Two Trains Running

by Andrew Vachss

  “Christ.”

  “You know what? I didn’t believe them. No matter how many times they said it, I wouldn’t listen. They took me to the hospital. They had my . . . they had my mom and my dad there. When I saw them, all . . . I don’t remember what happened after that.”

  “Did people take you in?”

  “Nobody took me in,” Tussy said, fiercely. “I quit school. I got a job. The same job I have right now today. And I never missed one single payment on our house.”

  “Didn’t anyone . . . make trouble or anything, you being all by yourself?”

  “Well, they sure tried,” Tussy said, leaning back and supporting herself with one palm against the hood. “The Welfare people said I had to go to a foster home. Even the school, they said I was too young to drop out. I could get working papers, for part-time, but I couldn’t leave school entirely, is what they said. And the bank said I couldn’t take over the mortgage, because I wasn’t of age.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But Mr. Beaumont—he’s the biggest man in Locke City—he saved me. With everybody acting like I was a baby, I was so scared. I thought I would lose . . . every last trace of my mom and dad. But this one policeman, he told me, ‘Miss, you go and see Mr. Beaumont. He can fix things.’ And that’s just what I did,” she said, reflectively. “I knew the proper thing would be to write him a letter, but I couldn’t wait. I was too terrified. I couldn’t just sit in my house and have them come for me. So I started walking.”

  “You walked to—? I mean, was it far?” Dett hurriedly amended.

  “It was real far. The policeman, the nice one, he told me where it was, but I had never been way out in the country. I mean, we went out there, for picnics and stuff, but not to where Mr. Beaumont lives. That’s a different kind of country, you know?”

  “Sure. Rich country.”

  “Yes! First, I hitched. I knew that was stupid. If my dad had ever caught me pulling a stunt like that, he would have . . .”

  Tussy tossed away her cigarette, put her face in her hands, and started to sob. Dett held her against him, protectively, not moving his hands, his face as flat and blank as a slab of stone. He felt his own heart—a fist-tight knot in his chest, pulsing hate.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 23:01

  * * *

  “What do you make of it, Sally?”

  “It’s a list of some kind, G. Maybe the letters are the jobs he’s been hired to do, and the numbers are the payoff?”

  “Could be, I guess. But what’s with the buildings? I mean, banks, I could see. Even the post office, there’s money there, if you know where to look. But the police station? That don’t make any sense.”

  “I know. But let’s say those letters, they stand for people, okay?”

  “Okay,” the scar-faced man said, noncommittal.

  “One of them, the letter is ‘D.’ What’s that tell you?”

  “The truth, Sal? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Those numbers, they’re not right. See where the ‘D’ is on the list? Second, not the top. And the number next to it, that’s half of the number across from the ‘X.’ Even if it was a hit list, nobody gets fifty grand. Nobody. Even the guys who did the job on Albert, they got ten apiece. And those guys, they were famiglia, not some outside contract men. If you’re the ‘D’ on that list for twenty-five K, then who’s ‘X,’ for fifty?”

  “I’m not saying that’s what it is, G. But I know this: it means something. This guy, Dett, it’s more like he’s a fucking Russian spy than a hit man.”

  “In Locke City?”

  “You making a joke, G.?”

  “No, Sal.”

  “No? Good. Because I got news for Mr. Walker Dett. Sal Dioguardi’s not some fucking cafone; he’s a man with a mind. See this number, here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mean anything to you?”

  “Not to me.”

  “It’s a phone number, G. You know how I know?”

  “How?”

  “The last three numbers, that was the tip-off.”

  “Two-one-three?”

  “Yeah. Look, I cover those numbers with my finger—see?—what do you have left?”

  “Sally, I swear I’m not—?”

  “You got seven numbers,” Dioguardi said, excitedly. “That’s a telephone number, G. Now, if you want to call long distance, you need an area code, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Which is how many numbers?”

  “Three. Huh! So you think the whole thing, it’s a phone number?”

  “Those last three numbers? Two-one-three? That’s the area code for L.A., Gino.”

  “And this guy, we know he didn’t have a car when he came in; he had to rent one here,” the scar-faced man said. “It all adds up, Sal.”

  “Yeah,” said Dioguardi, thoughtfully. “We talked about you going out to L.A. anyway. For that other business. Okay, this moves things up a bit: I want you on the next plane out, G. Tomorrow, okay?”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 23:06

  * * *

  “I didn’t mean to just . . . let go like that,” Tussy said, her voice muffled in Dett’s chest.

  “It’s okay,” Dett said. Knowing it was, trusting the knowledge.

  “You really want to hear all this?”

  “More than anything.”

  Tussy pulled back slightly. She examined Dett’s face in the moonlight for a long minute, making no secret of what she was doing. Finally, she nodded to herself, swallowed, and went on with her story: “I got three rides, one after the other. By then, it was already afternoon. I knew I wasn’t going to get anyone to pick me up on the side roads—I didn’t even see anyone for a long time—so I walked. It was almost dark by the time I got there.

  “Mr. Beaumont’s house, it’s like a castle. All stone. I never saw anything like it before, even in a book. There’s a gatehouse at the entrance to the property. Not a fence, a little house, like, where you have to stop before you can go in.

