Two Trains Running - By Andrew H. Vachss Page 0,50

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