The Rat On Fire Part 4

"If I don't go in there?" Dannaher said. "I am, of course."

"Like you did when you were in the can for a while?" Proctor said.

"If I don't get into this," Dannaher said, "I won't be in the can for a while, and I can do it."

"With no money?" Proctor said.

"I can get some money," Dannaher said.

"Yup," Proctor said, "you can get some money. But you can't get any money from me unless you come into that f.u.c.king dump with me and take your chances with the snakes and the skunks. You will have to find somebody else who is willing to give you some money, and I wish you luck, is what I do, because I think you are going to need it. If I was you, I would rather take my chances with the skunks."

"I don't see why the h.e.l.l they lock dumps up at night," Dannaher said. "They afraid somebody'll steal something from them?"

"No," Proctor said. "They lock up the dump road at night because they want to stop people from giving them things, such as whole messes of s.h.i.t they will have to bury. They block the road in the middle of the night because they don't want people coming in and throwing away all kinds of trees and rocks and s.h.i.t like that. They don't put a fence around the woods because they don't care if people go in the dump and catch a few rats. What they care about is people that are working on construction and demolition and stuff, that don't even live in the town, driving their trucks up and saving themselves a lot of money that they would have to pay to have the stuff carted away, and dumping the stuff in the town dump."

"I don't see why they care," Dannaher said.

"All right," Proctor said, "I was lying to you. The real reason is that snakes and skunks and rats always use the road when they try to get out of the dump. Every night the sun goes down and the guy that drives the bulldozer around goes back to the shack and gets his jacket on and goes home for Miller Time. And on his way down the road in his pick-up truck, he stops and he gets out and he wraps the big chain through the posts and he takes the big padlock out of the truck and he locks the gate shut.

"Now," Proctor said, "the snakes and the skunks and the rats are a long way away from this gate. They cannot hear whether the guy stops the truck and puts the chain and the lock on. So every night they wait until they think he is gone, and then they say to each other, 'Maybe tonight he forgot.' So all the snakes and the skunks and the rats get up and they go down the road to the gate and one of the snakes climbs it, climbs right up the fence, to see if the chain and the lock are on. And every night, they are.

"So the snake that does the inspection," Proctor said, "he climbs back down again, all discouraged and everything, and he tells all the rest of the animals, 'No use, fellas, the gate's locked again. He didn't forget tonight, either.' Then they all go back up the road to the dump.

"See, Jimmy," Proctor said, "snakes and skunks and rats are not very bright. It does not occur to them to go through the woods. If the gate is not open, they think they have to stay. The people who run the dump know this. They want all their rats and other animals to stay in the dump, because they are sort of like pets, you know? So they lock the gate, and the animals stay in the dump and eat dead meat and fruit and that stuff, and it keeps the place neat.

"Therefore," Proctor said, "if you walk through those woods with me, Jimmy, around that gate and so forth, there is no chance in the world that you will step on one of those animals. You are as safe as you would be in church, because the animals do not use the woods. Okay? And in addition, you will get some money, so you can take care of your kids."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," Dannaher said.

"Yes, you do," Proctor said. "You and I are going to open up the back of this thing and we are going to take out three steel traps and three pounds of smelly old fish heads that I have in this plastic bag there. One of us is going to carry two traps and the other one is going to carry one trap and the fish. We are going to go through the woods and the guy in front is going to hold the flashlight so that the guy behind him can see where he is going. When we get around the gate, we can walk on the road because all the animals have gone to bed except for the rats, and they are watching the late news on their television sets. When we get to the actual dump we will put the fish in the traps and set the traps and then we will go a little ways away and we will wait until we hear that we have got a lot of rats in our three traps. Then we will come back to the trucks with our rats in our traps."

"What about the fish?" Dannaher said.

"We will allow the rats to eat the fish," Proctor said. "Believe me when I tell you, that as far as I am concerned, the rats are welcome to that fish, because it stinks. Besides, rats have to eat. We have work for those rats to do, and we want them nice and healthy and ready to run fast when we light them off, so we will transcend our own appet.i.te for the fish and let them eat it."

