“Leo,” Dannaher said, touching Proctor on the sleeve again, “Leo, you can’t just cut me out like this. I was counting on that fifteen hundred. I need it, you know? I really need it.”
“I thought you had all kinds of ways, get money,” Proctor said. “Isn’t that what you was telling me the other night there, when you didn’t want to go in the dump and pull your own weight in an operation for once and catch some rats? Wasn’t it?”
“Well, yeah,” Dannaher said, “but this was one of them and this is the one that I happened to’ve picked. I turned the other ones down, you know, so’s I could work with you.”
“Meaning, of course,” Proctor said, “that the reason you never show up at the Londonderry last night is because you think maybe Clinker Carroll’s got something safer you can do with him before he goes back in the can again, and you just said, ‘Well, I think I will take a chance with Clinker and see if maybe what he has got to offer isn’t maybe better than this sure thing old Leo’s got for me, and fuck Leo.’ Am I right?”
“No, Leo,” Dannaher said. “No, honest, I told you. I was just sitting there with Clinker down the Paper Moon and he was all upset and I stayed there with him because I was afraid, I didn’t wanna leave the guy alone by himself, you know? And I didn’t think I could get in touch with you.”
“And then, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “then you heard a little more about what Clinker’s got in mind, finally, after you’d been buying him drinks for about three hundred years, and you started to get a little scared and besides there wasn’t much money in it, not as much as there is in what I’m offering, at least. And you start thinking about Clinker’s track record and how he’s goin’ away again pretty soon and you got scared as usual so you backed out on him and you decided: ‘Well, I will go around and I will see if maybe I can blow a little smoke up old Leo’s ass and maybe I can get back in his good graces, because old Leo never done much time and certainly didn’t do any since he was just a kid that didn’t know shit-all from what he was doing so he was always getting caught. But now he’s a lot smarter. And besides, the work ain’t dangerous and it pays good.’”
“No, Leo,” Dannaher said.
“Yes, Jimma,” Proctor said. “Yes, it does. It pays good. That kind of money for catching rats plus one hour of light work in the morning for fifteen hundred bucks is damned good pay, and you know it.”
“I didn’t mean it didn’t pay good,” Dannaher said. “I didn’t mean that. I meant: you’re wrong about Clinker. He was all steamed up. He just got back with his wife there and she’s been screwing around all the time he was gone the first time and now she thinks he’s gonna go away again…”
“Which,” Proctor said, “he is. The asshole. Only an asshole like Clinker Carroll’d come right out of the can for doing something and then do the same exact thing all over again with more cops looking up his asshole’n they got doctors doing the same thing to legitimate guys over the VA hospital.”
“Well,” Dannaher said, “he was. They sat down and they had this long talk and she’ll stop fuckin’ around and he’ll get a job and everything, for the sake of the kids, which if it hadn’t’ve been for them she would’ve divorced him the last time he was in and go back to live down in Bridgeport with the kids. Which he knows means she’ll stay somewhere around here and fuck that guy that’s the, that runs the hardware store there down Jamaica Plain. And then he goes out and he does what he tells her he isn’t gonna do, and naturally she finds out about it when they put his picture in the paper and anyway he didn’t come home that night when they had him down Charles Street there. So she went out last night and she told him, she was leaving, she said, ‘Nice going, Mister Hot-shot Big-time Two-bit Crook who thinks he’s so smart he can break in a store and steal television sets without setting off all the alarms and there’s a hundred cops waiting for him when he comes out. I’m gonna have some nice going for myself.’ And he tells me he knows she is out fuckin’ the guy last night and as soon as he goes away again, she will divorce him.
“Well,” Dannaher said, “that’s what I was doing. I was trying to talk to Clinker.”
“Look,” Proctor said, “other guy’s problems at home do not interest me. If I want the problems at home, all I got to do is go home, and I have got more problems at home’n they got animals up at Benson’s Wild Animals Farm there in New Hampshire. You got it? I’m not interested. Clinker did not do anything to me personally, although I got to say a friend of his did, and neither did Clinker’s wife, that snatch that’d fuck a flashlight if there was nothing else handy.
“You, Jimma,” Proctor said, “you did something to me personally. What you did to me was, you did not do something for me which you said you would do, and you have begun to piss me off somewhat. Which is why I am thinking about doing this job myself.”
“If I help,” Dannaher said, “I still get paid? The money?”
Mickey at the counter distracted the waitress from her study of rain coursing down the window. “Ma’am,” he said, “could I have a cheese Danish, please?”
She did not shift her gaze. “Haven’t got any cheese,” she said.
“Blueberry?” Mickey said.
She sighed. “I’ll check,” she said.
“Leo?” Dannaher said.
“Jimma,” Proctor said, “will you get outta here and leave me alone for a while? I got to do some thinking, and besides, there is a guy I got to meet anyway.”
“Jesus,” Dannaher said, “Jesus, Leo, you can’t leave me hanging like this. I got to know.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Proctor said.
“I’ll have a Danish too,” Don said.
“We haven’t got no blueberry left either,” the waitress said at the display case. “All we got is prune.”
“Two prunes,” Mickey said. “I been a little irregular lately anyway.”
15
It was still raining when Billy Malatesta, using an umbrella, entered the diner and stripped off his checked raincoat.
“So,” Don said to Mickey at the counter, “you got the compressor fixed, I assume.”
“Leo,” Malatesta said, sliding into the booth.
“Compressor?” Mickey said.
“Yeah,” Don said. “’Member, last time I see you, you were telling me you…”
“Oh,” Mickey said. “Yeah, the compressor. When I had them fuckin’ chickens there and the guy wanted me to go see that hooker in Auburn.”
“Billy,” Proctor said. “How you hittin’ them?”
“Ah, you know,” Malatesta said. “Sometimes, pretty good. Other times, not so good.”
“Yeah,” Proctor said. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have that fifty I loaned you, would you? I’m a little short tonight. Bank caught up with me again.”
Don said, “Yeah, that time. You were having it fixed down here. Get it fixed all right?”
“You call three days’ down-time all right” Mickey said. “Jesus, I had Fritz doing all my work since Lazarus finished his nap and he never does this to me before. And then I’ll be goddamned if I don’t take all kinds of chances with that goddamned three tons of chickens, just so I can get it down here so Fritz can work on it, and the son of a bitch takes three fuckin’ days to fix it. I lost a load of fish for Pawtucket. I lost two produce runs. I could’ve had one with eggs down from Maine and taken pies up, and I lost that. Goddamned Fritz.”
“What are you?” Malatesta said to Proctor. “You had a long day or something and now you want a little fun, is that it? Horse around with old Billy here, see if his chain can take another jerking or two? What the hell is this? I thought it was a coffee shop. Now’re you telling me, it’s vaudeville? I’d’ve known that, I wouldn’t’ve come.”
“Take it easy, Bill,” Proctor said. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure. I was just givin’ you the leg.”
“Yeah,” Malatesta said. “Well, that’s all right, but so’s everybody else. Three of you guys make a dozen, easy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Proctor said. “How’s the old lady?”