Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “But if the—”

  “There’s a third stage. They call it ‘latent’ or ‘tertiary.’ What that means is that you can’t pass it along to anyone else. You’re not what they call ‘infectious.’ But you’re sure as hell infected. It’s a freakish disease. The worse it looks, the less it’s doing to you. And when you think it’s gone, it’s actually eating you alive.”

  “Killing you?”

  “One way or the other, yeah. Sometimes, it goes after the heart. Sometimes, the liver. Paresis, what Capone had, means it went after the brain. By the time he got out of prison, he was a walking vegetable.”

  “With all his money, why didn’t he just go right to the hospital?”

  “He did,” Mack said. “But by then it was too late. See, in those days, they used to treat it with all kinds of different drugs, like ’606.’ Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Today, we have penicillin. For syphilis, that’s the KO punch. Kills it, every time. But even if they had had it back then, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because all it can do is stop the disease in its tracks—it can’t repair any damage already done. Once syphilis gets to the brain, that’s the end.”

  “Where would Al Capone get syphilis?”

  “Well, the story is, he got it when he was working muscle for Johnny Torrio back in New York, when he was just a kid himself. Torrio was a major pimp, had a whole string of whorehouses, so Capone could have been dipping his wick anytime he wanted.”

  “Then he thought it went away, but, all the time, it was—”

  “—killing him, yeah. That’s the story. But it’s not the truth. See, Al Capone had syphilis, all right. But he didn’t get it when he was a kid—he got it in the federal penitentiary.”

  “How? If he was—”

  “When he first got busted for taxes, he made some kind of a deal to plead guilty. According to him—and I mean him, not some rumor; that’s what he said—he was supposed to draw a deuce in the pen, and cover all the charges with that. But he bragged to the papers about it, and the judge—a federal judge, remember—said he wouldn’t go along. Hell, with all that press, he couldn’t go along, or it would look like he was on the mob’s payroll, too. Get himself investigated. So Capone went to trial. And he ended up with eleven years.”

  “You think, if he had kept his mouth shut—?”

  “We’ll never know. Anyway, they put him in the Cook County Jail while he was waiting to see how his appeals came out. And, kid, let me tell you, he ran the place. Had three private cells to himself, fixed up like a hotel suite. He ate steak and lobster, drank the best bonded booze, had all the ‘visitors’ he wanted, too.

  “When he lost his appeals, he was sent to the federal pen in Atlanta. And he ran that place just like he ran Cook County. The man was a king inside those walls. And that’s when it happened.”

  “The syphilis.”

  “Yep. Girl named Noreen Tisdale. Most gorgeous blonde you ever saw in your life. Face like a schoolgirl, and a body like Candy Barr—never mind, trust me, she was a real stunner. Visited that scar-faced greaseball five times, just to make sure.”

  “Wait! You’re saying she knew—”

  “Knew? That’s what she was paid for, kid. First, she had to fuck a guy who had the syph—early stage. Then she had to be checked by a doctor, make sure she had it. And then she goes and lets Capone fuck her, any way he wanted it. By the time she was done with him, that was it.”

  “But couldn’t a doctor—?”

  “What? Fix him? Maybe . . . maybe . . . if he’d gotten to one in time. But, soon as they were sure they had him infected, they boxed him up and shipped him to Alcatraz. That’s when Big Al stopped running the show. No more special treatment. No privileges, no nothing. And the only thing the doctors they had in there ever treated was stab wounds.”

  “Why would any woman do . . . all that?” Dave said.

  “Her husband was sitting in the Death House at the Georgia State Pen. Bank robbery, and a guard got killed. He got a pardon from the governor when another guy confessed to the crime. Turned out her husband was innocent all along.”

  “Jesus Lord!”

  “Yeah. She was some kind of woman.”

  “Her? I meant . . . an innocent man on Death Row. It’s so . . .”

  “He was guilty as sin, Davy.”

  “But you just said—”

  Mack drew a long, deep breath. Let it out slowly. Turned to the younger man and said, “It was a business deal, son. All the way around. Noreen did the job, and she got paid what she wanted for it. And what we got, we got Capone.”

  “We? You don’t mean—?”

  “Yeah, I do. That was just an experiment, at the time. And it worked. Nobody knew exactly what would happen if a man got syphilis and never got any treatment at all. Not for sure, anyway. Can you imagine what you could do with something like that? A disease you get from sex? The Krauts had their mustard gas in World War I. This, this could be bigger than that by a thousand, a million times. If you knew how to keep it under control, use it only when you wanted to use it, you could own the whole damn world.”

  “Mack, how could you know all this?” Dave demanded.

  “Because that was my job then.”

  “Al Capone?”

  “No, kid,” the older man said deliberately, as if the words were too heavy for his breath to carry them. “Noreen Tisdale.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 14:49

  * * *

  “Benny’s Poolroom,” the pudgy man answered the phone.

  “I want to leave a message for Harley Grant.”

  “Shoot,” the pudgy man said.

  “Tell him that part he wanted for his Chevy just came in. The one he’s been waiting for.”

