Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“That’s up to you.”

“I can’t just-”

“I understand. I’ll give you some time to think about it, okay? Then I’ll call again, and you can give me your answer.”

“Hey! If you-”

The dial tone cut off whatever Dioguardi was going to say.

1959 October 04 Sunday 16:09

Five young men walked down the alley toward the panel truck. They were in a V-formation, two on each wing of their leader, whose slender frame made him appear taller than he was. He gave a hand gesture and the group halted. The leader approached on his own, hands open at his sides.

“How old is this punk, anyway?” the driver said.

“His DOB is six-ten-forty-one,” the passenger said. “Makes him just past eighteen. Doesn’t look it, does he?”

By then, the young man had closed the distance. He stepped to the passenger side as the window rolled down.

“Mr. White?” he asked.

“That’s right, Myron,” Fred said.

“I don’t go by that,” the young man said. “They call me-”

“Get in the back,” Fred told him. “The door’s not locked.”

The young man felt his comrades close by, but he didn’t look in their direction.

The passenger glanced at his watch. When he looked up, his eyes were as empty and flat as twin panes of brown glass.

The young man walked around to the back of the truck, opened the right-side door, climbed in, and pulled it closed behind him.

The driver started the engine and drove off, without a glance at the remaining Hawks.

The gang leader duckwalked toward the front of the truck. He knelt behind the seat, said, “Where are we going?” to the man in the passenger seat.

“Not far,” Fred told him, his tone not inviting further conversation.

The gang leader watched through the windshield as the truck navigated familiar streets. As they turned onto Devlin Avenue, he mentally catalogued the changing neighborhood, clicking off stores he recognized like a priest working rosary beads. I have to do this, ran through his mind. I’m the President. And this is our chance.

The truck pulled into a gas station, but drove past the pumps all the way around to the back. The passenger hopped out and opened a garage door. The truck pulled inside.

“Let’s go,” the driver said, as he got out of the vehicle.

The gang leader climbed out the back and found himself in front of a collapsing-leg bridge table and three metal chairs.

“Have a seat,” Milt told him.

All three sat down.

The gang leader reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, moving very slowly so as not to startle the two men. His hand was halfway to his jacket before he realized he was wasting the effort-they looked about as nervous as a pair of gardeners.

“You’ve got one on for Wednesday night,” Milt said. “At the lot on Halstead.”

“Yeah,” the young man answered, not questioning how the men sitting across from him would know such a thing. “That’s the best time-too many cops driving around on weekends.”

“Fair one?” Milt asked.

“Supposed to be. But you can’t trust the-”

“Who called it?”

“We… I guess we both did. Our warlord met their-”

“Whole mobs, or ten-best?”

“Nobody does ten-best anymore,” the young man said, unconsciously dry-washing his hands. “The others always show up, to watch, like, and they end up getting in it, anyway.”

“So you’ll be outnumbered,” Fred said.

“Not this time,” the young man said, pride thickening his voice. “We have a treaty with the Mercy Street Gladiators. So some of them might even be there with us, maybe.”

“That was pretty slick work,” Fred complimented him. “Only thing is, we heard the niggers have reached out.”

“Huh?” the young man said, puzzled.

“You ever hear of the Chicago Vice Lords?”

“I… I think I heard of them. But I never seen-”

“They started the same place the Hawks did,” Fred said.

“In Truesdale?” the young man said. “Man, you don’t know what you’re saying. I spent more than two years locked up there, and I never saw any-”

“I don’t mean the same physical location,” Fred said, patiently. “I mean the same place. ‘Locked up,’ that’s a place, understand? Only, for the Vice Lords, it was in the St. Charles Reformatory-that’s up in Illinois, an hour’s drive west of Chicago. That joint, it’s run the same way they do it at the Truesdale Training School for Boys. Cottages, right?”

“Dorms,” the young man said. “The cottages were only for the-”

“Right,” Fred interrupted. “The point is, they kept you separated, mostly.”

“Except for the sissies. They had their own dorm. That was the only place they mixed colors. But nobody cared about that. Even niggers got no use for-”

“That was a mistake,” Milt said.

“What?”

“A big mistake,” Fred took up the thread. “You leave niggers alone, they’re going to plot. And that’s what happened. What they call those places, it’s all wrong. ‘Reformatory.’ ‘Correctional Institute.’ ‘Training School.’ What did they train you to do in Truesdale?”

“Uh, to be a farmer, I guess. That was all we did there, just get up in the morning and-”

“Yeah,” Fred said, making it clear he wasn’t interested in the young man’s recollections of institutional life. “Look, Myron-I’m sorry, look, Ace-when you do a burglary, you’re inside the house, you see a chest of drawers, where do you start?”

“With the bottom drawer,” the young man said, promptly. “That way, you don’t have to close each one to get to the next one. Saves time, you get out faster. But you gotta be sure to-”

“Where’d you learn that?” Fred said.

“While I was in- Oh, yeah, I see what you mean now.”

“Learned some other things, too, didn’t you?” the agent said. “And when you got out, it was like you earned your stripes, wasn’t it?”

“My stripes?”

“Proved yourself,” Fred said. “Showed you had what it takes. You were a Hawk before you went in, weren’t you?”

“Just one of the Juniors.”

“Sure. But by the time you came out of Truesdale…”

“That’s when they first wanted me for leader.”

“ ‘Leader,’ now, that’s the word we’re looking for, Ace,” Fred said, leaning in, flicking his lighter into life to start the youth’s cigarette burning. “ ‘President,’ that’s just a title. Something you are. But ‘leader,’ well, that’s something you do.”

“The Vice Lords aren’t just a club,” Milt said. “They’re more like an army. Their leaders, they call them ‘generals.’ They practically run the whole West Side of Chicago. You know how big a piece of turf that is? More than all of Locke City.”

“I heard, in New York, the niggers got gangs so big they swarm like ants when they come to bop,” Ace said. “But that’s just what people say. Here, they got more men than us, but nothing like that.”

“That’s what I was telling you before, Ace. About the Kings reaching out,” Fred said, extending his arm to illustrate his words. “The Vice Lords are thinking about expanding their territory. And, Wednesday night, they’re going to have some men on hand. Not to fight. More like… observers. If they like what they see…”

“I don’t get it,” the young man said, dragging on his cigarette. “Why would they even care? It’s not like anyone around here has got anything.”

“Where do your boys get reefer?” Milt asked.

“From Fat Lucy,” the young man said, wondering, even as he spoke, why it seemed impossible to lie to the self-assured men sitting on either side of him. “She runs the candy store over on-”