“Who’s this Peters?” Mack said.
“Peters is one of them,” Alfred said, “and the other one is his partner, Cole. Now those two guys, Cole shouldn’t let him do that, go in there and start giving Selene a whole ration shit. It’s late at night and there’s only one other person in there, Toby Florence, he’s usually drunk and he can’t do nothing to help her. Drunk or he’s smokin’ and he’s not interested. Now them guys, they shouldn’t be doing that. They should get transferred someplace else, if they are gonna be doing things like that. That’s what I mean.”
“Who is Peters and who is Cole?” Mack said.
“Peters is the guy that drives, all right?” Alfred said. “I already said something to him myself. I told him: ‘Look, you bastard,’ right? I said, ‘You been givin’ my sister a whole bunch of hard time and I don’t like it,’ right? And he just looks at me. And he calls me a shit and tells me I don’t get along, he is gonna take me in and arrest me for somethin’ and I can see how I like that, all right? And his partner, Cole? He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t do anything. He’s the guy that’s supposed to be in charge of the car, but he don’t say anything. Nothing. So here I am, and I’m talking to you and you don’t do nothing. You know something? I am gonna do something, if somebody doesn’t do something. Either that fuckin’ Peters starts leaving Selene alone or I am gonna do something to him.”
“Alfred,” Scott said.
“Don’t gimme that,” Alfred said. “She is a nice girl, my sister. They are bothering her all the time and nobody does anything about it.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “you did five indeterminate at Concord for something that you did. Didn’t that satisfy you? You really convinced that you would like to do something else?”
“I wouldn’t’ve,” Alfred said, “if you went at it the right way.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “they had three eyewitnesses who saw you with the weapon before the attack, and five who saw you make the attack, and the victim lived and told everybody about how you hit him three times with a jack handle. Now let us be reasonable and realistic, Alfred. You cannot go around doing things like that if you really want to be on the street. Now, if you really want to be in jail, if that is actually what you want, you can go ahead and beat up another guy, a cop this time. Knowing you, why don’t you do it down in Quincy Market someday, some fine afternoon when Kevin White’s there with about three hundred people and two television cameras, announcing how he’s gonna run for reelection again, and that way everybody’ll be handy and they can just run some videotape of you doing it, huh? Then you can come in here again and tell me it’s a shit case and you don’t care about the moving pictures and three hundred witnesses, I should beat it easy.”
“This guy,” Alfred said, “this guy is kicking the shit out of my sister. You know how we live, Mister Mack? You got any idea with your house in Newton and your nice car that you use to come back in here every day and see how us poor niggers maybe get up some more money to give you, so the next time you don’t have to settle for an Oldsmobile, you own maybe a Cadillac, huh? You don’t live here no more. You say you do, but you really don’t. You got your kids in the private schools and your wife plays the tennis and her picture’s in the paper looking very fine and everything. And I see where you been playing some golf and getting your picture taken with a lot of the guys that play for the Patriots and also forgot how they used to be black, huh?
“You don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t. You made it. What you are is actual honky, except you’re kind of dark for it. But the honkies like that, don’t they? They like havin’ a pet nigger around that they can show off when they all go down to the swimming pool, and they lie around and have all that good shit and talk about how they’re going down to Florida in a week or so but they’ll be back in time so they can go the Cape for the summer. Bullshit.”
“You know, Alfred,” Mack said, “a little of you goes a considerable distance. I think what you need is another lawyer. I sure don’t need you for a client.”
“No,” Alfred said, “now you don’t need me for a client. But back when I first came in and my mother came up with three thousand dollars that she gave you, that she hadda go and beg off of her sister, then you did. Then you had a little place that you didn’t even have a secretary and you used to run your business outta phone booths. You didn’t mind seeing me then. You did a shitty job for me of course, but you got your money and that was all, mattered to you. Now, now it’s different, because you got the money and you’re a big-ass state rep, even though you don’t live in the district, and people’re always having you around at cocktail parties and stuff and givin’ you lots of money and kissing your ass for you.”
