Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “Because of what I talk to you about,” Rufus said, earnestly. “About what’s important to me. What I hope will be important to you, too.”

  “Rufus, if you want to go out on a date with me, why can’t you just ask me, like any regular man?”

  “Because I’m not a regular man, Rosa Mae. You know that. You know that because I showed it to you. That’s what I was trying to say, before. I asked you about . . . where you go and all because that’s where I want to take you.”

  “Like a real gentleman? That doesn’t sound like—”

  “Like Rufus? Like the Rufus you think you know, even after all the times I’ve talked to you? I swear, little sugar, if your daddy was around, I’d go and ask him before I asked you, if that’s the way you wanted me to be.”

  Rosa Mae stepped back from Rufus, her amber eyes flashing, as if in sync with her pulse. “You would?”

  “On my heart,” he said.

  “Then you go and talk with Moses,” she said, turning on her heel and walking off.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 11:08

  * * *

  Dett drank four glasses of tepid tap water, then did his exercises, his mind taking him to that colorless no-place he could induce at will.

  He dressed slowly. A fresh-pressed pair of chinos, a dark-green chambray shirt, oxblood brogans whose heavy construction concealed their steel toes.

  Dett slipped his brass knuckles into the side pocket of his leather jacket, and dropped his straight razor into a slot he had sewn in just for that purpose. The derringer, chambered for the same .45 caliber as his other pistols, fit snugly inside his left sleeve.

  He locked his room door behind him, and rang for the elevator car.

  “Morning, suh,” Moses said.

  “Morning to you,” Dett replied.

  As the car descended, Dett asked, “You’re not going to say anything about that package I left with you?”

  “Package, suh?”

  “You could teach some of these young men think they’re so sharp a thing or two,” Dett said. “Another day okay with you?”

  “One day the same as the other round here, suh.”

  “How are you enjoying Locke City so far, Mr. Dett?” Carl called out, as Dett stepped off the elevator car and started across the lobby.

  “It seems like a good place to do business,” Dett said, not breaking stride.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 11:11

  * * *

  “Time for another coffee break,” Sherman Layne told the clerk at the car-rental agency.

  “How long a break?” the young man asked, worriedly.

  “Ten minutes, tops,” Layne promised him. A quick phone call earlier that day had identified the plate on the Buick logged in by Holden as belonging to the agency. The clerk would have pulled the matching paper for him, but Sherman Layne was a man who believed in collecting information, not giving it away.

  Him again! he said to himself. Changing rides, are you, Walker Dett? And what does a man like you want with Tussy Chambers?

  He strolled out behind the agency building, where the clerk was puffing on a cigarette. “Ever get yourself stopped by the police?” Layne asked the young man. “For speeding, maybe. Or being parked where you shouldn’t be?”

  “No, sir,” the clerk said, nervously.

  “Next time you do, you give them this,” Layne said, handing over one of his business cards, with “OK/1” handwritten on the back.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 11:22

  * * *

  “He driving a Buick now, boss,” Rufus said into the pay phone. “Brand-new one. Shiny brown color. Let me give you the plate.”

  “Who was that, Sal?” a scrawny man in a white shirt and dark suit pants asked, when the phone was put down.

  “That was the future, Rocco,” Dioguardi told him. “For anyone smart enough to see it.”

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:07

  * * *

  “No flowers today?” Tussy said, as she stood aside for Dett to enter.

  “I didn’t think—”

  “Oh, don’t be such a stick!” she said, grinning. “I was only teasing you.”

  “I guess I’m no good at telling.”

  “Well, when I make this face,” Tussy said, turning the corners of her mouth down, “that’s the tip-off.”

  “But you weren’t—”

  “Walker, what am I going to do with you? That was teasing, too!”

  “I . . .”

  “I wish you could see the look on your face. Honestly! Well, come on, let’s get you some food. Just put your jacket over the back of the couch there, if you like.”

  “Where’s Fireball?” Dett asked, sitting down at the kitchen table.

  “Who knows?” Tussy said, airily. “He comes and goes just as he pleases.”

  “You mean he can get out by himself?”

  “Sure,” she said. “The back door’s got a hole cut in it for him, down at the bottom. My dad did that, a long time ago. He used to go out a lot more than he does now, but he still likes the idea that he can, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Dett said. “I do know. Sometimes, all you have is the things you think about.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes alive and attentive.

  “Well, things can happen. The bank can take your house—not your house, not with you never missing a payment,” Dett added immediately, seeing a dart of fear flash across Tussy’s face. “But . . . well, you can lose things. Like a car being repossessed, or a business going bad. But the idea of things, those you get to keep, no matter where you are.”

  “Like dreams, you mean? Wishes?”

  “No. More like . . . When I was in the army, some of the men I served with, what really kept them going was letters from home. But not everybody got those letters. The guys who didn’t, some of them built their own. In their head, like. The idea of a girlfriend, or a hometown, or people that cared about them—I don’t know—things that could have been. Or things that could come true, someday. Some guys, that was all they could talk about.”

