A Bomb Built in Hell

they turned into the Slip. Every streetlight in the neighborhood seemed to be smashed. The old man pressed the horn ring, but no sound came out—the side of a filthy wall seemed to open up and he drove inside almost without slowing down. Another press on the horn ring and the same door closed silently behind them.

“This here is the first floor. We’ll use it like a garage, since it used to be a loading bay. You going to live just below this. The rest of the place is empty and it’s like a damn echo chamber. I got the whole place mined—I’ll show you the schematic before we go upstairs—enough stuff to put this building into orbit. We got a phone in the electrical shack on the roof.”

“What’s an electrical shack? What if someone hears it ring?”

“The shack is where they used to keep the compressors and the generators for the factory before they closed this place. And the phone don’t ring. It flashes when someone’s calling in—I got a light hooked up. I know what I’m doing, Wesley.” The old man sounded mildly hurt.

“I know that. Carmine said you were the best.”

“One of the best is what Carmine would have said, but he didn’t know what was happening out here. The rest are gone and now I am the best.”

Wesley smiled and, after a second, the old man smiled too. They walked down the stairs to the apartment Pet had fixed up for him, Pet showing the security systems to Wesley as they walked. The walls on the lower level were all soundproofed, but Pet still kept his voice supersoft as he talked.

“I’ll have a job for you in a couple of weeks. Now remember, there are a couple of rules in this kind of work: One, you never hit a man in his own home or in front of his children. Two, you never hit a man in a house of worship. Three, you only hit the man himself, nobody else.”

“Whose rules are these?”

“These are the rules of the people who make the rules.”

“Then they can fuck themselves—I’m coming for them, too.”

“I know that. I know what Carmine wanted. I’m just telling you so’s you know how to act in front of them if that ever happens.”

“What you mean, in front of them?”

“You never know, right?”

“I’ll do good work, you understand?”

“Them, too?”

“They’re the real ones, right? Rich people?”

“Yeah, rich people ... very fucking rich people, Wesley.”

“Good. Now show me the rest.”

30/

It took another ninety days for the place to fill up completely to Pet’s satisfaction. The generator he installed would enable the place to run its electrical systems without city power. The freezer held enough for six months, and the old man installed a five-hundred-gallon water tank in the basement and slowly got it filled from outside sources. A gas tank the same size was also added, as was a complete lathe, drill press, and workbench. The chemicals were stored in an airtight, compartmentalized box.

Pet fixed himself a place to live in the garage. There was still enough room for a half-dozen vehicles.

Wesley spent the next few weeks practicing; first, inside the place so he knew every inch, especially how to get in and out, even during the daylight. The old man showed him the tunnel he had begun to construct.

“You can only use this once, Wes. It’ll exit in the vacant lot on the corner of Water Street and the Slip. I’m going to fix it so’s it’s got about two feet of solid ground at its mouth, and plank it up heavy. When you want to split that one time, you hit the depth-charge lever down here in your apartment ... and the tunnel mouth blows in, okay?”

Wesley later expanded his investigations, making ever-widening circles away from the factory, but always returning within twelve hours. Pet got him a perfect set of identification. “You can always get a complete bundle in Times Square. Good stuff, too. But the freaks selling it usually roughed it off some poor bastard, maybe totaled him, and it ain’t worth the trouble. I know this guy who makes the stuff from scratch, on government blanks, too.”

Equipped with paper, Wesley could drive as well as walk. He began to truly appreciate Carmine’s “No Parole” advice.

When Pet came back one day, Wesley asked him about another kind of practice. “I need to work with the pieces. Where can I do it?”

“Right here. I got the fourth floor soundproofed. Anyway, with those silencers I got for you, you could blow the wall away and not have anybody catch wise.”

“What about practicing without the silencers?”

“What you want to do that for? The pieces’ll just make more noise, that’s all. Even the long-range stuff has silencers now—I’ll show you later.”

The old man was right. Wesley fired thousands of rounds, making the most minute adjustments before he was satisfied. No one came, no sirens, nothing.

It was easy to make the adjustments since Pet had the fourth floor all marked off in increments of six inches—ceiling, floors, and walls. Wesley worked out a rough formula: the smaller the caliber, the more accurate the shot had to be. The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug had to be. The closer to the target, the less time you had to get ready. Pet came back late one night, pressed the silent warning system to let Wesley know he was there, and was already making himself a cup of the strong, pasty coffee he especially liked by the time Wesley got to the garage.