Two Trains Running

“Look, mister,” he said to the gunman seated next to him, “what-ever this is, it can be squared.”

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Dett said, conversationally. “I’ve got a silencer for this piece. I could have just walked by your car, popped you, and kept going. You never saw me coming. I could have put one right here.” The man tapped the pimp’s temple lightly with the tip of his.45. “You wouldn’t have felt a thing.

“I know where you live,” the gunman continued. “I know what car you drive. I know where you’ve got to be to do business. If I wanted, I could have taken you out, anytime.”

“Why you telling me all this, man?” the pimp said, plaintively. “I never did nothing to you.”

“I’m telling you so that you calm down,” Dett said. “We’ve got to go someplace where we can talk. I don’t want you thinking I need to get you alone so I can blast you.”

“What we got to talk about?”

“Soon as we get there,” Dett promised.

1959 October 03 Saturday 04:11

“This is good,” Dett told the pimp. “You can turn off the engine now. And the lights, too, please.”

“You making a mistake, man. Let me talk to you. I got money. Serious money.”

“I don’t want your money,” Dett told him. “I want to be your friend.”

“My friend? You got some way of making friends, man.”

“Have I talked badly to you?” Dett said. “Haven’t I been respectful?”

“Oh, yeah, man. You the most polite killer I ever met.”

“I already told you-”

“Yeah, I know. I got it.”

“Please don’t do something stupid,” Dett said, just short of pleading.

“Stupid? What I going to do that-?”

“You probably have a gun somewhere. At least a knife.”

“In my coat,” the pimp said. “The mink, on the back seat. But I got a permit for that piece, man. I’m a-”

“-professional.”

“Right! I-”

“You see what I mean? About respect? We’re both professionals. Businessmen. That’s why we can be friends.”

“How are we gonna be friends?” the pimp said, willing calm into his voice.

“Friends help each other.”

“What kind of help you-?”

“A man with a lot of ladies working for him is a man with a dozen pairs of eyes and ears.”

“My girls’ job ain’t to-”

“Whores gossip all the time,” Dett said. “He-say, she-say, that’s what they do, right?”

“You can’t be the law,” the pimp said. “Otherwise, I be down at the cop house, and some cocksucking faggot detective be ready to put a phone book on my head, he wanted to know something.”

“They did that to you?”

“When I was young and stupid, yeah. When I was still learning my game. But now? Not hardly, man. I ain’t no street-nigger trash. I got lawyers and everything. And I got a license to do what I do, same as the one for the gun. Bought it from the same people, too. That’s how I know you ain’t no cop, understand?”

“Sure,” Dett said. “That just proves you’re a real professional. A professional, he knows the value of information, and he knows how to use it, too. Like right now. You used information you have about this town to tell you I’m not a cop, see?”

“You playing with me, man?”

“No. I’m being honest with you, that’s why it sounds so strange. You know I’m not a cop, like you said. Not a local cop, anyway. But you know I’m not federal, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Those boys dress even worse than you. And they never work alone. Always two of them.”

“Okay, then. We can talk now, can’t we?”

“You holding the pistol, man.”

“I’m sorry about that. But I had to get you to go someplace with me. Someplace where you could just be yourself, no image.”

“I always be myself, wherever I am.”

“All right,” said Dett, agreeably, “whatever you say. Now, tell me. Do you ever bring your girls to private parties?”

“No, man. I got some girls, sure. But they out there, on the street. Where you found me.”

“A car like this, the way you dress, you must be holding a whole stable of racehorses,” Dett said, deliberately echoing Moses’s words. “Some of them have to be doing better than five-and-two tricks. Especially white girls.”

The pimp closed his eyes. I get it now, sounded inside his head. This is how it ends. “What you want, man?” he said, wearily, not opening his eyes.

“I asked you about parties.”

“Where you from, man? Around here, man wants some private action sent to his house, he don’t want a nigger along for the ride, unless he driving a cab.”

“So the girls would drive themselves?” Dett asked.

“I got another ride besides this one. They need to go someplace, they take that.”

“Your girls turn lump tricks?”

“No, man. I don’t do my women like that. But, sometimes, you know how it can be, customer can’t get it up, he blames the girl.”

“You ever lose a girl that way?”

“Girls come and go all the time, man. Cop and blow, that’s the game. My bottom woman, maybe, maybe a couple of her wives-in-law, that’s all I can count on, go the distance with me.”

“No. I mean lose one.”

“Like a trick kill a girl? No way, man. Never happen. I mean, I know it could happen, not saying it couldn’t. I had girls run off. Every mack has that happen. But I never had one go to the morgue.”

“I was in a place, once,” Dett said. “There was a man there. Real big shot. Rich, well connected. He liked to hurt working girls; paid heavy cash for his fun. One night, he went too far, and a girl died.”

“Why you telling me all this?”

“Because it was a weakness, what the man had. It made him easy.”

“Easy for what?”

“Easy for me. For what I do.”

“You’re a blackmailer?”

“Sure,” said Dett, his tone making it clear that the two men were mutually agreeing to a lie more comfortable than the truth they shared.

“Who you looking at?”

“I’m not particular. He’s got to be connected, that’s all.”

“Connected, like in…?”

“Dioguardi. Shalare. Beaumont. That level.”

“Men like that, they don’t be visiting no whorehouses.”

“I asked you about private parties, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. But I never did business with any of those men. Maybe some of their boys get their tubes cleaned once in a while. Probably do, as a matter of fact. But that ain’t the kind of thing any of the girls would talk about.”

“Too scared?”

“Scared? Of what? It’s no big thing, not to them. Most tricks pump themselves up, anyway. Working girls’ll tell you: with them, every man’s got to be a big man, you know?”

“Yes.”

“Who you looking at, man? A judge, something like that?”

“I’m not particular.”

“You really not going to kill me?” the pimp said, opening his eyes. “Right?”

“We’re going to be friends,” Dett said. Not predicting, stating a fact.

“There’s one guy,” the pimp said, thoughtfully. “I don’t know who he is, but he’s the fish you want to land.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, the way it works, the madam, Ruth’s her name, she taps a girl, says she’s going to get a visitor in the blue room, the girl knows what that means.”

“This guy?”

“This guy. Only nobody ever sees him. They put the girl in this room, put a black hood over her head, then they put her shoulders into this harness thing, like. So she can’t turn around. The door opens. The man comes in. Does his business, Greek-style, and leaves. Never says a word.”

“Does he hurt the girls?”

“You mean, because he goes up the chute? No, man. The girls know it’s coming, so they can get ready for it. And he lubes up, too.”

“What if one of the girls doesn’t want to-”

“You want to work Miss Ruth’s house, that’s part of the deal. She tells every girl, right up front. This guy, you may never get picked, but if you do, you’re going. And the man pays.”

“Any of your girls ever get a hint who he is?”

“Not a clue, man. The blue room, it’s in the basement. There’s a back door, leads right down to it from the outside. Whoever he is, the man don’t have to come through the house. And one thing’s for sure-Miss Ruth is never going to talk. She knows a lot of things, but she never says. She’s famous for that.”

“If this story is true, we’ll be friends,” Dett told the pimp.

“Meaning, if it ain’t, you gonna find me some night and kill me?”

“What does it matter?” the velvet-voiced gunman said. “I know you’re telling the truth. I know we’re friends now.”

1959 October 03 Saturday 09:22

“Lymon’s been talking,” Beaumont said.

“Lymon!” Harley said, shocked. “Who would he-?”

“Shalare. He’s been talking to Shalare.”

“Nah.”

“What?” Beaumont demanded.

“I just mean… some of the men we got, they’re like women, you know? Always talking. Yap-yap. Gossip. Maybe he had a beer with Shalare. Shot a game of pool with him. That doesn’t mean he said anything about our business. Besides, we’re not at war with-”

“Harley,” Beaumont said, heavily, “I want you to listen to me. Sometimes, you have to take a couple of steps back, look at things from a wider angle. You see more that way. Shalare’s coming at us same as Dioguardi is, only from a different direction. Dioguardi, he’s a muscle guy. But Shalare, he’s been plowing another field.”

“Where? I never heard of his boys doing-”

“He’s been buying politicians like a kid collecting baseball cards. Not the locals. You know the city council; they’ll take money from anyone, for anything. But that’s look-away cash; they don’t have the clout to change anything. Shalare, he’s been working the top shelf. The Assembly, the Senate, maybe even the governor.”

“All that for this little town?”

“Yeah,” Beaumont replied. “All that for this little town. And everything that’s in it.”

“But what could Lymon even tell them?”

“Lymon carries the bag for us. He could tell Shalare every stop he makes. And how much he leaves at each one.”

“He’s too smart for that,” Harley protested. “You know Lymon; he’s not a man to take chances.”

“A man who never takes chances is a man who hedges his bets,” Beaumont said. “I think that’s why Lymon started talking in the first place. But now he thinks he’s betting on a winner.”

“Shalare?”

“Yes.”

“He’s wrong.”

“Dead wrong,” Beaumont said, nodding his massive head for emphasis.

1959 October 03 Saturday 10:05

“He said he was probably going to be staying longer than he planned at first.”

“It must be very lonely for him, traveling all the time. Remember when we used to go visit your Aunt Madeleine in Chesterfield over the summers? Your father could never get time away from the store, so it would be just the two of us.”

“And Madeleine. And that big slob-”

“Your Uncle Max was nothing resembling a slob,” Carl’s mother said, grimly. “He was an educated, cultured man.”

“An educated, cultured Jew,” her son retorted, venomously.

“I’m disappointed in you, Carl,” his mother said, stiffly. “I did not raise my son to be a bigot.”

“It’s not bigotry to understand people,” Carl said, with icy assurance.

“You never took the time to understand-”

“Uncle Max? I understood him very well, even when I was just a boy. He’s like all of them. He gives the impression of being intelligent, but he’s really just… clever. There is a difference, Mother.”

“Where in the world did you ever get such a-?”

“There are racial characteristics,” Carl interrupted. “It’s no accident that Jews are good businessmen. They have a plan, a world plan. That’s why they keep to their own kind. They even have their own language. They may look white, but they’re not.”

“Carl!”

“Mother, I wish you would pay more attention to history. The Jews are a tribe, a separate and distinct race. Now they even have their own country.”

“Everybody in America once had their own country. You know very well that your own great-grandfather came here from Sweden.”

“Yes. We’re pure Nordic stock, on both sides. But what you say isn’t accurate, Mother,” Carl said, his voice both academic and concerned-a tutor who wanted to make sure his student really understood the lesson. “The Indians were born here, and they lived like wild animals. The coloreds were brought here, right out of the jungle. But those who came voluntarily, like our people, came from civilized countries. They came here to be Americans. And today, if I were to travel to, oh, I don’t know, Paris,” he said, airily, “I would be seen as an American, not a Scandinavian.”

“But you are an-”

“But wherever a Jew travels, he travels as a Jew,” Carl said, in a tone of finality. “They came here as part of their plan.”

“I don’t under-”

“The plan, Mother. It’s well documented. The Jews want to control… everything. Look closely. See who owns things here. Who runs the banks. The newspapers. Look at Hollywood, it’s dominated by the Jews.” Carl took a sip of his coffee, watching his mother’s face over the rim of the cup. “If you look closely, if you read between the lines, you can see the pattern emerging. The whole so-called civil-rights movement is really run by the Jews. You can see Jew money everywhere. Anytime a colored man is arrested in the South-well, not every time, but when it’s a big case, the kind we read about even here-you’ll see he has Jew lawyers. Who’s paying for that? Some sharecroppers who took up a collection? I don’t think so. The Communists who were exposed, how many of them turned out to be Jews? Look at the Rosenbergs. Who were they loyal to? Not America, Russia. And where do most Jews come from? Russia.”

“Carl!”

“Calm yourself, Mother. Most of what has been reported in the popular press about the Nazis is nothing but Jew propaganda. You don’t really believe six million people were gassed to death, do you? Research shows that was physically impossible.”

“Carl, I never pry into your affairs, but-”

“Oh, I know you saw the flag, Mother. It’s just a symbol. A symbol of racial purity.”

Carl’s mother began sobbing softly. “You can’t…”

“Ssshhh,” he said, reaching over to stroke her shoulder.

“Carl, people were killed over there. And it wasn’t just Jews they put to death. They killed Gypsies and…”

“They never exterminated Aryans,” Carl said, firmly.

“But…”

“I know,” Carl told her quietly. “Mother, I truly know.”

1959 October 03 Saturday 13:39

“You never write anything down?” Beaumont said.

“Would you want me to?” Dett asked.

“I’m not saying that. But all that information you asked for, it’s a lot to remember.”

“It’s a skill you can teach yourself. Like driving a car, or shooting a gun. Takes practice, that’s all.”

“Makes sense to me,” Beaumont said. “That’s something I can understand. What I’m not so clear about is why you’d want to meet Dioguardi’s people way out in the country.”

“You ever see the way cops search a house?” Dett said. “They look into everything. They look under everything. But they never look up.”

“That’s why you want that old shack? Because it has that crawl space up top?”

“Yeah. Besides, I need them to think I’m local. An out-of-towner wouldn’t even know how to find that place, right?”

“That’s true. But how do you know they’re planning to jap you?”

Dett’s eyes were gray mesh, absorbing without reflecting.

Moments passed.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Beaumont finally said. “What else would they do?”

1959 October 03 Saturday 15:22

“He frightens me,” Cynthia said. “Every time he comes here, he… he changes the air we breathe, somehow. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s not like you to get spooked, honey.”

“I know it’s not,” she said, crisply. “That’s why I’m saying it now.”

“You want me to cut him loose?” Beaumont asked.

“You’d do that, Beau? On nothing more than my… feeling?”

“Of course I would, Cyn. This… business we’re in, it’s probably like any other. There’s people you can never trust, people you can trust sometimes, but how many do you ever meet you can trust all the way?”

“I don’t know. You handle all the-”

“You,” Beaumont said, lovingly. “From the minute I was born, you.”

1959 October 03 Saturday 16:04

“You said one car,” the pawnbroker said to Dett.

“I said one space,” Dett rebutted, neutral-voiced. “There’s never going to be two cars back there at the same time. Just different ones, alternating.”

“That still should be more-”

“I came here as a courtesy, so you wouldn’t be surprised when you saw another car in the space I rented. I’ve always been polite to you, haven’t I? And I dealt fair, paid you what you wanted, didn’t I?”

“Yes. But-”

“All right. I’ll tell Mr. Beaumont you want to change the deal.”

“Anyone can say a name,” the pawnbroker said, in his professional bargainer’s voice.

“They can,” Dett agreed. “Sometimes, a man thinks he can make an investment with that. Spend a dime on a phone call, say a name, and get back a big reward. You seem like such a smart man. With your own business and all. I thought we were friends.”

“I-”

“You’re going to make some kind of call. If you make the right one, you’ll see I’m a man who tells the truth about who his friends are. If you make the wrong one, you’ll find out something else about me. When I come back, you tell me if you still want more money for that space, okay?”

1959 October 03 Saturday 16:22

“That was Nat,” Beaumont said, hanging up the phone.

“What could he want?”

“He said Dett used my name.”

“Well, he should, shouldn’t he? You were the one who sent him to Nat.”

“I’m not saying he did anything wrong. I’m just a little surprised. Nat was trying to shake Dett down for a few extra bucks. You’d think Dett would just pay it; what’s the big deal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me, either. But what Nat really wanted was for me to be sure to tell Dett he called. Can you make any sense out of that?”

“I think he did something that scared the hell out of Nat,” Cynthia said. “And that’s not such an easy thing to do.”

1959 October 03 Saturday 22:22

“You got a name?”

“I’m the man who sent your boss the letter.”

“Oh. The cute guy. What d’you want now, pal?”

“I want to speak to your boss. Just like I said the last time I called.”

“The boss isn’t going to talk to some punk hustler. There’s a hundred ways you could have gotten that license.”

“You talking for your boss? Or are you just talking?”

“You’ll never know, pal.”

“Okay, messenger boy. Tell your boss I won’t be using the mail to deliver the next package.”

“Hey! If you-”

1959 October 03 Saturday 23:45

“What’d he look like?” Rufus asked Silk. The two men were in the back booth of a sawdust-floored juke joint, walled off from the other patrons by three men who stood in a fan around them, facing out.

“Like any of your regular hillbillies, man. Kind of tall, but not no giant. Slender, but not skinny. White skin, but not ex-con color. He just… average-looking, I guess. Not the kind of man leaves an impression. Except for his eyes.”

“What color?”

“I couldn’t even tell you, brother. Not in the light we was in. But it’s not the color, it’s the look.”

“Like nobody’s home?”

“That’s it! Even when he smiled-”

“And he gave you those?” Rufus asked Silk, looking down at the pimp’s open palm. “Just gave them to you?”

“You know what they are?”

“Looks like a pair of gold dice. With little diamonds where there’s supposed to be dots.”

“Solid gold, brother. Real diamonds. You never heard of these?”

“Supposed to be some kind of good-luck charm?” Rufus asked, his mind flashing to an image of the mojo Rosa Mae had described.

“You know how the greaseballs be moving in on our policy banks?”

“Our banks?”

“You know what I mean, man,” Silk said, deliberately not taking offense. “The numbers game is a colored thing. Always been. We invented it. Got a whole big industry behind it: dream books, charms, stuff like that. Naturally, Whitey sees us making some money, he wants it for himself.”

“You got me all the way over here so you could tell me that?”

“I know you don’t feature me, man. Behind what I do.”

“I don’t care what you do,” Rufus said. “I care about what you are. You’re a black pimp, that’s okay. What I got to find out is what comes first. Black, or pimp.”

Silk leaned back in the booth. He lit a cigarette with a small gold lighter. Half-closed his eyes. “Young boys, they think being a pimp takes a steel cock. What it takes is a steel mind.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They think it’s the perfect job, what I do,” Silk went on, unruffled. “All the free pussy in the world. What they don’t know is, there’s no such thing as free pussy. You pay, one way or the other.”

“Why you telling me all this?”

