The rat on fire

14

“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 bitch that’s always whining and complaining and bitching 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 hell not?” Proctor said. “You did it to me. You could’ve called me the fuck 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 goddamned hell’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 fuckin’ windows, for Christ sake. If their wives weren’t coming down after them it’d be the cops or some sonbitch wanted to ring their chimes for them. They wouldn’t do that.”

“That fuckin’ sign, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “that fuckin’ sign is just a fuckin’ 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 asshole, you didn’t call me.

“So I sit there and I am drinking the Bally ale and I am naturally smelling like horse-piss 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 fuckin’ grease and those goddamned canned green peppers that taste like old green socks, in the fuckin’ roll that if you used it to beat a guy over the head with it, you would fuckin’ 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 bastard,” Dannaher said.

“Bullshit,” Proctor said. “Guy was doing me a favour. He stayed there, I would’ve stayed there. I would be there now, probably eatin’ another belly-buster and drinking some more ale and ruining my fuckin’ stomach for good. Plus which, I am supposed to be onna diet anyway, for Christ sake. I wonder what the hell that goddamned 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 fuck 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 hell 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.

“Shit, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “shit, 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 shit? 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 goddamned weather,” he said. “It is raining like a bastard out there. Christ, this goddamned 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.

“Shit,” 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 pussy out there tonight.” He took the stool next to Don.

“No shit,” 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 damn,” Mickey said. “Just gimme the goddamned coffee.”

“Jesus,” the waitress said. “Ya don’t have to jump down my throat, ya know.”

“Ahh, shit,” Mickey said. “I know. I just had a hard night, is all. Fuckin’ roads’re awful out there. Can’t see three feet in front the bumper sometimes.”

“You go up to Chicopee?” Don said.

“That’s affirmative,” Mickey said. “Deadheaded up there like a bat out of fuckin’ hell. 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 goddamned 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 bitch.”

“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 goddamned 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 fuck 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 ass 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 shit-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 damned 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 screwing 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 asshole. Only an asshole 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 asshole’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 fuckin’ 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 fuck 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 fuckin’ 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 snatch that’d fuck 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 piss 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.”