George Higgins - The rat on fire

“Right now, Philip, I don’t know. But Mister Fein is a very smart man and he will think of something that will drive you absolutely nuts, if you let me down like this. He will dribble you up and down the court like you were a basketball. He will make you wish that you had never been born.” She paused again. She nodded. “That’s better, Philip,” she said. “That is very much better. Yes. Thank you. I certainly will. I will call you tomorrow. Yes. That will be fine.”

Lois Reynolds hung up and looked inquiringly at Wilfrid Mack. “You’re dressed pretty good,” she said, “but I don’t recognise you. Least, I don’t think I do. You dance or something?”

“In a way,” Wilfrid said, “I dance all the time. In another way, I don’t dance at all. But I’ve got a great natural sense of rhythm. Jerry Fein in?”

“He expecting you?” she said.

“Nope,” Wilfrid said. “I knew him a long time ago and I was in the neighbourhood and just thought I’d drop in on the off-chance I could see him.”

“You’re a lousy gambler,” she said.

“You’re in a lousy mood,” he said.

“This is true,” she said. “And it is probably not your fault. So, I apologise. What’s your name?”

“Mack,” he said, “Wilfrid Mack.”

“What do you want?” she said. “No offence meant.”

“None taken,” he said. “I’m a State Senator and some of my voters live in some buildings he owns, and I thought it might be helpful if I saw him and talked to him about the conditions in those buildings, and maybe he could do something about them.”

“Bristol Road,” she said.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “yes.”

She nodded. “Good,” she said. “You ever see one of those moon rockets take off? You ever see the flame come out of the tail and all that? You didn’t, and you mention Bristol Road to that guy in there, you are going to. You want to do it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, “take a seat under Milton Berle, there. He’s got somebody with him. When that guy comes out, you can go in, and then I am going to get under the desk, and I will wait there until one of you comes out. Because it is for damned sure both of you will not come out, not with what you’re planning to say to him.”

Mack sat down on the blue plastic chair next to the picture of Milton Berle on the wall. “He’s a little grouchy about those apartments, is he?” he said.

“You could say that,” she said. “You could even say that he is kind of teed off about those apartments. You could say that he thinks it was probably the worst day in his life, when he decided to buy those apartments. I mean, this man is angry, you know? He is just about beside himself. He is liable to strangle you, you go in there and start telling him anywhere near like what you just been telling me. Try to strangle you. You’re bigger’n he is. But he’s so mad, he probably’ll try anyways.”

“What kind of guy is he?” Mack said. “I met him once or twice, but I don’t know him real well.”

“Well,” she said, “let me think. He is the type of guy who will get desperate, you know? I worked for him, let’s see, about twenty-three years ago, and then I went and had babies and I brought the kids up and Harold worked down at the Navy yard and supported us all, and then I came back. And, Jerry didn’t change in all that time. He is still the same kind of guy, that will work all day and part of the weekend and will not complain about it. But those apartment buildings drive him crazy.”

“Why?” Mack said.

“Because he can’t get any rent,” she said. “There’s about three of his tenants, and he’s got nine, that pay him any rent. And the city keeps coming after him. ‘You got to do this. You can’t do that. You better do the other things or we come after you and this and that.’ He doesn’t like it. He really doesn’t like it at all.”

“There’s rats in those buildings,” Mack said.

“Sure there are,” she said. “There’s rats in most buildings, I know about. There’re rats in this building. There’re rats where I live. The rats’re taking over, mister, in case you didn’t hear. They’ve got us outnumbered. They breed fast-er’n we do. They’ve been around longer and they’re not so choosy about what they eat.”

Mack began to laugh.

“You can laugh if you want to,” she said, “but I mean it. I know from rats. If you can laugh, you don’t.”

Mack stopped laughing.

“You know something?” she said. “You want to know something? There is nothing that Jerry Fein or any other mortal man can do about rats. If that’s what you’re here for, Senator, you are wasting your time.”

“Who’s with him?” Mack said.

“None of your business,” Lois said. “This is a law office, even if it does have a picture of Milton Berle up. I’m not allowed to say.”

“Now,” Proctor said to Fein, “I got the rats, right? I got the guys to help me, right? Because there is no way I am going into this swamp you got for a cellar there with a cage full of rats and a can of gas and I haven’t got a guy to hold a flashlight.”

“Where the hell’re you getting gas?” Fein said. “That fuckin’ Seville, you can hear the goddamned gas going through it. I got a flush at home that runs. Hell, I got three flushes at home that run. Sounds like Niagara Falls in my house, everybody goes the bathroom and all the flushes run and run and run. The people down the Water Department? I am their pension plan. ‘You want a nice condo down Daytona, Sadie? Wait till Feins get home from vacation. Sooner or later they go to the bathroom, and you’ll be set for life.’”

“See?” Proctor said. “Should’ve hired me to fix them, too. Any fool can fix a leaking flush.”

“Sure,” Fein said. “Twenty bucks an hour, door to fuckin’ door, you come there and you jiggle it, same as I do. Then after it stops you put in what you say’s about thirty dollars’ worth of parts, and you screw around with it for an hour or so, and I end up doing the same thing I was doing before. Which is jiggling the handle. The fools I hire cannot fix toilets. What I need is a new set of fools, and I would think with all of them around that I’d be able to locate two or three.”

“Jerry,” Proctor said, “why’ncha calm down now, all right?”

“I am not going to calm down,” Fein said. “I want those buildings gone, and I want them gone last week. I want those niggers out of there. I haven’t had any regular rent out of those goddamned buildings in three months, except for one woman named Davis that pays on time. I’ll be fucked if I know what’s the matter with her. Must be she doesn’t talk to her goddamned neighbours. Doesn’t know she can live for free off of Fein. Dumb broad pays her rent on time every month and she’s the one out of three of nine families that pays at all. The other two pay late. Must be nuts. Doesn’t know I’m running a hotel there and I just take people in. When the hell’re you going to clear those joints out, so’s.I can get some insurance money and some rest from all these bastards that’re driving me nuts: that is what I want to know.”

“Jerry,” Proctor said, “I can’t do it tonight. You and me, remember? We got to be in court tomorrow, out in Framingham. I got a little problem with the Statics, and you have to represent me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Fein said. “I forgot about that.”

“Yeah,” Proctor said.

“I did,” Fein said. “Look, I been booking dates all over the place. I’ve been as busy as a sex maniac in a women’s prison. Gimme a break, will you? I’ll represent you. I said I would, and I will.”

“That’s good,” Proctor said. “Because if I haven’t got a lawyer there in court tomorrow, I am going to get convicted and then I am going to go to jail, and it’s kind of difficult to transpire the jail and go light off the buildings, you know?”