George Higgins - The rat on fire

“But Jerry,” she said, “Jerry’s got a lot of clients that he’s had for a long time, but he doesn’t have all that many friends. Jerry just doesn’t make friends very easy. He plays the golf with Max Winchell, and he has a drink with Max Winchell when they finish playing the golf, but that’s it. I bet the two of them’ve been members at the same club for fifteen years or so, and they’ve been playing golf all that time. But they’re not friends. They don’t do anything else together. I know Max’s divorced because Jerry said something about it a while ago, but they never did anything together with their wives when Max was still married. ‘Course, Jerry got married late, and Pauline’s pretty young for somebody like Max’s ex-wife, so maybe that could be it, I don’t know. But, and most of the people Jerry represents, you know, he’s been handling for years. He’s done a good job for them, although they’re show business people and a lot of them may not think that because they always think it’s their agent’s fault or their manager’s fault that they never got booked in to do a month headlining at Caesars Palace or the Sands. Never crosses their mind that maybe they’re just not good enough, or it’s the breaks in this game just like in every other one.

“Pauline was like that when she was singing,” Lois said. “I was always surprised he ended up marrying her, because she used to bitch all the time about the only thing he could get her was club dates in Fitchburg, but I guess he was really in love with her and he just decided he would take it. Pauline couldn’t sing very good. She looked good – she was a real knockout when she was younger, but she wouldn’t strip. She was a singer. I don’t know – maybe he married her so he wouldn’t have the aggravation of representing her.”

Fein opened the door of his office and stuck his head out. “You coming in, Leo?” he said.

“That Tackles,” Fein said. “Lois ever tell you about Tackles? That guy is the goddamnedest guy I ever met. And he is smart, too. He may not be the brightest light I ever saw, but you know how it is, you see some football player that is starting up a club, and you figure he must’ve played a few games without his helmet. And in Braintree, for Christ sake? Who the hell, a genius couldn’t make a club go in Braintree.

“Tackles did it,” Fein said. “Him and his partner, they went ahead and they did it. Even when they had to shut down the operation for a while, they made it go.”

“Who’s his partner?” Proctor said.

“Well,” Fein said, shutting the door, “not many people know this, because Tackles is the up-front guy and everything with Buddy’s strictly hush-hush, but…”

“Buddy Kelley,” Proctor said.

“Yeah,” Fein said. “See, Buddy had the money, but there was no way he could get the license for the booze, so Tackles comes in and he has the name and gets the cabaret thing like nothing, and they’re in business. Couple of smart cookies. Only time they had any interruption was when the guy who comes in once a week to tell them there is something funny with the phones, and when they get that information, they, Buddy does his business somewhere else until the guy tells him it’s all clear again. And the only thing the cops get on those tapes is orders for beer and conversations about the weather. I tell you, Leo, if you’re smart and you take no chances, you can do all right in this world. Not even the IRS can get them – they do so much legitimate business in the club there’s no tax thing there at all. It’s beautiful.”

“I’m glad to hear somebody else’s making out,” Proctor said. “How’re we doing?”

“On what?” Fein said.

“On being the Camp Fire Girls, for Christ sake,” Proctor said. “How’re we doing? Lemme have the details.”

“Great,” Fein said. “Spent the whole day playing golf, there’s no way in the world anybody can get hold of me because the only one who knows where I am is Lois, and she’s out buying trucks or something. I get home around quarter-eight, Pauline tells me the cops’re coming, there’s been a fire. It’s these two young kids who’d probably trade a razor back and forth because neither one needs it except every other day and there’s no use wasting money. They tell me it looks as though somebody stacked a whole bunch of oily rags next to the coal bin and there was a lot of smoke and everything, but nobody was hurt so that is good. And they tell me it looks as though somebody was trying to burn the building down.

“I go into my song-and-dance routine about the fuckin’ niggers destroying the place,” Fein said. “They bought it. Then I had another idea, which I thought was a pretty good one. I tell them, which is the truth, that I’m surprised they even went to the trouble of setting something. All the trouble I had with them the past couple years sticking pennies in the fuse box so they can overload the wiring and overheat it at the same time, I’m surprised they didn’t just do that and burn the place flat with no trouble at all, and I would even have to pay for the juice.

“I tell them: ‘That is not a new building. I can’t afford, on the rent I don’t get, to rewire that whole building. I can’t go in every apartment every night, every hour on the hour, and make sure they haven’t got a toaster and a broiler oven and a window fan and the television set and three lamps plugged into six extension cords all plugged in to the same socket, and if they don’t burn the place down on purpose, they will probably burn it down with their goddamned radios and record players and tape decks and portable dishwashers, and by the way, how do all those welfare niggers get all those fancy goods, huh?’

“They loved it,” Fein said. “They ate it right up. Wrote it all down. Pauline sat there almost crying, she felt so sorry for me and all my troubles.”

“She doesn’t know, then,” Proctor said.

“Are you kidding?” Fein said. “Pauline’s crowding forty and she looks like she’s twenty-five. She wants a little face lift, I bought her a little nip and tuck. Her tush is tight and she’s got great boobs and in bed, well, I don’t need to waste my time jogging to keep my weight down. But I don’t tell her none of my business. I would rather eat her cooking’n tell her my business, and about her cooking I will tell you that I am glad they make all that frozen crap now. I’ll take my chances with the preservatives and stuff – it’s better’n risking getting fuckin’ poisoned.”

“Okay then,” Proctor said, “Billy Malatesta did his job.”

“Malatesta wasn’t with them,” Fein said.

“Naturally he wasn’t,” Proctor said. “Malatesta’s kind of a jerk when it comes to women, but he’s not dumb enough to do the actual investigation of this himself. He sent you two dummies, two rookies, so you could set them up. And it sounds like you did. I’d kick his ass for him if his tracks showed up on one of those reports.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Fein said.

“Okay then,” Proctor said, “I’m gonna pop the thing tomorrow morning, soon’s you give me the rest of the money, that is.”

“No,” Fein said. “Wait till Monday.”

“Why Monday?” Proctor said. “I got a cage full of rats in my cellar. I got other people living in my house. One of them goes down in that basement, he’s liable to wonder what other kind of house pets I got in mind. I get up in the morning and I have to go down the cellar and practically take my life in my hands getting fish guts and dog food into the cage. I got Dannaher and I got to prop him up like he was a wall that somebody put up and they forgot the studs. This’s Thursday. Why the hell wait till Monday?”

“Because I had another visitor,” Fein said. “Mister Wilfrid Mack. State Senator Wilfrid Mack.”