Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

The man in the driver’s seat leaned back against the thickly padded cushions, scratched a spot on his dimpled chin. “You’re a good man, Rufus,” he said. “We’ve been doing business a long time. You’re reliable, I know that. You say you’re going to do something, you do it. I can count on you.”

“Thank you, boss.”

“But this here job, no offense, it takes a lot of… You got to be able to think, not just do what you’re told-make decisions on the spot.”

“I don’t understand, boss.”

“Yeah. That’s kind of what I’m afraid of. Look, Rufus. Let’s say I ask you to find a little red box in his room, you could do that, right?”

“Sho’!”

“Uh-huh. Now, what if I ask you, just find out what you can about the man, what do you do then?”

Rufus nodded several times, as if pondering the problem before solidifying his thoughts.

“I looks for papers, boss. Papers and numbers.”

“Tell me more,” the man said, a slight posture-shift revealing his heightened alertness.

“Anything with names or numbers on it, that wouldn’t mean nothing to me, I guess. But I figure you would know what stuff like that means.”

The bodybuilder turned to look at Rufus’s earnest face, again noticing that slight yellowish cast in the man’s eyes that had always disconcerted him. Probably got one of those nigger diseases, he thought.

“You’re smarter than you look,” the bodybuilder said. “And that’s a very good thing.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 02:12

Buick Roadmaster, four-door hardtop, coral body, with a white roof, Dett thought to himself, watching the empty car. This guy, he’s making enough to afford an Imperial, like his boss, but he’s smart, driving something a step down. Shows respect. They like that stuff.

Dett had spotted the Roadmaster during one of his careful sweeps of what Beaumont had called a “fringe territory.” The target’s car was docked just off a decrepit street lined with storefronts-two liquor stores, a spot-labor joint, a deserted-looking greasy spoon, and a Chinese laundry. Most of the storefronts were empty. Some were boarded up; others forlornly displayed FOR RENT signs in their dirt-encrusted windows.

Before he had located the Roadmaster, Dett had eye-marked a half-dozen teenagers moving along the sidewalk. They were identically dressed in shiny black rayon jackets, with “Hawks” on the back, in gold lettering. The rest of their uniform consisted of gold chauffeur’s caps with black bills, narrow-cuffed jeans, and engineer boots. Garrison belts, with the buckles sharpened, probably some switchblades, Dett thought, dismissing the idea of those kids carrying firearms. The gang moved in a wedge behind their leader, sweeping down the empty sidewalk. As they passed a storefront with black-painted windows, they all moved to the edge of the curb.

They don’t want any part of that place, Dett thought. Must be Dioguardi’s joint. Which means that’s where the target is now. So his car’s got to be around here somewhere, too. Those kids, they probably keep an eye on it for him…

Dett gave the gang a two-block lead, then slowly followed in their wake. They descended a flight of stairs below street level, and disappeared.

Dioguardi owns that building, Dett calculated. Lets them use the basement for a clubhouse; they watch the street for him. Same as it’s done everywhere.

After a quick glance at his watch, Dett shrugged his shoulders and kept driving, heading for Lambert Avenue. “That’s the dividing line,” Beaumont had told him. “You got white on one side, colored on the other. Only time they cross is to rumble. The white kids are the Golden Hawks; the coloreds call themselves the South Side Kings.”

“You know how big they are?” Dett had asked him.

“The Hawks? Maybe twelve, fifteen of them are real members. But, for a fight, they might get some other white kids to pitch in, even if they weren’t affiliated. The coloreds, it seems like there’s more of them, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

I could tell you, Dett had said to himself, thinking of a recent job he’d done in Chicago. But he had only nodded.

A few blocks away, Dett brought his rented Impala to a stop on Lambert, a wide boulevard lined with what appeared to be thriving businesses on both sides. The DMZ, he thought to himself, noting the pair of black-and-white patrol cars down the block. The cars were pointed in opposite directions-one parked at the curb, the other blocking an oncoming lane of late-night traffic-as the drivers discussed something through their opened windows.

As Dett watched, another prowl car loomed in his rearview mirror. Three in five minutes, he thought. A few blocks south of here, I didn’t see one in over an hour.

He started the Impala, pulled out of his parking space, and drove several blocks down Lambert. He was not surprised to see still another black-and-white before he turned back in the direction of the Hawks’ basement.

The patch of broken ground between two short blocks had never been used for sandlot baseball games. Choked with rubble, it looked like the place where junkyards dumped what they couldn’t sell.

Dett pulled alongside the vacant lot. Stepping out briskly, he opened the Impala’s trunk, reached in carefully with both hands, and extracted a crosshatched weave of Scotch tape. He sprinkled dirt lightly on the sticky side of the weave, turning it cloudy. Using his back to block what he was doing, he reversed the weave so that it adhered to the license plate on the rear bumper. Then he stepped back to inspect his work, satisfying himself that the plate was unreadable, even at close range.

The Roadmaster was still in place, almost directly under a working streetlight. Dett parked ahead of it on the one-way street, climbed out, and walked slowly back. A wine bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag was in his left hand. His walk was determinedly steady-a drunk who knew he was loaded.

The drunk’s walk got sloppier and sloppier as he neared the Buick. By the time he was ten feet past the car, the booze seemed to get the upper hand-he slumped against a deserted building for support.

A minute later, the drunk was sitting on the sidewalk, his back to the building, chin on his chest. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes swept the surrounding terrain like a prison searchlight after the escape siren sounds.

Less than twenty minutes had passed when two men turned the corner to the drunk’s left.

Dett watched, Two! registering clinically in his technician’s mind.

As the men came closer, Dett’s eyes noted that they were both wearing black topcoats and pearl-gray snap-brims. His mind dismissed the information, focusing on the vitals-they were approximately the same height.

Anyone watching would have seen a drunk struggling to his feet, using one hand to brace himself against the building wall. The drunk stumbled toward the two men, weaving slightly.

One of the men parted his topcoat, revealing a white silk lining as he reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a set of car keys.

Dett staggered down the sidewalk toward them, a wet-brain on autopilot, determined to walk home despite the ground rippling under his feet.

Slow down, Dett said inside his mind. The movie playing on the screen of his eyes began to crawl forward, frame by frame, as his world telescoped down to a narrow tunnel.

At five yards, Dett made a pre-vomiting sound. The man with the car keys involuntarily drew back, looking at Dett in disgust. Dett tossed the paper bag to his left. It seemed to hang in the air for seconds, pulling the eyes of both men into its arc before the bottle inside shattered on the sidewalk. The one with the car keys shook his head in contempt. The other, more experienced, was already reaching inside his coat as Dett drew his pistol from under his left armpit-Exhale… slowly, slowly-and gripped it in two hands, the left hand pulling back against the slight forward pressure of the right, wrists locked.