The Rat On Fire Part 10

"Yeah," Roscommon said.

"Thing of it is," Carbone said, "we flagged every file that Malatesta's handled, and the one they were talking about was that smoker over on Bristol that went up yesterday. So it's one of Fein's buildings, because he's the guy that owns it."

"Can we move on it?" Roscommon said.

"I don't think so," Carbone said. "Mickey doesn't think so, either. Do you, Mick?"

"No," Sweeney said, "no, I don't."

"They're liable to kill somebody, the next time," Roscommon said. "Then we'll have s.h.i.t up our nostrils for a month, turns out we expected it and we didn't do anything."

"Don't think so," Sweeney said. "Billy's very strong on that-n.o.body in the building. That's why the smoker. Drive people out. Besides, right now we can't prove it."

"You had a tail on Proctor, I thought I told you," Roscommon said.

"So what?" Carbone said. "Proctor's a handyman. There's a lot of work in those buildings for handymen. We didn't go in the bas.e.m.e.nt with him and Dannaher. We watched them stop and we watched them go in and we watched them come out in less'n ten minutes and we followed them down Dort Ave and they have a hot dog and a beer and go off someplace else. That's no arson. All they got to do is get up on their hind legs in court and say they went to fix something and they couldn't fix it and they left to go get some lunch and some more tools and then they heard it on the radio that there was a fire there so they didn't go back. Or maybe that they read it in the newspaper the next morning, when they were going back. That's no case."

"You got Billy taking money," Roscommon said.

"John," Sweeney said, "cop or no cop, the guy can borrow fifty or a hundred bucks off of another guy and that is not a crime no matter how thin you slice or how much bread you serve with it. That is baloney, and it stays baloney. If it was a crime for a cop to borrow money, we would probably all be in jail."

"He's got a girlfriend," Roscommon said.

"He drinks coffee and he eats doughnuts too, when that lippy little broad at the pastry shop will let him have one," Carbone said. "That's no crime either. Fein owns a building and it's no garden spot and he would probably like to get rid of it. Still, no crime."

"We've got to catch somebody so red-hot he'll have to talk," Sweeney said.

"I was afraid you'd say that," Roscommon said. "Good G.o.d, what chances we take with people's lives."

PROCTOR COULD HEAR Fein talking on the phone when he entered the reception area. Fein was laughing loudly in the conversation. Lois Reynolds grinned at Proctor and said, "He's on the phone. Tackles. He won't be long. Have a seat with Uncle Miltie."

"Sounds like he's in a good mood, at least," Proctor said.

"Listen," she said, "he is. But even when he isn't in a good mood, he's in a good mood when he's talking to Tackles because Tackles gives him a lot of business. Lou Black. Remember him? Played for the old Boston Yanks and then the Redskins when they moved down there. The only black football player who was white. Tackles Black."

"Oh, him," Proctor said. "Yeah. Runs the joint down there in Quincy."

"Braintree," she said. "Does an awful lot of business. We've had as many as three acts in there at once, and some of them were kind of shabby around the edges, you want the G.o.d's honest truth. But Tackles had the joint packed every night. Had them coming out the windows on Mondays, when you could park your car inside most joints without asking any of the customers to move."

"The food?" Proctor said.

"Doubt it," she said. "All I've ever seen them serve is hamburgers and pastrami and steak, the sandwiches, you know, in those little straw baskets with some pickles and a small bag of chips. I guess on weekends you can get ribs and maybe spaghetti or something like that. Don't think there is any dessert-never saw any, at least. Put it this way: you can go in there for a drink and if you get hungry, you can find something to eat, and the food's okay but it's nothing I'd call special. And it doesn't cost a lot of money, but it's not free, either. I don't think it's the food."

Another burst of laughter sounded in Fein's office.

"Big drinks?" Proctor said.

"Usual size," she said. "Usual size, usual price. People're wise to those one-quart martini outfits, where you get maybe two and a half ounces of booze and the rest is melted ice. No, what Jerry and I think it is is that people really like Tackles and when they go there the first time, he makes them feel like he's really glad to see them and he will do the best he can to make sure they have a good time. So, and they like that and they come back and they bring either some of their friends or else they tell all their friends about it, and Tackles does the same thing with them.

"He's always there," she said. "He's always been there, too. Not like some of these stars you got now, they collect a fee and ten percent of the take on a joint they maybe visited once, the day it opened. Tackles really runs that place.