“Outsiders, they don’t understand The Life,” the pimp went on as if he had not been interrupted. “They think a whore’s a cold-blooded cunt. Like a slot machine-you slide in the money, and they open up. You want to know the truth? To be a high-class working girl, like the kind I got, you have to believe in love. That’s what they get from me. That’s what I pay with. See, a real mack, he knows everything comes from here,” Silk said, touching his temple in the same spot Dett had with his.45. “I talk for a living. I’m not going to do that with you. I came here to show you something. You don’t want it, I’ll just-”

“Something besides these trick dice?”

“Those dice are famous, man. Maybe not where you live, but every player this side of St. Louis knows them. Belong to Brutus Farley, king of the Cleveland policy game. That’s where I came up, Cleveland. Back then, the whole East Side belonged to Brutus. That policy money made him too rich for anyone to touch. He had all kinds of legit businesses. Colored businesses. Barbershops, liquor stores, gas stations. Owned him some apartment buildings, too. Word is, Brutus got his stake rolling bones; that’s what he started his bank with. Those were his lucky dice, man. He always carried them with him, wherever he went.”

“You’re sure those are the same ones?”

“Brutus always had men around him,” the pimp continued, ignoring the question. “Not collectors-you don’t need muscle to collect for numbers-bodyguards, like. He had a pair of motherfuckers so ugly make a gorilla run back into the jungle, he see them. Huge boys. Carried so much iron they clanked when they walked, too.

“A few years ago, Brutus disappears. Him and his two bodyguards. For a while, some of the people under him was able to keep things together, run the bank. But they couldn’t hold it. Now you still got a numbers game in Cleveland. And you still got our people working as runners. But the wops own it.”

The pimp puffed lightly on his cigarette. “Nobody ever knew what happened to Brutus,” he said. “Some people say he had enough money, he just went someplace else, live out the rest of his life in peace. Some say he’s laying in the cut, waiting to make a comeback. But it was on the drums that he got done, and that’s what most people believe.”

“You think this guy, the one who snatched you, he did that?”

“Where else he get those dice, brother? You know him, right? You said he staying at your hotel. What do you think?”

“He’s… he’s kind of a nice guy. Real gent.”

“He was nice to me, too. Polite and everything. Kept his voice soft. But I’ll tell you this, Brother Omar. You don’t like what I do, but you know what it take to do it. My game, it is game. All game. You got to play people like a violin. Know what strings to stroke. And you can’t play them unless you can read them. This guy, what’d you say he called himself…?”

“Walker Dett.”

“Yeah. I know he go by a lot of different names, but I never heard that one for him before.”

“What are you talking about, man?”

“You ain’t going to catch me saying his name out loud, brother. Not his real name-that’s the worst kind of bad luck there is,” Silk said fervently. “I never thought I’d ever see him, not with my own eyes. But I always knew he’d be a white man.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 00:06

Back in his room, Dett extracted a small brass canister from a compartment inside his suitcase. He unscrewed the top and carefully tapped several tiny crimson flakes into the palm of his hand. He licked them delicately off his palm, and immediately drank a full glass of water, swallowing slowly.

Seating himself, he dialed a local number. When it was picked up at the other end, Dett said, “That property we talked about? The one with the crawl space up top? I don’t believe I’m going to have an immediate use for it, as I had thought. I need to explore other options. When would be a convenient time for us to meet?”

Dett listened to the response, then hung up.

In the nightstand drawer, he found a local phone book. “Chambers” was a common name in the area. He found two “T. Chambers”es and three “C. Chambers”es. No Tussy, and no Carol. Working slowly through the addresses, Dett finally came to a match with the one Tussy had given him. The phone number was the same, too. Both listed under “Abner Chambers.”

Dett dialed the number.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice, sleepy-soft.

Dett hung up.

1959 October 04 Sunday 01:10

“There’s no way I can get that,” Lymon said, the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver cupped protectively in his hand. “I don’t even know when he goes out there to see him, never mind what they talk about.”

“You better get something,” a whiskey-roughened voice said. “If you can’t, you’re not much good to us, are you, then?”

“I already got-”

“-paid, is what you got. Paid good.”

“You know I’m not doing it for money. I’m with-”

“-us? You’re with us, are you? That’s fine, isn’t it? But you’re not a soldier, boyo, you’re a spy. A spy for peace. Remember what you were promised?”

“Yeah. You said there’d be no-”

“-and there won’t,” the voice assured him. “We’d rather do it peaceful. But we are going to do it. Now, listen to me, my friend. Being with us, that’s not like betting on a horse. It’s not even like riding a horse. You’ve got to be the horse.”

“I am, goddamn it. Haven’t I proved-?”

“All you proved, so far, is that you’re a smart man. Right now, we’d rather have a bloody dummy, if he had some good gen for us, understand?”

“Yeah. I’ll try and-”

“Try hard,” the voice said, its tone matching the last word.

1959 October 04 Sunday 01:15

“It’s too risky, boss,” Rufus said.

“Piece of cake,” the man in the driver’s seat of the Chrysler Imperial responded. He was slightly under average height, but his bodybuilder’s physique gave him the presence of a much larger man. “The guy who’ll be doing the search, he’ll already be a guest in that hotel. Checked in, all nice and legal. So, even if someone sees him in the hall, so what?”

“I ain’t worried about nobody seeing him in the hall, boss. Mr. Dett, he comes and goes. There ain’t no regular pattern to him. If he was to walk in and find someone searching his room…”

“You let us worry about that,” the man said, pursing his thick lips into a Cupid’s bow.

“Nah, sir. I cain’t do that. That little job is all I have, and I done had it a long time. The man finds out someone got into his room, he gonna know somebody used a passkey.”

“Anyone could pick one of those hotel-room locks.”

“Mebbe so. But how he gonna lock the door behind him when he go?”

“That’s where you come in,” the powerfully built man said. “All you have to do is-”

“I ain’t doing that, boss,” Rufus said, firmly. “Not for no kind of money.”

“Big words,” the man in the driver’s seat said.

“I’m big scared, boss.”

“Look, no job is such a-”

“It ain’t the job, boss. It’s that man I’m a-scared of. You ain’t met him.”

“I met plenty like him,” the bodybuilder said, confidently. “Just a hired gun. They’re the same as whores; they just do different things for their money.”

“If you says so, boss. You knows about things like that. I know you not scared of nothing. But, me, I cain’t do that. I just cain’t. Swear to Jesus. Even if I didn’t get caught doing it, that man would know.”

“He’s a fortune-teller, too?”

“Boss, please. I got another idea. Get you the same thing you want, I promise.”

“I’m listening,” the man said. He spread his hands before him, palms-down, admiring the manicure he’d gotten earlier that day.

“Your man, he just wants to search the room, right?”

“Right.”

“So how about I does it for you, boss? You tells me what you wants me to look for, I tells you if it’s there.”

“Searching a place, that’s no job for a-for an amateur. There’s ways to do it, make sure nobody knows you’ve ever been looking. There’s guys do that for a living, they’re like ghosts. Float in, float out, never leave a trace.”

“I could do it, boss,” Rufus said, eagerly. “It’s not like this the man’s house; it’s a hotel room. Guests, they be expectin’ people goin’ in and out, all the time. You got the maids, the maintenance men, the room-service people. You got-”

The man in the driver’s seat leaned back against the thickly padded cushions, scratched a spot on his dimpled chin. “You’re a good man, Rufus,” he said. “We’ve been doing business a long time. You’re reliable, I know that. You say you’re going to do something, you do it. I can count on you.”

“Thank you, boss.”

“But this here job, no offense, it takes a lot of… You got to be able to think, not just do what you’re told-make decisions on the spot.”

“I don’t understand, boss.”

“Yeah. That’s kind of what I’m afraid of. Look, Rufus. Let’s say I ask you to find a little red box in his room, you could do that, right?”

“Sho’!”

“Uh-huh. Now, what if I ask you, just find out what you can about the man, what do you do then?”

Rufus nodded several times, as if pondering the problem before solidifying his thoughts.

“I looks for papers, boss. Papers and numbers.”

“Tell me more,” the man said, a slight posture-shift revealing his heightened alertness.

“Anything with names or numbers on it, that wouldn’t mean nothing to me, I guess. But I figure you would know what stuff like that means.”

The bodybuilder turned to look at Rufus’s earnest face, again noticing that slight yellowish cast in the man’s eyes that had always disconcerted him. Probably got one of those nigger diseases, he thought.

“You’re smarter than you look,” the bodybuilder said. “And that’s a very good thing.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 02:12

Buick Roadmaster, four-door hardtop, coral body, with a white roof, Dett thought to himself, watching the empty car. This guy, he’s making enough to afford an Imperial, like his boss, but he’s smart, driving something a step down. Shows respect. They like that stuff.

Dett had spotted the Roadmaster during one of his careful sweeps of what Beaumont had called a “fringe territory.” The target’s car was docked just off a decrepit street lined with storefronts-two liquor stores, a spot-labor joint, a deserted-looking greasy spoon, and a Chinese laundry. Most of the storefronts were empty. Some were boarded up; others forlornly displayed FOR RENT signs in their dirt-encrusted windows.

Before he had located the Roadmaster, Dett had eye-marked a half-dozen teenagers moving along the sidewalk. They were identically dressed in shiny black rayon jackets, with “Hawks” on the back, in gold lettering. The rest of their uniform consisted of gold chauffeur’s caps with black bills, narrow-cuffed jeans, and engineer boots. Garrison belts, with the buckles sharpened, probably some switchblades, Dett thought, dismissing the idea of those kids carrying firearms. The gang moved in a wedge behind their leader, sweeping down the empty sidewalk. As they passed a storefront with black-painted windows, they all moved to the edge of the curb.

They don’t want any part of that place, Dett thought. Must be Dioguardi’s joint. Which means that’s where the target is now. So his car’s got to be around here somewhere, too. Those kids, they probably keep an eye on it for him…

Dett gave the gang a two-block lead, then slowly followed in their wake. They descended a flight of stairs below street level, and disappeared.

Dioguardi owns that building, Dett calculated. Lets them use the basement for a clubhouse; they watch the street for him. Same as it’s done everywhere.

After a quick glance at his watch, Dett shrugged his shoulders and kept driving, heading for Lambert Avenue. “That’s the dividing line,” Beaumont had told him. “You got white on one side, colored on the other. Only time they cross is to rumble. The white kids are the Golden Hawks; the coloreds call themselves the South Side Kings.”

“You know how big they are?” Dett had asked him.

“The Hawks? Maybe twelve, fifteen of them are real members. But, for a fight, they might get some other white kids to pitch in, even if they weren’t affiliated. The coloreds, it seems like there’s more of them, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

I could tell you, Dett had said to himself, thinking of a recent job he’d done in Chicago. But he had only nodded.

A few blocks away, Dett brought his rented Impala to a stop on Lambert, a wide boulevard lined with what appeared to be thriving businesses on both sides. The DMZ, he thought to himself, noting the pair of black-and-white patrol cars down the block. The cars were pointed in opposite directions-one parked at the curb, the other blocking an oncoming lane of late-night traffic-as the drivers discussed something through their opened windows.

As Dett watched, another prowl car loomed in his rearview mirror. Three in five minutes, he thought. A few blocks south of here, I didn’t see one in over an hour.

He started the Impala, pulled out of his parking space, and drove several blocks down Lambert. He was not surprised to see still another black-and-white before he turned back in the direction of the Hawks’ basement.

The patch of broken ground between two short blocks had never been used for sandlot baseball games. Choked with rubble, it looked like the place where junkyards dumped what they couldn’t sell.

Dett pulled alongside the vacant lot. Stepping out briskly, he opened the Impala’s trunk, reached in carefully with both hands, and extracted a crosshatched weave of Scotch tape. He sprinkled dirt lightly on the sticky side of the weave, turning it cloudy. Using his back to block what he was doing, he reversed the weave so that it adhered to the license plate on the rear bumper. Then he stepped back to inspect his work, satisfying himself that the plate was unreadable, even at close range.

The Roadmaster was still in place, almost directly under a working streetlight. Dett parked ahead of it on the one-way street, climbed out, and walked slowly back. A wine bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag was in his left hand. His walk was determinedly steady-a drunk who knew he was loaded.

The drunk’s walk got sloppier and sloppier as he neared the Buick. By the time he was ten feet past the car, the booze seemed to get the upper hand-he slumped against a deserted building for support.

A minute later, the drunk was sitting on the sidewalk, his back to the building, chin on his chest. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes swept the surrounding terrain like a prison searchlight after the escape siren sounds.

Less than twenty minutes had passed when two men turned the corner to the drunk’s left.

Dett watched, Two! registering clinically in his technician’s mind.

As the men came closer, Dett’s eyes noted that they were both wearing black topcoats and pearl-gray snap-brims. His mind dismissed the information, focusing on the vitals-they were approximately the same height.

Anyone watching would have seen a drunk struggling to his feet, using one hand to brace himself against the building wall. The drunk stumbled toward the two men, weaving slightly.

One of the men parted his topcoat, revealing a white silk lining as he reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a set of car keys.

Dett staggered down the sidewalk toward them, a wet-brain on autopilot, determined to walk home despite the ground rippling under his feet.

Slow down, Dett said inside his mind. The movie playing on the screen of his eyes began to crawl forward, frame by frame, as his world telescoped down to a narrow tunnel.

At five yards, Dett made a pre-vomiting sound. The man with the car keys involuntarily drew back, looking at Dett in disgust. Dett tossed the paper bag to his left. It seemed to hang in the air for seconds, pulling the eyes of both men into its arc before the bottle inside shattered on the sidewalk. The one with the car keys shook his head in contempt. The other, more experienced, was already reaching inside his coat as Dett drew his pistol from under his left armpit-Exhale… slowly, slowly-and gripped it in two hands, the left hand pulling back against the slight forward pressure of the right, wrists locked.

One man’s hand was already under his lapel as Dett’s.45 cracked. The shot caught him in the center of his chest, dropping him instantly. Without shifting his feet, Dett ratcheted his shoulders a few notches and cranked off another round, nailing the other man in the stomach.

Dett bent forward and carefully shot each man between the eyes. He turned and walked unhurriedly past the dead bodies toward his car, the.45 dangling at his side.

No lights went on. No sirens broke the night.

Dett slipped his pistol back into its holster and kept walking, moving quickly through the slow-motion movie reel unfurling all around him.

The ignition key was already slotted in the Impala, the protruding portion wrapped in black electrical tape so it wouldn’t catch the eye of any casual passerby. The door was unlocked. It only took Dett a long heartbeat to get in, start the engine, and smoothly pull away.

Dett drove to the pawnshop. But instead of parking in front of the building, he pulled around to the side, and opened the padlock to the chain-linked lot, using a key the pawnbroker had insisted on giving him.

When he drove out a few minutes later, Dett was behind the wheel of the Ford, dressed in laborer’s clothes. His hands reeked faintly of gasoline. He was unarmed.

1959 October 04 Sunday 03:09

“What did he say? Exactly,” Dioguardi demanded.

“He said, ‘Tell your boss, the next package I deliver, I won’t use the mail.’ Then he hung up. Fucking cocksucking-”

“He didn’t ask for anyone, Vito? Like last time?”

“No, boss. It was just what I told you, word for word.”

“Would you know the voice if you heard it again?”

“I… Maybe, I don’t know, Mr. D. It was a white guy. Not a kid, but not too old, either.”

“He didn’t have any kind of an accent?”

“No. It was like… it was like talking to a machine. What do we do, Mr. D.?”

“When he calls again, you tell him I want to talk.”

“Maybe he won’t-”

“Yeah, he will,” Dioguardi said, grimly confident.

1959 October 04 Sunday 03:23

Moonlight transformed the gleaming aluminum skin of the Air-stream trailer into a shimmering, eye-tricking image, like a metallic mushroom growing in a dense forest. The trailer was mortally wounded-first ripped and torn beyond repair in a head-on collision with a hell-bound semi, later stripped of anything that could be turned into cash, and finally left to rot in a far corner of the junkyard. A red dot glowed from somewhere inside what was once its doorway.

“It’s almost half past, Omar,” Kendall said to Rufus.

“I know what time it is, brother.”

“They was never so late before.”

“You got someplace to be, K.?”

“Yeah, man. Always. Right here, with you, wherever you is. All I’m saying-”

“That’s them,” Darryl interrupted, as jaundiced headlight beams cut the night.

A dark-gray panel truck turned into the entrance to the junkyard. On its side were the words “Acme Transfer Company” in red, flowing above a painting of a deliveryman wheeling a file cabinet on a hand truck, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to display bulging cartoon biceps.

The truck did a slow-speed slalom through the piled-up car corpses until it came to a cleared area where the remains of the trailer sat.

“Why it always got to be two of them?” Kendall whispered to Rufus.

“There’s more than two of us,” Rufus answered. “They’re the ones walking into the lions’ den.”

“Don’t ever feel like that to me, brother. Those some spooky motherfuckers.”

Rufus was already on his feet, moving toward the truck, which had come to a gentle stop.

A man emerged from the passenger seat, dropping lightly to the ground. He was dressed in a black leather jacket over a white turtleneck jersey and blue jeans.

Like he bought that whole outfit an hour ago, Rufus thought to himself. And look at those shoes-they’re made for a suit. “You’re late,” he said aloud. “I wasn’t sure you’d be coming.”

“We had to take a detour,” the man said. He was a couple of inches shorter than Rufus, with a face older than his trim physique.

“I’ve got your money,” Rufus said.

“And we’ve got your goods,” the man replied, twitching his mouth.

As they spoke, the driver climbed out of the truck, walked around to the back, and opened the doors.

Mutt and Jeff, Rufus thought, noting the driver’s height. But they shop at the same store.

The shorter man made a “Welcome to my establishment” gesture with one hand, indicating two rows of neatly stacked wooden crates.

“I don’t see any-” Rufus said.

“Everything’s there,” the man cut him off. “You’ve got four to a crate, so that’s twenty-four total. Behind, you’ve got extra thirty-round magazines, plus five thousand rounds.”

“We said fifty.”

