“Those wop bastards don’t have a chance,” the broad-faced man said, with the calm assurance of a man stating a known fact.
“It depends on what they want to put into it, Sammy,” the man in the wheelchair said. “They know we’ve got the cops and the judges, but they also know those people aren’t with us—they’re just whores, charging us for every trick. When this jumps off, they’ll stand on the sidelines, and climb into bed with the winners.”
Beaumont looked around the room, using his eyes to lock and hold each man individually before he continued:
“Now, you know, they’ve already been around, the Italians. Sat down with me. Very nice, polite. They just want a little taste, is what they say. But it would never stop there. When they come for us, they’re going to come hard.”
“You really think one guy’s going to make that much of a difference?” Lymon asked.
“You mean, do I think we need him?” Beaumont said. “Hell, no. What Sammy said is the truth. The outcome’s not in doubt. But being a good general isn’t just about winning wars; it’s about keeping your men safe, too. And if this guy’s half as good as I’ve been told, he’ll get it over with quick.”
* * *
1959 September 28 Monday 22:09
* * *
A battleship-gray ’56 Packard sedan purred down the interstate, past the exit marked LOCKE CITY. A few miles later, the driver pulled into a service area. He drove to the pumps, glanced at the dash, noted the gas gauge read just below the halfway mark, and shut off the ignition.
“Fill it up with high-test, and check the oil and water, please,” he told the young man wearing a blue cap with a red flying-horse emblem who came to his rolled-down window.
As the pump jockey went to work, the driver walked over toward the restrooms, hands swinging free at his sides. As he turned the corner of the building, he encountered a pay phone. The man slotted a coin, dialed a number, and waited, his back to the wall.
“I was told you’d be expecting a call. About your garage,” he said into the receiver. His voice was flat, using neither volume nor inflection to communicate.
He listened for a few seconds, then said, “I can find it. Inside of an hour, all right?”
The man listened again, then hung up.
“Took almost twenty gallons,” the pump jockey said when he returned. “Man, you were empty. Oil’s okay, though.”
The man paid his bill, got behind the wheel. He noted approvingly that the pump jockey had cleaned his windshield.
* * *
1959 September 28 Monday 22:30
* * *
At the next exit, the driver circled back and re-entered the highway, heading back the way he had come. As he turned off at the Locke City sign, he pushed a button set into the gauge cluster. The four-digit row of numbers reset itself to 0000. A trip odometer began to click off the miles, the rightmost numerals, in red, indicating tenths.
From an inside pocket, the driver took a hand-drawn map, which he taped to the padded dashboard. He followed County Road 44, keeping the big car at a subdued pace, watching the odometer. When the mileage reading hit 013.4, the driver slowed slightly, his eyes another pair of headlights.
The dirt road was unmarked, barely wide enough for two cars. The driver turned in cautiously, pulled as far over to the side as possible, and extinguished his headlights. He rolled down his window, plucked a nearly full pack of Lucky Strikes from the seat next to him, and turned it around in his right hand, over and over, breathing shallowly through his nose.
Several minutes later, the driver tossed the pack of cigarettes back onto the front seat. With his left hand, he thumbed the fender-mounted bullet spotlight into life.
The big car crawled forward cautiously as the dirt road narrowed, became rougher. The spotlight picked up the remnants of a tar-paper shack. It had no door, no glass in either of its two windows, half its roof, and only three of its walls.
The driver steered into the clearing behind the shack. He stopped the car and stepped out, leaving the door open and the engine running. He circled the car, opening each of the other doors in turn. The overhead interior light was intense, illuminating the seats and floor of the Packard as brightly as if it were in a showroom. He then unlocked the trunk, activating still another light.
The driver stepped away from his car and lit a cigarette, holding it in his left hand. His right dangled at his side, empty. He stood utterly still. Not tense, motionless.
The night-sounds merged with the barely discernible throb of the Packard’s engine, its power muted by a set of highly restrictive mufflers.
The driver raised one foot, ground out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe, and deposited the butt in the pocket of his dark-blue sport coat.
“Whisper said you was one careful motherfucker.” A voice came out of the darkness, seemingly pulling a man along in its wake. A barrel-shaped black man wearing denim overalls and an egg-yolk-yellow T-shirt emerged: He was holding a long-barreled revolver in his left hand, pointed at the driver’s midsection.
“Careful for me; careful for you,” the driver said, nothing in his voice but the words themselves.
“You right about that,” the black man said, moving closer, “if Whisper was right about you.”
The driver shrugged, to show that decision was out of his hands.
“You know how the garage works?” the black man asked.
“I leave my car with you. You give me another one to use. When I’m done, I call you, and we trade back.”
“Uh-huh. And Whisper, he told you, it costs a grand, right?”
“Five hundred is what he said.”
“Price of everything’s going up,” the black man said. “That’s the way it is, everywhere you go.”
“Whisper said that, too.”
“Prices going up?”
“No. That you’d try and hold me up for more. He under-estimated you—he was guessing an extra C-note.”
A flash of white scythed across the black man’s face. It might have been a smile. “You know what I mean, I say I been listening to the drums?”
