Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Where’s he staying?”

“Not now. It’s too soon. We have to wait for Lymon to give us more. Otherwise, Dioguardi won’t appreciate the gift, see? We need proof that he’s Beaumont’s man, not ours.”

“And it’s our man, Lymon, that’ll do that.”

“It is. He’s a treasure to us.”

“If Beaumont knew, he’d be buried treasure.”

“He doesn’t,” Mickey Shalare said. “It took me the best part of two years to get this going. I was slow. I was careful. And now I’m almost ready.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:30

“Two white males. Fifty-seven Chrysler two-door hardtop. Alpha, X-ray, Bravo, four, zero, two, local,” a man sitting behind a pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod said, his clipped voice etching every syllable. “Copy?”

“Two white males. Fifty-seven Chrysler. Alpha, X-ray, Bravo, four, zero, two, local,” a man with a notebook open on his lap repeated.

“That’s Shalare’s car, his personal car,” the spotter said. “But I can’t make out the faces at this angle.”

“That’s not our job,” the other man answered.

The two men, identically dressed in smog-gray jumpsuits, were stationed on the top floor of an abandoned factory that had once mass-produced steam boilers. They had been dropped off at midnight, offloaded from an unmarked delivery van, together with canteens of water, freeze-dried rations, a chemical toilet, two sleeping bags, and a variety of distance-viewing devices, including night-vision binoculars.

“It probably is Shalare,” the spotter said. “This is where he brings anyone he wants to talk to alone. I wish we could get a listening device on that car of his. It would be a gold mine.”

“That’s not our job,” the other man repeated. He lifted his eyes from his notebook to the corner of the room, to where a long padded case lay on the floor.

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:39

“When I said ‘dug in too deep’ before, I didn’t mean like in a bunker or anything,” Beaumont said. “I meant dug in the way roots do.”

“That means a lot to you, Beau? Those roots?”

“Well… yeah. Yeah, it does, Cyn. That’s been the difference for us, all these years, right? I mean, the Italians, remember when they were holding those hearings, about the Mafia, on TV? They’d talk about this ‘family’ or that ‘family,’ but all they meant was some gang called by the boss’s name. That’s not real family. Not a band of brothers. Not like we are.”

“It’s still your… organization, Beau. Without you, they couldn’t-”

“Yes they could!” the man in the wheelchair said, intensely. “Maybe not this minute, but someday… We’re just like a real family, Cyn. The father passes on to the sons. When we’re done, you and me, there’ll be someone else running things. But it will always be ours.”

“So that’s why!”

“What? Cyn, are you-?”

“That’s why you want Lymon… gone. That’s why you’re not telling him wrong stuff, so he could pass it along to Shalare. You did that before, Beau. Remember, back when you found out Tiller Hawthorne was telling the Richardson brothers about… about what we were doing? When you had that big run, down from Canada, you gave Tiller the wrong route, and told him the disguise. So the Richardsons ended up hitting a post-office truck, and they all went to prison.”

“Tiller wasn’t really one of us. Just a guy who did work.”

“I know. Lymon, he’s… he’s that ‘family’ you’re always talking about, Beau. Still, you could use him the same way you used Tiller, instead of having Harley…”

“Lymon’s fifty times as smart as Tiller. If I tried the same thing on him, he’d sniff it out in a second.”

“Then just cut him loose, Beau. Kick him out.”

“He’s a dirty Judas, Cyn. Selling his own people for pieces of silver.”

“He’s just a weak man, Beau.”

“Lymon? What’s weak about him? He stood with us against Lenny Maddox, didn’t he? He’s handled a hundred jobs, and never showed yellow once.”

“He’s… changed, I guess. If he wanted to sell you for money, he could have done it a long time ago, Beau. Right at the beginning, even. How much would Maddox have paid if Lymon had given him warning about what you were planning to do that day? It’s not… I’m not excusing him, Beau, but it’s not as if Shalare wants you dead. He just wants… Well, we’re not even sure what he wants, but it isn’t what Dioguardi’s been after. Now, if Lymon were talking to that man, that would be different.”

“Look, Cyn, I can’t-”

“Lymon wasn’t going to take over anyway, Beau. He’s the same age as we are.”

“It’s Harley,” Beaumont said, firmly. “He’s got the… vision, I guess you’d say. Look at how he came up with a way to make money out of that acreage we own out on Route 85. All we were getting out of it was a couple weeks’ rent, once in a while, when the carny would come to town, or they’d have a tent revival. It was Harley who came up with the idea of a drag strip, and a track for those go-kart things.”

“He’s so young, Beau.”

“I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, Cyn. He’s more… in touch than a lot of our guys are. More forward-thinking. Remember when he first talked about selling marijuana? We thought that was just for those beatniks, but Harley said there was money to be made there, and he was right.”

“He was right because it’s kids smoking it. That’s how he knew so much about it. Just like that drag-strip idea.”

“We were all young once, Cyn. It’s not how old you are that makes you a leader; it’s how smart you are. But our kind of people, they won’t follow a man unless he’s been blooded.”

“It doesn’t have to be Lymon’s blood!”

“I… All right, damn it. I’ll feed Lymon a diet of baloney from now on, see if maybe we can’t put a little sugar in Shalare’s gas tank. And when this is over, I’ll cut him loose,” Beaumont said, making a ripping gesture at his chest, as if pulling out his heart.

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:48

“Your boss ready to talk to me now? Or does he need some more messages?”

“You!” Vito sputtered. “He’ll… he wants to talk to you. Just hang on, I’ll-”

“I’ll call back. Fifteen minutes. If anyone but your boss answers this line, it’ll cost you more men.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:56

The panel truck that had delivered guns to the junkyard slowed as it came to an intersection of alleys north of Lambert Avenue. This afternoon it was beige, and each side had a plastic sign attached with magnets: FOSTER BROTHERS PEST CONTROL. The truck’s license plate was mud-splattered; its window glass was heavily hazed.

“I don’t like this,” the driver said.

“What else is new?” the man in the passenger seat said, almost slyly.

“I mean it, Fred. We’re supposed to be gathering intelligence. Surveilling, interviewing-”

“We pay informants, Milt,” the shorter man in the passenger seat said, mildly. “That’s right in the-”

“We pay authorized informants. These kids, they’re not even-”

“We’re not giving them money.”

“Come on, Fred. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is, like I told you before, initiative, okay? Just pull over there, by those garbage cans.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 16:00

“When things change, people have to change, too,” Beaumont said, lighting a cigarette. “There’s whole towns that didn’t understand that, Cyn. Ghost towns, now. A plant closes down, a mine stops operating, it’s like somebody cut off the air supply. The town just… suffocates. Locke City was a fine place to live during the war. Everybody had work, everybody had money. But then it all dried up, like a farm with no rain for years. So we had to plant new crops.”