“You said fifty M1s,” the man corrected Rufus. “What you’ve got here, my friend, is two dozen M2s. They may be Winchesters, but they’re not the kind you could walk into a gun shop and buy, not ordnance like this. It’s all military, right out of the armory. Brand-new and perfect. An operation like we run, if you want to keep doing it, you take the opportunities as they’re offered. Twenty-four is what we could take out safely. So we know we can always go back.”

“The price-”

“The price is the same,” the man said. “And it’s cheap at that. The M2s have a selective fire switch. You know what that means?”

“Yeah, I know what it means. But two dozen machine guns still means only two dozen men can hold them. My buyer wanted fifty, like I said.”

“This load is what we have, friend. You want it, or not?”

“I want it. But not for no-”

“We didn’t drive out here to bargain, friend,” the shorter man said. “If you don’t want to take the package, we know other people who will. The only reason we even bothered to come all the way out here was because you’ve been such a good customer.”

“I don’t see why we can’t… adjust the price,” Rufus said, resentfully.

“We took the same risk for twenty-four as we would have for fifty,” the man said, his tone indicating he considered his position very reasonable. “And we’d spend just as much time in prison if we were caught. We have expenses. People to pay, all along the route. Nobody we had to pay wanted to hear about any ‘adjustment.’ Look, like I said, you’re a good customer. We’ll make it up to you on the next shipment. What do you say?”

“I’ll get the money,” Rufus said.

“Good. We’ll start unloading, then.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 04:19

“I still think it was stupid, Fred,” the driver of the panel truck said to the man next to him. They were back on the interstate, twenty miles from the drop-off point, heading west. “What if they had refused the load?”

“You don’t understand those people, Milt,” the man in the passenger seat said. “They expect us to try and change the deal, from time to time. If we didn’t, they’d get suspicious.”

“So what if they did? So long as they take the guns, what difference does it make?”

“The difference it makes is, maybe, the difference in our careers, partner.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying, Fred. We were told to-”

“What I’m saying is, this whole thing started as an assignment. The Bureau needs to know who’s buying guns, and the best way to know that is for us to be in the gunrunning business.”

“Right. So?”

“So knowing who’s buying guns isn’t the same thing as knowing what they’re going to do with them.”

“You think they’re going to just tell us?”

“Well, they did kind of tell us, Milt, if you think about it. That is, if you count that fairy story about some nigger in a junkyard who’s an international arms trafficker,” the shorter man said, scornfully. “Still, up to now, they haven’t asked us for anything except what we’re supposed to be selling. Guns. Now, we know something from the kind of guns they buy, don’t we? Sure!” the shorter man said, answering his own question, as was his habit. “But think what we might learn if they got the idea we could get inside an armory somewhere. Who knows how far they might go?”

“That’s why you told him-?”

“Exactly!” Fred said, clapping his hands in self-satisfaction. “I planted a seed. That’s what the Bureau calls initiative, partner.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 04:26

“I don’t like those boys,” the cadaverous man said.

“I don’t like them, either,” Rufus replied. “But I like what they deal in.”

“Every time we make a buy, they get a real good look at you,” the cadaverous man said. “And they know this place, too.”

“Yeah. But K-man already made the calls. By daybreak, those guns are going to be on their way to ten different places.”

“They only brought two dozen.”

“So some units will get less than we planned on. But these are real machine guns. We never had any of those, before.”

“I don’t like dealing with whites, brother.”

“For what we need, who else could we be going to?” Rufus said, not expecting an answer.

1959 October 04 Sunday 08:08

The North Side block was a solid chunk of attached, identical two-story buildings-retail establishments, with apartment units above.

Behind the block was an alley almost as wide as a two-lane road, with a row of garages facing the rear of the buildings. Exposed wooden stairways provided access to the rear doors of the second-floor apartments. The railings sported a fresh coat of cream paint. A couple of tenants had decorated their portions with flower boxes. A portable barbecue grill stood on one landing, an armchair covered with a canvas tarp on another.

The Shamrock Inn’s façade was sun-faded brick, with a pair of narrow, vertical-slit windows standing like sentries on either side of a heavy black oak door. To its right stood a laundry; to its left, a dry cleaner.

Above the Shamrock, two men sat at a small table covered with red-and-white-checked oilcloth. The table was placed precisely in the center of a bare room, set well back from the thickly curtained front windows.

“That’s a mighty big slice of honeycake you’re feeding me here, Sean.”

The whiskey-roughened voice belonged to a small, compact, ginger-haired man with a deeply cleft chin, dressed in a white corduroy shirt buttoned to the throat, neatly pressed chinos, and lace-up brown work boots. His features placed him somewhere between his late thirties and early fifties; his eyes were a deceptively soft blue. The lobe of his right ear was elongated, like a piece of pulled taffy; the left lobe was missing, leaving a ragged edge. His hands looked as if they had been grafted onto his body from a man twice his size.

“Not a word of it, Mickey Shalare,” the ruddy-faced man across from him said. He was in his mid-sixties, wearing a double-breasted blue suit that emphasized his considerable bulk. “It’s sweet, that I won’t deny. But it’s gospel-pure, on my mother’s love.”

“It’s really going to happen, then? The coalition?”

“It’s already happened, my son. By Thanksgiving, it’ll be locked down tighter than a church secret.”

“You really think this country’s ready for one of us at the top?”

“One of us? Oh, I wouldn’t think so,” Sean replied, a grin flashing across his face and disappearing quickly, a subliminal message. “But a Catholic? That can be done, yes.”

“People in this part of the country-”

“-vote the same way they do everyplace else, Mick. One at a bloody time. And not nearly so many of them as could. A lot of folks here, they don’t even bother.”

Sean paused, catching the expression on the younger man’s face. Then, clearing his throat dramatically, he spoke again. “Sure, we understand there’s some… bad elements in these parts. But you think those boys who like to dress up in hoods and robes are going to try burning a cross on the White House lawn?”

“Not them,” Shalare said contemptuously. “They don’t have the bottle for it. But-”

“You’re going to tell me that there’s plenty think like them, though, are you? Well, listen to me now: their votes don’t count.”

“How can they not count, Sean? The ballots are blind.”

The bulky man took a slow, contemplative sip from a heavy brown mug. His posture shifted subtly; his voice took on an almost professorial tone. But his words were hard metal, without even a trace element of condescension. “In this country, the way they have it set up, there are only two parties. If you want to cast your vote for the idiot who promises you a worker’s paradise, or for the moron who swears he’s going to ship all the darkies back to Africa, well, you can do it. But your vote won’t count, do you see? You’d be at a horse race, betting on a pig.

“Besides,” the bulky man continued, running a hand through his thick, reddish gray hair, “it’s the big cities where the real numbers are. And that’s where we’re the strongest. Strongest by far, I do promise you.”

“And if this should happen, it will mean… what, for our people?” the ginger-haired man asked, a beveled edge to his flinty voice.

The bulky man changed position so that his elbows were on the table, his body language inviting the smaller man to do the same.

“This kind of talk… it’s not meant for anyone to hear.”

The smaller man’s complexion darkened as quickly as a finger-snap. “Are you saying that I-”

“Ah, Mickey Shalare,” the bulky man interrupted, holding up his palm for silence. “Do you think any of us forget how you held your own against all the King’s men, even down in the pit of their dungeons? Right after the Gough Barracks it was when they came for you, and there’s good and true men who wouldn’t have breathed free air these past years, were it not for your devotion.”

“Yes, and…?” the ginger-haired man said, not softening.

“And I never forget what my mother taught me at her knee, son,” the bulky man said, dropping his voice and glancing over his shoulder before returning his eyes to Shalare’s. “Poverty’s bad, but stupidity’s worse. Green, that’s the color of grass, too.”

“I had a mother, myself, Sean,” the smaller man said, his oversized hands splayed on the tabletop. “Below us is my own place. The apartments on either side of this one, the only tenants are women whose husbands are never coming home, and they don’t keep company, understand? There’s a pigeon coop on the roof, and the boy who takes care of them is the youngest son of Michael McNamara himself. Here, where we’re sitting, it might as well be a Bogside estate.”

“Yes, ‘here,’ indeed,” the bulky man said. “No Brit soldiers on patrol outside, sure. But America’s not the Promised Land-we’ve got our enemies ‘here,’ do we not?”

“Aye.”

“And they buy our people the same way they do at home-every chance they get.”

“I’ve been in Locke City long enough to learn the way of things, Sean. Here, it’s us who does the buying.”

“The police-”

“Not the police. Everybody who wants to do business here pays them. It’s like a bloody tax.”

“The big men, the men who are putting this together, they don’t rent the police, Mickey. They own them.”

“Maybe in Boston or Chicago. Not here,” Shalare said, emphatically.

“Is that so?”

“It is. But that doesn’t mean they’re free agents. Around here, it’s Mr. Royal J. Beaumont who holds those cards.”

“That’s why I’ve come,” the bulky man said. “Why I’ve been sent, I should say.”

“You never did answer my question,” Shalare told him, making it clear that bridge had to be crossed first.

“What it’s going to mean for our people? Just imagine it, Mick.”

“When I was down in that little cell, I used to imagine all kinds of things, Sean. They didn’t keep me long, but they kept me cruel. I had to make up beautiful stories in my head, just to stop from going mad. Because that was all I could do, yes? That’s not the way it is anymore. Now I’d want to see the road map. Hold it in my hands.”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I could give you that,” the bulky man admitted. “It’s not as if we’d really be running the show, is it? You know we’d only have a seat or two at the table.”

“So we’d be a bloody minority again, you’re saying?”

“It’s not the numbers, Mickey, it’s the strength. Look at Korea. The war’s supposed to be over, but America’s still standing between two raging forces, to keep them from each other’s throats. Just like the Limeys say they’re doing back home.”

Ignoring the smaller man’s puzzled look, the emissary opened another organ stop in his mesmeric voice. “Now listen close to me, Mickey Shalare. Because that’s the key I gave you, right there. That’s what has to change. Not just at home, all over the world. You have to know your enemy. And the Brits, all we ever need to know about them is that they’re colonialists in their hearts. It’s in their very souls. Right this minute, they’ve got far more troops in Africa than they’ll ever have in Ireland. It’s the bloody British Empire, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Shalare agreed. “But you make it out as if they’re the only ones.”

“Who? The Americans? They’re done with all that.”

“Are they, then? Wasn’t it you just talking about Korea?”

“Ah, but the Yanks don’t think Korea’s part of America, do they?” The bulky man said, sweeping away the comparison. “They don’t want to stay there. You know how many bloody Koreans there are? Occupying that country, why, it’s just impossible. They’d have to slaughter everyone first, like they did the Indians, here, and then they’d have to persuade enough Americans to go over there and live. Or transport them, the way the Brits did the Aussies. No, the Yanks have a different scheme. They want to do as they did in Japan. Put their lackeys in power and get the hell out.”

“Sure,” Shalare said. “And that’s what the Brits would like to do, too. But the very moment they leave…”

“And that’s where the change has to come, Mick. We have to show them a different model.”

“Speak plainly,” Shalare said, his tone matching his words.

“All right, then,” Sean said, squaring his shoulders. “Every time the Brits pull out of a place they once controlled, what happens? The country they leave behind celebrates with a civil war, doesn’t it? Look, they’re supposed to be leaving Nigeria soon. Now, that’s a big country. I’ve been there. I swear to you, if you closed your eyes and couldn’t see skin color, you’d think you were in England. They speak English like the Brits, they have a parliament like the Brits. Why, even their money is in pounds. Lagos, that’s their capital city, it’s got buildings as tall as London’s. Very… cosmopolitan, I’d call it.”

The bulky man paused a beat, then said, “All that, it didn’t come from farming, Mickey. What they have there is oil. A lot of oil. Just like the Arabs, maybe more. British Petroleum probably pumps more out of Nigeria than anyplace else on earth. And the minute, the very minute the Brits take their troops out of there, there’s going to be bloody chaos. You know why?”

“Because they’re a pack of fucking savages,” Shalare said, folding his oversized hands.

“No, my son,” the bulky man said. “It’s because the Brits picked one tribe out of all the different ones to be their pet. The same way they picked the Ulstermen to be their darlings in our country. So it was one tribe that got all the businessmen. And the lawyers and the doctors and the judges and the politicians and the… Well, you see, don’t you?”

“I do,” Shalare said. “And when we finally drive them out of-”

“No, no, no,” the bulky man said, his ruddy face set in hard lines. “Not drive. Induce. How long now have we been trying to force them off? It’s been twenty years since the S Plan, and what has changed? What good have the border wars done for us? Operation Harvest? It’s been almost three years now, Mickey Shalare. And all we’ve gathered from it is blood and tears.”

“The Jews managed it,” Shalare said, stubbornly.

“In Israel, you mean? Sure, they got the Brits out. But you’re not saying that’s a country at peace, now are you? I mean, they’re bloody surrounded, aren’t they?”

“So what’s the answer, then?”

“America,” the bulky man said, his voice heavy with the weight of the word. “We can do from here what we could never do from home.”

“So-we should all emigrate, then?” Shalare said.

“No,” Sean said, ignoring the heavy sarcasm. “We should build a power base inside a country that can call the shots. This isn’t about the righteousness of our cause; it’s about the power we need to prevail. And that won’t come from gunfire, not in the end.”

The bulky man leaned back in his chair, as if to withdraw from the smaller man’s level stare. “Am I wrong, Mickey Shalare? Am I wrong to say that, for all our sacrifices, for all the Irish mothers and wives and sisters who mourn our soldiers, we’ve nothing to show?”

“If it wasn’t for those sacrifices, we’d all be living under the yoke of the-”

Sean filled his chest with air, injecting power into his voice without raising the volume. “Damn, man, won’t you see? We’ve put all our strength into trying to drive them out. And come up short. But what if America were to side with us?”

“Against the Brits? You can’t be that drunk this early in the day.”

“The next president is going to owe a lot of debts, Mick. And we’re going to be holding some of that paper. Our cause has taken… aid, shall we say, from other governments all along. But when we take it under the table, it’s always much less by the time it reaches us, isn’t it? On the black market, every hand that touches the goods, a little sticks to it. But if we could get it direct, think of the possibilities! That’s a stake worth playing for, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see it,” Shalare said. “The Yanks aren’t going to arm us, no matter what we do in this damn election.”

“Not arm us, Mick. Support us. Stand with us. Push the Brits out with political pressure, as we were never able to do with guns and bombs.”

“Sean, it sounds sweet, like I said. But I can’t see it, much less taste it.”

“Ah,” the bulky man sighed, “will you give me a listen, Mickey Shalare? Our cause, we say it’s for a united Ireland, do we not? But we don’t mean a word of it, no more than the tribes in Nigeria really want to live together. There’s plenty that could call themselves ‘Irish,’ yes? But how many of us are there in that big stew?”

“Most of the-”

“Nah, Mickey. Don’t fall into that trap, now. You think every Catholic in Ireland is with us?”

“No,” the smaller man said, coldly.

“No,” the man opposite him agreed. “And here? In America? There’s those who send us support, sure. They’re with us, but they’re not of us. But in this election, we’re playing a role all out of proportion to our numbers, if you follow me.”

“Yes, but-”

“But damn nothing! I’m telling you, straight out, they cannot put their man in power without us doing our part. And when it’s over, it’s not those ‘Irish-Americans’ they’ll owe, Mickey. It’ll be us. Because, inside every local political machine that can bring the Irish vote, we’ve got those of our own.”

“Sean…”

“Will you listen? I said our own, Mickey Shalare. Because they’ve got the talkers and the poets and the dreamers. They’ve got the precinct captains and the police chiefs. They’ve got the silver tongues and the greasy palms. But what they don’t have is the soldiers. Men of commitment. One of us is worth a thousand of them, and the people trying to make this happen, well, they understand that.”

“You really believe-?”

“It’s not what I believe, Mickey… although I do believe. It’s the decision of the leadership. But the only way it happens is if we keep the coalition in place. That’s why I’ve been sent to you now.”

“Yes?” Shalare said, a dozen questions in that single word.

“This whole territory has been Beaumont’s for a long time. You and that wop Dioguardi, you’ve both been coming at him, but from different directions.”

“Dioguardi’s a stupid thug.”

“Granted. And you’re a soldier. A general, I should say. You’ve built up a fine collection of allies, all over the state.”

“With the Organization’s money,” Shalare said. “I know.”

“Ah, that’s not where I’m going at all, Mickey. Haven’t I been talking politics from the moment I came here today? And that’s why Dioguardi is important.”

“Dioguardi doesn’t have one single-”

“If you’re going to say ‘judge,’ or ‘senator,’ you’re right. But what he does have is friends. Or bosses, more likely, the way those people work. And the people over him, they’ve reached out to us.

“You understand? We’re all of us agreed, each for his own reasons, sure, but all as one for this. The last thing we need now, when we’re so close, is some kind of raging gang war. The big cities have gone quiet. The way they’re supposed to. Oh, there’s crime. Always will be. And there’s people making their living from it. Always will be that, too. But there’s a deal in place, Mick. From New York to Chicago to Detroit to Los Angeles to Houston to New Orleans to… Well, if you took a map of America and stuck pins in it for all the places who’ve come under our control, you’d hardly be able to see what’s underneath.

“I’ve been around a long time, my son. And if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s this. A free press doesn’t mean it’s not a tame press. So this whole business of crime, it makes a headline once in a while, but it’s not the daily fare. If you read the papers-I don’t mean just here, I mean anywhere throughout this country-you’ll see nothing but teenagers on the crime pages. That’s what’s got this country all in an uproar. Not the men at the top. Not who controls prostitution, or gambling, or booze. No, what scares Americans is crazy children who kill each other over who gets to hang out in what sweetshop.”

Shalare calmly regarded the man across from him. “Still, the crime-fighters always get the vote, don’t they?”

“Not if that’s all they have to offer,” the bulky man shot back. “A man named Dewey found that out a few years back, didn’t he? Now, listen,” he said, a quicker, deeper current entering the dark river of his voice, “Kefauver’s done. He had his chance. He won’t be on the national ticket ever again. The Democrats are going our way. All the way. The train has already left the station. But if the press starts up again, if bodies start dropping in the streets, the public could turn on us.”