“Grapevine.”
“Right. People know you coming, man. They don’t know your name, don’t know your face. And I guess you don’t want them to know your car, either.”
The driver shrugged again.
“Sure,” the black man said. “So what that means is, I got extra expenses.”
The driver watched, silently.
“You ain’t holding up your end,” the black man said, the thin slash of white back in his mouth.
“The money’s—”
“Of the conversation, man. This is what men do, they got a dispute. They talk about it, right?”
“We don’t have a dispute.”
“Sure, we do. I don’t mean we enemies or nothing like that. Just trying to get you . . . involved, see?”
“In what?”
“In my problem, man. What I been telling you.”
“Your ‘extra expenses.’ ”
“Now you paying attention. I don’t know you. Don’t want to know you. But I know what you here for. So I got to figure at least some possibility I may never get that phone call from you, understand where I’m going?”
“That you won’t get your car back.”
“That’s right! Now you getting with the program. I got a real nice . . . rental for you. You can drive a stick, right?”
“Yes,” the driver said. He took out his pack of cigarettes, held it toward the black man.
“No thanks, man. Appreciate it, though. Anyway, what I got for you is a sweet little ’49 Ford. But it’s not running no flathead—got a ’54 Lincoln mill with a lot of work into it. All heavy-duty: brakes, shocks, clutch, everything. Floor shift, Zephyr gears. Some wild-ass kid built it for drag racing. It don’t have a lot of top end, but it’ll walk away from any cop car in this town. Get you good and gone, you need to.”
“Sounds fine.”
“She is fine, man. What
I’m telling you, she don’t come back, I’m out a lot of coin, see what I’m saying?”
“No. No, I don’t. I see you coming out ahead. My car’s worth a lot more than some kid’s hotrod.”
“Yours is newer, sure. But that don’t—”
“Mine’s running a punched-out Caribbean engine,” the driver interrupted. “Dual quads, headers, triple-core radiator, cutouts for the pipes. The whole chassis has been redone, and it’s got a belly pan, too. You could drive it through a cornfield at thirty and it wouldn’t get stuck. Got a second gas tank in the trunk: extra twenty-five gallons. Steel plate behind the back seat—”
“Damn!”
“There’s more. Go look for yourself, you don’t believe me. Cost you seven, eight grand, minimum, to build anything like it.”
The black man’s eyes narrowed. The pistol in his hand moved slightly. “Must make you worried, then. Leaving a valuable ride like that with a stranger. I mean, what if you called and I never came?”
“I’m not worried,” the driver said. “Whisper vouched for you.”
“Man can always be wrong.”
“Whisper told you about me,” the driver said. It wasn’t a question.
The black man nodded.
“Well, he wasn’t wrong about that,” the driver said.
* * *
1959 September 28 Monday 23:39
* * *
Only Sammy, Lymon, and Harley remained behind after the others had been dismissed, their chairs drawn up close to Beaumont’s desk. The men spoke in low, but not guarded, tones.
“We already lost one man,” Beaumont said. “Hacker never came back with the casino collection. It’s been over three weeks, and nobody’s heard from him.”
“That was a lot of money,” the broad-faced man said.
“Meaning what, Sammy?” Beaumont asked, swiveling his imposing head in the speaker’s direction.
“Everybody knows Hacker’s route,” Sammy said, unruffled. “It’s no secret. All our collectors work alone. We never have anyone riding shotgun. Everybody knows that, too.”
“You’re saying—what?—we don’t have any proof that it was Dioguardi?”
“I’m saying, it could have been Dioguardi, sending a message, sure,” Sammy said. “But it could have been a hijacker, too, Roy. A freelancer, I mean. We got no shortage of those coming through here. Most of them, they’ve got enough sense to come to our town to spend the money they made off their jobs, not to pull one . . . but every deck always has at least one joker in it.”
“Can’t say it wasn’t,” Beaumont mused. “But Hacker was always a ready man. He wouldn’t go easy . . . not unless he went willingly. And, you know, if you’re going to take down something big, like an armored car, say, the best way is to have an inside man.”
“Hacker wouldn’t steal from us,” the redheaded man put in, sure-voiced.
“I don’t think so, either, Lymon,” Beaumont agreed. “It was a good piece of change, all right, but not enough to live on for the rest of your life, if you had to stay hidden. When the cops came out here, they said nothing in his house had been touched. There’s things a man wouldn’t leave behind if he had time to plan his run.”
“Hacker would know that, too,” Sammy said, cautiously.
“He would,” Beaumont said, nodding his head. “But you know what else the cops found when they went to his place? They found that hound of his, Ranger. Dog didn’t even have food laid out for him.”
“That does it for me,” Sammy said, in a tone of finality. “Hacker loved that old dog. He expected to come home that night. Yeah.”
“So what’s our first—?” Harley asked, as a woman entered the room from the door behind Beaumont. She was of medium height, but looked shorter because of her stocky frame—an impression enhanced by her low-heeled shoes and boxy beige jacket worn over a plain white blouse. Her hair was the color of tarnished brass, worn short, with moderate bangs over her high forehead. She had Beaumont’s iron eyes, but long lashes and artfully arched eyebrows banked their fire.
