Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “When I wheeled myself out of his office, I had Lenny’s own pistol in my hand. Got both of his men”—snapping his fingers, twice—“before they even knew something was wrong. And then Luther opened up, just like I had told him.

  “Our guys swooped in the minute they heard the first shots. All we had to do was hold our position: me inside the office, Luther out by the car.

  “The minute I saw Lymon and Sammy coming through the trees, I knew we were going to make it. Lenny’s boys never had a chance. It was over so fast, I think I must have held my breath all the way through it.”

  “I was so—”

  “The paper said it was a gang war. Remember, honey? The Locke City Massacre, they called it. But the cops never even came around—there wasn’t a single one of Maddox’s men left to finger us. We lost Everett that day, but we didn’t leave him there. Faron got hit, too, but he was just winged.

  “The cops put it down to out-of-town talent. I knew Lenny Maddox had to be doing the same thing to other people he was doing to us. People a lot bigger than we were. Everybody figured he finally stepped on the wrong toes.

  “Lenny Maddox, he was never really a big man. It’s just that, around here, he was bigger than anyone else. He never bothered to organize things—we were the first ones to do that. And by the time outsiders started looking our way, we were dug in too deep.”

  “That’s just what it feels like sometimes, Beau,” Cynthia said, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “That we’re dug in too deep.”

  * * *

  1959 October 04 Sunday 15:05

  * * *

  “Walk with me, Brian O’Sullivan,” Mickey Shalare said to a square-shouldered man whose flattened nose, cauliflower ears, and scar-tissue eyebrows marked his profession as clearly as would a doctor’s bag in a never-callused hand.

  The former prizefighter got to his feet with a feline grace that belied his time-thickened body. He tossed down what was left of his pint with one hand, and wiped his mouth with the back of the other.

  The two men left via the rear of the Shamrock Inn without speaking. Shalare’s pristine white ’57 Chrysler 300C hardtop was parked parallel to the wall of the alley, only the driver’s door accessible. He unlocked the car, climbed in, and slid over to the passenger side.

  “Get in, then,” he called to Brian.

  Puzzled, the boxer got behind the wheel. The Chrysler was Shalare’s pride and joy—no one else was ever permitted to drive it.

  “Take us out to the Flats, Brian.”

  The boxer started the car, then crawled forward to where the alley opened onto a side street.

  “Come on,” Shalare told him. “This isn’t some pram you’re pushing here.”

  At Brian’s glance, the smaller man said, “Not much good having a motor like this if you can’t make it go, is there?”

  “Sure. But how come I’m the one driving?” Brian asked, with characteristic bluntness.

  “You’re driving because you’re the man I trust.”

  “With your car?”

  “With my life,” Shalare said, in that steel-in-honey tone all his men recognized instantly.

  They rode in silence for about twenty minutes, through city streets, out past a subdivision that had been built on the town’s hopes for a huge paper mill—a hope that had died an unnatural death years ago.

  The houses, formerly individual monuments to working-class pride, had fallen to a depth below disrepair. Once-proud patches of greenery on the postage-stamp lawns had given way to arid dirt; neatly trimmed trees and hedges had been replaced with rusting car parts and salvaged junk.

  The big Chrysler cleared its throat and leaped forward, as if fleeing the decay around it.

  “This is some piece of machinery, yours, Mickey.”

  “It is. The Yanks know how to build things, I’ll give them that. This one, it’s not as posh as a Jag, maybe, but it’ll run away from any of them on the highway. Won’t be breaking down every other day, either.”

  “How fast will it go, you figure?”

  “Well, I’ve near seen the end of that speedometer, Brian.”

  “A ton and a half? You didn’t, Mickey!”

  “I did. But I suspect the dial turns to blarney once it gets into those high numbers. A bit . . . optimistic, you know.”

  “Still.”

  “Oh, it’s got a mighty engine, no doubt. She’s a man’s car.”

  “Yes she is!” Brian said, enthusiastically. “But she handles real nice. Some of the ones I’ve driven over here, they might as well be lorries.”