"And another thing is this," she said, "and that is he has got this wonderful memory for names. If you went in there tonight and somebody introduced you, he would tell you all about his football career and show you the pictures he's got over the bar of when he was playing, and then if you didn't come in for another month, when you did, he would remember your name.

"That's important," she said. "There's too many of the joints now, that they may get Bobby Vinton one week and Wayne Newton the week after that and then they've got, oh, Don Rickles coming in. And if you went there every night they had a new act, and left sixty bucks with them, you would still be just another customer without any face on you when you came back the next time to give them sixty bucks more. People don't like that. If you asked them if they didn't like it they would probably not know what you were talking about, because they don't think about it.

"What they do instead," she said, "is forget about the places with the knockout talent and go down to Tackles', have a beer, play the pinball, see what Tackles thinks about the spread on Monday Night Football, which is on the big-screen set in the lounge, or sit there and eat a sandwich and listen to some second-rater sing Sinatra songs before some third-rater gets up and tells jokes that weren't very funny when Bob Hope told them forty years ago to Henny Youngman.

"Then the band comes on," she said, "which is usually some college kids that're picking up a few extra dollars, and you can dance if you want to because the kids are always professional musicians but just happen not to be quite as professional yet as they are going to be in a few years. They are getting some experience, and while they are getting it, Tackles never tries to cheat them, always pays them union scale at least, and he promotes his acts in the local papers and the radio, so that also makes them feel good as well. A lot of our best acts in the area got their start and their experience at Tackles', and I will tell you something: they remember him just as well as he remembers them. You get some guy that's now at the Music Tent on the Cape warming up a crowd for Tony Bennett or somebody like that, he can get top money around here now, but if he gets a slow week a month or two down the road, he will call up and tell Jerry to ask Tackles if he wants one of the graduates for union scale. Tackles has got a lot of friends."

"Sounds like he must," Proctor said. "Wished I did."

"Ahh," she said, "no use worrying about it." Fein was roaring his conversation into the phone. "It's a gift," she said. "Now, you take somebody like Jerry. I worked for him for almost twenty years. He's a nice guy. I know him, and he's a nice guy. He would do anything to help out a friend of his.

"But Jerry," she said, "Jerry's got a lot of clients that he's had for a long time, but he doesn't have all that many friends. Jerry just doesn't make friends very easy. He plays the golf with Max Winch.e.l.l, and he has a drink with Max Winch.e.l.l when they finish playing the golf, but that's it. I bet the two of them've been members at the same club for fifteen years or so, and they've been playing golf all that time. But they're not friends. They don't do anything else together. I know Max's divorced because Jerry said something about it a while ago, but they never did anything together with their wives when Max was still married. 'Course, Jerry got married late, and Pauline's pretty young for somebody like Max's ex-wife, so maybe that could be it, I don't know. But, and most of the people Jerry represents, you know, he's been handling for years. He's done a good job for them, although they're show business people and a lot of them may not think that because they always think it's their agent's fault or their manager's fault that they never got booked in to do a month headlining at Caesars Palace or the Sands. Never crosses their mind that maybe they're just not good enough, or it's the breaks in this game just like in every other one.

"Pauline was like that when she was singing," Lois said. "I was always surprised he ended up marrying her, because she used to b.i.t.c.h all the time about the only thing he could get her was club dates in Fitchburg, but I guess he was really in love with her and he just decided he would take it. Pauline couldn't sing very good. She looked good-she was a real knockout when she was younger, but she wouldn't strip. She was a singer. I don't know-maybe he married her so he wouldn't have the aggravation of representing her."

Fein opened the door of his office and stuck his head out. "You coming in, Leo?" he said.

"That Tackles," Fein said. "Lois ever tell you about Tackles? That guy is the G.o.dd.a.m.nedest guy I ever met. And he is smart, too. He may not be the brightest light I ever saw, but you know how it is, you see some football player that is starting up a club, and you figure he must've played a few games without his helmet. And in Braintree, for Christ sake? Who the h.e.l.l, a genius couldn't make a club go in Braintree.

"Tackles did it," Fein said. "Him and his partner, they went ahead and they did it. Even when they had to shut down the operation for a while, they made it go."

"Who's his partner?" Proctor said.

"Well," Fein said, shutting the door, "not many people know this, because Tackles is the up-front guy and everything with Buddy's strictly hush-hush, but ..."

