The Rat on Fire (17 page)

“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
.”

“He was an elderly man,” Fein said. “That was …”

“I know who he was,” Proctor said. “I know he was drunk and he’s got a heart condition. And I also know he grabbed your little lady by the left tit and pulled it out of her dress and shook it up and down in front of about three hundred
people and she started screaming and you didn’t even get between them and stop him from doing it and help her get her boob back in her dress. You didn’t have to chop him down, Jerry. All you had to do was stop him. A little shove would’ve knocked him flat on his ass, and you didn’t have the goddamned guts to do that.”

“I’ve known him for a long time,” Fein said.

“You’ve known me for a long time, too,” Proctor said. “That mean I can go out to where you live and feel up your wife? Maybe pork her, if she’s interested? And you won’t do anything about it?”

“You bastard,” Fein said.

“I doubt it,” Proctor said. “I seen my old man and I look a lot like him. Now, are we gonna talk a little business here?”

W
ILFRID
M
ACK STOOD UP
as Leo Proctor came out of Fein’s private office at a measured pace, nodded at Lois Reynolds and left.

“I hate to be a nuisance about this,” Mack said, after Proctor had shut the door, “but I am in sort of a hurry. Can I see Mister Fein now?”

“If you’re in a reckless mood,” she said. “Want to chance it?” She grinned.

“Difficult client?” he said.

“Not a bit,” she said. “Mister Fein likes seeing him almost as much as I’d enjoy finding a big spider in my bed.”

“I’ll take a shot at it,” he said, grinning back.

Fein was irritable but composed when Mack entered his office. He stood and they shook hands.

“Counselor,” Mack said, “I know your problems. I’ve got the same kind myself.”

“I doubt it,” Fein said.

“Oh, yeah,” Mack said. “I only spend part of my time in the Senate. The rest I spend dealing with difficult clients. I hope you come out of the wringer better’n I usually do. Must be awful, dealing with those show-biz types. All I have to do is get young punks out of jail on car-theft charges, after they’ve stolen police cruisers. What’s that guy do, anyway, wrassle alligators?”

“He
is
an alligator,” Fein said. “Son of a bitch. No, he’s sort of a general-purpose roustabout that I got to know years ago, and if I’d’ve known what I was getting to know, I wouldn’t’ve got to know him. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know as you remember me,” Mack said. “We met at a dinner, some time ago, and I thought maybe we could talk.”

They both sat down. “Senator,” Fein said, “I don’t doubt we met at a dinner. I have met half the world at dinners. If what we are going to talk about is dinners, the answer is: No, we probably can’t talk. I’ve been to so many dinners that cost at least a hundred a plate that I am almost busted out, and the thing of it is, I never get anything to eat. The chicken population is about a third of what it was when I started going to dinners, and I think I saw some feathers starting to grow on my wife Pauline and me, but I just can’t afford this kind of high living. Not any more. What is it this time, the NAACP?”

Mack laughed. “Nothing to do with organizing,” he said. “The reason I’m here, I’m not looking for a contribution or anything like that. I represent the Bristol Road neighborhood, and I’ve been getting a lot of heat from some people who live in those buildings.”

“Who’ve been telling you that I don’t give them any heat,” Fein said.

“Look, Mister Fein,” Mack said, “hear me out, okay? Believe me, I don’t want to make your life more difficult. It’s just that these people came to me and I said that I would come and see you. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that these are my constituents and I have to listen to them.”

“You ever tell them anything?” Fein said.

“I told them that I’d see you, and see if we could reach some sort of understanding,” Mack said.

“Well,” Fein said, “let’s try. Let’s try to do that, reach some understanding. And if we can do it, my friend, I will be a lot happier man.

“The first thing,” Fein said, “is that I would like your constituents that are my tenants to stop tearing the copper piping out of the walls and selling it to junkmen. I would appreciate that. It plays hell with the plumbing when your constituents tear the pipes out. You got no idea how hard it
is to get water around a building where the pipes’ve been ripped out and sold for scrap.”

“These people complain that the premises suffer from rodent infestation,” Mack said.

“And they do,” Fein said. “I don’t doubt that for a minute. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that had something to do with the habit your constituents have of throwing the garbage in the yard. You think that might have something to do with it?”

“Perhaps if there were adequate facilities for disposal,” Mack said.

“Mister Mack,” Fein said, “those buildings are rent-controlled. I am allowed to charge one hundred and thirty-five dollars a month for five rooms. The buildings are not tax-controlled, and they are not controlled in the cost of heat in the winter. I have provided the best disposal system I can afford, which is barrels. No, that’s wrong—I can’t even afford the barrels. I can’t put in chutes—those buildings’re over a hundred years old. I’d have to rip the place to shreds. And if I did it, I couldn’t afford to install the incinerator. I can’t put in sink units—your constituents rip the pipes out, and those pipes’re necessary to conduct the water. All they have to do is bag the garbage and cart it downstairs and put it in the barrel and put the cover on the barrel and tie the cover down. But they won’t do it.”

