Two Trains Running - By Andrew H. Vachss Page 0,20
he got all his shaving stuff and the like in the bathroom.”
“The man say anything to you?”
“This morning, he did. There’s no sign on his door, it’s after eight, I figure he’s out working so I let myself in. He’s just sitting there, in the big chair, reading the paper. I tell him I can come back later, when he’s out, but he tells me, just go ahead.”
“I know you-all said something besides that, Rosa Mae.”
“He just . . . polite, is all. A real gentleman. Some of the men that stay here, they like watching me clean up their rooms. I bend over to make the bed, I can feel their eyes. This man, he wasn’t nothing like that.”
“Maybe he’d like old Carl better than you,” Rufus said, grinning.
“You believe that, you three kinds of fool, Rufus,” she said, turning to go.
Rufus watched Rosa Mae walk down the hall. The exaggerated movement of her buttocks under the loose-fitting uniform was a lush promise, wrapped in a warning.
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:45
* * *
“Yes?” Cynthia’s voice on the phone was clear and clipped, just slightly north of polite.
“May I speak to Mr. Beaumont, please?”
“Who should I tell him is calling?”
“I’m the man he sent for. I believe he’ll—”
“Call back in ten minutes,” the woman’s voice said. “This same number.”
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:50
* * *
Rufus ambled over to the pay phone in the basement, dropped a slug in the slot, and dialed a local number.
“What?” a male voice answered.
“This be Rufus, sir,” Rufus said, thickening his long-since-outgrown Alabama accent and introducing a thread of servility into his voice. “I calling like you said.”
“Yeah?”
“The man, he a drinker, sir. Big drinker.”
“Can he hold it?”
“Seem so, sir. But ah cain’t say fo’ sure, ’cause he might be one of those, sleeps it off.”
“What’s he driving?”
“Got nothing out back in the lot, boss. And there ain’t no plate number on the books from when he signed in.”
“He didn’t come in on the bus,” the voice said, brawny with certainty. “I need to know what he’s riding, understand?”
“Yes, sir. You know Rufus. I got peoples all over the place. I finds out for you.”
“All right. He ask anyone to bring him anything?”
“Not no girl, if that what you mean, sir.”
“Stop fucking around,” the voice said, “and just tell me what I’m paying you for, understand?”
“Yes, sir. I wasn’t . . . I mean, no, sir, the man don’t ask me for nothing. Not none of the other boys, neither. ’Cept for a bottle of whiskey.”
“Get me that car, understand?” the voice said.
“I—” Rufus started to reply, then realized the connection had been cut.
Yassuh, massah, Rufus said to himself, twisting his lips into something between a snarl and a sneer.
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 11:56
* * *
“He wants to see you,” Cynthia told Dett on the phone. “Do you have transportation?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“A car.”
“Yes,” the woman said, without a trace of impatience. “What kind of car? Year and model. And the license plate, too, please. The guard at the gate will need this to pass you through.”
“A 1949 Ford, kind of a dull-blue color. The plate is: Ex, Oh, Bee, four, four, four.”
“All right, let me give you the directions. Please be here by two.”
* * *
1959 September 30 Wednesday 12:11
* * *
Dett slid the locked attaché case under the bed. From inside
his Pullman, he removed a sculpture made of gnarled roots wrapped around a pair of doll’s hands, clasped together in prayer by a single strand of rusty barbed wire. He placed this so it would greet anyone who opened the suitcase.
Dett shrugged into his overcoat, worked his shoulders in a slight circular motion until he was satisfied with the kinetic fit, then left the room.
He answered, “Good afternoon to you, too,” to the elevator operator, deposited his key with the desk clerk, and walked out into the fall sunlight, eyes slitted against the glare.
Two blocks away, Dett hailed a passing cab. It deposited him in front of a seedy pawnshop just over a mile away.
Dett entered the pawnshop, pretended to examine a display of rings in a glass case while a man in a green eyeshade completed a transaction. As the customer moved off, clutching a few bills and a pawn ticket, Dett caught a nod from the proprietor and moved toward the end of the long counter. A buzzer sounded. Dett lifted the hinged portion of the counter and walked past a half-open bathroom door to a large