“Okay, Alfred,” Scott said, “that’ll do it. Now why don’t you just go outside and sit down and read a magazine or something and I’ll talk to Mister Mack and see if I can make some sense out of your problem. And then if we need you again, we’ll just call you back in and we’ll ask you, all right?”
“I don’t have to leave,” Alfred said.
“No,” Scott said, “you don’t. And you don’t have to come to work tonight, or any other night. Not for me at least. And I don’t have to pay you. I had to ask Mister Mack as a special favor if he would see you on account of all the trouble that you gave him the last time, and he did me the favor and made time in his busy schedule so you could talk to him, and I took time out of mine so that I could come here with you, and you are making me think that maybe I am wasting my time and certainly wasting his. Now get the hell out of here and go outside and sit down and shut up, because I am sick of listening to you and I know he is.”
“What’re you paying him an hour?” Mack said, after Alfred had slammed the door behind him.
“Wilfrid,” Scott said, “the minimum wage is two-ninety an hour. He isn’t worth that. But his mother works fifty hours a week trying to make a living, and she doesn’t get one, and his sister works and puts her share in the pot, and I pay Alfred four bucks an hour for eight hours a day and he usually doesn’t show up less than an hour and a half late and then he sits around reading comic books all night. But I know Mavis. I knew her before she got herself tied up with Roosevelt. She lived two houses down from me in Roxbury when I was growing up. She wasn’t a very pretty girl and she wasn’t very smart, or she never would’ve gotten herself tied up with Roosevelt, but she was a good kid then and she is now. When Roosevelt left I tried to help her out, and I guess I did, some, and when Alfred was coming up for parole and he needed a job to go to, I said I would give him one. That’s all.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “Alfred is the most troublesome client I ever had. Bar none.”
“I know,” Scott said. “He’s the most unsatisfactory employee I ever had, too. You know how easy that job is? All he has to do is sit there and wait for the phone to ring at Boston City. When it does, he wakes up Herbert, who sleeps all the time, and they get in the wagon and go down there to the back door and ring the bell. The hospital people deliver the body to the door. Alfred and Herbert put it in the wagon and bring it back to my place. All they have to do is unload it and put it in the refrigerator. In the morning I come down, or Farber comes in. We do all the embalming work. Strictly delivery boys. Nothing more. Herbert sleeps and Alfred reads comic books.
“For that I pay Herbert three-fifty and Alfred four bucks an hour. I pay my accountant to do their withholding. I pay the government unemployment compensation, which I guess is my punishment for giving those two jobs. I pay Blue Cross. I pay Blue Shield. I keep the refrigerator in the basement stocked with Coca-Cola and they keep it stocked with beer and God knows what else. I hire them to work nights so I can get some sleep, and when I come downstairs in the morning there is always this sort of sharp smell in the air, as though somebody had been smoking something. Herbert is twenty-three. If things go right, he will get his high school diploma next spring. Then he wants to go to embalming school so he can be an undertaker like me. Her
bert can slam-dunk with either hand, but he couldn’t embalm a cockroach. I don’t know what Alfred wants to do, except hit Peters with a tire iron for being attentive to his sister. Who is probably encouraging it. And I only have two of them. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Is Peters white?” Mack said.
“No,” Scott said, “he isn’t. He’s from North Carolina and he apparently likes the ladies pretty well, from everything I hear. And there is nothing wrong with that, I guess.”
“There’s a lot of it going around,” Mack said. “At least if some of the things I hear are true.”
“Yeah,” Scott said, “but, well, I broke up with her, you know.”
“No shit,” Mack said. “You broke up with Gail?”
“I had to,” Scott said. “She was bugging me all the time about leaving Crystal and gettin’ a divorce and us gettin’ married, and I can’t do that, for Christ sake.”
“Good-looking woman, though,” Mack said.
