The Rat on Fire Read Free Page B

little trees on the way in. But, I never did like that Monte Carlo anyways. Lousy car. Lousy on gas. This guy Carter got any idea what he’s doing, you think, on the gas thing? Jesus, first he makes me, I can’t use nothing that burns the stuff with lead in it and then he tells me I can’t use none of the stuff that hasn’t got lead in it and when I do I can kiss my house goodbye. What the hell is he doing? You got any ideas?”
    “No,” Malatesta said.
    “Neither’ve I,” Proctor said. “I have no idea in the world what he is doing. I wished I could convince myself that he does. It’s bad enough,
I
got to be an asshole, but if the goddamned President’s an asshole we are all in trouble, including poor assholes like me that can’t stay out of trouble anyway, and
then
what the fuck we do, huh?
    “Anyway,” Proctor said, “I was thinkin’ about gettin’ rid the damned car anyway, although what I had in mind was, I was gonna sell it, not drown it, because it was all shot. But the water was kind of cold and it sobers me up. I’m soaked and I’m walkin’ around in the mud with the water up to my balls and it’s three inna morning, but then I think, Hey, somebody could’ve got themselves killed in this thing, and it could’ve been me, even. See, the little cocksucker, him I don’t care about. I wished he
was
dead, him causing all the trouble, except I don’t want him dead in my car, I want him dead in somebody else’s car.
    “Because,” Leo said, “you know what them cops’re gonna do with somebody that’s got a record like I got, that he ends up inna swamp at three inna mornin’ and there’s a body of a dead guy inna car with him, or maybe inna swamp and there doesn’t happen to be no other way that body could’ve gotten there, huh? They’re gonna blame me for it, and then they’re gonna charge me manslaughter.
    “This,” Leo said, “I do not need. He is a little shit and thewhole goddamned world will be better off for all of us if he is dead, and that includes the cops, but I was glad he was alive. Because if he is dead, I certainly cannot afford to take the credit.”
    “So what’d you do?” Malatesta said.
    “Well,” Leo said, “like I said, what I did was sober up. Which maybe would’ve been a good idea earlier, when I wasn’t so tired and then maybe I never would’ve gotten myself in this mess where I drowned my own car like a cat. What am I, a United States Senator or something, I drown my own car? But it was not such a hot idea, because I decide I can charm a dog offa meat wagon and I am gonna think up this story that’ll explain the whole thing. When I am finished, the cop is probably gonna be cryin’ his eyes out and put me in for an award, I was such a quick-witted citizen when this emergency hits and I probably even saved the guy’s life. The worthless little piece of shit he is that started the whole thing inna first place.”
    “What’d you tell them?” Malatesta said.
    “I told them,” Proctor said, “I told them I was, I was standing there inna water up over my ankles, I sort of waded over to where I saw the headlights, and I would’ve been freezing my balls off except it was summer and anyway I was so shitfaced I was probably good for about twenty below, and honest to God, Billy, I must’ve thought I was Winston Churchill or something. Here is this cop. I saw something once that was also alive and was just as big, but it was gray and it couldn’t talk and it had a very long nose and I saw it in the circus when I took the kids the Garden and it cost me about seventy bucks and there was this guy that had on a silver suit and made a tiger jump on the back of this thing with a long nose and then the guy jumped on the tiger’s back and rode the two of them around the room and that big gray thing was an
elephant
. That’s how big this cop was.
    “But he could talk,” Leo said. “He could talk and he did talk. What he said was impressive, but he did not say