carefully, as he always did. The news carried a small column about the new methadone clinic being opened up on Pike Street. It was directly across from the Projects and only about six blocks away from the factory on Water Street. Wesley felt an overpowering sense of encroachment, as if a stranger had just entered his apartment.
He went back into his newspaper file, thinking it through. The headlines formed a story-sequence on their own: Addicts Overrun Residential Community ... Citizens Up In Arms Over New Methadone Clinic ... Arrests Triple Near New Clinic, Citizens’ Committee Reports ... Community Group Complains of Lowered Property Values ... Vigilantes Threaten to Burn New Methadone Center.
Wesley reflected, deep within himself. Cocaine was going way up in price. Methadone didn’t block reaction to Lady Snow, the way it did with heroin. Freebase was the coming thing. Carmine had told him, hundreds of times, that no government policy was ever an accident, but...
Methadone. A way to register every dope fiend in the country. A way to control habits, supplies, prices ... lives.
Wesley thumbed through the laboriously titled “Methadone Maintenance Treatment Program of the New York City Health Services Administration: Policy and Procedure Manual,” and finally found what he was looking for on page E-1.
Although the Program does not consider detoxification as the ultimate goal which defines “success,” some patients do see this as their own, personal objective....
Wesley had asked the librarian for any official publications on the program, but was bluntly told such information was not public. Three days later, a junkie had met Wesley in front of the Felt Forum and gotten into the Ford.
“I got it, man,” he had said, handing over the manual. “You got the bread?”
“Yeah,” Wesley told him, tucking the bills into the junkie’s shirt pocket. “You want to make another fast hundred?”
“Sure, man. I need—”
“I know. Just hang on now.”
Wesley swung the car into the Eighth Avenue traffic stream and took Eighth all the way to 57th. From there, he went crosstown and got on the upper roadway of the 59th Street Bridge. They crossed the bridge in silence, the junkie unaware they were bracketed by Pet in the cab and the kid in the Fleetwood.
Carmine had told him, “You ever go to a meet with a junkie, you remember two things: One, go with cover; and two,
The junkie was already nodding off the free cap Wesley had laid on him—his tolerance was for heroin, not Thorazine. He was drifting into unconsciousness as Wesley parked on the bridge between Northern Boulevard and Skillman Avenue in Long Island City, overlooking Sunnyside Yard. The Yard was once the world’s biggest railroad center, but it was largely abandoned now. The only business the neighborhood did was the giant Queens Social Services Center—the city’s euphemism for “Welfare”—on the corner.
Wesley hauled the junkie out of the car. He leaned them both against the railing. The street was empty. A cab cruised by slowly—Pet at the wheel. The junkie was barely breathing. Wesley had read about people so relaxed that they didn’t die even when falling from great heights. He slammed the icepick into the back of the junkie’s neck and shoved him over the railing in one smooth motion.
56/
A big red-white-and-blue sign materialized on Water Street, right across from the factory. It proclaimed the area to be part of the TWO BRIDGES RECLAMATION PROJECT. Wesley figured that the only thing “reclaimed” would be the fat man’s part of the federal expenditures, and that nothing would be torn down or built there for years. Plenty of time. But a methadone clinic was another story—too close and too much trouble.
Methadone meant government-inspected dope. It meant sales-and-service. And too many greedy people.
Pet came back later in the day. He told Wesley that the building on Chrystie had been purchased—he and the kid were going to get to work on it right away.
Wesley just nodded, deep in his problems.
57/
The triplex pump was installed without difficulty. It would work to almost unlimited pressures and function for more than sixteen hours straight at top speed. The pump was connected to a simple tubing system with seventy- two tiny outlets in the ceiling. The hydrocyanic acid was easy to obtain. When forced through alcohol it produced a gas much more deadly than the apple-blossom perfume they used to snuff enemies-of-the-state in California.
The interior rapidly took shape: expensive leather lounge chairs, a wet bar against one wall, a huge blackboard directly opposite, indirect lighting, a highly polished hardwood floor, a large air-conditioning unit prominently displayed in the single window.
The marks wouldn’t be remotely suspicious of bars across the windows of any building being renovated in that part of town. The entrance to the room was by a pocket-door. But instead of the usual four-inch penetration, this door went two feet into the frame, activating a series of snaplocks with each six inches it moved.
Wesley and Pet went over the plans dozens of times; revised them again and again; discussed, modified, refined, changed, sharpened, rejected ... always polishing. The kid was going to have to be used for this one, too; there wasn’t any other way and they’d be shorthanded as it was.
“Remember, unless everything goes
“Wes, maybe we’ll never got another chance,” Pet said. “So what if we...?”
“Forget it. There’s a lot more to do now. Stuff I didn’t know about before. This is for Carmine, but there’s a lot left for me and you, after.”
“I don’t get it. I thought we were just going to take them and—”
