The Digger's Game (2 page)

“Okay,” the Digger said.

“Don’t take no more’n that,” the driver said. “You do and they’re liable to spot it the next time they use the book.” From the floor under the driver’s seat he produced a razor knife. “Take them out right along the binder. Don’t leave no shreds. Shreds can fall out and get somebody looking. Nice, clean cuts. One page at a time. Don’t use where it’s perforated. Cut them out right along the binder. Okay?

“Don’t take nothing from the other books,” the driver said. “The petty-cash box, it’s probably got about eighty dollars in it. Leave it be. No stamps, no currency if there’s any, no nothing. Five pages of checks and that’s all. You give them all to me. I want thirty checks and I don’t want no more’n thirty checks taken. Okay?”

“Okay,” the Digger said.

“The guy I got,” the driver said, “it’s going to be important for him the checks went out some time this month, because he’s on vacation and he’ll be able to prove where he was all the time. We get checks from one of the other books, they start coming in, he’s not gonna be protected. Okay?”

“Okay,” the Digger said. “How’d you meet him, anyway?”

“It was a business thing,” the driver said. “He needed some money and this friend of his sent him around to see me.”

“Jesus,” the Digger said, “I don’t know where the hell you’d be without us guys pressed for dough. You’d probably have to go out and work for a living.”

“Some guys,” the driver said, starting the Jaguar, “some guys need more’n they have, some guys have more’n they need. It’s just a matter of getting us together, Dig, that’s all it is.”

“I’m thinking of changing sides,” the Digger said. “If I get through this without doing time, I’m definitely gonna change sides.”

“I recommend it,” the driver said, “it’s lots more comfortable. Still, it shouldn’t take you more’n an hour, and you’re fifteen hundred bucks ahead of where you were when you closed up tonight.”

“Yeah,” the Digger said, “one and a half down, sixteen and a half to go. Someday, my friend, I’m gonna get smart, and when I do, well, I just hope you can find another guy, is all.”

“Digger,” the driver said as the fat man began to get out, “as long as they keep making women and horses, they’ll always be a guy to find. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Y
OU LOOK TIRED
, D
IG
,” Harrington said. “You look like you been up all night or something.” Harrington was a foreman at Boston Edison. He worked on Saturdays as a supervisor. He took the Dort Ave bus home every night; he got off a block away from the intersection of Gallivan Boulevard. The Bright Red was on that corner and he stopped in for a couple of cold ones. Weeknights he drank his beer and read the
Record
. Saturdays were quiet and he read the
Record
at work, his feet on the desk and a cardboard container of coffee growing cold beside the portable radio. Saturday nights he talked.

“I was,” the Digger said. “You’d think a guy as old as I am’d learn sometime, you can’t stay up all night ’thout feeling like hell the next day. Not me, I never learn.”

“You out drinking or something?” Harrington said.

“Nah,” the Digger said, “I was down to the Market, I see this guy. I had something to do. I just didn’t get around to going home, is all. I guess I roll in about four. What the fuck, it’s Saturday. It’s not like it’s the middle of the week, you hadda come in here and bust your ass, everybody gets out of work the same time. I can handle it.”

“See, I was wondering,” Harrington said. “You look like that, I see you looking like that, I was wondering, maybe you got that problem again.”

“Martinis,” the Digger said. “No, I didn’t have that. That’s a funny thing, you know? I think, I haven’t had
that kind of problem since the first time I was talking to you. Which was a pretty long time, I think. No, that much I learn, I don’t drink no more of that stuff, that fuckin’ gin. That stuff’ll kill you, I know that much. No, it was something else.”

“Broads,” Harrington said. “You’re a stupid shit, Dig, I always told you that. You’re a stupid shit, fool around with the broads. That’s dumb. I maybe grew up in Saint Columbkille’s, I maybe don’t know my ass from third base, I’m out here, the chocolate factory, I still know enough, I don’t fool around with no broads. I know that much, at least. You’re a dumb shit, staying out all night, fool around with broads. It don’t change, Dig, you got to know that. The monkey is the monkey, a cunt is a cunt. Why you wasting your time? Oughta go home and sleep.”

“I don’t fool around,” the Digger said.

“Okay,” Harrington said, “you’re an asshole. You stayed up till four in the morning because you wanted to. You’re a fuckin’ asshole. I thought you had more sense. You’re too old for staying out like that. No wonder you look like death warmed over. You stayed out because you wanted to. You’re an asshole.”

“I had a reason,” the Digger said.

“Sure you did,” Harrington said. “You wanted to get laid, was your reason. You didn’t get laid. You’re an asshole.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “I went to Vegas the other week.”