Carrying two steel cages, each about two feet long and one foot wide, in his left hand, and the flashlight in his right hand, Proctor led Dannaher through the underbrush on the northerly side of the gate, trampling the low, green, three-leafed plants. On the easterly side of the gate they stepped onto the gravel road and walked up a long hill. Now and then a trailer truck pa.s.sed on Randolph Avenue behind them, the lights barely disturbing the darkness. The gravel crunched and the hill became steeper. Dannaher said, "Slow down, for Christ sake."

"You're outta shape, Jimma," Proctor said. "See? Here's another thing that I am doing for you. I am getting you some exercise so you don't get yourself a heart attack when you are still a young man."

"I think I'm getting one now," Dannaher said.

WILFRID MACK SAT on the aluminum chair with the yellow plastic covering, in Mavis Davis's kitchen at 25 Bristol Street. She was in her late forties. She wore a red jersey dress which showed that she had kept her figure, and an expression of weariness.

"Mister Mack," she said, "it's nice of you to come, and I appreciate it. But I don't know what you or anybody else can do. You know it just as well as I do-Alfred goes off half-c.o.c.ked. I've tried everything I could think of, to do with him. It didn't work. His sister's a fine lady and she works very hard. I get out of bed every morning and go down to the hospital and talk to the people all day on the telephone, the ones who haven't paid their bills any more'n I have, and then I come home at night with a bag of groceries that I can't afford and I cook dinner on a stove that doesn't work right. Selene eats fast and goes to work, and if Alfred's in the mood, he gets up and eats before he goes down to work for Walter all night long. The plumbing backs up and the owner won't fix it. You can't even get Mister Fein on the telephone. Two guys came over here the other day, one of the neighbors was telling me, and went into the cellar with a lot of tools, and then they went right out again. They didn't do anything. If I fill that sink up with water right now, and you sit here and wait for it to go out, you won't get anything done tomorrow.

"Just as soon," she said, "just as soon as I start to think that I am making some progress and there must be some way that an apartment with three people in it, all of them working, can have something like a decent life for themselves and send their kids to school, or maybe just go out to a movie, something happens. We don't have a car, but we do have lamps. They burn out bulbs. Last week, the summer here and everything, I figured Selene would be working full-time and lots of nights I could walk home or take the subway instead of spending all that money on cabs, and I went out and put thirty dollars down on an air conditioner.

"Mister Mack," she said, "I don't know how I'm going to pay for that air conditioner. I just wanted one cool room and I put thirty dollars down, and this week I got a letter that the taxes went up and the heating oil went up and my share of those things is going to just wipe out my air conditioner.

"If you want to look out that window," she said, "you can. This is the third floor and the back yard's full of junk. You can pull that chair over there and look right out and see a yard that's full of junk that people threw away but n.o.body ever bothered to pick up. You can even get a little breeze over there, if you can stand looking at the junk. But it'd be a good idea if you didn't tilt too far back in the chair because the back legs're a little shaky. And don't lean on the table either. We don't get good meat very often, but when we do it's h.e.l.l cutting it because the table's so wobbly. I keep this stuff, Mister Mack, because I can't afford anything better. I make twelve thousand dollars a year and both my kids work, but Alfred gives me nothing and Selene buys her own stuff. If I want an air conditioner, I have to eat on a wobbly table, and now I'm probably going to lose my thirty dollars that I put down on an air conditioner. You politicians. If you don't mind me saying so, you make me sick."

"Look," Mack said, "I'm only a state legislator, ma'am. There're some limits to what I can do. I don't set the price of oil and I don't set the city tax rate. I can't make the man clean up the yard and I can't do anything about the heat and the humidity. Give me a break, lady."

"Mister Mack," she said, "you asked me a question. You asked me about Alfred and why I don't calm him down and let his sister solve her own problems. You asked me that. I just told you why I can't do that. You didn't listen to me.

"Alfred's got a temper. I don't know where he got it. His father sure didn't have one. He never showed it, if he did. All he ever did was smile and say he would think of something to do about it, but he never did. Until the day he thought of something finally, and he did it. He ran away. That was Roosevelt's way of doing something. Maybe he was right. He was no good at this business of getting along with other people and enough to eat and a place to sleep that was warm in the winter and at least so you could breathe in the summer. He was a nice man, but he liked to have his gla.s.s of beer and he almost always had fifty cents to go sit in the bleachers at the Red Sox game. He went to work at the fine offices downtown and he reported every night. He washed the floors and he waxed the floors. At Christmas, sometimes, one of the professional gentlemen would have his secretary give Roosevelt a fifth of cheap whiskey. He would give me a new nightgown and the kids would get one toy each, and everybody was happy.

