Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“That is one strange white man.”

“You didn’t know that, behind what I told you was in his suitcase, you’re not as smart as everyone says you are, Rufus Hightower.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 10:10

“How long have we known each other, Lymon?”

“All our lives, I guess. I was in the same class as Cynthia, from the time we started school. I guess we could count up the years, but that’d just make us sound old,” Lymon said, smiling. “How come you ask, Roy?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it’s just natural. In times of crisis, you always look to the people you know you can count on. And talking about how far back you go with them, it’s kind of a comfort, I suppose.”

“Crisis? Come on, Roy. I know Dioguardi’s been nibbling and all, but that’s happened before. We always come out on top.”

“It’s the top that’s the problem. The top over us.”

“Us? We’re not part of-”

“Everybody’s part of something, Lymon. Look, who’s the mayor of this town?”

“Bobby Wyeth. He’s been the-”

“Uh-huh. And who’s the boss of this town?”

“Well, you, Roy. Who else?”

“Yeah. But if you were an outsider, you wouldn’t know that, would you? If you wanted something, I don’t know, a permit to put up a building, or a license to open a club, you’d go on down to City Hall, right?”

“I guess…”

“And Bobby-not that you could get to see Bobby yourself, right off-he could take care of that for you. Everyone knows how that works-you have to take care of the person who takes care of you. If the job is big enough, the pie gets cut up right in Bobby’s office, and he passes out the little slices. Passes them down, okay? But if it’s a small-potatoes job, the cut travels up, from the building inspector or whoever, until it finally gets to Bobby.”

“Sure.”

“Well, we don’t get a taste of that pie, Lymon. We’re not supposed to; that’s not the deal. But all of what we do get, it comes from the same place, like a lot of wires plugged into the same socket.”

“Well, sure, Roy. I mean, I guess so.”

“You know what they call the vote, Lymon?”

“The… what?”

“The vote. The right to vote, actually. What they call it is the ‘franchise.’ ”

“You mean, like a Howard Johnsons?”

“I don’t think that’s what they were thinking of when they named it, but that’s what it comes down to. See, it costs money to be elected. Money and muscle. The money and muscle, that’s what buys votes. And once you control enough of those, you get to make money. Like Bobby Wyeth does. Like we do.”

“So in every town…?”

“In every town, every village, every city, every state-hell, in every country-”

“-Whoever runs the show, he gets a franchise to make money,” Lymon said, like a schoolboy reciting out loud, to reinforce the lesson.

“Right,” Beaumont said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Without us, Bobby Wyeth isn’t the boss of anything. His whole operation, it’s like a damn army tank. Once it gets rolling, it doesn’t matter who the driver is, what’s going to stand in its way? But a tank’s still a machine. And machines, they don’t run on air. They need gas. They need oil. They need maintenance.”

Beaumont paused a beat, then went on: “And that’s us, Lymon. We’re the only place the machine can get what it needs.”

“Maybe that was so, once,” Lymon said, thoughtfully. “But now, any election day, Bobby Wyeth can put a hundred precinct captains out in the street.”

“He can,” Beaumont conceded. “And if they want to keep their city jobs, they’ll be out there, bringing in the voters. That’s the way Bobby pays: with jobs, mostly. And I don’t mean just cleaning the streets, or driving a bus, either. Being a judge, that’s a job, too.”

“So you’re saying Bobby doesn’t need us anymore?”

“No. No, I’m not saying that at all. We need each other. That’s the way it works. The way it works everywhere. Real power is never public. You can’t rub folks’ noses in it; they won’t stand for it. We’ve got enough on Bobby Wyeth to put him under the jail, we wanted to do that. The first nickel he ever took, you handed it to him yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. And that was before he ever got elected, too.”

“So we could put a lot of dirt on him, so what? There may be some rubes out there who actually think politicians aren’t all crooks, but there aren’t enough of them to elect the town dogcatcher. The newspapers make a big deal out of political corruption, but the average guy, he expects a man in office to make something for himself. Bobby’s got a house that had to cost him ten, fifteen years’ salary… and there’s no mortgage on it. He drives a new Cadillac every year, dresses like a movie star. And nobody cares. Or, if they do, they don’t make a lot of noise about it.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Roy. There’s plenty of legit ways for a man who’s mayor to make money. People don’t know Bobby’s got his hand in the till. Not for sure, anyway. If the papers ever got hold of-”

“You know what people actually hate about political corruption?” Beaumont said, slicing the air with his right hand to silence the other man. “They hate that they don’t have it going for them. Who doesn’t wish he could get a parking ticket fixed? Or get his son a good job, just by making a phone call?

“See, the people everyone thinks are running the show, they’re really not. None of them, Lymon. That’s the way it is, everywhere. There’s always men like us. We’re the power. Not because of what we know; because of what we do. What we’re willing to do. Because, no matter how high the hill any of them stand on, it never takes anything more than a good rifle shot to bring them down.”

“Christ, Roy! What did Bobby-?”

“Bobby didn’t do anything,” Beaumont said, sighing. “I’m just trying to explain some things to you, old friend.”

“The… crisis?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Bobby was here yesterday. Asking for money.”

“What does he need money for? The election’s not for another year. And who’s going to run against him, anyway?”

“He needs money to get out the vote,” Beaumont said. “Not for him, for the ticket. The national ticket. The governor himself put out the word. Come 1960, this country’s supposed to change hands, Lymon. And what Bobby was told is, he has to deliver double the vote from the last election. And it better all be going to the right place.”

“Okay, but why is that such a big deal for us?”

“Because they didn’t come to us, Lymon. If that greedy little bastard Bobby wasn’t too cheap to spend his own money, like he was supposed to, like they expected him to, we never even would have known.”

“But so what, Roy? What does it mean?”

“It means we’re not sitting at the table,” Beaumont said, his iron eyes darkening to the color of wet slate. “And in this game, if you’re not sitting down at the table, sooner or later, you get to be the meal.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:02

“Beau, I think-”

“Wait till Luther gets back, honey.”

“Where did he go?”

“He’s just making sure Lymon gets out okay, like he always does.”

“I don’t see how people can be so cruel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you have a meeting, Luther’s in the room. He stands right over there,” she said, pointing to an unlit corner of the office. “But, for all the notice anyone takes of him, he might as well be a stick of furniture.”

“They don’t mean anything by it, girl.”

“Maybe they don’t. But it’s still a rotten thing to do. Remember how the kids always made fun of him when we were in school?”