The Rat on Fire (12 page)

“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 ass. 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 buttons 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.”

“W
HERE THE FUCK
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 piss 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 slobbering all the time, so it runs right down your chin and into your shirt pocket. Get your undershirt all wet.”

“Where the fuck 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 dogging it,” Roscommon said.

“He’s not dogging 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 shit. 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 shitbird back in his nest without listening to another fucking 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 hell 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 bitching about how Proctor’s making him do all kinds of crazy shit 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. “Shit, where the hell’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 hell’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 fucking forest fires, god-damnit.”

“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 assholes need money. Maybe they went to the woods to pick up kindling. We just don’t know, because Dannaher, when he got through pissing and moaning about going in the woods, shut up.”

“Or passed out,” Roscommon said.

“Or passed 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 assumes 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 whorehouse. 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 Middlesex 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 crap 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.