Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  He took a cautious seat on the edge of the couch, back ruler-straight, unsure of where to put his hands, eyes trained on the door through which Tussy had departed.

  The gray-and-black cat entered the living room, regarding Dett with unflinching yellow eyes. His thick tail twitched twice, then he effortlessly launched himself onto the seat of an armchair upholstered in the same fabric as the couch. The cat curled up comfortably, his bulk covering the cushion completely. His eyes never left the intruder.

  “Oh, you met Fireball,” Tussy said, smiling as she came back into the living room.

  “He looks like someone should have named him Cannonball,” Dett said, making a face to show he was impressed.

  “Yes, he’s a big fat load now, aren’t you, boy?” Tussy said, scratching the monster behind his ears, a move instantly rewarded with a sound like a trash compactor. “It was my dad who named him. Even when he was a little kitten, he was the laziest cat on earth. ‘A real ball of fire,’ my dad said one day, and it just stuck.”

  “I never saw one that big. Is he part bobcat or something?”

  “I don’t know what he is. My dad brought him home one day from work. I had been asking for a kitten for the longest time, and it was my birthday, so . . .”

  “But that had to be when . . .”

  “When I was a little girl, yes. Well, twelve, anyway. Fireball’s been with me ever since. Guess how old he is?”

  “I . . . uh,” Dett struggled, trying for the right number, “. . . thirteen?”

  “I don’t know who you’re being nicer to,” Tussy said, “me or Fireball. He’s twenty-one—old enough to vote.”

  “Really?”

  “Why are you so shocked? Didn’t you ever hear of a cat who lived that long?”

  “I . . . I don’t know much about cats. I never had one. But if he’s twenty-one, and you got him when you were—”

  “I’m thirty-three years old,” Tussy said, hands on her hips, as if daring him to deny it.

  “You don’t look . . . I mean . . . I don’t know how to say things sometimes. I thought you were . . .”

  “Younger? Don’t look so distressed, Walker. I took it as a compliment.”

  “I didn’t mean it as one. Damn! I’m sorry. What I meant to say was, I wasn’t just saying it. You look like you’re maybe twenty-five. Anybody would say the same thing.”

  “Well, me and Fireball are a lot alike. We’re both overweight, and we both don’t show our age so much.”

  “You’re not . . .” Dett felt his face burn as his voice trailed away.

  “I’m just having fun with you,” Tussy said. “Look, it’s only a half-hour drive to the restaurant. I’ve never been there, but I know where it is. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I should have tea in the house. My girlfriend Gloria does; it’s ever so elegant. But I don’t drink it, and I don’t have people over very much.”

  “Could I have a glass of water?”

  “With ice? Boy, listen to me!” Tussy laughed. “You can take the girl out of the diner, but you can’t take the diner out of the girl, I guess.”

  “I would like some ice water,” Dett said. “Very much.”

  He studied the cat, who affected great boredom, until Tussy returned with a pair of tall blue glasses, one in each hand.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing one to Dett, and seating herself on the opposite end of the couch.

  Dett took a sip. “It’s great,” he said. It’s water, you fool, he thought to himself.

  “Oh, just put it down on the table,” Tussy said, sensing his discomfort. “We never used coasters in the house. Mom always said they were for people who put on airs.”

  “With a house like this, you wouldn’t need to put on airs,” Dett said. “Your furniture is really something. It looks too good to buy in a store.”

  “It is!” she said, delightedly, clapping her hands. “My father made it. All of it. My father and my mother together, actually. Dad did the woodwork, Mom did the upholstery. It took them forever. And when it was finally all done, Mom said she wasn’t about to cover it with plastic, the way some people do.”

  “Your father makes furniture? I mean, for a living?”

  “No. He worked at the plant. Woodworking, it was like his hobby.”

  “Hobby? He’s a real artist. I’ll bet he could sell stuff like this for—”

  “My parents are gone,” Tussy said. She opened a little black purse, took out her pack of Kools. Dett reached for his matches as she said, “They’ve been gone a long time. My dad had a workshop. Out in the garage. There wasn’t even room for the car in there. And my mother, she sewed for money, sometimes. She made dresses, like for proms or weddings.” She leaned toward Dett, accepted the offered flame, inhaled deeply. “She never got to make one of those dresses for me.”

  “Christ, I’m sorry,” Dett said. “I didn’t know. I never would have—”

  “They’ve been gone a long time. Eighteen years, this December. It’s all right, Walker. I love this house. I love everything my mom and dad did to make it beautiful. It didn’t make me sad when you said what you did—it made me proud.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 19:00

  * * *

  “I didn’t know who else to talk to,” David Peterson said.

  “You did the right thing,” SAC Wainwright assured him.

  “Exactly the right thing,” the man standing next to Wainwright’s desk seconded. He was a stranger to Dave, dressed in a matte gray alpaca suit which draped softly over his lithe frame, and a white silk shirt, buttoned at the throat. The man’s skin was the color of rawhide, emphasizing the artificial whiteness of his too-perfect teeth. His eyes were shallow pools of dirty water. “What is it this time?” he said. “Nazi scientists, working in a secret lab to send rockets to the moon? A plot to test new vaccines on military personnel? Flying saucers?”

