Two Trains Running - By Andrew H. Vachss Page 0,33
more than thirty years ago.
“Doc, I’m not trying to bust your chops, okay? In a case like this, there’s a dozen possibilities. If I thought it was even money this guy would wake up and tell us who slugged him, I could save myself a ton of work digging into his life.”
“That’s important, saving work?” the doctor asked, archly. He had a high-domed forehead and thinning dark hair, carefully combed to minimize that fact.
“You got any idea how overstretched we are for something like this? An assault investigation, most of the time, you don’t have to look any further than home, if you understand what I’m saying.”
The doctor nodded absently, as he made some notations on the injured man’s medical chart.
“Only, in this case,” the detective continued, “this guy’s home isn’t a place where we want to be asking a lot of questions. Not without more information.”
“I don’t understand,” the doctor said, stifling a yawn.
“He had his wallet on him. And the car was registered to him, too. Plenty of ID. We know who he is.”
“So ask his—”
“He’s got no family around here. No blood family, anyway. But we knew his name. He works for Dioguardi.”
“I don’t know who that is,” the doctor said, his tone maintaining the distance between his world and the cop’s.
“He’s a gangster, Doc. Set up shop here a while back. We’ve been watching him, but, so far, he hasn’t tried to move in on any of the local people.”
“What does any of this have to do with—?”
“Anytime we find a guy lying in the street with his head bashed in, first thing we do is check to see if he’s still got his wallet. That neighborhood, you have to figure he was rolled for his money. There’s a club a couple of blocks away. Guy staggers out of that joint, drunk, there’s men in this town would be on him like vultures on a corpse.”
“But he still had his wallet . . .” the doctor said, drawn in despite himself.
“An empty wallet,” the detective said.
“So maybe he was robbed.”
“Who’s going to brain a guy, snatch his wallet, remove all the money, and then put the wallet back?”
“People do strange things,” the doctor said, returning to the disengaged distance he preferred.
“Yeah. And one of those things is gamble. He wouldn’t be the first man to walk out of a club Tap City.”
“Tap City?”
“Broke.”
“Yes. I understand there are a couple of places around here where it’s possible to gamble.”
“Yeah. Just the way you want it,” the detective said, reacting to the doctor’s snide tone.
“The way I want it?”
“That’s right. You, the good citizens of Locke City. You want folks to be able to play cards, have a drink, have a good time with a girl who isn’t going to tell anyone about it. And what you want from us, from the police, what you want is for us to keep the animals in their cages. You don’t want them breaking into your houses, stealing your cars, raping your wives. And we do that. We do it good.”
“Is that so?”
“You know it is. Locke City’s a border town. If you were in my business, you’d know what that always means. There’s things people want to do, they’re going to do them. And they’re going to come to wherever they can do them. The factories closed up a long time ago. And they’re not coming back. But we’ve still got good roads to drive on. We’ve got nice schools for our kids. The crime rate—the real crime rate—is one of the lowest in the state.”
“You sound like you should be running for office.”
“People like you make me tired,” the detective said. “You like to pretend you don’t know what fuel this town runs on. But you’re happy enough that your taxes are so low.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow theatrically. “So, if the tax rates were increased, then the sort of . . . vice you’re describing would all go away?”
“Go away? No. Move away, maybe, but never disappear. Every time the government tries something like that, they just make things worse.”
“Enforcing the laws would make things worse?” the doctor baited the detective, enjoying himself. This would make a wonderful story for his wife’s dinner party on Saturday.
“You think medical school’s the only place they teach sarcasm?” the detective said, dropping the temperature of his voice. “It takes money to run a criminal organization. I don’t mean Bonnie and Clyde stuff, I mean a business. A business that owns a