“Turn to where, Sean? Whoever runs for office in this country, they always say the same things. They all promise to clean up whatever mob’s making the papers.”

“Sure,” the other man said, not rising to the implied challenge. “But this election, it’s going to be paper-thin. We’re going to need every last vote. That’s a huge machine to keep oiled, Mick. The coalition has to come at it from both sides. We need the organized groups to work the vote. And we need the wild kids to keep the public’s eye off us.”

“What is it you want from me, then? Every single politician on my payroll is actually on yours, already.”

“You’ve been brilliant at that,” the other man said. “Stunning, really, considering how little time you’ve had. It’s the other side of your work that’s the problem.”

“Sean…”

“Dioguardi. You and him, you’ve got to call a truce.”

“We’re not at war. He wants the-”

“You both want what Beaumont has. So it’s just a matter of time before you step on each other. And it’s Beaumont we’ve got to approach.”

“What do we approach him with, then?”

“With whatever it takes, Mickey. But it’s got to happen. Beaumont’s been the ruler around here since before most of the other big dogs were puppies. Like I said, my son… every single vote.”

“Spell it out.”

“The killing has to stop. Dioguardi’s lost two men. Three, really, if you count that boy in a coma.”

“Wasn’t any of our work,” Shalare said flatly.

“Who, then? Beaumont?”

“Nobody knows. Some think it’s just one of their vendettas. Among themselves, I mean. Those people are like that.”

“I told you, that’s over. If the Commission-that’s what the Italians call their council-was going to sanction a killing, it would be Dioguardi himself who got done. And that would only be because he refused to go along with the plan I told you about.”

“It wasn’t any of us,” Shalare repeated.

“Then it had to be Beaumont.”

“I might be able to tell you something about that, in a short time.”

“You have someone…?”

“I do.”

“When you talk with him, then, will you ask him a question? For us?”

“Aye,” Shalare said.

“The question isn’t what you think. Sure, we need to know if it’s Beaumont hitting Dioguardi’s men. If it is, we’ll ask him to stop. A truce, we can call it. A freeze, more likely. Everybody keeps what they have, nobody goes after anything that belongs to another. That will work for Beaumont, because he’s the one who’s got what the others are coming after. It’s in his best interests to work with us.”

“So the question is…?”

“The question is this: if Beaumont were to go, are any of his people in a position strong enough to take over and keep his enterprises going, like proper businessmen? Or are those hillbillies crazy enough to start a war?”

“I’ll ask,” Shalare said.

“That’s all we ask,” the man across from him said, smiling broadly as he extended his hand.

1959 October 04 Sunday 09:04

“Nobody saw anything?” Procter asked, notebook open in his lap.

“In that neighborhood? The only people on the street that time of night are the kind who don’t volunteer as witnesses,” Chief George Jessup said, sitting behind his ornate desk, framed between an American flag to his right and the state flag to his left.

“So all I can go with is-”

“It was a murder,” Jessup said, as if underscoring an indisputable fact. “Anything beyond that would be pure speculation at this point.”

“My sources tell me it had all the earmarks of a gangland assassination. A professional hit.”

“Or a jealous husband,” the chief said, dismissively. “This is off the record, but we’ve got it on pretty good authority that the deceased-Tony LoPresti-was a class-A cockhound. The other one, Lorenzo Gagnatella, he was probably just in the wrong place, with the wrong guy.”

“You think so? I heard whoever shot them gave each one the coup de grâce. That sounds pretty professional to me.”

“Anyone’s ever gut-shot a deer would know to do that much,” the chief said.

1959 October 04 Sunday 09:12

“That’s all he wanted for his meal last night?” Rufus asked Rosa Mae. “Nothing else?”

“Celery sticks, carrots, radishes, lettuce, and a red onion,” the young woman recited, as if reading back an order.

“That’s nothing but a salad.”

“No, Rufus. He didn’t want them mixed. Didn’t want no dressing, either. Now I got to get going. I’m going to be late for church.”

“That’s no kind of meal for a man. Especially a drinking man.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rosa Mae said, shrugging her shoulders. “Clara down in the kitchen said they didn’t even know what to charge for all that. She had to call upstairs to ask.”

“That is one strange white man.”

“You didn’t know that, behind what I told you was in his suitcase, you’re not as smart as everyone says you are, Rufus Hightower.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 10:10

“How long have we known each other, Lymon?”

“All our lives, I guess. I was in the same class as Cynthia, from the time we started school. I guess we could count up the years, but that’d just make us sound old,” Lymon said, smiling. “How come you ask, Roy?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it’s just natural. In times of crisis, you always look to the people you know you can count on. And talking about how far back you go with them, it’s kind of a comfort, I suppose.”

“Crisis? Come on, Roy. I know Dioguardi’s been nibbling and all, but that’s happened before. We always come out on top.”

“It’s the top that’s the problem. The top over us.”

“Us? We’re not part of-”

“Everybody’s part of something, Lymon. Look, who’s the mayor of this town?”

“Bobby Wyeth. He’s been the-”

“Uh-huh. And who’s the boss of this town?”

“Well, you, Roy. Who else?”

“Yeah. But if you were an outsider, you wouldn’t know that, would you? If you wanted something, I don’t know, a permit to put up a building, or a license to open a club, you’d go on down to City Hall, right?”

“I guess…”

“And Bobby-not that you could get to see Bobby yourself, right off-he could take care of that for you. Everyone knows how that works-you have to take care of the person who takes care of you. If the job is big enough, the pie gets cut up right in Bobby’s office, and he passes out the little slices. Passes them down, okay? But if it’s a small-potatoes job, the cut travels up, from the building inspector or whoever, until it finally gets to Bobby.”

“Sure.”

“Well, we don’t get a taste of that pie, Lymon. We’re not supposed to; that’s not the deal. But all of what we do get, it comes from the same place, like a lot of wires plugged into the same socket.”

“Well, sure, Roy. I mean, I guess so.”

“You know what they call the vote, Lymon?”

“The… what?”

“The vote. The right to vote, actually. What they call it is the ‘franchise.’ ”

“You mean, like a Howard Johnsons?”

“I don’t think that’s what they were thinking of when they named it, but that’s what it comes down to. See, it costs money to be elected. Money and muscle. The money and muscle, that’s what buys votes. And once you control enough of those, you get to make money. Like Bobby Wyeth does. Like we do.”

“So in every town…?”

“In every town, every village, every city, every state-hell, in every country-”

“-Whoever runs the show, he gets a franchise to make money,” Lymon said, like a schoolboy reciting out loud, to reinforce the lesson.

“Right,” Beaumont said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Without us, Bobby Wyeth isn’t the boss of anything. His whole operation, it’s like a damn army tank. Once it gets rolling, it doesn’t matter who the driver is, what’s going to stand in its way? But a tank’s still a machine. And machines, they don’t run on air. They need gas. They need oil. They need maintenance.”

Beaumont paused a beat, then went on: “And that’s us, Lymon. We’re the only place the machine can get what it needs.”

“Maybe that was so, once,” Lymon said, thoughtfully. “But now, any election day, Bobby Wyeth can put a hundred precinct captains out in the street.”

“He can,” Beaumont conceded. “And if they want to keep their city jobs, they’ll be out there, bringing in the voters. That’s the way Bobby pays: with jobs, mostly. And I don’t mean just cleaning the streets, or driving a bus, either. Being a judge, that’s a job, too.”

“So you’re saying Bobby doesn’t need us anymore?”

“No. No, I’m not saying that at all. We need each other. That’s the way it works. The way it works everywhere. Real power is never public. You can’t rub folks’ noses in it; they won’t stand for it. We’ve got enough on Bobby Wyeth to put him under the jail, we wanted to do that. The first nickel he ever took, you handed it to him yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. And that was before he ever got elected, too.”

“So we could put a lot of dirt on him, so what? There may be some rubes out there who actually think politicians aren’t all crooks, but there aren’t enough of them to elect the town dogcatcher. The newspapers make a big deal out of political corruption, but the average guy, he expects a man in office to make something for himself. Bobby’s got a house that had to cost him ten, fifteen years’ salary… and there’s no mortgage on it. He drives a new Cadillac every year, dresses like a movie star. And nobody cares. Or, if they do, they don’t make a lot of noise about it.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Roy. There’s plenty of legit ways for a man who’s mayor to make money. People don’t know Bobby’s got his hand in the till. Not for sure, anyway. If the papers ever got hold of-”

“You know what people actually hate about political corruption?” Beaumont said, slicing the air with his right hand to silence the other man. “They hate that they don’t have it going for them. Who doesn’t wish he could get a parking ticket fixed? Or get his son a good job, just by making a phone call?

“See, the people everyone thinks are running the show, they’re really not. None of them, Lymon. That’s the way it is, everywhere. There’s always men like us. We’re the power. Not because of what we know; because of what we do. What we’re willing to do. Because, no matter how high the hill any of them stand on, it never takes anything more than a good rifle shot to bring them down.”

“Christ, Roy! What did Bobby-?”

“Bobby didn’t do anything,” Beaumont said, sighing. “I’m just trying to explain some things to you, old friend.”

“The… crisis?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Bobby was here yesterday. Asking for money.”

“What does he need money for? The election’s not for another year. And who’s going to run against him, anyway?”

“He needs money to get out the vote,” Beaumont said. “Not for him, for the ticket. The national ticket. The governor himself put out the word. Come 1960, this country’s supposed to change hands, Lymon. And what Bobby was told is, he has to deliver double the vote from the last election. And it better all be going to the right place.”

“Okay, but why is that such a big deal for us?”

“Because they didn’t come to us, Lymon. If that greedy little bastard Bobby wasn’t too cheap to spend his own money, like he was supposed to, like they expected him to, we never even would have known.”

“But so what, Roy? What does it mean?”

“It means we’re not sitting at the table,” Beaumont said, his iron eyes darkening to the color of wet slate. “And in this game, if you’re not sitting down at the table, sooner or later, you get to be the meal.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:02

“Beau, I think-”

“Wait till Luther gets back, honey.”

“Where did he go?”

“He’s just making sure Lymon gets out okay, like he always does.”

“I don’t see how people can be so cruel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you have a meeting, Luther’s in the room. He stands right over there,” she said, pointing to an unlit corner of the office. “But, for all the notice anyone takes of him, he might as well be a stick of furniture.”

“They don’t mean anything by it, girl.”

“Maybe they don’t. But it’s still a rotten thing to do. Remember how the kids always made fun of him when we were in school?”

“I stopped that soon enough, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Cynthia said, a smile suddenly transforming her into the pretty girl she had been in her youth. “You, Sammy, Faron, and…”

“That’s right, honey. And Lymon. He was with us back then. With us all the way.”

“Beau, are you really so sure he-?”

“Wait till Luther gets back,” the man in the wheelchair said.

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:11

“We can’t have this now,” Salvatore Dioguardi said, an emperor issuing a command. The gangster’s facial features were dominated by thick, fleshy lips and a wide forehead notched by a widow’s peak of tight, raven-black curls, mismatching the chiseled hardness of his carefully cultivated body. His custom-cut suit was the color of ground fog, making his upper body appear even more imposing. He wore a white-on-white shirt with the top two buttons unfastened, and sported a matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. On his feet were buttery black slip-ons whose simplicity drew the eye to the craftsmanship of the shoemaker. A diamond pinky ring blazed on his right hand. At his elbow was a saucer covered with multi-colored tablets and capsules. Each time he paused, he put some of the pills into his mouth, and swallowed them with a few gulps from a tall glass of tomato juice.

“We? Who’s ‘we,’ Sal?” the man seated across from him asked, his voice a semi-challenge. He was a decade older than his boss, his dark complexion a stark contrast to the white scar tissue that covered most of the left side of his face. His suit would have been at home on a mortician.

“What’re you saying, Gino?” the bodybuilder half-snarled, drumming his fingers on the snow-white linen that covered the table. The two men were seated in a shielded corner of Dioguardi’s restaurant. The wall beside them housed a hundred-gallon aquarium overstocked with brightly colored fish. In the too-early-for-customers gloom, it looked like a miniature cave in a vast ocean.

“What I’m saying is, how’re we supposed to do what they want?” the scar-faced man said. “It wasn’t us who put Little Nicky in a fucking coma. It wasn’t us who clipped Tony and Lorenzo. They call us all the way up to Chicago for this big meeting, give us the word, we have to keep things quiet. Everything goes on hold. Okay. Only, how’re we supposed to do that, with that fucking cripple picking us off?”

“We don’t know it was Beaumont.”

“Who else? It wasn’t Shalare. What would be in it for that Irish fuck to make trouble now? He’s got nothing we want.”

“Right, it’s not Shalare,” Dioguardi agreed. “Because, the way I was told, he got the same word we did. Through his own people.”

“So who does that leave? When it was just Nicky, it could have been anyone. He’s got a mouth on him, that kid. No finesse. But Tony and Lorenzo?”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t Beaumont, okay?” Dioguardi said, clenching his fists.

“Let’s say it was. What’re we supposed to do about it?” the scar-faced man said, reasonably. “One, it’s not like the guy’s walking around, where we could maybe get to him. Two, even if we could, I don’t know, drop a bomb on that fucking fortress he lives in, that’s just what we was told not to do. We’re supposed to make something stop, but the only way we could do that, we can’t do. So?”

“Don’t forget those phone calls,” Dioguardi said.

“The guy who sent us Nicky’s license?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“What about him? It’s probably just one of Beaumont’s-”

“There’s one way to find out.”

“You’re not going to meet with-?”

“I only wish I could,” Dioguardi said, cracking his knuckles. “Nicky was an asshole. And Lorenzo wasn’t any big loss. But Tony, he was a man. Anyway, whoever it is, I can’t see him walking in here, could you?”

“So what’s our move, Sal?”

“I want you to tell everybody to pull back. Let this burg go back to being Beaumont’s town. For now.”

“How are we going to-?”

“What? Feed our families? That’s what a war chest is for, Gino. Like a union’s strike fund. We’ve still got a good cash flow from back home.”

“Pull out, then?”

“No. They said not to do that. Not. When this is over, the whole thing, this territory, it’s ours. The Commission said so. But we have to wait our turn, like always. So, what we’re going to do, we’re going to do nothing. If it was Beaumont, and he doesn’t see any of our people in his spots, if we stop all the collections, he’ll think we got the message.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

“Then this guy, this guy that likes to send things in the mail, he’s the one we got to fix.”

“You think he’s going to do more-”

“Nah, G. He’s already made his point. Nicky, that was a message. If I’d talked to him then, Lorenzo and Tony would never have happened. Whatever he wants, he wants it from us. Otherwise, what’s he calling for? So we’ll hear from him again. And that’s when we’ll know.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:20

“Wouldn’t you like to get another suit, Luther?” Cynthia said. She was walking beside the marble-eyed man, her hand on his forearm.

“This is the one Roy bought for me,” Luther said, tenaciously. “He bought it with his own money.”

“He’d buy you another one, Luther. Or a whole bunch of them, if you wanted.”

“This is a very good suit,” Luther said, stubbornly. “Roy picked this out for me himself. Right in the store. When he was still… when he was still going out.”

“I know, Luther. But that was a long time ago. Your suit’s pretty old now. It doesn’t fit as good as-”

“It fits good,” the slack-mouthed man answered, his voice growing even more mulish.

“All right, Luther,” Cynthia said, patting his forearm. “You know best. Come on, let’s go talk to Royal.”

They entered the office together. Beaumont was slumped back in his wheelchair, eyes closed. As they crossed the threshold, he sat up straighter, reached for his cigarette case.

“What do you think?” he asked Luther.

“Huh?”

“Remember when Lymon was here? Just now?”

“Sure, Roy. I remember.”

“Good. And you remember that game we play? The special one we made up?”

“Oh! Okay, he had a gun, Roy. I didn’t see it, but I-”

“Not that game, Luther,” the man in the wheelchair said, the calming gentleness of his voice reaching out to his lifelong friend. “The other one.”

“I think… I think I do.”

“Sure you do,” Beaumont said, encouragingly. “You’ve got a sharp mind, Luther. You just have to remember to… what?”

The marble-eyed man stood rigidly, his brow furrowed, the slackness of his mouth even more pronounced than usual.

“Concentrate!” he suddenly said.

“That’s the ticket! Just let it come…”

Luther went silent. Beaumont and his sister watched the slack-mouthed man’s face writhe as he struggled with his task.

“He was, Roy,” Luther said, suddenly. “But I can’t say… I mean, you didn’t ask him no questions, so I don’t know… I don’t know when, exactly. But he was lying about something. I know he was.”

“You never miss, Luther,” the man in the wheelchair said, nodding his head like a man accepting his fate.

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:33

“Which is better for you, the white rice, or the brown rice?”

“Rufus, what are you talking about? You call me back down here on my day off-”

“I’m talking about some truth, Rosa Mae. Truth a girl as smart as you ought to be knowing.”

“I didn’t know you were a race man, Rufus.”

“You see a colored man that’s not a race man today, I know his name.”

“His name?”

“Tom. That would be his name. Uncle Tom.”

“You know that’s not… I mean, look at you, in this hotel. The way you talk to the guests, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Is it Tomming when you do that, Rufus?”

Rufus tilted his chin up, as if regarding the young woman before him from a new perspective. A smile no hotel guest had ever seen softened his eyes.

“No, baby,” he said. “That’s called putting the dogs to sleep.”

“Rufus,” the young woman said, as she stepped very close to him, “if you be so two-faced, why do you want to show me the secret one?”

“Because a woman like you, a fine, strong woman, an African woman, she doesn’t want a clown for her man.”

“You’re not my-”

“Not now, I’m not,” Rufus said. “But, one day, I’m going to be.”

Rosa Mae’s amber eyes widened in surprise. “Just like that, you say it.”

“Just like that, I mean it.”

“I know what you want, Rufus Hightower. Tom or no, a man’s a man.”