  “Giving syphilis to Al Capone,” Dave said, relieved when the unnamed man barked a laugh.

  “Mack Dressler used to be a top agent,” Wainwright said, solicitously. “But a number of years ago, he began experiencing what psychiatrists call ‘paranoid ideation.’ It’s not as uncommon as you might think, Agent Peterson. A man spends his life following people, opening their mail, listening in on their phone calls—he starts to think people are doing the same thing to him.”

  Wainwright paused, looked into Dave’s eyes to emphasize his concern, paused a couple of heartbeats, then went on, as if responding to a question: “Well, of course, we arranged for Mack to get treatment. Had him in a government hospital for almost a year. Unfortunately, the treatment wasn’t a complete success. He no longer believes he’s under surveillance, but he . . . ruminates a lot. And he constructs bizarre, highly detailed scenarios in his head, to ‘explain’ things.”

  “Sir, could I ask, how come he’s still . . . ?”

  “Working? Well, there’s two reasons, Agent Peterson. The first one is that Mack Dressler, for all his . . . well, we might as well call it what it is, craziness . . . is an excellent investigator. He has superb skills, and we use him in sort of a training capacity, always partnering him with new agents. You’ve learned a few tricks from him, I’ll bet.”

  “I sure have,” Dave said, loyally. “He’s shown me how to—”

  “Yes,” the unnamed man interrupted. “Exactly so. And the other reason we keep Mack Dressler on staff is the most important one. The Bureau always takes care of its own, Agent Peterson. Never forget that.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  I never saw a Bureau man who didn’t wear a tie before, Dave thought to himself on the drive back to his apartment. And he wasn’t carrying a weapon, either—you couldn’t even hide a wallet under a suit like that. He wished he could ask Mack what it all meant.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 19:13

  * * *

  “This is a swell car,” Tussy said, touching the over
head sun visor of the Buick with a freshly painted fingernail.

  “It’s not mine,” Dett told her. “It’s just a rental. For while I’m in town.”

  “That must be fun, driving different cars all the time.”

  “I . . . I guess it could be, if you did it only once in a while. But when you do it all time . . .”

  “When you’re home, do you have a car there?”

  “I don’t really have a home.”

  “How could you not have a home? Everybody has to live someplace, don’t they?”

  “I suppose most people do, but me, I’m like a high-class hobo. I sleep in hotel rooms instead of boxcars, and I eat good, but I don’t have a real home of my own.”

  “Well, you have a hometown, don’t you? I mean, a place you’re from.”

  “I used to live in Mississippi.”

  “You don’t talk like you’re from the South.”

  “I haven’t been back in a long time,” Dett said. “I guess I lost the accent. Besides, I wasn’t born there. I was born in West Virginia, and we moved to Mississippi when I was a kid. Then I went in the service, and when I got out, I never went back.”

  “Wow. I’ve been in the same place my whole life.”

  “Locke City?”

  “The same house. I was born there. I mean, I was born in the hospital, but my folks always said they bought that house for me. As soon as Mom got pregnant, they went out and got it.”

  “But when they—”

  “Turn up ahead,” Tussy interrupted. “The road we want is just past the next intersection, on the right.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 19:29

  * * *

  “See?” Wainwright said to the man in the alpaca suit. “He’s harmless. We know what he’s going to do. And every single man we’ve partnered him with has come to us with the same report.”

  “So you think that’s a good test?”

  “Don’t you? Now, if one of the rookies didn’t come to us with one of Mack’s famous stories, then maybe we’d have something to worry about.”

  “What do you think turned him?”

  “He’s not turned,” Wainwright said, forcefully. “He’s nuts. There’s reports on him going back to way before I signed on.”

  “Fine,” the other man said, patiently. “What’s the read on why he started giving those little lectures of his, then?”

  “The McCarthy business.”

  “He was in on that?” the man in the alpaca suit said, tonelessly.

  “Not in on the end-game, no. But he was . . . told certain things, during the briefings, when we were still in the process of selecting the . . . technicians.”

  “Christ.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Wainwright said, making a flicking motion at his lapel. “He was a drunk then. Everyone knew it, but there was a lot of pressure to get things moving, and there was a personnel shortage. Anyway, Dressler’s been telling his wild yarns for so long, who’d ever take him seriously? As you just heard for yourself, he always sounds exactly like what he is—a crazy old man.”

  “That’s the Bureau’s take on it? Officially?”

  “From the top,” Wainwright said, firmly. “And there’s no reason for you people to look at it any differently. If Mack Dressler’s a problem, he’s our problem, not yours.”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 19:51

  * * *

  “That’s it,” Tussy said, pointing through the windshield to a château-style building standing at the top of a rise. “Even the cars in the lot are all foreign. It looks like it was transplanted right from France, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve never been there,” Dett said.

  “Well, neither have I, silly! Don’t you ever just imagine the way things would be, things you’ve never seen yourself?”