"He was happy because he didn't have to do very much, and they were happy with one toy because they were little then and they weren't seeing what all the other kids were getting. I was happy because where we were living then was d.a.m.ned cold in the winter and I needed a new nightgown. A new flannel nightgown that would be nice and warm for me until it wore out in April, because those were cheap nightgowns Roosevelt bought, Mister Mack. They were very cheap nightgowns. Roosevelt was polite to everybody, and he was mostly a happy man, at least when I knew him, but when the kids started gettin' bigger, and noticed more things, and I grew up a little myself, we started talking to him. Maybe we talked too much, Mister Mack. Maybe we gave Roosevelt more trouble than he could handle. Maybe Roosevelt found out he might have been a happy man, and he might have been a nice man, but we didn't think he was a very good man. And he wasn't. And we didn't.

"The trouble is," she said, "the man the kids got, when Roosevelt left, turned out to be me. I am not even as good a man as Roosevelt was. I am not even a man at all. I am a woman whose husband ran off on her and left her with two kids and no way to make a living and not much chance of finding another man who would be better, that was in the market for a woman with two kids that had had a man and lost him. So I was more or less forced to take over where Roosevelt left off.

"I was dumb enough," she said, "to think that I could do it better. And I was right. I did do it better. But it wasn't better enough. Roosevelt wasn't ever around much anyway, so the kids didn't really miss him and his one toy apiece at Christmas, but until he left and I had to go work, I was around. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't. I was out making a living for us, and they were pretty much stuck with themselves.

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "Those kids did well. If you think about it they did very well. But that's when you think about it. I did make more than Roosevelt did, and I brought it home. But every time I made a little more, somebody who was selling things I had to have charged me a little more. I kept on doing better, but nothing got better. We were still right where we started, only I was working harder and harder to keep us there.

"That's what's the matter with Alfred," she said. "He looks around this place with the cracked linoleums on the floor and the busted screens and the plumbing that clogs up, and he looks out that window at all the junk. He knows about the rats and bugs, and he knows the air conditioner went to pay the taxes and fuel adjustment, and he gets mad. Alfred's not a bad boy, Mister Mack, even though he did do time. He's frustrated, but the things that frustrate him are things that he can't do anything about and I can't either, so he picks out this guy Peters and gets mad at him.

"I know Donald Peters," she said. "I haven't seen him for a long time, but back when I still lived with the kids in Roxbury, I used to see Donald's mother all the time at church. Irma Peters, her name was. She always looked tired, and I suppose I always looked tired, and that was probably why we started talking. We used to chat now and then when we would see each other on the street, and after a while I found out that her husband Richard was chasing every skirt in town and she never did know where he was. And her son Donald does the same thing.

"Now," Mavis Davis said, "there isn't anything I can do to stop Donald from chasing after my little daughter's a.s.s. I wish there were, but there is not. Selene is a young lady now, and she is having thoughts. I have explained to her about older fellows like Donald, and what it is that interests them, and how long they will remain interested in it, after they get it. I believe she understood what I was saying. I do not believe she knows what it means. There is no way I can tell her what it means. Maybe she takes after her mother the same way that Donald takes after his father, and she needs a little experience of her own before she understands what is going on, and what it means. You may not think much of Officer Peters, Mister Mack, and I guess I don't, myself, but Officer Peters is not the first man who took a look at some young honey and decided he might like to try a little of that. Nor will he be the last one. I'd like it better if he landed his eye on somebody else's girl child, but he picked mine and there is nothing I can do about it except tell her that I see her doing up the top three b.u.t.tons on her uniform blouse when she comes up the street at night and she might have less trouble with Officer Peters if she kept them done up in the first place, the way they were when she left the house.

"Alfred," she said, "Alfred does not know about things like that. Alfred knows that he wants to get into every pair of pants that he sees on a woman, and he thinks that is perfectly all right and the way things should be. He does it all the time, as much of the time as he can anyway, and he thinks that is all right. He does not understand that the pants he gets into are being worn by young women who want him in there as much as he wants to be in there. He thinks he gets in there because he is handsome and charming, and they cannot resist him.

