The Digger's Game

by George V. Higgins

  “Well,” the Digger said, “I got some of it.”

  “How much?” Paul said.

  “About two thousand,” the Digger said.

  “That leaves you sixteen thousand to get,” Paul said.

  “That’s the way it come out when I did the figuring onna way over here,” the Digger said.

  “Where do you plan to get it?” Paul said.

  “I been running a little short of ideas,” the Digger said. “I know where to get sixteen, but it’s probably gonna get me in a deep tub of shit. That’s why I come out here. That don’t appeal to me. Now you say, you remind me, all them times I come out here, I’m inna bind. Right. But I don’t like asking you, you know? I know you’re pretty sick of it. I’m a big pain in the ass. But it isn’t, I don’t plan all them things, you know? I just got a way, it seems like I can stay out of trouble just so long, and then there I am, in trouble again. And here I am again. I had some way, getting that dough, Paul, I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t. I haven’t got any way of getting it, won’t get me in worse trouble’n I’m in already.”

  “Who,” Paul said, “to whom do you owe all this money? Forgive me, I’m innocent. Is it some casino? I never knew anybody in a scrape like this.”

  “Well,” the Digger said, “actually, probably, I don’t know yet. Some loan shark.”

  “Fellow in a black sedan,” Paul said, “cigar.”

  “Could be,” the Digger said. “I know one, looks like that. But see, I don’t know who’s got the markers, yet. I thought somebody’d be in before this. I still owe it. It’s some shy.”

  “How much time will he let you have,” Paul said, “to raise this money?”

  “Time?” the Digger said. “He’ll let me have the rest of my life, is what he’ll let me have. That’s the way he wants it. It’s me, I don’t want the time. I figure the vig goes me four and five hundred. Probably five, maybe I hold him off for four, it’s somebody it turns out I know.”

  “Four hundred dollars a month,” Paul said.

  “Four hundred a week,” the Digger said. “I got two grand. That’s either vig plus sixteen off the nut, or it’s five weeks to raise the eighteen. See, that’s what I come out here, find out, what do I do, what do I plan on? I dunno how I use the two.”

  “Say it,” Paul said.

  “Say what?” the Digger said.

  “Say what you want me to do,” Paul said. “Those other times I listened to your story and then I said I’d try to help you, and you said: ‘Thanks,’ and I started making telephone calls and presuming on friendships, trying to find a way out for you. This time I want you to say right out what you want me to do. I think it might do you good to hear yourself say it.”

  “I want you to give me sixteen thousand dollars,” the Digger said.

  “Not lend,” Paul said, “give.”

  “Paul,” the Digger said, “if I could borrow sixteen, if I could go somewhere and get it, I wouldn’t be here. No, I admit it, I didn’t come here, I’m not looking for no loan.”

  “You want me to give you sixteen thousand dollars,” Paul said, “just like that. Sixteen thousand dollars.”

  “Yeah,” the Digger said.

  “No,” Paul said.

  The clock ticked.

  The Digger cleared his throat. “Paul,” he said, “you know, maybe you don’t know, you know what this means. It don’t matter, what shy got the paper, you know? They all work the same way. They’re going to come around and say, where’s the money? And I got to have the money for him, is all. Otherwise, well, they got, every one of them has got a guy or so with a Louisville Slugger, come around and break your kneecaps for you or something. I mean that, Paul. I could get my knees broken.”

  “I believe it,” Paul said. “You convinced me, a long, long time ago, that if anybody knows how those things’re done, you do.”

  “Paul,” the Digger said, “I don’t like the idea, you know? Getting the knees busted up, it don’t appeal to me.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t,” Paul said.

  “Furthermore,” the Digger said, “furthermore, I’m not getting the knees broke. That’s how much it don’t appeal to me: I’m not gonna sit around and wait for it to happen. I’m gonna do something before it happens.”

  “That seems to have a threatening sound to it,” Paul said.

  “You can take it any way you want,” the Digger said. “One way or the other, I’m getting that dough. You don’t give it to me, I’m getting it some other way. But I am getting it. I don’t need the kind of grief a man gets if he don’t.”

