The Digger's Game

by George V. Higgins

  “You know,” the Digger said, “your principal trouble is, you got a big mouth.”

  “My wife claims that,” Harrington said. “She also says I hang around the wrong type of guys and it gets me in trouble, it won’t be her fault. She says a lot of things. But then I say, ‘Look, did I go to Vegas and win a million dollars? Not me. I’m too smart for that. Nobody fakes old Harrington into winning no million, no sir.’ That shuts her up.”

  “She think I’m one of the bad guys?” the Digger said.

  “She does,” Harrington said. “She has said that. But she don’t say it no more. I said, ‘Look, you like the stereo all right. You give me a lot of stuff and all, but the Digger gets that Stromberg for a hundred and Lechmere’s knocking them down for three-fifty, I don’t hear no complaints from you.’ See, I stand up for you, Digger.”

  “You interested in a portable radio?” the Digger said.

  “No,” Harrington said.

  “How about a nice color tee-vee?” the Digger said. “RCA, Accucolor, the whole bit.”

  “No,” Harrington said. “I touch the stereo the other night by mistake and I burned myself. I’m gonna be sitting there some fine night, watching the ball game, and some cop’s gonna come in. Besides, I can’t buy nothing right now, I don’t care if you’re giving it away. The wife wants a boat. I’m supposed to be saving up for a boat.”

  “Look,” the Digger said, “I need some dough.”

  “Jesus,” Harrington said, “I could use some dough myself. You get ahold the guy that’s passing out the dough, give him my name. I could use about thirty-five big ones, right this minute. I got to buy a boat. Get that? I had a boat. I had four rooms over to Saint Columbkille’s, I had a nice boat. She don’t like that. We got to have a house. ‘I can’t afford no house,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got the down payment, for God’s sake.’ She says, ‘Sell the boat.’ I didn’t want to sell my boat. I didn’t want to buy the house. I sell the boat. I buy the house. Nine years we had the house, eight of them she’s been complaining, we should get another boat. I give up.”

  “I’m serious,” the Digger said.

  “You’re serious, is it?” Harrington said. “You think I’m just horsing around?”

  “You’re not serious the way I’m serious,” the Digger said. “I need eighteen thousand dollars and I need it right away. Yesterday would’ve been good.”

  “Oh oh,” Harrington said, “you guys did take a bath out there, didn’t you.”

  The Digger nodded. “The rest of the guys, not as bad as me. But I went in right over my head.”

  “Jesus,” Harrington said, “that why you’re out all night?”

  “Yup,” the Digger said, “I take all kinds of chances and you know what? I’m not even close to even.” From the end of the bar a customer demanded service. “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, I give you a bat in the head,” the Digger shouted. “I’ll get to you when I’m damned good and fuckin’ ready. Right now I’m talking to a guy.” The customer said he thought he could get a drink in the place. “You can get a drink when I feel like gettin’ you a fuckin’ drink,” the Digger said. “Right now I don’t feel like it. Paul, ’stead of sittin’ down there like a damned dog, come around and give the loudmouth bastard what he wants. Pour it down his fuckin’ pants, all I care.” At the end of the bar a small man with grey hair got off his stool and came around to the spigots. He started to draw beer. “I got to get even,” the Digger said to Harrington, “I got to find a way to get even and that’s all there is to it.”

  “You’re not gonna do it pushing radios,” Harrington said. “You’re not gonna do it that way, I can tell you right now. You, I think you’re gonna have to find something a lot bigger’n radios to sell, you expect to make that kind of dough.”

  “Well, okay,” the Digger said, “that’s what I was thinking.”

  “Sure,” Harrington said, “you’re gonna have to sell the place, here.”

  “No,” the Digger said.

  “Whaddaya mean, ‘No’?” Harrington said. “You haven’t got anything else you can sell. You don’t dress that good, you can’t sell suits. You got a car there, isn’t bad, but you got to get around and you couldn’t get more’n a grand for it if you sold it anyway. What the hell else can you do, sell your house? Can’t do that. Some guy make you a price on the wife and kids?”

