Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

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.”

“Why you telling me all this, man?” the pimp said, plaintively. “I never did nothing to you.”

“I’m telling you so that you calm down,” Dett said. “We’ve got to go someplace where we can talk. I don’t want you thinking I need to get you alone so I can blast you.”

“What we got to talk about?”

“Soon as we get there,” Dett promised.

1959 October 03 Saturday 04:11

“This is good,” Dett told the pimp. “You can turn off the engine now. And the lights, too, please.”

“You making a mistake, man. Let me talk to you. I got money. Serious money.”

“I don’t want your money,” Dett told him. “I want to be your friend.”

“My friend? You got some way of making friends, man.”

“Have I talked badly to you?” Dett said. “Haven’t I been respectful?”

“Oh, yeah, man. You the most polite killer I ever met.”

“I already told you-”

“Yeah, I know. I got it.”

“Please don’t do something stupid,” Dett said, just short of pleading.

“Stupid? What I going to do that-?”

“You probably have a gun somewhere. At least a knife.”

“In my coat,” the pimp said. “The mink, on the back seat. But I got a permit for that piece, man. I’m a-”

“-professional.”

“Right! I-”

“You see what I mean? About respect? We’re both professionals. Businessmen. That’s why we can be friends.”

“How are we gonna be friends?” the pimp said, willing calm into his voice.

“Friends help each other.”

“What kind of help you-?”

“A man with a lot of ladies working for him is a man with a dozen pairs of eyes and ears.”

“My girls’ job ain’t to-”

“Whores gossip all the time,” Dett said. “He-say, she-say, that’s what they do, right?”

“You can’t be the law,” the pimp said. “Otherwise, I be down at the cop house, and some cocksucking faggot detective be ready to put a phone book on my head, he wanted to know something.”

“They did that to you?”

“When I was young and stupid, yeah. When I was still learning my game. But now? Not hardly, man. I ain’t no street-nigger trash. I got lawyers and everything. And I got a license to do what I do, same as the one for the gun. Bought it from the same people, too. That’s how I know you ain’t no cop, understand?”

“Sure,” Dett said. “That just proves you’re a real professional. A professional, he knows the value of information, and he knows how to use it, too. Like right now. You used information you have about this town to tell you I’m not a cop, see?”

“You playing with me, man?”

“No. I’m being honest with you, that’s why it sounds so strange. You know I’m not a cop, like you said. Not a local cop, anyway. But you know I’m not federal, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Those boys dress even worse than you. And they never work alone. Always two of them.”

“Okay, then. We can talk now, can’t we?”

“You holding the pistol, man.”

“I’m sorry about that. But I had to get you to go someplace with me. Someplace where you could just be yourself, no image.”

“I always be myself, wherever I am.”

“All right,” said Dett, agreeably, “whatever you say. Now, tell me. Do you ever bring your girls to private parties?”

“No, man. I got some girls, sure. But they out there, on the street. Where you found me.”

“A car like this, the way you dress, you must be holding a whole stable of racehorses,” Dett said, deliberately echoing Moses’s words. “Some of them have to be doing better than five-and-two tricks. Especially white girls.”

The pimp closed his eyes. I get it now, sounded inside his head. This is how it ends. “What you want, man?” he said, wearily, not opening his eyes.

“I asked you about parties.”

“Where you from, man? Around here, man wants some private action sent to his house, he don’t want a nigger along for the ride, unless he driving a cab.”

“So the girls would drive themselves?” Dett asked.

“I got another ride besides this one. They need to go someplace, they take that.”

“Your girls turn lump tricks?”

“No, man. I don’t do my women like that. But, sometimes, you know how it can be, customer can’t get it up, he blames the girl.”

“You ever lose a girl that way?”

“Girls come and go all the time, man. Cop and blow, that’s the game. My bottom woman, maybe, maybe a couple of her wives-in-law, that’s all I can count on, go the distance with me.”

“No. I mean lose one.”

“Like a trick kill a girl? No way, man. Never happen. I mean, I know it could happen, not saying it couldn’t. I had girls run off. Every mack has that happen. But I never had one go to the morgue.”

“I was in a place, once,” Dett said. “There was a man there. Real big shot. Rich, well connected. He liked to hurt working girls; paid heavy cash for his fun. One night, he went too far, and a girl died.”