Read Online The Rat on Fire by George V. Higgins - Free Book Online

will come around looking for you. You will try to talk to him, naturally, but he is not gonna believe you. Because like I say, a lot of people know about you and there have been too many times when you took some money from somebody who wanted you to do something and then it slipped your mind or something and you didn’t do it.”
    “You cocksucker, Leo,” Dannaher said.
    “I am not a cocksucker,” Proctor said. “I have done a lot of dumb things but I never sucked a cock in my life. Now are you gonna come in that cellar with me, or am I gonna get somebody else to help me and also put your tail inna crack, just on general principles?”
    “I just hope you’re right,” Dannaher said. “You better be right, Leo, is all I can say. I’m not goin’ back to the can for anybody.”
    “You are goin’ in the cellar, though,” Leo said. “You are gonna come into that cellar with me and you are gonna help me and if you help me you will get your fifteen hundred bucks and if you don’t, you won’t. Clear?”
    There were four stone steps leading down to the green wooden door made of matched boards. There was a large padlock on a heavy hasp on the door. Proctor took a key out of his pocket and opened the lock with difficulty. “Fuckin’ thing’s all rusted,” he said.
    “Those’re supposed to be good locks, too,” Dannaher said. “They cost a lot of money. They shouldn’t do that.”
    “Shit,” Proctor said, removing the lock, “nobody makes anything right anymore. Look at these steps, all right? Been here probably a hundred and fifty years. They’re all right. Oh, they’re a little worn, sure, but they’re here and you can still go down them without figuring you’re gonna break your neck when they fall apart under you. You try gettin’ somethin’ like that done today. Just try it.
    “You tell somebody,” Proctor said, “you want a cellarway put in a building, or you’re doing a job for somebody wants a cellarway put in, and the first thing that’s gonna happen if you’re the guy hiring the job is they’re gonna come back at you with the specs and you’re gonna get wooden steps, open-framed, and one of those goddamned steel bulkheads they sell down to Grossman’s. And you gotta paint the fuckin’ thing every year with about three hundred bucks’ worth of Rustoleum because if you don’t it’ll rust out in a year.
    “Or you’re the guy,” Proctor said, “that’s doing the job and you try to tell the guy, ‘Look, you’re better off, leave it open, put some stone steps down there and the weather isn’t gonna hurt them and they’ll last forever. And besides that nobody can jump on them and probably wreck them inna month like they can a bulkhead.’ And he’s gonna look at you and ask you how the hell you expect him to pay for quality work like that.
    “That’s what I mean,” Proctor said. “That’s why they don’t do it anymore. It makes a helluva lot more sense, but nobody does it because it’d cost too much money up front and nowadays the whole thing is, you put as much money into it as it takes to make it stand up straight for maybe six years and then you depreciate the ass off of it in five and you sell the fuckin’ thing to somebody else. That’s the way it works now, and if you don’t know that everybody figures that you’re just an asshole and there isn’t any point in talking to you anyway.”
    “Come on, come on,” Dannaher said, looking around,“open the fuckin’ door and let’s go in there, we’re gonna go in there, all right? Guy could paint pictures of us, we stand here long enough.”
    Proctor opened the toolbox and removed a three-cell flashlight. “Not without this,” he said, closing the box. “I’m not goin’ in one of these places without no light.”

“J ERRY ,” L EO SAID in Fein’s office, “it was darker’n a carload of assholes in there.”
    “I never been in there,” Fein said. “You know that? I never been in there. I own the