Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “Sure,” the watcher said. “I always carry it, just like you said, Sherman.”

  “You got anything in there about a different Merc? A newer one; a ’58, two-tone blue?”

  “No, sir,” Holden said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure I am, Sherman,” Holden said, in an injured tone. “You know I never forget a car once I see it.”

  “I know,” Sherman said, reassuringly. “But even the best detectives, they write things down. To keep a record, like I explained to you.”

  “Sure, Sherman. I know. Here,” he said, “look through it yourself.”

  “That’s all right,” the cop said, waving away the offer. He knew Holden’s compulsive watching imprinted itself on the damaged man’s brain—the notebook was just to make things “official.”

  “Most of them, I know them, right away,” Holden said. “They come back, over and over. But you have to watch close. Some of them, they bring different people in them sometimes.”

  “Is that right?” Sherman said, absently. He understood that Holden believed the cars to be independent creatures, visiting the Lovers’ Lane of their own volition, carrying random cargo.

  “Tonight, we had a ’56 Buick Century—you can tell by the extra porthole; ’57 Olds 98—they’re a little longer in the back than the 88; ’54 Ford, ’53 Studebaker, the Starliner; you can always . . .”

  Sherman Layne stood in the night, oddly soothed by the sounds of Holden’s litany. Anyone who parks where Holden patrols, they might as well be signing a hotel register, he thought, proudly.

  “. . . a beautiful ’55 Chevy, a Bel Air hardtop,” Holden went on. “I almost didn’t recognize it at first. The Bel Airs are all two-tones, you know. This one, it had the chrome tooken off the sides, except for one little strip. And it was this special red, all over. It looked like those apples you get at the carnival. You know, all shiny and—”

  Harley Grant, sounded in Sherman’s mind. “You sure it was a ’55?” he asked.

  “Oh, it was a ’55, Sherman,” Holden said, with absolute conviction. “They can’t fool me. I always know how to tell. Like, there’s a ’56 Ford that comes here all the time. Only, what it did, it swapped the taillights for a ’56 Mercury’s. Did you know they screw right in? You don’t have to do nothing to make them fit. So, if you just get a quick look at it, from the back, you can make a mistake. Now, the ’55 Chevy, the grille is different from a ’56; it doesn’t go all the way across. And it didn’t have fins, like a ’57.”

  “You ever see it before?”

  “No, I never did. I would’ve remembered it. That paint job, it was so beautiful, like the moon shined down on it special.”

  “What did the girl look like?”

  “You know I never—”

  “Sure, Holden. I know,” Sherman said, gently. “I meant, did you notice anything about her? I mean, she was in this special car, so you’d think . . .”

  “She had a kerchief on her head,” Holden said, stopping to think before each word. Usually, he tried to speak quickly, to make people forget that he had spent his whole life being called “slow.” But Sherman wasn’t like those other people. Sherman was his friend. Sherman called him “Holden,” not . . . other names.

  “A white kerchief,” Holden went on. “But, underneath, her hair was dark. And she never once took it off. They just sat there. Together, I mean. He was smoking, but she wasn’t. I didn’t stay long.”

  What the hell was Harley Grant doing in Lovers’ Lane? He’s one of Beaumont’s top men. He could afford a motel. And he’s got his own place, too. “Thanks, Holden,” Sherman said aloud. “You’re the best agent I’ve got.”

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 00:19

  * * *

  “He’s a pimp,” Rufus said, flatly.

  “So?” one of the men seated around a makeshift wood table in the back room of a garage challenged. “Who here don’t have some kind of a scuffle going for him? This is a white man’s—”

  “Everybody here sings that tune, K-man,” a tall man with a cadaverous face interrupted. “Omar doesn’t say things just to be talking.” He turned his head toward Rufus, expectantly. “Come on with it, now.”