  “Well,” the Digger said, “I mean, there’s other ways of raising money.”

  “Not without taking chances,” Harrington said. “That kind of money, you either got in the bank and you go in and you take it out, or else you got it in something else and you go the bank and you practically hand it over to them, or else you go the bank with a gun and you say, ‘Gimme everybody else’s money.’ There’s no other way, and that last one, that’s risky.”

  “There’s other ways,” the Digger said. “Look, this place. You know what I hadda do, get this place? I hadda get up off the floor, is what I hadda do. Johnny Malloy, I get out of the slammer and Johnny Malloy gives me a job and no shit. Me, I figured, it’s temporary, I got to have something to do. I never had any idea of running a barroom all my life.”

  “What’s the matter with running a bar?” Harrington said. “Nothing the matter with that. I wished I had a good bar to run.”

  “Sure,” the Digger said, “but that’s it. Takes money, get a bar. I didn’t have money. All I had was a goddamned record. Was all I could do, keep the Probation looking the other way while I was working here. So, Malloy gets the cancer. He knew he had it. He says, there wasn’t anybody else had the money, wanted to buy it. They’re all laying off. He told me that. ‘Wait it out and steal it off the wife, they got in mind. Bastards. I’ll sell it to you for what it’s worth. Not what I could get for it if I was all right and I just wanted to sell. What it’s worth. That’s about twice what I’m getting offers for.’

  “I said, ‘John, I haven’t got what the place’s worth. You know that,’ ” the Digger said. “ ‘I’m working for you, for Christ sake. I shouldn’t even be doing that. You’re taking a chance with the license, I’m taking a chance with the Probation, what the hell. I can’t buy this place.’

  “He says, ‘You quit too fast, my friend. What I got in mind, you just keep on working for me, only I won’t be here. You work for the wife. Only instead of me keeping what I got left after I pay for the stock and the lights and you and all, you pay for the stock and that, and pay her like she was working for you, and you keep what’s left. You do that long enough, she’s all right, the kids finish school, I don’t have to worry about none of that stuff because I trust you, and you end up with the place. Me, what the hell I want with money? Where I’m going, money’s no good. What I need is, somebody who’s gonna pay money to Evelyn.’

  “I said, ‘John, okay, all right, sure. But the license. I can’t get on no license. You want your wife onna license?’ He says, no, he don’t want that. Somebody’d take it away from her. He says, ‘Look, whyn’t you see what your brother can do, the Governor. Try for a pardon.’

  “So I do it,” the Digger said. “I go see my holy brother and I ask him, does he know anybody. See, by then he’s almost getting over it, I did time. Well, no, he don’t know anybody, but then he’s in pretty thick with Bishop Hurley there. Maybe Hurley knows somebody. So it’s this way and that, and then I get this call from this rep I never heard of before, will I meet him? Sure I’ll meet him. So I meet him, and he’s got quite a lot to say, how do I like the weather and what about the way the Red Sox’re doing, all kinds of shit, and finally he gets to the point: he wants five hundred bucks. For what he don’t say, why he wants it from me, but he knows me and he knows I want this pardon, which I didn’t tell him, and he says, ‘Running for office, it’s very expensive. I got this printing bill.’ Then he shows me this bill, it’s all beat to shit. He’s been carrying it around for probably two years, ever since he got elected, showing it to six or eight guys a week. That’s how I could do it, boy, get even: all I need’s one of
them printing bills. Anyway, it’s for five hundred and thirty bucks and he says, ‘I dunno how I’m gonna pay it.’

  “I come back to Malloy,” the Digger said. “I ask him and he says, ‘Hit him the five. That’s cheaper’n I figured.’

