A Bomb Built in Hell (20 page)

It wasn't nearly as simple as he had represented it to the kid. But the kid had to be taught to think a few steps in advance, and this was the best way to teach him. Wesley calculated the cash he and Pet had hidden in various spots throughout the building, in stashes elsewhere in the city, and in various banks and safe-deposit boxes around the country. Wesley could put his hands on almost half a million and never leave the building, but he could hardly bank the whole thing and expect to live on the interest. Even this huge sum of money was nothing compared with what they had actually earned in their profession. Pet routinely discounted all payoffs from employers against the possibility that the money was somehow marked, in serial sequence, or just plain bogus.

The discounters charged 70 percent for brand-new money with sequential serial numbers, all the way down to 20 percent for money that looked, felt, and smelled used. They, in turn, deposited the money with a number of foreign banks—banks of friendly South American governments ran a close second to those in the Caribbean. Pet had laughed out loud once, before reading Wesley a
Times
article about the “unstable” governments in South America:

“Simple-ass
educated
motherfuckers! Listen to this, Wes. The fools talk about
predicting
which countries is stable and which ain't. Now any asshole could tell you
that if he would just ask the discounters. Wherever
they
put their money, you know there ain't going to be no fucking revolution.”

“I thought you said some of them banked in Haiti.”

“So?”

“So how about if that Papa Du takes it all and tells them to go fuck themselves?”

“No way. Why you think America sends troops in there like they do? So many rich motherfuckers got their money in that place, and it's those same rich bastards who bankroll the politicians. They're all criminals.”

“Like us.”

“Wrong. Stealing to eat ain't criminal—stealing to be rich is.”

“I wanted to get rich.”

“So's you wouldn't have to …?”

“Steal. Yeah, okay, old man.”

The money they got in exchange was perfect: old, used, no way to distinguish it or connect it with any job or payoff. “Steam-cleaned,” they called it. Such money always came with a lifetime guarantee—the lifetime of the laundryman.

So the half-million was clean. They could pass it all day, anyplace, without trouble. Pet had made some watertight containers for the cash, and Wesley had memorized the locations. And the bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes all had books, keys, and papers to grease the way if necessary. So they didn't have to kill to eat, to survive, even to live in what would amount to a certain degree of luxury and comfort.

Wesley often thought about foreign countries, but
never with longing. The only piece of land he would risk his life to protect was an ugly old warehouse on Pike Slip.

So why kill Norden … why meet him at all? What could another fifty thousand—forty at best, after the cleaning—what could that mean to either of them now?

But Carmine had built a bomb in hell—a bomb that had somehow learned how to explode and kill without destroying itself. Wesley sat on the roof, thinking:
Is that the only fucking thing I can do now?

Carmine had spent hours examining, probing, destroying Wesley's once-treasured genetic misconceptions:
“The only color I hate is blue.”
And Wesley spent still more hours wrestling with them on his own. What made Carmine hate the men who had perished in their custom-made gas chamber was easy to see. They had left him to die without a cause, without a culture—so the old man forged his own, joining his hatred with Wesley's need.

But what had made the men that Carmine hated? They weren't born like that.

The only common thread in all the humans Wesley had been paid to kill had been their wealth or their threat to those who had wealth. That same thread ran through all the humans Wesley killed intentionally for himself and Carmine and Pet—but it wasn't in every one of the victims. The woman on Sutton Place had died because she was a way to kill others—that she was rich was incidental. The Prince must have had some
serious
money stashed someplace, but he was killed because he was an enemy. The people in the crowd on West 51st
who got bombed by the grenade, the junkies blown up by the booby-trapped bag, whoever was within the fallout range of the building on Chrystie, the methadone clinic, the girl in the massage parlor …

Casualties of war.
Very
fucking casual.

When the jets strafed a village in Korea, they left everybody there on the ground, burning. Women breed children; children grow up to hunt their parents' killers. Blood into the ground, seeding the next wave.

They hit a village way up north once, before Wesley got on the sniper team. When his squad charged the smoking ruins, Wesley was on the point. The lieutenant wasn't shit, a ROTC college kid the whole platoon hated, so Wesley just up and took the point because he wanted to stay alive. The silent backing of the rest was enough to educate even a human with a college degree on that miserable slice of earth.

Wesley crashed through first, but the place was empty. In the next-to-last hut, he heard a baby's cry and he hit the ground elbows first, rifle up and pointed at Oriental-chest level. No more sound. Wesley crawled toward the hut … slowly.

He saw the woman then; she was coming at him with a tiny knife, moving as quickly and quietly as she could. As Wesley rose to his knees, she launched herself at his face. Wesley spun his rifle and slammed it against the side of her head. She went down hard. He ran past her and started toward the next hut. The woman landed on his back, and her knife pricked into his upper shoulder. He rolled with the thrust; the woman went flying over his back, still holding the knife.

Wesley held the rifle at his waist. His eyes met the woman's … and time stopped. He motioned with the barrel for her to split—get into the fucking jungle before he blew her head off. It took her only a second to understand what he meant. The woman moved off, holding the puny knife between herself and Wesley, as though it were a cross to a vampire. But instead of running into the jungle, she backed toward the hut.

Wesley's ears picked up the sound of other soldiers systematically working their way through the burning ruins: shots fired, an occasional scream.

The woman kept backing toward the hut.
Stupid bitch
, he thought. She was going to die or worse if she didn't get into the brush fast. The woman ducked into the hut and came out a second later, holding a naked little male child under her left arm. Her right hand still held the knife. Wesley watched as she faded into the jungle. He was still staring at the spot when the others came up behind him.

