“Name your poison.”
“I’m a scotch-rocks man.”
“Luther,” Beaumont said.
While Luther was preparing the drink, Dioguardi took out a cigarette. Luther stopped working on the drink and rushed over to Dioguardi’s chair, a lighter in his hand. Dioguardi waved him off. “I got it, pal,” he said.
Beaumont wheeled himself from behind the desk, until he was facing Dioguardi’s chair. “I’ll have one, too,” he said to Luther, resting his hands on the flat arms of his wheelchair, palms-down. Dioguardi unconsciously imitated the gesture.
“I appreciate you coming all the way out here,” Beaumont said, holding up his glass.
“Well, I admit, you got me curious,” Dioguardi said, again unconsciously imitating his host’s gesture. “I thought I was the one giving you the news. About me pulling up stakes. I meant that, by the way. Then you say ‘partners,’ and that kind of knocked me back on my pins. I thought you wanted this whole thing for yourself.”
“If you reach for too much, you sometimes end up with nothing.”
“I heard you were a blunt man, Beaumont.”
“Fair enough,” Beaumont said, smiling slightly. “I understand you made a deal with… some people. They want what I have… what I can do, anyway. And, me, I want you and me to stop warring over what’s mine in the first place.”
“Yeah. And so? I already said I was going to-”
“Oh, I think you’re going, all right. I believe you. What I’m worried about is you coming back.”
“I’m not-”
“Wait,” Beaumont said, holding up his hand in a “stop” gesture. “Just let me finish. The way I have it doped out is like this: I can do what the politicians call ‘deliver the district.’ Only I can deliver a lot more than that. In a lot bigger area than you might think. That’s what the people who came to you want from me. And they’ll get it. In exchange, I’m supposed to have this whole territory for myself. Like I used to have, before you started making your moves.”
Beaumont shifted position in his chair, paused for a second, then continued. “Okay, let’s say the election’s over. Before, I was gold. Now I’m a piece of Kleenex. They used me for what I was good for, and now they can throw me in the trash. If you decided to come back, they wouldn’t stand in your way.
“Now, I know what you’re going to say,” Beaumont said, holding up one finger in a “pause” gesture. “Why should you come back? It’d be over a year that you’d be gone, and you’d be starting from scratch. But I’m thinking there might be one good reason you’d come back to Locke City. A very good reason.”
“What would that be?” Dioguardi asked, his voice low and relaxed. He took a sip of his drink, every movement conveying that he was in no hurry.
“A good reason would be if we were partners,” Beaumont said. “The future for men like us, it isn’t in gang wars, it’s in… cooperation. You use only your own people in your business; I use only mine. That’s good in some ways. You know a man, you know his family, where he comes from, you can trust him, right? But it’s also a limitation. If we don’t learn to work together, we don’t get the chance to grow.”
“What kind of growth are you thinking of?” Dioguardi said, affecting mild interest.
“Drugs,” Beaumont said, leaning forward, gripping the arms of his wheelchair, his iron eyes locked on Dioguardi’s. “There’s a fortune to be made. In the big cities, people are already making it. Locke City’s like a… smaller example, that’s all. I’ve got the network in place here. Men on the street, friends on the force, judges, politicians-everything. But what I don’t have is product. It’s your people who control that. You can get a steady, safe supply into the country. I want you and me to go into business, Sal.”
“Starting when?” Dioguardi said. He expanded his chest and moved his shoulders in Beaumont’s direction. He blinked, and his eyes snapped from bored to predatory.
“After this whole thing is over. It doesn’t matter where you’re going, you’ll be someplace where you can put the whole thing together. At your end. And I’ll be doing the same thing at mine.”
“We don’t do business with-”
“Yes, you do,” Beaumont interrupted. “At some level, you have to, am I right? They sell drugs in the colored sections of every big city, don’t they? I mean, it’s coloreds themselves who are selling it. Come on.”
“That’s different,” Dioguardi disclaimed. “We’re not partners with niggers. It’s like we’re wholesalers and they’re retailers, is all.”
“Times are changing,” Beaumont said. “You can be a spectator, or you can be a player. All I’m saying is, think about it. You don’t have to give me an answer now.”
Dioguardi sat back in his chair, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the armrest. “Tell me something,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore, I just want to know. Was it you who did Little Nicky? And Tony and Lorenzo?”
“Me?” Beaumont said. “I thought it was you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Lorenzo Gagnatella was talking to the law. I thought you knew.”
“I still don’t know,” Dioguardi said, his voice tightening. “How’d you find out something like that?”
“I told you, I’ve got a lot of friends on the force. You don’t believe me, ask-”
“I know you got friends around here, Beaumont. A lot of friends.”
“And I’d like you to be one of them,” Beaumont said, finishing off his drink.
1959 October 09 Friday 16:13
“You want me to go over it again?” Dett asked.
“I’ve got it,” Harley said, trying to imitate the same utter absence of emotion exuded by the man next to him. Freezing cold, but burn you bad if you touch it, Harley thought. Like that dry ice they use in freight cars. His mind replayed his last meeting with Royal Beaumont: You’re going along because I want you to learn from this man, Harley. Learn what you’re going to need to know-what I can’t teach you myself, anymore. This guy, he’s the best there is. But he’s not one of us; he’s a hired gun. After this is over, he’s leaving. You, you’re coming back.
“You don’t think there should be more of us?” Harley asked.
“What we’re going to do, it’s like an operation, in a hospital,” Dett said. “Every man’s got his job. Too many men, they just get in each other’s way. And it’s much easier for two guys to disappear than a whole mob.”
“What if he pulls up in front?”
“From where we’re going to be sitting, we can see whichever way he goes.”
“But if he goes in the front, that’s right on the street,” Harley persisted. “People passing by…”
“So they’ll tell the cops they saw two men,” Dett said, unconcerned. “Once we pull those stockings over our faces, put the hats on our heads and the gloves on our hands, nobody’ll even be able to tell if we’re black or white, never mind describe us. This car was stolen from a parking lot-the owner won’t even know it’s missing for a couple of hours, yet. And the plates on it come right out of the junkyard-you cut them in half, then you solder a little seam up the back, make one plate out of two. Anyone grabs the number, all that’ll do is confuse the cops more.”
“But we don’t have the letter yet.”
“That’s not our job. If it doesn’t get here before they do, the whole thing’s off.”
“Give Jody a five-minute head-start and he’ll beat them here by a half-hour. He’s not good for much else, but he can drive better than a stock-car racer.”
“We’ll see soon enough,” Dett said.
1959 October 09 Friday 16:41
“Like to show you around, if you’ve got the time,” Beaumont said. “You’ve got to walk out, anyway.”