  Rufus nodded to the cadaverous man. “Thank you, brother. When I hear my true name—any of our true names—said out loud, it fills me with power. I don’t know where my father’s father’s father came from,” he began, “but I know, wherever it was, they didn’t have no names like ‘Rufus.’ The slavemasters branded us deep, brothers. And not just with their names. So we have to be two people—the one Mister Charlie sees, and the one he don’t. Here, with my own people, I’m not Rufus anymore. I’m Omar.”

  As the others nodded approval, Rufus got to his feet, taking command. His voice was muscular but modulated, a high-horsepower engine held against a firm brake pedal.

  “A black pimp is the white man’s living proof. They see a nigger with money, how did he get it? He stole it, they think. Or he sold some pussy. Or some dope. Doesn’t matter—the thing they know for sure, he didn’t work for it, right? And when the colored man scores some coin, what’s the first thing he does with it? Come on, brothers, tell the truth. He plays right into Charlie’s game. Gets him the biggest ride he can, drapes himself in the finest vines, and goes looking for a place to show it all off.”

  Rufus held his hands at waist height, palms-down, creating a podium from the empty air in front of him. His eyes took in each man in the room, individually, before he spoke again.

  “Stupid, ignorant motherfucker thinks he’s on top of the world, right? Got everything a big black ape could ever want, including a white woman. But does a pimp own anything? Does he have a legitimate business? Or even a damn house he can call his own? Where’s his money in the bank? Where’s his land? Where’s his power?

  “Whitey goes like this,” Rufus said, snapping his fingers, “and it’s all gone. One day, this pimp, he’s king of the block. Next day, he’s down to the prison farm, digging in the dirt, while a man stands over him holding a gun. In some places I’ve been, that’s a black man, the one holding the gun.”

  “A bank robber could end up the same way,” said a somber-looking man in a neat brown business suit two shades darker than his sepia complexion.

  “Sure!” Rufus agreed, readily. “But . . . let me show you some pictures, okay?” he said, pointing at an imaginary photograph on the wall of the garage. “There’s one of some nigger in a suit with sparkles sewn into it, diamonds on his fingers, driving a big Cadillac. Now, over there, you see a picture of a black man with a gun, aimed right at the face of some bank teller. You’re a white man, which picture do you like? That one,” he said, gesturing, “you turn up the heat, he’s going to kiss your ass. But this one”—he pointed—“you get in his way, he might just take your life.”

  “We’re not in this for the image,” said a bespectacled young man in a putty-colored corduroy sport coat.

  “Not our images, Brother Garfield,” Rufus said, skillfully transforming dissent into ammunition, “images for our children. Who are their heroes now? Some baseball player? Or a singer, maybe? People like that, you can dream about them, but you never get to see them up close. They’re not real. But the pimp, the numbers man, the hustler—they’re right out there, every day.

  “Our children need another path,” Rufus said. That’s what we’re in this for, brothers. That’s why the New Black Men came to be.”

  “And it’s not just the children,” the cadaverous man echoed. “Plenty of our people haven’t come to consciousness yet. Maybe a pimp can’t be one of us, but there’s no law says a pimp must stay a pimp.”

  “That’s the truth, Brother Darryl!” Rufus said, deftly accepting the passed baton. “We know two things: One, this ‘Silk,’ he came to us. Two, him being a pimp, that means he got eyes and ears out there, hearing things we never would. A pimp, he gets to see the truth. A trick does things with a whore he’d never do with his wife . . .
and he also tells a whore things he’d never tell his wife.

  “That’s how we made our connection for the guns, remember? One of Silk’s women has this regular customer who’s in the business. He told her, she told him, he told us . . . and it all came together sweet. They may hate us, brothers, but no white man ever minded making money off us. Mister Green always going to be the boss.”

  “Maybe there’s something in it for Silk,” Garfield said. “We’re paying a lot of money for every shipment. Maybe he’s getting a little commission for himself.”

