The Rat On Fire Part 5

Proctor strode confidently into the bathroom, unzipped and relieved himself. He said, "Ahhh." It took him a while. Then he removed his shirt and hung it on the hook on the inside of the door. He took his shoes off, leaning on the washstand to do it. He put his shoes under the washstand and stripped off his socks, dropping them into the laundry bag on the hook. He took off the brown suit pants and hung them over the shirt. In his union suit he stood before the mirror, blinking, for a moment. Then he sighed, relaxed his stomach muscles, shut off the light, opened the door, and turned left into the hallway.

He opened the bedroom door very slowly, waiting for the sound of it hitting a wooden chair. It swung silently and without interference. He padded into the room in the dark, seeing the outline of his edge of the bed and the night table with the doily next to it. By habit he believed that he could see the small gla.s.s lamp with the blue frilly shade and the little wind-up Westclox travel alarm clock with the cover on rollers. He closed the door and walked quietly but surely toward the bed. He tripped over the chair that had been tipped over on the rug. He stubbed his toes and yelled, "Motherf.u.c.ker."

The matching gla.s.s lamp with the matching blue shade on the other lace doily on her nightstand came on as though triggered by his obscenity. Cynthia Irwin Proctor sat up in bed, her hair in a satin bag, her face mottled from sleep, her eyes flaming and her mouth switched on with the lamp. "Ah hah, you miserable drunken son of a b.i.t.c.h," she said. "Fooled you, didn't I? Thinking you could sneak in on me in the middle of the night like some f.u.c.king cats? Is that what you think? Thought it'd be by the door, didn't you? Yeah, well, I learned a few things from you, too, you s.h.i.t. Where the h.e.l.l've you been till this hour, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d? I know you've been drinking. You smell like a f.u.c.king Budweiser brewery."

"Yeah?" he said. "Well, you look like one of them Budweiser horses, you big fat old bag, tryin' make a man break his leg inna middle of the night. Honest to G.o.d."

"You're drunk," she said.

"f.u.c.k you," he said. He picked up the chair and threw it into the corner, where it crashed against the bureau.

"You are drunk," she said. "You're as drunk as a hoot owl."

"I'd have to be," he said. "No man in his right mind'd come home to a house like this if he was sober. Jesus, what the h.e.l.l're you doing here, anyway? Why the h.e.l.l aren't you down Atlantic City, or wherever the h.e.l.l it is they're holding the Fat Ladies' Convention this year?"

"You oughta talk," she said. "You got a stomach on you like a spare tire."

"Yeah," he said, "it's almost as big as half of your big fat a.s.s.

Cynthia rose out of the covers and walked across the bed. She jumped on the floor with a crash, saying, "You lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You never gave me a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing and you say things like that to me, you dirty s.h.i.t."

From the second-floor apartment there was a pounding as a mop handle was thudded against the second-floor ceiling. m.u.f.fled shouts accompanied the pounding.

Cynthia charged toward Leo with her fingernails outstretched. "... your f.u.c.kin' eyes out," she panted. Leo waited until she was within his reach and backhanded her across the face with the side of his right fist. She sat down suddenly, with another crash, and remained on the floor with her legs spread out before her. Her tears interrupted her statement of further plans for him. The pounding and yelling from the floor below continued.

Proctor went to the window and opened it. He leaned out. Into the night air he screamed, "One more f.u.c.kin' peep outta you tonight, Moran, and I will personally get up out of bed and go down there and kick your f.u.c.kin' teeth in. Then I will evict you. Now shut the h.e.l.l up and see if you can get along with your old lady for a change, like us regular people." He slammed the window shut as lights went on in the adjoining tenements.

Cynthia sat on the floor, weeping and mumbling about Leo. Leo stepped over her, walked around to her side of the bed, shut off her night-light, got into the bed on her side, rolled to his side and shut off his light. Then he deliberately sprawled out over most of the bed and soon began to snore, leaving her crying on the rug.

"WELL NOW," Proctor said to Dannaher, "I will tell you what I did. When you didn't show up, you poor excuse for a human man." They sat in the Scandinavian Pastry Shop, drinking coffee. Outside in the warm muggy night the rain came down in sheets and there were long tracks of vicious-looking lightning every so often in the sky, reflecting off the surface of the boulevard.

"I got tied up," Dannaher said.

