Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  * * *

  “Uriah got shot,” Kitty said. “But he didn’t get hurt.”

  “I know.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me how it happened. But I know, if you hadn’t told me about the gun, he couldn’t have done . . . whatever he did to protect himself, Harley.”

  “I wouldn’t let anything happen to your family, Kitty.”

  “When I talked to Uriah, it was just for a few minutes. But he’s different now. Like he aged a lifetime.”

  “Scared?”

  “No. Not at all. It’s like he’s got a . . . purpose now. I could tell, from the way he was talking. He might even make up with my father. But you know what?” she said, sadly. “You saved his life, and he hates you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not you yourself, Harley. All white people. That’s what he was going on about. How the whole gang thing was something the white man tricked them into doing, and he wasn’t going to be tricked anymore.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Locke City will never be the place for us, Harley.”

  “Never’s a long time, baby.”

  “I know you have plans,” Kitty said. “Big plans. And I know you’re smart. You’re so smart, Harley. I wish you’d go away with me.”

  “To college, huh?”

  “Yes!”

  “Give me another year, honey. One more year. If I can’t . . . if we can’t be together then, right here in Locke City, I’ll come and be with you, Kitty, wherever you are. I swear.”

  * * *

  1959 October 08 Thursday 23:16

  * * *

  “Compass. Procter speaking.”

  “If I get you something so hot it could turn this country upside down, could you get it into the paper?”

  “Ah, you again. Yeah, sure. If it’s newsworthy. I mean, really newsworthy, not just some gossip about a politician’s wife, do we understand each other?”

  “Yeah, that was just to— Look, this is a guaranteed blockbuster, a bigger story than the Rosenbergs. If I deliver, can you do the same?”

  “Absolutely,” Procter said.

  “You’re lying,” the voice on the phone said. “You’re not the boss of that place. Your editor would kill it in a minute.”

  “This isn’t the only paper in the world,” Procter said. “And there’s magazines, too. More every day. I can—”

  “You promise, you swear, that if what I hand over to you is genuine dynamite, and I have all the proof, you’ll get it published somewhere? So people can see it?”

  “That’s what I live for,” Procter said. “And if you did as much checking up on me as you seem to have, you already know that.”

  “I don’t have much time. There isn’t much time left. You’re my last hope. The next time I call, I’ll have everything for you.”

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 00:01

  * * *

  “I need my car,” Dett said into the phone.

  “Name a time,” a man’s voice replied. “You know what you got to bring, and where you got to bring it to.”

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 14:02

  * * *

  A decorous dark-blue Cadillac sedan pulled up to the guardhouse. Seth emerged, empty-handed.

  The Cadillac’s front window slid down. The driver said, “I’ve got Mr. Dioguardi in the back. He’s supposed to see—”

  “You’re expected,” Seth said, half-saluting toward the back seat, noting the two men sitting there. “I’ll get someone to come and walk you over, just be a minute.”

  Seth walked back into the guardhouse.

  “Last time, he searched my car like I was bringing a bomb with me,” Dioguardi said to the man seated next to him.

  “Things are different now, right, boss?”

  “They are so far,” Dioguardi replied. “Hey, look. See that guy walking toward us? I remember him from the last time I was out here. He’s a retard.”

  “Beaumont’s got retards working for him?”

  “Why not?” Dioguardi shrugged. “They got to be at least as smart as a dog. And probably just as loyal.”

  Seeing Luther approach, Seth stepped from the guardhouse and joined him alongside the Cadillac.

  “Mr. Beaumont says you can all go in, if you want. Or just Mr. Dioguardi.”

  “You guys stay with the car,” Dioguardi ordered.

  “But, boss,” the man next to him said, “I don’t feel right letting you just walk in by yourself.”

  “It’s the right play,” Dioguardi said, self-possessed. “If he brought me out here to hit me, he could do it just as easy with you in the room. That’s not Beaumont’s style. Only thing I’m worried about is maybe someone putting something in the car, so it’s better you stay with it.”

  Dioguardi got out, took the cashmere topcoat the other man in the back seat handed over, and slipped into it.

  “Lead on,” he said to Luther.

  The slack-mouthed man walked off, Dioguardi in his wake.

  “This isn’t where I went the last time,” Dioguardi said, as they approached the weathered wood outbuilding.

  Luther opened the door without answering, and ushered Dioguardi inside.

  “What is this, a garage?”

  “Come on,” Luther told him.

  Dioguardi entered the meeting room. Beaumont wheeled himself over to the door, offering his hand. Dioguardi grasped it firmly, eager to test his strength against the man everyone said had once been the best arm-wrestler in the whole county. But Beaumont’s grip wasn’t a challenge.

  “Thanks for coming,” the man in the wheelchair said. “Sorry, we’re in the middle of remodeling the whole place. . . .” His gesture took in the entire room. The sawhorse-supported desk was covered with a large sheet of white butcher paper, as were a side table and the broad wooden arms on three identical lounge chairs. “Take his coat, Luther.”

