A Bomb Built in Hell
Andrew Vachss
Author’s Notes
In 1972, I was represented by the John Schaffner Agency, largely on the strength of some short stories I published in minor magazines.* My first full-length effort was, essentially, the journal I kept during my time in the infamous NYC Welfare Department between 1966 and 1969, ending when I left to enter the warzone inside a country calling itself Biafra.** That book was (as was all my work prior to
Victor Chapin, my tireless agent, who never lost faith in me, thought my varied ground-zero experiences (including, by that time, not only the genocidal madness in Africa, but a stint as a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, working as an organizer in Lake County, Indiana, running a center for urban migrants in Chicago, a re-entry joint for ex-cons, and a maximum-security prison for violent youth) would lend themselves perfectly to a “hardboiled” novel of the type that was so successful in the ’50s.
And (again) was unanimously rejected by publishers. They professed to love the writing, but felt the events depicted were considered a “political horror story” and not remotely realistic. The rejection letters make interesting reading today. Included in the “lack of realism” category were such things as Chinese youth gangs and the fall of Haiti. And, of course, the very idea of someone entering a high school with the intent of destroying every living person inside was just too ... ludicrous.
Naturally, the book was also “too” hardboiled, “too” extreme, “too” spare and violent. I heard endlessly about how an anti-hero was acceptable, but Wesley was just “too” much.
Victor, ever-loyal, insisted that there was no dispute about my ability as a writer, but that I needed to add some intimacy to a book everyone called “dry ice.” So ...
Victor read the manuscript and told me I had finally done it ... we were winners. And then he died. Suddenly and unfairly.
Years later, after
Rumors of the original book’s existence were sparked by an excerpt published in the HBJ series
The rumors were true. And how I wish some of the book’s predictions had not proven to be so.
I dedicated
Andrew Vachss
New York
notes:
*One of which was later cannibalized into “Placebo,” which, still later, came to anchor the threeact play, “Replay,” both featured in my first short story collection,
**Neither the country nor the name survived. Nigeria won. And the world has seen the result.
1/
Wesley sat quietly on the roof of the four-story building overlooking the East River near Pike Slip. It was 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in August, about eighty-five degrees and still clear-bright. With his back flat against the storage shack on the roof, he was invisible to anyone looking up from the ground. He knew from observation that neither the tourist helicopter nor the police version ever passed over this area.
In spite of the heat, Wesley wore a soft black felt hat and a dark suit; his hands were covered with dark grey deerskin gloves. The breeze blew the ash away from his cigarette. Aware of his habit of biting viciously into the filters, he carefully placed the ground-out butt into his leather-lined side pocket before he got to his feet and stepped back inside the shack.
A soft green light glowed briefly as he entered. Wesley picked up a silent telephone receiver and held it to his ear. He said nothing. The disembodied voice on the phone said, “Yes,” and a dial tone followed at once. So Mansfield was going to continue his habit: Wednesday night at Yonkers, Thursday afternoon at Aqueduct. It never varied. But he always brought a woman to the Big A, so it would have to be tonight. A woman was another human to worry about, another pair of eyes. It increased the odds and Wesley didn’t gamble.
He walked soundlessly down the steps to the first floor. The building was a hundred years old, but the stairs didn’t creak and the lock on the door was virtually unbreakable. The door itself was lead between two layers of stainless steel, covered with a thin wood veneer.