“A Tom’s no man, honeygirl. Anyway, you can’t be lumping us all together in your mind. That’s the way Whitey thinks about us, right? Niggers, all they want to do is dance, eat watermelon, get drunk, and make babies.”

“I don’t like that kind of-”

“That’s what they call us, girl. And they don’t care if you like it.”

Rosa Mae put her hands on her hips. “What does that have to do with-?”

“It’s the same kind of being dumb, Rosa Mae, no matter what you call it. Just ’cause you know some men, that don’t mean you know all men. You think what I want from you is under that skirt, you’re wrong.”

“You mean you’re like Mister Carl?” she said, grinning, trying to move the conversation to a safer place.

“I mean what I say, girl. I want you to be my woman. And not for one night, or one week.”

“We never even been-”

“What? On a date, like kids? I’m not a kid, I’m a man. A full-grown man. But I’ll take you anyplace you want to go, little Rose. Do anything you like to do.”

“You know what I really like to do?”

“Yeah,” he said, holding her eyes. “You like to read.”

“How did you-?”

“Because I know you,” Rufus said. “I really know you, Rosa Mae. And all I want is for you to know me.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:40

“How do you think he does it?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t know, honey. I think it has something to do with the wiring in his brain. One time, when we were kids, I was trying to help him with his homework. It was arithmetic, I remember. Long division. Luther would just stare at the paper for hours. Like he couldn’t read numbers, or something. I told him Miss Bayliss-you never had her; she came in after you were past her grade-would never know who did the homework, just write down what I told him. And Luther, out of nowhere, he says to me that Miss Bayliss has a baby.”

“What was so-?”

“Miss Bayliss wasn’t married, Cyn. But she left, in the spring, before school was out. To have the baby, people said.”

“You’re saying Luther knew that?”

“He did. And right after that, he started to know when people were lying, too. He’d just blurt it out. One time, Victor came to the clubhouse with this whole stack of magazines. He said he stole them, right out of Mr. Titleman’s store. He had candy, too. Enough for everyone. And a model-airplane kit. Now, Victor wasn’t just bragging, Cyn. He had the loot, okay?

“Out of nowhere, Luther pipes up, ‘No!’ We asked him what he was talking about, and he said Victor never stole that stuff. Victor hauled off and punched him, right in the face. But Luther didn’t cry. He never would, no matter what anybody did to him.

“I was… upset, I guess. I mean, I could stop outsiders from picking on Luther, but Vic, he was with us. In our club and everything. So I… I had to find out. I went down to Mr. Titleman’s store myself. I could always get people to talk. Probably they felt sorry for me, being a cripple and all.”

“Beau!”

“Come on, Cyn. We don’t hide from the truth, you and me. Anyway, I said to Mr. Titleman, Gee, Victor sure had himself a lot of magazines, and a new model airplane, too. I was a little worried, saying that, because if Victor really had stolen the stuff it would be like ratting him out. I had a whole story ready, about how Victor had gotten it all from some big kid none of us knew. But Mr. Titleman just busts out laughing. He says, ‘Yeah, that boy walked in here with a five-dollar bill, and walked out broke.’

“After that, I got Victor alone. He didn’t want to tell me, but I got him in a lock and told him I’d break his arm if he didn’t. That’s when he admitted he’d gotten the money when his uncle came to visit the family for the first time ever. A big shot, from Chicago, the uncle. He gave Victor a fin, just like that.”

“How come Victor lied about it?”

“All the kids were stealing stuff then. But Victor, he was too chicken to do it himself. When his uncle gave him that money, he saw his chance.”

“That was horrible, hitting Luther like he did.”

“Yeah. But I could see, right then, it could get even worse if I didn’t do something. So I told Luther it had to be a secret, just between us. Luther, he could keep a secret. I told him, anytime he knew someone was lying, he could tell me, but nobody else. And ever since then, he never has.”

“But, Beau, you already knew Lymon was-”

“What Luther’s got is a gift, Cyn. I figure, a gift like that, it just shows up one day; it could just as easy go away, too. So, every once in a while, I like to check.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Beau.”

“What?”

“You didn’t want Lymon to be lying. You wanted there to be some… explanation, for him talking to Shalare. If Luther had said he was telling the truth, you would have… I don’t know.”

“You always know,” Beaumont said.

1959 October 04 Sunday 12:58

“Tomorrow’s my night off,” Tussy said.

She listened silently as the voice at the other end of the line droned on, occasionally nodding her head as if the speaker were in the room with her.

“I’m sorry, Armand. You know I’d do it if I could. Have you tried Wanda?”

She sipped her coffee from a daisy-patterned mug, the receiver held against her ear by an upraised shoulder. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray on the yellow Formica counter.

“What about Ginny?” she asked.

As Armand continued to plead his case, Tussy put the cigarette to her lips and took a shallow drag.

“I have a date,” she finally said. “No, it isn’t anyone you know.”

You never miss your water until the well runs dry, she thought to herself, remembering one of her mother’s favorite sayings.

“No, I can’t make it another night, Armand. We’ve got reservations.”

Another shallow drag. Another sip. Then, “What difference does it make where, Armand?”

Tussy poured the dregs of her coffee into the sink, ran the tap to clean out the cup before she placed it on the rubberized drying rack.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she said. “I’ll see you Wednesday night, okay?”

1959 October 04 Sunday 14:01

“You work for Mr. Beaumont?” the willowy brunette asked. She was dressed in a tasteful dark-cranberry business suit over a pale-pink blouse, wearing a minimum of expertly applied makeup. Her heart-shaped face was fine-boned, dominated by deceptively vulnerable eyes the color of burnt cork, framed by a pair of cat’s-eye glasses. “I’ve never seen you before,” she said.

“You see everybody who works for him?”

“Probably everybody but that sister of his, sooner or later,” the woman said, her face composed, not reacting to Dett’s ignoring her question. “And the big man himself, of course. Most of them aren’t regulars. After all, this is the highest-priced house in the county. Most of those boys, they can only come here when they’re flush.”

“It’s a beautiful place,” Dett said. “Must cost a lot to keep it up.”

“It does, for a fact. I wish your boss understood that a little better. Between what I pay the law and the things some of these girls get themselves into…”

“Yeah. So you can’t be making a living just taking care of one… group.”

“You’re not part of Mr. Beaumont’s organization,” she said, her suddenly icy eyes briefly drifting over Dett’s face.

“You were expecting me,” Dett said, without inflection. “Whoever you spoke to told you to cooperate with me.”

“And what you want is information about my visitors.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a camera guy?” she asked, an unmistakable hint of contempt in her modulated voice.

“No.”

“What are you, then?”

“A strategist.”

“That’s a big word.”

“If you say so.”

“I have to make a phone call,” the woman said. “You can wait right here, in my office, if you like. Or, if you want, I have a couple of girls who aren’t busy right now.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 14:19

“What’s he doing?”

“That’s Sherman Layne,” the stubby, mostly bald man in the passenger seat of the plain-Jane sedan said to the much younger man behind the wheel. “He’s a cop, local. And that’s a whorehouse. Ritziest one in the county, according to our briefing. Maybe he’s doing a surveillance on some guy they think’s holed up there. Or maybe he’s just taking down license-plate numbers.”

“Same as we are,” the younger man said, peevishly. His protruding Adam’s apple bobbed with each word.

“You think we can always be out chasing the Ten Most Wanted, Dave?” the older man said, chuckling. “This is just like the army-everybody’s got their job to do.”

“Our job must be KP, then.”

“No,” the older man said, idly tapping his asymmetrical nose with a thick forefinger, “although it may seem like it. We’re part of something, even if we don’t always know what it is.”

“I wish we did. I wish we could-”

“Observe and record,” the older man said. “That’s the job. That’s today’s job, anyway.”

“That’s a weird place to have a whorehouse.”

“You’re an expert, Davy?”

“Come on, Mack,” the younger man said, reddening. “It’s sit-ting down in that little clearing, all surrounded by woods. Anyone could just sneak up on it. That cop, where he’s parked, nobody inside would ever spot him.”

“Who’s going to sneak up on it?”

“I… I don’t know. Kids, maybe. To get a thrill.”

“Only if they had binoculars that worked at night, and what kids have the money for equipment like that? Come on, Dave. Look closer. See all that open ground? There’s no way anyone could move within fifty yards of that door without being spotted, day or night.”

“You really think there might be a guy hiding out in there?”

“Who knows?” the older man said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s not our problem.”

“What if he was a bank robber, Mack? You know, we have jurisdiction if there’s been a-”

“We don’t have any ‘jurisdiction’ to do anything but what our orders are,” the older man said, firmly. “That’s how agents get themselves in trouble, freelancing. And… Hey, there he goes. I guess the cop saw everything he had to see.”

“You think maybe he’s coming back? With reinforcements?”

“Jesus H. Christ, Dave. This isn’t a goddamn gangster movie; this is real life.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 14:30

“All right,” the brunette said, re-entering the room where Dett waited, “what do you want to know?” Her voice was businesslike, just short of brusque.

“Who comes here in secrecy?”

“Secrecy?” she said, coolly. “You mean ‘privacy,’ don’t you?”

“No,” Dett said, watching her eyes. “I mean the man nobody sees. You bring a girl into the room he uses, put a hood over her head, bend her over, and tie her up. The man comes into the room. He doesn’t say anything, just does what he does. After he’s gone, you go in there and untie the girl. Everyone who works here knows they could be picked for the job, but they never know when their turn is going to come.”

“Who told you such a-?”

“Someone who doesn’t work here anymore, so don’t waste your time asking around.”

“No, I mean, who told you a story like that?”

“It’s not true, then?”

“Of course not. We cater to all kinds of… tastes here. And I’m not saying we wouldn’t put a girl in the position you described. Or even that we never have. But the idea that this happens all the time, for the same man-”

“I told Beaumont this was a waste of time.”

“Well, that’s all right. Surely you understand the way these girls exaggerate their-”

“I told him it was a waste of time,” Dett went on, level-voiced. “I told him you wouldn’t cooperate.”

“But I just said…”

“You’re lying,” Dett said, his voice as cold and flat as a glacier. “A woman as smart as you, you’re not owned by anyone. You pay Beaumont because he’s the powerhouse in this town. A business expense, like a lawyer, or an abortionist. But you couldn’t stay in business if you didn’t keep this place neutral. So this isn’t Beaumont’s house. Dioguardi’s men come here, too, right? And Shalare’s. And people who don’t work for any of them. People with money of their own. You don’t work for Beaumont, you pay him. That’s a big difference. If Beaumont was to disappear tomorrow, you’d just pay someone else.”

“You seem to have figured everything out,” the woman said, lighting a cigarette in what Dett recognized as a time-buying gesture.

“Except the man’s name.”

“What good would that do you?” she said, her tone implying she was actually interested in the answer. “So he likes the girls, so what? I could see it if he was a priest, or a-”

“I told you, this isn’t about blackmail.”

“What, then?”

“That’s not something you want to know,” Dett said.

“What if I told you I don’t know his name?”

“I’ll tell you what I told Beaumont.”

The brunette looked a question at Dett, not speaking.

“I told him that you were going to play your own game, for your own reasons. And I was right. So there’s only one thing to do.”

“Which is?”

“Put you out of business. Then the man I’m interested in will have to go someplace else for his fun. The next… manager will be glad to work with me.”

“Putting me out of business wouldn’t be such an easy thing to do,” she said, clipping her words to keep the sudden fear out of her voice.

“No harder than this,” Dett said, striking a wooden match on his thumbnail.

1959 October 04 Sunday 14:49

“I wish you didn’t have to do this.”

“Do what, honey?”

“All of this,” Cynthia said.

“We had no choice, girl. If I hadn’t started the-”

“Not at the beginning, I know. But now? What difference could it make, Beau?”

“You want to go back to the way we were before this all started? That can happen, Cyn. That can always happen, if I get weak.”

“You were never weak, Beau.”

“Neither were you. All we wanted was to live in peace, right? But would they let us?”

“Oh, Beau,” she said, despairingly.

“What?”

“You never wanted to live in peace,” she said, bringing her hands together in a prayerful gesture. “Never once. You and Sammy and Lymon and Faron and… all of you, you made enough during the war to start real businesses. But you-”

“We did start real businesses, damn it!”

“What, the bowling alley? That was just a place for you all to… meet, and everything.”

“We weren’t doing anything people didn’t want done, girl. Other-wise, we couldn’t have made a living at it.”

“Beau, you don’t have to take care of everyone, like you were their father.”

“Who’s going to do it, if I don’t? Somebody’s got to run the show. Our show, I mean. If we don’t have our own people in charge, some other outfit will just come in, and…”

“Is that why you want Harley to…?”

“He’s the one I’ve been thinking of, yeah. I’ve been watching him for a long time, and he’s got the cold mind you need to run a complicated operation like ours. Sammy says so, too. But if Harley ever wants to be in charge, he’s got to show what he’s made of, elsewise no one will follow him. You know that, Cyn. If I hadn’t-”

“Don’t, Beau.”

“Don’t what?” the man in the wheelchair said, defiantly. “Say the truth? I’ll say it, Cyn. I’m not afraid of it. If I hadn’t killed Lenny Maddox, he would have eaten us like a slice of apple pie, with vanilla ice cream on top. One bite-poof!-we’re gone. Right down his pig’s gullet.”

“I don’t like to talk about that.”

“It was him or us,” Beaumont said, reciting his lifelong mantra.

“I…”

“Honey, you had your little salary from the dress shop, and I had what we were making from the bowling alley. When we were kids, remember where we lived? Remember how we lived? All of us would have fit into one room of this house.”

“We never needed such a-”

“I didn’t kill Lenny Maddox to buy us a house, honey. We had no choice. No choice I could live with, anyway.”

“I thought you were going to die that day, Beau. I was so terrified, I was frozen. I just sat and stared at the telephone. I knew it was going to ring, and the… somebody was going to tell me you were dead.”

“I remember when they searched me that last time,” Beaumont said. The iron of his eyes began to lighten, like an abating storm. “They just sort of slapped at my clothes, before they let me into the back room. The cripple in his wheelchair, getting an audience with the pope. Maybe they thought Lenny was going to lay his hands on me, cure me like one of those faith healers.”

“Beau…”

“Yeah, what did he have to worry about?” the man in the wheelchair went on, relentlessly. “It was broad daylight, not even ten in the morning, when we drove up to that roadhouse he owned. Me and Luther. The cripple and the retard.”

“Beau!”

“No, that was good, Cyn. It’s always good when they under-estimate you. Lenny thought I was coming to beg. That’s what cripples are, right? Beggars. He had a couple of men around, like he always did. But he’d been feeding at the trough so long, he forgot where he came from. He let them stand around outside his office, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed, having to beg in front of them.

“I thought I might die that day, too, Cyn. And I was ready for it. I don’t mean I was looking to die, but I could face it. The same way I made all the other guys face it. Before we took off, I told them, ‘By tonight, we’ll have us some ground. It’s either going to belong to us, or we’ll be under it.’ ”

Cynthia turned toward her brother. Her face was as blanched as it had been on that day so many years ago, when she had waited for the call. And, just as then, she never said a word.

“He never knew how I could move in this thing,” Beaumont recalled, patting his wheelchair as if it were a prized racehorse. I kept talking, about the bowling alley and how I wanted to expand it, maybe even add a skating rink. That’s what I was there for, to ask his permission. Before he knew what was going on, I had rolled right up to where he was sitting. I put everything I had into that one punch. Right here”-touching a spot just below the inverted V of his rib cage-“and all the breath just whooshed out of him. Then I got these”-holding up two clawed hands-“around his throat and clamped. He never made a sound.

“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 corner 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.”

“Aimed at us?”

“No, that’s the… twist. Lymon thinks he’s being aimed at Dioguardi.”

“Well, good luck to him, then.”

“It’s not that simple, Brian. There’s two men dead already, another so deep asleep he probably won’t ever wake up. But from what we hear, Dioguardi himself doesn’t think that was Beaumont’s doing.”

“Wasn’t he told same as us? That we’re all to be under the flag of truce?”

“The thing about a liar is, he thinks everybody else is one, too. Dioguardi’s a treacherous devil; so he thinks we must be treacherous devils ourselves. The way his mind works, he probably believes it’s us trying to reduce his ranks, shooting from behind the cover of the white flag.”

“Three men?” Brian said.

“Yeah, that isn’t much, I know. But if he hits back at us, it could torpedo the whole big plan.”

“The election? How could a man like Dioguardi stop something so powerful?”

“Because it’s going to be paper-thin,” Shalare said, quoting his recent visitor. “If Beaumont gets us all back to fighting, we’re not going to be able to pull this off. And even if he’s not playing games, moving us around like chess pieces, unless he plays with us, it’s going to hurt. The entire political machine in this county is his. And we need it to be ours.”

“So what do we do?”

“We bring Dioguardi the head of whoever’s picking off his men. Because that has to be the man Beaumont brought in, even if Dioguardi himself can’t see it.”

“Where’s he staying?”

“Not now. It’s too soon. We have to wait for Lymon to give us more. Otherwise, Dioguardi won’t appreciate the gift, see? We need proof that he’s Beaumont’s man, not ours.”

“And it’s our man, Lymon, that’ll do that.”

“It is. He’s a treasure to us.”

“If Beaumont knew, he’d be buried treasure.”

“He doesn’t,” Mickey Shalare said. “It took me the best part of two years to get this going. I was slow. I was careful. And now I’m almost ready.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:30

“Two white males. Fifty-seven Chrysler two-door hardtop. Alpha, X-ray, Bravo, four, zero, two, local,” a man sitting behind a pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod said, his clipped voice etching every syllable. “Copy?”

“Two white males. Fifty-seven Chrysler. Alpha, X-ray, Bravo, four, zero, two, local,” a man with a notebook open on his lap repeated.

“That’s Shalare’s car, his personal car,” the spotter said. “But I can’t make out the faces at this angle.”

“That’s not our job,” the other man answered.

