A Bomb Built in Hell

Get everything ready—I’ll be pulling out around ten tomorrow.”

Wesley smoked two packs of cigarettes on the roof, thinking. The News only reported the “heart attack” death of the desk clerk because it was in the same hotel where a half-nude man was found shot to death—a bullet in his chest, one in his eye, and another in the back of his neck. A low-yield explosion had blown out most of the room.

He thought of calling Carmine’s widow to tell her about the fifty thousand in the basement, but decided to tell the kid about it instead.

He spotted a tiny fire out on the Slip—it was getting cold again and the tramps would have to make their usual arrangements. Wesley realized that he wasn’t sleepy. And that he’d never sleep again.

85/

By 10:30 the next morning, everything was ready. The dog sat on its haunches in the corner of the garage. It ran forward and leaped into the truck’s cab when Wesley snapped his fingers. Wesley started the engine; it rumbled menacingly in the sealed garage.

He looked down at the kid, who was looking up.

“How old’re you, kid?”

“Twenty-eight, I think.”

“I don’t want to see you for a lot of years, right?”

“I’ll be here, Wes.”

“You got your own brain, but you’re my blood. All my debts are cancelled—the only reason you out here now is for yourself, right?”

“For all of us.”

“If something fucks up, I’ll get across the Bridge before I let go. You know what to do if they come here?”

“I always knew that.”

Wesley pressed his hand against the window glass, palm out—the kid’s palm flattened against his.

86/

The kid turned and hit the garage button. Wesley released the clutch and the big truck rumbled out onto Water Street. As the truck headed for the Bridge, Wesley spoke to the dog. “Keep your fucking head down. As ugly as you are, they’d see something was wrong for sure.”

The dog sat on the floor of the cab on the other side of the gearshift lever. The thermometer on the dashboard, calibrated in centigrade, read a steady fifty degrees, the speedometer an equally steady forty-five.

Wesley remembered not to take the exact-change lane since he had a truck this time. He paid the Whitestone toll and motored sedately onto 95 North. The big truck moved through New Rochelle without problems. It wasn’t the only rig on North Avenue.

It was almost 11:30 when Wesley turned onto Pinebrook Boulevard. A squad car passed him by without a glance. By 11:45, he was turning into the school parking lot.

Wesley drove the truck right up to the front entrance of the huge building. He got out quickly and threw a series of switches. The carbon monoxide hissed into the giant tank with the nickel bars, a heavy-voltage current shot through all the hardware holding the truck doors closed, priming the system to release the explosive at the same time.

Wesley drew a couple of curious glances, but nobody said a word. He opened the cab of the truck and snapped his fingers for the dog to jump down. Then he pulled two large suitcases and a heavy canvas duffel bag from the cab. He reached back inside and pulled what looked like the choke cable. A tiny, diamond-tipped needle slammed into the plastic distributor cap and five cc’s of sulfuric acid ran into the points; nobody could hope to start the truck now, even with a key. A quick twist on the valve of each tire sent a similar needle slamming home and the tires started to drain—the hiss was audible only if you stood very close.

Wesley shouldered the duffel bag, grabbed a suitcase in each hand, and walked up the flower-bordered concrete to the main door, the dog trotting along behind him as silent as a fish in clear water. Students and teachers looked at him curiously, but the elderly lady didn’t seem surprised when Wesley stopped in front of her. “Pardon me, ma’am. Could you direct me to the auditorium?”

“Certainly, young man. It’s just down the end of this corridor,” she gestured with a ringless left hand. “You’ll see the signs.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Wesley turned and began to walk down the corridor. A teacher who looked like a college kid, with long brownish hair, a red shirt and a silly-authoritative face stopped him. “Can I help you?”

“The auditorium,” Wesley replied. “Gotta go fix the lights.”

The young man looked at Wesley critically, but finally shrugged. “It’s straight ahead,” he said, and went back to his dreams of a marijuana paradise where all men were brothers.

Wesley found the auditorium. It had three doors across the back and an entrance on each side—five in all, too many to cover. The floor plan had been accurate. It was empty. Wesley walked down the center aisle to the front row. He threw his equipment up on the stage and opened the duffel bag. He pulled out a pair of holsters and cartridge belts and strapped them on, sticking an S&W .38 Special with a four-inch barrel in one, the silenced Beretta in the other. He pulled out the grease gun and bolted in the clip. The stopwatch on his wrist told him four minutes had elapsed—ten minutes to go to be safe.

Wesley pushed all the equipment toward the back of the stage and tested the PA system to be sure it was working. He climbed off the stage and started to walk back up the aisle when the young teacher with the long hair came running down the aisle toward him.

“Hey, you! I just called Con Edison and they said there wasn’t any—”