The Digger's Game (15 page)

“H
ARRINGTON
,” the Digger said, “how you doin’ on that boat of yours, you getting anywhere?”

“Look,” Harrington said, “everybody else inna world, it’s Friday night, they haven’t gotta go to work tomorrow. I got to go to work tomorrow, no Saturday for Harrington. You know why that is? Because I gotta, that’s why. Just leave me alone, all right, Dig? Lemme have a couple beers just like it was Friday night for me, too. No guy that’s gotta work six days a week to make the payments on what he’s got is gonna see a boat he hasn’t got already. I wished to God I never sold the boat I used to have.”

“I know something you could do, ’d get you the down payment onna boat,” the Digger said.

“Yeah?” Harrington said. “And then what about them others, I gotta stop going down to Saint Hilary’s for my laughs every Sunday, hear what the Portugee’s got to say this week about them poor unfortunate thieving Puerto Ricans that haven’t got no money, I can work Sundays too.”

“Well,” the Digger said, “you played your cards right, might not be all that many of them, you know? You oughta be able to get a pretty good boat for thirty-five hundred or so, you could pay for more’n half of it right off.”

“Oh oh,” Harrington said. “Excuse me, I think I’m gonna have to go home right about now. I gotta go to work tomorrow, you know. I’ll see you the first of the
week, probably. I’ll come in for a beer, we can talk about how the Sox do Sunday.”

“The fuck’s the matter with you?” the Digger said.

“Look,” Harrington said, “I got a nervous stomach. I come in here a few days ago, your problem is, you’re inna hole eighteen and juice. Now you’re giving me, you’re saying you got a way,
I
can get about, what, two grand, I do something you got in mind. You’re talking about somebody else’s money, I think.”

“How much you make inna week?” the Digger said.

“None of your fuckin’ business,” Harrington said.

“Not enough for a boat, though,” the Digger said.

“Not enough for a wife and three kids and a car and a house in Saint Hilary’s,” Harrington said. “Not enough for no lawyer, either, and it’s a lot more’n I’d get making license plates inna can, too.”

“Never mind the can,” the Digger said.

“Right,” Harrington said, “and don’t do nothing that’s gonna get you put into it, either, that’s what I say. Lemme have another beer.”

The Digger returned with Harrington’s beer. “You can make two thousand dollars for less’n three hours’ work,” the Digger said. “You’re sure you wanna turn that down, okay, I can get somebody else. I’m tryin’ to do you a favor. You like working six days, you don’t want no boat, okay, be a shit if you want, all your life. Just thought I’d give you the chance. Two grand for three hours.”

“That’s more’n I make at the Edison,” Harrington said. He drank some beer. “The trouble is, the Edison never told me, go out and kill somebody important, and I never had the cops looking for me, anything I did at
the Edison. Which is probably why it don’t pay as good.”

“Nobody’s gonna get hurt,” the Digger said. “Nothing like that.”

“Dig,” Harrington said, “my kind of luck, well, I didn’t go to Vegas, you know? Because I know what’ll happen to me, I got to Vegas. Same thing happened to you, only worse. I see the guys, I hear them talking, I know, they’re doing some things. Okay, and they got more dough’n I have, and they get away with it, too. But I, I wouldn’t. Something’d happen. I’d get caught.”

“You get caught driving your own car,” the Digger said, “they don’t generally hit a man too hard for that.”

“Sure,” Harrington said. “Of course while I’m driving it, the motor’s running and I’m outside a bank and you guys’re inside holding it up, and all the driving I got to do is get it in gear and make it go like a bastard and hope I don’t get shot. Like I said, I finish this beer, I’ll go home and say the Rosary with Father Manton onna radio, I think. Got saved from the temptation, there.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “here’s what I want: you drive the car a place and you pick up a guy. Then you go where he tells you and you pick up two more guys. Then you go and you leave us all off and you drive to another place, and we come there and you drive us home. That’s all there is to it.”

“For that I get two thousand dollars,” Harrington said.

“Yup,” the Digger said. “I want a guy I can trust, do what I tell him to do.”

“And that little ride and all,” Harrington said, “that’s gonna get you out of this hole you’re in now.”

