Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“He’s what we been looking for, Brother Omar. A true elder.”

“You think he should sit in when that boy comes around?”

“He’s got the wisdom,” Darryl said, “and he’s ready to share it with us. I be proud to have him.”

“No sign of Silk?”

“No, brother. But if he shows, Kendall’s going to ease him off-he’ll never see nothing.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:03

“Sherman, can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything,” the big detective said.

“When you were with those girls. In my house, I mean. Did you ever think about me?”

“You mean, think about you that way? Or… think about you while I was…?”

“What’s the difference?”

“When you came out here, what did you expect?” Sherman countered.

“I expected to… I expected to prove my promise. About doing anything for you. So I didn’t know what to expect, but it didn’t matter.”

“You thought what I wanted, it was the same thing I did down in your basement, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it wouldn’t matter if you-”

“I do think about you that way, Ruth,” Sherman said. “Having… being with you. But not with you tied up, or blindfolded. I always wished, when I was coming out there, when we were talking, that it would be… in bed. Like… afterwards, you know?”

“Start by kissing me,” Ruth said, locking her hands behind Sherman’s neck.

1959 October 06 Tuesday 22:14

A boxy ’51 De Soto moved slowly through the night-shrouded junkyard, every rotation of its tires recorded by watchers’ eyes.

The car came to a halt. A young man with a tall, rangy build got out. He was wearing a long black coat. The three orange feathers in the headband of his hat looked like candle flames in the night.

Two men approached, bracketing the young man.

“I’m here to see someone,” the young man said.

“Who?” the men asked, with one voice.

“I don’t know no name. Don’t want to know no name. I’m here to buy something. This is where they told me to come.”

“You come alone?” one of the bracketing men asked.

“Just me.”

“I don’t mean in the car,” the man said. “I mean, you got anyone waiting for you, close by?”

“No.”

“Come on,” the man said.

The young man followed the speaker; the silent man walked behind them, maintaining the bracket.

“In there,” the lead man said, pointing to a shack.

The young man entered. The room was shadowy, illuminated only by the distant glow of the junkyard’s arc lights coming through a single, streaked window. But he could make out a table, three seated men, and an empty chair.

“Sit down,” said the man seated directly across from the empty chair.

The young man did as he was instructed, resting his hands on the table.

“Say what you come to say,” he was told.

“My name is Preacher,” the young man said. “I’m the President of the South Side Kings.”

His statement greeted by silence, the young man continued, “We’ve got one on for tomorrow night with the Golden Hawks. At the lot over on Halstead.”

More silence.

“I heard that the white boys got cannons, this time. Pistols. Real ones. That never happened before.”

The young man took a breath, said, “I heard the white boys, they got guns from the Klan. We need guns, too. That’s why I came here. To buy some.”

“How much money you bring?” Darryl asked.

“I got three hundred dollars,” Preacher said, proudly, hoping his voice concealed that he had emptied his gang’s treasury for this purpose.

“You say ‘guns,’ you mean pistols?” Darryl asked.

“That’s right. ’Cause that’s what they got.”

“You ‘heard’ this, about the white boys having pistols?” Rufus said. “You didn’t say where you heard it.”

“From a lot of different places,” Preacher said, evasively. “Word’s out, all over.”

“What happens when the fight is finished?” Moses said.

“When it’s finished?” Preacher asked, puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What changes?” Moses said. “What will be different?”

“Oh, I see what you saying. What’ll be different is that those white boys will know the South Side Kings don’t play.”

“And now they think you do?”

“Hey, man, no! Everybody knows our club is-”

“So what would be different?” Moses said, implacably.

“I guess… I guess it depends on how the bop comes out.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Moses said. “Before you go out tomorrow night, you going to pour an ‘X’ out of wine on the sidewalk, right?”

“Sure. You got to-”

“What? Show respect for the dead? That’s what they get, for dying? The people who ain’t dead, they get together and say, ‘Oh, that boy, he had a lot of heart’?”

“What else could they get?” Preacher said, as surly as a corrected child. “Tombstone wouldn’t make no difference.”

“You don’t mind dying, do you, son?” the old man said.

“No, I don’t. I can’t. The only way a man can-”

“Courage is a good thing,” Moses said. “You can’t be a man without it. But getting killed don’t make you brave. And dying over a piece of ground that’ll never be yours-”

“It will be ours,” Preacher said. “After tomorrow night, that’ll be Kings turf.”

“Yours?” Rufus said, caustically. “Does that mean you going to build houses on it? Open a gas station, maybe? Could you sell it, get money for it?”

“That’s not what I’m-”

“Fighting for land, that’s what this country’s all about,” Rufus said. “White men killed a whole bunch of Indians, for openers. When they got done with the Indians, they started on each other. And they still doing it. But that’s land that’s got a deed to it, see?”

“You’re saying it ain’t worth it, over a little piece of vacant lot?” Preacher said. “But that’s not what this is about. If we let the Hawks take that lot, it’s like they took a piece of us.”

“Rep,” Rufus said.

“Rep,” Preacher agreed. “When I was in New York…” He paused, but if he was waiting for some indication that he had impressed the seated men, he was disappointed. “When I was just thirteen, I stayed with my uncle for the summer. He lives in Harlem. They got gangs there the size of armies. They run the city. When people see them coming, they get out the way.”

“That’s where you took your name?” Rufus said.

“Huh?”

“The biggest gangs in New York, the Chaplains and the Bishops, right? So… ‘Preacher,’ that would be like… representing what they are.”

“You know a lot,” Preacher said, not disputing Rufus’s intuitive guess.

“You know what? Those big gangs, those armies, they don’t own nothing,” Rufus said. “They got no real power. Only reason the Man hasn’t stepped on them is, right now, they making things easy for Whitey. Got half the folks in the big cities scared out of their minds, so the politicians, nobody cares what crooks they are, long as they protect them from the crazed hordes of niggers. It’s all a shuck, son.”

“How do you know so much?” Preacher said. Not disputing, wondering. Whatever these men were, they were a lot more than gun dealers.

“We’re going to tell you,” Rufus said. “And I hope you listen.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 22:39

“Walker?”

“Huh?” Dett said, opening his eyes.

“You were asleep!”

“Me?” he said, noticing, for the first time, that his right arm was wrapped around Tussy.

“Yes, you!” she said. “I’ve heard of boys who take girls to drive-ins for all kinds of reasons, but I never heard of one who fell asleep on the job.”