  “Well, now,” Paul said, “let’s see. There aren’t an awful lot of ways you can do that. Seems to me as though about the only thing you can do is go to a bank and get yourself a mortgage man.”

  “That’s one of the first things I think of,” the Digger said. “I can hock the Bright Red. Then I think, I’ll be lucky, somebody’ll give me ten onna place. So that means: the house, I got to hock the house. What’s that good for? I suppose I could probably get five onna house, I was to go out and look for it. So, I’m still short, and not only that, what’s Aggie got then? Nothing. So I think, I say, I’m not gonna do it. It’s not Aggie and the kids’ fault, I need that kind of dough. It’s something I did. I can’t go out and do that to them. I gotta keep them things free.”

  “Very touching,” Paul said. “Of course it doesn’t leave you much room to maneuver, but there it is.”

  “There it is,” the Digger said. “I’m not looking for no credit, Paul. I’m just telling you, I’m not getting no more mortgages. So that leaves me, that leaves me with some of the other things I think of to do.”

  “Which are?” Paul said.

  “Well,” the Digger said, “I don’t know as I oughta answer you that one. See, some of them could be kind of risky, and you might get nervous.”

  “Now that,” Paul said, “that is very definitely a threat. As little as I know about being threatened, I can recognize that. Just what do you plan to do, Jerry? Rob the poor box down at Saint Hilary’s?”

  “What I got planned,” the Digger said, “it’s none of your business, Paul. You don’t want to help? Okay, you don’t want to help. I give you credit, you lay it right onna line. You don’t gimme the long face and say, ‘Jeez, Jerry, I don’t have it.’ Man knows where he stands with you, at least. Until the kneecaps go, anyway.”

  “I have got it,” Paul said.

  “There you go,” the Digger said, “of course you got it. You got the fancy dogs running around and the hair, dyeing the hair, the whole bit. The rugs, you got to have it. That’s why I come to you. But I give you credit, you don’t shit a man. I ask you and you say, ‘Fuck you.’ Okay, fuck me. But I give you that, you put it right down there, no bullshit about old Paul. Way to go, Paul baby. Course they’re not your kneecaps, but that don’t matter, does it.”

  “Oh come off it, Jerry,” Paul said. “None of this belongs to me and you know it. It all belonged to Labelle before me, and it’ll belong to somebody else after me. None of this is mine, Jerry.”

  “But you’re still all right, right, Paul?” the Digger said. “Long as Paul’s all right, that’s all that matters.”

  “The car’s mine,” Paul said. “The clothes’re mine. I’ve got a couple of very small bank accounts, when you think about how long I’ve had to work to get them. I couldn’t live two years on what I’ve got in the bank. The rest belongs to the Church.”

  “You got the place at Onset,” the Digger said.

  “I have,” Paul said. “I paid fifteen-five for that place seven years ago. I’ve reduced the principal considerably since then, mostly by putting money into it that I might’ve liked to spend on something else. It’s about twenty-eight thousand now, with appreciation and inflation and the improvements I’ve made. I owe three thousand on the note, now. So, in equity, I’ve got twenty-five thousand dollars, say. About that.”

  “That’s what I was saying,” the Digger said.

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p; “Those things,” Paul said, “American Express’ll trust me for a month and I’ve got a new set of Walter Hagens. I’ve got five thousand dollars’ worth of AT and T. I spent twenty-four years of my life grubbing up that very little pile. If I retire at sixty-five, the way I expect I’ll have to when I get to be sixty-five, I’ve got nineteen years left to add to it. If I can stay on till I’m seventy, or don’t die or something before then, I’m precisely halfway along. Otherwise, I’m on the decline.

  “Now, what is it you want, Jerry?” Paul said. “You want those twenty-four years to pay for three or four days of you making a goddamned ass of yourself. That’s what your position is. You’re forty-two years old and you’re still acting like you never grew up, and you expect me to pay for it. You want me to turn over everything I’ve got, to you, and start over. I won’t do it.

  “That house in Onset is my retirement home. I’ve got to pay it off before I get on a pension, because I won’t be able to carry more than the taxes when I retire. Maybe not even those. I’d better not live too long, is what I’m saying. If I mortgage it now, I pay off some bookies in Nevada, I won’t have it when I quit. I just won’t. I’ll have to sell it and throw the money into the common pot of some home for drooling old priests and spend the rest of my years getting chivvied about by jovial nuns. No thanks. This time you want more’n I can afford.”