  “The man there, the guard, I guess he was, he was very nice, but I told him I would only talk to Mr. Beaumont. Like I was insisting on it, isn’t that ridiculous? But, finally, he told me to move away. Not get off the property, just step back. Then he picked up a phone thing and he talked into it. After he hung up, he told me someone would be out to get me.

  “I just stood there. A man came up. He was one of those . . . slow ones. I don’t like the names people call them, but I don’t know the polite thing to say. He just said to come with him, and I did.

  “Inside the building, it was just like the outside. I mean, like a palace or something. I don’t even have the words to tell you how . . . stupendous it was. The foyer, where I waited, it was bigger than my whole house.

  “The man who brought me, he said to just sit down—there was a hundred places you could do that—and somebody would come and get me.

  “I guess I expected it would be Mr. Beaumont himself, I don’t know why. But it was a lady. She told me her name was Cynthia Beaumont, and she was Mr. Beaumont’s sister. I went with her into this place like an office, and she sat behind a desk and told me to tell her everything I came to tell Mr. Beaumont.

  “That’s what I did. She had a hard face, Miss Beaumont did. Not a mean one, but hard. Like policemen have. I never saw her smile, not once, all the time I was talking. But I guess I didn’t tell her anything to be smiling about. I was crying. A lot.

  “When I was all done, she said, ‘Mr. Beaumont will set things right for you, young lady.’ Then she just got up and left. In a minute, that man, the one who you could see was kind of slow, he came back, and he took me outside.

  “There was a car sitting there. A big black car, like you see in gangster movies. The slow man, he said to get in. So I did. And the man in the car—a different man—drove me straight to my house, like he knew exactly where it was.”

  “That’s some story.”

  “That’s not even the end,” Tussy said. “Af
ter that, everything stopped. No more Welfare people, no more truant officer, no more talk about a foster home. I got my job at the diner, working for Armand. And I still did babysitting—I didn’t work nights then. One of the other girls, she was a few years older than me, she had a car, and I rode to work with her.

  “I only made sixty cents an hour—fifty for the babysitting—but I got my meals free. And the tips were very good. The mortgage is thirty-seven dollars and forty-nine cents a month, so I could pay it with plenty left over, for the electricity and the oil man and everything.”

  “Why do you think this Mr. Beaumont did all that for you?” Dett asked.

  “Oh, I think he does it for everybody. Not the same thing, of course. But everyone in Locke City knows Mr. Beaumont is the man you go to if you have a problem. There’s only one thing that makes me sad, every time I think about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I never had the chance to thank him. Oh, I wrote him a letter, of course. But he never answered it. I never even met him. People say he’s a cripple, in a wheelchair. I wish I could do something for him. Fix him, like he fixed me. But that’s just being silly. What could someone like me ever do for a man like him?”

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 23:12

  * * *

  I don’t know her, Holden Satterfield thought. I don’t know him, neither. And I never seen that car before. I have to write it down, so when Sherman— Holden’s forest-trained ears picked up the sound of another car pulling in, just on the other side of the embankment. They’re not going to do nothing. They’re just talking. I better go see who else is here. . . .

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 23:14

  * * *

  “All right, tell me,” Kitty’s voice floated out the car window.

  I know this one, Holden said to himself. She’s been here before. In that pretty red Chevy. But it’s a different car tonight. A Cadillac. She must be one of those girls who . . .

  “Wednesday night, there’s going to be a rumble. In that big lot on Halstead.”

  “Harley, what Uriah does has nothing to do with me. With any of our family. He hasn’t lived at home for—”

  “You know people call him ‘Preacher’? You know he’s the President of the South Side Kings?”

  “Yes. Yes, we all know. Everyone in town knows. Every family has its disgrace. That’s why my father—”

  “This won’t be one of those kiddie rumbles they’re used to having, Kitty. Not this time.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The Golden Hawks, the ones your brother’s gang is going to clash with, they have guns. Real guns.”

  “You mean like the army?”

  “No. Pistols. But real ones. Your brother, he’s the leader. He’s got to go first. Walk right up to the leader of the other side and start throwing. Only, your brother, he’s going to be expecting bicycle chains and tire irons and baseball bats . . . stuff like that. If he walks up on a man holding a pistol—a real pistol, Kitty, not a little zip gun—he’s going to get killed.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “You see why I had to tell you? I know you and your brother don’t—”

  “Uriah got shot once. In one of those rumbles. He didn’t even have to go to the hospital, he said.”

  “That was with a zip gun, Kitty. They only take twenty-two shorts, and most of the time they don’t even—”

  “I don’t want to know about guns! I hate them. I don’t . . . Why do you even know how they . . . how gangs fight, and everything?”

  “That was me, once,” Harley said. “I didn’t know it then, but gangs, they’re like the minor leagues. In baseball, I mean. The big boys, they have scouts. They know what they’re looking for. And when I got picked, that’s when I got my chance. The chance for everything I’ve been telling you about, Kitty.”

