Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Something besides these trick dice?”

“Those dice are famous, man. Maybe not where you live, but every player this side of St. Louis knows them. Belong to Brutus Farley, king of the Cleveland policy game. That’s where I came up, Cleveland. Back then, the whole East Side belonged to Brutus. That policy money made him too rich for anyone to touch. He had all kinds of legit businesses. Colored businesses. Barbershops, liquor stores, gas stations. Owned him some apartment buildings, too. Word is, Brutus got his stake rolling bones; that’s what he started his bank with. Those were his lucky dice, man. He always carried them with him, wherever he went.”

“You’re sure those are the same ones?”

“Brutus always had men around him,” the pimp continued, ignoring the question. “Not collectors-you don’t need muscle to collect for numbers-bodyguards, like. He had a pair of motherfuckers so ugly make a gorilla run back into the jungle, he see them. Huge boys. Carried so much iron they clanked when they walked, too.

“A few years ago, Brutus disappears. Him and his two bodyguards. For a while, some of the people under him was able to keep things together, run the bank. But they couldn’t hold it. Now you still got a numbers game in Cleveland. And you still got our people working as runners. But the wops own it.”

The pimp puffed lightly on his cigarette. “Nobody ever knew what happened to Brutus,” he said. “Some people say he had enough money, he just went someplace else, live out the rest of his life in peace. Some say he’s laying in the cut, waiting to make a comeback. But it was on the drums that he got done, and that’s what most people believe.”

“You think this guy, the one who snatched you, he did that?”

“Where else he get those dice, brother? You know him, right? You said he staying at your hotel. What do you think?”

“He’s… he’s kind of a nice guy. Real gent.”

“He was nice to me, too. Polite and everything. Kept his voice soft. But I’ll tell you this, Brother Omar. You don’t like what I do, but you know what it take to do it. My game, it is game. All game. You got to play people like a violin. Know what strings to stroke. And you can’t play them unless you can read them. This guy, what’d you say he called himself…?”

“Walker Dett.”

“Yeah. I know he go by a lot of different names, but I never heard that one for him before.”

“What are you talking about, man?”

“You ain’t going to catch me saying his name out loud, brother. Not his real name-that’s the worst kind of bad luck there is,” Silk said fervently. “I never thought I’d ever see him, not with my own eyes. But I always knew he’d be a white man.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 00:06

Back in his room, Dett extracted a small brass canister from a compartment inside his suitcase. He unscrewed the top and carefully tapped several tiny crimson flakes into the palm of his hand. He licked them delicately off his palm, and immediately drank a full glass of water, swallowing slowly.

Seating himself, he dialed a local number. When it was picked up at the other end, Dett said, “That property we talked about? The one with the crawl space up top? I don’t believe I’m going to have an immediate use for it, as I had thought. I need to explore other options. When would be a convenient time for us to meet?”

Dett listened to the response, then hung up.

In the nightstand drawer, he found a local phone book. “Chambers” was a common name in the area. He found two “T. Chambers”es and three “C. Chambers”es. No Tussy, and no Carol. Working slowly through the addresses, Dett finally came to a match with the one Tussy had given him. The phone number was the same, too. Both listed under “Abner Chambers.”

Dett dialed the number.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice, sleepy-soft.

Dett hung up.

1959 October 04 Sunday 01:10

“There’s no way I can get that,” Lymon said, the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver cupped protectively in his hand. “I don’t even know when he goes out there to see him, never mind what they talk about.”

“You better get something,” a whiskey-roughened voice said. “If you can’t, you’re not much good to us, are you, then?”

“I already got-”

“-paid, is what you got. Paid good.”

“You know I’m not doing it for money. I’m with-”

“-us? You’re with us, are you? That’s fine, isn’t it? But you’re not a soldier, boyo, you’re a spy. A spy for peace. Remember what you were promised?”

“Yeah. You said there’d be no-”

“-and there won’t,” the voice assured him. “We’d rather do it peaceful. But we are going to do it. Now, listen to me, my friend. Being with us, that’s not like betting on a horse. It’s not even like riding a horse. You’ve got to be the horse.”

“I am, goddamn it. Haven’t I proved-?”

“All you proved, so far, is that you’re a smart man. Right now, we’d rather have a bloody dummy, if he had some good gen for us, understand?”

“Yeah. I’ll try and-”

“Try hard,” the voice said, its tone matching the last word.

1959 October 04 Sunday 01:15

“It’s too risky, boss,” Rufus said.

“Piece of cake,” the man in the driver’s seat of the Chrysler Imperial responded. He was slightly under average height, but his bodybuilder’s physique gave him the presence of a much larger man. “The guy who’ll be doing the search, he’ll already be a guest in that hotel. Checked in, all nice and legal. So, even if someone sees him in the hall, so what?”

“I ain’t worried about nobody seeing him in the hall, boss. Mr. Dett, he comes and goes. There ain’t no regular pattern to him. If he was to walk in and find someone searching his room…”

“You let us worry about that,” the man said, pursing his thick lips into a Cupid’s bow.

“Nah, sir. I cain’t do that. That little job is all I have, and I done had it a long time. The man finds out someone got into his room, he gonna know somebody used a passkey.”

“Anyone could pick one of those hotel-room locks.”

“Mebbe so. But how he gonna lock the door behind him when he go?”

“That’s where you come in,” the powerfully built man said. “All you have to do is-”

“I ain’t doing that, boss,” Rufus said, firmly. “Not for no kind of money.”

“Big words,” the man in the driver’s seat said.

“I’m big scared, boss.”

“Look, no job is such a-”

“It ain’t the job, boss. It’s that man I’m a-scared of. You ain’t met him.”

“I met plenty like him,” the bodybuilder said, confidently. “Just a hired gun. They’re the same as whores; they just do different things for their money.”

“If you says so, boss. You knows about things like that. I know you not scared of nothing. But, me, I cain’t do that. I just cain’t. Swear to Jesus. Even if I didn’t get caught doing it, that man would know.”

“He’s a fortune-teller, too?”

“Boss, please. I got another idea. Get you the same thing you want, I promise.”

“I’m listening,” the man said. He spread his hands before him, palms-down, admiring the manicure he’d gotten earlier that day.

“Your man, he just wants to search the room, right?”

“Right.”

“So how about I does it for you, boss? You tells me what you wants me to look for, I tells you if it’s there.”

“Searching a place, that’s no job for a-for an amateur. There’s ways to do it, make sure nobody knows you’ve ever been looking. There’s guys do that for a living, they’re like ghosts. Float in, float out, never leave a trace.”

“I could do it, boss,” Rufus said, eagerly. “It’s not like this the man’s house; it’s a hotel room. Guests, they be expectin’ people goin’ in and out, all the time. You got the maids, the maintenance men, the room-service people. You got-”