Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“You had people,” Shalare agreed. “But your people, they didn’t have the power. Oh, we had enough for some things, sure. No one ever approached you to throw a fight, did they, Brian? And if they had, you know they would have come soft, not hard. Money they would have offered you to go along, not a beating or a killing if you didn’t. If they had threatened you, they’d have threatened us all, that they knew.

“They had the boxing game all locked up, the Italians. We could keep them from leaning on you, but we couldn’t get you a title fight, no matter how many you knocked out.

“It’s not like liquor once was. That they never controlled, try as they might. There was always room for an outsider to come in and start a business for himself. And it’s the same today. Gambling, girls, money-lending, all of that’s an open market.

“But the fight racket, it’s like this giant pyramid. The higher you climb, the less room there is for others to compete. So any man with the skills and the heart, he can be a boxer. But the top, well, that’s not for the best fighters, it’s for the fighters with the best connections.”

“So you’re saying, if I had caught up with John Henry Jefferson that night…”

“It’d be you they would have come to for the tank job with Swede Hannsen, that’s all.”

“And that will never change?”

“It’s changing right now, Brian. And we can all see it coming. Instead of fighting wars over bookmaking or booze, we’ve been after other prizes. Bigger and better ones. The unions, they’re the real future. You know why?”

“I… I guess I don’t, Mickey.”

“Because the unions, they’re the lifeblood of the politicians. A union’s a vote-making machine, Brian. Every member is going to vote the way their leaders tell them. And their wives and children and brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, as well. They’re going to raise money for the candidate. They’re going to go out in the streets and drum up support. Carry people to the polls, and make sure they do things right when they’re inside the booth, too.

“The Italians are coming from one direction. So, instead of meeting them head-on, we’re moving in at an angle. Look at Boston. Or Chicago. The Italians are paying the cops, but we’re paying the politicians. Who do you think is going to be stronger, in the long run?”

“Yeah, Mickey!”

“But that game has changed. We’ve got to share now.”

“Share what?”

“Share what we’ve got. Combine forces. Because the next president of the United States, he’s going to be ours, Brian.”

“Mickey, come on.”

“I don’t mean in our pocket, like some little alderman we can make or break in an hour, Brian. But ours, for true. A man we can count on to protect our interests.”

“The next president, well, that’s going to be Mr. Nixon, isn’t it? How could we hope to-?”

“It won’t be that shifty-eyed, pope-hating little rodent, Brian. No it won’t. It’ll be a Democrat, if we all pull together. A Democrat who’s going to give us territory no one will ever take back from us, nevermore.”

“What shall I be doing?”

“Ah, that’s you, Brian, isn’t it?” Shalare said, admiringly. “Irish to the marrow of your thick bones. The Italians, you’d think they’d be just like us, wouldn’t you? Come to this country in rags, treated like bloody slaves, scratch and claw for everything they ever get. Only the Italians, they’re a bunch of little tribes. Not villagers, like we have, where a man from Armagh might think he knows a thing or two that a man from Londonderry might not, and true enough. No, I mean… well, the ones from Sicily, they’re not the brothers of the ones from Rome. They don’t stand together. And they never trust one another.”

“The Prods are Irish,” O’Sullivan said, mildly.

Shalare regarded his old friend intently. “They are,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully. “But they come farther down the road, Big Brian. In good time. For now, they’re not our concern, any more than the Italians are.”

“Who is, then?”

“Royal Beaumont,” Shalare said. “They named him right, too. Royalty he is, Brian. Where we’re sitting right now, all around us, this is all his.”

“All this pile of junk?”

“All the land, Brian. When the mills closed down, when the factories went bust, the whole town had to find another way to live. That was a long time ago. If you looked at a census, you would be thinking Locke City is a quarter the size it once was, so many people have left. But it’s a sweet cherry tart of a town now. It’s known for a half-dozen states around: the place you can come to for whatever you need. Or whatever you want.

“Beaumont’s been the power here since way before we came. Through one front or another, he probably owns half the property on the tax rolls in this whole county.”

“If this is the kind of property-”

“He owns the land under the Claremont Hotel, too, Brian. And the whole block the First National sits on. He owns office buildings downtown, apartment units all over the city, that little shopping center over in-”

“Mickey, I must be slow. I can’t see where any of this matters to us.”

“It matters because Beaumont’s going to come along, Brian. He’s a way clever man. All this property, it’s… Well, land doesn’t have a value, the way a silver coin does. It’s worth whatever someone will pay for it. This desolate plot we’re looking at now, it would all turn to gold overnight if the government decided it was needed. For a munitions plant, say. Or maybe a federal prison.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. And who makes those decisions? While Beaumont’s been buying land, we’ve been buying the people who decide what that land is worth, see? I got it from the leadership itself. We’re to stop our squabbling with the Italians-yes, and they with us-and put all our strength into the one objective. Beaumont’s going to be approached. And he’ll come right along, I know.”

“Well, that’s all we need, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s not, Brian. You know we have one of his men.”

“That Lymon fellow?”

“Him indeed. And what he tells us is, Beaumont’s brought in an outsider.”

“For what?”

“For murder. That’s his game, this man. A hired killer.”

“Aimed at us?”

“No, that’s the… twist. Lymon thinks he’s being aimed at Dioguardi.”

“Well, good luck to him, then.”

“It’s not that simple, Brian. There’s two men dead already, another so deep asleep he probably won’t ever wake up. But from what we hear, Dioguardi himself doesn’t think that was Beaumont’s doing.”

“Wasn’t he told same as us? That we’re all to be under the flag of truce?”

“The thing about a liar is, he thinks everybody else is one, too. Dioguardi’s a treacherous devil; so he thinks we must be treacherous devils ourselves. The way his mind works, he probably believes it’s us trying to reduce his ranks, shooting from behind the cover of the white flag.”

“Three men?” Brian said.

“Yeah, that isn’t much, I know. But if he hits back at us, it could torpedo the whole big plan.”

“The election? How could a man like Dioguardi stop something so powerful?”

“Because it’s going to be paper-thin,” Shalare said, quoting his recent visitor. “If Beaumont gets us all back to fighting, we’re not going to be able to pull this off. And even if he’s not playing games, moving us around like chess pieces, unless he plays with us, it’s going to hurt. The entire political machine in this county is his. And we need it to be ours.”

“So what do we do?”

“We bring Dioguardi the head of whoever’s picking off his men. Because that has to be the man Beaumont brought in, even if Dioguardi himself can’t see it.”