“Gorgeous,” Scott said. “Dumb as a rock, though. I dunno, maybe she isn’t. Who the hell knew anything when they were twenty-four, huh? I didn’t. I know you didn’t. The hell’re you gonna do, you know? Crystal would’ve taken the house and the business and every fuckin’ penny I own, I did that. Shit, Gail’d last about a week with me, if I was broke. Gail likes money.”
“Yeah,” Mack said.
“Maybe that means she isn’t stupid,” Scott said. “Could be, I suppose. Anyway, I had to drop her. Crystal don’t make any stink, I fool around a little, sometimes I don’t come home. She knows what’s goin’ on. But if I tell her I want a divorce, that is gonna be a different thing, my friend. She will come after me with a lawyer who swims in the water and nobody else goes in when he’s taking a dip. They put bulletins on the radio. I don’t think so. I had a good time with Gail, but I’m not pushing my luck like that, pissing away everything I got. I worked too hard for it.”
“Too bad Alfred doesn’t try a little of that formula,” Mack said.
“Alfred,” Scott said, “ahh, shit. You know that stuff about his mother borrowing the money to pay you? From her sister? She didn’t. She told Alfred that, but she told me the truth.”
“I didn’t make a dime on that case,” Mack said. “I was lucky I came close to breaking even. That trial, all those hearings? Day after day I spend listening to Alfred lie to me and then going around and finding out he lied to me and going back to Alfred and having him tell me some more lies, so I can start the whole procedure again? Worst case I ever had. When he went in for sentencing and the judge asked me if I wanted to make a plea for him, I was going to ask for the death penalty. The only reason the judge gave Alfred five was because he knew me and he knew Alfred and he felt sorry for me. If it’d been somebody else representing Alfred, Alfred would’ve gotten life. Jesus, what a kid. The jury loved him.”
“I can imagine,” Scott said. “But that really was all she could raise. She had a pension she built up working as a cleaning lady in the Roslindale post office, and she cashed it in. That was all she had.”
“That,” Mack said, “and one goddamned mean kid. What the hell is bothering him, anyway?”
“Well,” Scott said, “the cop, for openers.”
“The cop, the cop,” Mack said. “The cop is the current excuse, like the previous victim was the previous excuse. Should I go and see the kid’s mother?”
“You probably should,” Scott said. “You go down there and talk to her, she might be able to throw some light on this whole thing.”
“Mavis Davis,” Mack said. “Okay, I’ll do it. Even if she does rhyme with herself.”
BILLY MALATESTA PARKED the white unmarked car next to a fireplug on Jersey Street. He shut off the headlights and sat for a moment in the dark, watching the street behind by using the rear-view mirrors, switching his gaze back to study the street in front of him. The white sign with the Red Sox logo up on the left advertised three night games with the California Angels, but Fenway Park lay in darkness with the team on the road, and there was no other automobile traffic.
Malatesta, in a blue blazer, yellow shirt, gray slacks and black loafers, got out of the car and locked it. He inspected the street again. The wholesale office furniture store was dark; there were no lights burning in the second-story warehouse rooms. A man wearing a scalley cap and a coat sat in the doorway of the loading platform near the street light, drinking every so often from a bottle in a brown bag.
Malatesta went up the street toward Fenway Park and stopped at a paneled wooden doorway illuminated by a sixty-watt bulb. There was an engraved brass plaque on the center panel of the door, under a brass lion’s-head knocker. The plaque read: Club 1812. Malatesta fished a key from his pocket and inserted it into the polished brass lock. He opened the door, entered, and closed it behind him.
The foyer of the club was carpeted with thick green plush. He wiped his feet and walked past the cigarette machine and the empty cloakroom. The main room of the club was small, able to accommodate fifteen or sixteen customers at the bar, which was set off from the dining area by a waist-high partition crowned with knurled spindles that rose to about two feet below the ceiling. The tables in the dining area had red cloths on them, with white napkins and ornate silverware at each of the place settings. The water glasses were crystal; they were turned upside down at the vacant places. There were six men eating steak and drinking Valpolicella at the table farthest to the rear, and three men hunched over a table in the middle of the room, to Malatesta’s left. They had a bottle of Canadian Club, a soda siphon and a silver ice bucket in front of them. They were examining papers.
