A Bomb Built in Hell (5 page)

“
Jews
used to be big criminals?”

“Kid, they was the
worst
. Used to be you couldn't be in crime in New York unless you was Jewish. The Irish
came after them, and then we came after the Irish. And now it's time to bury us, too.”

“Who's next?”

“The blacks, the Latins … who knows? Maybe the fucking Chinese. But it'll all end the same. Greedy, stupid bastards.”

“Then I couldn't …”

“No, kid, there's no place for you. Even if I recommended you, you'd just be a soldier in someone's fucked-up army. But I've been thinking a long time. And before I check out of here, I'll tell you what you
can
do.”

T
he next two years went by unchanged. Carmine ran the Book as he always did—on the square—and his customers were never lured away by promises of bigger payoffs elsewhere. Too often, those bigger payoffs were a shank planted in some sucker's chest. Besides, Carmine was the old, established firm, and prisoners are a conservative lot.

Dayton was trouble from the day he hit the Yard. A tall, over-muscled motorcycle freak, he gorilla'ed off a couple of young kids easily enough. This immediately gave him some highly inflated ideas about prison reality. The older cons just shook their heads and predicted a quick death for him, but Dayton stayed alive through his combination of strength, skill, and stupidity.

But the only part of that combination that grew was stupidity. He bet fifty packs with Carmine on the Yankees in the 1960 Series. He lost. And when he passed
Carmine and Wesley on the Yard the next day, he strolled over to them.

“You looking for your fifty packs, old man?”

“Do I
have
to look for them?”

“Nah. Don't look for them. Because I'll cut your throat first.”

Wesley stayed relaxed—he heard this kind of bullshit threat every day on the Yard, and Carmine could handle the ticket-sellers in his sleep. But before he turned his head away, Dayton leaned over Carmine, whispered, “And just so you know …,” and slapped him viciously across the face.

The next thing Wesley remembered was the hack's club smashing into the back of his head for the third time. He woke up in the hospital. When he opened his eyes, he saw Carmine staring down at him.

“You okay, kid?” the old man asked.

“Yeah. Is he dead?”

“He will be in about an hour.”

“I didn't kill him?”

“No, thank the Devil, you didn't.”

“I will as soon as I get out of here.”

“Be too late then, you stupid punk!”

“What … Why'd you say that, Pop? I did it for you.”

“The
fuck
you did. You did it for you, right? You couldn't stand the profile of being partners with the kind of old man who'd take a slap in the face from a buffoon. So you try to snuff him right on the Yard. Stupid … stupid fucking kid.”

“Listen, Carmine, I—”

“No,
you
listen, Wesley. You
never
lose your temper,
or someday you lose your head. Now, this is only a minor beef you got—fighting on the Yard, no weapons, no sneaking up, and the other guy's not dead. You gonna get thirty days in the Hole behind it and a black tab on your jacket, but so what? If you'd taken him off like you tried to, you never get outta here … never.”

“So what?”

“So what? Don't be a fucking
cafone
, so what! You got a lot to do.”

“What?”

“I'll tell you when you get outta the Hole. And while you're there, be thinking about this: that cocksucker was twice as big as you, but you almost dropped him anyway, because you jumped him in hot anger. If you took him in his sleep with
cold
anger, what you think would have happened?”

T
he thirty days in the box were actually a relaxed time for Wesley. Carmine had books and cigarettes smuggled in by the runners. And the guards transmitted the daily messages. Carmine's notes were always instructions.

Wesley read each note until he was certain he had it memorized, then burned it and flushed it down the lidless toilet.

When he was released, Carmine was waiting for him. The old man's juice had kept his cell unoccupied during his absence.

“What'll I do now?” Wesley asked.

“Right now?”

“When I get out.”

“Damn, kid, didn't you think about nothing else all the time you were down?”

“Yeah, everything you wrote me.”

“Can you do it?”

“Just about.”

“That's not good enough. You got to get it perfect.”

“Why am I learning all this?”

“For your career.”

“Which is?”

“Killing people.”

“Which people?”

“Look, Wes, how many men you already killed?”

“Three, I guess.” Wesley told him about the sergeant and the Marine, all the time wondering how Carmine knew it was more than one.

“How many felony convictions you got?”

“A few, I guess. There's this beef, which was really two, and a couple before when I was a juvenile, and the Army thing … I don't even know.”

“You know what ‘The Bitch' is?”

“No.”

“Habitual Offender. In this state you get three felony
drops and they make you out to be ‘dangerous to society'—it's a guaranteed Life for the third pop. Understand what I'm telling you, Wes? The next time you fall, you fall forever. Whether it's a lousy C-note stickup or a dozen homicides, you get the Book. And killing people pays a lot more than sticking up liquor stores.”

“What about banks?”

“Forget it. You got the fucking cameras taking your picture, you got the fucking
federales
on your case for life, and you got to work with partners.”

“That's no good?”

“How many partners you got?”

“Just you.”

“That's as far as you can go, but I won't ever make the bricks. You'll have a partner again, but make me the last person you ever trust with
all
your business. You gonna meet all kinds of people, but don't ever let anyone see your heart or your head. Just your hands, and only if they make you do it.”

“How do I do this?”

“I'll give you the names to get started: who to contact, how to do it without getting into a cross. After a couple of jobs, you'll have all the work you want.”

“What're the rules?”

“You can say ‘yes' and you can say ‘no.' But—you say ‘yes,' you got to get it done, whatever it costs. And if you fall, you say nothing … no matter what. That's all.”

“What else, Pop?”