  “Turn toward the freight yard,” Shalare said.

  Brian took a series of alternating lefts and rights on unmarked streets of cracked concrete, past smokestacks as dead as cannons abandoned on a forgotten battlefield, until he finally wheeled the big car to a careful stop. Through the panoramic windshield, the two men looked out at an abandoned railroad spur, its tracks rust-frozen in their last-switched position from years ago. A trio of linked boxcars sat forlornly on the track, waiting for the locomotive that would never come again.

  “That’s not you, Brian,” Shalare said, quietly.

  “I wish I knew how you did that, Mickey. I remember Tommy Hardison saying, ‘Mickey Shalare has the special sight, you know. He can see right into your mind.’ I thought it was the booze doing his talking then. But I’ve seen you do it myself, time and again.”

  “You’re still the Irish Express, Big Brian. And you’ll always be.”

  “In the pubs, maybe,” the flat-nosed man said sadly. “But not in the ring, not nevermore.”

  “You were managed by maggots, that’s what happened.”

  “Wasn’t no manager inside those ropes, Mickey. It was just me. Me and whoever they put in front of me.”

  “You had too much heart, Brian. Always willing to have a go, no matter what. And that’s what those bloodsuckers wanted to see. Not a scientific contest between athletes, no. Blood, that’s what they fed on. If they’d brought you along, the way they do some, you’d have been a champion for sure. Who doesn’t know that?”

  “Ah, Mickey, I was never no—”

  “Don’t you be saying that!” Shalare cut in, sharply. “Who had a better right hand than Big Brian O’Sullivan? You put a lot of good men to sleep with it. No matter how the bout might be going, you always had that puncher’s chance. Any man that would stand in there and trade with you always ending up going inside the distance.”

  “Aye. It was the ones I couldn’t catch that did me in, Mickey. But, Jesus knows, there was no shortage of those kind, after a while.”

  “John Henry Jefferson.”

  “Yeah. He’s the one who started it, that time in Detroit. You’d think, a name like that, he’d be one of those colored boys who’d come straight at you, hammer and tongs. Anyone who’d try that, I had something for them, didn’t I, Mickey?”

  “Swear you did, Brian. Swear it to God.”

  “John Henry Jefferson,” O’Sullivan said, reverently. “He was as slick as a weasel in a river of oil. Must have hit me with a dozen jabs before I could get my gloves up. I never even felt them. Flick-flick-flick. Light as feathers. He was as quick as a scorpion, but I was sure he couldn’t hurt me. I knew I could just walk through those pitty-pats of his, get to his ribs, slow him down. You remember?”

  “I never will forget. I was saying to myself, this boy’s not a fighter; he’s a dancer. Fast and pretty, but he’s got to slow down sooner or later.”

  “But it never happened,” O’Sullivan said, regretfully. “Those feathers had razors in their tips. Cut me so clean I never even knew it until there was a red mist over my eyes. And he just got faster. Hands and feet. He’d pop up out of the mist, slash and dash, then come at me all over again. I was a bull, but he was the matador that night.”

  “If it had been anyone but Big Brian O’Sullivan in there with him, they would have stopped it.”

  “Ah, you know I’d never let them do that, Mickey. My corne
r kept telling me what to do, but I just couldn’t do it. You want to know something? John Henry Jefferson was the cleanest fighter I was ever in the ring with. You think I didn’t try to step on his foot, anchor him down? You think I didn’t hit him behind the head whenever I could grab him? Or go to lace him, up close? Well, I did. I did all that, and more. But did he? No. No, he didn’t. He just sliced pieces off me like I was a rare slab of roast beef, the kind that’s got warm blood right in the center.”

  “You did us all proud that night, Brian. Won the whole crowd over to your side. Even the coloreds were screaming for you at the end.”

  “I couldn’t hear a thing, Mickey. Just my heart pounding in my ears. I wanted to catch him so bad. But I didn’t get one in. Not in the whole ten rounds, not one.”

