The Rat on Fire

by George V. Higgins

  “Oh,” Mack said.

  “And there is another thing they will not do,” Fein said, “which is one of the reasons that I cannot accomplish a lot of the things that they would like me to do, and that is this: your constituents will not pay their rent.” Fein came out of the chair and started waving his arms. He was not quite screaming, but he was close.

  “Senator,” he said, “they refuse to pay their fucking rent. They want me to run the fucking Ritz Carlton for them, at a hundred thirty-five a month, and when they find out that I cannot run the fucking Ritz for them for that money, they get mad at me. So they do not even pay me the hundred thirty-five. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? Am I running a goddamned seamen’s mission over there? Is that what the goddamned hell I am doing?

  “I tell you, Senator,” he said, “I can’t afford it. I didn’t know that was what I was going to be doing, when I bought into that real estate. I thought I was going to be renting apartments to people who would be pleased to get an apartment. I thought maybe they would not go around knocking holes in the walls and throwing garbage in the yard, and stuff like that. You want to know from exterminators? I ought to adopt one. I get the rats out. The rats come right back, and I don’t blame them. Any rat that would stay around some other building, when he could stay around my building, is nuts. No self-respecting rat would go anywhere else. ‘You got any sense, Rat, go over Bristol Road and eat like you were a king. Just bug out when you see the exterminator truck. Then come right back.’

  “Which,” Fein said, “is exactly what the fuckers do. Because your constituents, who do not pay the rent, throw the garbage out in the yard.”

  “The woman who asked me to talk to you,” Mack said, “is Mavis Davis.”

  “Mavis is different,” Fein said immediately. “Mavis is a hardworking woman. What I said don’t apply to her. She was living in that building when I bought it, and I have never had any trouble whatsoever with her. I wished I had a hundred like her. Her fuckin’ kid I could do without.”

  “Alfred,” Mack said.

  “I don’t know what his name is,” Fein said. “I met him once and I was completely satisfied. He is a nasty little prick which the world would be better off without.”

  “I don’t think I want to comment on that,” Mack said. “Do you believe you could do something for your tenants that would maybe get them off my back? I hate to impose.”

  “Like what?” Fein said.

  “If you could just get rid of the rats,” Mack said.

  “As a personal favor,” Fein said, “as a personal favor, I will do my best.”

  “SCARED THE LIVING shit out of him,” Proctor said to Malatesta at the Scandinavian Pastry Shop. “Told him if he didn’t come through, pronto, I was gonna dump him.”

  “Did he come through?” Malatesta said.

  “Sure did,” Proctor said. “I get out there in Framingham this morning, there’s old Tiger Mike Fogarty, got his yellow suit on and he’s loaded for bear. ‘You Proctor?’ he says. ‘I’m Proctor,’ I say. ‘I’m Fogarty,’ he says, ‘I’m yer gawddamned lawyer. Keep yer mouth shut and don’t say nothin’.’ I tell you, Billy, tied the guys up in knots. That trooper didn’t know whether he was coming or going, and by the time Tiger Mike got through with him, he didn’t much care.”

  “Get bound over, the grand jury?” Malatesta said.

  “Lemme think,” Proctor said, laughing. “ ‘Driving Under,’ right? No evidence I was driving. They had a charge of ‘Wading Under the Influence,’ they would have had me. But that’s not against the law, and the cop didn’t see me driving. ‘Driving So’s To Endanger?’ Same thing. Cop didn’t see me driving. ‘Drunk?’ They don’t indict you for being drunk. And they were gonna make me enroll in that temperance thing they got, where you learn about all the bad things happen, you drive when you’re stiff, except they can’t make you go to the meetings unless they catch you driving drunk, which they didn’t, me.”

  “I thought you said some things,” Malatesta said.

  “I did,” Proctor said.

  Mickey and Don entered the pastry shop together, both sweating in their green uniforms from the summer night. “Goddamned pork,” Mickey said. “I hate carrying pork. There isn’t one foot of the way, I don’t start thinking about that goddamned pork, this time of the year.”