  “Now I don’t know this rep from a hole inna ground,” the Digger said, “and reps don’t give pardons, governors do that. But I do it. Two months later, the pardon comes through. And it’s a good thing, too, because Malloy’s got trouble hanging on. ‘Now we got to get an appraiser,’ he says. I say, ‘What the hell we need an appraiser for? Tell me what it’s worth. I’ll pay it.’ He says: ‘We don’t need an appraiser, you need an appraiser. You want to get on the license, don’t you?’ Okay. He tells me, fifty-four K. Now the appraiser comes in. He looks around. ‘Fifty-four thousand,’ he says. He was here probably twenty minutes. Two grand he charges. I thought that was kind of high. I said, ‘You work pretty fast.’ He says, old hundred-a-minute, ‘I’m an expert appraiser. Been at it a long time, particularly bars and restaurants. Experience, that’s what does it.’ He leaves and Malloy says, ‘Another thing that does it: his brother-in-law’s on the Licensing. Now you’re gonna get on the license.’

  “Now that’s the way it is,” the Digger said. “I learn fast. I been in the can, it’s all right, I still got room for more things I can learn. ‘You see?’ Malloy says. ‘You’re gonna do all right now. You’re okay to be on the license, and now you’re gonna get the license. Take care Evvie.’

  “I think Malloy was probably dead about a month,” the Digger said. “He didn’t last long after he got things taken care of the way he wanted. I go see my fat fuckin’ brother. Just by way of no harm he says, ‘You might’ve thanked me, getting the pardon and all, you’re doing so well now.’ I said, ‘Thanks? What the hell for? All you did was send the thief around. I paid the five.’ He says, ‘What five?’ I tell him. Turns out he paid a guy a grand. So I ask him, is it the rep? See, the same thing, I’m willing to go the five, he still shouldn’t beat the brother out of the grand. No indeed, he says, no such thing. It’s another guy. That’s funny, I think, and I tell him about the rep, and he says, ‘Well, I think probably I’m gonna check that out.’ And he does.

  “Now I get another telephone call,” the Digger said. “The rep again. Will I meet him. I meet him. I meet him inna Parker House. He says, ‘I certainly want to thank you, the loan you give me, and now I want to pay you back.’ Hands me this envelope. Five-thirty in it. I count it and I say, ‘Here’s thirty back. I loaned you the five.’ He gets this dumb expression on his face. ‘Oh yeah,’ he says, ‘now I remember you, you cheap fuck.’ ”

  “You should’ve called a cop,” Harrington said.

  “I could’ve,” the Digger said. “I could also’ve called the ghinny Pope in his fuckin’ bubbletop limousine, I could’ve done that, too. Would’ve done me about as much good.

  “Now you look at that,” the Digger said. “The rep, the guy with the brother-in-law, my fine fat brother. What does he produce? Every single month for fourteen years I been sending Evvie Malloy three hundred. Gimme about six more years, I own this place, the way the deal finally worked out. ‘The place took care of O’Dell,’ Malloy said to me, ‘it took care of me and it’ll take care of Evvie and take care of you. Take care the place, Digger.’ He was right. I took care the place. I worked like a bastard. I produced. My brother, he’s just as big as me, he’s got to eat a lot, you got to eat a lot, you weigh two-ninety, what’s he done? I eat at home, what the wife cooks. He’s throwing down the lobsters at the Red Coach. He’s got a nice Electra Two and a Q. I got to hump it around, find something used that I can afford. After I find it, I get hell for buying it. He’s got the place down to Onset, his cottage, it’s got eight or nine rooms, a couple baths up and one down, it’s a cottage. I got three boys and a girl and I practically got to hock the Social Security to get half a bath in the, where the pantry was, I got a house. He’s got a two-car garage, I got no garage at all, in the summer I get the same view of Morgan’s lawn, which he never cuts, I had in the winter. The snow and all, it looks better in the winter. In the winter my fuckin’ brother’s down to Delray for a couple weeks, I see where he goes to Ireland in the fall. Now what I want to know is this, how come them guys? How come them guys and not me.”

  Harrington drank some beer. “You’re pulling your joint,” he said. “God’s punishing you. Pretty soon you’re gonna get hair on your hands and moles on your face and pimples on your ass. Everybody’ll be able to tell. Don’t do your brains any good, either. Keep it up, you’re gonna turn simple, and you don’t have far to go, either, you was to ask me. Three Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys and a good Act of Contrition. Our Blessed Mother don’t go for your filthy habits, you know.”

  “Fuck you,” the Digger said. “I listened to you plenty of times. All I was doing was thinking out loud.”

