A Bomb Built in Hell (3 page)

Wesley slammed down the hood of the Chevy and got back inside. The Ford's ignition key started the Chevy immediately, and he pulled it off the shoulder and onto the road. As he glanced back in the rearview mirror, he saw the Ford cutting across traffic to the left-hand lane.

He took the BQE to Roosevelt Avenue and turned right, followed it to Skillman and took that street across Queens Boulevard to the upper roadway of the 59th Street Bridge. Then he crossed the bridge and took Second Avenue all the way to the Lower East Side before he slid into the maze of ugly narrow streets near the Slip.

A
s he turned onto Water Street, he pushed the horn ring. No sound came from the horn, but the door of the garage opened quickly and quietly, then closed the same way behind him as soon as he was inside.

The old man stood in the shadows, holding a sawed-off shotgun. As soon as he saw Wesley climb out of the car, he put the gun back into its rack. He was already wiping down the Chevy by the time Wesley closed the basement door behind him.

Wesley walked soundlessly down the back stairs, reflexively checking the security systems as he
approached his apartment. He reflected ruefully on how much all this protection had cost. The lack of obvious luxury depressed him sometimes, triggering thoughts of the ugly chain of inevitability that had set him up in business for himself.

S
eventeen years old and facing a judge for at least the seventh time. Only this time Wesley wasn't a juvenile and couldn't expect another vacation in the upstate sodomy schools. It was the summer of 1952, before heroin was discovered as the governmental solution to gang fighting, and with the Korean War to occupy the attention of the masses.

And it was the same old story—a gang fight, with the broken and bloody losers screaming “assault and robbery” at the top of their punk lungs.

Cops always waited until the fights were over before moving in to pick up the survivors. They arrived with sirens and flashing lights, so that anyone even slightly disposed to physically resist arrest would have more than enough time to get in the wind instead. Wesley had taken a zip-gun slug in the thigh, and couldn't limp off quickly enough.

He was waiting in the sentencing line. The boys had all pleaded guilty; Legal Aid expected nothing less. Wesley was standing next to a stubby black kid who had ended his engagement to a neighborhood girl with a knife. The black kid was in a talkative mood; he'd been this route before, and he wasn't expecting anything but the maximum worst.

“Man, that judge throwin' nickels and dimes like he motherfucking Woolworth's!”

Wesley kept his eyes straight ahead and wondered if there was a way out of the courtroom. But even as his eyes flew around the exits and measured the fat-bellied bailiff, he knew he wouldn't have any place to go but back to the block. Nothing to do there but keep building a sin for himself, as he had been doing ever since he could remember. The State's “training schools” hadn't trained him to do anything but time. Prison was as inevitable in his future as college was for three other defendants he saw waiting: well-dressed young men, accompanied by parents, friends, and lawyers, who were awaiting disposition on a burglary charge. They'd cop probation or a suspended sentence. Wesley wondered why his gang always fought people just like themselves, when it was really privileged weasels like those kids that they all hated.

The Legal Aid lawyer ran over, his chump face all lit up with excitement.
Probably worked a great deal for me to make license plates for twenty years
, thought Wesley, who'd been “represented” by the same firm since he was a little kid. The lawyer grabbed him by the sleeve and motioned him to step over to the side.

“Would you like to beat this rap completely?”

“I already pleaded guilty, man.”

“I know that, I know that … but the judge is going to throw a Suspended at anyone over seventeen who agrees to join the Army. And you turned seventeen yesterday. So what do you say?”

“How many years would I have to be in the Army?”

“Four years, but—”

“How much time will I cop with this beef?” Wesley interrupted.

“With your record, even with this being your first adult felony, I'd say five to fifteen.”

“Sign me up,” Wesley told him.

A
nd it went just like that. While the judge was making a fat-cat's stupid speech about the opportunity to serve your country, Wesley was wondering if the Army gave you time off for good behavior. His next stop was a recruiting booth, where they finally removed the handcuffs.

Basic training was at Camp Gordon. Wesley didn't like the heat in Georgia, and he didn't like the loudmouth sergeant, and he didn't like the gung-ho clowns. But it wasn't prison. When his unit got transferred to Fort Bragg for infantry training, conditions didn't improve. But Wesley was already trained to do his own time, and he didn't have anyone to complain to anyway.

He qualified Expert with the M1, the only non-hillbilly to do so. This was immediately noted and praised by the New York contingent, which had already clashed with the Southerners. But the city-breds were too used to fighting each other to mount any kind of sustained drive against a common enemy. So tension was generally discharged in beery brawls, with no one seriously injured.

Wesley stayed away from all that, and hoped like hell he wouldn't get shipped to Korea.

C
amp Jackson was right on the northern border, and the scene of many of the war's worst battles. Wesley was assigned there and attached to a special hunter-killer squad. Because he rarely spoke, he was considered stupid and therefore, according to Army standards, highly reliable. He became the team's sniper—again, the only city kid to be so assigned.

