“That crap is only seven percent carbon monoxide—we need pure stuff.”
“I guess seven percent can snuff you all right,” the kid said. “Like when those kids checked out together ... in their car?”
“Yeah, but not quick enough ... and it don’t work in the open air. When we play the right stuff over the pure nickel inside a pressurized tank at exactly fifty degrees centigrade, we get perfect nickel carbonyl, right? That’s one million times as potent as cyanide. It’ll work in open air and it has an effective range of about five miles if there’s no wind. But the explosion’s got to be light—we might blow this stuff all up in the air and the extra heat would screw things up, okay?”
“You want a
“Yeah,” Wesley confirmed. “Can you get this truck to reach it and hold it?”
“Sure. That’s only about one-hundred-and-twenty-two Fahrenheit—I looked it up. These rigs work both ways—they can heat as well as cool ... no problem.”
“Okay,” Wesley said, “here’s the deal. Under pressure, this gas’ll set up in about ten minutes ... enough to fill the big tank after the small tanks of carbon monoxide are emptied. I need the explosive so that when I blast it all open, it’ll mushroom
“How you know it’ll work?”
“We’re going to test it first. In one of the small tanks with just a small piece of the nickel. We’ll stuff it into this,” he said, holding up the pressure tank for the miniature blowtorch. “You’ll be with me on the test. And then that’s all, right?”
The kid was already silently at work and didn’t answer.
82/
Two days later, the experiment was ready. The cab pulled out—Wesley driving, the kid in the back. The kid was dressed in chinos and a blue denim work shirt. He carried a duffel bag over his shoulder. In his pocket was a roll of bills totaling $725. It was 11:15 p.m. when the cab pulled up past the corner of Dyer and 42nd. The kid stepped quickly out of the back seat and walked toward the Roxy Hotel.
The kid looked nervous as he approached the desk clerk, a grey, featureless man of about sixty. The kid pulled a night’s rent from the big roll—the .45 automatic was clumsily stuck into his belt, not completely covered by his tattered jacket. The clerk gave him a key with 405 on it and the kid turned to climb the stairs without a word.
Wesley entered the hotel just as the kid disappeared up the stairs. He wore his night clothing, the soft felt hat firmly on his head. Under the hat was a flat-face gas mask of the latest Army-issue type. It had replaceable charcoal filters which could be inserted in the front opening and could withstand anything but nerve gas for up to thirty-five minutes. It was held on top of Wesley’s head by elastic straps and was invisible from the front. Wesley approached the clerk, whose hand was already snaking toward the telephone.
“Remember me?” Wesley asked.
The clerk didn’t know Wesley’s face, but he knew what those words meant. He whirled for the phone again as Wesley slipped the gas mask into place and pressed the release valve on the miniature blowtorch. The greenish gas shot across the counter and into the clerk’s face. He coughed just once as his face turned a sickly orange. The clerk slumped to the floor, his fingers still clawing for the phone. As he hit the ground, the kid came down the stairs with a gas mask on his face, carrying a Luger with a long tube silencer. He walked deliberately past Wesley, who had already stuffed the now-exhausted gas cylinder into his side pocket and pulled out a pistol of his own.
The kid slipped the gas mask from his face as he climbed into the front seat of the cab—the chauffeur’s cap was on his head, and the flag dropped as Wesley hit the back seat.
The cab shot crosstown, toward the East River. The kid spoke quietly. “I had to waste one of the freaks upstairs—he came into my room with a knife before I could even close the door.”
“You leave the room clean?”
“Perfect—I never got a chance to even sit down. Anyway, the charge in the duffel bag will go off in another few minutes.”
“That clerk was gone before he hit the ground,” Wesley said. “The stuff is perfect.”
“Was he the same one?”
“I don’t know. But he was guilty, alright.”
The cab whispered its way toward the Slip. It was garaged by midnight.
83/
Thursday night, 9:30 p.m. Wesley and the kid were completing the final work on the truck.
“Tomorrow there’ll be a full house. The Friday assembly period’s at 11:30, and there’ll be almost four hundred kids in the joint.”
“Wesley...”
“Yeah?”
“How come you’re taking the gas mask?”
“I’m not going out that way, kid. The gas’s for
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “I guess so. But I’m going to find a couple other places, too ... and fix them.”
“Yeah. And be
