The Rat on Fire Read online

  Praise for George V. Higgins

  “Higgins can plot a whole book like one long chase scene. He can write dialogue so authentic it spits.”

  —Life

  “Higgins’ writing is utterly convincing in every line.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Higgins’s books are extremely stylized, but utterly realistic; poetic yet vernacularly down to earth. The epic struggles in them are entirely human.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “George V. Higgins is a master.”

  —Chicago Sun Times

  “The Balzac of the Boston underworld.… Higgins is almost uniquely blessed with a gift for voices, each of them … as distinctive as a fingerprint.”

  —The New Yorker

  ALSO BY GEORGE V. HIGGINS

  The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972)

  The Digger’s Game (1973)

  Cogan’s Trade (1974)

  A City on a Hill (1975)

  The Friends of Richard Nixon (1975)

  The Judgment of Deke Hunter (1976)

  Dreamland (1977)

  A Year or So with Edgar (1979)

  Kennedy for the Defense (1980)

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2011

  Copyright © 1981 by George V. Higgins

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2011. Previously published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 1981.

  Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-94725-3

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for George V. Higgins

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  “I DO NOT NEED this shit,” Terry Mooney said. He was a small man with a lot of red hair, wire-rimmed glasses that were tinted pink and a wardrobe of three-piece glen plaid suits.

  I hate the little bastard, John Roscommon thought after their meeting. Roscommon had said that aloud on many occasions when there was nobody around but other State cops. “That little bastard,” Roscommon said, “here he is, about thirty years old, got more hair on him’n a fuckin’ buffalo but less brains, and he’s got this diploma from some half-assed law school and that gives him the right to order everybody around. He thinks. The little shit.

  “This guy,” Roscommon told Mickey and Don and every other trooper in the Attorney General’s office, “this guy was appointed directly by God to clear up all of the problems of suffering mankind. Here I am, I have been running around the world and dealing with the Japanese when I was a kid with fuzz on my cheeks and they have got Nambu machine guns with which they have got every intention of blowing my ass off before we finally get Douglas MacArthur safely at home in Tokyo, and they didn’t make it. I went out there in the goddamned jungle like I was Wyatt fuckin’ Earp and I keep my head down and no goddamned Jap blows my ass off and I in the meantime blow the asses off of several Japs.

  “I live through that,” Roscommon said. “I will not eat beef teriyaki and I will not go down to some fake Jap restaurant where the chef’s idea a good time is waving a knife around and screaming ‘Banzai’ every time somebody heaves a piece of cow in front of him, but I come out of my adventures with the Japs all in one piece and that is pretty good going, considering what I see happen to some other fellows I was somewhat acquainted with for a little while.

  “I live through that,” Roscommon said. “I live through several small labor disputes that some gentlemen on this side of the Pacific had with the warden and the guards down at the various jails we maintain for the care and feeding of guys that make everybody nervous when they are out on the street. There was one night when some of my previous fellow officers went out to deliver a piece of paper to a guy that took French leave from the prison and I was ordered to join them because the word was that he had every sidearm Colt Firearms ever made and one or two extra from Remington Arms that you could put up against your shoulder for a little extra range. And he did, too, and he was using them, and I got out of that in one piece.

  “I have never had an ulcer,” Roscommon said. “I am fifty-eight years old and if I do say so myself, I am in the prime of health and the pink of fucking goddamned good condition. But if I ever get an ulcer, if I ever do fall down and collapse on the floor with motherfucking apoplexy, it will be the fault of Terry Mooney.”

  Roscommon got out of the wooden chair and began to pace around the conference room. His face reddened upward from the collar of his shirt to the roots of his gray hair. Mickey Sweeney and Donald Carbone, corporals in the Massachusetts State Police, looked at the floor and did not permit any expression of amusement to attract the attention of Detective Lieutenant Inspector John Roscommon.

  “So,” Roscommon said, “we got no goddamned choice. That little piece of shit has got a law degree and for some reason that escapes my sawtoothed mind, the Attorney General has seen fit to make him a full-fledged prosecutor. There’re times when I think that guy’s playing with no more’n forty-four cards too, puttin’ a jerk of a kid like that in charge of anything bigger’n a head-on collision of two skateboards. But he did it and we’re stuck with it, the damned fools that we are.”

  “John,” Mickey said, “what’s he want?”

  “He wants to get reelected, naturally,” Roscommon said. “He’s got another year before he goes to bat again, and therefore naturally he is sucking every minority and majority hind tit he can find, and he is going to take over the work every District Attorney between here and Albany until he gets reelected. Then he will relax and maybe then we can all calm down a little and maybe even get some work done.

