George Higgins - The rat on fire

“Why?” Proctor said.

“We can talk about this,” Dannaher said.

The first truck driver dove in through the door like a man escaping from a bear. “Je-zuss,” he said, streaming with rain. The young woman behind the counter cleaned her teeth with her tongue, storing her gum on the left side of her mouth while she worked at the crevices between the teeth on the right, and looked at him with mild interest. He tried to dry his hair with the wet sleeve of his green shirt. He went over to the counter and pulled several paper napkins from the dispenser, using them in a wad to wipe his scalp vigorously. “This goddamned weather,” he said. “It is raining like a bastard out there. Christ, this goddamned weather.”

He sat down heavily on one of the counter stools. “Coffee,” he said. The waitress said, “Regular?” The truck driver said, “Yeah. Cream, sugar.”

The waitress poured a cup of coffee while she finished cleaning her teeth and resumed chewing the gum. She picked a small foil container of lightener from a stainless steel tray where several more containers floated around in ice and water, one of them leaking and turning the water white. “Don’t use cream here,” she said, putting the cup and the service container before him. “This is that sawdust stuff that they just put water in.” The truck driver said, “I don’t care.” She said, “Ya put in your own sugar.” She slid the sugar dispenser to him and resumed staring vacantly across the diner, snapping her gum every so often and looking at her watch every few minutes. “My buddy been in?” the driver said, after swallowing some coffee. She did not look at him. “Don’t know him, mister,” she said. “Lots of guys come in here that’ve got buddies. Can’t remember everybody.”

“No,” the driver said. “He was in here the other night with me. We were both in here, remember? Wears the same kind of uniform I do. Kind of heavyset guy. Red hair. The night it was so warm.”

“Don’t remember him,” she said.

“Oh,” the driver said, “well, he’ll probably be in.”

“Jimma,” Proctor said, “we haven’t got nothing to talk about. I already told you – the bank got the money. I haven’t got no more money right now. I can’t give you no money until we go out and we do it, you know? We got to deliver for the man before I get any more money, and I can’t help it.”

“I was counting on this,” Dannaher said.

“Shit,” Proctor said, “that and fifty cents’ll get you another cup of coffee, Jim. I was counting on you. You didn’t show up. Now I haven’t got your money anymore, which I wouldn’t have if you did show up, but the trouble is, you haven’t got the money – the bank has. I’m gonna have to do this thing myself. Alone. Least I know I can depend on me.”

The second truck driver burst through the door much as the first one. He also was soaked. “Mickey,” the first trucker said. The second trucker shook himself like a dog and dried his face with his bare hands. “Don,” he said, “it’s wetter’n a hot pussy out there tonight.” He took the stool next to Don.

“No shit,” Don said. “You ever see anything like this weather before in your life? I mean, Jesus H. Christ. Day after day, night after night, it just doesn’t stop. It’s awful.”

“Coffee, regular,” Mickey said. “One sugar.”

The waitress snapped her gum and repeated her speech about the synthetic creamer and the sugar. “I don’t give a damn,” Mickey said. “Just gimme the goddamned coffee.”

“Jesus,” the waitress said. “Ya don’t have to jump down my throat, ya know.”

“Ahh, shit,” Mickey said. “I know. I just had a hard night, is all. Fuckin’ roads’re awful out there. Can’t see three feet in front the bumper sometimes.”

“You go up to Chicopee?” Don said.

“That’s affirmative,” Mickey said. “Deadheaded up there like a bat out of fuckin’ hell. Wasn’t rainin” then. Nice day, matter fact. No cops around. No bears in the woods from One-twenty-eight all the way the terminal. Put the hammer down and I didn’t let her up until I hit Ludlow. Naturally, of course, minute I get the load hitched up and I start back, the rain comes in. I tell you, Don, I drove all the way back right in the middle of that goddamned downpour. I’d’ve gotten out of Hyde Park just about forty minutes earlier this morning, I would’ve run ahead of it all the way. Way it was, I got on the double-nickel with the load and the rain got on the double-nickel with me, and we both come all the way back down here together. Son of a bitch.”

“What’d you have?” Don said.

“Detergent and stuff,” Mickey said. “Soap, steel wool, Ajax, stuff like that. It’s all pretty bulky. No trouble, really, no real weight. It’s just that goddamned rain. If there was a Smokey out there tonight, you couldn’t prove it by me. I had all I could do to see my mirrors, and if he saw me, it was all right because I wasn’t doing much of anything. You go to New Beffa?”

“Yeah,” Don said, drinking coffee. “Took a load of cold cuts down, brought a load of Portuguese bread back. Easy run, like you say, ‘cept for the rain.”

“Leo,” Dannaher said, touching Proctor on the sleeve again, “Leo, you can’t just cut me out like this. I was counting on that fifteen hundred. I need it, you know? I really need it.”

“I thought you had all kinds of ways, get money,” Proctor said. “Isn’t that what you was telling me the other night there, when you didn’t want to go in the dump and pull your own weight in an operation for once and catch some rats? Wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah,” Dannaher said, “but this was one of them and this is the one that I happened to’ve picked. I turned the other ones down, you know, so’s I could work with you.”

“Meaning, of course,” Proctor said, “that the reason you never show up at the Londonderry last night is because you think maybe Clinker Carroll’s got something safer you can do with him before he goes back in the can again, and you just said, ‘Well, I think I will take a chance with Clinker and see if maybe what he has got to offer isn’t maybe better than this sure thing old Leo’s got for me, and fuck Leo.’ Am I right?”

“No, Leo,” Dannaher said. “No, honest, I told you. I was just sitting there with Clinker down the Paper Moon and he was all upset and I stayed there with him because I was afraid, I didn’t wanna leave the guy alone by himself, you know? And I didn’t think I could get in touch with you.”

“And then, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “then you heard a little more about what Clinker’s got in mind, finally, after you’d been buying him drinks for about three hundred years, and you started to get a little scared and besides there wasn’t much money in it, not as much as there is in what I’m offering, at least. And you start thinking about Clinker’s track record and how he’s goin’ away again pretty soon and you got scared as usual so you backed out on him and you decided: ‘Well, I will go around and I will see if maybe I can blow a little smoke up old Leo’s ass and maybe I can get back in his good graces, because old Leo never done much time and certainly didn’t do any since he was just a kid that didn’t know shit-all from what he was doing so he was always getting caught. But now he’s a lot smarter. And besides, the work ain’t dangerous and it pays good.’”

“No, Leo,” Dannaher said.

“Yes, Jimma,” Proctor said. “Yes, it does. It pays good. That kind of money for catching rats plus one hour of light work in the morning for fifteen hundred bucks is damned good pay, and you know it.”

“I didn’t mean it didn’t pay good,” Dannaher said. “I didn’t mean that. I meant: you’re wrong about Clinker. He was all steamed up. He just got back with his wife there and she’s been screwing around all the time he was gone the first time and now she thinks he’s gonna go away again…”