  “Sometimes I do,” Dett said, feeling the bluestone under his tires turn to pavement as they drove up to the entrance. He got out, leaving the engine running, and walked around to open the door for Tussy. A uniformed man beat him to the job.

  Tussy put her hand on Dett’s forearm as he handed the uniformed man a folded bill.

  They walked to the door together. Dett stood aside to open it for Tussy, regretting the loss of her hand on his arm the second it occurred.

  Inside, a man in a tuxedo checked a register, confirmed the reservation Carl had called in Saturday afternoon, then personally showed them to their table, already set for two. It had banquette-style seating. Dett stood aside as Tussy slid in first, then he settled himself next to her.

  “The sommelier will be with you momentarily, monsieur,” the man in the tux said.

  “Is that French for ‘waiter’?” Tussy said, biting softly into her lower lip.

  “I don’t know,” Dett replied. “I was never in a place like this.”

  “In your whole life?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, for goodness’ sakes, how come you picked this one, then?”

  “The hotel, the one where I’m staying, they said it was the best place in town.”

  “Do you always do that? Go to the best places?”

  “Me? I never do. What for?”

  “I don’t under—?”

  “I only wanted to come here because I was with you, Tussy,” he said, heavily conscious of her name in his mouth.

  “You don’t have to put on a show for me, Walker.”

  “I—”

  “Our wine list, monsieur,” the red-coated sommelier said, presenting a grape-colored leather packet with a gold tassel.

  Dett and Tussy looked at each other. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly. Even her eyes smile, Dett thought.

  “Perhaps I might be of some assistance?” the sommelier said, unctuously.

  “I don’t like wine very much,” Tussy said, speaking only to Dett. “I drank some at a wedding once, and it tasted like . . . I don’t even know how to say it, but it wasn’t . . . fun.”

  “I don’t like it, either,” Dett said. Turning to the sommelier, he said, “I think we’ll pass.”

  “Pass, monsieur?”

  “Not have any,” Dett translated.

  “Oh. Well. Votre garçon—pardon, your ‘waiter’—will be with you very shortly.”

  “I think we made him mad,” Tussy said, giggling.

  “At least we know how to say ‘waiter’ in French now,” Dett said.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 20:12

  * * *

  “This is what you got?” Dioguardi said, holding the list Rufus had concocted in one hand, reading with a flashlight.

  “That’s what I wrote down, boss. But that be ’xactly what the man had on his own paper. I copy as good as a camera. Checked it over twice, just to be sure.”

  “Where did you find the paper? The one you copied this from?”

  “In his room, boss. Just like you—”

  “Where in his room, goddamn it?”

  “Oh, I see, boss. It was in the pocket of one of his suits,” Rufus said, patting his own chest. “Nice suits he got, like the one you wearing.”

  “What made you look there?”

  “ ’Cause I couldn’t find nothing nowhere else, boss. Looked in his shoes, too. Sometimes, people be hiding things there.”

  “That was slick thinking,” Dioguardi said, soothing over any problem he might have caused by his earlier flash of temper. You have to watch the way you talk to these people, he counseled himself. They can get all sensitive on you, clam right up.

  “Thank you, boss.”

  “Let me ask you another question, Rufus.” They like it when you call them by their name, not “boy” and stuff like that. “When you were looking around, did you see anything that might give you a read on the man? You know, something about his personality?”

  “Well, he didn’t have no magazines, boss. That tell you something, you see what some people be looking at. You be surprised what some people keep in they r
ooms. No letters, neither. Had him some whiskey, but I was the one that went out and got that for him. I tell you this, though. That one, he a serious man.”

  “You say that why?”

  “Man had him a straight razor, boss.”

  “So? Lots of people shave with a—”

  “Yes, sir. I knows that. But the man, he had him a safety razor, besides. Nice new Gillette. And plenty of blades for it, too.”

  “I see what you’re saying.”

  “That’s right, boss. Some of the baddest men I know, they never walk out they house without one.”

  “No guns?”

  “Not a one, boss. And a gun, that ain’t something you can hide in a hotel room. Not from Rufus, noways.”

  “You did a good job, Rufus. Like you always do.”

  “Thank you, boss.” Nah, massah, Mr. Dett, he don’t keep no gun in his room. That’s ’cause he carries it around with him. Just ask Silk, you greaseball motherfucker.

  “Now, that list you saw, it’s probably not worth anything,” Dioguardi said. “But remember when I explained to you that time the difference between flat-work and piece-work?”

  “Yes, sir! I remember that like it was yesterday, you told me.”

  “You ever see a hundred-dollar bill before, Rufus?”

  “I seen them, boss. But I never held one.”

  “Well, now you are,” Dioguardi said, smiling in the night.

  The two men shook hands—Niggers love it when you do that, buzzing through Dioguardi’s mind—and Rufus slipped out of the Imperial and into the welcoming shadows of the vacant lot on Halstead.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 20:32

  * * *

  “Do you know what any of this stuff is?” Tussy asked Dett, tapping a red-lacquered fingernail against the placard on which the various dishes were listed.

  “The only French I know is à la carte.”

  “And all I know is à la mode,” she said, making a face. “Do you think we should ask him?”