  “If he is, that’s a betrayal,” Rufus agreed. “Because Silk says he’s one of us. Wants to be one of us, anyway.”

  “Every man here has been tested,” Darryl said, his voice barely audible. “His turn will come.”

  Rufus held up a lecturer’s forefinger. “Like I said before, brothers: he’s a pimp. Nobody’s ever going to suspect a man like that could be with us. So, if he’s down for real, he could be worth a lot to our cause. And if it turns out he’s not, nobody’s going to miss him when he’s gone.”

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 01:01

  * * *

  Tussy clothespinned her just-washed stockings to a cord strung from the shower-curtain rod, then padded into the living room in her bare feet. She was wearing a man’s red flannel pajama top as a nightshirt; it came down almost to her knees.

  The furniture was all pre-war, except for the radio and a console TV. Substantial woodwork, heavy fabrics. A working-class living room, it had been designed to be used only for “best,” with normal social activities relegated to the kitchen.

  On the mantelpiece was a stiffly posed photograph of a young couple. A short, powerfully built man in his early thirties, with a face already going fleshy, dressed in a dark, awkward-fitting suit, stared straight ahead. The woman next to him came only to his shoulder, even in high heels. She was smiling shyly—for her husband, not for the camera.

  Tussy turned on the radio. The sad-but-not-surrendering voice of Patsy Cline followed her as she went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 01:20

  * * *

  “This job I’m on, you ever do business with that guy before?” Dett spoke into a pay phone.

  “I’m just a messenger,” Whisper said, in the broken-larynx voice that gave him his name. “I don’t read the messages; I just deliver them.”

  “I wasn’t trying to insult you.”

  “I know,” the softly harsh voice said. “Just remember our deal: keep it clean, keep it green. Right?”

  “Right,” Dett answered.

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 01:51

  * * *

  The maroon-lacquered Eldorado Brougham glided away from the curb, its stainless-steel roof reflecting the cold-fire wash of neon from the darkened windows of a backstreet bar. The man behind the wheel was dressed in a powder-blue suit, custom-tailored to his slender, athletic frame. Diamonds glittered on both hands and circled the face of his wristwatch. He checked his image in the rearview mirror, patting his stiff, processed hairdo back into perfection: he smiled at the reflection of his exquisitely featured face, perfect white teeth gleaming against his dark-parchment skin.

  The pimp drove slowly past a street corner and came to a stop. A skinny girl in a short, tight red dress and matching high heels trotted toward the Eldorado as its window slid down. She leaned into the car for a minute. Dett could see her head nod vigorously under a luxuriant auburn wig. Then she ran around behind the car and got into the passenger seat. In less than five minutes, she got out, and the Eldorado pulled away.

  Checking his traps, Dett said to himself. Just where the old man said he’d be.

  Dett shadowed the Eldorado as it meandered. Mostly, the driver contented himself with just cruising by certain corners. Occasionally, he would pull over and pose, deliberately putting his status on display. Twice, hookers came to the car and got in, but neither stayed for longer than it would take to transfer recently earned cash.

  “Silk don’t go out in daylight,” Moses had told Dett. “Like one of those vampires you see in the movies. Behind what he do, that make sense to me. Darktown, it’s not like around here, suh. Man wants to get a haircut, get his car fixed, stuff like that, he can get it done even when the sun’s way down.”

  “So he pretty much stays in . . . ?”

  “Can’t stay over in Darktown all the time, suh. A pimp, he’s got to hawkeye his women while they working the street. And, you want to make money, you got to put your merchandise out where white men don’t be afraid to come. Got plenty of men around here like a taste of what Silk sells, but . . .”

  “He doesn’t run any white women?”

  “I think that’s all he runs, suh. Word is, he’s even got girls in some of the high-class houses. ’Course, you listen to any pimp, he’ll tell you he got nothing but racehorses in his stable.”

  “So maybe the ‘word’ is just him, bragging.”

