Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Yeah,” Ace said, thinking, This guy, the President of the Gladia-tors, he talks like some faggy schoolteacher. Jesus.

“So-you see what I’m telling you?” Lacy said, smiling as if he read Ace’s thoughts… and forgave him the mistake. “You-the Hawks, I mean-you never really did hold your own.”

“The niggers wouldn’t dare to move against us on our own turf,” Ace said, hotly.

“Why should they?” Lacy countered. “They don’t want your territory; it’s on the wrong side of town. But that lot on Halstead, that’s No Man’s Land, right?”

“Well… well, sure it is. I mean, it’s just a whole block of dirt and junk. Nobody even lives around there.”

“Uh-huh. Last time you rumbled there, who won?”

“We did,” Ace said confidently, knowing each side would tell a different story. Hell, he thought, when a rumble’s over, everyone tells a different story… ‘specially those who weren’t even there.

“So you won… what, exactly? A fight?”

“What else is-?”

“There’s the land, is what I’m telling you. When you win a war, you get the land, right?”

“Nobody wants that land, man. It’s just a-”

“Yeah, I know. But, see, if you control land, you can do things with it.”

The same thing those Klan guys were telling me, Ace thought. “I see what you mean,” he said, aloud.

“We’ve been thinking about that property ourselves,” Lacy said. “So we’re going to send along a few men Wednesday night. Just to make sure the Kings don’t try anything extra.”

“That’s cool.”

“And after it’s over, that lot on Halstead, it’s going to be Gladiator turf,” Lacy said, his voice subtly downshifting to a tighter gear.

“Well, I guess. I mean, we got this treaty-”

“The treaty means you don’t move on us and we don’t move on you. It means you can walk through our turf flying your own colors and you don’t get jumped. It doesn’t mean we’re partners.”

Ace felt his face flush. He lit another cigarette, quickly glancing down to satisfy himself his hands were steady. “If your club went to war, we’d be right there with you,” he said.

“That’s not going to happen,” Lacy said. “You see what it says on our jackets now?” He nodded to his right.

Sunglasses plucked a white satin jacket from the seat of a straight chair in the corner. He held it up in both hands, displaying the back, with its ornate red script yoked across the shoulders:

Gladiators SAC

“Social and Athletic Club? You’re going collegiate!?” Ace blurted out. “The Gladiators always been the strongest bopping club in the whole-”

“Relax,” Lacy said, holding up his palm like a traffic cop. “What we’re doing is moving up. Rumbling, that’s for kids. We’ve got bigger plans. Who needs the cops looking over your shoulder every minute?”

“They don’t bother us,” Ace said, struggling with what he was hearing.

“No offense, but why should they, unless you’re getting it on with some other club?”

“Yeah, I can see that, but…”

“But what?”

“It’s like… I don’t know, not what I expected, maybe. What do you want us to do?”

“Do? Nothing. You have your meet Wednesday night. After that, it’s over.”

“No warring with the-?”

“Listen, when it comes to other clubs, you guys do whatever you want. But not on Halstead. Wednesday night is going to be the last rumble in that lot. On that whole block, in fact. The Kings cross your border, it’s okay with us, you kill every last one of them. And if you decide to go down on them, jump them in their own territory, that’s your business, too. Wednesday, we’ll have enough men there, make sure you guys come out all right. But after that, the lot on Halstead, it’s Gladiator turf. Understand?”

“We’ll come out all right,” Ace said, sullenly.

“Because they’re niggers?” Lacy said.

“No,” Ace told him, pausing dramatically, “because they ain’t got nothing like what we got.”

“What’s that?”

“This,” Ace said, slowly taking the pistol out of his jacket.

Nobody moved.

“It’s not loaded,” Ace said, thrilling inside at the silence he had produced. “I’d never bring a loaded piece inside your clubhouse.”

1959 October 05 Monday 13:18

“You know how old Capone was when he went to prison?”

“Fifty?” Dave guessed.

“Just a little past thirty,” Mack told him. “And when he was released, he was barely forty. So how come he didn’t move right back in, take over the rackets again?”

“He was sick, I thought.”

“He was sick all right, kid. Paresis, you know what that is?”

“Like, cancer?”

“No. His brain was all rotted out. From syphilis.”

“Ugh. That’s…”

“What? A nigger disease?”

“I didn’t say-”

“I’m not accusing you of being prejudiced, Davy. But that is what you heard, isn’t it? That only coloreds get it?”

“No. That’s not true at all. In the army, they showed us this film-”

“And gave you the short-arm inspection when you got back from leave, sure. But that’s for the clap, gonorrhea. Syphilis, it’s what the colored people call ‘bad blood.’ Compared to the clap, it’s like a howitzer against a rifle.”

“How come you know so much about this?”

“That’s another story. Now you’re hearing this one. So pay attention. Syphilis, it’s a special disease. When you got the clap, you know it-it burns like hell when you take a piss. But the syph isn’t like that. When you first get it, what they call the primary or the secondary stage, you get these sores on your body. Right at the same spot where you… made contact. They look like all holy horror, like leprosy or something, but they don’t hurt. And here’s the special thing about them: they go away. All by themselves.”

“You only get it from having sex?”

“Yeah. No matter what else you might have heard, that is the only way. And it doesn’t matter what kind of sex, okay? So even queers get it. Anyway, if you ever go into a neighborhood where it’s all colored-not just a place where they let them live, where it’s wall-to-wall black, businesses and everything-you’ll find some of what they call ‘men’s doctors.’ They’re not real doctors. Not even witch doctors,” Mack said, making a sound of disgust. “They’re just con men. You come to one of them with syphilis sores and they’ll sell you some potion supposed to be just the thing for it. So, when the sores go away-and they always do-you think you’re all cured. Only you’re not.”

“But if the-”

“There’s a third stage. They call it ‘latent’ or ‘tertiary.’ What that means is that you can’t pass it along to anyone else. You’re not what they call ‘infectious.’ But you’re sure as hell infected. It’s a freakish disease. The worse it looks, the less it’s doing to you. And when you think it’s gone, it’s actually eating you alive.”

“Killing you?”

“One way or the other, yeah. Sometimes, it goes after the heart. Sometimes, the liver. Paresis, what Capone had, means it went after the brain. By the time he got out of prison, he was a walking vegetable.”

“With all his money, why didn’t he just go right to the hospital?”

“He did,” Mack said. “But by then it was too late. See, in those days, they used to treat it with all kinds of different drugs, like ’606.’ Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Today, we have penicillin. For syphilis, that’s the KO punch. Kills it, every time. But even if they had had it back then, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because all it can do is stop the disease in its tracks-it can’t repair any damage already done. Once syphilis gets to the brain, that’s the end.”