“Yeah,” the Digger said.

“And nobody’s gonna get shot,” Harrington said, “and there isn’t gonna be every cop in Boston looking up his ass all the time.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “the only way you could shoot a guy on this job is, you’d have to bring a guy along to shoot, is all. If I ever see a tit, Harrington, this here’s a tit.”

“What is it?” Harrington said.

“Uh uh,” the Digger said, “that’s not the way it goes. I make a rule, long time ago, I don’t tell anybody what it is until after he decides, he’s in or not. You in or not?”

“How can I, what do you think I’m gonna do?” Harrington said. “Say I’m gonna do something, I don’t even know what it is I’m gonna do? I never done anything like this before. Take pity onna guy, Dig, tell me what I’m gonna do, I tell you I’m gonna do it.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “week from tonight, Labor Day weekend, right?”

“Yeah,” Harrington said.

“Week from Sunday night, you’re gonna pick me up and then you’re gonna pick up two other guys, and you take us, about a twenny-minute drive,” the Digger said. “This is before midnight. About two hours later, sometime around two in the morning, you pick up, you pick us up, and you drop us off. That’s it.”

“For that I get two thousand dollars,” Harrington said.

“Yeah,” the Digger said.

“Right off,” Harrington said. “I finally get to bed Labor Day, I’m gonna have two thousand onna bureau I didn’t have when I get up.”

“No,” the Digger said, “nobody’s got the dough Monday. You’ll have to wait a little bit.”

“How long?” Harrington said.

“Look,” the Digger said, “I dunno. It can take a little time to get the dough, one of these things. Inside a week or so, I guess. But I personally guarantee you, you get the dough.”

“Yeah,” Harrington said, “but maybe something happens to you. I still get the dough? I mean, where’s that leave me?”

“Better off’n I am, something’s gonna happen to me,” the Digger said. “Look, I get hit by a truck, you haven’t got your dough, you do the best you can. You might get fucked.”

“That’s what I thought,” Harrington said.

“Look,” the Digger said, “you had two thousand in the bank, any time you wanted that dough you could go down the bank and take it out, and it’s, you got a guarantee, right? That’s why this thing, you’re listening to me because you don’t have it in the bank, you did and you’d be down to Green Harbor with all the rest of the fat bastards. They, the money that’s here is here for somebody that hasn’t got it and wants it.”

“I don’t know,” Harrington said.

“Okay,” the Digger said, “that’s fine. I’m gonna take that, you’re not interested. And one more thing: forget you had this talk with me, right? I wouldn’t want to think you went out and told somebody anything.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Harrington said.

“You’re a nice guy,” the Digger said, “I like you. But you either gotta shit or get offa the fuckin’ pot, is all, I haven’t got time to wait around while you go this way and that and say, ‘Gee, Digger, gee.’ I like things to go right when I do something, get everything all set up ahead of time so everybody knows what he’s gotta do
and what the other guys’ve gotta do. So make up your fuckin’ mind.”

“I wished I knew more about it,” Harrington said.

“You know all you’re gonna know unless you come in,” the Digger said. “I told you as much as I’m gonna.”

Harrington said he would have another beer. When the Digger brought it, Harrington said, “Look, this’s gotta be something pretty big we’re after, two thousand for cab fare. There’s how many of us?”

“Probably four,” the Digger said.

“Okay,” Harrington said, “four. I got probably the easiest thing to do, I’m getting the two, you said, you told me, it’s gonna get you clear on the eighteen. Now I figure, that’s twenny thousand dollars, and them other guys, they’re not working for nothing. So there’s gotta be quite a bit of money coming out of this.”

“Harrington,” the Digger said, “the two is tops. Don’t gimme none of that shit. I can get five guys in ten minutes, do it for a grand. I’m being nice to you, get it? You want to stall around with somebody, go down the Lincoln-Mercury and pretend you can afford the Mark, there. I don’t go no higher.”

“No,” Harrington said, “I didn’t mean that. It’s just, this isn’t no bank or anything, is it?”

“No bank,” the Digger said.

“Okay,” Harrington said. “Okay. No bank, I’m in.”

“Beautiful,” the Digger said. “I guarantee you, you’ll never regret it.”