"Buddy Kelley," Proctor said.

"Yeah," Fein said. "See, Buddy had the money, but there was no way he could get the license for the booze, so Tackles comes in and he has the name and gets the cabaret thing like nothing, and they're in business. Couple of smart cookies. Only time they had any interruption was when the guy who comes in once a week to tell them there is something funny with the phones, and when they get that information, they, Buddy does his business somewhere else until the guy tells him it's all clear again. And the only thing the cops get on those tapes is orders for beer and conversations about the weather. I tell you, Leo, if you're smart and you take no chances, you can do all right in this world. Not even the IRS can get them-they do so much legitimate business in the club there's no tax thing there at all. It's beautiful."

"I'm glad to hear somebody else's making out," Proctor said. "How're we doing?"

"On what?" Fein said.

"On being the Camp Fire Girls, for Christ sake," Proctor said. "How're we doing? Lemme have the details."

"Great," Fein said. "Spent the whole day playing golf, there's no way in the world anybody can get hold of me because the only one who knows where I am is Lois, and she's out buying trucks or something. I get home around quarter-eight, Pauline tells me the cops're coming, there's been a fire. It's these two young kids who'd probably trade a razor back and forth because neither one needs it except every other day and there's no use wasting money. They tell me it looks as though somebody stacked a whole bunch of oily rags next to the coal bin and there was a lot of smoke and everything, but n.o.body was hurt so that is good. And they tell me it looks as though somebody was trying to burn the building down.

"I go into my song-and-dance routine about the f.u.c.kin' n.i.g.g.e.rs destroying the place," Fein said. "They bought it. Then I had another idea, which I thought was a pretty good one. I tell them, which is the truth, that I'm surprised they even went to the trouble of setting something. All the trouble I had with them the past couple years sticking pennies in the fuse box so they can overload the wiring and overheat it at the same time, I'm surprised they didn't just do that and burn the place flat with no trouble at all, and I would even have to pay for the juice.

"I tell them: 'That is not a new building. I can't afford, on the rent I don't get, to rewire that whole building. I can't go in every apartment every night, every hour on the hour, and make sure they haven't got a toaster and a broiler oven and a window fan and the television set and three lamps plugged into six extension cords all plugged in to the same socket, and if they don't burn the place down on purpose, they will probably burn it down with their G.o.dd.a.m.ned radios and record players and tape decks and portable dishwashers, and by the way, how do all those welfare n.i.g.g.e.rs get all those fancy goods, huh?'

"They loved it," Fein said. "They ate it right up. Wrote it all down. Pauline sat there almost crying, she felt so sorry for me and all my troubles."

"She doesn't know, then," Proctor said.

"Are you kidding?" Fein said. "Pauline's crowding forty and she looks like she's twenty-five. She wants a little face lift, I bought her a little nip and tuck. Her tush is tight and she's got great b.o.o.bs and in bed, well, I don't need to waste my time jogging to keep my weight down. But I don't tell her none of my business. I would rather eat her cooking'n tell her my business, and about her cooking I will tell you that I am glad they make all that frozen c.r.a.p now. I'll take my chances with the preservatives and stuff-it's better'n risking getting f.u.c.kin' poisoned."

"Okay then," Proctor said, "Billy Malatesta did his job."

"Malatesta wasn't with them," Fein said.

"Naturally he wasn't," Proctor said. "Malatesta's kind of a jerk when it comes to women, but he's not dumb enough to do the actual investigation of this himself. He sent you two dummies, two rookies, so you could set them up. And it sounds like you did. I'd kick his a.s.s for him if his tracks showed up on one of those reports."

"I didn't think of that," Fein said.

"Okay then," Proctor said, "I'm gonna pop the thing tomorrow morning, soon's you give me the rest of the money, that is."

"No," Fein said. "Wait till Monday."

"Why Monday?" Proctor said. "I got a cage full of rats in my cellar. I got other people living in my house. One of them goes down in that bas.e.m.e.nt, he's liable to wonder what other kind of house pets I got in mind. I get up in the morning and I have to go down the cellar and practically take my life in my hands getting fish guts and dog food into the cage. I got Dannaher and I got to prop him up like he was a wall that somebody put up and they forgot the studs. This's Thursday. Why the h.e.l.l wait till Monday?"

"Because I had another visitor," Fein said. "Mister Wilfrid Mack. State Senator Wilfrid Mack."