The one thing Wesley paid any attention to was his sergeant telling his squad that every time they went out on patrol, the zips were the only thing keeping him from coming back.

The sergeant was a lifer and respected by everyone for his ability to make an excellent living in a lousy situation. But the sergeant didn't realize what a good listener Wesley was, or how concretely he thought.

During a heavy firefight near Quon Ti-Tyen, Wesley's squad was exposed. They all realized they were going down the tubes unless they retreated, and fast. The ROTC lieutenant had already fallen, leaving their sergeant in command. But the sergeant wasn't even thinking about retreat. He kept screaming at his men to advance.

It took Wesley only a piece of a second to realize that it was the
sergeant
who was keeping him from returning to the safety of the base. He pumped four rounds from his M1 into the lifer's back and neck with the same lack of passion that had always produced the best results from his sniper's roost.

Nobody saw the sergeant fall—his was just another body in a whole mess of bodies. Wesley shouted
“Retreat!”
at the top of his lungs. Because he was the
last man to pull out, he was later awarded a Bronze Star from his grateful government.

T
wo months later, Wesley was hit in the leg with a ball bearing from the land mine that had wiped out the three men just ahead of him. Sent down to South Korea for surgery, he made a complete recovery—just in time to take advantage of an R&R in Japan.

Wesley stayed away from the Japanese whores. He couldn't understand how they could feel anything but hate for American soldiers, and he knew what he would do if their positions had been reversed. The crap games didn't interest him, either; gambling never had.

He was sitting quietly in an enlisted men's bar when four drunken Marines came in and started to tear up the place. Wesley slid toward the door. He was trying to get out when he was grabbed by one of the Marines and belted in the mouth. The Marine saw Wesley falling to the floor, and turned his attention back to the general brawl. He never knew Wesley had come off the floor as fast as he went down.

And smashed a glass ashtray into the back of the Marine's neck.

At the court-martial, Wesley couldn't explain how the ashtray had gotten into his hand or why he had reacted so violently to such a minor assault.

T
he verdict was an Undesirable discharge. But, in consideration of his excellent combat record and that
Bronze Star, Wesley was separated from the service without stockade time added on. Before he was shipped out, Wesley had the chance to visit the Marine in the hospital.

Even paralyzed from the neck down, he caught Wesley's eye across the room. The Marine was lying faceup on a special bed, with tubes running out of his lower body into various bottles and machines. Wesley walked up close until he was sure the Marine could see him. They were alone in the semi-private room; the Marine's roommate was getting physical therapy in the pool.

“You know who I am?” Wesley asked, not sure yet.

“Yeah, I know who you are—you're the man I'm going to kill.”

“You? You're a cripple.”

“Oh, it won't be me, punk. But I'm a Marine, remember? We back each other up, all the way. And once I tell them who—”

Wesley grabbed the pillow from the next bed and held it tightly over the Marine's face. It was strange to see a man struggle with only his neck muscles, but it didn't last long. Wesley replaced the pillow, pulled the Marine's lids down over his bulging eyes, and walked quietly out of the hospital, unnoticed.

The Marine was listed as having suffocated in his sleep. His death was recorded as “combat-related.” A medal was awarded posthumously at the ceremony, when he was buried at Arlington with full honors. His family was proud.

S
tateside, Wesley took the Army-issue .45 he had smuggled back from Korea and went for a walk late Saturday
night. He entered the liquor store on Tenth Avenue off 21st Street and showed the clerk the piece. The clerk knew the routine. He emptied the cash register even as he was kicking the silent alarm into action, but Wesley was out the door with the money before the police arrived.

He found a hotel on 42nd Street near Eighth and checked in with his military duffel, the pistol, and $725 from the holdup. A few hours later, the room's door burst open. Wesley grabbed for his pistol, but the shot that blasted the pillow out from under his face froze him.

On the way out of the hotel, Wesley looked at the desk clerk very carefully. The clerk was used to this; as a professional rat, he was also used to threats of vengeance from everyone who walked past him in handcuffs.

But Wesley didn't say anything at all.

T
he night-court judge set bail at ten thousand dollars, and asked if he had the money for a bondsman. Wesley said, “I've got around seven hundred dollars,” and the arresting officer called him a smart punk and twisted the handcuffs hard behind his back.

W
esley 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, because the prior felony now counted since he hadn't completed his “commitment” to the military.

Wesley just nodded—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, keep you company. 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 sharpened 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. That smile convinced Wesley it wouldn't do any good to try and bargain for another shank to replace the one stolen from him.

At eight-thirty, 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 hours.

“Just you,” he said, in a shaky voice.

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. The would-be jockey unzipped his fly and stepped toward Wesley … who sprang forward and rammed his head and shoulders like a spear into the bigger man's stomach.

They both slammed backward into the cell wall, and Wesley whipped his knee up, trying to drive it right through the other man's groin into his chest.

The big man shrieked in pain, and slumped forward. 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.

W
esley spent the night in solitary. The special watch assigned reported that he went to sleep promptly at ten-thirty, and slept right on through the night.