“Now,” Harrington said, finishing his beer, “tell me if I’m wrong. It’s jewelry, right? Gotta be jewelry. Isn’t anything else worth that kind of money, except money, four guys can move that fast.”

“You object to jewelry?” the Digger said.

“Digger,” Harrington said, “I object to no money, that’s what I object to.”

“You don’t object to jewelry,” the Digger said.

“I’d take pennies if I could get enough of them,” Harrington said.

“Because this is something like your cherry,” the Digger said. “Once it’s gone, you’re in. No way of going back.”

“I know,” Harrington said. “Where’s the jewelry?”

“Isn’t jewelry,” the Digger said. “Look, you read the paper, what kinda ads you see inna paper this time of year?”

“I don’t read them,” Harrington said. “I’m always giving the wife a whole bunch of money for stuff, kids’re going back to school and that, we gotta practically buy out Zayre’s. I dunno. We’re not stealing kids’ clothes.”

“No,” the Digger said. “See, you’re wasting your money on the paper. You oughta look at them ads better. We’re stealing furs.”

“Hey,” Harrington said.

“Sure,” the Digger said. “All them guys down the beach, they all think: this is the year I get the wife a mink stole. Them other guys, can afford the minks, their wives already got a stole, wear to the supermarket or something. They want a nice chinchilla. So naturally, all them guys, sell furs, got the ads in. All over the place there’s them trucks coming in with furs. And that is the real stuff, you know? That stuff moves.”

“Holy shit,” Harrington said.

“We’re gonna get ourselves a trailer load of that stuff,” the Digger said. “A whole fuckin’ trailer load.”

“We got a buyer?” Harrington said.

“This friend of mine,” the Digger said, “he’s got a buyer. Except, well, we’re not really stealing furs. Look, the guy that’s buying the furs?”

“Yeah,” Harrington said.

“Well,” the Digger said, “the less you know, the better off you are, but he’s also the guy, you go back far enough and you look at everything and all, that we’re stealing the furs from. He knows we’re stealing them.”

“Ah,” Harrington said, “insurance.”

“Yeah,” the Digger said. “See what I mean, this’s a tit? We’re stealing insurance. See what I mean, safe?”

“Beautiful,” Harrington said.

“You bet,” the Digger said. “We take them furs out of the place that the guy owns, and we turn them over to a guy runs another place, and the guy that owns the other place is gonna sell them and the first guy howls like a bastard, all his furs’re gone. Then he’s gonna get the insurance, and he keeps his stock up, he’s gonna buy from the guy we sell to. He’s gonna buy his own stuff from the guy we sold it to, with the insurance money. Nice, huh?”

“Jesus,” Harrington said, “I’d rather know him’n you. He’s doing better’n any of us.”

“No,” the Digger said, “he don’t want to do this, you know. He’s gotta.”

“Shit,” Harrington said.

“You see the Super Bowl,” the Digger said.

“Yeah,” Harrington said. “Shitty game, I thought. Baltimore.”

“Onna field goal,” the Digger said. “Last-minute fuckin’ field goal, all right?

“The guy that owns the stuff,” the Digger said, “he missed the spread on that field goal. Cost him one hundred thousand dollars. He’s been paying juice a long time. He’s through. He’s getting even.”

“T
HE
G
REEK WAS IN
,” Schabb said. “He had a whole lot of things on his mind.”

“I know, I know,” Torrey said. “I got home, one this morning. I was absolutely
beat
. I actually, onna way up there’s this girl, little heavy, but I look her over and she didn’t mind, you know? I would’ve invited her up for a drink. Not this trip. I was so tired all I wanted to do was sleep.”

“Well,” Schabb said, “the Greek was right about that one, anyway. He
said
you’d fuck yourself out down there.”

“The Greek, the Greek,” Torrey said. “That don’t make me tired. I been onna steady jump for almost a week. You see a guy and you talk to him. Then you see somebody else. Looks like a pretty good deal, but first you better check and see what this other guy can do, You’re making calls, it’s this and that, you got to fly all over the place on these dinky little planes that scare the living shit out of you. It comes right out of you. I, the screwing’s not as good there as it is here.”