  “You mean, to build himself up? That wouldn’t be Silk’s way, suh. A man in his job, he’s got to show a lot of flash, sure. That’s how he pulls girls. But the last thing he want to do is attract attention from the wrong boys.”

  “The cops?”

  “The Klan.”

  “This seems pretty far north for the Klan, Moses.”

  “That’s ’cause you ain’t colored, suh.”

  I have to take him while he’s still on this side of the border, Dett said to himself, watching as the Eldorado positioned itself near a corner, just past the dull spray of an anemic streetlight. Halfway down the block, a sign hung suspended from a building front, the words STAR HOTEL barely illuminated by a surrounding rectangle of pale blue bulbs.

  The Brougham was a pillarless four-door hardtop, the rear doors set “suicide” fashion, so that they opened out from the center. The pimp had all the windows lowered, creating a vista of white-leather-covered luxury for all who passed. He was leaning back, left hand on the mink-wrapped steering wheel, his right idly caressing a custom-made white Stetson.

  “I want a girl.”

  The pimp twitched his shoulders, startled. Despite his pose, he had been on full alert, consulting his side mirrors constantly, his eyes never at rest. Where had this white man come from?

  “I don’t know nothing about no girls, man. Why don’t you—?”

  Suddenly, the white man was in the front seat next to him, a .45 in his lap, aimed waist-high.

  “Drive,” Dett said.

  “Look, man, you don’t got to—”

  Dett gestured with the .45. Moving with deliberate slowness, the pimp turned the ignition key. His left hand never left the wheel.

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 02:11

  * * *

  “He asked a lot of questions, Beau.”

  “He’s supposed to ask questions, honey. That’s his job.”

  “I thought his job was to fight.”

  “Strategy is fighting, Cyn. I told you that, a hundred times. That’s why we got him, remember?”

  “Why did he need all that information about the . . . houses?”

  “Probably figures, all the people using them, some of them have to be people we might want to know where they are, sometimes.”

  “You told Ruth to tell him whatever he wants to know?”

  “Sure.”

  “But, Beau . . .”

  “Ruth knows what I meant by that, Cyn.”

  “Because she understands men so well?”

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I know you better than that.”

  “I guess I just don’t understand men and whores. Why anyone would want to . . . do things with someone they didn’t love. Didn’t even know. It’s . . . ugly.”

  “And you’re beautiful.”

  “Beau.”

  “You are, Cyn. You know you are. If you hadn’t
been stuck with a cripple baby brother to take care of, you could have—”

  “I love you,” she said, fiercely. “I never wanted . . .”

  “Me, either,” Beaumont said, torquing his powerful wrists to move his wheelchair in her direction.

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 02:40

  * * *

  In the secrecy of his room, the desk clerk angrily tore up a sheet of notepaper covered with neat, precise script.

  Weak! he thought, contemptuously. Is that the handwriting of a warrior? No!

  He returned to his task, starting with a fresh sheet. Save for the cone of light cast by the desk lamp, the room was in darkness.

  It took him an hour to finish his letter. He read and reread the closing line: “Pure Aryan love.” Finally, the clerk nodded in satisfaction and signed his name at the bottom.

  Karl

  * * *

  1959 October 03 Saturday 03:52

  * * *

  In three different parts of town, Procter, Sherman, and Rufus each watched a different house, shielded by darkness.

  In another, a pimp drove slowly through a maze of streets toward the warehouse district.

  “Look, mister,” he said to the gunman seated next to him, “what-ever this is, it can be squared.”

  “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Dett said, conversationally. “I’ve got a silencer for this piece. I could have just walked by your car, popped you, and kept going. You never saw me coming. I could have put one right here.” The man tapped the pimp’s temple lightly with the tip of his .45. “You wouldn’t have felt a thing.

  “I know where you live,” the gunman continued. “I know what car you drive. I know where you’ve got to be to do business. If I wanted, I could have taken you out, anytime.”