The two men, identically dressed in smog-gray jumpsuits, were stationed on the top floor of an abandoned factory that had once mass-produced steam boilers. They had been dropped off at midnight, offloaded from an unmarked delivery van, together with canteens of water, freeze-dried rations, a chemical toilet, two sleeping bags, and a variety of distance-viewing devices, including night-vision binoculars.

“It probably is Shalare,” the spotter said. “This is where he brings anyone he wants to talk to alone. I wish we could get a listening device on that car of his. It would be a gold mine.”

“That’s not our job,” the other man repeated. He lifted his eyes from his notebook to the corner of the room, to where a long padded case lay on the floor.

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:39

“When I said ‘dug in too deep’ before, I didn’t mean like in a bunker or anything,” Beaumont said. “I meant dug in the way roots do.”

“That means a lot to you, Beau? Those roots?”

“Well… yeah. Yeah, it does, Cyn. That’s been the difference for us, all these years, right? I mean, the Italians, remember when they were holding those hearings, about the Mafia, on TV? They’d talk about this ‘family’ or that ‘family,’ but all they meant was some gang called by the boss’s name. That’s not real family. Not a band of brothers. Not like we are.”

“It’s still your… organization, Beau. Without you, they couldn’t-”

“Yes they could!” the man in the wheelchair said, intensely. “Maybe not this minute, but someday… We’re just like a real family, Cyn. The father passes on to the sons. When we’re done, you and me, there’ll be someone else running things. But it will always be ours.”

“So that’s why!”

“What? Cyn, are you-?”

“That’s why you want Lymon… gone. That’s why you’re not telling him wrong stuff, so he could pass it along to Shalare. You did that before, Beau. Remember, back when you found out Tiller Hawthorne was telling the Richardson brothers about… about what we were doing? When you had that big run, down from Canada, you gave Tiller the wrong route, and told him the disguise. So the Richardsons ended up hitting a post-office truck, and they all went to prison.”

“Tiller wasn’t really one of us. Just a guy who did work.”

“I know. Lymon, he’s… he’s that ‘family’ you’re always talking about, Beau. Still, you could use him the same way you used Tiller, instead of having Harley…”

“Lymon’s fifty times as smart as Tiller. If I tried the same thing on him, he’d sniff it out in a second.”

“Then just cut him loose, Beau. Kick him out.”

“He’s a dirty Judas, Cyn. Selling his own people for pieces of silver.”

“He’s just a weak man, Beau.”

“Lymon? What’s weak about him? He stood with us against Lenny Maddox, didn’t he? He’s handled a hundred jobs, and never showed yellow once.”

“He’s… changed, I guess. If he wanted to sell you for money, he could have done it a long time ago, Beau. Right at the beginning, even. How much would Maddox have paid if Lymon had given him warning about what you were planning to do that day? It’s not… I’m not excusing him, Beau, but it’s not as if Shalare wants you dead. He just wants… Well, we’re not even sure what he wants, but it isn’t what Dioguardi’s been after. Now, if Lymon were talking to that man, that would be different.”

“Look, Cyn, I can’t-”

“Lymon wasn’t going to take over anyway, Beau. He’s the same age as we are.”

“It’s Harley,” Beaumont said, firmly. “He’s got the… vision, I guess you’d say. Look at how he came up with a way to make money out of that acreage we own out on Route 85. All we were getting out of it was a couple weeks’ rent, once in a while, when the carny would come to town, or they’d have a tent revival. It was Harley who came up with the idea of a drag strip, and a track for those go-kart things.”

“He’s so young, Beau.”

“I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, Cyn. He’s more… in touch than a lot of our guys are. More forward-thinking. Remember when he first talked about selling marijuana? We thought that was just for those beatniks, but Harley said there was money to be made there, and he was right.”

“He was right because it’s kids smoking it. That’s how he knew so much about it. Just like that drag-strip idea.”

“We were all young once, Cyn. It’s not how old you are that makes you a leader; it’s how smart you are. But our kind of people, they won’t follow a man unless he’s been blooded.”

“It doesn’t have to be Lymon’s blood!”

“I… All right, damn it. I’ll feed Lymon a diet of baloney from now on, see if maybe we can’t put a little sugar in Shalare’s gas tank. And when this is over, I’ll cut him loose,” Beaumont said, making a ripping gesture at his chest, as if pulling out his heart.

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:48

“Your boss ready to talk to me now? Or does he need some more messages?”

“You!” Vito sputtered. “He’ll… he wants to talk to you. Just hang on, I’ll-”

“I’ll call back. Fifteen minutes. If anyone but your boss answers this line, it’ll cost you more men.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 15:56

The panel truck that had delivered guns to the junkyard slowed as it came to an intersection of alleys north of Lambert Avenue. This afternoon it was beige, and each side had a plastic sign attached with magnets: FOSTER BROTHERS PEST CONTROL. The truck’s license plate was mud-splattered; its window glass was heavily hazed.

“I don’t like this,” the driver said.

“What else is new?” the man in the passenger seat said, almost slyly.

“I mean it, Fred. We’re supposed to be gathering intelligence. Surveilling, interviewing-”

“We pay informants, Milt,” the shorter man in the passenger seat said, mildly. “That’s right in the-”

“We pay authorized informants. These kids, they’re not even-”

“We’re not giving them money.”

“Come on, Fred. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is, like I told you before, initiative, okay? Just pull over there, by those garbage cans.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 16:00

“When things change, people have to change, too,” Beaumont said, lighting a cigarette. “There’s whole towns that didn’t understand that, Cyn. Ghost towns, now. A plant closes down, a mine stops operating, it’s like somebody cut off the air supply. The town just… suffocates. Locke City was a fine place to live during the war. Everybody had work, everybody had money. But then it all dried up, like a farm with no rain for years. So we had to plant new crops.”

“We always had gambling, Beau. Here, in Locke City, I mean. Even when we were kids, there was always places where you could find-”

“That was low-level stuff, honey. Not organized, the way we have it now. There’s a mountain of difference between a crap game on a blanket in an alley and a professional dice table, with a man in a tux raking in the bets and pretty girls walking around with trays of drinks. What makes Locke City special isn’t the games. Or the girls. It’s not just what you can get here; it’s the quality of it.

“Look, there’s places all along the river where you can buy a drink, dry county or not. And there’s no town where you can’t find a dice game, or a whorehouse. But those are rough places, where you’re just as likely to wake up in a back alley with your wallet missing. A man comes to Locke City, he knows he’s going to be protected, if he comes to the right places. Our places. We don’t water the booze, and we don’t serve Mickey Finns. Our houses don’t get raided. If you bet on a horse, or a football game, or whatever, and you win, you will get your payoff. That’s what we’re really selling here. Not sin, safety.”

“There must be plenty of places in the big cities where you could get the same-”

“Sure, if you’re rich. There’s always high-class places, with everything nice and protected. But Locke City, we built it for the workingman. The regular, average guy. The folks who live here now, they all make their living from the people who are passing through, see? Everyone’s invested, one way or the other. That’s why the water has to be calm on the surface. From the time we took over from Maddox, we’ve kept it that way.”

“But now you bring in this… I don’t know what to call him.”

“Because we need him, Cyn. The prettier the flower, the more people want to pluck it. If Dioguardi was just going to keep nibbling at the corners, we could deal with him on the quiet. Do the kind of thing to protect ourselves that never makes the papers. But he’s coming hard now, and we have to put him down for good. Close him up.”

“Beau…”

“Cyn, I can smell danger like a mine-shaft canary. Dioguardi’s just a gangster. And not even a smart one; he’s like the guy who gets to run the family business because he married the boss’s daughter. Whoever gave him this territory, they knew he couldn’t do anything big with it. He’s been around, what, three, four years? What’s he ever had, that two-bit protection racket of his? I’m surprised he can even cover his payroll with what he takes in. Now, all of a sudden, a couple of months ago, he starts moving in on our places. Jukeboxes, punch cards… still just little stuff. What for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either. Like I said, he’s a stupid man. So, maybe, it could be no more than that. But Mickey Shalare, he’s not stupid. Not even a little bit. Something’s coming. And we’re not going to sit here and wait for it. Hacker was the last one of us who’s going to be taken by surprise.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to adapt. Find other ways. That’s what we did with the… doctors, right?”

“You mean the-?”

“A girl needs an abortion-I don’t just mean in Locke City, I mean anywhere-what’s she supposed to do? Go visit one of those coat-hanger guys? Risk getting crippled for life, or even dead? Now we’ve got it all in one place: clean, safe, sterile. And never a whiff from the law. It’s been a real moneymaker, too.”

“And it all started with me,” Cynthia said, choking back a sob.

“It didn’t have to, sweetheart. I never wanted you to-”

“I had to, Beau! There was no way we could have-”

“Yes, we could,” Beaumont said, clenching his jaw as he bit off the words. “Here in Locke City, in our town, there’s nothing we couldn’t do, Cyn.”

“No,” she said, firmly. “There’s some things we could never do.”

The man in the wheelchair closed his eyes, nodded his head a couple of times. His sister walked behind his desk and stood next to him, her hand on his shoulder.

“It was just you and me, from the beginning,” he said. “You remember when Dad would come home? Stinking drunk? Remember when he used to think it was real funny, kick the braces out from my legs, watch me crawl?”

“Beau…”

“How many beatings did you take for me, Cyn? How many times did you throw your body over me when he came at me with the belt?”

“It didn’t matter. I-”

“I never knew about the rest. Not until I saw-”

“I don’t want to talk about… about that, Beau. You know I don’t.”

“You told Mom,” he said, bulling through her refusal. “And what did she do, the dirty bitch? I wish they hadn’t been asleep when I did it.”

“Beau!”

“The cops never even took a second look,” he said. “Why should they? A couple of drunks like them, falling asleep with a lighted cigarette, cans of kerosene right there in the house for the heater. The paper said you were a hero, carrying your little brother out of that fire just in time.”

“You were the hero.”

“I wish I could kill them both again,” Beaumont said, unaware his hands had turned to claws. “For what they did.”

“They were poison, Beau. That’s why I could never-”

“Not because the baby would have maybe been-?”

“No. I could bear that. Look at Luther. He’s not right. He never will be. But he’s a lovely little boy.”

“Luther’s not a little boy.”

“You know what I mean, Beau. I could have lived with a… damaged baby. But I could never carry on their seed. It would have been like spreading a filthy disease. I couldn’t…”

Beaumont took a deep, slow breath, then said, “I’m sorry I said what I did, Cyn. You were right-you were right then, and you’re right now. I’ll never speak of it again.”

“Beau, do you think we’ll… Do you think we’ll go to hell?”

“Into the fiery pit? That’s where they went, sweetheart. God wasn’t around to save us, so we saved ourselves. I don’t think there’s anything after… this. But if there is, there’s no hell for you. Not for you, Cyn. Everything you did, everything you ever did, it was only for love.”

“You, too, Beau.”

“Killing those animals? Sure, that’s true. But there’s been a lot marked down on my ledger since then.”

“Wherever you go, I’m going with you.”

“Then it doesn’t matter where it is,” the man in the wheelchair said, closing his eyes again.

1959 October 04 Sunday 16:04

When the phone in the back office of the restaurant rang, it was Dioguardi himself who picked up the receiver.

“Who are you?” he said, without preamble.

“I’m a businessman, just like you. I want to do business. So I sent you my card, and a sample of my work.”

You’re a very cute guy, Dioguardi thought to himself. “Okay,” he said aloud, “what kind of business do you want to do?”

“The kind where I get paid.”

“Paid how much? And for what?”

“Well, that’s really your choice. You can either pay me for what I sent you a sample of, COD, or you can pay me to take my business elsewhere.”

“Uh-huh. And how much payment would we be talking about?”

“For deliveries, it’s a sliding scale, starting at a grand a head.”

“Starting?”

“Starting. But if you want to make a deal for me to move my operation to another city, you can pay a onetime noncompetition fee. That’d be ten large.”

“Just to go away?”

“Far away. And not come back.”

“You, uh, ever do this other places?”

“Lots of other places. It’s what I do.”

“Maybe I don’t want to do business at all.”

“That’s up to you.”

“I can’t just-”

“I understand. I’ll give you some time to think about it, okay? Then I’ll call again, and you can give me your answer.”

“Hey! If you-”

The dial tone cut off whatever Dioguardi was going to say.

1959 October 04 Sunday 16:09

Five young men walked down the alley toward the panel truck. They were in a V-formation, two on each wing of their leader, whose slender frame made him appear taller than he was. He gave a hand gesture and the group halted. The leader approached on his own, hands open at his sides.

“How old is this punk, anyway?” the driver said.

“His DOB is six-ten-forty-one,” the passenger said. “Makes him just past eighteen. Doesn’t look it, does he?”

By then, the young man had closed the distance. He stepped to the passenger side as the window rolled down.

“Mr. White?” he asked.

“That’s right, Myron,” Fred said.

“I don’t go by that,” the young man said. “They call me-”

“Get in the back,” Fred told him. “The door’s not locked.”

The young man felt his comrades close by, but he didn’t look in their direction.

The passenger glanced at his watch. When he looked up, his eyes were as empty and flat as twin panes of brown glass.

The young man walked around to the back of the truck, opened the right-side door, climbed in, and pulled it closed behind him.

The driver started the engine and drove off, without a glance at the remaining Hawks.

The gang leader duckwalked toward the front of the truck. He knelt behind the seat, said, “Where are we going?” to the man in the passenger seat.

“Not far,” Fred told him, his tone not inviting further conversation.

The gang leader watched through the windshield as the truck navigated familiar streets. As they turned onto Devlin Avenue, he mentally catalogued the changing neighborhood, clicking off stores he recognized like a priest working rosary beads. I have to do this, ran through his mind. I’m the President. And this is our chance.

The truck pulled into a gas station, but drove past the pumps all the way around to the back. The passenger hopped out and opened a garage door. The truck pulled inside.

“Let’s go,” the driver said, as he got out of the vehicle.

The gang leader climbed out the back and found himself in front of a collapsing-leg bridge table and three metal chairs.

“Have a seat,” Milt told him.

All three sat down.

The gang leader reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, moving very slowly so as not to startle the two men. His hand was halfway to his jacket before he realized he was wasting the effort-they looked about as nervous as a pair of gardeners.

“You’ve got one on for Wednesday night,” Milt said. “At the lot on Halstead.”

“Yeah,” the young man answered, not questioning how the men sitting across from him would know such a thing. “That’s the best time-too many cops driving around on weekends.”

“Fair one?” Milt asked.

“Supposed to be. But you can’t trust the-”

“Who called it?”

“We… I guess we both did. Our warlord met their-”

“Whole mobs, or ten-best?”

“Nobody does ten-best anymore,” the young man said, unconsciously dry-washing his hands. “The others always show up, to watch, like, and they end up getting in it, anyway.”

“So you’ll be outnumbered,” Fred said.

“Not this time,” the young man said, pride thickening his voice. “We have a treaty with the Mercy Street Gladiators. So some of them might even be there with us, maybe.”

“That was pretty slick work,” Fred complimented him. “Only thing is, we heard the niggers have reached out.”

“Huh?” the young man said, puzzled.

“You ever hear of the Chicago Vice Lords?”

“I… I think I heard of them. But I never seen-”

“They started the same place the Hawks did,” Fred said.

“In Truesdale?” the young man said. “Man, you don’t know what you’re saying. I spent more than two years locked up there, and I never saw any-”

“I don’t mean the same physical location,” Fred said, patiently. “I mean the same place. ‘Locked up,’ that’s a place, understand? Only, for the Vice Lords, it was in the St. Charles Reformatory-that’s up in Illinois, an hour’s drive west of Chicago. That joint, it’s run the same way they do it at the Truesdale Training School for Boys. Cottages, right?”

“Dorms,” the young man said. “The cottages were only for the-”

“Right,” Fred interrupted. “The point is, they kept you separated, mostly.”

“Except for the sissies. They had their own dorm. That was the only place they mixed colors. But nobody cared about that. Even niggers got no use for-”

“That was a mistake,” Milt said.

“What?”

“A big mistake,” Fred took up the thread. “You leave niggers alone, they’re going to plot. And that’s what happened. What they call those places, it’s all wrong. ‘Reformatory.’ ‘Correctional Institute.’ ‘Training School.’ What did they train you to do in Truesdale?”

“Uh, to be a farmer, I guess. That was all we did there, just get up in the morning and-”

“Yeah,” Fred said, making it clear he wasn’t interested in the young man’s recollections of institutional life. “Look, Myron-I’m sorry, look, Ace-when you do a burglary, you’re inside the house, you see a chest of drawers, where do you start?”

“With the bottom drawer,” the young man said, promptly. “That way, you don’t have to close each one to get to the next one. Saves time, you get out faster. But you gotta be sure to-”

“Where’d you learn that?” Fred said.

“While I was in- Oh, yeah, I see what you mean now.”

“Learned some other things, too, didn’t you?” the agent said. “And when you got out, it was like you earned your stripes, wasn’t it?”

“My stripes?”

“Proved yourself,” Fred said. “Showed you had what it takes. You were a Hawk before you went in, weren’t you?”

“Just one of the Juniors.”

“Sure. But by the time you came out of Truesdale…”

“That’s when they first wanted me for leader.”

“ ‘Leader,’ now, that’s the word we’re looking for, Ace,” Fred said, leaning in, flicking his lighter into life to start the youth’s cigarette burning. “ ‘President,’ that’s just a title. Something you are. But ‘leader,’ well, that’s something you do.”

“The Vice Lords aren’t just a club,” Milt said. “They’re more like an army. Their leaders, they call them ‘generals.’ They practically run the whole West Side of Chicago. You know how big a piece of turf that is? More than all of Locke City.”

“I heard, in New York, the niggers got gangs so big they swarm like ants when they come to bop,” Ace said. “But that’s just what people say. Here, they got more men than us, but nothing like that.”

“That’s what I was telling you before, Ace. About the Kings reaching out,” Fred said, extending his arm to illustrate his words. “The Vice Lords are thinking about expanding their territory. And, Wednesday night, they’re going to have some men on hand. Not to fight. More like… observers. If they like what they see…”

“I don’t get it,” the young man said, dragging on his cigarette. “Why would they even care? It’s not like anyone around here has got anything.”

