George Higgins - The rat on fire

“Ah,” Fein said.

“And those rats that’re on fire go running right up inside all those walls where the wiring is, and they set the building on fire,” Proctor said.

“And anybody,” Fein said, “that was looking at it, they would think that it was probably the wiring.”

“See?” Proctor said. “That is why rats’re good news.”

“Finally,” Fein said. “Finally, I am gonna get even with the rats.”

Wilfrid Mack wore a light blue three-piece suit with silver blazer buttons, black Gucci loafers and a light blue shirt with a dark blue necktie knotted precisely over the gold collar pin. He had a gold identification bracelet on his right wrist and a gold Corum watch with a black alligator strap on his left wrist. On the brick wall behind his chromium and rosewood desk he displayed his diplomas from the University of Kentucky and the Syracuse Law School, his certificate of honourable discharge with the rank of captain in the Judge Advocate Corps of the U.S. Army, his certificates of admission to the Massachusetts and federal bars, his award from the Jaycees as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1963, and his membership scrolls in the Urban League, NAACP, ACLU and American Legion. His appointment as a member of the Presidential Commission on Neighbourhoods was preserved in a frame standing on his desk, next to the picture of his wife, Corinne, and the snapshots of his three children.

Alfred Davis and Walter Scott sat in the blue tweed chairs in front of the desk. Walter wore a dark blue blazer and tan slacks. Alfred wore a dark green tee-shirt with sweat stains at the armpits and dirty blue jeans. Alfred talked and Walter listened, looking at Wilfrid.

“I am telling you, Mister Mack,” Alfred said. “That is exactly what it is that I am doing. I am telling you. I am telling you that these guys are out doing a number on us, and that is exactly what they are doing and we all know it. Now if we can’t come in when this kind of thing starts going down and talk to you who is our elected representative and is always coming around the community centre and stuff and telling the kids that he is on the job because he wants to help us and that is why we should all get out and vote him back in the job because he wants to help us, then what good are you, huh? What good’s that do us, huh? You tell me that? You tell me to tell you things and I am doing that. How about, you tell me something?”

“Alfred,” Walter said, “Mister Mack isn’t arguing with you. He didn’t say that. He just said that it wasn’t doing anybody any good for you to just sit there and call people names. You’ve got to tell him what happened.”

“That’s right,” Mack said. “Alfred, maybe I can’t do anything for you. Maybe I can do something for you. I won’t know until you tell me exactly what it is that’s bothering you, and what you think ought to be done about it. Maybe I will tell you something else that I think I can do, and maybe I will tell you I can’t do anything. I don’t know. And I won’t know, either, unless you can stop hollering and yelling like a little baby and tell me what happened that’s bothering you.”

“Oh, shee-it,” Alfred said. He waved his hands. “You gonna try and give me that shit, man? You’re supposed to be our representative, right? We elected you. You’re supposed to help us, when somebody is doing this kind of thing to us. You’re supposed to give us all this here effective leadership thing. Isn’t that what you said?”

“That’s what I said,” Mack said, “and that’s what I want to do. But I can’t lead you any place if I don’t know where you’re coming from, and so far you haven’t told me.”

“All right,” Alfred said, “my sister, right? My sister Selene. Now my sister Selene, she is only seventeen years old, all right? She don’t hang out. She goes to school every day and she gets all A’s and B’s and she helps my mother and she works on the weekends and at nights down at the twenty-four-hour store. She comes home nights with that fuckin’ purple slush all over her uniform and she’s so tired she can’t hardly say anything, and she sits up there and she studies and next year she’s gonna go to Boston State and maybe after that she’s gonna be a lawyer like you, Mister Mack. And this guy, this Peters guy, he is buggin’ her all the time and askin’ her to go out with him and he’s a married man. He won’t leave her alone.”

“Who’s this Peters?” Mack said.

“Peters is one of them,” Alfred said, “and the other one is his partner, Cole. Now those two guys, Cole shouldn’t let him do that, go in there and start giving Selene a whole ration shit. It’s late at night and there’s only one other person in there, Toby Florence, he’s usually drunk and he can’t do nothing to help her. Drunk or he’s smokin’ and he’s not interested. Now them guys, they shouldn’t be doing that. They should get transferred someplace else, if they are gonna be doing things like that. That’s what I mean.”

“Who is Peters and who is Cole?” Mack said.

“Peters is the guy that drives, all right?” Alfred said. “I already said something to him myself. I told him: ‘Look, you bastard,’ right? I said, ‘You been givin’ my sister a whole bunch of hard time and I don’t like it,’ right? And he just looks at me. And he calls me a shit and tells me I don’t get along, he is gonna take me in and arrest me for somethin’ and I can see how I like that, all right? And his partner, Cole? He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t do anything. He’s the guy that’s supposed to be in charge of the car, but he don’t say anything. Nothing. So here I am, and I’m talking to you and you don’t do nothing. You know something? I am gonna do something, if somebody doesn’t do something. Either that fuckin’ Peters starts leaving Selene alone or I am gonna do something to him.”

“Alfred,” Scott said.

“Don’t gimme that,” Alfred said. “She is a nice girl, my sister. They are bothering her all the time and nobody does anything about it.”

“Alfred,” Mack said, “you did five indeterminate at Concord for something that you did. Didn’t that satisfy you? You really convinced that you would like to do something else?”

“I wouldn’t’ve,” Alfred said, “if you went at it the right way.”

“Alfred,” Mack said, “they had three eyewitnesses who saw you with the weapon before the attack, and five who saw you make the attack, and the victim lived and told everybody about how you hit him three times with a jack handle. Now let us be reasonable and realistic, Alfred. You cannot go around doing things like that if you really want to be on the street. Now, if you really want to be in jail, if that is actually what you want, you can go ahead and beat up another guy, a cop this time. Knowing you, why don’t you do it down in Quincy Market someday, some fine afternoon when Kevin White’s there with about three hundred people and two television cameras, announcing how he’s gonna run for reelection again, and that way everybody’ll be handy and they can just run some videotape of you doing it, huh? Then you can come in here again and tell me it’s a shit case and you don’t care about the moving pictures and three hundred witnesses, I should beat it easy.”

“This guy,” Alfred said, “this guy is kicking the shit out of my sister. You know how we live, Mister Mack? You got any idea with your house in Newton and your nice car that you use to come back in here every day and see how us poor niggers maybe get up some more money to give you, so the next time you don’t have to settle for an Oldsmobile, you own maybe a Cadillac, huh? You don’t live here no more. You say you do, but you really don’t. You got your kids in the private schools and your wife plays the tennis and her picture’s in the paper looking very fine and everything. And I see where you been playing some golf and getting your picture taken with a lot of the guys that play for the Patriots and also forgot how they used to be black, huh?