George Higgins - The rat on fire

“Shut up,” Roscommon said.

“You’ll lose control of yourself,” Carbone said. “You’ll piss in your pants all the time and when you talk it’ll sound like you had a mouthful of spit. And you would have, too, if you could only stop drooling and slobbering all the time, so it runs right down your chin and into your shirt pocket. Get your undershirt all wet.”

“Where the fuck is Sweeney?” Roscommon said.

“Sweeney is at home and Sweeney is in bed,” Carbone said. “He’s been carrying one of those summer colds around with him for about a month now, and it finally took him out.”

“He’s dogging it,” Roscommon said.

“He’s not dogging it,” Carbone said. “He’s got a temperature and he’s got a fever and he’s got the trots. He’s dizzy and his body aches. You keep him out till four in the morning, four or five nights a week, following that jerk Malatesta around, and he finally got so run-down he collapsed from it.”

“You’re supposedly doing the same thing,” Roscommon said. “He’s doing it, you’re doing it. He’s sick, you’re not sick. How’d that happen?”

“Told you and told you, Lieutenant,” Carbone said, “us dagos’re tough.”

“Too dumb to get sick and lie down, most likely,” Roscommon said.

“Too proud,” Carbone said.

“Uh-huh,” Roscommon said. “Okay, enough of this shit. You guys had close to a month. Have you got something for me, maybe, I can take over and tell Mooney and get that little shitbird back in his nest without listening to another fucking lecture about the law enforcement responsibility to society? Please? Tell me you got something, Don. Tell me I’m not a total failure and I’m doomed to Purgatory.”

“We haven’t got a hell of a lot,” Carbone said.

“Grand,” Roscommon said.

Carbone reached into his jacket pocket and took out a steno pad, spiral-bound at the top. “I haven’t had a chance to dictate this stuff yet. Some of it’s mine and some of it’s what Mickey told me on the phone that he’s been doing.”

“No reports, then,” Roscommon said.

“Not typed, Lieutenant,” Carbone said.

“Go ahead,” Roscommon said. “I wish I’d stayed in the Airborne. I could be retired by now.”

“First,” Carbone said, “what Mickey’s getting. Near as we can tell, Jimma Dannaher thinks his feet are wet and he’s telling people that they’re starting to get cold. He’s not exactly saying that, but he’s been doing a lot of work on his thirst in a couple bars down on Old Colony Boulevard and Broadway, and Jimma can’t drink so well.”

“Which bars,” Roscommon said.

“Dunno,” Carbone said. “Mickey just sort of rattled this stuff off at me and he sounded awful, so I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. He’s got the ins down there, though, which is why he’s working them. Says Dannaher was yapping and bitching about how Proctor’s making him do all kinds of crazy shit and he’s afraid he’s gonna get hurt.”

“What’s he mean, hurt?” Roscommon said.

“Not exactly sure,” Carbone said. “I did ask Mickey that and he told me his guys didn’t know either. Seems like Proctor’s making Dannaher go out late at night and he’s taking him into the woods and Dannaher don’t like the woods.”

“Woods, for Christ sake?” Roscommon said. “Shit, where the hell’re there woods around Bristol Road? No woods out around there. Woods in Jammy Plain, woods in West Roxbury. No woods around Symphony Hall. Some bushes, maybe, you go out the Fenway and jump into the Victory Gardens there, tromp all over the old people’s tomato vines. But there’s no woods around at all.”

“I know,” Carbone said.

“Well, for Christ sake,” Roscommon said, “then what the hell’s Proctor taking the guy in the woods for? Where’s he taking him in the woods? They drop Fein’s stuff and go to work for some guy who wants his crop of Christmas trees torched? They’re going to start a forest fire, they don’t need Malatesta. He’s not in charge of fucking forest fires, god-damnit.”

“John,” Carbone said, “Mickey knows that and I know that. But we’ve also got a pretty good line on Dannaher. He’s not very bright. He’s not bright enough to make up a trip in the woods with Proctor if he didn’t actually make a trip to the woods. And if he did go into the woods, he’s not smart enough to say nothing about it. So our guess is that Proctor took him into the woods and it was probably not for a picnic.

“Now,” Carbone said, “we’ve got a pretty good line on these guys. We don’t know everything they’re planning to do, and we don’t know when they’re planning to do it. But we’re pretty sure they’re going to do it at Fein’s joint, because as far as we know that’s the only thing they’ve got going right now and those two assholes need money. Maybe they went to the woods to pick up kindling. We just don’t know, because Dannaher, when he got through pissing and moaning about going in the woods, shut up.”

“Or passed out,” Roscommon said.

“Or passed out,” Carbone said. “Now, what we also got is, we got Proctor. And Proctor is down at the Londonderry a lot, which I know because I went to school with Danny, who is the barkeep and he will tell me something from time to time as long as I don’t go in there. And what he tells me is that Proctor is in there, night after night, and he’s alone. He gets no calls, he eats there, he drinks himself bloated and then he goes home. He is not cheerful. Danny assumes he goes home. He doesn’t really know.

“So,” Carbone said, “it is at least possible that this thing with Fein’s little marshmallow roast is not going to go up the chimney anymore. At this point.”

“Nuts,” Roscommon said.

“Malatesta,” Carbone said, flipping the pages of the notebook. “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, Malatesta goes to Club 1812.”

“That place,” Roscommon said. “Algerian whorehouse. If I could prove what they did to get the license for that thing, I’d have six guys in jail and two more worried.”

“Very expensive type of place for a guy that doesn’t have a lot of money,” Carbone said.

“Or else very cheap,” Roscommon said.

“Or else very cheap,” Carbone said.

“Particularly for a guy that was working Middlesex fires when Dennis Murray’s Hideaway restaurant went up in a sheet of blue flame, and the guy who investigated decided it was the U-joints on the gas-pipe fittings and they weren’t installed right so they leaked and the pilot lights in the stoves did the rest,” Roscommon said.

“Dennis is not a nice guy,” Carbone said.

“Actually,” Roscommon said, “Dennis is sort of a nice guy. If I had a daughter and she brought him home to meet me, I might not be jumping with joy, but Dennis is not a bad fellow. He just got a little pressed for cash. Could happen to anybody. You’ll never get anything out of him, if you’re trying to get something out of him, but if you just sit down and talk to him, he will tell you a few things. Saw him few weeks after the Wayland fire, gave him my condolences of course, we said the Sorrowful Mysteries together. Then he starts to talk about the insurance companies. Should’ve heard him.

“’To them it’s just another crap game,’ he says. ‘They don’t care. They lose one percent off profit on the spread this year, more guys had fires’n they expected, they put three percent on the spread next year. They make an extra point next year, not as many guys had fires, they claim they had a lot of unexpected costs and they put another three points on the spread. They say the bankers make ‘em do it, account of everything else costs more to replace, and the bankers say the insurance companies’ve got them over barrels because the collateral is mortgaged and it’s got to be insured. It’s a beautiful dodge they got working.’