  “In the meantime,” Roscommon said, “what he has got is a whole bunch of people that’re beating on his head and griping all the time about various things that they do not approve of. Some of them’re complaining about the oil companies and how they’re nailing everybody to the mast, and some of them’re complaining about being broads and that means they can’t get their bosses to leave them alone and can’t get free abortions after their bosses get through with them. He’s got guys that want him to sue the Red Sox because the seats in the bleachers’re too expensive, and he’s got guys that don’t approve of dogs taking a shit on Beacon Hill. He’s got women that spend the whole day at the State House so they can scream at him that we shouldn’t have nuclear power, and he’s got people there that bring kids and yell about how they should get forty grand a year on wel
fare and he should go sue somebody so they can. I am telling you, if his porch light is out, and I think it is, I also know the reason why. I’ll be damned if I can figure out how the hell he stands it.

  “Now,” Roscommon said, “one of the things he does on some day when he’s got six shingles off the roof and all these people yelling at him, one of the things he does is hire this fucking Mooney kid. He hadda be nuts to do that. You know what Terry Mooney thinks? Terry Mooney thinks us cops’re too soft on crime. Terry Mooney thinks that until Terry Mooney came along and became a goddamned prosecutor, people got away with murder all over the place. And Terry Mooney is going to put a stop to it, and also make the AG think that if he did one thing right in the whole time he was in office, it was hiring Terry Mooney. Terry Mooney thinks that when the AG runs again, he is gonna spend most of his time out in Belchertown and Clinton telling everybody that we got the whole crime thing under control now, on account of they elected him and he hired Terry Mooney. The AG does not believe this, but he has got Terry Mooney believing it and that is enough to give me a case of piles, I can tell you that.”

  Sweeney began to laugh.

  “Shut up,” Roscommon said. “You think this is funny, you wise little prick? Listen up, because you won’t when you get through.

  “Mooney can read,” Roscommon said. “I know it’s hard to believe, but he can. You would’ve thought a man that reads as well as he does would’ve learned something about judgment, but he didn’t and there’s nothing we can do about that, either.

  “What that little turd has done,” Roscommon said, “is somehow he persuaded the newspapers to bring him copies every morning, and he also watches the television every night and apparently takes in a lot of what is said. So he goes to the AG and he says to him, ‘There’re people that’re burning buildings down in Boston.’ ”

  “No shit,” Sweeney said.

  “ ‘And furthermore,’ says Mooney, ‘they are doing it for money.’ ”

  “Goodness gracious,” Sweeney said.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” Carbone said.

  “Who would’ve dreamed of it?” Roscommon said. “I’m telling you guys, this kid’s as sharp as a tack. There’s no fooling him.

  “ ‘Now,’ says the genius Mooney, ‘here is what you should do: you should set up a special outfit that doesn’t do a god-damned thing in the world except run around and catch guys that play with matches. And you should put me in charge of it and give me every single cop in the world that isn’t off guarding the President or the Pope and never mind all that simple-minded shit about catching people that’re looting the banks, and then make an announcement about how you’re gonna stand up for the rights of all the poor people that live in the buildings where the fires start, and that will make you golden. How is that?’ And the Attorney General says, ‘Mooney, you are a gentleman, a scholar, a good friend and a loyal knight of the table round, and someday I will dub thee Sir Terrence, if everything else works out all right and I get reelected. Go plague the shit out of Roscommon.’

  “Which, of course,” Roscommon said, “he did. And therefore I am plaguing you.”

  “Oh,” Sweeney said.

  “Yeah,” Roscommon said, “that’s nowhere near as goddamned funny, is it? Uh-uh. Now it’s serious. Now you’re looking around for the Preparation H. I got bad news for you—there isn’t any. You are going to catch all the firebugs and make everybody safe in their beds, so that the AG can go out and tell everybody that him and Terry Mooney’ve ended the terrible menace of people setting fires and doing other evil things.”

  “Right,” Carbone said. He got up. “Well, how long we got? I mean, I realize it’d probably be nice if we had the whole thing wrapped up by lunchtime tomorrow, but it’s prolly going to take at least until maybe three-thirty or so.”

  “Siddown,” Roscommon said.

  “John,” Carbone said, “we got fire marshals for that kind of shit.”

  “This is true,” Roscommon said. “And if you know any fire marshals … You know any fire marshals?”

  “One or two,” Carbone said.

  “One or two,” Roscommon said. “Now, Corporal, thinking back over what you know about the one or two fire marshals that you know, do you think maybe there might be an explanation for why we got this kind of shit?”

  “Yup,” Carbone said.

  “Sure,” Roscommon said. “You’re just as smart as Mooney. They can’t fool you, neither. But they sure can fool the fire marshals, and they do. They fool them all the time. The fire marshals are fire marshals because they couldn’t find their way out of a phone booth if they had a map and a guide and one of those big dogs with a harness on it, and some desk sergeant got a look at them one night and said to himself, ‘This guy is so fuckin’ stupid he couldn’t fall out of a tree and land on the ground, and I think I will get him out the barracks before he tries to brush his teeth with his revolver and blows somebody else’s head off.’ ”

  “Jesus Christ, John,” Sweeney said, “I don’t know anything about fires. Don doesn’t know anything about fires. Hell, I’m not even sure Don knows anything about getting his pants on, and if he does know anything, it’s what I told him.”

