't they fight?”

“They
do
fight. It's just that—”

“Oh, bullshit, man. They don't do shit but rip us off. They let their women be diseased whores, and they wash the fucking dishes and do the laundry and all.… I mean, why don't they fight us?”

“We're on their side—we're helping them get free.”

“A zip's a zip, right? That's what everyone says—once we start blasting, everything yellow goes down.”

“Yeah. Well, look … why did you ask me if we want to win?”

“If we want to win, why'd they give us such lousy guns?”

“Well, you know the factories. In wartime, speed counts, so they have to—”

“I thought this was a fucking police action.”

“Man, Wes, you get harder and harder to talk to.”

“You know what I think, Morty?”

“What?”

“I think
we're
the bullets, you know?”

W
esley went back to reloading some new cartridge casings. He finished at about 3:00 a.m. and climbed up to the roof. He was dressed in double-knit black jersey pants and shirt. Socks of the same material went almost to the knee. He wore mid-calf leather boots which closed with Velcro fasteners. The boots had been worked for hours with Connolly's Hide Food until they were glove-soft, and the crosscut crepe soles gave superb traction without making a sound. He had on a soft, black felt hat—with the jersey's turtleneck, it made an unbroken line of black to anyone behind him. Dark-gray deerskin gloves hid his hands. The same black paste that football players use to protect their eyes from reflected glare was smeared across both cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.

In the roof's blackness he was just another shadow.

Wesley put the night glasses to his face and dispassionately watched a gang of car-strippers at work under the only remaining streetlight in the area, about two blocks north of Pike Slip. Unlike the junkies, these kids were anxious to avoid contact with the rest of the human race while they were working. They were the same as the birds in the trees in Korea had been—everything was safe as long as you saw them, or heard them going about their business.

The old man worried him. Pet had tried to check out in the gas chamber. They both knew this, and it changed the way they did business. Pet couldn't hit the street at all anymore—Wesley had to rely on the kid.

They were working only for money now. Before they put all of Carmine's old enemies in the gas chamber, Wesley hadn't thought about the future. He was out of prison with a job to do. Nothing but a guided missile. But now he was a missile that hadn't exploded when it had connected with its target. Empty. He had to think about “tomorrow” now, and it was a new experience.

Wesley climbed down the stairs. Before he went back to his own apartment, he checked the garage. The old man had a blank look on his face, polishing the cars for the hundredth time. They gleamed like jewels,
too
bright for work.

T
he next morning, the old man was polishing the Ford as Wesley slipped into the garage. For the first time, the old man hadn't turned when someone entered. Wesley walked up to the Ford and just stared silently until the old man finally turned to face him.

“What?”

“I want to talk to you, Pet. You want to check out of here?”

“Yeah. I wanted to check out when I had to do that Prince motherfucker … and you knew it and you wouldn't let me. And that was good, Wes. The right
thing. But you should have left me in that room there on Chrystie.”

“I know it. I know it now, anyway.”

“I waited for you, for Carmine's son, all those fucking years because I had a
reason
, you know? We'd either get all of them or they'd get us. Or both. All the same, right? That was all there was. All I care about was in that room. I can't even
drive
anymore, you know what I'm saying?”

“I know, Pet. But …”

“There ain't no ‘but' behind this, Wes. If I get spotted now, they'll hit me. And what's worse, they'll fucking know I was involved in that gas job. They'll know there was other people. They'll know, and they'll smell around, and sooner or later …”

“I know.”

“I was going to go out
hard
, you know? Take some of them with me. But there's none of them really left. Except maybe a few new guys we couldn't ever get close to. And the soldiers, the button men, you know how that works. You kill one, they get another.”

“No soldier's going to hit you, Pet.”

“It wouldn't be right. I helped kill the sharks, Wes—I don't want the fucking little minnows to nibble 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 down here.”

“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?”

“I did, Pet.”

“I want to stay here, right?”

“I wasn't thinking about no Potter's Field, old man.”

“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 beloved old leather chair, lit a twisted black cigar, and inhaled deeply. He moved his lips, trying to smile up at Wesley.

Wesley screwed the silencer into the .45 and cocked the piece. He held it dead-level pointed at Pet's forehead.

“Goodbye, 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 pistol 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.

T
he 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 pistol 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?”

“Gone home.”

“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, but there's still 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?”