“Where do your boys get reefer?” Milt asked.

“From Fat Lucy,” the young man said, wondering, even as he spoke, why it seemed impossible to lie to the self-assured men sitting on either side of him. “She runs the candy store over on-”

“Right,” Fred said, approvingly. “And where does she get it?”

“I don’t know,” the young man said, shrugging. “She’s always had it.”

“If Fat Lucy was in Chicago, you know where she’d get reefer to sell, Ace? From the Vice Lords. You see the difference? That’s the wave of the future. Consolidation. A little club like yours, no offense, you can hold your turf, a few blocks, maybe, but you can’t make a living from it. So it’s not really yours.”

“Where we live, everything around there, it belongs to Mr. D.”

“Yes. And where did he get it from?”

“Huh?”

“Pay attention, Ace. Sal Dioguardi didn’t get what he has because he had a rich father, left it to him in his will. He took it. He took it doing the same thing you’re going to be doing Wednesday night.”

“Fighting.”

“Yeah. But not fighting for… Do you even know what you’re fighting for?”

“The niggers keep coming into our-”

“Christ!” Fred said, disgusted. “Look, that’s the exact same reason you used to rumble with the Gladiators, isn’t it? Before your ‘treaty,’ I mean?”

“We can’t let-”

“This is why the whole white race is going to hell,” Fred said, exasperated. “You can get just as dead rumbling over who gets to sell reefer in your part of town as you can over who stepped on a piece of sidewalk without permission. You take the same risks. You go to the same prison if you get caught. If the Vice Lords decide to come to Locke City, it’ll be like someone spread hot black tar all over the North Side, and then brought in a steamroller. The only way to keep them out is to show them it’s not worth the risk.”

“I… How could we…?”

“You got how many zips in your arsenal?”

“Three good ones. There’s a few more, but I’m not so sure they’ll-”

“And the niggers?”

“Who knows what they’ll bring. Last time, they didn’t even have one, I don’t think. Nobody got hit, anyway.”

“Wednesday, that all changes,” Fred said. He took a chrome-plated revolver out of his jacket, laid it on the table in front of the gang leader. “Ever use one of these, Ace?”

“I once-” the young man began, then cut himself off to speak the truth. “No.”

“Nothing to it,” Fred assured him. “Now, this here is a quality piece. Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, exactly like the cops use. Soon as the niggers even see it, they’re going to run. And when it goes off-boom!-it’s not like hearing that little pop from a zip gun; this thing sounds like a cannon.”

“It’s beautiful,” the gang leader said, not reaching to touch the pistol, willing his hands to calmness.

“Wednesday night, you walk toward each other, all in a line, right? Side to side? You in the middle, the leader. The leader from the Kings-what’s his name, Preacher?-he does the same. You wait until you get close before you pull this out, Ace. And two seconds after that, the whole world changes. That is, if you’ve got the heart to-”

“Me?” the young man said, torn between anger and fear. “Me!?”

“Come on! What are you talking about?” Milt said to his partner. “Ace wouldn’t be leader of the Hawks if he hadn’t proved himself.”

“Sure, that’s right,” Fred apologized. “I know you’re the man for the job.”

“How much for the pistol?” the young man said, tight-jawed.

“Consider it a gift,” Fred said. “From your friends.” He brought out a box of bullets. “There’s twenty-four in there. More than enough for you to practice with, and have plenty left for Wednesday.” He released the revolver’s cylinder and sighted down the barrel, holding his thumb at the front end to reflect light. “That’s how you check, to make sure it’s clean, okay?”

The gang leader nodded, watching closely.

Fred loaded the pistol, each step a slow-motion demonstration. “You only put five in, okay? So the hammer always rests over an empty chamber.” He snapped the cylinder into place.

“You with me?” he asked.

The gang leader nodded again, realizing that he wouldn’t like the way his voice would sound if he spoke aloud.

Fred reopened the cylinder, turned the pistol upside down, and caught the cartridges as they spilled into his open palm.

“They come out real easy most of the time. But if they stick, you just use the extractor, like… this, see?”

Another nod.

“First thing, you get used to the trigger pull,” he said, handing over the empty gun.

The gang leader hefted the pistol, surprised at its weight.

“Aim it over there… at the wall. Good. Now squeeze the trigger. One long, steady pull. Don’t ever jerk it.”

The gang leader felt the resistance of the trigger, pulled steadily. As the hammer came down, his face twitched, so slightly that it would have gone unnoticed if the others hadn’t been expecting it.

“Now, you could cock it first,” Fred said, taking the pistol back and demonstrating, “and then shoot.” The hammer dropped-Ace flinched at the sound. “And that’s more accurate, if you’re only going to shoot once. But you don’t want to be doing that. You want to be able to squeeze all five off, bang-bang-bang, nice and smooth. Understand?” he asked, handing the pistol back.

“Will it kick?” the gang leader asked.

“A little bit. Nothing much. That’s why you have to practice. Get used to it. So it doesn’t make you jump when you go into action.”

“Okay.”

“There’s no safety on this piece,” Fred said. “But if you don’t walk around with it cocked, it’s never going to go off accidentally. And, anyway, you’re always on an empty chamber, like I showed you, all right?”

“Yes.”

“This is it, Ace,” the man he knew as Mr. White said. “After Wednesday, the Hawks aren’t going to be small change anymore. You’re going to be the real thing.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 17:06

The knock on the hotel-room door pulled Dett from the easy chair as if attached by invisible wires. He said, “Yes?” in a calm, polite voice, slid the derringer from his pocket, and padded silently across the room so he was standing to the side of the door.

“It’s me, sir. Rufus. Thought I’d just freshen up that ice bucket for you before I went off my shift.”

Dett opened the door, his right hand in the pocket of his slacks. Rufus smiled his way inside, and made straight for the top of the bureau.

“Yes, sir, this one ain’t but water now.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Yes, sir. You know, like I said before, anytime you want something, all you got to do is ask for me.”

“Thanks.”

“You okay with your liquor supply, sir? ’Cause it just take me a minute to-”

“I’ll be fine,” Dett said.

“Mix you one now, if you like?”

“Yeah, okay.” Thinking, He’s working way too hard for a lousy dollar.

“I notice, a lot of the gents, they like to have a little taste before dinner, ‘specially if it’s going to be a real spread.”

“You must be a mind reader,” Dett said, half-smiling. “I’ve got a big date later, and a big date starts with a big dinner, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes sir, I sure do!” Rufus said, grinning as he handed over the drink he had prepared. “Gonna be out late tonight, I bet.”

“If things work out the way I plan, all night,” Dett said, holding up the glass of bourbon in a silent toast.

1959 October 04 Sunday 17:11

“In this life-our life, I mean-you know what’s the best thing you can have going for you?” Salvatore Dioguardi said.

“People you can trust?” the scar-faced man sitting across from him replied.

Dioguardi nodded his concurrence. “I know guys, you know guys, right in this thing with us, been from the beginning, guys who wouldn’t give you up even if they had to walk into the death house,” he said. “We got a dozen men fit that description, right in our own outfit back home, G.”

“More,” the scar-faced man said.

“But that’s not enough to make a man trustworthy,” Dioguardi said. “A man could have a solid-steel pair on him, but that don’t make him smart. Some guys, you couldn’t beat their own name out of them, but you put them in the right situation, you could get them to tell you anything you want to know.”

“You mean, like with a broad?”

“With a broad. Liquored up. Or even just plain okey-doked-tricked, scammed, chumped. They’d be spilling their guts, and they wouldn’t even know it.”

“So you’re saying the best thing a man can have is a good brain?” the disfigured man asked, waiting patiently for the punch line.

“No, Gino. The best thing, for what we do, for our life, is when people think you’re stupid. When they underestimate you.”

“Nobody underestimates you, Sal.”

“When did you turn into an ass-kisser, G.?”

“Hey!” the older man said, his voice dropping an octave.

“What else should I say, you pouring the olive oil over me like I’m a fucking plate of pasta, Gino? You know me all my life. I always looked up to you. When I started to make my own moves, you were the man I wanted with me, from the beginning.”

“And I been with-”

“Yeah. Yeah, you have, G. The man I come to with my problems, that’s you to me. Closer than my father-fuck him in his eyes-ever was. I don’t keep you right next to me so you can jerk me off like some hooker.”

“Sal, I don’t have to take-”

“You’ll take it, G. Because it’s the truth. And that’s what I want from you, capisce? The truth. I can’t do what I got to do unless I see things like they really are.”

“I never-”

“Ah, you just fucking did, G. ‘Nobody underestimates you,’ the fuck does that mean? Everybody thinks I’m a real genius, right?”

“No,” the older man answered, chilly-voiced.

“No?”

“No, Sally,” he said, heavily. “Everybody don’t necessarily think you’re a genius, that’s right.”

“Now we’re rolling,” Dioguardi said, smiling broadly, showing a gleaming set of perfectly capped teeth. “So what’s the read on me, G.? Straight up, straight out.”

“Cugliuna di ferro!” Gino said, as if taking an oath.

“And the brains of a parakeet, right?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“No?”

“What do you want me to say, Sally? That you’re no Luciano? Who is?”

“You think I’m smart, G.?”

“Kind of question is that? Ever since you were a little kid, I knew you could be-”

“-a boss, with my own crew? Sure. But not the kind of man they ever ask to sit on the Commission.”

“What do you care about that, Sally? You sit down with those people, you’re in the room with the most crafty, devious, back-stabbing collection of men in the whole world. Like putting your hand in a basket of fucking rattlesnakes.”

“I can handle-”

“You know what made Lucky what he was?” Gino interrupted his boss, gently steering him away from danger as he had so many times in the past. “Lucky wasn’t like the rest of us. He was a prince,” the scar-faced man said, worshipfully. “And a prince, he’s not with one little group or another. He’s with everyone.”

“No tribes,” Dioguardi said, listening.

“You got it! With a real leader, it don’t matter who’s your cousin. This thing of ours, it started with blood. Close blood. Maybe it should have stayed that way. Now you got ‘families’ what ain’t families for real. And the bosses, they spend more time plotting against each other than they do thinking of ways to take care of their soldiers.”

Dioguardi leaned back in his chair, cast his eyes at the ceiling, and recited, as if reading from a report. “Sal Dioguardi, that is one vicious motherfucker. Rip the eyeballs out of your head and eat them for appetizers. Kill you, your father, and your sons if you cross him. How many men did he kill before he even got a little crew of his own? A dozen? More? A stone animale. About as subtle as a sledgehammer. You got a problem with Sally D., he’d rather hit you in your fucking head than sit down and talk with you.” He shifted position, pinned the man across from him with his eyes. “That sound about right, G.?”

“I heard people say that, yeah. All of it.”

“And, see, G., that’s all true. I made all that true. A rep like mine, it buys you some distance. One time, when I was just a young guy, back home, I made this nice score, and I was flush. I heard about this girl, Angel. Three hundred bucks a night, but she was supposed to be worth it. The best piece of ass in the whole city, what people said. I didn’t have my button yet, but I was a comer. A sure thing. I wasn’t ready for a Caddy-not in my position, not then-but I could have the best of something. Treat myself, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“So I go see this girl. I mean, I called her, made an appointment, like she was a doctor or something. And she was gorgeous. Long black hair, boobs out to here,” he said, gesturing, “an ass like a perfect ripe peach, a face like you could see what they named her after, everything.

“Now, all night means all night. After the first time, I was just laying back on her bed-silk sheets she had, G., black silk-and we’re talking. Mostly her, the talking, I mean. I’m kind of half-listening-that broad almost put me in a coma-and I realize she’s talking about a job. A job she wants done.”

“On her pimp?”

“No. No, nothing like that. A woman like her, she never had no pimp, I bet. What she was talking about was one of her… clients, she called them. A guy who worked with diamonds. One of those Jews with the beards and the long black coats? What she told me was, they carry the ice around with them. And they deal all in cash. You understand where I’m going?”

“She had a plan to take this guy off?”

“Right. A complicated plan, G. But, listening to her, I could see how it could work. I remember, I sat up in the bed, and just… just stared at her. And you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said, and I never forgot it, ‘I just look like this. It’s not all I am.’ You see what I learned right there, G.? You look at this broad, you never think she could be some kind of mastermind. Only she was. And, right that minute, I swore to myself that I’d be just like her. It’s the perfect camouflage. You look at her, all you see is a piece of ass. You’d never see how dangerous she is, because you wouldn’t be thinking of her that way.”

“Did you ever do that job? The one she wanted you for?”

“No. And I never went back to see her again, either. ’Cause even as I snapped to what she was telling me, I realized I was already playing the role I do now. I mean, if she hadn’t thought I was a little slow, she wouldn’t have picked me. I ever did that job with her, she’d own me, the cunt. Probably turn right around and sell me to the Jew she wanted me to rob.”

“You got a plan, Sal? Is that what all this-?”

“I got a lot of plans, G. That’s what makes me different from the others. They all got plans, but they’re like a flock of pigeons on the ground, so busy pecking at the garbage that they never look up, see where it came from.”

“You mean… what, Sal?”

“I mean the people who run the whole show, G. Not the Commission, the government.”

“The feds?”

“Not them. They’re just soldiers, too. They got bosses, they do what they’re told. A boss-a boss by us-he gets clipped, what happens to his people? When I was in Japan-oh, the money you could make there after the war!-I made friends with this guy, Yasui. He told me the Japs had a thing like ours thousands of years before we did. Believe that! They had families, bosses, soldiers, territories, rackets… everything.

“So, anyway, my point, when one of their bosses got killed, his soldiers-’samurai,’ they called them-they were just cut loose. After that, they were ‘ronin,’ which means, like, a man without a family. A bad thing to be. Like a mercenary. Take the money and do the job, but they got no… connection. You can never trust a man like that, because he’s not tied to you: not by blood, not by honor.

“Our people, we do things different. Our way is better. With us, your boss gets taken down, you can catch on with another family. Not the one you was at war with, maybe-although even that happens-but you’re still… connected. Still a part of something.”

“Sure, Sal. But what does that have to do with-?”

“The president, he’s just like a boss, G. And the feds, they’re his soldiers. When the president’s gone, the next guy who takes over, he gets all the soldiers, too. Now they’re his soldiers.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What’re you talking about, G.? How else could it be?”

“If the feds are soldiers, their boss, it’s not the president, it’s that fucking Hoover. We changed presidents how many times? But it’s still Hoover. It’s like he’s the boss-for-life.”

“Batista,” Dioguardi blurted out.

“What?”

“He was boss-for-life, too, right, G.? Down in Cuba. We had all kinds of things working there. It was perfect. Our own country. Then this guy comes out of the mountains and-bam!-before you can look up, everything’s turned upside down.”

“Sally, I’m not following you.”

“The smart boys-the ones think they’re smart-they’ve been looking over their shoulders so long, make sure one of the others isn’t sneaking up on them, they forget how to look forward. The things we make our money from, they could disappear in a second, just like Cuba.”

“I still don’t see-”

“Like liquor, G. Remember when that was our gold mine? Every family in America today, that’s where it got its stake. Everything started with booze. That’s what took us to the big time.

“But what kind of money is there in liquor now? You got hill-billies running moonshine into dry counties, but that’s a mug’s game. The government saw how strong we were getting off the booze money. So what did it do? They cut us off at the knees. You make something legal, how do we make a profit off it? That’s why the smart boys think drugs are the way to go.”

“They’re right,” the scar-faced man said, flatly. “No way they’re ever going to make dope legit. It’ll be good for-”

“Don’t say ‘forever,’ G. Because dope’s not like booze. There was always outlaws in the booze racket, but they were small-timers. It wasn’t even worth shutting them down. Drugs, that’s different. Ten years from now, maybe less, you’ll have niggers and spics and-who knows?-maybe the fucking Chinese in on the action. It’s their neighborhoods where it gets sold, what’s to stop them from dealing themselves in?”

“They don’t have the organization for anything like that.”

“Yeah? How many niggers do you talk to?”

“Me? I don’t talk to moolingan.”

“I do.”

“Huh?”

“I got a boy on the payroll. My personal payroll, out of my own pocket. Smart boy, too. He’s like me, in a way. You see him working-he’s a bellhop, down to the Claremont-you think, There’s another mush-mouthed jungle bunny. But this one, he’s slick. And he likes money. That’s how I know about this man Beaumont’s brought in. I got a watch on him like he’s a fish in that aquarium over there.”

“And this guy, the nigger, I mean, he’s going to be dealing dope someday?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to be doing. Maybe saving the money I give him to buy a red convertible with leopard-skin seat covers, all I know. But we’re not going to be in the dope game, G. Not us. I got something better.”

“Yeah?” the scar-faced man said, tilting his head slightly, to show he was fully focused.

“You know the stag films, the ones we get made up in Calumet City?”

“Sure. But they don’t bring in the kind of-”

“Not yet they don’t. But they will. Someday, those are going to be a better racket than booze ever was.”

“Come on, Sally. How much can we make on a stag film?”

“How much can we make on a load of dope?”

“Huh? That depends, right? On how much you got to sell in the first place.”

“Right!” Dioguardi said, rapping the tabletop twice with his knuckles. “That’s it, exactly, Gino! See, what they sell on the streets-I’m talking real dope now, heroin-it has to go through a lot of hands before it ever gets here. The poppy don’t grow in America. Where they grow it, it starts out as opium. People, people who know what they’re doing, they have to change it into heroin. And once the heroin’s made, pure, it has to be cut, right?”

“Sure. So?”

“So how many times can you step on it before you got nothing? You cut it too much, it’s worthless. And once you sell it, it’s gone forever. You with me?”