"I don't know him," Proctor said. "The h.e.l.l's he got to do with this?"

"Mack's district," Fein said. "He's black. Bristol Road's in his district. He's worried about his voters. About his voters getting hurt when they live in my building and my building burns up. One of them, who pays her rent, actually, came to him last night and said her kid was sleeping in there when the fire started in the bas.e.m.e.nt and she's worried about staying there."

"What'd you tell him?" Proctor said.

"Same thing I told the cops," Fein said. "I told him: 'Look, Senator, you and me're getting well acquainted here, and I figure I can talk straight to you. I can't guarantee the safety of the tenants in my building as long as those tenants are in that building. Somebody set that G.o.dd.a.m.ned fire. Obviously somebody got into that building and set that fire in the cellar. Now I have to hire some people to go in there and clean up the smoke and the water damage and fix whatever needs fixing. If it was somebody that came in from the outside, that probably means new locks on the doors. Maybe even a new door. If it was somebody that was already in the building, new locks aren't going to do any good anyway because he will still be inside the building after I put the new locks on.'

"Now," Fein said, "now I laid it on him. 'From the cops I understand,' I said, 'that there was only one person in the building yesterday that anybody saw, and that was Mavis Davis's son Alfred. He's not supposed to be in there. He's a bad kid, if he's the kid I think he is, and I wouldn't be surprised if old Alfred had something to do with that fire. What was he doing in there?'

"Mack tells me the Davis kid was resting after working all night," Fein said. "We had some more back and forth. Finally Mack decides to threaten me. 'I think, Mister Fein,' he says in his best voice, 'I think I will have to advise my const.i.tuents to move out of your building until you can a.s.sure me that they need not fear for their safety. Of course you need not expect any rent until they can safely return to their apartments.'

" 'Mister Mack,' I said, 'that is the best news I had all day. You tell them to move out. You tell them that the minute they move out, considering that most of them haven't paid their rent in quite a while, those apartments are presumed vacant, and I can rent them to anybody who wants them.'

" 'I doubt anyone will want them, if living in them amounts to living in danger,' he says.

" 'If Alfred is out,' I say, 'maybe they won't be.' So after all of this, where we come out is that they will be out by Sunday night at the latest. And then you can go in there on Monday night and light the thing off, because Mack is right and even when they are out, n.o.body that will pay his rent will want to live in that building, and I will collect the insurance."

"Jerry," Proctor said, "there are times, right? There are times when I think every man should do some time, just so he understands some things about things and does not go around doing dumb things which will get him in the can and a lot of time inside to think about them."

"What do you mean?" Fein said.

"I mean that you have just f.u.c.ked everything up, if we wait till Monday," Proctor said. "On Monday all the tenants're out of the building, right?"

"Right," Fein said.

"You told the cops from the fire marshal's office about overloads on the wiring, and how you wouldn't be surprised if that started a fire, right?"

"Right," Fein said. "Jesus Christ, Leo, we're gonna make it look like a wiring overload. That's what you told me with them rats. I got them all prepped to say that's what it was."

"When there's n.o.body living in the building," Proctor said, "who overloaded the wiring?"

Fein did not say anything.

"Now," Proctor said, "you have got us in the cream where we have got to make those rats uncomfortable before the tenants pack up and get out. While their toasters and their other electrical goodies are still all plugged in to the six extension cords that come off the same outlet. Don't we, Jerry?"

"Yeah," Fein said.

"Everybody in that building works or goes someplace during the day," Proctor said. "That kid being in there was a freak thing. We're gonna light her off tomorrow morning, and hope for the best."

When Proctor left Fein's office with an envelope of money in his pocket, Lois smiled at him and said, "Is Jerry clear now?"

"Yup," Proctor said. "Far as I know, at least. But he's not in a good mood anymore."

"ACCORDING TO MAVIS," Scott said to Mack in Scott's office at the funeral home on Friday afternoon, "he never did go to work last night. I wouldn't know myself, because I went to bed. That is what I hired Herbert and Alfred to permit me to do: go to bed. They don't have any real duties except to sit there and drive the wagon to Boston City when some poor fellow runs out of the will to live or something. If everybody makes it through the night, Herbert and Alfred didn't have anything to do. When somebody didn't make it, they generally got there before he turned spoiled and got him back here in the freezer in time to chill enough for me to bother working on in the morning. But if there were no deaths, they had nothing to do.

