Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  No outside light penetrated the room. A single red bulb dangled from exposed overhead wiring, spliced from the adjacent building. Fat hurricane candles burned in several upturned hubcaps. The cement floor was an ashtray.

  “This is just the beginning,” Ace told the others. “After Wednesday, when people hear our name, when they see our colors, they’ll pay attention. Because we’re going to be stepping up.”

  “Stepping up to what?” a boy named Hog, whose bridgeless nose and wide nostrils had given birth to his name, asked.

  “To the rackets,” Ace said: an acolyte, reciting liturgy. “If we just keep on like we’ve been doing, where do you think we end up?”

  “We . . .”

  “Got no answer, right, Harold?” Ace said to the red-haired youth. “You think a man like Mr. Dioguardi didn’t get his start the same way we are now?”

  “But he’s in the Mafia, right?” the acne-scarred boy said. “They have a whole . . . organization, and all.”

  “He was just an example,” their leader said, smoothly. “You don’t have to be Italian to be in the rackets. Look at Mr. Beaumont. Everybody knows how he got started.”

  “He was in a club?” Hog said, incredulously. “In a wheelchair? How was he going to—?”

  “He was in something,” Ace said, assuredly. “ ’Cause he had men with him when he made his move. Same as we do.”

  “They was older guys,” Hog said.

  “How do you know that? I mean, none of us really knows. All we have is . . . stories. One person tells another person, that’s the only way we ever know anything. But this part isn’t no story: Mr. Dioguardi, he’s got his stuff going, but Locke City, the whole thing, it belongs to Mr. Beaumont. And wherever he started out, it wasn’t on top. It was small.”

  “I still don’t see where we could—”

  “This is all about rep,” Ace said, confidently. “It’s all about how people see you . . . us. Mr. Dioguardi even said to me, once, maybe someday he’d have some jobs for us. The Hawks, I mean.”

  “He said that to you—to you, personally?”

  “That’s right, Hog,” Ace said, choosing to ignore the skeptical tone. He’d speak to Hog later, privately—it didn’t look good for a Warlord to question the President in front of the others. “To me. Face to face. How do you think we got this clubhouse? Mr. Dioguardi owns this building. He owns a whole lot of buildings. On this block, he told me, you men—the Hawks, he was saying—are my eyes and ears.”

  “That’s not doing a job,” Harold said.

  “Not a big job,” Ace corrected him. “But how is a man like Mr. Dioguardi ever going to know that we can do bigger jobs, unless we grow our rep? After the meet with the Kings, he’s going to know. Everybody’s going to know.”

  “Yeah!” Hog said, crossing his arms to show he stood behind their leader.

  “We don’t have much of anything now,” Ace told the group. “We’ve got a few blocks, our turf, that’s it. When we bop, it’s not to get new ground, it’s to hold on to what we already got, that’s all. The Gladiators, they’ve got a real clubhouse. A big apartment, over on Harrison. On the second floor, even. They’ve got cars, too. I’ll bet they’ve got fifty members. When they walk down the street, it’s like an army on the march. You don’t see the Kings crossing their line. You don’t see their debs going with outsiders.”

  “That’s because they’ve got the reefer business,” the acne-scarred boy said. “The money, that’s what does it.”

  “That’s exactly what the men who gave me this pistol said, Donny,” the leader replied. “We should have a piece of that for ourselves.”

  “How?” Hog asked. “The Gladiators only signed that treaty with us because of the niggers. They’re not going to give us any of their—”

  “They’re not going to give us nothing,” Ace said. “Wednesday night, it’s our meet. We’re the ones that called it. The Gladiators will be there, like to back us up, because of the treaty. But we know what that’s really about, don’t we? It’s just to watch us, see how we handle ourselves.”

  Ace took a quick swig from the pale-green bottle of Thunderbird, passed it to the boy on his right, and addressed his audience.

  “And remember, their President, Lacy, he fucking hates that nigger Preacher. And after Lacy sees what I do to him, he’s going to think, Okay, those Hawks, they’ve got it. They’re killers, man.

  “I’m not saying we’ll run the Gladiators off. They got the numbers. And there’s the treaty, too. We have to respect that. But the reefer, in our territory, by rights, it should be us getting paid from Fat Lucy, not them. After they see how the Hawks have real firepower, I’ll bet they see it that way, too. And Mr. Dioguardi, he’ll know the Hawks can do a lot more jobs than just keeping an eye on things for him.”

  “We’re doing all right without . . .” said a tall, well-muscled boy with a deeply underslung jaw.

  “We’re not, Larry,” Ace said. “Not if we want to—”

  “What I wanted, when I joined, was to . . . I don’t know, be with a club. Have a place where we could bring girls, drink a little wine, smoke some gauge, you know what I’m saying. I mean, sure, bop with anyone who calls us out. But I don’t want to be a gang man for my whole life.”

  “What do you want to do, then?” Ace confronted the challenger. “Go work in the plant, like your daddy did? The plant’s fucking closed, man.”

  “I was thinking about the army.”

  “The army?”