  “I had corn,” Don said. “Least the unit wasn’t on. Easier when it’s just crates.” They took stools and both of them ordered coffee. The waitress explained that the cream was not real.

  “Look,” Mickey said, “I heard that before. And I put my own sugar in. I know that, too. Just gimme the coffee, all right?”

  “Mister,” she said, “I have to tell people that. It’s my job.”

  “Bring the damned coffee,” Mickey said.

  “The thing of it is,” Proctor said, “as Tiger Mike reminds the judge, what I said don’t matter unless the arresting officer says something first.”

  “Oh, oh,” Malatesta said.

  “Which,” Proctor said, “he did not.”

  “Something like: ‘I’m a police officer,’ ” Malatesta said.

  “And,” Proctor said, “ ‘anything you say may be taken down and used against you as evidence in a trial in a court of law. You have a right to remain silent. If you do say anything …’ ”

  “I’m familiar with it,” Malatesta said.

  “Well,” Proctor said, “the elephant never did that. And when Tiger Mike got him on the stand, all he could do was show him the waiver I signed in the station, when I was still trying to get ahold of Four-flusher Fein. Except, I didn’t say anything after I signed that waiver. The case got blown out like a tornado went through it.”

  “What’d Fogarty cost you?” Malatesta said.

  “Nothing,” Proctor said. “Fogarty cost me nothing. What Fogarty cost Fein I do not know, and I didn’t ask, either. I’m not gonna ask.”

  “Hey, lady,” Mickey said to the waitress, “you got any blueberry Danish tonight?”

  She snapped her gum. “I’ll check,” she said.

  “Now,” Proctor said, “tomorrow morning I’m gonna light off a little one.”

  “There’s people in there, Leo,” Malatesta said.

  “This is why it’s gonna be a little one, Billy,” Proctor said. “Just a little one. Won’t do anybody any harm. Won’t do nobody no bodily harm. Just a little smoke and stuff, get the fuckers pull the alarms and evacuate the fucking building. Any kind of luck, enough damage so they won’t want to move back in.”

  “What’s the explanation gonna be?” Malatesta said.

  “For you?” Proctor said. “Wiring. No sweat.”

  “There ain’t no Danish, mister,” the waitress said to Mickey.

  “No Danish,” Mickey said.

  “No Danish,” the waitress said.

  “No Danish at all,” Mickey said.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “You got a boyfriend?” Mickey said.

  “What business’s that of yours?” she said.

  “Will you shut up, Mickey?” Don said.

  “Why the hell should I shut up?” Mickey said. “I asked the lady a civil question. I come in here, night after night, and she hasn’t got any Danish. All I want’s a goddamned Danish. I’m not tryin’ to get her pants off.”

  “Will you please shut up?” Don said.

  “No,” Mickey said, “I will not shut up.”

  “Excuse me a minute, Leo,” Malatesta said. He stood up and walked over to Mickey and Don. He stood behind them. He said, “Sir, I’m a police officer, and you’re creating a disturbance. Why don’t you quiet down and save everybody a lot of trouble?”

  Mickey spun the stool and looked at Malatesta. “You’re a police officer, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Malatesta said, “I’m a cop.”

  Mickey looked him up and down. “You don’t look like a fuckin’ cop,” he said. “You look like somebody that sells brushes, or brooms or something.”

&nb
sp; “You wanna see my badge?” Malatesta said.

  “Yeah” Mickey said, “I wanna see your goddamned badge.”

  Malatesta displayed his badge. “Be goddamned,” Mickey said. “Badge 1412, you believe that? Guy really is a cop.”

  “Now,” Don said, “will you leave this kid alone?”

  “Yup,” Mickey said. “Miss, could I have a honey-dipped doughnut?”

  “IT WAS REALLY quite simple,” Walter Scott told Wilfrid Mack. “Alfred was due at my place at eleven. He was only an hour late. There wasn’t any work, and Herbert was taking his nap in the cellar, face-down on his comic book. I didn’t think anything about it. When Alfred’s only an hour late, I figure it must be a national holiday, showing me some special consideration. Doesn’t bother me at all. The later Alfred is, the less chance there is he’ll set the place on fire, drop his joint in a display casket or something.

