Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“If you’ve been looking as hard as you say you have, for as long as you have, you must have narrowed it down past that.”

“If he’s a fag, he’s the best faker I ever heard of,” Beaumont said, chuckling. “Ernest the Fourth has been in half the whorehouses in the state. And he’s had a woman on the side every time he’s been married, too. In fact, the one he’s married to now, she used to be the lady-in-waiting.”

“And if he wasn’t shooting blanks, he would have gotten one of them pregnant by now,” Dett said. “ ‘Specially when he knows any kid of his would inherit a fortune.”

“Right,” Beaumont agreed. “Got to be something wrong with his equipment.”

“There’s a lot more wrong with him than that,” Cynthia said, disgustedly. “No man ever had more opportunities in life than Ernest Hoffman’s son. And he’s squandered them all. He’s just a wastrel and a failure. If I was his father… Oh!”

“Sure,” Dett said. “The line is going to die out, without anyone to take over. The daughter, Dianne, she’s out of Hoffman’s second wife, after his first one died. Twenty years younger than the son, and still pretty old to be having a baby.”

“You think she was pressured into it?” Cynthia asked.

“It adds up,” Dett said, moving his hands in a wide-sweeping gesture, as if to include all the material Beaumont had gathered. “Hoffman knows his own son isn’t going to take over for him. But his grandson… I don’t care what the name on the birth certificate says, that’s the real Ernest the Fourth.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 22:59

Sherman Layne entered the precinct house at the beginning of his shift. He strolled through the squad room, back to the area reserved for the detectives. “I heard there was a rumble earlier, Chet,” he said to a jowly, white-haired cop in a houndstooth sport coat, making the statement into a question.

“There was something,” the plainclothesman answered. “Call comes into the precinct, says they’re having World War III out there. Heavy gunfire. Everybody saddles up and rides, but, time the first cars are on the scene, it’s back to being a vacant lot.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the big detective said, slowly. “There’s always some of them left, either from wanting to be the last ones to run, or not being able to run at all.”

“They got tricked,” the jowly cop said, making a jeering sound with his rubbery lips. “Looks like someone in the neighborhood had their own police siren. Some of our guys heard it in front of them, as they were heading to the scene.”

“That was pretty damn slick, whoever thought of it,” Sherman said, furrowing his brow in concentration. “Those kids hear a siren, they’re going to bolt. They wouldn’t stop to figure out where it was coming from.”

“Yeah. But you know that area. Nobody knows nothing. One old lady, lives a few blocks from the lot-on Halstead, where it went down-she said the sirens were coming from a couple of different cars.”

“Cars?”

“That’s what she said.”

“But not squad cars?”

“Nope. Just regular cars. Driving around, blasting sirens.”

“That’s a new one on me. Never heard of anything like that before.”

“Me, neither. But it wasn’t her imagination, Sherman. ’Cause the gang boys heard them, too. That’s what made them cut and run.”

“I think I’ll go out there myself,” Sherman Layne said. “Take a look around while it’s still dark.”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 23:04

“Did you see it?”

“Not up close,” Lacy said into the phone. “But we were there. Saw one of them go down. We split soon as we heard the sirens.”

“Tomorrow morning, come over to Benny’s place. We’ll shoot a game of pool.”

“What time?”

“I’ll be there sometime between ten and eleven,” Harley Grant said.

1959 October 07 Wednesday 23:08

“Dianne lives right here,” Beaumont said, pointing to a large map. “Not in Locke City proper, but just outside. They have a place on Carver Lake.”

“Summer place, you mean?”

“No, it’s year-round. Her husband, he works for… well, he works for Hoffman, I guess. He’s the manager of a half-dozen different businesses in town: couple of bars, Trianon Lanes-that’s the bowling alley that’s not ours-the movie house-the Rialto, not the drive-in-things like that.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It isn’t any work,” Cynthia said, making a snorting sound. “Every one of those places has a full-time manager. All the husband-Parsons is his name, Mark Parsons-has to do is make his rounds and collect money. He’s like a little kid with an allowance.”

“Is he paying anyone off?” Dett asked.

“With Ernest Hoffman for a father-in-law? You’ve got to be joking,” Beaumont said. “Those businesses, they’re all legit. And nobody’d be crazy enough to try and shake him down for protection.”

“All he’s good for is driving around in that fancy sports car of his,” Cynthia said, dismissively. “And making babies. That he knows how to do.”

“They only have the one kid, right?”

“They do,” Cynthia said, her mouth twisting in disapproval. “But before that child was born, two of his girlfriends visited Dr. Turlow.”

“He does abortions,” Beaumont explained.

“If you know all that…”

“It’s not a lever,” Beaumont said. “The son-in-law is… well, he’s a son-in-law. That’s what he is; that’s what he does. He’s not running for office.”

“What if he thought his wife was going to find out?”

“Even if that was worth something, it’s not what we need,” Beaumont said. “All the son-in-law could do is pay some money to hush it up. Probably already did. But he can’t make anything happen, not the way we need it to.

“Hell, his wife probably already knows. And you can bet Hoffman himself does. If Hoffman wanted him to stop running around, he’d take care of it himself. There’s nothing there for us.”

“But if someone had the baby…”

“A kidnap?” Beaumont said. “You have to be insane.”

“Who kidnaps kids?” Dett replied, calmly.

“I don’t know. Psychos, I guess. It’s, I don’t know…”

“Dirty,” Cynthia finished for him, her mouth twisted in disgust.

“Rich people’s kids get kidnapped all the time,” Dett said, calmly. “Bobby Greenglass, Peter Weinberger…”

“Those kids got killed,” Beaumont said.

“You’re going to do a snatch, you might as well,” Dett said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s the death penalty no matter what. They’re going to execute that guy out in California… Chessman, and he didn’t kill anyone. Ever since Lindbergh…”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Beaumont said, feeling Cynthia’s anger fill his own chest. “We can’t snatch Ernest Hoffman’s grandson. Even if he’d play ball-and we don’t know that he would-he’d know it was us. That’s not strategy. That’s suicide.”

“Have to be pretty stupid to try and pull a stunt like that, wouldn’t you?” Dett said, as if struggling to understand a complex proposition. “Extortion’s for money, not for politics. I mean, what kind of a man thinks he can kidnap a kid to make the kid’s grandfather do him a bunch of favors?”

“An idiot,” Beaumont said, his voice as iron as his eyes.

“Exactly,” Dett said, very quietly. “A real animal. The kind you can’t talk to. You know anyone like that around here?”

1959 October 07 Wednesday 23:59

“Tussy! Call for you.”

“Thanks, Booker.”

“You know Armand don’t like it when-”

“Armand won’t mind,” she said, innocent-eyed.