  “But you work for Royal Beaumont. How could he—?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Not now, anyway. What matters now is, you’ve got to tell your brother.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Do? It would save his damn life, if he called this off.”

  “Harley, sometimes I don’t know where you were raised. If you were in a gang yourself, you know my brother could never do anything like that.”

  “Then he should use different—I don’t know—tactics.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe, while the Hawks are going over to the lot, your brother’s gang sneaks over to their clubhouse and waits for them. Then, when they come back, ambush them or something.”

  “Wait around in that neighborhood? They’d all end up in jail.”

  “So? That would be the best thing, wouldn’t it? Let someone call the cops, and say a lot of . . . Negroes are congregating. If your brother and his boys have to spend the night in jail, it’s a lot better than being dead.”

  “I . . . I’ll tell him. About the guns. I can cut lunch tomorrow and go over there. But I don’t know if he’ll—”

  “You have to at least give him the chance.”

  “You’re only doing this because of me, aren’t you?”

  “Kitty, I don’t give a damn about your brother, and I’m not pretending to.”

  “If anyone ever found out you told, wouldn’t you get in a lot of trouble?”

  “More than a lot.”

  Holden watched as the voices stopped and the bodies came together.

  * * *

  1959 October 05 Monday 23:29

  * * *

  “I don’t know why I told you all that,” Tussy said, sliding off the hood of the Buick to stand next to Dett. “Some date, huh?”

  “This wasn’t a date.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, a tincture of misgiving in her voice.

  “I mean, a date, it’s like you . . . it’s just something to do,” Dett told her, struggling to express himself. “You go out on dates a lot, don’t you? But they don’t mean anything.”

  “I don’t go out on dates a lot, for your information. But you’re right: they don’t mean much.”

  “This does,” he said, gravely.

  “This?”

  “Being with you. To me, I mean.”

  “You don’t even know me, Walker. For all you know, I could be—”

  “Pure.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what you are,” Dett said. “Pure. A pure person. I knew it the minute I saw you.”

  “I thought I heard every line there was,” Tussy said, chuckling hollowly, longing for him to say something to banish her skepticism.

  “It’s not a line. I know you think . . . I don’t even think you do think it is,” Dett said. “You know, just like I knew.”

  “That you’re a pure person?”

  “I’m not. I’m nothing like that. I never was; I never will be.”

  “You mean, like the church says, about sin? I already told you I was divorced. You know what they say about—”

  “There’s no church. Not for me, there isn’t. A turned-around collar doesn’t make you a good person, no more than wearing a black robe makes you an honest one. I wasn’t talking about that. You say I don’t know anything about you. Well, I’m saying that I do. What I said is true. And so are you. True. I know this. And what I said about you knowing me? I only meant, you know I’m not lying now.”

  “I thought ‘pure’ meant you were a virgin.”

  “ ‘Pure’ is your heart, not your . . . I don’t know how to say what I want to, Tussy. You know what? I’ve been all over. Not just in America. All over. And the world, it’s rotten. Like, if you could look all the way into the center of the earth, it would be this . . . ugly, evil thing.”

  “There’s bad people and there’s good people,” Tussy said, in a schoolmarm’s tone. “I found that out for myself, like I just told you about. Just because you had some bad experiences, that doesn’t mean the whole world’s—”

  “No, no,” Dett said. “Can I .
. . ?” He reached out his hand. Tussy took it, as trusting as a child.

  Dett felt her hand, small and work-roughened, pulsing faintly, like a heart at peace.

  “I wasn’t talking about people,” he finally said. “Not . . . individuals. I meant the world. The people who run it.”

  “Like kings and presidents?”

  “Not them. Well, maybe them, but even that’s not what I mean. I mean the people who run them.”

  “I don’t understand. Nobody runs the president of America. And nobody runs an evil man like . . . like Hitler was, right?”

  “No.”

  “No, I’m right? Or no, I’m wrong?” she said, looking up at him.

  “No, you’re wrong. But you’re right about people. Most people, anyway. They’re sheep. They go wherever they’re herded.”

  “Walker?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not some kind of . . . religious man, are you?”

  “I already told you—”

  “When I was nineteen,” she said, suddenly, “I got married. He was twenty-five, just back from the war. He had been wounded in Italy. He was a hero, people said. He was a very handsome man, especially in his uniform. That’s what he was wearing when I met him. In the diner. I thought he was the man I had been waiting for.”

  “But he wasn’t . . .” Dett said, fearful she would stop talking, desperate beyond his own understanding to hear the end—to know what had gone wrong.

  “Joey didn’t have any trouble getting work. The war was still going on—this was right after VE Day—but everyone knew we would win by then. The plants were running double shifts. And, with him being a veteran and all . . .

  “We got married in the church. And then we came back ho—to my house. For a little while, it was good.”

  “And then . . . ?”

  “It started . . . I don’t know exactly what started it. So many things happened at once. Joey didn’t like Fireball—which was a dirty trick, because when we were going out he said he did—and he . . . drank a lot. I thought that was because he hated his job. He wasn’t a war hero at the plant. He was always coming home in a temper because the foreman had chewed him out or some supervisor didn’t like the way he did something.”