"Officer Peters, as far as Alfred is concerned, is raping Selene. Alfred does not approve of Selene having a man, or of a man having Selene. That is not what bothers him the most, so he starts in on Donald Peters. Alfred doesn't know he can't do anything about Peters, either, and neither can you."

"Well," Mack said, getting up, "I guess that pretty much covers it then. There isn't anything I can do."

"Well," she said, "there might be. You might speak to Mister Fein about this rathole that we live in. That would be a help."

"WHERE THE f.u.c.k is Sweeney?" Roscommon said.

"Lieutenant," Carbone said, "you have got to stop coming into the office like this and getting your bowels in an uproar. You don't and the first thing you know, you will have a stroke for yourself and the left side of your face'll fall down, so's you'll only be able to maneuver the right side and you'll look like something just about half finished."

"Shut up," Roscommon said.

"You'll lose control of yourself," Carbone said. "You'll p.i.s.s in your pants all the time and when you talk it'll sound like you had a mouthful of spit. And you would have, too, if you could only stop drooling and s...o...b..ring all the time, so it runs right down your chin and into your shirt pocket. Get your undershirt all wet."

"Where the f.u.c.k is Sweeney?" Roscommon said.

"Sweeney is at home and Sweeney is in bed," Carbone said. "He's been carrying one of those summer colds around with him for about a month now, and it finally took him out."

"He's d.o.g.g.i.ng it," Roscommon said.

"He's not d.o.g.g.i.ng it," Carbone said. "He's got a temperature and he's got a fever and he's got the trots. He's dizzy and his body aches. You keep him out till four in the morning, four or five nights a week, following that jerk Malatesta around, and he finally got so run-down he collapsed from it."

"You're supposedly doing the same thing," Roscommon said. "He's doing it, you're doing it. He's sick, you're not sick. How'd that happen?"

"Told you and told you, Lieutenant," Carbone said, "us dagos're tough."

"Too dumb to get sick and lie down, most likely," Roscommon said.

"Too proud," Carbone said.

"Uh-huh," Roscommon said. "Okay, enough of this s.h.i.t. You guys had close to a month. Have you got something for me, maybe, I can take over and tell Mooney and get that little s.h.i.tbird back in his nest without listening to another f.u.c.king lecture about the law enforcement responsibility to society? Please? Tell me you got something, Don. Tell me I'm not a total failure and I'm doomed to Purgatory."

"We haven't got a h.e.l.l of a lot," Carbone said.

"Grand," Roscommon said.

Carbone reached into his jacket pocket and took out a steno pad, spiral-bound at the top. "I haven't had a chance to dictate this stuff yet. Some of it's mine and some of it's what Mickey told me on the phone that he's been doing."

"No reports, then," Roscommon said.

"Not typed, Lieutenant," Carbone said.

"Go ahead," Roscommon said. "I wish I'd stayed in the Airborne. I could be retired by now."

"First," Carbone said, "what Mickey's getting. Near as we can tell, Jimma Dannaher thinks his feet are wet and he's telling people that they're starting to get cold. He's not exactly saying that, but he's been doing a lot of work on his thirst in a couple bars down on Old Colony Boulevard and Broadway, and Jimma can't drink so well."

"Which bars," Roscommon said.

"Dunno," Carbone said. "Mickey just sort of rattled this stuff off at me and he sounded awful, so I didn't ask a whole lot of questions. He's got the ins down there, though, which is why he's working them. Says Dannaher was yapping and b.i.t.c.hing about how Proctor's making him do all kinds of crazy s.h.i.t and he's afraid he's gonna get hurt."

"What's he mean, hurt?" Roscommon said.

"Not exactly sure," Carbone said. "I did ask Mickey that and he told me his guys didn't know either. Seems like Proctor's making Dannaher go out late at night and he's taking him into the woods and Dannaher don't like the woods."

"Woods, for Christ sake?" Roscommon said. "s.h.i.t, where the h.e.l.l're there woods around Bristol Road? No woods out around there. Woods in Jammy Plain, woods in West Roxbury. No woods around Symphony Hall. Some bushes, maybe, you go out the Fenway and jump into the Victory Gardens there, tromp all over the old people's tomato vines. But there's no woods around at all."

