A Bomb Built in Hell

“I don’t see how it’s the same. If—”

“The Welfare, that’s the thirty grains of rice. You can live off it but you can’t live on it, you understand? And the methadone, to a dope fiend, that’s the thirty grains.”

“Dope fiends don’t vote, Wes.”

“The fuck they don’t—winos vote on election day, right?”

“Yeah, for a bottle of wine.”

“So the dope fiends...”

“I get it.”

“Yeah. So what? Even I can see that.”

“What do you mean, Wesley?”

“That kind of crap just plain hits you in the face. They got to have systems, you know? Like in the joint. Just a few hacks ... and a fucking regiment of cons, right? But nobody ever walks over the Wall.”

“The Man has the guns.”

“Bullshit! He don’t have the guns in the blocks, on the tiers, right? The guards are unarmed, but we let him lay, because we don’t even trust each other. It’s real easy my way—black and white, us against them, period. I did it for Carmine ... but now I don’t know who to do it for. It can’t be for me....”

“Why not? If you risk your life like you do, then...”

“I’m already dead. I’m tired. I don’t want to be here anymore, kid.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“I know. That means you can still be here, you see? It can still be for you.”

74/

Wesley went upstairs and focused on the fourth-floor wall for a long while. Then he went down to the kid’s room in the garage.

“I saw on the news last night that Poppa Doc’s faggot son is coming to this country.”

“From Haiti?” the kid asked.

“Yeah. That fat, greasy nigger is running the show down there his way. I knew a guy in the joint that lived under his old man— he said Poppa Doc was the Devil, straight up.”

“So?”

“I’m going to blow him up.”

“Why? I don’t get it, Wesley. You call him a nigger, right? And all that’s going to be getting anything behind you wasting this cocksucker is another bunch of niggers....”

“Like Carmine said ... that maggot is a nigger, right? An ugly word for a black bastard with a greedy heart and bloody hands. But the others he’s got locked up there, they ain’t niggers, kid— they’re people like us, right? Like you, anyway.”

“You going to hit him for...?”

“I wish it was for me. Maybe it will be for me after it happens. If it works in Haiti...”

“Hit the Boss here?”

“You know, it’s not that hard. I studied assassinations for years. Every day, every way. The reason we don’t hit presidents here too much is that we afraid to die.... In some countries, they do it all the time. Look at the different styles; you’re going to hit a big man here, how you do it?”

“A rifle,” the kid replied. “Like at the bridge.”

“Right. In Latin America, or in the Orient, you take a goddamn machete and you jump right into the bastard’s limo, or up on the stage, or...”

“But you’d never—”

“Get out alive, right?” Wesley interrupted. “But, see, you’re not doing it for no money. You got some people you protecting—your mother and your children and your neighbors and all that, right? It’s worth it ... it fucking must be worth it.”

“It don’t seem to work here—that guy, who shot Wallace...”

“He was a whacko, kid. A stone freak, probably came behind pulling the trigger. He wasn’t a pro. I was that close, I’d have so much lead into him it’d take a fucking crane to get him off the ground.”

“That clown who shot the black preacher, wasn’t he...?”

“That was a fix, kid—just like at the fucking track. Let me tell you what happened, okay? Somebody came to him in the joint, told him he was pulling The Book anyway, didn’t have nothing to lose. So here’s the proposition: he hits the preacher and escapes, he’s ahead and he’s rich. He hits the preacher and they snatch him ... and they agree in front not to total him when they make the capture ... all he gets is another stretch. You can’t do no more than one Life, right? And in that joint, he’s a fucking hero behind hitting that preacher, too.

“Kid, you know how hard it is to hit a man right and walk away from it. You know how long I’ve worked at it. And that’s just here. I wouldn’t drive no fucking registered car to Memphis, hit him with