"You whine too much, Jimma," Proctor said. "Anybody ever tell you that? You're the kind of sorry son of a b.i.t.c.h that's always whining and complaining and b.i.t.c.hing and moaning about something that happened to you and it was supposedly not your fault. You got to transpire that stuff, Jimmy. You got to learn to act so's people come around to thinking they can rely on you. You got me in a whole mess of trouble."

"I was down at the Paper Moon with Clinker," Dannaher said. "Clinker was all upset. He said he was figuring he'd have to go away again and he doesn't want to do it. I couldn't just stand up and leave the guy sittin' there, like he didn't have no friends this world. That wouldn't've been right. You wouldn't've done that to Clinker, would you?"

"The h.e.l.l not?" Proctor said. "You did it to me. You could've called me the f.u.c.k up. You knew where I was, that you could get in touch with me, you needed to, there was something that was going on you couldn't get away from. The G.o.dd.a.m.ned h.e.l.l's the matter with you, is what I want to know. Danny down the Londonderry knows me good enough. I go in there enough, for Christ sake."

"They don't take no calls down the Londonderry, Leo," Dannaher said. "They even got a sign up over the bar. I seen it. It says the phone's for people to call out on. They started taking calls for people, they would lose half their business the first night, guys find out people can find out where they are, just by calling up. They would have guys goin' out the f.u.c.kin' windows, for Christ sake. If their wives weren't coming down after them it'd be the cops or some sonb.i.t.c.h wanted to ring their chimes for them. They wouldn't do that."

"That f.u.c.kin' sign, Jimmy," Proctor said, "that f.u.c.kin' sign is just a f.u.c.kin' sign. It means if you don't want any calls there, you don't get any. And if it was my wife that called up and was looking for me, Danny would never even find out it was my wife because he would tell her the minute he answered the phone: 'Londonderry. We don't take no calls here.' And that would do it. But like last night, I told him, I said, 'Danny, all right? I am expecting this guy all night and he's about an hour late, so if some guy calls up and he wants me, I am here.' And Danny says, 'Okay.' And it was. But you, you a.s.shole, you didn't call me.

"So I sit there and I am drinking the Bally ale and I am naturally smelling like horse-p.i.s.s as a result, and after a while I been there what seems like about a week and I am getting hungry again. So I get myself one of Danny's belly-busters there, that a self-respecting dog would not eat, and I ate it, all them pieces of somebody's old snow tires and that f.u.c.kin' grease and those G.o.dd.a.m.ned canned green peppers that taste like old green socks, in the f.u.c.kin' roll that if you used it to beat a guy over the head with it, you would f.u.c.kin' kill him, and then naturally I got to drink some more of that ale to settle my stomach and everything, and I stayed there until me and Danny was the last two guys in the joint and he wants to close up so he throws me out."

"Mean b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Dannaher said.

"Bulls.h.i.t," Proctor said. "Guy was doing me a favor. He stayed there, I would've stayed there. I would be there now, probably eatin' another bellybuster and drinking some more ale and ruining my f.u.c.kin' stomach for good. Plus which, I am supposed to be onna diet anyway, for Christ sake. I wonder what the h.e.l.l that G.o.dd.a.m.ned oil is that they boil up that steak in and throw the peppers in? Is it something they get down the pizza shop from the garbage or something? Jesus Christ, it's orange. I never saw no meat juice that was orange. And that, that stuff, those bubbles, floating all over it. Looks like the Fort Point Channel down there. I dunno why the f.u.c.k I ate that thing. Yes, I do-it's your fault. You'd've been there like you were supposed to be, we could've done our business and then I would've gone home and I wouldn't've gotten h.e.l.l from the wife for coming home drunk. Which I was. I was drunk all right."

"What was the business?" Dannaher said. "See, I was with Clinker and everything, and I didn't even know what you wanted and everything."

"Oh," Proctor said, "it don't matter. I just wanted to make some plans and stuff. Go over things, give you some money and everything. Doesn't matter."

"We can do it now," Dannaher said.

"s.h.i.t, Jimmy," Proctor said, "s.h.i.t, no. We can't do it now. I had to give that money the bank this morning. They got to me before you did, you know? The guy that's there first? The early bird and all that s.h.i.t? They got to me first. I don't give them some interest money, at least, they're gonna start foreclosing on me. Last night I had it. Tonight I haven't got it. I haven't got the stomachache anymore either. I miss the money more. You should've been there." Proctor reached in his pocket and put fifty cents on the tabletop. He started to get up.

