George Higgins - The rat on fire

“You are not going to jail,” Fein said. “Not on those charges.”

“You know what the charges are?” Proctor said.

“You drove the car in a lake,” Fein said.

“Wrong,” Proctor said. “’Driving Under, Driving So As To Endanger, and Drunk.’ Plus ‘Attempted Manslaughter.’ Them is no Christmas cards for a guy with my record. And I didn’t think you knew what they were, either. You’re yappin’ at me all the time about your problems and you haven’t done a fuckin’ thing about mine. But, you don’t do something about my problem, there is no way I’m gonna be able to do anything about yours. My arms’re too short, light off a building in Boston from the old jailhouse.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Fein said.

“When?” Proctor said.

“This afternoon, of course,” Fein said.

“Isn’t hardly good enough,” Proctor said. “You should’ve been on it two weeks ago.”

“I been busy,” Fein said.

“Everybody’s busy,” Proctor said. “God’s busy, cops’re busy, Proctor’s busy, Fein’s busy. Fein ain’t busy on the right fuckin’ things. You oughta be running the goddamned Red Sox: ‘Whaddaya mean, pitching? The hell we need pitchin’ for? You mean the guy that throws the goddamned ball up the goddamned plate? We got guys that hit the goddamned ball, other guys throw it up the plate. Don’t need no pitchers. All you need is guys with bats, win the pennant and all that stuff.’

“Nuts,” Proctor said. “You want me to do something for you, and in order to do it, I have got to have you do something for me, and you haven’t done it. Asshole. I go to jail, I might have a couple, three things to say about you. Keep in mind, Jerry, I know what you got in mind for those buildings, there. That’s a conspiracy.”

“Now look,” Fein said.

“Now look, nothing,” Proctor said. “This here is not a game that the cops play with Monopoly money, all right? Those guys know who I am, and I don’t think they like me. They think I am a no-good guy, and a fellow that’s a bad influence on the young. They take a look at me and they think that here is a guy they would like to see wearing stripes, you know?

“This makes me nervous,” Proctor said. “It makes me nervous because those guys can fit me out for stripes, if they get a good grip on my nuts, and right now they have a good grip on my nuts and I haven’t got anybody who looks to me like he can make them let go right away. Which makes me even more nervous.”

“Take it easy,” Fein said. “I’ll think of something.”

“Bullshit you will,” Proctor said. “You’ll fuck around here all afternoon tryin’ book some stripper into an American Legion hall, and then when it comes time, drop the shovel, you will, and it won’t be till after you get home and you had your dinner and you seen the ball game and you’re watching the goddamned eleven o’clock news with some clown who talks like the Lone Ranger, and then you’ll think of it. Which will be too late, because I bet you haven’t even read the complaints yet.”

“Well…” Fein said.

“You don’t even know where they fuckin’ are,” Proctor said. “I am not a betting man, but if I was, I would bet the fuckin’ ranch you don’t know where the complaints are.”

“Lois does,” Fein said.

“Lois ain’t no lawyer,” Proctor said. “I wished she was, but she isn’t. Lois can’t come to court with me tomorrow morning and stop me from going to jail. Which is what I am gonna need.

“Now, Jerry,” Proctor said, “I am a reasonable man. I pride myself on being a reasonable man. And going to jail ain’t reasonable, right? No reasonable man would go to jail if he could think of a way that he wouldn’t have to go to jail. I can’t escape. I’m too old and I’m too fat and I can’t climb fences and I can’t run as fast as I could when I escaped about twenty, thirty years ago. And that didn’t work out too great neither, because they ended up catching me and giving me some more time for duckin’ out on the rest of the other time.

“So I have to think of something,” Proctor said. “I have to figure a way that I can get myself out of going to jail without climbing any fences and trying anything else that I probably can’t do and which would give me a heart attack anyway. And I thought of one, if I get to the point where they are going to put me in jail. And that is conspiracy to commit arson.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Fein said.

“Mister Fein,” Proctor said, “I can see where you and me’ve got to get some things straight. We don’t seem to understand each other, and that makes me even more nervous’n I was before.

“You got to get it into your head that I will do what I say I will do,” Proctor said. “I don’t just go running around, bullshitting people. I haven’t got time for it. I got too many other things which are pressing on my mind, and what I have to do is, I have to transcend myself from the bullshit and tend to business, you know? All the time.

“Now,” Proctor said, “this is the thing, all right? I happen to know the same thing as you know, which is that you know about as much about being in a courtroom like a lawyer as I know about maybe taking a trip to the moon, and you are about as interested in going into one of those rooms for me as I am in going to the moon for somebody else. Which I would probably be as good at going to the moon as you are going to be, going to court with me. Except, when you go to court with me, I am not going to the moon. I am going to jail.

“Now, Jerry,” Proctor said, “I have done some things and I admit I done them, except I am not gonna admit what things I did and where I did them, because so far nobody figured out who did them, and that is all right with me, on account of the jail thing. But they were not anything like driving a Chevy into a pond when I was drunk, all right? They were a little more serious, and I did not get caught for doing them, and I am very glad of it. Because, if I had’ve been, I would be in the shit up to my knickers, and I’m not.

“You, my friend,” Proctor said, “you are not gonna get me in that shit, that I stayed out of so long, on something like I drowned my own car. So what I want to tell you is this: if you do not get me out of the shit, I will get me out of the shit. Of course this will mean that you go into the shit, but that is tough shit. Tough shit for you, that is.”

“You son of a bitch,” Fein said.

“My mother wouldn’t like your choice of words,” Proctor said, “but I have to admit, there was a time when I agreed with you, and since you’re not the first man that’s said it, you may have something there. I ain’t sure, but you could be right. I was never proud.”

“I’ll have you killed,” Fein said.

Proctor began to laugh. He laughed for perhaps twenty seconds, an arid laugh. He threw his head back and slapped his rib cage with his right hand. When he had finished, he took a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and dried his eyes, which were not wet. He leaned forward in his chair. “Aw right,” he said. “Now, let’s talk. You’re not gonna have anything done to anybody, and you and I both know it. You were down at the Royal in Hyannis last weekend and you had the lovely wife with you. You had on the maroon pants with the silver threads and the white belt and the white shoes, and you played the goddamned golf tournament and then that night the two of you went the formal dinner dance, and she had something on that was a little low in the front.

“And this drunk comes up to you in the bar,” Proctor said, “and he gets a look at the cupcakes and he’s staggering all over the place, and he grabs her right by the left tit and gives her a nice little milkshake, on the house. And you didn’t do a goddamned thing to him.”