  “Sure. Who’s—” Benny started to ask. But Lacy Miller, President of the Gladiators, had already hung up.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 14:51

  * * *

  “The car wasn’t satisfactory, sir?” the clerk at the rental agency asked.

  “No, it was fine,” Dett said. “Only I believe I need something a bit . . . nicer.”

  “Well, we do have a Buick Invicta available. It’s a real beauty. Brand-new, really. But it’s quite a bit more than—”

  “I’ll take it,” Dett said.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 15:28

  * * *

  Tussy’s bedroom looked as if it had been freshly burglarized, by a ham-fisted drunk. Drawers hung open, their contents strewn about the room. The bed was hidden under a blanket of discarded dresses, sweaters, and blouses. The back of the room’s only chair was draped in brassieres, its seat covered with panties.

  All this . . . junk! she admonished herself, surveying the mayhem. The red one is too tarty, the black one is for funerals, and that blue one is for an old lady. What am I going to—?

  Surrendering, Tussy went into her kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. “You want something, too?” she asked the enormous gray-and-black cat who was perching regally on one of the padded chairs.

  When the animal responded with a rumbling noise, Tussy poured a dollop of cream into a saucer and set it out on the floor. The cat calmly strolled over to her offering, sniffed it suspiciously, then lapped it up.

  Tussy sat down at the chrome-legged kitchen table and lit a smoke. Glancing at her watch, she realized she still had a couple of hours to go before her date. After all this aggravation, I’ll need another shower before I get dressed, she thought, absently patting the curlers in her hair.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 15:40

  * * *

  Dett inspected his newly polished shoes with a jeweler’s eye.

  “Those look all right to you, sir?” Rufus asked, anxiously. Thinking, Those shoes, they’re just like the man himself. Nice and smooth on top, but they got rubber soles and steel toes.

  “They look better than when they were new,” Dett told him. “Whoever you�
�ve got doing shoes at this place is an ace.”

  “Did them myself, sir. Not to be downing the boy who usually do them, but I wanted them to be perfect. And I know, you wants a job done right, you does it yourself.”

  “Why do you talk like that?” Dett asked, suddenly.

  “Huh? What you mean, boss?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Dett said. “You’re an educated man. Why do you talk like you’re not?”

  “Educated man? Me? No, sir. I ain’t got no education, ’cept for up to the tenth grade at Lincoln—that’s the high school over in—”

  “Help you get bigger tips?” Dett asked, as if Rufus had not spoken.

  “No, sir, I don’t believe it do.”

  “I don’t blame you for not trusting me,” Dett said, handing Rufus a folded five-dollar bill. “Thanks for the shoes. You did a beautiful job.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 16:01

  * * *

  “Fuck!” Hog said to Ace. “Why’d you show it to them?”

  “You weren’t there, man.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means, the way they talked, it was like we were the niggers.”

  “But the treaty—”

  “You’re not listening, man. The treaty, all it means is, the Gladia-tors aren’t going to move on us. But, see, what they were saying—and this is from Lacy himself—they wouldn’t be doing that anyway. Bopping, that’s kid stuff to them now. Big shots.”

  “I thought Lacy hated Preacher.”

  “Maybe he does, but he sure didn’t act like it. It was . . . like they didn’t give a fuck, one way or the other. The only thing they cared about was the lot on Halstead. After Wednesday night, that’s theirs. Maybe if the Kings tried to claim it—’hold their ground’ is what Lacy said—that’d make him call an all-out. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The plans we had, they’re no good now.”

  “We still gotta show. Otherwise . . .”

  “You think I don’t know that, man? But no matter how it comes out, we’re never going to end up part of the Gladiators, not now. Remember how we had it figured? After the meet, after they see what we can do, we get asked to come in with them? Sure, I don’t be President anymore. And you wouldn’t be Warlord. But men like us, we could move up in the organization, be a part of something big. That’s all gone, now. So I’m thinking about what those Klan guys told me.”

  “About Fat Lucy’s and—?”

  “Yeah. See, it’s like someone talked to the Gladiators, too. About the same thing, only bigger.”

  “What are we going to do, Ace?”

  “First, we’re going to take care of the Kings,” the young man said, grimly. “Then I’m going to ask to see Mr. Dioguardi. He’ll know what we should do.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 17:21

  * * *

  Dett shaved slowly and meticulously. He patted witch hazel onto his cheeks, and started to dress. His face was a frozen mask, his mind a cloudless night sky.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 17:29

  * * *

  Tussy grunted as she tugged a panty girdle over her hips, finally letting out a breath when it was in place. She attached her stockings—a brand-new pair, purchased earlier that day—to the garter clips, then shrugged into a pale-pink bra trimmed in lace around the top of the cups. Next came a dark-gray pencil skirt—her earlier attempts to fit into it had necessitated the girdle—a lightly ruffled ice-blue silk blouse, and a peplum jacket that was a mate to the skirt. Finally, ankle-strapped black pumps with three-inch heels.