  “But if those things never happened—”

  “They could happen,” Dett said, insistently. “I don’t mean fools who dreamed about being millionaires—or . . . there was this one guy, Big Wayne, he was always talking about how he was going to write a book. Not like that. I mean, things that really could happen, if you got lucky enough.”

  “Fireball, when he goes out, I don’t think he . . . chases girl cats, anymore,” Tussy said. “He used to come back just mangled from some of the fights he got into with the other toms. But with that door still there, maybe he thinks he could go out and . . . be like he was before. Is that what you mean, Walker?”

  “It’s exactly what I mean,” Dett said.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:36

  * * *

  “You have to listen to me, Uriah.”

  “That’s not my name. Not no more,” the tall, rangy youth said to his sister. He was wearing a long black undertaker’s coat and matching narrow-brimmed black hat, with three orange feathers in the headband.

  “I don’t care what you call yourself,” she said, firmly. “I didn’t cut out of school and come all the way over here to listen to any more of your foolishness.”

  “My foolishness? It ain’t me saying those mangy-ass little white boys got themselves some real guns. Where’d you hear that, anyway?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Kitty said. “But it’s from someone who knows.”

  “I know you ain’t keeping company with none of those—”

  “I’m not one of your little gang boys, Uriah Nickens,” she said, facing him squarely, “so don’t you dare use that tone of voice with me.”

  “You heard it at school?”

  “What if I did?”

  “Yeah. What I thought. Those white boys think they slick, spread the word they got cannons,
maybe we don’t show up tomorrow night. Punk out. Wouldn’t they fucking love that!”

  “Do you have to talk that way?”

  “I’ll talk . . . I’m sorry, Kitty-girl. You my baby sister. Always will be, no matter what the old man say. Look, I think I got it scoped out, what happened. It’s just a bluff, like I said.”

  “Uriah, you know I don’t lie. Just because I can’t tell you where I heard it, that doesn’t mean it’s not true. If you go and fight, you could end up . . .”

  “You don’t know nothing about our life, the life we live, Kitty. Some people got farms, some people got houses, some people got cars. What we got is that we’re the South Side Kings. And every King knows, when we roll on another club, he might not be coming back. But if one of us punked out, ever punked out, then we’re all dead, or might as well be.”

  “You could always come back home, Uriah. Daddy didn’t mean those things he said. I know he didn’t. You come back, and I’ll stand right there with you, I promise.”

  “I know you would, Kitty-girl. And I hope you find the life you want for yourself. College and all. But me, this is my life. Back there, I’m Uriah Nickens, the nigger-boy dropout nothing. If I’m lucky, maybe I get me a job cleaning some white man’s toilets. Here, I’m Preacher, President of the South Side Kings. And you know what, baby sis? I’d rather die where I stand than live back where I came from.”

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:52

  * * *

  The sky had broken its morning promise. A dull, leaden rain slanted down with the self-assurance of an experienced conqueror. A pink-and-black ’58 Edsel Corsair swayed down the

  two-lane blacktop, yawing badly at each curve. The turnoff was unmarked, but the driver had been thoroughly briefed, and recognized the lightning-scarred trunk of what had once been a magnificent white-oak tree.

  The Edsel slowed considerably as the blacktop turned to hard-packed dirt, passing ramshackle houses so deteriorated a stranger to the area would have thought them abandoned. The houses were scattered carelessly, like garbage tossed from the window of a passing car. Just like home, the driver thought. Only I don’t live here anymore.

  The house at the top of a rise was little more than a cabin, but it looked well maintained, with a fresh coat of barn-red paint and a cedar-shake roof, faded to a soft gray. The surrounding yard was more forest than lawn, with a wide swath of macadam laid through it, branching off to a detached two-car garage.

  The Edsel pulled up to the garage, and Ruth Keene, proprietress of Locke City’s finest whorehouse, stepped out.

  The door to the cabin opened; Detective Sherman Layne stood there a long moment. Then he walked over to her.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:31

  * * *

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “You talking to me now,” Moses said to Rufus.

  “Not like this. I want to sit down with you.”

  “After work,” the elderly man said.

  “You want to meet me at—”

  “You know where I got my little office?”

  “There?”

  “After work,” Moses said, again.

  “I don’t like talking business with so many white people around.”

  “When’s the last time you saw any white people down there?”

  “Fair enough, what you say. But . . . this is private, man.”

  “So’s my office.”

  Rufus looked into the old man’s eyes. Stubborn old mule, he thought. But he’s holding the case ace, here. And he knows it. “Thanks, Moses,” he said, humbly.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:33

  * * *

  “What is this?” Dett asked Tussy, touching a dark-green leaf lightly with his fork.