  “My brother went in. Oscar. He was—”

  “Oscar didn’t have no choice,” Ace said. “He was a Hawk, too, remember? The judge told him it was the state pen or the army. A lot of guys went in the same way.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Larry said. “But Oscar ended up liking it. He was supposed to go in for four years, but when that was done, he signed up again. He’s a sergeant. He’s always writing me, telling me I should do it, too. It’s a pretty good deal. He never has to worry about losing his job. And he can even retire when he’s younger than my father is right now. Have a salary for life. He’s got a new car, and he’s saving for a ‘Vette. They get free doctors and free—”

  “Free? He’s not free, man. He’s got to take orders.”

  “Everybody takes orders from somewhere,” Larry said, stubbornly. “It doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

  “That’s because your brother, when he came up, it was a different time. He didn’t have the . . . opportunities, like we’re going to have.”

  “I don’t—”

  “What’s your hurry, man? I know all about that army thing. You got to be seventeen to go in, even if your folks sign for you. Just wait until after Wednesday, okay? You’ll see.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Who gave you that gun, anyway?” Hog asked, deliberately redirecting the growing tension in the basement.

  “All I know is Mr. White and Mr. Green,” Ace told the others. “They said they’d been scouting us. Liked what they saw.”

  “You think maybe they were from Mr. Dioguardi’s—?”

  “Oh, man, come on!” Ace said. “Those guys, the way they talked, I know where they’re from.” He paused dramatically, waiting for everyone’s close attention. “They were the Klan,” Ace said, rapturously. “The way they talked, they got to be.”

  * * *

  1959 October 04 Sunday 21:05

  * * *

  “It’s your turn,” Ruth told the busty girl in the white babydoll nightgown. “You want it or not?”

  “What do you mean, my turn?” the girl who called herself Lola asked. Her dull-brown hair fell limply on either side of even duller-brown eyes.

  “You know the trick,” Ruth said, tapping a yellow pencil against the frame of her cat’s-eye glasses. “I told you about it when you first came here. And you’ve talked about it with other girls, girls who’ve done it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Yes, you did. There’s something else I told you, told you f
rom the beginning,” Ruth said, sternly. “In this house, you can turn down a trick—any trick—and still stay. But you lie to me, even one time, and you’re out on your ass.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Ruth. I didn’t mean to—”

  “He’s going to be here soon, all right? Now, either you say yes, so we can get you down to the blue room, or you say no, and I get someone else.”

  “I . . .”

  “This isn’t a punishment, you dumb bitch,” Ruth said, sharply. “It’s a fifty-dollar trick. Ever get that much before? In your whole life? There’s girls here who never even heard of such a thing, except when they’re lying to each other. The way it works is, the man calls, and I spin the wheel. Whoever’s name comes up, they—”

  “What wheel?”

  “There is no wheel,” Ruth sighed. “It’s just an expression. What I actually do, since it’s so important to you to know, I write every girl’s name on a card, like this one,” Ruth said, holding up a plain white index card, with the letter “L” written on it in a composition-book hand, “and I put them all in a bowl, face-down. Then I close my eyes, mix them all around, and pull one out. That one, it’s the winner, not the loser.”

  “Does it . . . does it hurt?”

  “You never . . . ?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s . . .”

  “And you never asked Barbara? Or Lorraine? They both—”

  “I did ask Lorraine. But I know how some of the girls are. They’ll say things. . . .”

  Ruth pointedly looked at her wristwatch, a black oval on a thin gold band.

  “Does he ever tip?” the dull-eyed woman asked.

  * * *

  1959 October 04 Sunday 21:20

  * * *

  “You better not be calling me from work,” the voice said.

  Cold and hard, Carl thought, like a diamond. A perfect

  pure-white diamond. “No, of course not,” he said aloud. “I would never—”

  “—disobey,” the voice finished the sentence for him.

  “Never!” Carl said, excitement rising in that part of him he kept buried under his many shields.

  “Don’t say ‘never’ to me like that, you sniveling little baby! I told you, no more notes. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Yes?” the voice said, the undercurrent of threat closer to the surface.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I only wanted to—”

  “What you want isn’t important. Is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you know what is important, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I . . . Yes, sir, I know. Please?”

  “What time is your shift over?”

  “Eleven. But then I have to close down the—”

  “Oh four hundred hours,” the voice said. “That will give you plenty of time to prepare yourself.”

  * * *

  1959 October 04 Sunday 21:34

  * * *

  I got to get closer, refrained through Holden’s labyrinth mind. I got to get closer, so I can make my report. He moved as cautiously as a weasel approaching a henhouse, his passage disturbing the underbrush less than a gentle breeze. The night creatures were used to Holden’s presence—his scent didn’t alarm them, his movements didn’t send them scurrying. He was one of them: a resident, not a visitor.

  That’s the one, he said to himself. That same ’55 Chevy. That’s why he didn’t back all the way in, the way most of them do—he wouldn’t want to get that beautiful paint all scratched up.

