A Bomb Built in Hell

make change. Wesley wished he was negotiating with her instead of this weasel.

They hit the outside door, copping a “Goodnight, sir!” to each of them from several different flunkies, and then they were in the lot. When the attendant left with their tickets and Norden’s five-dollar bill (Wesley couldn’t tell if this was for the both of them and paid nothing), Wesley said, “Drive up the road about a half-mile and pull over. I’ll be right behind you and we’ll talk.”

Norden started to answer, and then apparently thought better of it. His white Cadillac Coupe de Ville was easy to follow; Wesley counted 6/10 on his odometer before the Caddy pulled off to the side. It was a wide field that Wesley thought was a farm until he spotted the stone gate, set in about fifty yards from the road. Wesley pulled the Firebird just in front of Norden’s car, then backed up so that the Caddy couldn’t leave first without using reverse.

“Pull up your hood so it looks like I’m helping you with the engine. In case somebody stops,” said Wesley, opening his trunk.

“Who would stop?”

“The cops, right?”

“Not around here, they wouldn’t. Anyway, that’s not important. It’s my wife, she—” Wesley started to say it didn’t matter ... but some almost-dormant instinct told him that this rich man needed to talk or there’d be no contract—“has all the money, really. It used to be alright, but now she’s getting older and crazier and I can’t... Well, look, will you do it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make it look like an accident?”

“No. I’m no mechanic—you’re going to be someplace else at the time. It’ll look like a robbery ... or,” watching his face, “a rape that went wrong ... something.”

“It won’t be painful to her? I wouldn’t want—”

“No pain. She won’t feel a thing. For a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“That’s what it costs for a perfect job. She goes, and I say nothing if I’m caught ... ever.”

“Oh, I know the Code. Mr. Petraglia told me how you all—”

“Then you know how things are,” Wesley cut him off. “Okay. I need half up front in cash, you understand. You know what to do: nothing bigger than fifties, no serial numbers in sequence, no new bills. And don’t fuck with powders or anything; I got the same lights as the feds.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that.... But it’ll be hard to raise that kind of cash without making her suspicious.”

The woman was no longer “my wife,” Wesley noticed. “So what? She won’t be around long enough to do anything about it.”

“I need a week. Can I meet you right here next Tuesday night?”

“No. Stay by your phone; I’ll call between nine and nine-thirty one night, tell you where to come.”

“But ... well, I guess that’s the way you—”

“I’ll call you then.”

Wesley slipped back into his car and drove off. He thought the whole thing over. Maybe Norden’s car was wired; maybe they were picking up his conversation with a shotgun mike from behind that stone fence; maybe...

But they’d never play that square with him. Wesley knew he’d never die in prison, because he’d never come to trial. He thought about the mark’s “code” and wondered where Pet had gotten the cojones to shovel that much crap. He remembered Carmine telling him about the “code.”

“What fucking ‘code,’ kid? Here in prison? Shit! The ‘code’ that says skinners can’t walk the Yard? You know DeMayo? That miserable slime fucked a four-year-old girl until she died from being ripped open. He walks the Yard and nobody says nothing. Why? Because he carries and he kills. That much for the fucking ‘code’! You know why cons always target baby-rapers? Because they’re usually such sorry bastards—old, sick, weak ... or young and fucked up in the brain, you know? The kind that can’t protect themselves. And this bullshit that the cons fuck them up because they love kids, or ‘cause they got kids of their own’ ... crap! They kill them and they rip them off because they are fucking weak ... that’s the only rule in here. There’s no ‘code.’ There’s no fucking nothing ... except this,” a tightly balled fist, “this,” a flat-edged hand, “this,” the first two fingers rubbed against the thumb in the universal symbol for money. “And you handle it all with this!” tapping his temple.

“What about this?” Wesley asked, smacking his fist against his chest.

“Kid, all the heart does is pump blood,” Carmine told him. “Listen, take this racial shit, right? A nigger can’t walk certain places, right? So how come Lee, he walks where he wants?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because he won’t be fucked with, that’s why. He don’t mind dying. That’s the only thing they respect, kid ... in here and out there.”

“You said a few things with your hands.”

“They’re all the same thing: power. You got it and you don’t use it, it goes away. You do use it, it grows. You don’t have it, you better get some.”

“Who do you get it from?”

“Power in America is money. You can steal money, but you will never be able to join their fucking rich-man’s club. You could steal a billion fucking dollars and not run for senate ... but you could buy a senator, you see?”