George Higgins - The rat on fire

“I can imagine,” Scott said. “But that really was all she could raise. She had a pension she built up working as a cleaning lady in the Roslindale post office, and she cashed it in. That was all she had.”

“That,” Mack said, “and one goddamned mean kid. What the hell is bothering him, anyway?”

“Well,” Scott said, “the cop, for openers.”

“The cop, the cop,” Mack said. “The cop is the current excuse, like the previous victim was the previous excuse. Should I go and see the kid’s mother?”

“You probably should,” Scott said. “You go down there and talk to her, she might be able to throw some light on this whole thing.”

“Mavis Davis,” Mack said. “Okay, I’ll do it. Even if she does rhyme with herself.”

Billy Malatesta parked the white unmarked car next to a fireplug on Jersey Street. He shut off the headlights and sat for a moment in the dark, watching the street behind by using the rear-view mirrors, switching his gaze back to study the street in front of him. The white sign with the Red Sox logo up on the left advertised three night games with the California Angels, but Fenway Park lay in darkness with the team on the road, and there was no other automobile traffic.

Malatesta, in a blue blazer, yellow shirt, grey slacks and black loafers, got out of the car and locked it. He inspected the street again. The wholesale office furniture store was dark; there were no lights burning in the second-story warehouse rooms. A man wearing a scalley cap and a coat sat in the doorway of the loading platform near the street light, drinking every so often from a bottle in a brown bag.

Malatesta went up the street toward Fenway Park and stopped at a panelled wooden doorway illuminated by a sixty-watt bulb. There was an engraved brass plaque on the centre panel of the door, under a brass lion’s-head knocker. The plaque read: Club 1812. Malatesta fished a key from his pocket and inserted it into the polished brass lock. He opened the door, entered, and closed it behind him.

The foyer of the club was carpeted with thick green plush. He wiped his feet and walked past the cigarette machine and the empty cloakroom. The main room of the club was small, able to accommodate fifteen or sixteen customers at the bar, which was set off from the dining area by a waist-high partition crowned with knurled spindles that rose to about two feet below the ceiling. The tables in the dining area had red cloths on them, with white napkins and ornate silverware at each of the place settings. The water glasses were crystal; they were turned upside down at the vacant places. There were six men eating steak and drinking Val-policella at the table farthest to the rear, and three men hunched over a table in the middle of the room, to Malatesta’s left. They had a bottle of Canadian Club, a soda siphon and a silver ice bucket in front of them. They were examining papers.

Malatesta walked past the maitre-d’s desk and into the bar area. There was a long leaded mirror behind the bar. The bartender was reading Time and absently eating olives from an old-fashioned glass. The bartender seemed to have a system: when he finished reading a page of the magazine, he ate an olive. When he finished chewing the olive, he sipped from a glass of Coca-Cola. Then he turned the page. He read whatever was on that, including automobile advertisements. He ate an olive and drank Coke. On Tuesday nights the bartender read Time. On Wednesday nights he read Newsweek. On Thursdays he read Sports Illustrated. Malatesta did not know what he read on Mondays and Fridays, or whether the weekend bartender read anything at all.

Malatesta went up to the service counter and took an olive. “Evenin’, Larry,” he said. The bartender did not look up from Time. He said, “Billy. She’s in the toilet. Got here about half an hour ago. Think she’s pissed at you.”

“She drinking?” Malatesta said.

“Nothin’ heavy,” the bartender said. “Tequila Sunrise. It’s down there. About half gone. She’s all right.”

“I’m really sorry about last Thursday, Larry,” Malatesta said.

The bartender finished a page and took an olive. He held it in his right hand and said, “Ahh, think nothin’ of it. Those things’ll happen. Nobody was pissed off.”

“She was overtired when she got here,” Malatesta said.

“That’ll do it,” the bartender said. “I wasn’t with her, night before.”

“Didn’t mean anything either,” the bartender said. “Applies to everybody. Hard day at the job, no lunch maybe, get so fuckin’ pissed off you don’t even want any dinner, only thing on your mind’s a good couple of belts, huh? Happens to everybody. Dennis comes in here some nights, supposedly he’s checking on me and am I taking all his money out of the register when he’s not looking, finds out I’m not, decides hell maybe have himself a double Wild Turkey, and that’s when I know he’s had a piss-ass day and I’m gonna end up driving him home again. Doesn’t happen very often-guy runs four bars, he’s got some idea what happens to people when they do that, and even he still does it. Now and then. She wasn’t bad. I’ve seen a lot worse.” He ate an olive.

“See,” Malatesta said, eating an olive, “Jesus, I should stop doing this. Every time I come in here like this and start talking to you, I start doing the same thing you do and eat the olives.”

“Don’t agree with you?” the bartender said.

“They do going down,” Malatesta said, “but they sure don’t about three hours later, when they start coming up.”

“Never affected me that way,” the bartender said. “I was doing time, I got this terrible craving for olives. And what was that, about six years ago, I got out? Been eatin’ them ever since. Tell you, Billy, there’re times when I think I’d rather eat an olive’n a broad.” He ate an olive.

“Rather have the broad,” Malatesta said.

“Every man’s got his own twitch,” the bartender said.

“You got any pistachio nuts?” Malatesta said.

“Billy,” the bartender said, “I told you and told you: this is a class-act saloon, right? Private club. No guys in tee-shirts sittin’ around, throwing pistachio shells on the rug. Class joint. Give you some smoked almonds, you want. Those’re good. Like them almost as much’s I like olives.”

“Yeah,” Malatesta said, “but you can cream the olives off the bar here. Don’t have to account for them. Gotta pay for the almonds.”

“True,” the bartender said. “That’s another thing I kind of had the time to think about when I was in. If there is a choice between something that you like to eat that’s free, and something that you like to eat that costs you money, go with the free stuff. Makes sense. Your case, you got a different problem, because the free stuff don’t agree with you and therefore you have to eat the stuff you got to pay for.” He ate another olive. “Suppose you want a drink with it.”

“Johnny Red and soda,” Malatesta said.

“Uh-huh,” the bartender said. “Dennis was looking at that stuff the other night and how much I was ordering, and he said, ‘Jesus, old Billy’s been a regular lately, hasn’t he?’”

“You can tell old Dennis,” Malatesta said, “that if I wasn’t a regular in here for a lot of years, and got to like the guy against my better judgment, he might’ve had a lot of time to think about what he likes to eat, back when his joint on Route Twenty went up about seven years ago. Might’ve gotten to liking olives.”

“I don’t think I’ll tell him that,” the bartender said. He straightened up. “You want to tell him that, you tell him that. You and him’re in charge of that matter. I’ll just get you your drink and your nuts.”