Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“I know you have to go,” Dett said, glancing at his watch. “And I know you won’t get back until late. But could I-?”

“It doesn’t matter how late it is,” she said, standing close to him. “Just be sure to call before you come. I’ll leave the back door open, okay?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I didn’t have to work tonight.”

“That’s okay,” Dett said. “I have to work, too.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 15:56

“Good afternoon,” Dett said to the stylishly dressed woman seated at a small desk behind a wooden railing. “I have an appointment.”

She looked up from her typewriter, adjusted her glasses, smiled professionally, said, “Mr. Dett?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certainly on time,” the woman said, approvingly. “Please have a seat.” She stood up, tucked a ballpoint pen into her lightly frosted hairdo, and walked into a back office.

Dett remained standing. The woman returned, said, “Come this way, please.”

Dett walked past the railing and followed the woman’s pointing finger into a spacious corner office. The man behind the desk was wearing a navy-blue suit with a faint chalk stripe. A heavy gold wedding band on his left hand caught the sunlight slanting through the high windows.

“Mr. Dett,” the man said, getting to his feet and extending his hand. He was slightly above medium height, with a bearish frame. Thick, tightly curled brown hair topped a clean-featured face. His eyes were the color of rich Delta soil.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Dett said, shaking hands.

Both men sat down. Gendell spread his hands, his gesture an invitation to speak.

“This is about a mortgage,” Dett said.

“Oh?”

“You seem surprised.”

“You’re not from around here,” the lawyer said. “So I assumed what you told my secretary was a pretext of some sort. And, now that I’ve had a look at you, I still think so.”

“It’s not about my mortgage,” Dett said. “Someone else’s.”

The lawyer’s expression didn’t change.

“Let’s say I wanted to pay off someone’s mortgage,” Dett went on. “How would I go about it?”

“You mean if you wanted to acquire the property for yourself?” the lawyer asked, his hands working expertly with a cigar cutter.

“No, nothing like that. Just pay off someone’s mortgage. So they’d own their house, free and clear.”

“Give them the money, let them walk down to the bank,” the lawyer said, the corners of his eyes tightening.

“I can’t do it like that.”

“Because…?”

“I don’t want them to know… I mean I want it to be a surprise.”

“You want to be someone’s mystery benefactor?” Gendell said, using a long match to distribute flame evenly around the tip of his cigar.

“There’s nothing shady about what I want to do,” Dett said, calmly. “There’s someone I care about. A woman. If I just offered to pay off her mortgage, she’d never accept. So I want it to be a surprise. For after I’m not around.”

“Oh, I get it. You want to leave her the money in your will, so when you-”

“No,” Dett said, slowly. “After I’ve gone from here. From Locke City.”

“And that would be…?”

“In a few days.”

“What, exactly, would you want me to do?”

“I want to leave the money with you. Enough to pay off the mortgage. A month from now, I want you to go to the bank, get the mortgage canceled, and give the papers, the free-and-clear papers, to her.”

“Well, I’d need a power of attorney, together with-”

“Just the money,” Dett said. He reached into his overcoat and took out several stacks of neatly banded bills. “There’s a thousand in each one,” he said. “Six thousand total. The mortgage is thirty-seven dollars and forty-nine cents a month. It’s at least twenty years paid. That’ll be more than enough to cover it. And your fee, too.”

“You don’t need a lawyer for this,” Gendell said, puffing on his cigar. “All you need is a messenger boy.”

“I do need a lawyer,” Dett said. “To be sure she doesn’t get cheated, make certain the deed they give her is what it’s supposed to be. I don’t want anyone at the bank pulling a fast one.”

Dett got to his feet.

“Wait a minute,” the lawyer said. “You come in here talking about the bank pulling a fast one, but you drop six grand on my desk and don’t even ask for a receipt. How do you know I won’t just pocket the money?”

“Because I know what kind of man you are, lawyer or not,” Dett said. “The mortgage I want you to pay off, it belongs to Tussy Chambers.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 19:03

“The address is a bottle club in Cleveland. On East Seventy-ninth. In what they call the Hough area. It’s all colored there; a white man would stick out a mile away.”

“I never been there, boss.”

“But you got people there, right? A cousin, a friend, something?”

“Well, I knows people there, sure. But what you want, that’s pretty tricky stuff. Like being a spy.”

“It’s not tricky at all,” Dioguardi said, soothingly. Don’t want to spook the nigger, he thought, grinning inwardly as he realized his unintentional pun, vowing to use it later, when he got back to his headquarters. “The package is going to look like this,” he said, holding up a nine-by-twelve-inch manila envelope with thick red bands running both horizontally and vertically to form a cross.

“Looks like a Christmas package, boss.”

“That’s right,” Dioguardi said, encouragingly. “You could spot it at fifty feet. Now, we’ll make sure it gets delivered this coming Monday. All you have to do is watch for a white man coming out of that club, with this envelope in his hand.”

“What if he don’t pick it up on Monday, boss?”

“I told you; this is a colored place, in a colored neighborhood. A rough one, too. The guy I’m interested in, he’s a white man. So he’s not going to want to hang around. The way I have it figured, whoever he’s got working for him-inside the place, I mean-that person is going to call him as soon as the package gets delivered. And the guy I want you to watch for, he’ll be close by, ready to make his move.”

“I don’t think this is something I could do for you, boss. I mean, I wants to do it, sure, I do. I know you pays good. But I be worried that… well, they’s just too many things that could go wrong. And then you be mad at me. If this was Locke City, in Darktown, I mean, I could follow any man you say. But Cleveland, I ain’t never even been there myself. How I gonna chase after a man, I don’t even know the streets?”

“I was counting on you, Rufus.”

“That’s just it, boss. I wants you to count on me. I got a good reputation with you, don’t I? You ask Rufus to do something, it gets done. For a long time now, ain’t that true? Well, this time, something go wrong, now Rufus ain’t so reliable anymore, see? I can’t have that, boss. Now, you got a slick plan, find out who’s going to pick up your package. I know you a big man. You could probably make one little phone call, get a dozen good men to watch that place, if you wanted.”

Dioguardi leaned back in his seat, staring at nothing.

Rufus waited, silently.

“You make good sense, Rufus,” Dioguardi said, grudgingly. “You’re right. I’ll have it taken care of.”

“Thank you, boss. You said there was two things…”

“Yeah. And the other one, it’s right up your alley. All I want you to do is tell me if Walker Dett leaves town.”

“I gonna do that anyway, boss. I watching that man like a hawk for you.”

“You understand, I don’t just mean if he checks out, right? If he leaves town at all, even if he comes back. You can tell if he spent the night at the hotel, right?”