  “Sure,” Carbone said, “you’re the guy that told me to pull them on over my head.”

  “You’re not investigating fires,” Roscommon said.

  “You got to excuse me,” Sweeney said, “I had the distinct impression I been sittin’ here about three weeks listening to you yell about this Mooney kid and the fires and the AG and a whole bunch of other shit, and now I got it wrong?”

  “You are not investigating fires,” Roscommon said. “Now, all right? Terry Mooney does not know this, or much of anything else, and I do not tell Terry Mooney much of anything because the first time he finds something else out, he thinks it is a good idea to run around all over town shooting his mouth off about this great thing he just learned that everybody else in town knew for years but nobody could ever prove. What you are investigating is not fires, but fire marshals and people who take money for setting fires and then give some of that there money to fire marshals so that the fire marshals will not be too critical when they come around and look at someplace that was torched. This means that you are investigating Billy Malatesta, who is a fire marshal, and a scumbag loser name of Proctor that I put away once and I will put away again as soon as I get a halfway decent chance, and that will get Mooney and the AG off of my back. What do you guys know about trucks?”

  THE FAT MAN WORE a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up over the elbows and the fabric straining over the biceps. The top three buttons were undone, showing the neck of the sleeveless tee-shirt. He wore brown suit pants with a pleated front and his black hair was sparse. He said, “The principal thing that there is about this, that is bothering me basically, is the fuckin’ niggers.”

  The other man was about forty. He was in reasonably good shape. He wore a lightweight blue madras sport coat and a light blue tie embroidered with white birds. His shirt was light blue and so were his slacks. He had gray-black curly hair, cut short. He said, “I don’t see what’s botherin’ you. What’s to bother? You got to get them out of there. There isn’t one goddamned other thing that you can do about it, because there isn’t anything that anybody else could do about it. Until you get those niggers out of there, nobody can do anything. You leave the boogies in, they are in and that is all there is to it. There’s no way anybody can do a fucking thing for you if those niggers’re still in it and something happens. The fuckin’ Globe’d go nuts if there was niggers in there and something happened. It’d be worse’n if the Cardinal was in there and something happened, for Christ sake. I told you that before and I’m telling you that now, and anybody who tells you different’s just blowing smoke up your ass and gonna get you in a whole mess of shit that you’ll never get out of. That’s the way it is.”

  They sat in a booth at the Scandinavian Pastry Shop on Old Colony Boulevard in Dorchester. The fluorescent lights refl
ected on the fat man’s sweaty scalp and the white Formica tabletop. Large moths bumped the plate-glass window from the outside and the air conditioning droned on with the kind of noise that a motor makes when it is running short of oil and some system attached to it is making unusually heavy demands. “Twenny years ago,” the fat man said, “twenny years ago, nobody would’ve given a shit.” The fat man’s name was Leo Proctor.

  “Twenty years ago,” the other man said, “there probably weren’t any coons in there. Just nice, respectable, middle-aged white people that paid their fuckin’ rent on time and didn’t put coal inna bathtub or rip out the plumbin’ or bypass the gas meter and break all the windows. That was a long time ago. Twenty years ago, there wouldn’t be this problem you got.”

  Two truckers sat in green cotton uniforms at the counter. They had large sweat stains at their armpits and the belt area of their backs. “I meet this guy,” Mickey said, “the diner out at Nine and Twenty?”

  “The fuck’re you doin’ there?” Don said. “You got time enough, fuck around on those roads? The hell you didn’t take the Pike?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mickey said, “will you lemme fuckin’ talk for once? You always have to go around interrupting me all the time, you asshole? I’m tryin’ to tell you something.”

  “So,” Don said, “tell me something. I’m listening. I’ll listen to any asshole. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna pay attention, but I’ll listen.”

  “I had trouble with the unit,” Mickey said. “I got off at Auburn, see if maybe there was someone could do somethin’, maybe fix it so I could drive it home and get Carl to work on it inna morning. So, and there’s nobody around. I said, ‘Some kind of all-night service you got here, Charlie,’ and by then I lost an hour already so I figure I might as well get a bowl of soup for myself. And I go down the diner and there’s this guy in there. I never saw this guy before in my life. And all of a sudden he’s gonna have this conversation with me. I’m tryin’ drink my coffee, and this guy I never saw before in my life says to me, ‘Come on, we’ll go see Auburn Alice, the Long-haul Lady. So, only a couple miles. I ain’t got my rocks off since Buffalo.’