Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“I stopped that soon enough, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Cynthia said, a smile suddenly transforming her into the pretty girl she had been in her youth. “You, Sammy, Faron, and…”

“That’s right, honey. And Lymon. He was with us back then. With us all the way.”

“Beau, are you really so sure he-?”

“Wait till Luther gets back,” the man in the wheelchair said.

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:11

“We can’t have this now,” Salvatore Dioguardi said, an emperor issuing a command. The gangster’s facial features were dominated by thick, fleshy lips and a wide forehead notched by a widow’s peak of tight, raven-black curls, mismatching the chiseled hardness of his carefully cultivated body. His custom-cut suit was the color of ground fog, making his upper body appear even more imposing. He wore a white-on-white shirt with the top two buttons unfastened, and sported a matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. On his feet were buttery black slip-ons whose simplicity drew the eye to the craftsmanship of the shoemaker. A diamond pinky ring blazed on his right hand. At his elbow was a saucer covered with multi-colored tablets and capsules. Each time he paused, he put some of the pills into his mouth, and swallowed them with a few gulps from a tall glass of tomato juice.

“We? Who’s ‘we,’ Sal?” the man seated across from him asked, his voice a semi-challenge. He was a decade older than his boss, his dark complexion a stark contrast to the white scar tissue that covered most of the left side of his face. His suit would have been at home on a mortician.

“What’re you saying, Gino?” the bodybuilder half-snarled, drumming his fingers on the snow-white linen that covered the table. The two men were seated in a shielded corner of Dioguardi’s restaurant. The wall beside them housed a hundred-gallon aquarium overstocked with brightly colored fish. In the too-early-for-customers gloom, it looked like a miniature cave in a vast ocean.

“What I’m saying is, how’re we supposed to do what they want?” the scar-faced man said. “It wasn’t us who put Little Nicky in a fucking coma. It wasn’t us who clipped Tony and Lorenzo. They call us all the way up to Chicago for this big meeting, give us the word, we have to keep things quiet. Everything goes on hold. Okay. Only, how’re we supposed to do that, with that fucking cripple picking us off?”

“We don’t know it was Beaumont.”

“Who else? It wasn’t Shalare. What would be in it for that Irish fuck to make trouble now? He’s got nothing we want.”

“Right, it’s not Shalare,” Dioguardi agreed. “Because, the way I was told, he got the same word we did. Through his own people.”

“So who does that leave? When it was just Nicky, it could have been anyone. He’s got a mouth on him, that kid. No finesse. But Tony and Lorenzo?”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t Beaumont, okay?” Dioguardi said, clenching his fists.

“Let’s say it was. What’re we supposed to do about it?” the scar-faced man said, reasonably. “One, it’s not like the guy’s walking around, where we could maybe get to him. Two, even if we could, I don’t know, drop a bomb on that fucking fortress he lives in, that’s just what we was told not to do. We’re supposed to make something stop, but the only way we could do that, we can’t do. So?”

“Don’t forget those phone calls,” Dioguardi said.

“The guy who sent us Nicky’s license?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“What about him? It’s probably just one of Beaumont’s-”

“There’s one way to find out.”

“You’re not going to meet with-?”

“I only wish I could,” Dioguardi said, cracking his knuckles. “Nicky was an asshole. And Lorenzo wasn’t any big loss. But Tony, he was a man. Anyway, whoever it is, I can’t see him walking in here, could you?”

“So what’s our move, Sal?”

“I want you to tell everybody to pull back. Let this burg go back to being Beaumont’s town. For now.”

“How are we going to-?”

“What? Feed our families? That’s what a war chest is for, Gino. Like a union’s strike fund. We’ve still got a good cash flow from back home.”

“Pull out, then?”

“No. They said not to do that. Not. When this is over, the whole thing, this territory, it’s ours. The Commission said so. But we have to wait our turn, like always. So, what we’re going to do, we’re going to do nothing. If it was Beaumont, and he doesn’t see any of our people in his spots, if we stop all the collections, he’ll think we got the message.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

“Then this guy, this guy that likes to send things in the mail, he’s the one we got to fix.”

“You think he’s going to do more-”

“Nah, G. He’s already made his point. Nicky, that was a message. If I’d talked to him then, Lorenzo and Tony would never have happened. Whatever he wants, he wants it from us. Otherwise, what’s he calling for? So we’ll hear from him again. And that’s when we’ll know.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:20

“Wouldn’t you like to get another suit, Luther?” Cynthia said. She was walking beside the marble-eyed man, her hand on his forearm.

“This is the one Roy bought for me,” Luther said, tenaciously. “He bought it with his own money.”

“He’d buy you another one, Luther. Or a whole bunch of them, if you wanted.”

“This is a very good suit,” Luther said, stubbornly. “Roy picked this out for me himself. Right in the store. When he was still… when he was still going out.”

“I know, Luther. But that was a long time ago. Your suit’s pretty old now. It doesn’t fit as good as-”

“It fits good,” the slack-mouthed man answered, his voice growing even more mulish.

“All right, Luther,” Cynthia said, patting his forearm. “You know best. Come on, let’s go talk to Royal.”

They entered the office together. Beaumont was slumped back in his wheelchair, eyes closed. As they crossed the threshold, he sat up straighter, reached for his cigarette case.

“What do you think?” he asked Luther.

“Huh?”

“Remember when Lymon was here? Just now?”

“Sure, Roy. I remember.”

“Good. And you remember that game we play? The special one we made up?”

“Oh! Okay, he had a gun, Roy. I didn’t see it, but I-”

“Not that game, Luther,” the man in the wheelchair said, the calming gentleness of his voice reaching out to his lifelong friend. “The other one.”

“I think… I think I do.”

“Sure you do,” Beaumont said, encouragingly. “You’ve got a sharp mind, Luther. You just have to remember to… what?”

The marble-eyed man stood rigidly, his brow furrowed, the slackness of his mouth even more pronounced than usual.

“Concentrate!” he suddenly said.

“That’s the ticket! Just let it come…”

Luther went silent. Beaumont and his sister watched the slack-mouthed man’s face writhe as he struggled with his task.

“He was, Roy,” Luther said, suddenly. “But I can’t say… I mean, you didn’t ask him no questions, so I don’t know… I don’t know when, exactly. But he was lying about something. I know he was.”

“You never miss, Luther,” the man in the wheelchair said, nodding his head like a man accepting his fate.

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:33

“Which is better for you, the white rice, or the brown rice?”

“Rufus, what are you talking about? You call me back down here on my day off-”

“I’m talking about some truth, Rosa Mae. Truth a girl as smart as you ought to be knowing.”

“I didn’t know you were a race man, Rufus.”

“You see a colored man that’s not a race man today, I know his name.”