A Bomb Built in Hell

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Andrew Vachss has written more than a dozen crime-fiction novels and two collections of short

stories, earning him such diverse honors as “Lord of the Asphalt Jungle” [Washington Post],

“contemporary master” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], “Zen warrior with a pen” [Austin

Chronicle], “the voice of righteousness confronting a powerful and cowardly evil” [James

Ellroy], and “as much Dickens and Defoe as Hammett and Chandler” [Martha Grimes]. He

began writing fiction to “reach a bigger jury than I could ever hope to find in a courthouse,”

where he works as a lawyer representing children. More information about Andrew Vachss and

his work can be found on The Zero, at www.vachss.com.

A Bomb Built in Hell

Andrew Vachss

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Printed in the United States of America. No part of

this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information

and permissions please contact Ten Angry Pitbulls, 1701 Broadway, Suite #350, Vancouver, WA

98663-3436. Phone and fax: 1.360.859.4506.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of

the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or

deceased, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Bomb Built in Hell

ANDREW VACHSS • A BOMB BUILT IN HELL

Wesley sat quietly on the roof of the four-story building overlooking the East River near

Pike Slip. It was 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in August, about eighty-five degrees and still

clear-bright. With his back flat against the storage shack on the roof, he was invisible to anyone

looking up from the ground. He knew from observation that neither the tourist helicopter nor the

police version ever passed over this area.

In spite of the heat, Wesley wore a soft black felt hat and a dark suit; his hands were

covered with dark grey deerskin gloves. The breeze blew the ash away from his cigarette. Aware

of his habit of biting viciously into the filters, he carefully placed the ground-out butt into his

leather-lined side pocket before he got to his feet and stepped back inside the shack.

A soft green light glowed briefly as he entered. Wesley picked up a silent telephone receiver

and held it to his ear. He said nothing. The disembodied voice on the phone said, “Yes,” and a

dial tone followed at once. So Mansfield was going to continue his habit: Wednesday night at

Yonkers, Thursday afternoon at Aqueduct. It never varied. But he always brought a woman to

the Big A, so it would have to be tonight. A woman was another human to worry about, another

pair of eyes. It increased the odds and Wesley didn’t gamble.

He walked soundlessly down the steps to the first floor. The building was a hundred years

ANDREW VACHSS • A BOMB BUILT IN HELL

old, but the stairs didn’t creak and the lock on the door was virtually unbreakable. The door itself

was lead between two layers of stainless steel, covered with a thin wood veneer.

Wesley stepped into a garage full of commonplace cars. The only exception was a yellow

New York City taxicab, complete with overhead lights, numbers, a meter, a medallion, and the

“crash proof” bumpers that city cabbies use so well.

An ancient man was lazily polishing one of the cars, a beige El Dorado that looked new. He

looked up as Wesley entered. Wesley pointed to a nondescript 1973 Ford with New York plates.

“Ninety minutes.”

“Plates okay?”

“Give me Suffolk County.”

Without another word, the old man slipped a massive hydraulic jack under the front of the

Ford and started pumping. He had the front end off the ground and the left wheel off before

Wesley closed the door behind him.

Wesley took the back staircase to his basement apartment. It was actually two apartments;

ANDREW VACHSS • A BOMB BUILT IN HELL

the wall between them had been broken through so they formed a single large unit. He twisted

the doorknob twice to the left and once to the right, then slipped his key into the lock.

A huge Doberman watched him silently as he entered. Its ears had been completely,

amateurishly, removed, leaving only holes in the sides of its skull. The big dog moaned softly. It

couldn’t bark; the same savage who had cut off its ears when it was a pup had cut out its tongue

and damaged its larynx in the process. The Doberman still had perfect hearing, and Wesley

didn’t need it to bark.

The dog opened its gaping mouth and Wesley put his hand inside. The dog whined softly, as

though remembering the emergency surgery Wesley had performed to stop it from choking on its

own blood.

Wesley would have killed the human who carved up the dog anyway; dogs weren’t all that

he liked to cut, and a practicing degenerate like that automatically attracted the police, even in

this neighborhood.

He had ghosted up behind the target, still squatting obliviously before a tiny fire he had

built out on the Slip. Wesley sprawled in the weeds like a used-up wino and quickly screwed the

silencer onto a Ruger .22 semi-auto.

The first shot sounded like a softwet slap, audible for only about fifty feet. It caught the

ANDREW VACHSS • A BOMB BUILT IN HELL

freak in the back of the skull. Wesley stayed prone and pumped three more bullets into the

target’s body, working from the chest area upwards.

He was about to leave when he heard the moaning. He thought it might have been a little

kid—the freak’s usual prey—and he was about to fade away when the dog struggled to its feet.

Wesley went over then; a dog couldn’t identify him.

Wesley still didn’t know why he had risked someone spotting him as he quickly cleaned the

dog’s wounds—protecting his hands against the expected attempts to bite that never came—and

carried it back to the old building. It wasn’t playing the percentages to do that. But he hadn’t

regretted it since. A man would have to kill the dog to get into Wesley’s place, and the

Doberman had proved itself very hard to kill that night on the Slip.

The police-band radio hummed and crackled as Wesley showered and shaved. He carefully

covered his moderate-length haircut with Vaseline jelly; anyone searching for a grip there would

end up with a handful of grease instead.

Wesley changed into heavy cotton-twill work pants that were slightly too baggy from the

waist to the thighs, ankle-length work boots with soft rubber soles, and an off-white sweatshirt

with elastic concealed around the waistband. The steel-cased Rolex came off his left wrist, to be

replaced by a fancy-faced cheap “aviator” watch. A Marine Corps ring with a red pseudo-ruby

ANDREW VACHSS • A BOMB BUILT IN HELL

stone went on his right hand; a thick gold wedding band encrusted with tiny zircons on his left.

Wesley carefully applied a tattoo decal to his left hand, a tri-color design of an eagle

clutching a lightning bolt. The legend “Death Before Dishonor” ran right across the knuckles,

facing out. The new tattoo looked too fresh, so Wesley opened a woman’s compact that

contained soot collected from the building’s roof. He rubbed some gently onto his hand until he

was satisfied.

Next, he took an ice pick from a long steel cabinet and carefully replaced the thick wooden

handle with a much slimmer one. The new handle had a sandpaper-roughened surface and a

passage the exact size of the ice pick steel right through its middle. The old steel was anchored to

the new handle with a four-inch screw at the top. Wesley applied a drop of Permabond to the

screw-threads before tightening the new tool.

Laying the ice pick on the countertop, Wesley crossed the room to a brightly-lit terrarium

which held several tiny frogs. The terrarium was too deep to allow the frogs to jump directly out;

still, it was covered with a screen as a precaution. Four of the frogs were the color of

strawberries; the others were green-and-gold little jewels.

Wesley slowly reached in with a tropical-fish net and extracted one of the green-and-gold

frogs. He placed the little creature on a Teflon surface that was surrounded by wire mesh. After

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摘要：

ABombBuiltinHellAndrewVachsshaswrittenmorethanadozencrime-fictionnovelsandtwocollectionsofshortstories,earninghimsuchdiversehonorsas“LordoftheAsphaltJungle”[WashingtonPost],“contemporarymaster”[AtlantaJournal-Constitution],“Zenwarriorwithapen”[AustinChronicle],“thevoiceofrighteousnessconfrontingapow...

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