  “Ah, if you had, it wouldn’t have gone ten rounds.”

  “I always believed that—it’s what kept me going. I could always take three to give one, but carrying the equalizer’s no good if you can’t land it.”

  “That Jefferson, they all took a lesson from him.”

  “They did. After that, everyone knew how to fight me. Stick and move, pile up the points. But not one of them could do it like John Henry Jefferson. I was sure he’d be the next champ.”

  “You saw when he fought Swede Hannsen? On the television?”

  “Swede Hannsen. Aye, I saw it. Mickey, me, I was faster than Swede Hannsen. And I had twice his punch. Never would he get in there with me.”

  “That’s why he was undefeated when he met Jefferson, Brian. He was brought along right.”

  “If you call ducking anyone who could bang being brought along right, I guess he was, then. When he knocked out John Henry Jefferson, it almost knocked me out, right in the pub where the fight was showing. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “You know what the odds were on that fight, Brian?”

  “The odds? If I was a bookmaker, I would have given pounds to pennies that—”

  “Jefferson went in the tank, Brian.”

  “For money? Why? He was next in line for a title shot. Or close, anyway. The Swede was just a tune-up for him.”

  “The mob owned Swede Hannsen,” Shalare said. “Lock, stock, and barrel. Whatever they paid Jefferson, they made it back a thousand times betting on their man. Maybe they promised Jefferson he’d get a rematch, with Swede guaranteed to lay down next time. Or maybe even that title shot. With a loss to Hannsen on his record, he’d be the underdog against the champ, for sure.”

  “I fought the man, Mickey. You never get as close to a man as when you do that. I don’t believe you could pay John Henry Jefferson enough to make him take a dive.”

  “So they told him what would happen if he didn’t,” Shalare said, shrugging. “There’s always ways, if you’re not with people who can protect you.”

  “I heard he turned into a boozer after he lost to Swede.”

  “I don’t know about that, Brian. But it was a liquor store he was coming out of when he got gunned down.”

  “You mean, you think it was because—?”

  “We’ll never know,” Shalare said, his voice thick with implication. “They never caught the shooter. It could have been anyone . . . a jealous girlfriend, some people he owed money to. . . . Or maybe he started making noise about spilling his guts. That would do it, in a heartbeat.”

  “He could have been champ,” O’Sullivan said, his voice heavy with true Irish sorrow at the hand Fate sometimes deals. “He really could have.”

  “He might have made a pact with the Devil, or maybe he just wasn’t strong enough to keep them off. But it all comes down to the same thing, Brian. He didn’t have people.”

  “I had people, didn’t I, Mickey? So why wasn’t I—?”

  “You had people,” Shalare agreed. “But your people, they didn’t have the power. Oh, we had enough for some things, sure. No one ever approached you to throw a fight, did they, Brian? And if they had, you know they would have come soft, not hard. Money they would have offered you to go along, not a beating or a killing if you didn’t. If they had threatened you, they’d have threatened us all, that they knew.

  “They had the boxing game all locked up, the Italians. We could keep them from leaning on you, but we couldn’t get you a title fight, no matter how many you knocked out.

  “It’s not like liquor once was. That they never controlled, try as they might. There was always room for an outsider to come in and start a business for himself. And it’s the same today. Gambling, girls, money-lending, all of that’s an open market.

  “But the fight racket, it’s like this giant pyramid. The higher you climb, the less room there is for others to compete. So any man with the skills and the heart, he can be a boxer. But the top, well, that’s not for the best fighters, it’s for the fighters with the best connections.”

  “So you’re saying, if I had caught up with John Henry Jefferson that night . . .”

  “It’d be you they would have come to for the tank job with Swede Hannsen, that’s all.”

  “And that will never change?”

  “It’s changing right now, Brian. And we can all see it coming. Instead of fighting wars over bookmaking or booze, we’ve been after other prizes. Bigger and better ones. The unions, they’re the real future. You know why?”

  “I . . . I guess I don’t, Mickey.”