  “You listened to me,” Harrington said, “I was buying the beer. That’s the rule: guy that buys the beer does the talking. Now you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna go home. You’re thinking, the kind of thinking you do, I don’t want to be around when you do it.”

  AT ELEVEN THIRTY the Digger closed up. The small man with grey hair took a long time locating his jacket and lunchbox. “For the love of Mike, will you come on?” the Digger said.

  “Some son of a bitch stole my paper,” the small man said. “I didn’t even finish reading it. I think I had about half a beer since I get in here this after, and now some son of a bitch steals the paper.”

  “Paul,” the Digger said, holding the door, “I’m not paying you. Got that? No money. Thanks for your help, but no dough.”

  “I was on my feet about six hours,” the small man said.

  “You were on the tap for six hours too,” the Digger said. “I loan you money and you don’t pay me back. You’re into me for thirty or forty bucks and I never asked you for it and you never paid me back. You come home from the track and you’re tapped out and I stand you a couple beers and I listen to you, what horrible luck you got, and then I give you five, you don’t have to ask the old lady for carfare, she’s gonna know you lose. And you always take it. Now the thing for you to do is, shut the fuck up and go home.”

  The Digger drove to Copley Square and parked his car in front of the Public Library. A sleepy drunk sat up on the steps, then stood and walked unsteadily toward the car. He removed a dirty cloth from his left hip pocket. The Digger locked the driver’s side door. The drunk was very old. He stopped and swayed and said: “Polish your car and watch it for you, mister?”

  The Digger straightened up. “No,” he said. The drunk swayed. “And if I come back here and I see a lot of scratches on the fuckin’ thing I’ll come find you and take you apart, you fuckin’ old wino, you understand that?”

  The drunk, swaying, replaced the rag in his pocket. He turned slowly and went back up the steps.

  The Digger entered the Boylston garage on the Huntington side and took the elevator to the third tier. At Row D he found a mustard-colored Coupe de Ville with a gold vinyl roof. It had Maryland plates.

  The Digger tried his square-butted key in the driver’s side door. It worked. It also worked in the ignition. He drove the Cadillac down the ramps to the exit. There was a sleepy kid in a blue Eisenhower jacket on duty.

  “I lost my check,” the Digger said. On the attendant’s booth there was a sign: “Lost ticket must show license and registration.”

  “You gotta pay the max,” the kid said. “Three-fifty.”

  “Here,” the Digger said. He presented a five-dollar bill. The kid gave him change. “That’s a screwing,” the Digger said. “I was only in here since six.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the kid said, “read me the whole act if you want. I could make you get undressed and everything, you know.”

  “I know,” the Digger said.

  At Logan International Airport the Digger took the “Arrivals” lane and put the Cadillac into an empty space in front o
f the ground-level entrance to United Airlines. He got out of the car and locked it. At the top of the electric stairs he turned left and walked toward the bar. He found a short, swarthy man seated at a table for two at the east windows. He sat down. He put the key in front of the man.

  “Where is it?” the man said.

  “Right down to the meter,” the Digger said. “Right down in front.”

  “You were supposed to put it inna regular garage,” the man said.

  “He didn’t tell me that,” the Digger said. “He said, ‘Leave it in front of the United terminal and take the keys in.’ That’s what I did.”

  “There’s liable to be some fuckin’ State Trooper watchin’ it, I go out,” the man said.

  “That’s your problem,” the Digger said. “You should take it up with him, is what I think.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think,” the man said. “Key okay?”

  “Yup,” the Digger said.

  “Okay,” the man said, starting to get up.

  The Digger grabbed him by the left arm and the man sat down again. “There’s another thing he told me, he told me you were gonna have some money belonged to me.”

  “You get that from him,” the man said.

  “You can get your arm fixed over to the Mass General,” the Digger said. “They’re open all night, they never close. Your face, too. The Boston City’s open all night, too, they got an emergency room, but guys I seen afterwards, I was to make a choice if I was you I’d go the Mass General. Get up five hundred and save the beef on the Blue Cross, is my advice.”