  “That’s basil leaf. Sweet basil, they call it. When I make my tuna salad, I always put some across the top. It adds something to the flavor. And it looks pretty, too, the way parsley does. I always put a sprig of parsley when I serve anything. See that pot on the windowsill there? I grow the basil myself. You have to keep it indoors; it won’t survive a good frost.”

  “It’s good,” Dett said, chewing the basil leaf slowly.

  “Oh, you’re not supposed to eat it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, now that you say it. That’s just what the waiter told me.”

  “Where?”

  “In this place where I went out to eat. An Italian restaurant. I had a veal cutlet, and this leaf was on it. I asked the waiter what it was, and he told me. So, later, I tried it myself. Putting it on food, I mean. I like to do that, try new stuff. Don’t you?”

  “I guess I never think about it.”

  “Maybe, working at the diner, I get the idea that food means a lot to people. They’re always talking about it, aren’t they?”

  “Not the people I deal with.”

  “Well, I guess people are different around here—we even have a Businessman’s Special at the diner. I had dinner with a man once, and he said it all went on his expense account.”

  “Big spender,” Dett said, dryly.

  “That’s what Gloria said! I mean, not the words, but the same way you said them.”

  “Well, I thought women liked it if a man spent money on them.”

  “Some girls do. You know what my mom always said? She said the man who spends a lot of money is all well and good to go on a date with; but the man who’s careful with his money, that’s the one you want to marry.”

  “But the man you married—”

  “Joey wasn’t careful with anything,” she said, sorrowfully. “But, by then, my mom wasn’t around for me to listen to.”

  “Your father wouldn’t have liked him, either.”

  “No, he sure wouldn’t,” Tussy said. “Daddy was always joking that I wouldn’t even be allowed to go out on dates until I was twenty-one. He didn’t mean it—I went to school dances with boys—but he looked them over careful, you can bet on that.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “Would you be that same way? If you had a little girl, I mean.”

  “I’ll never have a little girl.”

  “Why not? Plenty of men get married at—”

  “I’ll never get married, Tussy,” he said.

  In the silence that followed, Dett plucked the sprig of parsley from his plate and put it into his mouth.

  “You’re a strange man,” Tussy finally said.

  “Because I’ll never get married?”

  “No, because you eat basil!” she snapped. “I think plenty of men are never going to get married. It’s probably more fun being a bachelor. But you’re the first man I ever met that I was . . . that I had a date with, that ever came right out and said it like that.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Well, come on! If you were a girl, and a man said he was never going to get married, would you go on seeing him? I mean, I know some girls would, if he was . . . generous and all. One of the girls who works at the diner, her boyfriend is already married. But . . .”

  “I have to tell you the truth,” Dett said.

  “Why?” Tussy said, getting to her feet and starting to clear the dishes. “Why do you have to tell me the truth?”

  “I . . . I’m not exactly sure, Tussy. But I know I have to.”

  “But you still ask me to go out with you? Even though you’re never going to be my . . . boyfriend, even? Because, if you want a girl just for . . . fun, I’m not her.”

  “I know that.”

  “How?” she demanded. “How do you know all these things?”

  “I promise to tell you,” Dett said. “I have to tell you, or this would all be for nothing. But I can’t do it now.”

  Tussy snatched Dett’s empty plate from the table and brought it over to the kitchen sink. She stood there, with her back toward him, and said, “You’re never coming back again, are you? To Locke City, I mean?”

  “N
o.”

  “It would be easy to lie. Just say you might be. In your business, that’s always possible. Something like that.”

  “It would be a lie.”

  “What do you want from me, then?” she said, turning to face him. Her mouth was set in a firm line, but her green eyes glistened with tears.

  “I want to tell you my story,” he said. “I waited a long time.”

  “For what?”

  “To find you,” Dett said.

  * * *

  1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:38

  * * *

  “This place is really . . . impressive,” Ruth said. “I never saw a house built like it, one huge room, with no walls.”

  “I did it myself,” Sherman told her. “It started out as kind of a hobby. I bought the land when I was just a kid. It was a few years into the Depression. I was already a cop, so I wasn’t worried about having a job, but I couldn’t afford to buy a house. And what does a man living alone need a house for, anyway? So I thought I’d invest in a piece of land and sell it someday. Like the big shots do, only just this little bit.

  “I started out by clearing the land. Coming up here on my days off. I guess that’s when the idea came to me.”

  “How long did it take you to finish it?”

  “It’s still not finished,” Sherman said, ruefully. “At the rate I’m going, it may never be. But it’s good enough to live in. For me, anyway.”

  “Where did you learn how to do all the . . . things you have to do? To build a house, I mean.”

  “I just read about it. At the library. They’ve got books on everything there. Plumbing—you can’t get city water out this far; I’ve got a well—electricity, everything. I didn’t always get it right the first time, but I just kept worrying at it until I solved it.”