  “Mavis called me,” he said. “Must’ve been close to two in the morning by then. ‘I need some help,’ she said. I was mostly asleep. At first I thought it was somebody calling from the Southern Mortuary for a pick-up. Pissed me off. Those guys’ve got the regular number. There’s no need to wake me up. That’s what I have Herbert and Alfred and the station wagon for, along with the business number: so I can have a decent night’s sleep. It was okay, I got waked up when I first started and I was building the business, but I’m gettin’ along in years now, and I need my rest. Man my age.

  “I was kind of grumpy,” Scott said in Mack’s office. “I was more than half asleep, and I wanted to be all asleep, which I had been until the damned phone rang. So I said, ‘Call the regular number. You guys know the regular number. Call that. I got two kids to handle this kind of thing at this hour.’

  “Then it hits me,” Scott said. “I never heard of any women working the early shift at the Southern Mortuary. Now I admit, it’s been a while. There’s women all over the place, doing things I never heard of women doing. I’ve had kids down in the cellar for several years, handling the early-morning stuff. ‘Pick ’em up and stick ’em in the icebox. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning, and I’ll see the customer in the morning too.’ How do I know if they got a woman working the early shift at the Southern? I haven’t taken a call from the Southern on the early in years. But it’s still kind of hard for me to imagine. I say, ‘Who is this?’ Because generally when somebody calls for a hearse, they do not say that they need help. That is not what they usually say. See, I was starting to wake up.

  “ ‘Mavis,’ she says,” Scott said. “ ‘Mavis Davis.’ By now I am pretty much awake. At least I am not trying to figure out when they started hiring fine ladies at the Southern to work the early. ‘Mavis,’ I say, ‘the hell’s the matter?’ ‘You know where Alfred is?’ she says. ‘In the basement, I guess,’ I say. ‘He’s supposed to be in the basement anyway. I didn’t check, but then I never do. He comes in at night and he goes out in the morning. I don’t pay much attention to him. I pay him once a week and that is that. Why? You think he’s somewhere else?’

  “ ‘I know where he is,’ she says. ‘He’s down at the station house.’

  “ ‘Oh,’ I said,” Scott said.

  “ ‘He is down at the station house,’ she said, ‘and they have locked him up and he has to go to court in the morning at ten, and I don’t know Wilfrid’s home phone, now that he moved.’

  “ ‘Oh,’ I said,” Scott said, “because I was still waking up and everything, of course.

  “ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He is down at the station house and he is in a cell and they will not let him out unless somebody goes there and brings a bondsman. And he probably ought to have a lawyer.’ ”

  “Wonderful,” Mack said.

  “Yes,” Scott said. “I thought I was employing the kid and doing his mother a favor because she is an old friend, and now I find out I apparently adopted the pair of them. This was not what I had in mind.”

  “No,” Mack said.

  “ ‘Mavis,’ I say to her,” Scott said, “ ‘I can’t call Wilfrid at this hour of the morning and tell him to go down to the station house and get Alfred out. Wilfrid is most likely sleeping. Wilfrid needs his sleep as well. He is a busy man, and he cannot be running around all over hell and gone all night and expect to do anything the next day. He needs his rest. Besides, if Alfred has to have Wilfrid come down and do something for him, Alfred is going to have to come up with some money, same as any other nigger.’ ”

  “Good for you,” Mack said.

  “I said, ‘Mavis, Alfred is a considerable amount of trouble to most of the people that know him, and Mister Mack is one of those people. Alfred gave Mister Mack a ration of shit the other day, and I know because I was present. Mister Mack is not going to take kindly to me calling him while he is trying to get a good night’s sleep, to go fish Alfred out of the can. Besides which, nobody can probably fish Alfred out of the can at this hour of the morning anyway. He will have to do the best he can, and when the sun comes up you go down and see if the judge will let him out. But it is not a good idea to call Mister Mack at home at this hour.

  “What time was it?” Mack said.

