The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins Read Free Book Online

niggers to come in now?”
    “Come on in, Mill,” Torrey said. “Shut the fuckin’ door and shut your goddamned yap, too, while you’re at it. The Greek didn’t know where you stood, was all.”
    Schabb put the bag on a pad of white paper. “Look at that,” he said, “goddamned stuff. Gets all over you, got to go out, it isn’t even ten o’clock yet and I bet it’s ninety already. I tell you something: tonight on the way home, I’m stopping at Lechmere and getting a coffeepot.”
    “You get it,” Torrey said, “you clean it.”
    “Sure,” Schabb said, “sure, I’ll clean it. I also sweepout and I clean the toilet, too. That’s what I do, Greek, I’m on the shit detail.”
    “Willya come off it, Mill, for Christ sake?” Torrey said. “Greek don’t have nothing against you. He just didn’t know. He’s getting old, getting worried, he just wanted to be sure.”
    “Yeah,” the Greek said. “See, Mill, somebody should’ve told you. You got, see, Richie’s the kind of partner you got to watch. He gets himself all pissed off or something and then he goes out and does something, and then everybody else’s got to run around and everything trying to cover his ass for him. Richie’s okay for a partner if you watch him real close and don’t leave him go down the North End and start waving his arms at the cops or something. It don’t mean nothing.”
    “It don’t mean nothing,” Torrey said, “long as you understand what it means, Greek. This is my business. Miller’s in it and you’re in it, because I wanted you guys in it. That’s all. It’s still my business. I can’t work it with you guys, either one of you, I’ll go get some new guys and run it with them. I can do it. I’m the guy with the okay, don’t forget.”
    Schabb distributed the cups of coffee. “I dunno what I’m gonna forget,” he said, “since I wasn’t here and all. You guys mind telling me what this is all about?”
    “The Greek’s afraid he can’t do his job, is all,” Torrey said. “He don’t want to admit it, but that’s basically what it is.”
    “I don’t like that kind of talk, Richie,” the Greek said. “I come in here, I been doing this more’n twenty years, putting money out and getting it back in again, and I’m as cold as a nun’s cunt. You, you had a good idea, now you don’t want to listen to anybody else, you want tostart something, pretty soon you got the FBI putting three guys in white sedans out there and all. Okay, don’t listen. Be a big asshole. Then when you fuck it up good and everybody’s good and screwed, you can tell everybody, you screwed it up because you’re just like a little kid and you wanted to, I guess.” The Greek leaned forward, toward Richie. “Now you can do that, you want,” he said, “you can. But I was here when you got here and I’ll be here when you’re gone, I still got my regular business. And you’re not gonna fuck me up with it, clear?”
    “What he’s afraid of,” Torrey said to Schabb, “he’s afraid the guys down the Bright Red’ll tell him to go home, and make him cry.”
    “I don’t know those guys,” Schabb said. “I was after some other guys, I know them from around town. You see them various places. I had about thirty of them, the movers that don’t always go home at night, like they’re supposed to, I figured them for naturals. Except I didn’t figure, I was talking the last two weeks in July, first week in August. That’s when these birds take the family to the Cape and pretend they’re behaving themselves. I got about four out of the lot and I was counting on twenty. We could’ve lost some serious money on that. So I asked Richie.”
    “Richie give you some bad advice, then,” the Greek said. “I’ll do the best I can with it this time, but I don’t want no more of this. Next time, ask me, too, see what I got to say.”
    “Okay,” Torrey said, “ask him, Mill, is it all right, we got the Holy Name?”
    The Greek