Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“What about the girl? That little Caril?”

“What about her?”

“She went to prison. People say she did some of those murders, don’t they?”

“Yeah. And I don’t know what the truth of her is. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to know. Starkweather, he wasn’t one of the hard men, he was just a freak.”

“What do you mean, one of the hard men?”

“A professional. A man who does crime the way another man does whatever his job is. A man with… a code. If he’d been one of those, you can bet he would have taken the weight. Said it was all his fault, that he had forced the girl to go along. He was going to die anyway; he might as well have gone out with some class. Sat down in that chair and rode the lightning like a man. Starkweather, he was nothing but a degenerate. A piece of garbage like that, he doesn’t care what other people think of him, even his own kind.”

“You know what, Sherman?” Ruth said, curling into him. “Even if you’re right, even if his family did… horrible things to him, he didn’t have to do what he did. He had choices. Everybody has choices.”

“Everybody?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice as soft as gossamer. “Sometimes, the only choice is to live or to die. But you always have that. Like a bank account no one knows about, one that you can always go to if things get bad enough.”

“You’re not talking about Starkweather now, are you?”

“No, sweetheart. I was talking about that little Caril girl.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:02

“Are you sure?” Dett said. “You don’t even-”

“If I wasn’t sure, do you think I would dare to do it here? In my own house?” Tussy said, indignantly. “I already know you’re not going to be with me when I wake up.”

“But you’re… crying.”

“So what?” she said, defiantly. “Just because I’m a big enough girl to know my own mind doesn’t mean I can’t cry if I feel like it.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:09

“Night desk. Procter.”

“I’ve got a story for you.”

White male, mid-to-late-fifties, Midwest accent, but not local, flashed through the newsman’s mind, as he reflexively reached for his reporter’s pad. “Go,” he said.

“There’s a pay phone outside the Mobil station on Highway 109, just past the-”

“-exit. So?”

“I’ll give you an hour,” the voice said.

1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:13

Tussy’s kisses tasted like peppermint and Kools. Dett was lost. He cupped her breast gently, as if testing its weight.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

“It sure looks like you do,” she chuckled, her hand trailing lightly between his legs.

“I don’t mean… that. But I never…”

“Oh, Walker,” she said, pushing him onto his back, “don’t tell me you’ve never been with a woman before.”

“Not with a woman I…”

“What?” she said, fitting herself over him.

Dett looked up at Tussy’s face, haloed in the reflected light from the hallway. His life fell into her eyes. “Love,” he said.

1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:20

“Do you hate them all, Sherman?”

“Who, honey?” he asked.

“The… bad people, I guess you’d call them.”

“There aren’t that many truly bad ones, girl. Most of them, they’re just… dopes. You know how we catch them? They start throwing money around, brag to some girl they meet in a gin mill. Or one of them gets arrested for something else, and he turns informer to save his own skin.”

“Some of them… you know the kind I mean… they’re nothing but animals.”

“No, they’re not,” Sherman said, with sad certainty. “But they all practice on animals. When they’re still kids, I mean. Every single one I ever talked to, he started out hurting animals. They loved the feeling. So they went after more of it. They all loved fire, too.” Holden loves animals, flashed into his thoughts. And, just like them, he fears fire.

“When they were kids?”

“Yeah. And, sometimes, even after. You show me a kid who tortures animals and sets fires, I’ll show you a man I’m going to have to hunt someday.”

“You think they’re born like that?”

“No,” he said, watching the candlelight dance in Ruth’s dark hair. “It takes a lot of work to make them turn out that way.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:01

Procter pulled into the Mobil station with eight minutes to spare. He left his car at the pumps and walked inside. “Where’s the restrooms?” he asked the attendant, covering his tracks to the pay phone.

“Around the side,” the young pump jockey told him, pointing.

“Thanks. I’ll just get some gas first.”

“I can fill it for you, mister,” the kid said. “If you’re not back, I’ll just pull it over in front for you, okay?”

“You got a deal,” Procter said.

He ambled out of the station, walked around to the side of the cement-block building and into the darkness between the two restrooms.

The pay phone was hanging on the wall, sheltered by the overhang of the flat roof. Procter lit a cigarette, hunched his shoulders, and waited.

1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:03

“Oh God!” Tussy moaned, falling face-first against Dett’s chest.

Dett’s arms encircled her, as rigid as steel bands, but not quite touching her back.

“It’s all right, Walker,” she whispered against him. “Come on.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:08

When the pay phone rang, Procter snatched it before the pump jockey could react. As he lifted the receiver to his ear, he heard, “That was a nice piece you did for The Voice of Liberation.”

“Oh, you’re the guy who read it,” Procter said.

“How come you never did another?”

“I didn’t care for the company.”

“You knew they were Commies before you-”

“I drove a long way,” Procter said. “So where’s the big story you promised, whoever you are?”

“You never wrote another article for them because you found out that the man in charge of that paper wasn’t Khrushchev, it was Hoover,” the voice said. A statement, not a question.

Procter felt the hair on the back of his neck flutter, and he knew it wasn’t the night breeze.

“Want more?” the voice said.

“Not on the phone, I don’t,” Procter said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out with the heel of his shoe.

“They ran you off once,” the voice said. “But I’ve been studying you. And I don’t think they could do it again… if the story was big enough.”

“You’re doing all the talking,” Procter said.

It was another few seconds before he realized he had been speaking into a dead line.

1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:21

Alone in his room, Carl angrily tore another sheet of heavy, cream-colored stationery into strips. It has to be perfect!

He stood up, went to his closet, and spent several minutes precisely aligning his clothes until a familiar calmness settled over him. Then he sat down and began to write.

Mein Kommandant, I am yours to…

1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:59

As Ruth and Sherman slept in each other’s arms, Walker Dett slipped through the darkness behind Tussy’s house to where he had hidden the Buick and a change of clothes.

Driving back to his two-room apartment, Procter was thinking, This one’s no crank. And he knows about that time the G-men paid me a visit in Chicago.

Holden felt the darkness lifting around him, felt the night predators retreating to their dens, felt the forest respond to the not-yet-visible sun. He checked his notebook one more time, then headed back to his cave.

A maroon Eldorado crept around the corner on Halstead, then turned up the block.