  Music drifted out onto the night air, so softly that even Holden’s forest-trained ears could barely pick it up. Unlike the lumbering gait he automatically fell into whenever he had leave the safety of his forest, Holden moved with an almost sinuous grace as he closed the gap. The bruised-and-blue sounds of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” floated over to him, but Holden didn’t recognize the song. He’s going to run down his battery, playing the radio with the engine turned off like that, he thought.

  The moon refracted against the Chevy’s windshield, blocking Holden’s view of the interior as effectively as a curtain. It’s a warm night. Maybe they have the side windows down. I know that Chevy’s a hardtop, so even if they’re in the back seat . . .

  Holden was so close that he tested each footstep before committing to it. From long experience, he knew that hiding behind a tree wasn’t as effective as standing in the open, blending with the night. His green-and-brown camouflage jacket and matching hat—gifts from his friend, Sherman—coupled with his ability to stand perfectly, soundlessly still, were all he had ever needed.

  Holden didn’t like radios. They masked the sounds he coveted. The secret sounds he replayed in his mind, back in his room. They were his, those sounds. He owned them.

  Holden often wanted to tell Sherman about the sounds. He thought his friend would understand. But . . . but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, Sherman was a policeman. A detective, even. Maybe there was a law Holden didn’t know about. . . .

  The side windows were down, just as Holden had wished. Sometimes, Holden believed he could wish things true. Like tonight. He had wanted the windows to be down, and . . . there they were. But when he tried it on . . . other things he wanted, it didn’t work. There was something about this Holden yearned to understand. But there was no one he could ask—he knew what would happen if he did.

  “I hate this.”

  A woman’s voice came through the side window. Something about it was deeply familiar to Holden, but he knew better than to reach for the memory. Every time that happened, he ended up trying to grasp smoke. If you spook up a rabbit, and you don’t chase it, just stay in the same spot, very still and quiet, sometimes, sometimes, the rabbit comes back.

  “You think I like it?” A man’s voice. A young man. Holden was sure he hadn’t heard it before. “What am I going to do?”

  “That’s just it, Harley. It should be ‘What are we going to do?’ ”

  “You know that’s what I meant.” The man’s voice was somewhere between angry and . . . something else. Holden searched his mind for the right word. Sulky. That was it. Sulky like a little kid.

  “It’s only a couple of months, Harley. A couple of months, and then I’m gone from here. I’m going to start second semester.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “Kitty, why do you have to always be twisting everything I say? I only meant, college, it’s not like you stay there forever. You’ll be back, for summers and stuff, that’s all I was saying.”

  “You could come with me.”

  “Come with you? To . . . what’s the name of that school, again?”

  “Western Reserve University,” the woman’s voice said, proudly. “And it wouldn’t be to the school. We, the girls, we have to live in dorms. But it’s in Cleveland, Harley. A big city. You could find work easy, I know. My father says the mills are still pumping like mad up there. There’s plenty of—”

  “A steel mill? That’s what you think I’m going to do with my life, Kitty?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Let me ask you something,” he interrupted. “Why are you going to that fancy college?”

  “To get an education. It’s the only way I could ever hope to . . . to make something of myself.”

  “Nobody just gets an education. You learn things so you can use them, don’t you? I mean, nobody takes Drivers’ Ed in school so they can learn all that crap about safety; they do it because they want to get a license. There’s a teachers’ college right over in—”

  “I’m not going to be a teacher.”

  “What, then?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. But I know it’s going to be something. Maybe a doctor. Or a lawyer.”

  “You?”

  “Why not, Harley?” she said, her voice sharpening down to an ice-pick point. “Because I’m a girl? Or because I’m a—?”

  A colored girl! flashed onto the screen of Holden’s mind
. She talks just like a colored girl. He shifted his stance, a leafy branch reacting to a faint breeze, and leaned in closer, straining to listen.

  “I . . . I didn’t mean what you think, Kitty. I just, I just know how people are.”

  “People change.”

  “No, they don’t,” he said, stolidly.

  “I don’t mean individual people, Harley. I mean society. The whole world is changing. Not as fast as I would like. Not as fast as it should. But things are changing. If you looked anyplace but Locke City, you’d see it for yourself.”

  “Things are changing here, too, baby. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You want me to go someplace like Cleveland, where we could be together right out in the open, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. You think I enjoy sneaking around like I’m some kind of—”

  “Cleveland, it’s different from here, sure. But not for the reason you think.”

  “And what reason do you think I think?”

  “Come on, Kitty. I drove up there with you once, remember? Sure, you can see couples, couples like us, walking around that little lake they have in the middle of the college. But a college, that’s not real life. Sooner or later, you have to leave, go out in the world.”

  “There’s plenty of places where we could—”

  “Oh yeah. Like Greenwich Village, I suppose.”

  “What do you know about Greenwich Village, Harley?”

  “My friend Sammy, he was there. During the war. I mean, he was on leave, in New York. Most of the guys wanted to go to Times Square, but a couple of them heard there was more action in Greenwich Village. So he went down there. Sammy said it’s all beatniks and stuff. Everything all mixed together.”