The rat on fire

16

Corpobal Michael Sweeney and Corporal Donald Carbone perched on the orange plastic moulded chairs in the office of Detective Lieutenant Inspector John Roscommon in the tenth floor quarters of the Criminal Division, Massachusetts Department of the Attorney General, at 20 Ashburton Place in Boston. Sweeney wore blue slacks and a yellow short-sleeved shirt, open at the throat. Carbone wore brown slacks and a pale blue short-sleeved shirt, open at the throat. Roscommon had pulled his maroon tie down from the open collar of his white shirt – he wore grey slacks. All three men perspired.

“Good Christ,” Roscommon said, “all that rain last night, I figured for sure it’d break this goddamned heat.”

“Yeah,” Sweeney said. “Too bad this building’s so old, doesn’t have air conditioning. What is it, two, three years?”

“Least that,” Roscommon said. “And thank you very much, President Carter. Always did like to work in a nice warm place. What’d you guys get besides wet? Mickey?”

“It looks to me – it looks to us, right, Don?” Carbone nodded. “Looks to us like our old friend Lieutenant Billy is getting himself into a hod of shit the Lord couldn’t save him from.”

“Ahh, shit,” Roscommon said. “I like Billy. The hell’s he have to fuck things up like this, can you tell me that?”

“It’s the broad,” Mickey Sweeney said. “The cunt down at the Registry. He’s got the stars in his eyes for her. You were right. He’s gettin’ fifteen hundred.”

“Marion Scanlon,” Carbone said.

“Oh, for Christ sake,” Roscommon said. “Didn’t the dumb son of a bitch have trouble enough just with that drunk he married? That broad’s been all over the place like horseshit ever since she was fifteen, for Christ sake. Honest to God. There’s only three men in the United States that can honestly claim they never fucked her, and they’re all sittin” in this fuckin’ room. He can’t keep up with her. She’s been making out with wired guys for years. Vegas, Mexico, San Juan. Jesus Christ, a cop can’t afford that kind of ginch.”

“Malatesta doesn’t know that,” Sweeney said. “He thinks if he does a few favours for Leo Proctor, he can have the best piece of ass between here and Portland.”

“He probably could,” Roscommon said, “but he hasn’t got the right one this time. Jesus Christ, I bet you could drive one of those goddamned trucks up her and she’d thank you for the happy time.” Roscommon stood up and turned his back on Sweeney and Carbone. He stared out over the Government Centre. “I swear to God,” he said, “I got no idea whatsoever what the goddamned hell makes women tick, but compared to men like Billy, they’re at least sensible. Jesus.”

“He’s had a rough time of it,” Sweeney said.

Roscommon turned around. “That won’t do it,” he said. “I know he’s had a rough time, but that won’t do it. Everybody’s had a rough time. My wife’s had rheumatoid arthritis for six years now. She can’t get around, most days. The poor woman’s all crippled up. There are times when she has to use a wheelchair, and I have to feed her. I do the cooking and I do the cleaning and on my way home, I do the marketing. She’s in pain about every minute. God knows what’s been spent on treatments, and thank God for the medical plan.

“We can’t go away,” Roscommon said. “What the hell would we do? We can’t have the furniture done over and we can’t do anything we worked so long for. I’m fifty-eight years old. My last physical I got better grades than men fifteen and twenty years younger than I am. I’m a healthy man. Just as healthy as Malatesta in the body, and a lot healthier in the mind. I don’t go around fooling with whores and associating with the likes of Leo Proctor.

“I know that son of a bitch,” Roscommon said. “I’ve known Leo Proctor’s name for a hundred years. I know who he is and I know what he does, and the bastard is no damned good. I know his sidekick, Dannaher, and I know the other one, the Carroll fellow there that they all call Clinker. They’re nothing but a bunch of hoodlums and thugs. They steal and they cheat and they’ll do anything to make a buck and then whine at you when you catch them at it. They didn’t mean anything. Then they get some liver-lipped lawyer to come into court and whine some more, and they hit the street again.

“You guys,” Roscommon said, “you guys don’t do that. You go out on lousy nights for lousy pay and no overtime and get yourselves all wet, and you aren’t going to sit there and tell me you don’t have problems paying your bills and taking care of your families. You’re not going to sit there and tell me you’d do the same thing Billy’s doing, because if you did, I would laugh at you. And if you went out and did it, I’d throw you in the can.

“I’ve got no respect for a shit-heel like that,” Roscommon said. “I’ve got no sympathy for him, either. I’m going to do the same for him that I would do for you, if you guys were the scumbag he is, that rotten son of a bitch. Mickey, you tail that fucking Proctor, everywhere he goes. Don, cover Billy as close as you can. We’re gonna nail those two bastards, plus anybody else they’re hooked up with, and we’re gonna nail them damned straight good, once and for all. What else they say?”

“Lemme back things up a little here,” Carbone said. “We found out what Leo and Dannaher were up to in the woods. They were catching rats.”

“Rats?” Roscommon said. “What the hell they want to catch rats for? You got a rat in your house, of course you’d want to catch him. But go into the woods looking for rats? That doesn’t make any sense. The hell they want rats?”

“I dunno,” Carbone said, “but that’s what they were doing in the woods.”

“Shit,” Roscommon said. “It’s still Fein’s buildings, right?”

“Right,” Sweeney said, “far as we know.”

“Fein’s buildings’re on Bristol, right?” Roscommon said. “The brick three stories there?”

“Right,” Sweeney said.

“Jesus Christ,” Roscommon said, “they are not going to drive those tenants out of those buildings with rats. That’s coals to Newcastle, for the luvva Mike. There’s more rats in that neighbourhood’n there is in Boston Garden. Importing rats won’t do them any good. I thought we had an arson thing here, not some goddamned exercise for the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.”

“Well,” Sweeney said, “that’s what they were doing. They were catching rats.”