"I know," Carbone said.

"Well, for Christ sake," Roscommon said, "then what the h.e.l.l's Proctor taking the guy in the woods for? Where's he taking him in the woods? They drop Fein's stuff and go to work for some guy who wants his crop of Christmas trees torched? They're going to start a forest fire, they don't need Malatesta. He's not in charge of f.u.c.king forest fires, G.o.d-d.a.m.nit."

"John," Carbone said, "Mickey knows that and I know that. But we've also got a pretty good line on Dannaher. He's not very bright. He's not bright enough to make up a trip in the woods with Proctor if he didn't actually make a trip to the woods. And if he did go into the woods, he's not smart enough to say nothing about it. So our guess is that Proctor took him into the woods and it was probably not for a picnic.

"Now," Carbone said, "we've got a pretty good line on these guys. We don't know everything they're planning to do, and we don't know when they're planning to do it. But we're pretty sure they're going to do it at Fein's joint, because as far as we know that's the only thing they've got going right now and those two a.s.sholes need money. Maybe they went to the woods to pick up kindling. We just don't know, because Dannaher, when he got through p.i.s.sing and moaning about going in the woods, shut up."

"Or pa.s.sed out," Roscommon said.

"Or pa.s.sed out," Carbone said. "Now, what we also got is, we got Proctor. And Proctor is down at the Londonderry a lot, which I know because I went to school with Danny, who is the barkeep and he will tell me something from time to time as long as I don't go in there. And what he tells me is that Proctor is in there, night after night, and he's alone. He gets no calls, he eats there, he drinks himself bloated and then he goes home. He is not cheerful. Danny a.s.sumes he goes home. He doesn't really know.

"So," Carbone said, "it is at least possible that this thing with Fein's little marshmallow roast is not going to go up the chimney anymore. At this point."

"Nuts," Roscommon said.

"Malatesta," Carbone said, flipping the pages of the notebook. "Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, Malatesta goes to Club 1812."

"That place," Roscommon said. "Algerian wh.o.r.ehouse. If I could prove what they did to get the license for that thing, I'd have six guys in jail and two more worried."

"Very expensive type of place for a guy that doesn't have a lot of money," Carbone said.

"Or else very cheap," Roscommon said.

"Or else very cheap," Carbone said.

"Particularly for a guy that was working Middles.e.x fires when Dennis Murray's Hideaway restaurant went up in a sheet of blue flame, and the guy who investigated decided it was the U-joints on the gas-pipe fittings and they weren't installed right so they leaked and the pilot lights in the stoves did the rest," Roscommon said.

"Dennis is not a nice guy," Carbone said.

"Actually," Roscommon said, "Dennis is sort of a nice guy. If I had a daughter and she brought him home to meet me, I might not be jumping with joy, but Dennis is not a bad fellow. He just got a little pressed for cash. Could happen to anybody. You'll never get anything out of him, if you're trying to get something out of him, but if you just sit down and talk to him, he will tell you a few things. Saw him few weeks after the Wayland fire, gave him my condolences of course, we said the Sorrowful Mysteries together. Then he starts to talk about the insurance companies. Should've heard him.

" 'To them it's just another c.r.a.p game,' he says. 'They don't care. They lose one percent off profit on the spread this year, more guys had fires'n they expected, they put three percent on the spread next year. They make an extra point next year, not as many guys had fires, they claim they had a lot of unexpected costs and they put another three points on the spread. They say the bankers make 'em do it, account of everything else costs more to replace, and the bankers say the insurance companies've got them over barrels because the collateral is mortgaged and it's got to be insured. It's a beautiful dodge they got working.'

"Told him," Roscommon said, "told him he shouldn't take it so hard. Told me he wasn't taking anything hard, just repeating some things friends of his said, friends that'd had some bad luck. Not a bad fellow."

"Never had the pleasure," Carbone said. "Did have the pleasure of meeting one of his employees once. Fellow did some time. Quite a bit of time. Would've done a lot more if he hadn't met me.

"This guy," Carbone said, "has got to be the biggest donkey and the most well-informed guy I know. Works in the club and he says Malatesta comes in there three nights a week and drinks Scotch and meets the broad.

