The Rat on Fire by George V. Higgins

it is, she was also
noisy
, you know what I mean, and you didn’t exactly come off too well in the conversation.”
    “Who was she with?” Malatesta asked.
    “Don’t think she was really
with
anybody,” the bartender said. “She came in with that broad Judy that’s Finnegan’s regular bimbo, but I think that was just because they happened to get out of cabs at the same time. Judy was waitin’ for Finnegan, and he showed up about forty minutes later, and then about twenty minutes after that, Marion started in singing her songs because you weren’t here and you didn’t call her or anything, and you were cheap and this is some godforsaken place that you only take her because you don’t have to pay anything and you can freeload all night off of her and you never buy her anything or take her any place and all in all, you ain’t much good.”
    “Jesus,” Malatesta said.
    “I will tell you something,” the bartender said. “You may have calmed her down a little Thursday night, but after what I saw before you got here, if I was you I would just go right back out that door and let her diddle herself in the powder room. Before you get through with her, she is going to get you in a whole puddle of shit.”

J IMMY D ANNAHER AND Leo Proctor sat in the van parked in the woods on the dirt road off Randolph Avenue in Milton, Massachusetts. “You didn’t say we had to walk around in the woods, Leo,” Jimmy said.
    “Look,” Proctor said, “everybody knows they close up the dumps at night. At least I’m not asking you to climb over the fence there, the gate. All you got to do is follow me around the gate and we go through the woods and there we are, inna dump.”
    “With the rats,” Dannaher said. “Skunks, too, probably. Big, fat, black-and-white skunks that spend all their time getting ready to drown me in their piss the minute I go tramping around in their garbage, and I’ll stink for six days.”
    “You stink now,” Proctor said.
    “Fuck you,” Dannaher said. “I’m serious about this. I don’t want to go in there with a bunch of rats. They’ve probably got snakes in there, too. They got snakes in the Blue Hills here. Poisonous snakes that can bite you and kill you. What if I step on a rattlesnake or something? Who’ll take care of my kids if I step on a rattlesnake, huh?”
    “They haven’t got any rattlesnakes in there,” Proctor said.
    “They
have
got rattlesnakes in there,” Dannaher said. “I know it because I read it in the paper. You don’t know nothing about rattlesnakes. They have had rattlesnakes out here for years. It’s been on television and everything. You don’t know anything. You’re going to get us both in prison before we’re through, and you’re telling me about rattlesnakes. I’m not going in there in the dark.”
    “And then who’s gonna take care of your kids?” Proctor said.
    “If I don’t go in there?” Dannaher said. “I am, of course.”
    “Like you did when you were in the can for a while?” Proctor said.
    “If I don’t get into this,” Dannaher said, “I won’t be in the can for a while, and I can do it.”
    “With no money?” Proctor said.
    “I can get some money,” Dannaher said.
    “Yup,” Proctor said, “you can get some money. But you can’t get any money from me unless you come into that fucking dump with me and take your chances with the snakes and the skunks. You will have to find somebody else who is willing to give you some money, and I wish you luck, is what I do, because I think you are going to need it. If I was you, I would rather take my chances with the skunks.”
    “I don’t see why the hell they lock dumps up at night,” Dannaher said. “They afraid somebody’ll steal something from them?”
    “No,” Proctor said. “They lock up the dump road at night because they want to stop people from giving them things, such as whole messes of shit they will have to bury. They block the road in the middle of the night because