"Mavis took the job a lot more seriously than Alfred did," Scott said. "Which maybe shows that Alfred after all was smarter than his mother, although it sure didn't show up so that you couldn't miss it. Anyway," he said, "when she got up to go to work this morning, Alfred was in bed.

"Alfred was not supposed to be in bed already when Mavis and Selene got up for school and work. When Alfred reported for work, and stayed for work, Alfred got home just in time to have breakfast with them. Then he either went to bed and slept all day so he could raise h.e.l.l all night, or else he went down to the corner to do what Mavis persists in calling 'talking to the other kids.' I'm more inclined to think that the best he did was loafing and the worst he did involved stolen cars, but those are mere suspicions.

"Mavis woke Alfred up and asked him when he got home from work. Alfred had not been to work. Alfred never came in here last night. He told Mavis he had not felt well on the way to work, so he turned around and came home and went to bed after she had gone to sleep.

"That," Scott said, "is bulls.h.i.t, of course. Alfred just got himself distracted on the way to work at the Scott Funeral Home. It's happened before, for hours at a time. Sometimes it's a foxy chick, and sometimes it's something you can drink, or smoke, or snort, or steal and sell for money. Officer Peters has also been a reason for Alfred to take a little paid vacation from the Scott Funeral Home. Alfred likes, liked, his vacations. He would use any excuse at all to take one, and Herbert would get somebody at the hospital to help him load the service wagon, and get the load down here on the gurney all by himself. Herbert never complains, of course, because every so often Herbert forgets that he's supposed to be at work, and Alfred covers for him.

"Whether Mavis actually believed what Alfred told her," Scott said, "I do not know and I am not going to ask. She gave him a good chewing out and told him he smelled as though he had been drinking quite a lot. He said he was upset about Selene and Peters. Then she made breakfast for herself and Selene and tried to wake Alfred up again, but couldn't do it. So she made up her mind that she would show a little responsibility at least, and she and Selene left the building. Alfred was still sleeping."

"Apparently everybody else left the building, too," Mack said.

"Sure," Scott said. "The people who do this kind of thing make a few plans at least. They know it's one thing to torch a building, but it's quite another thing to burn somebody to death. Insurance fraud is fairly minor, next to murder. The trouble is, they had too much faith in the regularity of Alfred's habits. Alfred wasn't regular in anything. If they'd only called me up, I could've filled them in."

"Was he badly burned?" Mack said.

"He was scarcely burned at all," Scott said. "Apparently when the fire started, the smoke and the noise and the heat woke him up. He got out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants, and went to the door. He opened it, but the flames were in the hallway by then. I say this because his jeans were scorched on the front and he had some minor burns on his stomach. He didn't have a shirt on.

"He went to the kitchen window on the fire escape," Scott said. "Now there were people who saw this, because they'd already sounded two alarms and the third was going off. The people on the ground, the firemen and the cops and the news people, saw him at the window. Until that instant they thought there was n.o.body in the building, because they'd gone through it pretty well, banging on doors and getting no answers. When Alfred slept one off, he slept well.

"Alfred got the window open. Even if he'd had the presence of mind to shut the door to the hall, the door had burned through, because there were flames in back of him. The people on the ground said he got the window open and got out on the fire escape and the fire came right after him."

"There must have been a draft by then," Mack said.

"Of course," Scott said. "The people said the whole d.a.m.ned thing was just a sheet of flame. Alfred got on the fire escape. The bolts let go-I suppose it hadn't been tested in fifty years, which would not surprise me-and down he went, fire escape and all. It was the fall that killed him."

"Three stories is not a bad drop," Mack said.

"It is if you're the guy that's dropping," Scott said. "Anyway, that's all I know. Except that for the next couple nights, Alfred will be at the Scott Funeral Home."

"Poor Mavis," Mack said.

"Poor Mavis, h.e.l.l," Scott said. "She's had a hard life before this. She'll make it through this one. What I want to know is what you're going to do."

"I've already done it," Mack said. "The Attorney General said he appreciated my call, and that the investigation was already well under way."

DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT INSPECTOR John Roscommon entered the green-painted interrogation room and closed the door deliberately behind him. Carbone and Sweeney watched the back of his blue blazer, and Dannaher stared at the floor. Roscommon shut the door so that the latch did not click. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling, under the textured Plexiglas, hissed every so often.