  “Because the unions, they’re the lifeblood of the politicians. A union’s a vote-making machine, Brian. Every member is going to vote the way their leaders tell them. And their wives and children and brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, as well. They’re going to raise money for the candidate. They’re going to go out in the streets and drum up support. Carry people to the polls, and make sure they do things right when they’re inside the booth, too.

  “The Italians are coming from one direction. So, instead of meeting them head-on, we’re moving in at an angle. Look at Boston. Or Chicago. The Italians are paying the cops, but we’re paying the politicians. Who do you think is going to be stronger, in the long run?”

  “Yeah, Mickey!”

  “But that game has changed. We’ve got to share now.”

  “Share what?”

  “Share what we’ve got. Combine forces. Because the next president of the United States, he’s going to be ours, Brian.”

  “Mickey, come on.”

  “I don’t mean in our pocket, like some little alderman we can make or break in an hour, Brian. But ours, for true. A man we can count on to protect our interests.”

  “The next president, well, that’s going to be Mr. Nixon, isn’t it? How could we hope to—?”

  “It won’t be that shifty-eyed, pope-hating little rodent, Brian. No it won’t. It’ll be a Democrat, if we all pull together. A Democrat who’s going to give us territory no one will ever take back from us, nevermore.”

  “What shall I be doing?”

  “Ah, that’s you, Brian, isn’t it?” Shalare said, admiringly. “Irish to the marrow of your thick bones. The Italians, you’d think they’d be just like us, wouldn’t you? Come to this country in rags, treated like bloody slaves, scratch and claw for everything they ever get. Only the Italians, they’re a bunch of little tribes. Not villagers, like we have, where a man from Armagh might think he knows a thing or two that a man from Londonderry might not, and true enough. No, I mean . . . well, the ones from Sicily, they’re not the brothers of the ones from Rome. They don’t stand together. And they never trust one another.”

  “The Prods are Irish,” O’Sullivan said, mildly.

  Shalare regarded his old friend intently. “They are,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully. “But they come farther down the road, Big Brian. In good time. For now, they’re not our concern, any more than the Italians are.”

  “Who is, then?”

  “Royal Beaumont,” Shalare said. “They named him right, too. Royalty he is, Brian. Where we’re sitting right now, all around us, this is all his.”

  “All this pile of junk?”


  “All the land, Brian. When the mills closed down, when the factories went bust, the whole town had to find another way to live. That was a long time ago. If you looked at a census, you would be thinking Locke City is a quarter the size it once was, so many people have left. But it’s a sweet cherry tart of a town now. It’s known for a half-dozen states around: the place you can come to for whatever you need. Or whatever you want.

  “Beaumont’s been the power here since way before we came. Through one front or another, he probably owns half the property on the tax rolls in this whole county.”

  “If this is the kind of property—”

  “He owns the land under the Claremont Hotel, too, Brian. And the whole block the First National sits on. He owns office buildings downtown, apartment units all over the city, that little shopping center over in—”

  “Mickey, I must be slow. I can’t see where any of this matters to us.”

  “It matters because Beaumont’s going to come along, Brian. He’s a way clever man. All this property, it’s . . . Well, land doesn’t have a value, the way a silver coin does. It’s worth whatever someone will pay for it. This desolate plot we’re looking at now, it would all turn to gold overnight if the government decided it was needed. For a munitions plant, say. Or maybe a federal prison.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah. And who makes those decisions? While Beaumont’s been buying land, we’ve been buying the people who decide what that land is worth, see? I got it from the leadership itself. We’re to stop our squabbling with the Italians—yes, and they with us—and put all our strength into the one objective. Beaumont’s going to be approached. And he’ll come right along, I know.”

  “Well, that’s all we need, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe it’s not, Brian. You know we have one of his men.”

  “That Lymon fellow?”

  “Him indeed. And what he tells us is, Beaumont’s brought in an outsider.”

  “For what?”

  “For murder. That’s his game, this man. A hired killer.”