At her entrance, the assembled men all rose to their feet and started for the exit.
“Lymon, you mind hanging around a few minutes?” Beaumont said.
By way of response, Lymon sat down.
* * *
1959 September 28 Monday 23:52
* * *
As if by prior assent, the two men walked across the clearing to the waiting Packard. The driver reached into the trunk, removed a pair of suitcases, stood them on the ground.
“Watch this,” he said, quietly. He lifted the heavy pad of felt that lined the floor of the trunk, revealing a flush-mounted keyhole.
“Now watch me,” the driver said, emphasizing the last word. He reached—slowly—toward his belt, carefully removed the tongue of the belt buckle, extracted a metal rod with a single notch at one end, and held it up for the other man’s inspection. He inserted the rod into the keyhole and turned his wrist—a shallow compartment was revealed. Filling the compartment edge-to-edge was a black, hard-shelled attaché case.
The driver removed the case, added it to the luggage on the ground, closed the compartment, pulled the felt back into place, and closed the trunk.
“Why you showing me all this?” the black man asked, more curious than hostile.
“I didn’t want anyone tearing up the car looking for . . . whatever they might find. So I thought I’d show you where the tricks were myself.”
“Pretty slick. But what’s the story with that key in your belt, man? Strange place to keep it.”
“It doesn’t just open the compartment in the trunk. It’s a speed key . . . for handcuffs, understand?”
“Yeah,” the black man said, shaking his head slowly. “But when they bring you down, first thing, they take away your belt and your shoelaces.”
“That’s after they get you to the jail,” the driver said. “Sometimes, their plans don’t work out.”
The black man stepped back a pace, but kept his pistol leveled.
“Look, man. Like I said, it was on the drums. Killer on the road, coming to town. Everybody knows there’s a gang war coming. That’s ofay business, got nothing to do with me, one side wants to bring in some outside talent. But if you kill a cop, even one of those blue-coated thieves that works for this town, that’s gonna bring heat like an oil-field fire. That happens, you call the number you got for me, nobody’s gonna answer. This big car of yours, it’s gonna get butchered like a hog, man. Cut up so small its own mother wouldn’t know it.”
The driver looked at the black man’s chest, expressionless.
“Whisper didn’t say nothing about dusting no po-leece,” the black man said, his voice feathering around the edges.
“Whisper didn’t say anything,” the driver said. “All he did was make a deal. And here I am, holding up my end of it.”
“I—”
“If you don’t want to go through with it, now’s the time to say so.”
“I didn’t say nothing about—”
“You take the deal, you take it the way it was laid out,” the driver cut him off. “What I do, that’s not your business. What you do, that’s not mine. But if I call that number and there’s no answer, there’s another number I can call, understand?”
“Whisper ain’t gonna side with no gray boy against his own—”
“You took this deal, and you don’t know Whisper?”
“I know him,” the black man said, capillaries of resentment bulging on the surface of his voice.
“You never met him,” the driver said, confidently. “You know him the same way everyone else in the game does, by reputation. That’s all he’s got, his reputation. Whisper vouched for you. You come up wrong, nobody’s going to want to deal with him anymore. Not until he fixes the problem. Sets an example.”
“You saying Whisper would do something to me?”
“Get it done, yeah.”
“That supposed to scare me?”
“What it’s
supposed to do, it’s supposed to get you to make a phone call. Ask him yourself. I’ll wait right here while you go and do it. You call Whisper. After you speak to him, you still think you can go back on our deal no matter what happens, I’ll just take my car and go. No hard feelings.”
The black man’s face tightened. “You must think I’m a stone fucking chump, Wonder Bread,” he said. “I tell Whisper I’m even thinking about not holding up my end, that’s the last business I ever get from him.”
“Up to you,” the driver said, making an “It’s all the same to me” gesture. “One of us is going to be driving my car out of here. Who that is, that’s up to you.”
* * *
1959 September 29 Tuesday 00:04
* * *
“Every time that sister of his comes into the room, the show’s over, huh, Sammy?” Harley said to the broad-faced man as they were walking toward their cars in the lot.
“Roy knows what he’s doing,” the broad-faced man said, a faint thread of warning in the blend of his voice.
“Yeah? I don’t see what Cynthia’s got to do with anything, myself. The way she acts sometimes, it’s like she’s the boss, not him.”
Sammy kept walking, silent.
“You don’t think it’s a little strange, Sammy?” Harley persisted.
“What I think is, nobody ever got themselves in trouble minding their own business.”
“I was just saying—”
“Harley, you’re a comer. Everybody knows that. The man himself has his eye on you.”
“So?”
“So listen to an older hand for a minute, son. There’s a lot more to Royal Beaumont than a big set of balls.”
“You saying—what?—people don’t think I got the brains to run my own—?”
“I’m not saying that, Harley . . . although, when you pull kid stuff like coming late to meetings, you make folks wonder. Look, I know you’ve got a head on your shoulders. But having something’s not the same as using it, you follow me?”
Two Trains Running Page 2