Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Where would Al Capone get syphilis?”

“Well, the story is, he got it when he was working muscle for Johnny Torrio back in New York, when he was just a kid himself. Torrio was a major pimp, had a whole string of whorehouses, so Capone could have been dipping his wick anytime he wanted.”

“Then he thought it went away, but, all the time, it was-”

“-killing him, yeah. That’s the story. But it’s not the truth. See, Al Capone had syphilis, all right. But he didn’t get it when he was a kid-he got it in the federal penitentiary.”

“How? If he was-”

“When he first got busted for taxes, he made some kind of a deal to plead guilty. According to him-and I mean him, not some rumor; that’s what he said-he was supposed to draw a deuce in the pen, and cover all the charges with that. But he bragged to the papers about it, and the judge-a federal judge, remember-said he wouldn’t go along. Hell, with all that press, he couldn’t go along, or it would look like he was on the mob’s payroll, too. Get himself investigated. So Capone went to trial. And he ended up with eleven years.”

“You think, if he had kept his mouth shut-?”

“We’ll never know. Anyway, they put him in the Cook County Jail while he was waiting to see how his appeals came out. And, kid, let me tell you, he ran the place. Had three private cells to himself, fixed up like a hotel suite. He ate steak and lobster, drank the best bonded booze, had all the ‘visitors’ he wanted, too.

“When he lost his appeals, he was sent to the federal pen in Atlanta. And he ran that place just like he ran Cook County. The man was a king inside those walls. And that’s when it happened.”

“The syphilis.”

“Yep. Girl named Noreen Tisdale. Most gorgeous blonde you ever saw in your life. Face like a schoolgirl, and a body like Candy Barr-never mind, trust me, she was a real stunner. Visited that scar-faced greaseball five times, just to make sure.”

“Wait! You’re saying she knew-”

“Knew? That’s what she was paid for, kid. First, she had to fuck a guy who had the syph-early stage. Then she had to be checked by a doctor, make sure she had it. And then she goes and lets Capone fuck her, any way he wanted it. By the time she was done with him, that was it.”

“But couldn’t a doctor-?”

“What? Fix him? Maybe… maybe… if he’d gotten to one in time. But, soon as they were sure they had him infected, they boxed him up and shipped him to Alcatraz. That’s when Big Al stopped running the show. No more special treatment. No privileges, no nothing. And the only thing the doctors they had in there ever treated was stab wounds.”

“Why would any woman do… all that?” Dave said.

“Her husband was sitting in the Death House at the Georgia State Pen. Bank robbery, and a guard got killed. He got a pardon from the governor when another guy confessed to the crime. Turned out her husband was innocent all along.”

“Jesus Lord!”

“Yeah. She was some kind of woman.”

“Her? I meant… an innocent man on Death Row. It’s so…”

“He was guilty as sin, Davy.”

“But you just said-”

Mack drew a long, deep breath. Let it out slowly. Turned to the younger man and said, “It was a business deal, son. All the way around. Noreen did the job, and she got paid what she wanted for it. And what we got, we got Capone.”

“We? You don’t mean-?”

“Yeah, I do. That was just an experiment, at the time. And it worked. Nobody knew exactly what would happen if a man got syphilis and never got any treatment at all. Not for sure, anyway. Can you imagine what you could do with something like that? A disease you get from sex? The Krauts had their mustard gas in World War I. This, this could be bigger than that by a thousand, a million times. If you knew how to keep it under control, use it only when you wanted to use it, you could own the whole damn world.”

“Mack, how could you know all this?” Dave demanded.

“Because that was my job then.”

“Al Capone?”

“No, kid,” the older man said deliberately, as if the words were too heavy for his breath to carry them. “Noreen Tisdale.”

1959 October 05 Monday 14:49

“Benny’s Poolroom,” the pudgy man answered the phone.

“I want to leave a message for Harley Grant.”

“Shoot,” the pudgy man said.

“Tell him that part he wanted for his Chevy just came in. The one he’s been waiting for.”

“Sure. Who’s-” Benny started to ask. But Lacy Miller, President of the Gladiators, had already hung up.

1959 October 05 Monday 14:51

“The car wasn’t satisfactory, sir?” the clerk at the rental agency asked.

“No, it was fine,” Dett said. “Only I believe I need something a bit… nicer.”

“Well, we do have a Buick Invicta available. It’s a real beauty. Brand-new, really. But it’s quite a bit more than-”

“I’ll take it,” Dett said.

1959 October 05 Monday 15:28

Tussy’s bedroom looked as if it had been freshly burglarized, by a ham-fisted drunk. Drawers hung open, their contents strewn about the room. The bed was hidden under a blanket of discarded dresses, sweaters, and blouses. The back of the room’s only chair was draped in brassieres, its seat covered with panties.

All this… junk! she admonished herself, surveying the mayhem. The red one is too tarty, the black one is for funerals, and that blue one is for an old lady. What am I going to-?

Surrendering, Tussy went into her kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. “You want something, too?” she asked the enormous gray-and-black cat who was perching regally on one of the padded chairs.

When the animal responded with a rumbling noise, Tussy poured a dollop of cream into a saucer and set it out on the floor. The cat calmly strolled over to her offering, sniffed it suspiciously, then lapped it up.

Tussy sat down at the chrome-legged kitchen table and lit a smoke. Glancing at her watch, she realized she still had a couple of hours to go before her date. After all this aggravation, I’ll need another shower before I get dressed, she thought, absently patting the curlers in her hair.

1959 October 05 Monday 15:40

Dett inspected his newly polished shoes with a jeweler’s eye.

“Those look all right to you, sir?” Rufus asked, anxiously. Thinking, Those shoes, they’re just like the man himself. Nice and smooth on top, but they got rubber soles and steel toes.

“They look better than when they were new,” Dett told him. “Whoever you’ve got doing shoes at this place is an ace.”

“Did them myself, sir. Not to be downing the boy who usually do them, but I wanted them to be perfect. And I know, you wants a job done right, you does it yourself.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Dett asked, suddenly.

“Huh? What you mean, boss?”

“That’s what I mean,” Dett said. “You’re an educated man. Why do you talk like you’re not?”

“Educated man? Me? No, sir. I ain’t got no education, ’cept for up to the tenth grade at Lincoln-that’s the high school over in-”

“Help you get bigger tips?” Dett asked, as if Rufus had not spoken.

“No, sir, I don’t believe it do.”

“I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” Dett said, handing Rufus a folded five-dollar bill. “Thanks for the shoes. You did a beautiful job.”

1959 October 05 Monday 16:01

“Fuck!” Hog said to Ace. “Why’d you show it to them?”

“You weren’t there, man.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means, the way they talked, it was like we were the niggers.”

“But the treaty-”

“You’re not listening, man. The treaty, all it means is, the Gladia-tors aren’t going to move on us. But, see, what they were saying-and this is from Lacy himself-they wouldn’t be doing that anyway. Bopping, that’s kid stuff to them now. Big shots.”