“Yeah. But…”

“Gino,” Dioguardi said, unconsciously flexing his biceps under his suit jacket, “listen. We put up the money for a stag film-not just some stripper playing with herself-the whole nine yards, fucking, sucking, anything goes. Let’s say we ante, I don’t know, five large into the whole production, okay? Do a real professional job, lights and cameras, everything. Maybe even in color. Now we sell copies for-what?-ten bucks? And even with everybody dipping their beak along the way, we net, say, five bucks a pop. So we need to sell-what?-a lousy thousand copies, and we’re in gravy from then on. Because, and this is the beauty part, we never really sell it, see? We’re selling copies. And we can make a million copies, we want to. Sell the same thing, over and over again.”

“It would take a whole-”

“Network? Sure. But look how easy it would be to put one together, G. What are they going to hit you with for selling fuck-films? A fine? It’s not like the way it is with dope-nobody’s really taking a risk. And, for product, there’s girls everywhere. I know a guy, out in L.A., he says he could get us a different girl, a gorgeous fucking girl, every day, we wanted. Get them to do anything, even the weirdo stuff.

“Let the feds go chase the dope, Gino. We’ll be sitting on a gold mine, because all we’re going to be selling will be copies of the gold.”

“You really think it could work like that, Sal?”

“How could it not? There’ll always be guys want that stuff. Just like there’ll always be whores. But films, films like I’m talking about, that’s the future.

“Look, the government, they’re just another mob. A greedy fuck-ing mob, at that. So, you have to figure, they see us making money, they want to get in on it themselves. How long you think it’s going to be before they got legal casinos in places besides fucking Vegas? They legalized booze, they could do the same thing with the numbers too, they wanted. But fuck-films? No way the government ever makes that legal, right?”

“Right, Sally. Any senator voted for something like that, it’d be Kaddish for him.”

“See?” Dioguardi said, triumphantly. “Things are happening now, G. All around us. This whole truce thing, the election, everything. I don’t know how it shakes out when it’s done. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to get to Beaumont, even. But I know this. If we get into this film thing on the ground floor, we can build ourselves a mountain of cash, G. And cash, that’s the locomotive that pulls the whole train.”

“It’s worth a try, Sal. The way you got it all doped out, it’s no big risk.”

“And no big-money investment, either. That’s why I want you to go out to L.A., meet with this guy I just told you about, get things set up.”

“But what about the wild card, Sally? This guy who knocked off Tony and Lorenzo? Don’t you need me around for him?”

“Maybe down the road, but not now. I think this guy, whoever he is, he’s about to make the same mistake about me everybody else does.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 17:38

“You got it?”

“Right here,” Ace said, patting his gang jacket.

“Let’s see it, man,” a sixteen-year-old with an acne-ravaged complexion said, eagerly.

“At the clubhouse,” Ace said. “Tonight. Call everyone in.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 17:41

“Hello…” The woman’s private-line voice was lush with secrets, revealing nothing, promising everything.

“It’s me,” Sherman Layne said.

“Yes. When will you be-?”

“After it gets dark.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 20:46

“We came a long way for these, brother,” the neatly dressed, dark-skinned young man said. “We thought there would be more.”

“Omar says we have to divide up what we have,” Darryl told him.

“Yes, I understand all that,” the young man said. “But we were told to expect five. And we came with the money for five.”

“It’s your decision to make, my brother,” Darryl said.

“What decision is that?”

“You have to decide: Are we calling each other ‘brother’ to mean something? Or do you think we’re just a bunch of gun dealers?”

“I wasn’t saying anything like-”

“This is what happened,” Darryl said, his cadaverous face spectral in the afternoon sunlight. “We made a deal for fifty weapons. We agreed to pay a certain price. When the man-the white man-came here, what he had, instead, was twenty-four. He said they were better than the ones we were supposed to buy. And Kendall, that’s our armorer, he said that was true. The ones we ended up with, they’re not semi-autos like we expected. These ones, you can switch them to full auto, like machine guns.”

“Yes, but-”

“-but that still means less men with a gun in their hand,” Darryl finished the sentence for the other man. “We know this. The man-the white man-he said he took what he could get, and twenty-four was what he could get. What he said was, it’s the same time in prison for twenty-four as it would have been for fifty. And he wanted the same money for the load he did bring.”

“And you paid him?”

“We paid him.”

“So what are we supposed to do now?”

“You were supposed to get ten percent of the shipment,” Darryl said. “You still can, if you want it.”

“Ten percent of twenty-four is-”

“-two point four. Which rounds out to two.”

“Two? Why doesn’t it round out to three?”

“Because the units who took twenty percent, they expected ten. Now they’re going to get five. We take their four point eight up to five, it means your two point four has to drop to two.”

“So they get half of what they expected, but we get less than that,” the young man said, his voice classroom-argumentative, reflecting his other life, a college student.

“These are guns, brother. Not poker chips. There’s no way to divide them more fairly than what I just said.”

“The man talks sense.” The young man’s companion spoke for the first time. “He talks sense about the whole thing.”

“You could of told us about this,” the young man said to Darryl. “Before we made the drive, I mean.”

“You know how it works,” Darryl replied. “We do not talk our business on the telephone, brother. That’s the rules we were given; that’s the rules we live by. Like I said, it’s your decision.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 20:59

“It’s a beauty!”

“Brand-new,” Ace said smugly to the lanky, red-haired youth. “The only way any of those niggers ever saw anything like this before was in a cop’s hand.”

Seven young men, ranging from mid- to late teens, were clustered tightly around a table made from pine planks set across a pair of half-barrels. The pistol lay on the bare wood surface before them: a rare jewel, amateurishly appraised.

The basement was divided into four rooms. Two had long, narrow, street-level windows, another housed an oil-burning furnace. The last, all the way to the back, was furnished with street-salvage: a couch so rotted that its exposed springs had been cut off at their base, with the jagged tips wrapped in black electrical tape; two kitchen chairs with no backs; a once-blue armchair now stained into virtual blackness; a child-sized desk; an army cot; two portable radios; and an assortment of ragged couch pillows strewn randomly on the floor.

No outside light penetrated the room. A single red bulb dangled from exposed overhead wiring, spliced from the adjacent building. Fat hurricane candles burned in several upturned hubcaps. The cement floor was an ashtray.

“This is just the beginning,” Ace told the others. “After Wednesday, when people hear our name, when they see our colors, they’ll pay attention. Because we’re going to be stepping up.”

“Stepping up to what?” a boy named Hog, whose bridgeless nose and wide nostrils had given birth to his name, asked.

“To the rackets,” Ace said: an acolyte, reciting liturgy. “If we just keep on like we’ve been doing, where do you think we end up?”

“We…”

“Got no answer, right, Harold?” Ace said to the red-haired youth. “You think a man like Mr. Dioguardi didn’t get his start the same way we are now?”

“But he’s in the Mafia, right?” the acne-scarred boy said. “They have a whole… organization, and all.”

“He was just an example,” their leader said, smoothly. “You don’t have to be Italian to be in the rackets. Look at Mr. Beaumont. Everybody knows how he got started.”

“He was in a club?” Hog said, incredulously. “In a wheelchair? How was he going to-?”

“He was in something,” Ace said, assuredly. “ ’Cause he had men with him when he made his move. Same as we do.”

“They was older guys,” Hog said.

“How do you know that? I mean, none of us really knows. All we have is… stories. One person tells another person, that’s the only way we ever know anything. But this part isn’t no story: Mr. Dioguardi, he’s got his stuff going, but Locke City, the whole thing, it belongs to Mr. Beaumont. And wherever he started out, it wasn’t on top. It was small.”

“I still don’t see where we could-”

“This is all about rep,” Ace said, confidently. “It’s all about how people see you… us. Mr. Dioguardi even said to me, once, maybe someday he’d have some jobs for us. The Hawks, I mean.”

“He said that to you-to you, personally?”

“That’s right, Hog,” Ace said, choosing to ignore the skeptical tone. He’d speak to Hog later, privately-it didn’t look good for a Warlord to question the President in front of the others. “To me. Face to face. How do you think we got this clubhouse? Mr. Dioguardi owns this building. He owns a whole lot of buildings. On this block, he told me, you men-the Hawks, he was saying-are my eyes and ears.”

“That’s not doing a job,” Harold said.

“Not a big job,” Ace corrected him. “But how is a man like Mr. Dioguardi ever going to know that we can do bigger jobs, unless we grow our rep? After the meet with the Kings, he’s going to know. Everybody’s going to know.”

“Yeah!” Hog said, crossing his arms to show he stood behind their leader.

“We don’t have much of anything now,” Ace told the group. “We’ve got a few blocks, our turf, that’s it. When we bop, it’s not to get new ground, it’s to hold on to what we already got, that’s all. The Gladiators, they’ve got a real clubhouse. A big apartment, over on Harrison. On the second floor, even. They’ve got cars, too. I’ll bet they’ve got fifty members. When they walk down the street, it’s like an army on the march. You don’t see the Kings crossing their line. You don’t see their debs going with outsiders.”

“That’s because they’ve got the reefer business,” the acne-scarred boy said. “The money, that’s what does it.”

“That’s exactly what the men who gave me this pistol said, Donny,” the leader replied. “We should have a piece of that for ourselves.”

“How?” Hog asked. “The Gladiators only signed that treaty with us because of the niggers. They’re not going to give us any of their-”

“They’re not going to give us nothing,” Ace said. “Wednesday night, it’s our meet. We’re the ones that called it. The Gladiators will be there, like to back us up, because of the treaty. But we know what that’s really about, don’t we? It’s just to watch us, see how we handle ourselves.”

Ace took a quick swig from the pale-green bottle of Thunderbird, passed it to the boy on his right, and addressed his audience.

“And remember, their President, Lacy, he fucking hates that nigger Preacher. And after Lacy sees what I do to him, he’s going to think, Okay, those Hawks, they’ve got it. They’re killers, man.

“I’m not saying we’ll run the Gladiators off. They got the numbers. And there’s the treaty, too. We have to respect that. But the reefer, in our territory, by rights, it should be us getting paid from Fat Lucy, not them. After they see how the Hawks have real firepower, I’ll bet they see it that way, too. And Mr. Dioguardi, he’ll know the Hawks can do a lot more jobs than just keeping an eye on things for him.”

“We’re doing all right without…” said a tall, well-muscled boy with a deeply underslung jaw.

“We’re not, Larry,” Ace said. “Not if we want to-”

“What I wanted, when I joined, was to… I don’t know, be with a club. Have a place where we could bring girls, drink a little wine, smoke some gauge, you know what I’m saying. I mean, sure, bop with anyone who calls us out. But I don’t want to be a gang man for my whole life.”

“What do you want to do, then?” Ace confronted the challenger. “Go work in the plant, like your daddy did? The plant’s fucking closed, man.”

“I was thinking about the army.”

“The army?”

“My brother went in. Oscar. He was-”

“Oscar didn’t have no choice,” Ace said. “He was a Hawk, too, remember? The judge told him it was the state pen or the army. A lot of guys went in the same way.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Larry said. “But Oscar ended up liking it. He was supposed to go in for four years, but when that was done, he signed up again. He’s a sergeant. He’s always writing me, telling me I should do it, too. It’s a pretty good deal. He never has to worry about losing his job. And he can even retire when he’s younger than my father is right now. Have a salary for life. He’s got a new car, and he’s saving for a ‘Vette. They get free doctors and free-”

“Free? He’s not free, man. He’s got to take orders.”

“Everybody takes orders from somewhere,” Larry said, stubbornly. “It doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

“That’s because your brother, when he came up, it was a different time. He didn’t have the… opportunities, like we’re going to have.”

“I don’t-”

“What’s your hurry, man? I know all about that army thing. You got to be seventeen to go in, even if your folks sign for you. Just wait until after Wednesday, okay? You’ll see.”

“I’m just saying-”

“Who gave you that gun, anyway?” Hog asked, deliberately redirecting the growing tension in the basement.

“All I know is Mr. White and Mr. Green,” Ace told the others. “They said they’d been scouting us. Liked what they saw.”

“You think maybe they were from Mr. Dioguardi’s-?”

“Oh, man, come on!” Ace said. “Those guys, the way they talked, I know where they’re from.” He paused dramatically, waiting for everyone’s close attention. “They were the Klan,” Ace said, rapturously. “The way they talked, they got to be.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 21:05

“It’s your turn,” Ruth told the busty girl in the white babydoll nightgown. “You want it or not?”

“What do you mean, my turn?” the girl who called herself Lola asked. Her dull-brown hair fell limply on either side of even duller-brown eyes.

“You know the trick,” Ruth said, tapping a yellow pencil against the frame of her cat’s-eye glasses. “I told you about it when you first came here. And you’ve talked about it with other girls, girls who’ve done it.”

“I didn’t-”

“Yes, you did. There’s something else I told you, told you from the beginning,” Ruth said, sternly. “In this house, you can turn down a trick-any trick-and still stay. But you lie to me, even one time, and you’re out on your ass.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Ruth. I didn’t mean to-”

“He’s going to be here soon, all right? Now, either you say yes, so we can get you down to the blue room, or you say no, and I get someone else.”

“I…”

“This isn’t a punishment, you dumb bitch,” Ruth said, sharply. “It’s a fifty-dollar trick. Ever get that much before? In your whole life? There’s girls here who never even heard of such a thing, except when they’re lying to each other. The way it works is, the man calls, and I spin the wheel. Whoever’s name comes up, they-”

“What wheel?”

“There is no wheel,” Ruth sighed. “It’s just an expression. What I actually do, since it’s so important to you to know, I write every girl’s name on a card, like this one,” Ruth said, holding up a plain white index card, with the letter “L” written on it in a composition-book hand, “and I put them all in a bowl, face-down. Then I close my eyes, mix them all around, and pull one out. That one, it’s the winner, not the loser.”

“Does it… does it hurt?”

“You never…?”

“No. I don’t think it’s…”

“And you never asked Barbara? Or Lorraine? They both-”

“I did ask Lorraine. But I know how some of the girls are. They’ll say things…”

Ruth pointedly looked at her wristwatch, a black oval on a thin gold band.

“Does he ever tip?” the dull-eyed woman asked.

1959 October 04 Sunday 21:20

“You better not be calling me from work,” the voice said.

Cold and hard, Carl thought, like a diamond. A perfect pure-white diamond. “No, of course not,” he said aloud. “I would never-”

“-disobey,” the voice finished the sentence for him.

“Never!” Carl said, excitement rising in that part of him he kept buried under his many shields.

“Don’t say ‘never’ to me like that, you sniveling little baby! I told you, no more notes. Didn’t I?”

“Yes, but-”

“Yes?” the voice said, the undercurrent of threat closer to the surface.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I only wanted to-”

“What you want isn’t important. Is it?”

“No, sir.”

“And you know what is important, don’t you?”

“Yes. I… Yes, sir, I know. Please?”

“What time is your shift over?”

“Eleven. But then I have to close down the-”

“Oh four hundred hours,” the voice said. “That will give you plenty of time to prepare yourself.”

1959 October 04 Sunday 21:34

I got to get closer, refrained through Holden’s labyrinth mind. I got to get closer, so I can make my report. He moved as cautiously as a weasel approaching a henhouse, his passage disturbing the underbrush less than a gentle breeze. The night creatures were used to Holden’s presence-his scent didn’t alarm them, his movements didn’t send them scurrying. He was one of them: a resident, not a visitor.

That’s the one, he said to himself. That same ’55 Chevy. That’s why he didn’t back all the way in, the way most of them do-he wouldn’t want to get that beautiful paint all scratched up.

Music drifted out onto the night air, so softly that even Holden’s forest-trained ears could barely pick it up. Unlike the lumbering gait he automatically fell into whenever he had leave the safety of his forest, Holden moved with an almost sinuous grace as he closed the gap. The bruised-and-blue sounds of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” floated over to him, but Holden didn’t recognize the song. He’s going to run down his battery, playing the radio with the engine turned off like that, he thought.

The moon refracted against the Chevy’s windshield, blocking Holden’s view of the interior as effectively as a curtain. It’s a warm night. Maybe they have the side windows down. I know that Chevy’s a hardtop, so even if they’re in the back seat…

Holden was so close that he tested each footstep before committing to it. From long experience, he knew that hiding behind a tree wasn’t as effective as standing in the open, blending with the night. His green-and-brown camouflage jacket and matching hat-gifts from his friend, Sherman-coupled with his ability to stand perfectly, soundlessly still, were all he had ever needed.

Holden didn’t like radios. They masked the sounds he coveted. The secret sounds he replayed in his mind, back in his room. They were his, those sounds. He owned them.

Holden often wanted to tell Sherman about the sounds. He thought his friend would understand. But… but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, Sherman was a policeman. A detective, even. Maybe there was a law Holden didn’t know about…

The side windows were down, just as Holden had wished. Sometimes, Holden believed he could wish things true. Like tonight. He had wanted the windows to be down, and… there they were. But when he tried it on… other things he wanted, it didn’t work. There was something about this Holden yearned to understand. But there was no one he could ask-he knew what would happen if he did.

“I hate this.”

A woman’s voice came through the side window. Something about it was deeply familiar to Holden, but he knew better than to reach for the memory. Every time that happened, he ended up trying to grasp smoke. If you spook up a rabbit, and you don’t chase it, just stay in the same spot, very still and quiet, sometimes, sometimes, the rabbit comes back.

“You think I like it?” A man’s voice. A young man. Holden was sure he hadn’t heard it before. “What am I going to do?”

“That’s just it, Harley. It should be ‘What are we going to do?’ ”

“You know that’s what I meant.” The man’s voice was somewhere between angry and… something else. Holden searched his mind for the right word. Sulky. That was it. Sulky like a little kid.

“It’s only a couple of months, Harley. A couple of months, and then I’m gone from here. I’m going to start second semester.”

“You’ll be back.”

“You’re so sure?”

“Kitty, why do you have to always be twisting everything I say? I only meant, college, it’s not like you stay there forever. You’ll be back, for summers and stuff, that’s all I was saying.”

“You could come with me.”

“Come with you? To… what’s the name of that school, again?”

“Western Reserve University,” the woman’s voice said, proudly. “And it wouldn’t be to the school. We, the girls, we have to live in dorms. But it’s in Cleveland, Harley. A big city. You could find work easy, I know. My father says the mills are still pumping like mad up there. There’s plenty of-”