  “I’m sorry I came,” the Digger said.

  “You’re nowhere near as sorry as I am,” Paul said. “That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry you got yourself into this mess, though. Now, you told me what you wanted me to do, and I told you I won’t do it. And you’re mad. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you what I will do, and you can take it or leave it. If you’d rather be mad, you can be mad. Suit yourself.”

  The Digger had started to get up. He sat down again. “I’m desperate,” he said, “I’ll take anything.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Paul said, “but this is a little more than that, taking something. This is a deal. A deal, you have to give something, am I right?”

  “Yup,” the Digger said.

  “I’ll give you my Limited,” Paul said. “I’ve got three thousand dollars in a special bank account, what I got for Christmas and Easter and baptisms and weddings over the past few years. There isn’t going to be any more of that now, the pastor’s special get-rich-slow scheme, but that’s the way it goes. The Electra’s good for at least another year, and my Limited’s probably not as important to me as your kneecaps are to you. Or to me, for that matter.

  “Now,” Paul said, “you can do whatever you like with the money. You can buy seven more weeks, of whatever it is, or you can reduce the principal. Just as I did on my house. It’s completely up to you.”

  “I’m not hocking the place,” the Digger said.

  “Jerry,” Paul said, “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m telling you something. You can have three thousand dollars, free, gratis and for nothing. You don’t have to pay it back.”

  “But I got to do something,” the Digger said.

  “Correct,” Paul said. “I get your solemn word: this is the last time. You’re my brother, but you’re a little old now to need a keeper, and I’ve had my share of the job. I don’t want it any more. I never had much luck at it anyway.

  “I don’t ask for miracles, Jerry,” Paul said. “They’re nice, but they’re hard to come by. You’ll be in another mess next year. You know it and I know it. I don’t want promises of good behavior.”

  “Okay,” the Digger said.

  “What I want,” Paul said, “what I want is peace and quiet. I want a promise that you’ll go to someone else, the next time you get in the soup. You won’t even tell me about it.”

  “Okay,” the Digger said.

  “I’m not finished,” Paul said. “I’m at the point where a man has to drive a hard bargain. I should’ve done it before, but I didn’t. Now I’ve got to, or you’ll just keep on coming back until you beggar me.

  “You started talking about risky things,” Paul said. “I know your history. You went to prison for minding Dinny Hand’s cellar full of stolen jewelry, twenty years ago, and you didn’t learn a solitary thing. You almost went to prison when they found out about those television sets and stereos in the cellar of the Bright Red. It was all I could do to persuade them the help put them in there and you didn’t know about it, and you know I was lying, Jerry, and I knew it too. Your vacation was all that saved you, that time, that and the silence of your friends.

  “I know the way your mind works,” Paul said. “I don’t like it, but I know it. When you get the chance, you steal. The trouble is that you’re not a very good thief. You’ve been caught twice. The last time you were next door to a long sentence. You got away that time. You won’t get away again. You see, I know them, too, from dealing with them in your behalf. They remember a man who got one free. If he slips again, they land on him.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” the Digger said, “what do you care, this is the write-off and all? I don’t mean nothing by it, I’m just asking.”

  “I’ve been here two years short of the magic number,” Paul said. “Nobody’s ever been pastor of Holy Sepulchre for ten years without making domestic prelate. I’d like to, Jerry, I’d really like to. I’d like for you not to foul it up for me.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the Digger said.

  “What you think is your business,” Paul said. “Your family deserves something better’n weekends traveling back and forth to Walpole to see Daddy. I deserve something better’n coming downstairs every year to hear about Little Brother’s latest calamity. You tell me you won’t mortgage the house or the saloon to get the money that you lost all by yourself. But there’s no other legal way to get it. So you’re telling me you’ll commit crimes. And I’m telling you, you’ll get caught. Don’t give me that pious stuff about your family. I’ll give you three thousand dollars. For that I get your promises: no more emergency visits, and no more crimes. You’ll get caught.”