On the way back, Wesley forced himself to think about what had happened. He finally realized that the only reason he didn't blow her away at first was because it wasn't consistent with his image of himself to kill a woman. Besides, it was some faraway commander that had talked about wiping them all out. And
he
never went out with the grunts, so fuck him and his orders—
that
was consistent.

But when Wesley saw her face, he had been afraid for just a split second. It wasn't until she came out of the hut that Wesley realized the crazy woman was willing to die to protect the little kid. He remembered her
face and her look. If his mother had looked like that, maybe he wouldn't have been raised by the State. But he had never seen his mother as far as he could recall, so he just didn't know.…

When they kill only the male children, they make one huge motherfucker of a mistake
, he thought.

T
he next morning, Wesley told the kid they weren't even going to meet Norden, much less cancel his ticket or his wife's. He watched the kid's face closely, pleased to see no trace of disappointment … or happiness. It was always bad news when the bomb started to need the target. Then he's just another junkie, needing a different kind of fix—no good to any professional.

But the kid was still puzzled. “So what's the next thing?”

“I don't know, kid. There's a reason why I didn't want to go out with Pet. The methadone clinic was part of it, maybe. And some other stuff, too. It started to come to me just before that hit at the racetrack.”

“What stuff?”

“That sicko, the freak who went around here cutting little kids with a razor—you know who I mean?”

“Yeah. They never caught him, right? He's still out there?”

“He's in the morgue. I hit him on the Slip the night I brought the dog home, a long time before you came.”

“That was the right thing to do. If I was the fucking heat and I came on him, I'd never bring him in.”

“They wouldn't bring
me
in, either, right? And I didn't
hit him for that.
All
dead meat brings flies. To me, he was no different than that methadone clinic.”

“Because?”

“Because what I just told you. Baby-rapers bring the Law—at least the ones with money always do. So he had to go. I thought he was cutting on a kid out there. But after I hit him, it turned out to be the dog.”

“How'd you know where to look for him?”

“I learned in prison. If I was a cop, there'd be a whole lot of sorry motherfuckers out there.”

“How'd you hit him?”

“With the target pistol, at about fifty feet.”

“That don't seem right to me. Like you showing him too much respect, you know? You maybe should of slashed his fucking throat.”

“He's just as dead this way. You think they'd pin a fucking medal on me for taking him out?”

“No, I know they don't do that.”

“They
used
to do it, right? I got a couple of medals in Korea for shit like that … stupid.”

“For giving you the medals?”

“Me, for doing their fucking killing for them.”

“You did Carmine's killing for him.…”

“Carmine made it
my
killing, too. And even if it wasn't, I had to kill them, so I could start doing my own.”

“At the racetrack?”

“No. I
thought
that was it. But, if it was, I'd go on this Norden thing, right? In fact, that's the one thing been on my mind for a long time.”

“Why just that?” the kid asked.

“Meaning …?”

“Why just killing—there's other things.”

“That's all I know how to … Look, you got a woman?”

“No, not right now. I mean, there's a girl I go and see sometimes, but I can't make anything regular out of it.…”

“But you can have one if you want, right? You can talk to them? Talk to all kinds of people out there”—he gestured with a wide sweep of his hand to encompass the city—“right?”

“Just some kind of people, really …”

“What kind?”

“Guys that have been Inside, women on the track … But … I don't know, maybe you're right. I could talk to anybody I wanted, probably.”

“I can't.”

“Can't what?”

“Have a woman, talk to a man outside the life, be around people and not have them know about me … I did it when I went out to see Norden, but that's not because I fit in. To those people, I was just invisible. In Times Square, they all knew.

“And when they don't.… You believe that three punks tried to take me off in a parking lot on the Island?”

“Heeled?”

“No!” Wesley snorted. “Three punks and one little knife between them … and I'm
already
sitting in the car with the engine running.”

“Jesus! They must've been …”

“They just couldn't see, kid,” Wesley explained. “I could walk right up to them and they'd never know. But I couldn't
talk
to them.”

“The women, maybe you could …”

“No. I left that. I left it in prison, or maybe even before.”

“You could get it back.”

“It would cost too much now. And what would I do with it? I know what I have to do, kid. Just not
who
to do it to.”

“I don't know, either,” the kid said.

“Well, you better fucking find out. Carmine sent me to the library to find out
how
to do some things. I guess you'd better start going to find out who.”

“I haven't had a woman since I moved in here.”

“You better stay in touch with that, too, kid. Stay in touch; stay close to it all. After I go, you don't want to be all alone.”

“Wesley …?”

“Carmine and Pet were always together, right? I was alone until I had them. When Carmine checked out, he left Pet behind. And Pet left me behind for you, understand? When I go, you'll be alone. We don't have enough bullets for them all, kid. It was all for fucking nothing unless you can make it happen—I know that now. I had to avenge Carmine. I did that. So how come I'm not dead? Home with him?”

“I don't know, but …”

“Pet wouldn't have gone unless he knew that I was okay to keep on. I can't go, either, not until you are.”

“I'm not ready—you've still got stuff to show me.”

“Show you what? I've taught you just about everything I know about how to kill.”

“But …”

“But there has to be something more, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that's the mystery, kid. The part I don't know about. But I'm going to figure it out before I leave.”

“Politics?” the kid asked.

“Politics? I don't know. I know this: When I was overseas, I learned some things besides killing. Say it takes thirty grains of rice a day to keep a man alive … what happens if you give him forty grains?”

“He's happy?”

“Enough not to kill you, anyway. What happens if you give him twenty grains?”