Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“More,” the scar-faced man said.

“But that’s not enough to make a man trustworthy,” Dioguardi said. “A man could have a solid-steel pair on him, but that don’t make him smart. Some guys, you couldn’t beat their own name out of them, but you put them in the right situation, you could get them to tell you anything you want to know.”

“You mean, like with a broad?”

“With a broad. Liquored up. Or even just plain okey-doked-tricked, scammed, chumped. They’d be spilling their guts, and they wouldn’t even know it.”

“So you’re saying the best thing a man can have is a good brain?” the disfigured man asked, waiting patiently for the punch line.

“No, Gino. The best thing, for what we do, for our life, is when people think you’re stupid. When they underestimate you.”

“Nobody underestimates you, Sal.”

“When did you turn into an ass-kisser, G.?”

“Hey!” the older man said, his voice dropping an octave.

“What else should I say, you pouring the olive oil over me like I’m a fucking plate of pasta, Gino? You know me all my life. I always looked up to you. When I started to make my own moves, you were the man I wanted with me, from the beginning.”

“And I been with-”

“Yeah. Yeah, you have, G. The man I come to with my problems, that’s you to me. Closer than my father-fuck him in his eyes-ever was. I don’t keep you right next to me so you can jerk me off like some hooker.”

“Sal, I don’t have to take-”

“You’ll take it, G. Because it’s the truth. And that’s what I want from you, capisce? The truth. I can’t do what I got to do unless I see things like they really are.”

“I never-”

“Ah, you just fucking did, G. ‘Nobody underestimates you,’ the fuck does that mean? Everybody thinks I’m a real genius, right?”

“No,” the older man answered, chilly-voiced.

“No?”

“No, Sally,” he said, heavily. “Everybody don’t necessarily think you’re a genius, that’s right.”

“Now we’re rolling,” Dioguardi said, smiling broadly, showing a gleaming set of perfectly capped teeth. “So what’s the read on me, G.? Straight up, straight out.”

“Cugliuna di ferro!” Gino said, as if taking an oath.

“And the brains of a parakeet, right?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“No?”

“What do you want me to say, Sally? That you’re no Luciano? Who is?”

“You think I’m smart, G.?”

“Kind of question is that? Ever since you were a little kid, I knew you could be-”

“-a boss, with my own crew? Sure. But not the kind of man they ever ask to sit on the Commission.”

“What do you care about that, Sally? You sit down with those people, you’re in the room with the most crafty, devious, back-stabbing collection of men in the whole world. Like putting your hand in a basket of fucking rattlesnakes.”

“I can handle-”

“You know what made Lucky what he was?” Gino interrupted his boss, gently steering him away from danger as he had so many times in the past. “Lucky wasn’t like the rest of us. He was a prince,” the scar-faced man said, worshipfully. “And a prince, he’s not with one little group or another. He’s with everyone.”

“No tribes,” Dioguardi said, listening.

“You got it! With a real leader, it don’t matter who’s your cousin. This thing of ours, it started with blood. Close blood. Maybe it should have stayed that way. Now you got ‘families’ what ain’t families for real. And the bosses, they spend more time plotting against each other than they do thinking of ways to take care of their soldiers.”

Dioguardi leaned back in his chair, cast his eyes at the ceiling, and recited, as if reading from a report. “Sal Dioguardi, that is one vicious motherfucker. Rip the eyeballs out of your head and eat them for appetizers. Kill you, your father, and your sons if you cross him. How many men did he kill before he even got a little crew of his own? A dozen? More? A stone animale. About as subtle as a sledgehammer. You got a problem with Sally D., he’d rather hit you in your fucking head than sit down and talk with you.” He shifted position, pinned the man across from him with his eyes. “That sound about right, G.?”

“I heard people say that, yeah. All of it.”

“And, see, G., that’s all true. I made all that true. A rep like mine, it buys you some distance. One time, when I was just a young guy, back home, I made this nice score, and I was flush. I heard about this girl, Angel. Three hundred bucks a night, but she was supposed to be worth it. The best piece of ass in the whole city, what people said. I didn’t have my button yet, but I was a comer. A sure thing. I wasn’t ready for a Caddy-not in my position, not then-but I could have the best of something. Treat myself, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“So I go see this girl. I mean, I called her, made an appointment, like she was a doctor or something. And she was gorgeous. Long black hair, boobs out to here,” he said, gesturing, “an ass like a perfect ripe peach, a face like you could see what they named her after, everything.

“Now, all night means all night. After the first time, I was just laying back on her bed-silk sheets she had, G., black silk-and we’re talking. Mostly her, the talking, I mean. I’m kind of half-listening-that broad almost put me in a coma-and I realize she’s talking about a job. A job she wants done.”

“On her pimp?”

“No. No, nothing like that. A woman like her, she never had no pimp, I bet. What she was talking about was one of her… clients, she called them. A guy who worked with diamonds. One of those Jews with the beards and the long black coats? What she told me was, they carry the ice around with them. And they deal all in cash. You understand where I’m going?”

“She had a plan to take this guy off?”

“Right. A complicated plan, G. But, listening to her, I could see how it could work. I remember, I sat up in the bed, and just… just stared at her. And you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said, and I never forgot it, ‘I just look like this. It’s not all I am.’ You see what I learned right there, G.? You look at this broad, you never think she could be some kind of mastermind. Only she was. And, right that minute, I swore to myself that I’d be just like her. It’s the perfect camouflage. You look at her, all you see is a piece of ass. You’d never see how dangerous she is, because you wouldn’t be thinking of her that way.”

“Did you ever do that job? The one she wanted you for?”

“No. And I never went back to see her again, either. ’Cause even as I snapped to what she was telling me, I realized I was already playing the role I do now. I mean, if she hadn’t thought I was a little slow, she wouldn’t have picked me. I ever did that job with her, she’d own me, the cunt. Probably turn right around and sell me to the Jew she wanted me to rob.”

“You got a plan, Sal? Is that what all this-?”

“I got a lot of plans, G. That’s what makes me different from the others. They all got plans, but they’re like a flock of pigeons on the ground, so busy pecking at the garbage that they never look up, see where it came from.”

“You mean… what, Sal?”

“I mean the people who run the whole show, G. Not the Commission, the government.”

“The feds?”

“Not them. They’re just soldiers, too. They got bosses, they do what they’re told. A boss-a boss by us-he gets clipped, what happens to his people? When I was in Japan-oh, the money you could make there after the war!-I made friends with this guy, Yasui. He told me the Japs had a thing like ours thousands of years before we did. Believe that! They had families, bosses, soldiers, territories, rackets… everything.