The Rat On Fire Part 3

"All right," Alfred said, "my sister, right? My sister Selene. Now my sister Selene, she is only seventeen years old, all right? She don't hang out. She goes to school every day and she gets all A's and B's and she helps my mother and she works on the weekends and at nights down at the twenty-four-hour store. She comes home nights with that f.u.c.kin' purple slush all over her uniform and she's so tired she can't hardly say anything, and she sits up there and she studies and next year she's gonna go to Boston State and maybe after that she's gonna be a lawyer like you, Mister Mack. And this guy, this Peters guy, he is buggin' her all the time and askin' her to go out with him and he's a married man. He won't leave her alone."

"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 s.h.i.t. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' 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 s.h.i.t 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 f.u.c.kin' 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 n.o.body 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 s.h.i.t 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 s.h.i.t 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 n.i.g.g.e.r around that they can show off when they all go down to the swimming pool, and they lie around and have all that good s.h.i.t 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. Bulls.h.i.t."

"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 s.h.i.tty 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-a.s.s state rep, even though you don't live in the district, and people're always having you around at c.o.c.ktail parties and stuff and givin' you lots of money and kissing your a.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 bas.e.m.e.nt stocked with Coca-Cola and they keep it stocked with beer and G.o.d 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. Herbert can slam-dunk with either hand, but he couldn't embalm a c.o.c.kroach. 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 s.h.i.t," 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 h.e.l.l knew anything when they were twenty-four, huh? I didn't. I know you didn't. The h.e.l.l're you gonna do, you know? Crystal would've taken the house and the business and every f.u.c.kin' penny I own, I did that. s.h.i.t, 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 n.o.body 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, p.i.s.sing 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, s.h.i.t. 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned mean kid. What the h.e.l.l 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 bra.s.s plaque on the center panel of the door, under a bra.s.s lion's-head knocker. The plaque read: Club 1812. Malatesta fished a key from his pocket and inserted it into the polished bra.s.s 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 part.i.tion 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 gla.s.ses 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 maitre-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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s of Coca-Cola. Then he turned the page. He read whatever was on that, including automobile advertis.e.m.e.nts. He ate an olive and drank c.o.ke. On Tuesday nights the bartender read Time. On Wednesday nights he read Newsweek. On Thursdays he read Sports Ill.u.s.trated. 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 p.i.s.sed 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. n.o.body was p.i.s.sed 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 f.u.c.kin' p.i.s.sed 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 p.i.s.s-a.s.s 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 thing 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 cla.s.s-act saloon, right? Private club. No guys in tee-shirts sittin' around, throwing pistachio sh.e.l.ls on the rug. Cla.s.s 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?' "

"You can tell old Dennis," Malatesta said, "that if I wasn't a regular in here for a lot of years, and got to like the guy against my better judgment, he might've had a lot of time to think about what he likes to eat, back when his joint on Route Twenty went up about seven years ago. Might've gotten to liking olives."

"I don't think I'll tell him that," the bartender said. He straightened up. "You want to tell him that, you tell him that. You and him're in charge of that matter. I'll just get you your drink and your nuts."

The bartender returned with Malatesta's order. He resumed reading. He ate an olive.

"Jesus Christ," Malatesta said. "What the f.u.c.k is she doing in that ladies' room? She look sick or something when she went in?"

"She did, I didn't notice it," the bartender said. "You know something?" He turned the magazine around so that Malatesta could read it. "That Cheryl Tiegs there, she is one fine-lookin' broad. I had a crack at her, I might forget about the olives."

"Yeah," Malatesta said. "How long's she been in there?"

"Marion?" the bartender said. "Dunno. Haven't been timing her. Went in just before you came, I guess. Ten, fifteen minutes."

"She look happy when she was out here?" Malatesta said.

"Happy as she ever does," the bartender said. He ate an olive and sipped Coca-Cola. "h.e.l.l of a lot happier'n she did last Thursday, anyway."

"She was p.i.s.sed at me because I stood her up Wednesday," Malatesta said.

"That'll do it," the bartender said. "My second wife was like that. Jesus, what a temper she had when something got f.u.c.ked up."

"That's what happened to me, Wednesday," Malatesta said. "I got tied up. Told her on Tuesday that I'd see her here on Wednesday, I don't show up on Wednesday and when I do show up on Thursday she's like a barrel of tigers."

"Maybe she was gettin' her period," the bartender said. "That always makes them jumpy."

"Yeah," Malatesta said.

