Free A Bomb Built in Hell by Andrew Vachss

knows the score.”
    â€œGet him over here—I want to see his face.”
    Juan walked toward the front of the cage, smiling at the idea that this petty mobster wanted to see
his
face.Wesley brought the 9mm Beretta out of the hatbox. The silencer made it seem six feet long, but Juan caught two slugs in the chest before he had a chance to wonder about it or make a move.
    â€œAlways take the hard man first—it’s tougher on your guts, but if you take the soft man first, you won’t be fucking alive to feel good behind it,”
Carmine had schooled Wesley, years ago.
    Wesley immediately turned the gun on the other man, who flung his hands into the air. Wesley said, “Open the cashbox!” so the target would relax, and blew away the side of his face as the man bent toward the drawer.
    Wesley put the hatbox down on the floor, clicked the snap-fuse open, and wheeled toward the door. He flipped the sign from “OPEN” to “CLOSED” and set the spring lock behind him as he went out. He was into the back seat of the cab and Pet was smoothly pulling away before Wesley could get the “Eight seconds!” out of his mouth.
    They caught the first light and were headed east when they heard the explosion. Traffic stalled. Everyone tried to figure out where the noise had come from, but a cop, who empathized with any white man’s desire to get the hell out of Harlem before dark, waved them through.
    T hey hit the FDR rolling. The meter showed $4.65 by the time they neared the Slip.
    â€œWhen we going to switch?” Wesley asked.
    â€œWe’re not. Nobody’s following us. I got a car buried on Park and Eighty-eighth and another in Union Square, but we don’t need them now. I’ll pick them up tomorrow. Change the numbers of this one tonight—nothing to it. We don’t want to make problems by getting too cute.”
    The late news had a story about a firebombing in Harlem; the reporter said it looked like a “terrorist act.” The film clips showed the entire front of the pawnshop and the stores on either side completely obliterated. The firemen were still battling the blaze, and it was not known if anyone had been inside at the time of the explosion.
    A full-regalia NYPD spokesman announced that a confidential informant had told them that two men, both Negro, of average height, were seen running from the shop heading west just before the explosion. The police expected arrests to follow.
    â€œWere you the informant?” Wesley asked.
    â€œYou must be kidding, Wes. There’s
always
some righteous asshole who pulls that kind of number. Every job I ever knew about had fifty fucking leads called in that didn’t have nothing to do with what actually went down.”
    â€œDon’t the cops know this?”
    â€œAnd you Carmine’s son! For Chrissakes, kid, don’t you know all they care about is making an arrest? They could give a fuck about who’s really guilty. Didn’t you get bum-beefed when you went down?”
    â€œNo. I did it, all right. I got ratted out by a scumbag clerk in a hotel.”
    â€œDon’t you want to pay him back?”
    â€œSomeday, when it ties in with something else. But I can’t risk what we’re doing just for payback.”
    â€œGood! Where is he?”
    â€œTimes Square.”
    â€œI can fucking guarantee you that sooner or later we’ll get into his territory. I always hated to work down there, though. Those fucking freaks, you never know what they’re going to do.”
    â€œI know what they’re going to do.”
    â€œHow the hell do
you
know?”
    â€œOne of them told me.”
    I t was slightly more than a year later when Wesley asked, “How come they’re paying a hundred K for this guy? What’s so hard about him?”
    â€œHe used to run all the family business in Queens, but they had a sit-down and told him he’s out. He took it the way he