A Bomb Built in Hell (6 page)

“Morning, Pop.”

“I got no more time, Wes. Listen to me as good as you ever did, and don't say a word until I'm done. I'm checking out of here. Maybe this morning, maybe tonight …”

“You're not—”

“The fuck'd I just tell you?”
the old man hissed in a whisper. “Shut up and listen: I made out my will, and you're the beneficiary. Sit down with me here against the wall.”

The two men hunkered down against the wall, ignoring the dampness. Wesley went stone-cold quiet, because one sidelong glance told him the old man wasn't going to get up again.

“You got to
remember
all this, Wes—you can't be writing it down. When you wrap up, you go to Cleveland; that's in Ohio. Take the bus in, but fly out, understand? Don't use the big airport going back, the one they call Hopkins. They got a little commuter airport in Cleveland. Like for businessmen, so be sure you got a suit on. Israel, he'll fix you up with that.

“Anyway, if the wheels come off, remember you want Burke Airport. It's right on the lake—just tell any cabbie to take you; they'll know.

“Okay, now, when you get to the bus station in Cleveland, you go to the King Hotel, that's at Fifty-fifth and Central. You make sure you go there between midnight and two in the morning. Tell the desk clerk you got a message for Israel.”

“Like the country?”

“Yeah, like the country—but Israel is a man, a black man. You tell him you're Carmine's son and you're there to pick up what he left. You say that, and Israel, he'll give you the name of someone to hit. And on this one you can't say ‘no,' you understand? You can't say ‘no.' ”

“I won't.”

“Okay. After the hit, Israel is going to give you a package. You take what's in there and go back to New York. You go to Mamma Lucci's—it's a restaurant near the corner of Prince and Sullivan, just north of Houston. You ask to speak to Mr. Petraglia, okay?

“You tell
him
you're Carmine's son, same as you told Israel. You give him the package Israel gave you. Then he'll know who you are for sure. This man, he'll show you a building to buy.”

“How am I going to—?”

“You'll
have
the money. After you buy the building, you fix it up the way it needs to be. Pet's gonna live there, too. He's the last of us, kid, and one of the best. He can do things with cars you wouldn't believe. But he's not going with you on jobs. At least, not too close.”

“But … what if Israel's dead when I get there? Or Mr. Petraglia?”

“You got two years, four months, and eleven days to serve out. They'll both live that long. They been waiting for you—they won't leave before you show.”

“But if—”

“
If
Israel is gone, go back to New York and call my wife at that number I gave you. Tell her Carmine said to get out of the house. Take a
vacation
for a couple of weeks and tell you where she'll leave you the key. Make sure you say ‘vacation.'

“In the basement, the fourth beam from the door holding up the ceiling is hollow in the middle. Cut it down. There's fifty thousand dollars in clean bills there. Take it, and go see Petraglia, tell him what you had to do. But if Israel is in Cleveland, don't call my wife. She has her own money coming, you understand? The basement, that's your case money—it's safer there than anyplace you could find on your own.”

“What's case money?”

“Just
in
case. Get it?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, there's just one more thing. You know why you're going to do all this?”

“I know why, Pop.”

“Who taught you why?”

“You did.”

“That makes you my blood, understand? And my blood's gonna keep on flowing even after they all think they're safe. I'm going out, but you're going to pay back every last one of those traitors for me.”

“I will.”

“I know. I waited years for you to come. Remember I told that judge that they couldn't kill what I stood for? Well, this is perfect revenge. They buried me in hell, all right. But I built a bomb right down here, and it's going to blow their yellow hearts right out of their chests.”

“I'll see you soon, Carmine.”

“I guess you will, son. But make it count for something while you're out there.”

“Pop, was I the best of the lot? Or was it that you couldn't wait any longer?”

“No! You were the one I
wanted
. You are my
son
. I could have waited a hundred more years.…”

Carmine's last words trailed off as he slumped back against the Wall.

Wesley walked away. Even though he was known to be the old man's partner, he was never a suspect. There wasn't a mark on the old man, and the autopsy showed a massive aortic aneurysm. The only thing that confused the doctors was that the burst vessels showed that the old man had been dead for more than an hour
when the guards found him. But medicine is an imperfect science, and prisons don't pay for medical investigations, anyway.

T
he hack strolled down the tier to Wesley's cell, carrying a piece of paper in his hand and a concerned look on his fat face.

“Listen, kid—you want to go to the old man's funeral?”

“Yes, sir, I really would. Could you fix it so that I could?”

“Well, I
might
be able to if we could really talk, you know?”

“No, sir, but I'll talk with you about anything you want to know.”

“Good,” the guard said, walking into Wesley's cell and lowering his voice. “The old bastard left some money stashed, right?”

“I don't know, sir. Did he?”

“That's the way you want to play it, you're out of luck. Let the fucking rats be his pallbearers.”

Wesley just looked blankly at the guard, thinking,
That's what he'll have, anyway
. He kept looking straight ahead until the guard finally left in disgust. Wesley had already checked the law and knew he wouldn't be allowed to attend a funeral—he wasn't a blood relative in any sense recognized by the State.

W
hen he hit the Yard almost three weeks later, a slender Latin guy was running the Book, and Carmine's
stash of cigarette cartons under the loose floorboards in the back of the print shop was all gone.

Wesley passed by the Latino without a glance. He wrote off the cigarettes and the Book. Even the whispers about a man being a pussy if he wouldn't fight for what was rightfully his.

He did the next years like moving through cold, clear Jell-O. He was able to dodge parole twice by infractions of institutional rules. But the last time, when he only had nine months to go on his sentence, he knew that they were going to parole him to keep him under supervision, no matter what he did. He knew a hundred ways to fuck up the parole hearing, but he didn't want the additional surveillance that came with getting a “political” label, and he didn't want the additional time that an assault would add on. So he spent several respectful hours talking with Lee until he learned what the older man knew.