"No," Dannaher said. He put out his hand. "Wait a minute."

"Why?" Proctor said.

"We can talk about this," Dannaher said.

The first truck driver dove in through the door like a man escaping from a bear. "Je-zuss," he said, streaming with rain. The young woman behind the counter cleaned her teeth with her tongue, storing her gum on the left side of her mouth while she worked at the crevices between the teeth on the right, and looked at him with mild interest. He tried to dry his hair with the wet sleeve of his green shirt. He went over to the counter and pulled several paper napkins from the dispenser, using them in a wad to wipe his scalp vigorously. "This G.o.dd.a.m.ned weather," he said. "It is raining like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d out there. Christ, this G.o.dd.a.m.ned weather."

He sat down heavily on one of the counter stools. "Coffee," he said. The waitress said, "Regular?" The truck driver said, "Yeah. Cream, sugar."

The waitress poured a cup of coffee while she finished cleaning her teeth and resumed chewing the gum. She picked a small foil container of lightener from a stainless steel tray where several more containers floated around in ice and water, one of them leaking and turning the water white. "Don't use cream here," she said, putting the cup and the service container before him. "This is that sawdust stuff that they just put water in." The truck driver said, "I don't care." She said, "Ya put in your own sugar." She slid the sugar dispenser to him and resumed staring vacantly across the diner, snapping her gum every so often and looking at her watch every few minutes. "My buddy been in?" the driver said, after swallowing some coffee. She did not look at him. "Don't know him, mister," she said. "Lots of guys come in here that've got buddies. Can't remember everybody."

"No," the driver said. "He was in here the other night with me. We were both in here, remember? Wears the same kind of uniform I do. Kind of heavyset guy. Red hair. The night it was so warm."

"Don't remember him," she said.

"Oh," the driver said, "well, he'll probably be in."

"Jimma," Proctor said, "we haven't got nothing to talk about. I already told you-the bank got the money. I haven't got no more money right now. I can't give you no money until we go out and we do it, you know? We got to deliver for the man before I get any more money, and I can't help it."

"I was counting on this," Dannaher said.

"s.h.i.t," Proctor said, "that and fifty cents'll get you another cup of coffee, Jim. I was counting on you. You didn't show up. Now I haven't got your money anymore, which I wouldn't have if you did show up, but the trouble is, you haven't got the money-the bank has. I'm gonna have to do this thing myself. Alone. Least I know I can depend on me."

The second truck driver burst through the door much as the first one. He also was soaked. "Mickey," the first trucker said. The second trucker shook himself like a dog and dried his face with his bare hands. "Don," he said, "it's wetter'n a hot p.u.s.s.y out there tonight." He took the stool next to Don.

"No s.h.i.t," Don said. "You ever see anything like this weather before in your life? I mean, Jesus H. Christ. Day after day, night after night, it just doesn't stop. It's awful."

"Coffee, regular," Mickey said. "One sugar."

The waitress snapped her gum and repeated her speech about the synthetic creamer and the sugar. "I don't give a d.a.m.n," Mickey said. "Just gimme the G.o.dd.a.m.ned coffee."

"Jesus," the waitress said. "Ya don't have to jump down my throat, ya know."

"Ahh, s.h.i.t," Mickey said. "I know. I just had a hard night, is all. f.u.c.kin' roads're awful out there. Can't see three feet in front the b.u.mper sometimes."

"You go up to Chicopee?" Don said.

"That's affirmative," Mickey said. "Deadheaded up there like a bat out of f.u.c.kin' h.e.l.l. Wasn't rainin' then. Nice day, matter fact. No cops around. No bears in the woods from One-twenty-eight all the way the terminal. Put the hammer down and I didn't let her up until I hit Ludlow. Naturally, of course, minute I get the load hitched up and I start back, the rain comes in. I tell you, Don, I drove all the way back right in the middle of that G.o.dd.a.m.ned downpour. I'd've gotten out of Hyde Park just about forty minutes earlier this morning, I would've run ahead of it all the way. Way it was, I got on the double-nickel with the load and the rain got on the double-nickel with me, and we both come all the way back down here together. Son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"What'd you have?" Don said.

