Wesley stepped into a garage full of commonplace cars. The only exception was a yellow New York City taxicab, complete with overhead lights, numbers, a meter, a medallion, and the “crashproof” bumpers that city cabbies use so well.
An ancient man was lazily polishing one of the cars, a beige El Dorado that looked new. He looked up as Wesley entered. Wesley pointed to a nondescript 1973 Ford with New York plates.
“Ninety minutes.”
“Plates okay?”
“Give me Suffolk County.”
Without another word, the old man slipped a massive hydraulic jack under the front of the Ford and started pumping. He had the front end off the ground and the left wheel off before Wesley closed the door behind him.
2/
Wesley took the back staircase to his basement apartment. It was actually two apartments; the wall between them had been broken through so they formed a single large unit. He twisted the doorknob twice to the left and once to the right, then slipped his key into the lock.
A huge Doberman watched him silently as he entered. Its ears had been completely, amateurishly removed, leaving only holes in the sides of its skull. The big dog moaned softly. It couldn’t bark; the same savage who had cut off its ears when it was a pup had cut out its tongue and damaged its larynx in the process. The Doberman still had perfect hearing, and Wesley didn’t need it to bark.
The dog opened its gaping mouth and Wesley put his hand inside. The dog whined softly, as though remembering the emergency surgery Wesley had performed to stop it from choking on its own blood.
Wesley would have killed the human who carved up the dog anyway; dogs weren’t all that he liked to cut, and a practicing degenerate like that automatically attracted the police, even in this neighborhood.
He had ghosted up behind the target, still squatting obliviously before a tiny fire he had built out on the Slip. Wesley sprawled in the weeds like a used-up wino and quickly screwed the silencer onto a Ruger .22 semi- auto.
The first shot sounded like a soft-wet slap, audible for only about fifty feet. It caught the freak in the back of the skull. Wesley stayed prone and pumped three more bullets into the target’s body, working from the chest area upwards.
He was about to leave when he heard the moaning. He thought it might have been a little kid—the freak’s usual prey—and he was about to fade away when the dog struggled to its feet. Wesley went over then; a dog couldn’t identify him.
Wesley still didn’t know why he had risked someone spotting him as he quickly cleaned the dog’s wounds— protecting his hands against the expected attempts to bite that never came—and carried it back to the old building. It wasn’t playing the percentages to do that. But he hadn’t regretted it since. A man would have to kill the dog to get into Wesley’s place, and the Doberman had proved itself very hard to kill that night on the Slip.
The police-band radio hummed and crackled as Wesley showered and shaved. He carefully covered his moderate-length haircut with Vaseline jelly; anyone searching for a grip there would end up with a handful of grease instead.
Wesley changed into heavy cotton-twill work pants that were slightly too baggy from the waist to the thighs, ankle-length work boots with soft rubber soles, and an off-white sweatshirt with elastic concealed around the waistband. The steel-cased Rolex came off his left wrist, to be replaced by a fancy-faced cheap “aviator” watch. A Marine Corps ring with a red pseudo-ruby stone went on his right hand; a thick gold wedding band encrusted with tiny zircons on his left.
Wesley carefully applied a tattoo decal to his left hand, a tri-color design of an eagle clutching a lightning bolt. The legend “Death Before Dishonor” ran right across the knuckles, facing out. The new tattoo looked too fresh, so Wesley opened a woman’s compact that contained soot collected from the building’s roof. He rubbed some gently onto his hand until he was satisfied.
Next, he took an icepick from a long steel cabinet and carefully replaced the thick wooden handle with a much slimmer one. The new handle had a sandpaper-roughened surface and a passage the exact size of the icepick steel right through its middle. The old steel was anchored to the new handle with a four-inch screw at the top. Wesley applied a drop of Permabond to the screw-threads before tightening the new tool.
Laying the icepick on the countertop, Wesley crossed the room to a brightly lit terrarium which held several tiny frogs. The terrarium was too deep to allow the frogs to jump directly out; still, it was covered with a screen as a precaution. Four of the frogs were the color of strawberries; the others were green-and-gold little jewels.
Wesley slowly reached in with a tropical-fish net and extracted one of the green-and-gold frogs. He placed the little creature on a Teflon surface that was surrounded by wire mesh. After immediately replacing the cover of the terrarium, Wesley gently prodded the tiny frog until clear drops stood out visibly on its bright skin. Holding the frog down with a forked piece of flexible steel, Wesley rolled the tip of the icepick directly across the skin of the squirming frog.
He put the icepick aside, returned the frog to its home, replaced the wire screen across the top, and then dropped the Teflon pan in the steel sink. Holding the icepick in one hand, he immediately poured boiling water over the Teflon surface so that the residue ran into the drain. He knew, from extensive tests, that the minute secretions of the Golden Poison-Arrow Frog were almost instantly fatal. The two men he had tested it on were slated to die anyway and the buyer hadn’t been particular about how they exited. A circlet of cork was placed around the tip of the icepick, which was then inserted into the screwdriver pocket of the work pants. Wesley flexed his leg and saw the outline did not show—he wasn’t surprised.
Wesley walked back into the entranceway where the Doberman now reclined. He didn’t bother to see if the dog had food—it knew how to get food or water by pushing one of the levers under the sink. He checked the closed-circuit TV screen above the door, saw that the hallway was empty, and left. The door locked silently behind him.
3/
6:00 p.m. Wesley went up to the garage. The old man was checking tire pressures on the Ford. Wesley noted