  Tussy walked over to the full-length mirror and surveyed the result of her handiwork. Her makeup had been applied before she dressed herself. The glass reflected a radiant beauty. Fatso! she said to herself, sticking out her tongue at the mirror.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 17:40

  * * *

  When the elevator car opened on the eighth floor, Dett entered, carrying a leather shaving kit in his right hand.

  “I wonder if you’d mind holding on to this for me until I get back,” he said to Moses.

  The old man pulled a folded brown paper bag from inside his uniform jacket. He snapped open the bag, inserted the shaving case, rolled the bag closed tightly, and deposited it atop the padded stool next to the brass control lever. He moved the lever to the right, and the car slowly descended.

  Neither man spoke until the car opened in the lobby and Dett stepped out.

  “You have yourself a good evening, suh,” the operator called out.

  Dett walked over to the front desk, waited patiently as Carl finished speaking with one of the maintenance men, then asked, “Do you know where I can find a good flower shop around here?”

  “At this hour?” Carl said, glancing at his watch.

  “Yeah,” Dett said, his voice shifting tone so slightly only a human mine-detector like Carl would have noticed. “Right now.”

  “Give me a moment,” Carl said. He picked up the desk phone, dialed a number from memory. “Laurel,” he said, to whoever answered, “we have a guest who needs some flowers. Yes, I know you close at six. But this is a VIP request, Laurel. The Claremont would very much appreciate . . . Hold on,” he said, turning to Dett. “Did you have any particular flowers in mind?”

  “Just nice ones.”

  Covering the receiver with his hand, Carl leaned toward Dett ever so slightly, said, “Forgive me if I seem intrusive, sir. But there are flowers one brings to a lady, flowers one leaves as an offering, although that would be more a floral arrangement. . . .”

  “I’ve got a date,” Dett said, the spaces between his words so measured, the effect was just short of mechanical. “I want to bring her some flowers.”

  “Ah! Excuse me. . . .” Carl removed his hand from the receiver, said, “Laurel, we can make do with American Beauties. I know you still have some very fresh ones from earlier. Of course long-stemmed. And, I think”—glancing over at Dett—“some whites, too.” Catching Dett’s confirmatory nod, Carl went back to the phone: “No, Laurel, not a dozen. That’s so . . . ordinary. Let’s have six white, with three red, centered, of course. Wait. . . .” Turning to Dett, he said, “Their boy has already gone for the day; they won’t be able to deliver. Shall I send someone over to collect them for you, or would you prefer—?”

  “I’ll pick them up myself,” Dett said. “Just tell me where I have to go.”

  “He’ll be there in, say, ten minutes, Laurel. We won’t forget this.”

  Carl hung up. “It’s really not even five minutes from here by car,” he said to Dett. “I’ll just draw you a little map.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 18:45

  * * *

  Tussy peered out from behind the living room curtains. It was six-forty-five in the evening, past dusk, but the street was alive, as if the unseasonably warm weather had turned back the calendar. The men in work clothes had been home for a while; the ones in business suits always came later. A man played catch with a boy wearing a blue baseball cap with a white bill. Tussy didn’t need a telescope to read the embroidered logo on the cap—anyone in her neighborhood would recognize the colors of the Beaumont Badgers, the Little League team sponsored by Beaumont Realty.

  Some of the men were doing what Tussy always thought of as weekend work—washing their cars, mowing their lawns. A pack of kids were playing touch football in the street, making the kind of noise that quiets every mother’s anxiety. A little girl jumped up and down excitedly in front of her parents, telling them something wonderful. The neighbor’s beagle—a notorious escape artist no fence could contain—charged across a backyard, chasing an invisible rabbit.

  Parents watched as a bronze Buick came slowly down the block, silently approving of the driver’s cautious approach. It was more than his being alert to the ever-present possibility of a child or an animal darting into the street—somehow, it felt as if he was showing respect for the
ir neighborhood, like a man who knew enough to take off his hat in church.

  They all watched as the Buick pulled to the curb in front of Tussy’s house. Tussy watched, too. And when a tall, neatly dressed man emerged from the car, a bouquet of roses in his hand, and started up her flagstone walk, she thought, Now they’ll have something to talk about for weeks!

  Dett felt eyes on his back. He didn’t feel endangered; he felt . . . appraised. Squaring his shoulders, he tapped the brass door-knocker gently, the sound barely registering.

  He counted to seven in his head, and was just reaching for the knocker again when the door opened.

  Tussy.

  “Hi!” she said. “You’re right on time. I’m almost ready. Come on in.”

  Dett stepped across the threshold, holding out the flowers. “These are for you.”

  “Oh, they’re just lovely! I never saw roses like that, so . . . perfect.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I have to put them in something. I think I have . . . Oh! I’m sorry; I have no manners. Please sit down; I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Dett looked around the small living room, dominated by a large couch made of some dark wood, with an ornately carved frame into which sky-blue cushions with a white fleur-de-lis pattern were inset. In front of the couch was a simple slab of white-veined pink marble, standing on wrought-iron legs. The floor was wide pine boards, with knotholes showing through a gleaming coat of varnish. Against one wall was a small hutch, backed by a mirror. Its shelves held framed photographs, some hand-painted porcelain figurines, and what looked like military medals.