  Dioguardi did not hesitate, shrugging out of his cashmere overcoat as casually as if he were in a nightclub. Wants to see if I’m packing, he thought, not realizing that Luther had already registered his lack of a weapon.

  “We’re fixing the place up,” Beaumont said, as he wheeled himself behind the makeshift desk. “When it’s done, it’s going to be connected to the main house. Like an extension. Only it’s going to be just for me. My den, like. Will you have something to eat?” he said, pointing to the side table, heavily laden with a selection of cold cuts and breads. “Luther can make you any sandwich you want.”

  “That’s a beautiful spread there,” Dioguardi said, taking a seat. “But I had an early supper before I came out. Wouldn’t mind a drink, though.”

  “Name your poison.”

  “I’m a scotch-rocks man.”

  “Luther,” Beaumont said.

  While Luther was preparing the drink, Dioguardi took out a cigarette. Luther stopped working on the drink and rushed over to Dioguardi’s chair, a lighter in his hand. Dioguardi waved him off. “I got it, pal,” he said.

  Beaumont wheeled himself from behind the desk, until he was facing Dioguardi’s chair. “I’ll have one, too,” he said to Luther, resting his hands on the flat arms of his wheelchair, palms-down. Dioguardi unconsciously imitated the gesture.

  “I appreciate you coming all the way out here,” Beaumont said, holding up his glass.

  “Well, I admit, you got me curious,” Dioguardi said, again unconsciously imitating his host’s gesture. “I thought I was the one giving you the news. About me pulling up stakes. I meant that, by the way. Then you say ‘partners,’ and that kind of knocked me back on my pins. I thought you wanted this whole thing for yourself.”

  “If you reach for too much, you sometimes end up with nothing.”

  “I heard you were a blunt man, Beaumont.”

  “Fair enough,” Beaumont said, smiling slightly. “I understand you made a deal with . . . some people. They want what I have . . . what I can do, anyway. And, me, I want you and me to stop warring over what’s mine in th
e first place.”

  “Yeah. And so? I already said I was going to—”

  “Oh, I think you’re going, all right. I believe you. What I’m worried about is you coming back.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Wait,” Beaumont said, holding up his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Just let me finish. The way I have it doped out is like this: I can do what the politicians call ‘deliver the district.’ Only I can deliver a lot more than that. In a lot bigger area than you might think. That’s what the people who came to you want from me. And they’ll get it. In exchange, I’m supposed to have this whole territory for myself. Like I used to have, before you started making your moves.”

  Beaumont shifted position in his chair, paused for a second, then continued. “Okay, let’s say the election’s over. Before, I was gold. Now I’m a piece of Kleenex. They used me for what I was good for, and now they can throw me in the trash. If you decided to come back, they wouldn’t stand in your way.

  “Now, I know what you’re going to say,” Beaumont said, holding up one finger in a “pause” gesture. “Why should you come back? It’d be over a year that you’d be gone, and you’d be starting from scratch. But I’m thinking there might be one good reason you’d come back to Locke City. A very good reason.”

  “What would that be?” Dioguardi asked, his voice low and relaxed. He took a sip of his drink, every movement conveying that he was in no hurry.

  “A good reason would be if we were partners,” Beaumont said. “The future for men like us, it isn’t in gang wars, it’s in . . . cooperation. You use only your own people in your business; I use only mine. That’s good in some ways. You know a man, you know his family, where he comes from, you can trust him, right? But it’s also a limitation. If we don’t learn to work together, we don’t get the chance to grow.”

  “What kind of growth are you thinking of?” Dioguardi said, affecting mild interest.

  “Drugs,” Beaumont said, leaning forward, gripping the arms of his wheelchair, his iron eyes locked on Dioguardi’s. “There’s a fortune to be made. In the big cities, people are already making it. Locke City’s like a . . . smaller example, that’s all. I’ve got the network in place here. Men on the street, friends on the force, judges, politicians—everything. But what I don’t have is product. It’s your people who control that. You can get a steady, safe supply into the country. I want you and me to go into business, Sal.”

  “Starting when?” Dioguardi said. He expanded his chest and moved his shoulders in Beaumont’s direction. He blinked, and his eyes snapped from bored to predatory.

  “After this whole thing is over. It doesn’t matter where you’re going, you’ll be someplace where you can put the whole thing together. At your end. And I’ll be doing the same thing at mine.”

  “We don’t do business with—”

  “Yes, you do,” Beaumont interrupted. “At some level, you have to, am I right? They sell drugs in the colored sections of every big city, don’t they? I mean, it’s coloreds themselves who are selling it. Come on.”

  “That’s different,” Dioguardi disclaimed. “We’re not partners with niggers. It’s like we’re wholesalers and they’re retailers, is all.”

  “Times are changing,” Beaumont said. “You can be a spectator, or you can be a player. All I’m saying is, think about it. You don’t have to give me an answer now.”

  Dioguardi sat back in his chair, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the armrest. “Tell me something,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I just want to know. Was it you who did Little Nicky? And Tony and Lorenzo?”

  “Me?” Beaumont said. “I thought it was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Lorenzo Gagnatella was talking to the law. I thought you knew.”

