Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“Starting when?” Dioguardi said. He expanded his chest and moved his shoulders in Beaumont’s direction. He blinked, and his eyes snapped from bored to predatory.

“After this whole thing is over. It doesn’t matter where you’re going, you’ll be someplace where you can put the whole thing together. At your end. And I’ll be doing the same thing at mine.”

“We don’t do business with-”

“Yes, you do,” Beaumont interrupted. “At some level, you have to, am I right? They sell drugs in the colored sections of every big city, don’t they? I mean, it’s coloreds themselves who are selling it. Come on.”

“That’s different,” Dioguardi disclaimed. “We’re not partners with niggers. It’s like we’re wholesalers and they’re retailers, is all.”

“Times are changing,” Beaumont said. “You can be a spectator, or you can be a player. All I’m saying is, think about it. You don’t have to give me an answer now.”

Dioguardi sat back in his chair, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the armrest. “Tell me something,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I just want to know. Was it you who did Little Nicky? And Tony and Lorenzo?”

“Me?” Beaumont said. “I thought it was you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Lorenzo Gagnatella was talking to the law. I thought you knew.”

“I still don’t know,” Dioguardi said, his voice tightening. “How’d you find out something like that?”

“I told you, I’ve got a lot of friends on the force. You don’t believe me, ask-”

“I know you got friends around here, Beaumont. A lot of friends.”

“And I’d like you to be one of them,” Beaumont said, finishing off his drink.

1959 October 09 Friday 16:13

“You want me to go over it again?” Dett asked.

“I’ve got it,” Harley said, trying to imitate the same utter absence of emotion exuded by the man next to him. Freezing cold, but burn you bad if you touch it, Harley thought. Like that dry ice they use in freight cars. His mind replayed his last meeting with Royal Beaumont: You’re going along because I want you to learn from this man, Harley. Learn what you’re going to need to know-what I can’t teach you myself, anymore. This guy, he’s the best there is. But he’s not one of us; he’s a hired gun. After this is over, he’s leaving. You, you’re coming back.

“You don’t think there should be more of us?” Harley asked.

“What we’re going to do, it’s like an operation, in a hospital,” Dett said. “Every man’s got his job. Too many men, they just get in each other’s way. And it’s much easier for two guys to disappear than a whole mob.”

“What if he pulls up in front?”

“From where we’re going to be sitting, we can see whichever way he goes.”

“But if he goes in the front, that’s right on the street,” Harley persisted. “People passing by…”

“So they’ll tell the cops they saw two men,” Dett said, unconcerned. “Once we pull those stockings over our faces, put the hats on our heads and the gloves on our hands, nobody’ll even be able to tell if we’re black or white, never mind describe us. This car was stolen from a parking lot-the owner won’t even know it’s missing for a couple of hours, yet. And the plates on it come right out of the junkyard-you cut them in half, then you solder a little seam up the back, make one plate out of two. Anyone grabs the number, all that’ll do is confuse the cops more.”

“But we don’t have the letter yet.”

“That’s not our job. If it doesn’t get here before they do, the whole thing’s off.”

“Give Jody a five-minute head-start and he’ll beat them here by a half-hour. He’s not good for much else, but he can drive better than a stock-car racer.”

“We’ll see soon enough,” Dett said.

1959 October 09 Friday 16:41

“Like to show you around, if you’ve got the time,” Beaumont said. “You’ve got to walk out, anyway.”

“Sure,” Dioguardi replied.

Luther handed the mob boss his coat, draped a blanket over Beaumont’s shoulders, and piloted the wheelchair back through the garage, Dioguardi following.

As they started to stroll the grounds, Cynthia entered the room where they had met. She was nude, wearing only a pair of white gloves and a surgical mask.

Cynthia stripped the butcher paper from the right arm of the chair Dioguardi had occupied, and carried it over to the desk. There she laid out a bottle of white paste, a small brush, and a pair of scissors. Seating herself, she trimmed the butcher paper, using a sheet of typing paper as a template. Then she carefully opened a manila folder, laying it flat on the desktop. Quick, quick! she commanded herself, fingers flying.

One by one, she pasted words cut from the Locke City Compass onto the butcher paper.

We have the boy

we Just want a faVor

Put ad in the Compass PERSONALS

John Please call DIAnne

put in A phone number

WE will CALL you

NO cops or it is OVER

She folded the paper neatly, and placed it inside a stamped envelope, already addressed with letters and numbers cut from the same newspaper. Careful, now… She sealed the envelope, using a dampened sponge. Then she reached for the telephone.

1959 October 09 Friday 16:59

A beige ’57 Plymouth two-door sedan tore across the back roads behind the Beaumont estate in what looked like one continuous controlled slide. The driver was a young man with a bullet-shaped head and jug ears. His small mouth was exaggerated by pursed lips, as if he were getting ready to whistle. His hands were light and assured on the wheel, carving corners like a surgeon’s scalpel.

The Plymouth fishtailed slightly as it merged with the highway. The driver picked up cover behind a highballing semi, checked his rearview mirror, slipped into the passing lane, spotted a clot of cars ahead, and fed the Plymouth more gas.

No tickets! played across the screen of his mind, as he smoothly took the exit marked LOCKE CITY, his eyes burning evangelically.

1959 October 09 Friday 17:11

“How’d it go, boss?” the man seated next to Dioguardi in the back seat asked.

“You know what, Carmine? I think he’s all done.”

“Beaumont? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s been the man around here for-”

“He’s not the same. Not the same at all. I braced him about the guys we lost. I was watching his eyes when I did it. I can tell when a man’s lying to me. And he wasn’t.”

“You mean it wasn’t his boys who-?”

“No. That’s what he said, and I believed him. In fact, he said he thought we did that.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Beaumont, he said that Lorenzo had been talking to the feds.”

“That’s a lot of-”

“Don’t be so sure,” Dioguardi said. “Because I’m not. You know what convinced me? He never even asked about that collector of his, Hacker.”

“That’s ’cause, the way we did it, he couldn’t know if Hacker just took off with the loot. That’s one body that’s never going to be found, so he’ll never know. Not for sure.”

“Right. And that’s why we did it that way, remember? If we left him in the street, like a message, there wouldn’t have been any doubt. Now they can never know the truth, just guess at it. But there was something else, too, Carmine. He wants to go partners.”

“Let us in?”

“Not that,” Dioguardi said. “He wants to keep everything here for himself. But he wants to go into the dope business. And he wants us to be the suppliers.”

“But if we’re pulling out…”

“He thinks we’re coming back. After the elections. He didn’t say it out loud, but that’s what he was thinking. So he figures, he makes a deal with us-for the dope, I mean-there’s no reason for us to come back here, see? Not when we’d be making more by staying away.”