"Detergent and stuff," Mickey said. "Soap, steel wool, Ajax, stuff like that. It's all pretty bulky. No trouble, really, no real weight. It's just that G.o.dd.a.m.ned rain. If there was a Smokey out there tonight, you couldn't prove it by me. I had all I could do to see my mirrors, and if he saw me, it was all right because I wasn't doing much of anything. You go to New Beffa?"

"Yeah," Don said, drinking coffee. "Took a load of cold cuts down, brought a load of Portuguese bread back. Easy run, like you say, 'cept for the rain."

"Leo," Dannaher said, touching Proctor on the sleeve again, "Leo, you can't just cut me out like this. I was counting on that fifteen hundred. I need it, you know? I really need it."

"I thought you had all kinds of ways, get money," Proctor said. "Isn't that what you was telling me the other night there, when you didn't want to go in the dump and pull your own weight in an operation for once and catch some rats? Wasn't it?"

"Well, yeah," Dannaher said, "but this was one of them and this is the one that I happened to've picked. I turned the other ones down, you know, so's I could work with you."

"Meaning, of course," Proctor said, "that the reason you never show up at the Londonderry last night is because you think maybe Clinker Carroll's got something safer you can do with him before he goes back in the can again, and you just said, 'Well, I think I will take a chance with Clinker and see if maybe what he has got to offer isn't maybe better than this sure thing old Leo's got for me, and f.u.c.k Leo.' Am I right?"

"No, Leo," Dannaher said. "No, honest, I told you. I was just sitting there with Clinker down the Paper Moon and he was all upset and I stayed there with him because I was afraid, I didn't wanna leave the guy alone by himself, you know? And I didn't think I could get in touch with you."

"And then, Jimmy," Proctor said, "then you heard a little more about what Clinker's got in mind, finally, after you'd been buying him drinks for about three hundred years, and you started to get a little scared and besides there wasn't much money in it, not as much as there is in what I'm offering, at least. And you start thinking about Clinker's track record and how he's goin' away again pretty soon and you got scared as usual so you backed out on him and you decided: 'Well, I will go around and I will see if maybe I can blow a little smoke up old Leo's a.s.s and maybe I can get back in his good graces, because old Leo never done much time and certainly didn't do any since he was just a kid that didn't know s.h.i.t-all from what he was doing so he was always getting caught. But now he's a lot smarter. And besides, the work ain't dangerous and it pays good.' "

"No, Leo," Dannaher said.

"Yes, Jimma," Proctor said. "Yes, it does. It pays good. That kind of money for catching rats plus one hour of light work in the morning for fifteen hundred bucks is d.a.m.ned good pay, and you know it."

"I didn't mean it didn't pay good," Dannaher said. "I didn't mean that. I meant: you're wrong about Clinker. He was all steamed up. He just got back with his wife there and she's been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around all the time he was gone the first time and now she thinks he's gonna go away again...."

"Which," Proctor said, "he is. The a.s.shole. Only an a.s.shole like Clinker Carroll'd come right out of the can for doing something and then do the same exact thing all over again with more cops looking up his a.s.shole'n they got doctors doing the same thing to legitimate guys over the VA hospital."

"Well," Dannaher said, "he was. They sat down and they had this long talk and she'll stop f.u.c.kin' around and he'll get a job and everything, for the sake of the kids, which if it hadn't've been for them she would've divorced him the last time he was in and go back to live down in Bridgeport with the kids. Which he knows means she'll stay somewhere around here and f.u.c.k that guy that's the, that runs the hardware store there down Jamaica Plain. And then he goes out and he does what he tells her he isn't gonna do, and naturally she finds out about it when they put his picture in the paper and anyway he didn't come home that night when they had him down Charles Street there. So she went out last night and she told him, she was leaving, she said, 'Nice going, Mister Hot-shot Big-time Two-bit Crook who thinks he's so smart he can break in a store and steal television sets without setting off all the alarms and there's a hundred cops waiting for him when he comes out. I'm gonna have some nice going for myself.' And he tells me he knows she is out f.u.c.kin' the guy last night and as soon as he goes away again, she will divorce him.

"Well," Dannaher said, "that's what I was doing. I was trying to talk to Clinker."

"Look," Proctor said, "other guy's problems at home do not interest me. If I want the problems at home, all I got to do is go home, and I have got more problems at home'n they got animals up at Benson's Wild Animals Farm there in New Hampshire. You got it? I'm not interested. Clinker did not do anything to me personally, although I got to say a friend of his did, and neither did Clinker's wife, that s.n.a.t.c.h that'd f.u.c.k a flashlight if there was nothing else handy.