  “About two-thirty,” Scott said. “By now I was just about awake. So I said to her, ‘Mavis, are you telling me that the only person I have in the basement, to go and get somebody who turns up dead between now and sunrise, is that dope-head, Herbert?’ And she says, ‘I don’t know who’s in your basement, but Alfred is in jail.’

  “ ‘Jesus Christ, Mavis,’ I said,” Scott said, “ ‘what in the goddamned hell did the little bastard do this time, when he was supposed to be sittin’ in my cellar and waiting for somebody to die that needs to get picked up?’ And she says, ‘He went down to the store and he waited for Selene to get off work and Officer Peters came around. And that is what Alfred was waiting for.’ ”

  “Oh, my God,” Mack said.

  “It gets worse,” Scott said. “I said, ‘Mavis, not that I’m asking what Alfred did, because I’m not sure I want to know, but what the hell did Alfred do?’ ”

  “What did Alfred do?” Mack said.

  “It seems that Alfred may have had a tire iron,” Scott said.

  “On the assumption that Alfred had a tire iron,” Mack said, “is there any theory as to what he did with it?”

  “There is,” Scott said. “It seems to be a little more than a theory, actually, but I leave that to your trained legal mind.”

  “Thank you,” Mack said. “I’m not a bit sure I appreciate it, but your courtesy’s appreciated.”

  “Could you embalm a high mucky-mucky-muck of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks?” Scott said.

  “Not successfully,” Mack said.

  “No,” Scott said. “I will do the pickling and leave the lawyering to you.

  “It appears,” Scott said, “that when Selene Davis came out of that store in her little uniform with the short skirt and the reasonable impression from the eye of the observer that she was not wearing any underwear, Officer Peters arrived in his cruiser. That was all he did, as near as I can tell. Peters and his partner showed up at the store just as Selene was getting off work. They could’ve been there for a cup of coffee, or they could’ve been there because Peters had some plans for Selene. I don’t know, and neither does anybody else.

  “Alfred,” Scott said, “was in the alley. With his tire iron. Alfred started yelling when he saw Selene coming out of the store and Peters getting out of the car. This was a mistake.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mack said. “The way I get it so far, only three things’ve happened. Selene comes out of the store. Peters comes out of the cruiser. Alfred comes out of the alley.”

  “Right,” Scott said. “Alfred is supposed to be sitting in my cellar, waiting for the phone to ring so he can wake up Herbert and the two of them can go get a stiff, but Alfred instead is in the alley with his tire iron.”

  “Now Alfred is out of the alley,” Mack said.

  “He is certainly
out of the alley,” Scott said. “And he is howling like a fellow who has lost his mind. The trouble is that what he is howling is what he is about to do to Officer Peters for messing around with his sister, with this tire iron that he happens to have with him.”

  “Good,” Mack said. “What did he do?”

  “Well,” Scott said, “as you know, and I know much better’n you, Alfred is not the most successful brother on the earth. He is not much better with a tire iron and a cop than he is with reporting to work on time, which if he had done it, he would not have gotten in this scrape with the cop that he was charging with the tire iron.

  “Peters’s partner,” Scott said, “saw Alfred coming out of the alley and waving the tire iron, and he got out of that cruiser right smart. Alfred was on the way to giving Peters a couple hard licks upside the head when Cole tackled him around the knees and brought him down. Alfred thought it would be a good idea to get loose of Cole by hitting him with the tire iron.”

  “Alfred is just full of good ideas,” Mack said.

  “This was not one of them,” Scott said. “Cole knows a hell of a lot more about hand-to-hand combat than Alfred does. Alfred ended up without his tire iron, and with a large number of bumps and bruises and cuts. Alfred, in other words, had the livin’ shit beat out of him.”

  “Good,” Mack said.

  “It gets better,” Scott said. “According to Mavis, once Cole’d quieted Alfred down by whacking his head against the pavement a few times, Peters gave him a kick or two just for good measure. Then they cuffed him and heaved him in the back seat and drove him down to the station and locked him up. And all the time, of course, Selene was standing there and screaming.”