“Oh,” Mack said.

“And there is another thing they will not do,” Fein said, “which is one of the reasons that I cannot accomplish a lot of the things that they would like me to do, and that is this: your constituents will not pay their
rent
.” Fein came out of the chair and started waving his arms. He was not quite screaming, but he was close.

“Senator,” he said, “they refuse to pay their fucking
rent
. They want me to run the fucking Ritz Carlton for them, at a
hundred thirty-five a month, and when they find out that I cannot run the fucking Ritz for them for that money, they get mad at me. So they do not even pay me the hundred thirty-five. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? Am I running a goddamned seamen’s mission over there? Is that what the goddamned hell I am doing?

“I tell you, Senator,” he said, “I can’t afford it. I didn’t know that was what I was going to be doing, when I bought into that real estate. I thought I was going to be renting apartments to people who would be pleased to get an apartment. I thought maybe they would not go around knocking holes in the walls and throwing garbage in the yard, and stuff like that. You want to know from exterminators? I ought to adopt one. I get the rats out. The rats come right back, and I don’t blame them. Any rat that would stay around some other building, when he could stay around my building, is nuts. No self-respecting rat would go anywhere else. ‘You got any sense, Rat, go over Bristol Road and eat like you were a king. Just bug out when you see the exterminator truck. Then come right back.’

“Which,” Fein said, “is exactly what the fuckers do. Because your constituents, who do not pay the rent, throw the garbage out in the yard.”

“The woman who asked me to talk to you,” Mack said, “is Mavis Davis.”

“Mavis is different,” Fein said immediately. “Mavis is a hardworking woman. What I said don’t apply to her. She was living in that building when I bought it, and I have never had any trouble whatsoever with her. I wished I had a hundred like her. Her fuckin’ kid I could do without.”

“Alfred,” Mack said.

“I don’t know what his name is,” Fein said. “I met him once and I was completely satisfied. He is a nasty little prick which the world would be better off without.”

“I don’t think I want to comment on that,” Mack said. “Do you believe you could do something for your tenants that would maybe get them off my back? I hate to impose.”

“Like what?” Fein said.

“If you could just get rid of the rats,” Mack said.

“As a personal favor,” Fein said, “as a
personal
favor, I will do my best.”

“S
CARED THE LIVING
shit
out of him,” Proctor said to Malatesta at the Scandinavian Pastry Shop. “Told him if he didn’t come through, pronto, I was gonna dump him.”

“Did he come through?” Malatesta said.

“Sure did,” Proctor said. “I get out there in Framingham this morning, there’s old Tiger Mike Fogarty, got his yellow suit on and he’s loaded for bear. ‘You Proctor?’ he says. ‘I’m Proctor,’ I say. ‘I’m Fogarty,’ he says, ‘I’m yer gawddamned lawyer. Keep yer mouth shut and don’t say nothin’.’ I tell you, Billy, tied the guys up in knots. That trooper didn’t know whether he was coming or going, and by the time Tiger Mike got through with him, he didn’t much care.”

“Get bound over, the grand jury?” Malatesta said.

“Lemme think,” Proctor said, laughing. “ ‘Driving Under,’ right? No evidence I was driving. They had a charge of ‘Wading Under the Influence,’ they would have had me. But that’s not against the law, and the cop didn’t see me driving. ‘Driving So’s To Endanger?’ Same thing. Cop didn’t see me driving. ‘Drunk?’ They don’t indict you for being drunk. And they were gonna make me enroll in that temperance thing they got, where you learn about all the bad things happen, you drive when you’re stiff, except they can’t make you go to the meetings unless they catch you driving drunk, which they didn’t, me.”

“I thought you said some things,” Malatesta said.

“I did,” Proctor said.

Mickey and Don entered the pastry shop together, both sweating in their green uniforms from the summer night. “Goddamned pork,” Mickey said. “I
hate
carrying pork. There isn’t one foot of the way, I don’t start thinking about that goddamned pork, this time of the year.”

“I had corn,” Don said. “Least the unit wasn’t on. Easier when it’s just crates.” They took stools and both of them ordered coffee. The waitress explained that the cream was not real.

“Look,” Mickey said, “I heard that before. And I put my own sugar in. I know that, too. Just gimme the coffee, all right?”

“Mister,” she said, “I have to tell people that. It’s my job.”

“Bring the damned coffee,” Mickey said.

“The thing of it is,” Proctor said, “as Tiger Mike reminds the judge, what I said don’t matter unless the arresting officer says something first.”