“Cold: you got to be cold right on through. And you got to show me you
are
that cold before we go any further with this.”

“I am. I am right now.”

“Yeah? Okay, then. Listen, because we don't got a lot of time. Dayton's already been done, but he had a partner. Another stupid animal. He wants me, and he thinks he's being slick by waiting for a shot, okay? His name's Logan, and he locks in Seven-Up. Ice him—and don't let me even
guess
how you did it.”

Carmine started talking about the football-season betting, telling Wesley that the subject was dropped. And that he'd have to pick it up himself if he wanted to continue the conversation. Ever.

I
t took Wesley five weeks to learn that Logan was a Milky Way freak. Another three to get the hypodermic needle and syringe from the prison hospital. Two weeks more to steal a pinch of rat poison from the maintenance crew.

Just buying would have been quicker—all of those items were for sale Inside—but he understood Carmine expected him to act without leaving a trail. The only way to get that done was to act completely alone.

The real risk was getting into the commissary area without being seen, and pure patience solved that problem. Wesley took all but four of the Milky Ways. He carefully injected what he left behind with a mixture of strychnine and water, then painstakingly smoothed over the tiny holes the needle left in the dark wrappers.

The next morning, as he turned away from the commissary window, Wesley walked past Logan, who was
only a couple of men behind him. Wesley muttered, “No more fucking Milky Ways for two weeks.”

At 4:05 a.m., the whole tier woke up to Logan's screaming. By the time the hacks got there with the inmate nurse, he was already turning blue. They rushed him off to the hospital on a stretcher.

Logan held on through the night and even rallied slightly the next day. The poisoning had not been discovered, because the greedy sucker had eaten his entire supply before going to sleep. It was too late to pump his stomach. And they wouldn't waste State money on an autopsy.

Wesley walked by the hospital a dozen times that day, but it was never empty enough. Just before supper line, he slipped inside and saw that the guard was in the bathroom, probably moving his lips as he read a porno magazine piously confiscated from a convict. Wesley pulled the crude, needle-pointed file from under his shirt and wrapped the handle in a rag pulled from his belt. Logan never looked up at Wesley's soundless approach. He grunted as the spike slammed into the left side of his chest, right up to the hilt. Reflexively, his hands grabbed at the file's handle.

One look told Wesley that Logan was gone. With his own fingerprints all over the murder weapon.

W
esley caught the supper line near the end, picked up his tray, and sat down at his usual place with Carmine. He deliberately looked down into the pseudo-chicken and mashed potatoes until Carmine followed his gaze.
Wesley drew an “X” across the top of the mashed potatoes with his fork. The old man grunted in acknowledgment.

The word was down the grapevine by the time they returned to the block for lockup after supper. The rec room buzzed with the news, but that was soon replaced by an almost homicidal argument over which TV show to watch. Wesley and Carmine faded back toward the rear of the large room.

“You crazy fuck. Why'd you stick him?”

“He was going to get better.”

“Clean?”

“
His
prints are the only ones they'll find.”

“Why'd you only fix a couple of the bars?”

“Didn't want anybody else to get it. He was at the end of the line. I knew he'd buy up all four left if anyone else got there first.”

“That's half smart, kid. Sometimes, you can be
too
slick. If you'd done every bar in the place, you wouldn't need to steal any. And there would've been no way for that fucking swine to get off the hook.”

“Sure, but if more than one guy went, they'd do a big investigation, right?”

“So what? What do they find? Nothing about you. And why'd you give him such a light dose that he could get up behind it?”

“I didn't know how much to use.”

“Then you shouldn't have used that stuff at all.”

“It was all I had.”

“No, Wes—you had the library.”

“The
library
?”

“There's a lot of things in books they never meant us to know, you understand me?”

“Like what you said about the history books—that the winners write the stories after they win the wars?”

“Not just that—I'm talking about facts. Like how you make a bomb, what's inside of a poison, how you fix guns, how much money a politician makes, what the fucking laws say …”

“There's things you can't learn from books.”

“Sure. Now you talking like a real chump. What ‘things'?
You
learning these things, kid?”

“In here? Sure.”

“You ever listen to Lester when he talks?”

“That fucking skinner. Who'd listen to that disgusting little piece of shit?”

“You would, if you had any sense. You think you'll never be tracking a man in Times Square? You think people like Lester ain't all over the place there? If you going to run in the jungle, you'd better know
all
the animals.”

“How come you don't study him, then?”

“I
have
studied him, Wes. But I don't get too close, because I have to live in here the rest of my life. I can't let anyone think I'm changing my game after all these years. That's what gives them ideas. But if I was going out, I wouldn't just be studying Lester, I'd be studying every freak, every maniac, every sick-ass in this joint, until I knew exactly what makes them run. And I'd use it on the street. Why you think the shrinks are always studying Lester? Anything the big bosses want to know, you got to figure is worth knowing, too, right?”

“How do I make him talk?”

“You don't need to
make
him talk. Just forget your fucking image and listen—he'll do all the talking you'll ever want.”

“What about Logan?”

“Who's that?”

A
nother long year passed. Wesley divided his time between the library, the cellblocks, and the Yard. Always listening and learning. Part of that was learning to say nothing, except when forced.

But he spent as much time as possible with Carmine, because the old man was obviously hanging on by a fine thread, even if his reputation kept anyone from sawing at it.

One dirty, gray morning, the Yard was nearly empty. Carmine had told Wesley to meet him at their spot by eight-thirty. Wesley had arrived early, and stood motionless in the shadows, as he had been taught. Finally, he recognized the old man's bulk as it rounded the corner.