  “I still don’t know,” Dioguardi said, his voice tightening. “How’d you find out something like that?”

  “I told you, I’ve got a lot of friends on the force. You don’t believe me, ask—”

  “I know you got friends around here, Beaumont. A lot of friends.”

  “And I’d like you to be one of them,” Beaumont said, finishing off his drink.

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 16:13

  * * *

  “You want me to go over it again?” Dett asked.

  “I’ve got it,” Harley said, trying to imitate the same utter absence of emotion exuded by the man next to him. Freezing cold, but burn you bad if you touch it, Harley thought. Like that dry ice they use in freight cars. His mind replayed his last meeting with Royal Beaumont: You’re going along because I want you to learn from this man, Harley. Learn what you’re going to need to know—what I can’t teach you myself, anymore. This guy, he’s the best there is. But he’s not one of us; he’s a hired gun. After this is over, he’s leaving. You, you’re coming back.

  “You don’t think there should be more of us?” Harley asked.

  “What we’re going to do, it’s like an operation, in a hospital,” Dett said. “Every man’s got his job. Too many men, they just get in each other’s way. And it’s much easier for two guys to disappear than a whole mob.”

  “What if he pulls up in front?”

  “From where we’re going to be sitting, we can see whichever way he goes.”

  “But if he goes in the front, that’s right on the street,” Harley persisted. “People passing by . . .”

  “So they’ll tell the cops they saw two men,” Dett said, unconcerned. “Once we pull those stockings over our faces, put the hats on our heads and the gloves on our hands, nobody’ll even be able to tell if we’re black or white, never mind describe us. This car was stolen from a parking lot—the owner won’t even know it’s missing for a couple of hours, yet. And the plates on it come right out of the junkyard—you cut them in half, then you solder a little seam up the back, make one plate out of two. Anyone grabs the number, all that’ll do is confuse the cops more.”

  “But we don’t have the letter yet.”

  “That’s not our job. If it doesn’t get here before they do, the whole thing’s off.”

  “Give Jody a five-minute head-start and he’ll beat them here by a half-hour. He’s not good for much else, but he can drive better than a stock-car racer.”

  “We’ll see soon enough,” Dett said.

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 16:41

  * * *

  “Like to show you around, if you’ve got the time,” Beaumont said. “You’ve got to walk out, anyway.”

  “Sure,” Dioguardi replied.

  Luther handed the mob boss his coat, draped a blanket over Beaumont’s shoulders, and piloted the wheelchair back through the garage, Dioguardi following.

  As they started to stroll the grounds, Cynthia entered the room where they had met. She was nude, wearing only a pair of white gloves and a surgical mask.

  Cynthia stripped the butcher paper from the right arm of the chair Dioguardi had occupied, and carried it over to the desk. There she laid out a bottle of white paste, a small brush, and a pair of scissors. Seating herself, she trimmed the butcher paper, using a sheet of typing paper as a template. Then she carefully opened a manila folder, laying it flat on the desktop. Quick, quick! she commanded herself, fingers flying.

  One by one, she pasted words cut from the Locke City Compass onto the butcher paper.

  We have the boy

  we Just want a faVor

  Put ad in the Compass PERSONALS

  John Please call DIAnne

  put in A phone number

  WE will CALL you

  NO cops or it is OVER

  She folded the paper neatly, and placed it inside a stamped envelope, already addressed with letters and numbers cut from the same newspaper. Careful, now . . . She sealed the envelope, using a dampened sponge. Then she reached for the telephone.

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 16:59

  * * *

  A beige ’57 Plymouth two-door sedan t
ore across the back roads behind the Beaumont estate in what looked like one continuous controlled slide. The driver was a young man with a bullet-shaped head and jug ears. His small mouth was exaggerated by pursed lips, as if he were getting ready to whistle. His hands were light and assured on the wheel, carving corners like a surgeon’s scalpel.

  The Plymouth fishtailed slightly as it merged with the highway. The driver picked up cover behind a highballing semi, checked his rearview mirror, slipped into the passing lane, spotted a clot of cars ahead, and fed the Plymouth more gas.

  No tickets! played across the screen of his mind, as he smoothly took the exit marked LOCKE CITY, his eyes burning evangelically.

  * * *

  1959 October 09 Friday 17:11

  * * *

  “How’d it go, boss?” the man seated next to Dioguardi in the back seat asked.

  “You know what, Carmine? I think he’s all done.”

  “Beaumont? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s been the man around here for—”

  “He’s not the same. Not the same at all. I braced him about the guys we lost. I was watching his eyes when I did it. I can tell when a man’s lying to me. And he wasn’t.”

  “You mean it wasn’t his boys who—?”

  “No. That’s what he said, and I believed him. In fact, he said he thought we did that.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Beaumont, he said that Lorenzo had been talking to the feds.”

  “That’s a lot of—”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Dioguardi said. “Because I’m not. You know what convinced me? He never even asked about that collector of his, Hacker.”

  “That’s ’cause, the way we did it, he couldn’t know if Hacker just took off with the loot. That’s one body that’s never going to be found, so he’ll never know. Not for sure.”