"You got to be philosophical about it," the bartender said. "Ten percent of the time, all women're nuts. You want to know something? I am now separated from my third wife. Threw me out. She wants one of those things that, what do they call them, the things that watch the television for you and then when you get home you can see what was on when you were out. And I say to her, 'That's ridiculous. When're you out? You're home every night. Program comes on, watch it. Free.' See, she went back to work this year, she decided they were probably going to foreclose onna house if she didn't. Which was true. And it is her house. And she is all over me like a new suit. Shows she wants to watch're the soap operas, and they're on while she's up the K-Mart sellin' dingbats to dingbats or something. And I say to her, I say, 'Hey, you want to keep the house, keep the house. It's your house. Your first husband bought it. My name ain't on it. I kick in my share. I do the best I can. Forget it. I'll live inna apartment. You can stay home all day and watch the soaps. I got two other women I'm supportin' for life. You want to lose the house, lose the house. Get offa my back.'

"See," the bartender said, "I'm not as dumb as I look. I get her that thing, she's going to tape all the soaps and I want to watch a football game on my day off or something, she'll be watching some soap that was on Friday. It's her television, so I won't be able to say anything, and I'm going to end up spending Sat.u.r.day and Sunday in some other barroom, which does not happen to be my idea of a couple days off a week from working in a barroom. But I am not as smart as I think I am, either, because she tells me she can get one of those TV recorder things with the employee's discount for about six hundred bucks, and I say, 's.h.i.t, I can get you one on the street for three hundred, but I won't do it.' So she throws me out."

"Sorry to hear it," Malatesta said.

The bartender shrugged. "Hey, I been eighty-sixed out of better situations'n that. I'm just telling you, you'd better think a few times more about the lady in the powder room, is all."

"The h.e.l.l do you mean?" Malatesta said.

"You got the same weakness I got," the bartender said. "Difference is, I know about my weakness and I can control it. You can't control yours. That broad, no offense meant, is young and she is good-looking and she wants what she wants when she wants it. You know she made a speech in here Thursday night, 'fore you got in?"

"I heard she was loud," Malatesta said.

"Everybody was in here heard she was loud," the bartender said. "Thing of it is, she was also noisy, you know what I mean, and you didn't exactly come off too well in the conversation."

"Who was she with?" Malatesta asked.

"Don't think she was really with anybody," the bartender said. "She came in with that broad Judy that's Finnegan's regular bimbo, but I think that was just because they happened to get out of cabs at the same time. Judy was waitin' for Finnegan, and he showed up about forty minutes later, and then about twenty minutes after that, Marion started in singing her songs because you weren't here and you didn't call her or anything, and you were cheap and this is some G.o.dforsaken place that you only take her because you don't have to pay anything and you can freeload all night off of her and you never buy her anything or take her any place and all in all, you ain't much good."

"Jesus," Malatesta said.

"I will tell you something," the bartender said. "You may have calmed her down a little Thursday night, but after what I saw before you got here, if I was you I would just go right back out that door and let her diddle herself in the powder room. Before you get through with her, she is going to get you in a whole puddle of s.h.i.t."

JIMMY DANNAHER AND Leo Proctor sat in the van parked in the woods on the dirt road off Randolph Avenue in Milton, Ma.s.sachusetts. "You didn't say we had to walk around in the woods, Leo," Jimmy said.

"Look," Proctor said, "everybody knows they close up the dumps at night. At least I'm not asking you to climb over the fence there, the gate. All you got to do is follow me around the gate and we go through the woods and there we are, inna dump."

"With the rats," Dannaher said. "Skunks, too, probably. Big, fat, black-and-white skunks that spend all their time getting ready to drown me in their p.i.s.s the minute I go tramping around in their garbage, and I'll stink for six days."

"You stink now," Proctor said.

"f.u.c.k you," Dannaher said. "I'm serious about this. I don't want to go in there with a bunch of rats. They've probably got snakes in there, too. They got snakes in the Blue Hills here. Poisonous snakes that can bite you and kill you. What if I step on a rattlesnake or something? Who'll take care of my kids if I step on a rattlesnake, huh?"

"They haven't got any rattlesnakes in there," Proctor said.

"They have got rattlesnakes in there," Dannaher said. "I know it because I read it in the paper. You don't know nothing about rattlesnakes. They have had rattlesnakes out here for years. It's been on television and everything. You don't know anything. You're going to get us both in prison before we're through, and you're telling me about rattlesnakes. I'm not going in there in the dark."

"And then who's gonna take care of your kids?" Proctor said.