"Now," Carbone said, "don't know whether you ever heard of Marion down the Registry. Marion Scanlon?"

"Never heard of her," Roscommon said. "None of the German soldiers ever heard of Lili Marlene, either."

"Well," Carbone said, "she is Billy's bimbo, and she is mad at him because he did not meet her in there one night last week, when he was supposed to, and the next night when he came in she was half in the bag and she described him to everybody else in the joint. No money, stupid, all the rest of it.

"Tuesday night," Carbone said, "I drive past the joint and there is Billy's cruiser, which shows you how bright he must be, and the next day I talk to my guy and I ask him what Billy had to say. And he tells me that him and Billy had a long chat and the bimbo was poutin' in the powder room, and when she finally came out, she was still mad and Billy hugged her and gave her kissy-face and my guy heard Billy tell her, he was serving her drinks, it'd all be okay in a little while because pretty soon he was getting some money."

"Which puts us," Roscommon said, "right back in the woods with Dannaher and Proctor."

"Exactly, Lieutenant," Carbone said.

AT 2:35 IN THE MORNING, Leo Proctor took a right on Dorchester Avenue and drove the van south for about half a mile. He took a right and then another right, driving very carefully between the cars parked on both sides of the streets, and found a place in front of his yellow three-decker, the one with the white trim, at 41 Windsor Street. He did not hit anything when he parked the van, although he did stumble on the curb after he had locked it. He moved slowly up the front walk, swaying very slightly, unlocked the door on the left side of the front porch with only moonlight to a.s.sist him, replaced the keys in his left pants pocket carefully, opened the door, felt for the light, turned it on, entered, closed and snap-locked the door behind him and pushed the bolt shut above the snap lock.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said softly.

Grasping the banisters tightly, Proctor went up the stairs silently, never putting the heels of his shoes on the treads. The stairs hooked sharply to the right, three steps from the top, and the banister ended on the right-hand side. Proctor held the left banister tightly and fished in his pockets for the keys with his right hand. Swaying again, he reached across his belly, patted his left pocket, said, "s.h.i.t," and managed to get the keys out with his right hand. "b.i.t.c.h probably bolted this one," he said.

Proctor shook them loose, found the correct one, inserted it in the snap lock, turned it, leaned his right shoulder against the door and turned the k.n.o.b. The door opened. "b.i.t.c.h didn't bolt it," he said. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h. Must've gone to bed early. Nothing stupid on TV tonight."

He went into the apartment as quietly as he could, using his left hand on the inside doork.n.o.b and his right hand about a foot above it to close the door soundlessly. He did not release the snap lock with one twist, but turned it into place with his right hand. Then he slid home the bolt above it and the bolt below. He turned off the light in the stairwell with the inside switch.

It was hot and it was dark in the apartment. The only light came from the moon, and there was not much of that. The front room had three windows arranged in a bay that fronted on the porch, but the room to his right had only one window on the south, where the moon was descending, and the two southern windows of the kitchen ahead of him were blocked from the moon by the bulk of the three-decker next door. He did not switch on the light in the hallway, but crouched and ran his left hand along the waist-high molding while groping before him with his right hand at about knee height. "That b.i.t.c.h blocked that f.u.c.kin' doorway with another chair again," he whispered, "gonna go in there and kill the b.i.t.c.h. Won't even wake her up first."

There was no kitchen chair tipped across the kitchen doorway. Proctor said, "Ahh." He straightened up and advanced slowly in the darkness, some moonlight available in the kitchen from the open door of his son Timmy's room to the left. He padded fairly quickly around the kitchen table, found the white four-burner gas range with his left hand and the door to the hallway leading to the larger bedroom with his right. It was closed.

"Uh-huh," he said. He stood there for a moment. "h.e.l.l with it," he said. "She's got a chair the other side of it, she's got a chair the other side of it. She wants to wake up, I come home, lettah wake up. Serve the b.i.t.c.h right."

He opened the door quietly, but not slowly. There was no chair. The door swung silently on the hinges that he regularly sprayed with silicone. He went down the hallway, his left hand on the chair rail, pa.s.sing the second small bedroom and going on to the bathroom on the left. The bathroom door was open and the light was off. He turned it on aggressively. There was no one in the room.