Wesley appeared before the Board unshaven and smoking a cigarette. The Chairman, some kind of reverend, spoke first.

“Is there any reason why we should parole you at this time?”

Wesley broke into sincere and hearty laughter.

“What is so funny?”

“Man, you
got
to parole me—I'm nine months short.”

“That doesn't mean anything to us. We want to know what you've done to rehabilitate yourself.”

“I haven't done one motherfucking thing. But so what? You guys
always
parole a man who's less than a year short—that's the law, right? Besides, I did all this time for nothing. I'm innocent.”

“That's not the law!” the reverend proclaimed self-righteously. “Your case will be reviewed like any other.”

“But the guys in the block said …”

“Oh, so
that's
it. Who're you going to listen to, this Board or a bunch of prisoners?”

“But I thought …”

“Now, we may parole you
anyway
, but you shouldn't listen to—”

“See! I knew you were just kidding me, man.”

“This hearing is concluded. Return to your unit!”

The note from the Board said he was being denied parole due to his “poor institutional adjustment.”

T
hey kicked Wesley loose on a Tuesday. He was among eight men going home that day, but the only one who wasn't being paroled. He noticed one guy already nodding from his morning fix and wondered if the pathetic sucker would find the stuff as easy to score on the street as he had Inside.

The State provided a suit, twenty-five dollars, and transportation to the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan. The factory-reject suit screamed
PRISONER!
as loudly as black and white stripes would have, and Wesley's dead-white face ensured that that impression would register with any cop who bothered to look.

But nobody was looking. Wesley saw at once why Carmine had told him to learn from Lester—the terminal was a swirling river of predators and prey.

He thought about trying to get some fresh clothes,
but he knew Israel wouldn't care what he looked like. And he wasn't going to leave the terminal, anyway.

The Greyhound to Cleveland cost $18.75. Fifteen hours later, Wesley grabbed a cab in Public Square, and he was standing in front of the King Hotel just before midnight. He watched the whores shriek to passing cars for another fifteen minutes before he went inside and walked up to the desk clerk.

“I've got a message for Israel.”

“He not here, man.”

“I'll wait.”

The clerk tried a hard look for a few seconds. Then he dropped his eyes and went out a back door. Ten minutes later, a husky man with a blue-black face and a full beard came down the stairs.

“I'm Israel,” the man said. “Come on up to my room.”

They walked upstairs to Number 407 and went inside. The man motioned Wesley to a chair near the window and pulled a short-barreled pistol from his inside pocket in the same motion. The gun was only vaguely pointed in Wesley's direction, but his eyes were locked into Wesley's face.

“What are you here for?”

“I'm Carmine's son.”

“And …”

“I'm here to pick up what he left.”

“You know what that is?”

“He said Israel would show me.”

“He tell you anything else?”

“That I'd be doing a job of work for you.”

“You know who?”

“No.”

“You care?”

“No.”

“If you're Carmine's son, you must know the only color he hates.”

“A cop.”

“Yeah, a cop. A pig-slob maggot of a motherfucking cop. He—”

“I don't care what he did. You going to get me everything I need?”

“Which is?”

“A place to stay, some correct clothing, a street map of this town, some folding money to get around with, a couple of good pieces, some tools, some information.”

“I can get all that. Shit, I
got
all that already.”

“Okay. Show me where I can sleep.”

“You want me to drive the car?”

“What car?”

“He's a foot patrolman—that's about the only way you'll get a shot at him.”

“I work by myself. I'll think of something.”

I
t took Israel only until the next morning to come up with everything he'd been asked for. Wesley spent an entire day trying to fashion a silencer for the .357 Magnum, and then he decided he couldn't take a chance with a homemade job and unscrewed the tube with regret. He knew you could only silence a revolver but so much anyway.

The pistol was a Colt Python. Wesley dry-fired hundreds of times before he got the hang of making the piece repeat quickly enough. It reminded him of how the Army taught him to use a .45. They made him drop the hammer endlessly with a pencil jammed down the barrel, so the eraser cushioned the firing pin. After a short while, it felt natural.

The target patrolled Central Avenue four-to-mid-nights; his route took him right by the front door of the hotel. Wesley managed to get up on the roof of the tallest building across from the King, but it only took him a few seconds to write that option off. The lighting on the street was lousy. And the cop always walked with a partner—he'd never be able to tell them apart at that distance.

So he went back to Israel and told him he needed two things: a good double-barreled shotgun—a .12 gauge that could handle three-inch shells—and a telephone call.

T
hursday night. Wesley had been waiting in the hotel for four weeks without going outside once. The patrolman and his partner turned off Euclid and started walking up Central toward 55th. Israel came up to Wesley's room and knocked softly.

“They'll be out front in five to ten minutes.”

“Be sure to sound like a real nigger on the phone.”

“Don't worry about a thing, man—I
am
a real nigger.”

Israel picked up the phone and deliberately dialed the police emergency number. When the Central Exchange answered, the operator heard: “Lawd have mercy!
Po-leece! Dem niggahs got dat nice officer an' his friend bleedin' in da street! They gonna kill 'em—they all crazy! You got to … What? Right next to dat Black Muslim place on Superior. Dey gonna … No, ah
cain't
hang on, ah got to …”

Israel rang off just as Wesley passed by his door with the shotgun under a brown raincoat. The gun fit comfortably, now that the barrels had been sawed off down to fourteen inches.

The two officers walked by the front entrance to the hotel, past the winos and the junkies and the hustlers and the whores and the idlers and the vermin. Mr. Murphy, Mr. and Mrs. Badger, and Miss Thing … all waiting on Mr. Green. Business as usual.