Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“How fast will it go, you figure?”

“Well, I’ve near seen the end of that speedometer, Brian.”

“A ton and a half? You didn’t, Mickey!”

“I did. But I suspect the dial turns to blarney once it gets into those high numbers. A bit… optimistic, you know.”

“Still.”

“Oh, it’s got a mighty engine, no doubt. She’s a man’s car.”

“Yes she is!” Brian said, enthusiastically. “But she handles real nice. Some of the ones I’ve driven over here, they might as well be lorries.”

“Turn toward the freight yard,” Shalare said.

Brian took a series of alternating lefts and rights on unmarked streets of cracked concrete, past smokestacks as dead as cannons abandoned on a forgotten battlefield, until he finally wheeled the big car to a careful stop. Through the panoramic windshield, the two men looked out at an abandoned railroad spur, its tracks rust-frozen in their last-switched position from years ago. A trio of linked boxcars sat forlornly on the track, waiting for the locomotive that would never come again.

“That’s not you, Brian,” Shalare said, quietly.

“I wish I knew how you did that, Mickey. I remember Tommy Hardison saying, ‘Mickey Shalare has the special sight, you know. He can see right into your mind.’ I thought it was the booze doing his talking then. But I’ve seen you do it myself, time and again.”

“You’re still the Irish Express, Big Brian. And you’ll always be.”

“In the pubs, maybe,” the flat-nosed man said sadly. “But not in the ring, not nevermore.”

“You were managed by maggots, that’s what happened.”

“Wasn’t no manager inside those ropes, Mickey. It was just me. Me and whoever they put in front of me.”

“You had too much heart, Brian. Always willing to have a go, no matter what. And that’s what those bloodsuckers wanted to see. Not a scientific contest between athletes, no. Blood, that’s what they fed on. If they’d brought you along, the way they do some, you’d have been a champion for sure. Who doesn’t know that?”

“Ah, Mickey, I was never no-”

“Don’t you be saying that!” Shalare cut in, sharply. “Who had a better right hand than Big Brian O’Sullivan? You put a lot of good men to sleep with it. No matter how the bout might be going, you always had that puncher’s chance. Any man that would stand in there and trade with you always ending up going inside the distance.”

“Aye. It was the ones I couldn’t catch that did me in, Mickey. But, Jesus knows, there was no shortage of those kind, after a while.”

“John Henry Jefferson.”

“Yeah. He’s the one who started it, that time in Detroit. You’d think, a name like that, he’d be one of those colored boys who’d come straight at you, hammer and tongs. Anyone who’d try that, I had something for them, didn’t I, Mickey?”

“Swear you did, Brian. Swear it to God.”

“John Henry Jefferson,” O’Sullivan said, reverently. “He was as slick as a weasel in a river of oil. Must have hit me with a dozen jabs before I could get my gloves up. I never even felt them. Flick-flick-flick. Light as feathers. He was as quick as a scorpion, but I was sure he couldn’t hurt me. I knew I could just walk through those pitty-pats of his, get to his ribs, slow him down. You remember?”

“I never will forget. I was saying to myself, this boy’s not a fighter; he’s a dancer. Fast and pretty, but he’s got to slow down sooner or later.”

“But it never happened,” O’Sullivan said, regretfully. “Those feathers had razors in their tips. Cut me so clean I never even knew it until there was a red mist over my eyes. And he just got faster. Hands and feet. He’d pop up out of the mist, slash and dash, then come at me all over again. I was a bull, but he was the matador that night.”

“If it had been anyone but Big Brian O’Sullivan in there with him, they would have stopped it.”

“Ah, you know I’d never let them do that, Mickey. My corner kept telling me what to do, but I just couldn’t do it. You want to know something? John Henry Jefferson was the cleanest fighter I was ever in the ring with. You think I didn’t try to step on his foot, anchor him down? You think I didn’t hit him behind the head whenever I could grab him? Or go to lace him, up close? Well, I did. I did all that, and more. But did he? No. No, he didn’t. He just sliced pieces off me like I was a rare slab of roast beef, the kind that’s got warm blood right in the center.”

“You did us all proud that night, Brian. Won the whole crowd over to your side. Even the coloreds were screaming for you at the end.”

“I couldn’t hear a thing, Mickey. Just my heart pounding in my ears. I wanted to catch him so bad. But I didn’t get one in. Not in the whole ten rounds, not one.”

“Ah, if you had, it wouldn’t have gone ten rounds.”

“I always believed that-it’s what kept me going. I could always take three to give one, but carrying the equalizer’s no good if you can’t land it.”

“That Jefferson, they all took a lesson from him.”

“They did. After that, everyone knew how to fight me. Stick and move, pile up the points. But not one of them could do it like John Henry Jefferson. I was sure he’d be the next champ.”

“You saw when he fought Swede Hannsen? On the television?”

“Swede Hannsen. Aye, I saw it. Mickey, me, I was faster than Swede Hannsen. And I had twice his punch. Never would he get in there with me.”

“That’s why he was undefeated when he met Jefferson, Brian. He was brought along right.”

“If you call ducking anyone who could bang being brought along right, I guess he was, then. When he knocked out John Henry Jefferson, it almost knocked me out, right in the pub where the fight was showing. I couldn’t believe it.”

“You know what the odds were on that fight, Brian?”

“The odds? If I was a bookmaker, I would have given pounds to pennies that-”

“Jefferson went in the tank, Brian.”

“For money? Why? He was next in line for a title shot. Or close, anyway. The Swede was just a tune-up for him.”

“The mob owned Swede Hannsen,” Shalare said. “Lock, stock, and barrel. Whatever they paid Jefferson, they made it back a thousand times betting on their man. Maybe they promised Jefferson he’d get a rematch, with Swede guaranteed to lay down next time. Or maybe even that title shot. With a loss to Hannsen on his record, he’d be the underdog against the champ, for sure.”

“I fought the man, Mickey. You never get as close to a man as when you do that. I don’t believe you could pay John Henry Jefferson enough to make him take a dive.”

“So they told him what would happen if he didn’t,” Shalare said, shrugging. “There’s always ways, if you’re not with people who can protect you.”

“I heard he turned into a boozer after he lost to Swede.”

“I don’t know about that, Brian. But it was a liquor store he was coming out of when he got gunned down.”

“You mean, you think it was because-?”

“We’ll never know,” Shalare said, his voice thick with implication. “They never caught the shooter. It could have been anyone… a jealous girlfriend, some people he owed money to… Or maybe he started making noise about spilling his guts. That would do it, in a heartbeat.”

“He could have been champ,” O’Sullivan said, his voice heavy with true Irish sorrow at the hand Fate sometimes deals. “He really could have.”

“He might have made a pact with the Devil, or maybe he just wasn’t strong enough to keep them off. But it all comes down to the same thing, Brian. He didn’t have people.”

“I had people, didn’t I, Mickey? So why wasn’t I-?”