A Bomb Built in Hell

head. Just your hands, if you have to.”

“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 a jobs, you’ll have all the work you want.”

“What’re the rules?”

“You can say ‘yes,’ you can say ‘no’ ... but you can’t say ‘yes’ and then not hit the person they point to. And you say nothing to anyone ... 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.”

“Okay. Now listen, because we don’t got a lot of time. Dayton has a partner; another stupid animal ... but he wants me and he thinks he’s being slick by not moving right on me, okay? His name’s Logan, and he locks in 7-Up. Ice him—and don’t let me even guess how you did it.”

Carmine started talking about the cigarettes bet on the football season and Wesley understood the subject was dropped. He would have to pick it up himself if he wanted to continue the conversation. Ever.

19/

It 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 completely alone.

The only risk was getting into the commissary area without being seen. Wesley took all but four of the Milky Ways. Those he carefully injected with his mixture of strychnine and water, then painstakingly smoothed over the tiny holes the needle left in the dark wrappers.

The next morning, as he walked past Logan—who was on the end of the commissary line—Wesley muttered, “No more fucking Milky Ways for two weeks,” hoping they wouldn’t be all gone by the time Logan got to the front.

They weren’t. About 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 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 all four candy bars before going to sleep. It was too late to pump his stomach and they wouldn’t be doing an autopsy on a live body.

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 hack was in the bathroom, probably moving his lips as he read a porno magazine confiscated from a convict. Wesley pulled the needle-pointed file he’d bought for ten packs from a guy in the machine shop from under his shirt and wrapped the handle in a rag pulled from his belt. Logan never looked up at Wesley’s soundless approach, and only grunted sharply as the spike slammed into the left side of his chest, right up to the hilt. His hands flew up and grabbed the file’s handle.

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

20/

Wesley caught the supper line near the end, picked up his tray, and sat down at his usual place with Carmine. He looked down deliberately 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 and 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-murderous 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.”

“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 of them if anyone else got there first.”

“That’s half-smart, kid. Sometimes, you can be too slick. Now if you’d done every bar in the place, there would’ve been no way for the 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?”