George Higgins - The rat on fire

“You don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t. You made it. What you are is actual honky, except you’re kind of dark for it. But the honkies like that, don’t they? They like havin’ a pet nigger around that they can show off when they all go down to the swimming pool, and they lie around and have all that good shit and talk about how they’re going down to Florida in a week or so but they’ll be back in time so they can go the Cape for the summer. Bullshit.”

“You know, Alfred,” Mack said, “a little of you goes a considerable distance. I think what you need is another lawyer. I sure don’t need you for a client.”

“No,” Alfred said, “now you don’t need me for a client. But back when I first came in and my mother came up with three thousand dollars that she gave you, that she hadda go and beg off of her sister, then you did. Then you had a little place that you didn’t even have a secretary and you used to run your business outta phone booths. You didn’t mind seeing me then. You did a shitty job for me of course, but you got your money and that was all, mattered to you. Now, now it’s different, because you got the money and you’re a big-ass state rep, even though you don’t live in the district, and people’re always having you around at cocktail parties and stuff and givin’ you lots of money and kissing your ass for you.”

“Okay, Alfred,” Scott said, “that’ll do it. Now why don’t you just go outside and sit down and read a magazine or something and I’ll talk to Mister Mack and see if I can make some sense out of your problem. And then if we need you again, we’ll just call you back in and we’ll ask you, all right?”

“I don’t have to leave,” Alfred said.

“No,” Scott said, “you don’t. And you don’t have to come to work tonight, or any other night. Not for me at least. And I don’t have to pay you. I had to ask Mister Mack as a special favour if he would see you on account of all the trouble that you gave him the last time, and he did me the favour and made time in his busy schedule so you could talk to him, and I took time out of mine so that I could come here with you, and you are making me think that maybe I am wasting my time and certainly wasting his. Now get the hell out of here and go outside and sit down and shut up, because I am sick of listening to you and I know he is.”

“What’re you paying him an hour?” Mack said, after Alfred had slammed the door behind him.

“Wilfrid,” Scott said, “the minimum wage is two-ninety an hour. He isn’t worth that. But his mother works fifty hours a week trying to make a living, and she doesn’t get one, and his sister works and puts her share in the pot, and I pay Alfred four bucks an hour for eight hours a day and he usually doesn’t show up less than an hour and a half late and then he sits around reading comic books all night. But I know Mavis. I knew her before she got herself tied up with Roosevelt. She lived two houses down from me in Roxbury when I was growing up. She wasn’t a very pretty girl and she wasn’t very smart, or she never would’ve gotten herself tied up with Roosevelt, but she was a good kid then and she is now. When Roosevelt left I tried to help her out, and I guess I did, some, and when Alfred was coming up for parole and he needed a job to go to, I said I would give him one. That’s all.”

“Alfred,” Mack said, “Alfred is the most troublesome client I ever had. Bar none.”

“I know,” Scott said. “He’s the most unsatisfactory employee I ever had, too. You know how easy that job is? All he has to do is sit there and wait for the phone to ring at Boston City. When it does, he wakes up Herbert, who sleeps all the time, and they get in the wagon and go down there to the back door and ring the bell. The hospital people deliver the body to the door. Alfred and Herbert put it in the wagon and bring it back to my place. All they have to do is unload it and put it in the refrigerator. In the morning I come down, or Farber comes in. We do all the embalming work. Strictly delivery boys. Nothing more. Herbert sleeps and Alfred reads comic books.

“For that I pay Herbert three-fifty and Alfred four bucks an hour. I pay my accountant to do their withholding. I pay the government unemployment compensation, which I guess is my punishment for giving those two jobs. I pay Blue Cross. I pay Blue Shield. I keep the refrigerator in the basement stocked with Coca-Cola and they keep it stocked with beer and God knows what else. I hire them to work nights so I can get some sleep, and when I come downstairs in the morning there is always this sort of sharp smell in the air, as though somebody had been smoking something. Herbert is twenty-three. If things go right, he will get his high school diploma next spring. Then he wants to go to embalming school so he can be an undertaker like me. Herbert can slam-dunk with either hand, but he couldn’t embalm a cockroach. I don’t know what Alfred wants to do, except hit Peters with a tire iron for being attentive to his sister. Who is probably encouraging it. And I only have two of them. I don’t know how you stand it.”

“Is Peters white?” Mack said.

“No,” Scott said, “he isn’t. He’s from North Carolina and he apparently likes the ladies pretty well, from everything I hear. And there is nothing wrong with that, I guess.”

“There’s a lot of it going around,” Mack said. “At least if some of the things I hear are true.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, “but, well, I broke up with her, you know.”

“No shit,” Mack said. “You broke up with Gail?”

“I had to,” Scott said. “She was bugging me all the time about leaving Crystal and gettin’ a divorce and us gettin’ married, and I can’t do that, for Christ sake.”

“Good-looking woman, though,” Mack said.

“Gorgeous,” Scott said. “Dumb as a rock, though. I dunno, maybe she isn’t. Who the hell knew anything when they were twenty-four, huh? I didn’t. I know you didn’t. The hell’re you gonna do, you know? Crystal would’ve taken the house and the business and every fuckin’ penny I own, I did that. Shit, Gail’d last about a week with me, if I was broke. Gail likes money.”

“Yeah,” Mack said.

“Maybe that means she isn’t stupid,” Scott said. “Could be, I suppose. Anyway, I had to drop her. Crystal don’t make any stink, I fool around a little, sometimes I don’t come home. She knows what’s goin’ on. But if I tell her I want a divorce, that is gonna be a different thing, my friend. She will come after me with a lawyer who swims in the water and nobody else goes in when he’s taking a dip. They put bulletins on the radio. I don’t think so. I had a good time with Gail, but I’m not pushing my luck like that, pissing away everything I got. I worked too hard for it.”

“Too bad Alfred doesn’t try a little of that formula,” Mack said.

“Alfred,” Scott said, “ahh, shit. You know that stuff about his mother borrowing the money to pay you? From her sister? She didn’t. She told Alfred that, but she told me the truth.”

“I didn’t make a dime on that case,” Mack said. “I was lucky I came close to breaking even. That trial, all those hearings? Day after day I spend listening to Alfred lie to me and then going around and finding out he lied to me and going back to Alfred and having him tell me some more lies, so I can start the whole procedure again? Worst case I ever had. When he went in for sentencing and the judge asked me if I wanted to make a plea for him, I was going to ask for the death penalty. The only reason the judge gave Alfred five was because he knew me and he knew Alfred and he felt sorry for me. If it’d been somebody else representing Alfred, Alfred would’ve gotten life. Jesus, what a kid. The jury loved him.”