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

get. What do I know about investing money, huh? My father was the guy who knew about investing, right? He sure did. My father knew so much about investing that three years after he dies, I am supporting my mother, that’s how much he knew. You think I’m going to fuck around the stock market like he did?
Bullshit
, I am. The big wheeler-dealer type, he’s buying this and he’s selling that, he’s not paying any attention to his own business, he’s so busy getting rich buying stock in Studebaker and selling General Motors. Shit. Spent the whole goddamned day memorizing the
Wall Street Journal
. Didn’t have time to figure out what his clerks were doing, stealing him blind when he wasn’t watching the shelves. He was too busy studying the London gold market.
    “My Uncle Sherman,” Fein said. “Sherman tried to helphim. He was all over my father like a rash. ‘Julian,’ he would say, I heard myself, ‘Julian, will you take care of the business, please,’ ‘Sure, sure,’ the old man says, and he didn’t. Drove Sherman nuts. At the time I didn’t understand, although I have to say that now I do, paying for those goddamned vacations at Lake George. Anyway, I have this idea, I go to see Sherman. Sherman will know what to do. ‘Real estate,’ Sherman says. ‘Buy real estate. Real estate is always there and they cannot take it away from you or steal it in the middle of the night.’
    “This,” Fein says, “this was not a half an hour ago. This was fifteen, sixteen years ago. Sherman is now dead and he doesn’t know he was wrong. ‘A nice little parcel of rental property, you can rent out the apartments and deduct the taxes and you got a good regular income which you will always have because housing goes up with inflation and it’s automatic,’ he tells me. My Uncle Sherman did not know anything about niggers. Nothing. He thought they were all slaves that ought to be allowed to get in a different line of work and shouldn’t have to go out in the fields and bring the cotton in all the time, or whatever the hell it is they do with cotton. I went out and bought three buildings all hitched together and they had nice people in them who took care of the place and paid their rent on time, and then the niggers come in the neighborhood and the nice people who didn’t die of old age died of fright or left. So pretty soon all there was to rent places to was niggers, and I did that, and now look what I got.”
    “Yeah,” Leo said.
    “I was in the middle of one the other morning,” Fein said. “I am not inspecting any one of them after the sun goes down, I can tell you that. My own property that I am renting out to give me and my family some security in our old age so that we do not have to go on welfare like a bunch of fuckin’ niggers, and it’s full of mean niggers on welfare thatwon’t pay me and’re tearing my property apart and I’m afraid, go in there. Into property that I fuckin’
own?
You’re goddamned right I’m afraid. I would no more go in there when the sun is down than I would go over to the zoo and shack up in the snake house.
    “I go there in the morning,” Fein said. “I go there and here is this bastard leaning against the front door so I can’t get through it. And he is about nineteen, maybe, not very big, got on the jacket and the pants, doesn’t look like anything special, toothpick hanging out his mouth, and he looks at me. I say, ‘Excuse me.’ He says, ‘Whuffa?’ I say, ‘So I can get in the door.’ I don’t really see why I should have to explain to this fuckin’ kid why I want him to move on the steps of my own building, but it is possible that this kid has a knife in his pants and has been looking for somebody like me to stick it into. ‘Who you?’ he says. ‘Landlord sent me over,’ I say. ‘Just routine.’ He says, ‘You got any
identification
?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, but there is no way I am taking my wallet out so he can see exactly where it is, ‘yeah,