"You, Jimma," Proctor said, "you did something to me personally. What you did to me was, you did not do something for me which you said you would do, and you have begun to p.i.s.s me off somewhat. Which is why I am thinking about doing this job myself."

"If I help," Dannaher said, "I still get paid? The money?"

Mickey at the counter distracted the waitress from her study of rain coursing down the window. "Ma'am," he said, "could I have a cheese Danish, please?"

She did not shift her gaze. "Haven't got any cheese," she said.

"Blueberry?" Mickey said.

She sighed. "I'll check," she said.

"Leo?" Dannaher said.

"Jimma," Proctor said, "will you get outta here and leave me alone for a while? I got to do some thinking, and besides, there is a guy I got to meet anyway."

"Jesus," Dannaher said, "Jesus, Leo, you can't leave me hanging like this. I got to know."

"I'll call you tomorrow," Proctor said.

"I'll have a Danish too," Don said.

"We haven't got no blueberry left either," the waitress said at the display case. "All we got is prune."

"Two prunes," Mickey said. "I been a little irregular lately anyway."

IT WAS STILL RAINING when Billy Malatesta, using an umbrella, entered the diner and stripped off his checked raincoat.

"So," Don said to Mickey at the counter, "you got the compressor fixed, I a.s.sume."

"Leo," Malatesta said, sliding into the booth.

"Compressor?" Mickey said.

"Yeah," Don said. " 'Member, last time I see you, you were telling me you ..."

"Oh," Mickey said. "Yeah, the compressor. When I had them f.u.c.kin' chickens there and the guy wanted me to go see that hooker in Auburn."

"Billy," Proctor said. "How you hittin' them?"

"Ah, you know," Malatesta said. "Sometimes, pretty good. Other times, not so good."

"Yeah," Proctor said. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to have that fifty I loaned you, would you? I'm a little short tonight. Bank caught up with me again."

Don said, "Yeah, that time. You were having it fixed down here. Get it fixed all right?"

"You call three days' down-time all right." Mickey said. "Jesus, I had Fritz doing all my work since Lazarus finished his nap and he never does this to me before. And then I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned if I don't take all kinds of chances with that G.o.dd.a.m.ned three tons of chickens, just so I can get it down here so Fritz can work on it, and the son of a b.i.t.c.h takes three f.u.c.kin' days to fix it. I lost a load of fish for Pawtucket. I lost two produce runs. I could've had one with eggs down from Maine and taken pies up, and I lost that. G.o.dd.a.m.ned Fritz."

"What are you?" Malatesta said to Proctor. "You had a long day or something and now you want a little fun, is that it? Horse around with old Billy here, see if his chain can take another jerking or two? What the h.e.l.l is this? I thought it was a coffee shop. Now're you telling me, it's vaudeville? I'd've known that, I wouldn't've come."

"Take it easy, Bill," Proctor said. "I know you're under a lot of pressure. I was just givin' you the leg."

"Yeah," Malatesta said. "Well, that's all right, but so's everybody else. Three of you guys make a dozen, easy."

"Yeah, yeah," Proctor said. "How's the old lady?"

"Dryin' out," Malatesta said. "Again. Costs about three grand, usually. Doesn't work. I haven't got it. Doesn't matter. Didn't matter the last time. Didn't work the last time. Doesn't matter this time. Won't work this time. You pays your money, you can find some. You takes your choice, you got one. I can't find no money. I haven't got any choice."

"How's old Marion?" Proctor said.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h," Malatesta said.

"Oh, come on," Proctor said, "everybody in town knows that. The tide goes out and the tide comes in. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. The Red Sox are not gonna win the pennant. You're hangin' around with Marion. Will you get off my a.s.s? I don't mind you treating me like I'm stupid, but for Christ sake, man, I am not dumb."

"That's none of your business," Malatesta said. "That's none of your f.u.c.kin' G.o.dd.a.m.ned business whatsoever at all."

"Look," Proctor said, "it's not something that I'm looking to make a profit off of. In that respect it is not my business. It is something that I know. Which if I did not know it, I would be more or less dead and probably deserve it, because when there are too many things in this town that you do not know, you will probably get dead.

"On the other hand," he said, "Marion does explain a few things about you."