  “You’re buying me off,” the Digger said.

  “I’m buying me,” Paul said, “I’m buying me off. I told you. I’m making provision for my old age. I’m through bailing you out. Now I’m buying me off. I want those assurances. For three thousand dollars, we’re quits. Take it or leave it.”

  “Take it,” the Digger said.

  “I’ve got your word,” Paul said.

  “You got my word,” the Digger said.

  “On both things,” Paul said.

  “On both things,” the Digger said.

  “I’d better have,” Paul said. “I was really looking forward to that Limited.”

  “JESUS Christ, DIG,” the Greek said, “you got way in over your fuckin’ head. I saw that fuckin’ marker, I almost fuckin’ shit. The fuck’s the matter with you, you lose your fuckin’ mind or something? Guys, guys like us, you haven’t got that kind of fuckin’ money. What the fuck happened?”

  “You’d make some guy a great fuckin’ wife, you know that, Greek?” the Digger said. “That fuckin’ mouth of yours, come inna my place and start playing it like it was a fuckin’ radio, anybody ask you to do that? Fuck you, Greek.”

  “Fuck you, Dig,” the Greek said. They sat at a table at the rear of the Bright Red. They had draught beers in front of them. It was early in the afternoon and the air conditioner made a steady white ripple of interference across the ball game on the television set above the front door. “That’s my fuckin’ eighteen K you’re getting so fuckin’ big about. It was your eighteen, you had eighteen K, I might come around and be nice. But it’s my paper and I know fuckin’ well you haven’t got the dough and that makes you a big fuckin’ problem. Them I don’t like.”

  “Look at that,” the Digger said, “a hundred and sixty-five thousand a year and the bastard can’t get the fuckin’ ball outa the fuckin’ infield, for Christ sake.”

  “I assume you’re not down on them,” the Greek said.

  “Line’s wrong,” the Di
gger said. “No way them bastards get five more’n Cleveland, McDowell there. I laid off.”

  “Still at it,” the Greek said. “I’m beginning to see it, now, how it happened. You just haven’t got no fuckin’ sense, is all.”

  The Digger thought for a moment. “That’s about right,” he said, “I think that’s about right. I start off, blackjack, twenty-one, they call it. I had eight hundred and twenty bucks and three days and I’m there the first night, I just couldn’t wait.”

  “The fuck you doing playing blackjack?” the Greek said. “My little kid knows enough, don’t play blackjack.”

  “Look,” the Digger said, “my little kid too. My holy brother. Everybody knows that, got any fuckin’ brains at all. But see, I see this old bastard, brown sportcoat. He’s betting thousand-dollar bills. I never saw more’n two of them in my whole fuckin’ life, and one of them was queer, a guy, stupid shit, wants to sell me a hundred of them. This guy, he’s got the genuine and he’s peeling them off like they’re onna outside of something he’s gonna eat, all right? So, I got to be all right, I see that. I pay a grand, the trip, the eight-twenty’s somebody else’s, I’m peeling fives, it’s gonna last me a long time, I lose every goddamned hand. Which, of course, I’m not gonna do, I’m too fuckin’ smart for that.

  “I win some,” the Digger said. “I lose some. The old coot drops twenty of them things that I see. Don’t mean nothing to me. I’m thinking: you grab that son of a bitch in the alley, before he starts, you wouldn’t have to work again for the rest of your fuckin’ life. So, he’s got this credit card. You been to Vegas, Greek?”

  “Nah,” the Greek said. “I went to fuckin’ Havana before that fuckin’ Commie took over, I lost my fuckin’ shirt. Nothing like what you did. About five hundred. I said, ‘I’m not doing that again.’ Got hell from my wife, too. I don’t go for that shit, making other guys rich with my money.”

  “Your wife,” the Digger said. “My fuckin’ wife, she knew about this she would fuckin’ kill me. Anyway, the old bastard’s got a credit card. Shows it, he can cash checks. He writes out the check and this sleepy-looking cocksucker okays it. The old bastard gets his own thousands back, he starts in again. Only now, of course, he’s out the check. Now right fuckin’ there, Greek, is when I should’ve quit, right onna fuckin’ spot. But I don’t.