George Higgins - The rat on fire

“Yeah,” Leo said.

“I was in the middle of one the other morning,” Fein said. “I am not inspecting any one of them after the sun goes down, I can tell you that. My own property that I am renting out to give me and my family some security in our old age so that we do not have to go on welfare like a bunch of fuckin’ niggers, and it’s full of mean niggers on welfare that won’t pay me and’re tearing my property apart and I’m afraid, go in there. Into property that I fuckin’ own? You’re goddamned right I’m afraid. I would no more go in there when the sun is down than I would go over to the zoo and shack up in the snake house.

“I go there in the morning,” Fein said. “I go there and here is this bastard leaning against the front door so I can’t get through it. And he is about nineteen, maybe, not very big, got on the jacket and the pants, doesn’t look like anything special, toothpick hanging out his mouth, and he looks at me. I say, ‘Excuse me.’ He says, ‘Whuffa?’ I say, ‘So I can get in the door.’ I don’t really see why I should have to explain to this fuckin’ kid why I want him to move on the steps of my own building, but it is possible that this kid has a knife in his pants and has been looking for somebody like me to stick it into. ‘Who you?’ he says. ‘Landlord sent me over,’ I say. ‘Just routine.’ He says, ‘You got any identification?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, but there is no way I am taking my wallet out so he can see exactly where it is, ‘yeah, I got identification, and I’m going to have it when I leave here, too. Now get the fuck out the way.’

“ ‘Landlord, huh?’ he says. But he did move a little. ‘You’re talkin’ that man, you tell him, see? You tell him there is bugs in here. Bugs, and rats. You tell him that. You tell him we want them bugs and rats out, we ain’t payin’ no rent.’ Shit. They’re not payin’ the rent now.”

“Rats?” Proctor said.

“Yeah,” Fein said, “rats. ‘Course I’ve got rats in there. I got rats that walk on two legs. Why the hell wouldn’t I have the rats that walk on four? That place is a hellhole, what they’ve done to it. There’re holes in the walls in the hall. There is only about two ways that you could make those holes. One is with rocks and the other one is with a bat or something like that. This was done on purpose. Six months ago, I get a call that there is no hot water. I couldn’t get hold of Randy, the guy that does the plumbing, so I went over there and even I could tell the reason: somebody swiped the copper tubing that sends the water to the heater. I don’t know how many gripes I had with the light company – I keep telling them I’m not the guy who puts the pennies in the fuse box. And they don’t believe me. I got windows broken in the basement. Somebody ripped up the boards on the stairs. They piss in the hallways and they throw their garbage out the window on the third floor instead of carrying it downstairs. An alligator could get into that house and nobody would notice, no matter how bad he stunk. Of course I got rats. I got niggers and I got rats.”

“Good,” Proctor said. “Since you got both, you get a package deal. Thirty grand and I will solve your problems for you.”

“Thirty grand,” Fein said, “for a fire? You must be out of your mind.”

“Two fires,” Proctor said. “Two fires and one lieutenant and guy to help me. Plus what I get. Thirty.”

Leo Proctor and Jimmy Dannaher, wearing green cotton Eisenhower jackets and green cotton pants, got out of the blue Ford Econoline van at the curb of Bristol Street and walked down the alleyway between the building that made up 21-25 Bristol and the building that was 27-31 Bristol Street. The buildings were three-story brick, with tall front windows and mansard roofs with parapets. They had been built during the Federal period. The front doors had arches over them and the street numbers were painted in faded gold. Proctor carried a large grey metal toolbox.

“These people aren’t stupid you know, Leo,” Jimmy said. There was broken glass in the alleyway, and a discarded porcelain bathroom sink. There were eleven open rubbish barrels chained to the wall, and flies buzzed around them. “You tell them we come here to fix something, they’re gonna remember us. Besides, what if there isn’t anything like that that is broken? How we gonna be supposed to know the furnace is busted, it’s summertime and the goddamned thing isn’t on anyway? They’re gonna get suspicious. I wouldn’t be surprised, something happens, they’ll remember us, you know? Tell the cops.”

“Now look,” Proctor said.

“Now look nothing,” Jimmy said. He stopped. “Don’t tell me ‘Now look.’ I heard that kinda song and dance before. I heard that from a guy who was gonna do all these great things for me and all I had to do was help him, and he was always tellin’ me, everything was gonna be fine. Not to worry. I should not worry. And I did not worry, and everything did not turn out all right, which is a very kind way of putting it. So, do not start telling me ‘Now look,’ and ‘Stop worrying,’ because I had some experience with that shit and when somebody says it to me now I start thinking and remembering about how it was, my family, the only time my family sees me is on Sundays. Got it? So, don’t give me any of that shit, because it does not interest me.”

“Now look,” Proctor said, “all right? I am a regular type of repairman, which is true. You are a regular type of repairman, which is also true. The guy who owns the building told me the tenants’re screaming about hot water and he asked me to go over and check out the furnace. Which is a perfectly legitimate thing, because the tenants have been screaming about no hot water and unless you get it offa the stove you will generally find that the hot water in most buildings is something that comes out the furnace thing there. They will have this boiler, unless they got gas or electric which these old buildings have not got because the people who live there’d rip the things out and sell them. All right? So anybody who wants to can remember seeing us all they want, and that will be all right too, because we are here on a job that they been screaming about having done. If something else happens in the next few days, then something else happens in the next few days, but that hasn’t got nothing to do with us.”

“I still don’t like it,” Jimmy said. “I am not sure about this. This is exactly the kind of thing I hear about from Bobby Coffey there, when he is telling me he has got a sure thing going and then it turns out that he didn’t, or if he did what was sure about it was that me and him was going to jail, which is what we did.

“ ‘Nothing to worry about, Jimmy,’ he’s always telling me, ‘nothing to worry about at all.’ And I keep thinking, ‘Yeah, but suppose maybe the guy’s not scared of us, and he goes to see the cops and he talks to them, huh? What if that happens?’ And that is exactly what he did, and what I ended up doing was time, and Bobby was still telling me, they’re carting me off to Norfolk, I shouldn’t worry about anything because he will get me out. Except he didn’t. It was the parole board that got me out, and they took their own sweet time about it, too. I don’t want no more of that shit, Leo. I don’t want no more that shit at all.”

“Look,” Leo said, “if you’re gonna have your period here, go have it somewhere else, all right? You wanna back out the job, back out the job. Go ahead. Walk right down the street, take a right on Symphony Road, go down Mass Ave there and you come to the place they play the music, you’ll see this subway thing they got there, which says Symphony on it, and you go down the steps and give the machine there a quarter and pretty soon a train comes along and you get on it and I will go ahead with this matter and I will get somebody else who will help me with it. Because I can, you know, and he will get the money instead of you and I won’t have to hear no more fuckin bitchin out of your mouth. All right?”