Two Trains Running - By Andrew H. Vachss Page 0,53

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