Malatesta walked past the maître-d’s desk and into the bar area. There was a long leaded mirror behind the bar. The bartender was reading Time and absently eating olives from an old-fashioned glass. The bartender seemed to have a system: when he finished reading a page of the magazine, he ate an olive. When he finished chewing the olive, he sipped from a glass of Coca-Cola. Then he turned the page. He read whatever was on that, including automobile advertisements. He ate an olive and drank Coke. On Tuesday nights the bartender read Time. On Wednesday nights he read Newsweek. On Thursdays he read Sports Illustrated. Malatesta did not know what he read on Mondays and Fridays, or whether the weekend bartender read anything at all.
Malatesta went up to the service counter and took an olive. “Evenin’, Larry,” he said. The bartender did not look up from Time. He said, “Billy. She’s in the toilet. Got here about half an hour ago. Think she’s pissed at you.”
“She drinking?” Malatesta said.
“Nothin’ heavy,” the bartender said. “Tequila Sunrise. It’s down there. About half gone. She’s all right.”
“I’m really sorry about last Thursday, Larry,” Malatesta said.
The bartender finished a page and took an olive. He held it in his right hand and said, “Ahh, think nothin’ of it. Those things’ll happen. Nobody was pissed off.”
“She was overtired when she got here,” Malatesta said.
“That’ll do it,” the bartender said. “I wasn’t with her, night before.
“Didn’t mean anything either,” the bartender said. “Applies to everybody. Hard day at the job, no lunch maybe, get so fuckin’ pissed off you don’t even want any dinner, only thing on your mind’s a good couple of belts, huh? Happens to everybody. Dennis comes in here some nights, supposedly he’s checking on me and am I taking all his money out of the register when he’s not looking, finds out I’m not, decides he’ll maybe have himself a double Wild Turkey, and that’s when I know he’s had a piss-ass day and I’m gonna end up driving him home again. Doesn’t happen very often—guy runs four bars, he’s got some idea what happens to people when they do that, and even he still does it. Now and then. She wasn’t bad. I’ve seen a lot worse.” He ate an olive.
“See,” Malatesta said, eating an olive, “Jesus, I should stop doing this. Every time I come in here like this and start talking to you, I start doing the same th
ing you do and eat the olives.”
“Don’t agree with you?” the bartender said.
“They do going down,” Malatesta said, “but they sure don’t about three hours later, when they start coming up.”
“Never affected me that way,” the bartender said. “I was doing time, I got this terrible craving for olives. And what was that, about six years ago, I got out? Been eatin’ them ever since. Tell you, Billy, there’re times when I think I’d rather eat an olive’n a broad.” He ate an olive.
“Rather have the broad,” Malatesta said.
“Every man’s got his own twitch,” the bartender said.
“You got any pistachio nuts?” Malatesta said.
“Billy,” the bartender said, “I told you and told you: this is a class-act saloon, right? Private club. No guys in tee-shirts sittin’ around, throwing pistachio shells on the rug. Class joint. Give you some smoked almonds, you want. Those’re good. Like them almost as much’s I like olives.”
“Yeah,” Malatesta said, “but you can cream the olives off the bar here. Don’t have to account for them. Gotta pay for the almonds.”
“True,” the bartender said. “That’s another thing I kind of had the time to think about when I was in. If there is a choice between something that you like to eat that’s free, and something that you like to eat that costs you money, go with the free stuff. Makes sense. Your case, you got a different problem, because the free stuff don’t agree with you and therefore you have to eat the stuff you got to pay for.” He ate another olive. “Suppose you want a drink with it.”
“Johnny Red and soda,” Malatesta said.
“Uh-huh,” the bartender said. “Dennis was looking at that stuff the other night and how much I was ordering, and he said, ‘Jesus, old Billy’s been a regular lately, hasn’t he?’ ”
The Rat on Fire Page 7