“So I hear,” Harrington said. “All the high rollers going out to Vegas. ‘Look, you dumb shit,’ they say to me, ‘you can’t lose. Up front you pay a grand and they give you eight-twenty back in the chips and the plane
ride and the hotel and everything. Broads. You never see the broads like you see the broads in Vegas. Got to fight them off.’ So I say, ‘Okay. I believe you. How come I gotta tell them the name every bank I ever had an account, huh? It’s probably, they want to make sure, I’m a nice fellow, don’t want to give the money away, somebody doesn’t need it or something. That’s probably it.’ Oh no, that’s not it. It’s just to be sure, you know? They don’t want no deadbeats. Okay, that’s what I’m saying. I’m gonna win, what difference does it make, I’m a deadbeat or not? No difference at all. So all right, I’m not going. They ask me that, the bank accounts, I think they think I’m not gonna win. They think I’m gonna lose, is what they think. Now, they been at it a lot longer’n I have. I think I bet with the smart money this time. I think I’m gonna lose, too, and I can’t afford to lose. So I’m not going.

“Well,” Harrington said, “I dunno if you was around or not, but I take so many kinds of shit I figure, Howard Johnson went into the shit business, twenty-eight flavors. The wife won’t let me; I don’t have no balls; when am I gonna get smart: all the rest of it. Then everybody goes, and it gets quiet. Beautiful. I actually enjoy coming in here, three or four days, although I think, them millionaires get back from Vegas, I’m gonna have to go down the parish hall, drink tea with the Guild, I expect any peace and quiet.

“Then everybody comes back,” Harrington said. “Funny thing, I don’t hear nothing. Nothing about broads, I don’t see anybody with the big roll, nothing. I start to wonder, what is it? Girls wouldn’t do it? Nah, can’t be that. All you guys talk nice, use the deodorant
there. Steaks tough? Frank Sinatra goes there and the steaks’re tough? Can’t be that. Everybody got airsick? Nah, all you guys’re over the Bulge, some of you were in Korea, every single one of you wins the Medal of Honor, at least in here. Beats me. I just can’t understand it. See, I
know
you guys didn’t lose no money. You’re all too smart for that. You all told me so, a lot. So I finally decide, you’re being nice to me. I’m Mickey the Dunce and you’re all being nice. Out pricing the Cads with all the dough you won, you’re just not telling me because you don’t want me to feel bad. You guys, you’re saints, you know that, Dig? Saints. I said that to my wife.”

“You know,” the Digger said, “your principal trouble is, you got a big mouth.”

“My wife claims that,” Harrington said. “She also says I hang around the wrong type of guys and it gets me in trouble, it won’t be her fault. She says a lot of things. But then I say, ‘Look, did I go to Vegas and win a million dollars? Not me. I’m too smart for that. Nobody fakes old Harrington into winning no million, no sir.’ That shuts her up.”

“She think I’m one of the bad guys?” the Digger said.

“She does,” Harrington said. “She has said that. But she don’t say it no more. I said, ‘Look, you like the stereo all right. You give me a lot of stuff and all, but the Digger gets that Stromberg for a hundred and Lechmere’s knocking them down for three-fifty, I don’t hear no complaints from you.’ See, I stand up for you, Digger.”

“You interested in a portable radio?” the Digger said.

“No,” Harrington said.

“How about a nice color tee-vee?” the Digger said. “RCA, Accucolor, the whole bit.”

“No,” Harrington said. “I touch the stereo the other night by mistake and I burned myself. I’m gonna be sitting there some fine night, watching the ball game, and some cop’s gonna come in. Besides, I can’t buy nothing right now, I don’t care if you’re giving it away. The wife wants a boat. I’m supposed to be saving up for a boat.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “I need some dough.”

“Jesus,” Harrington said, “I could use some dough myself. You get ahold the guy that’s passing out the dough, give him my name. I could use about thirty-five big ones, right this minute. I got to buy a boat. Get that? I had a boat. I had four rooms over to Saint Columbkille’s, I had a nice boat. She don’t like that. We got to have a house. ‘I can’t afford no house,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got the down payment, for God’s sake.’ She says, ‘Sell the boat.’ I didn’t want to sell my boat. I didn’t want to buy the house. I sell the boat. I buy the house. Nine years we had the house, eight of them she’s been complaining, we should get another boat. I give up.”

“I’m serious,” the Digger said.

“You’re serious, is it?” Harrington said. “You think I’m just horsing around?”

“You’re not serious the way I’m serious,” the Digger said. “I need eighteen thousand dollars and I need it right away. Yesterday would’ve been good.”

“Oh oh,” Harrington said, “you guys did take a bath out there, didn’t you.”

The Digger nodded. “The rest of the guys, not as bad as me. But I went in right over my head.”

“Jesus,” Harrington said, “that why you’re out all night?”

“Yup,” the Digger said, “I take all kinds of chances and you know what? I’m not even close to even.” From the end of the bar a customer demanded service. “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, I give you a bat in the head,” the Digger shouted. “I’ll get to you when I’m damned good and fuckin’ ready. Right now I’m talking to a guy.” The customer said he thought he could get a drink in the place. “You can get a drink when I feel like gettin’ you a fuckin’ drink,” the Digger said. “Right now I don’t feel like it. Paul, ’stead of sittin’ down there like a damned dog, come around and give the loudmouth bastard what he wants. Pour it down his fuckin’ pants, all I care.” At the end of the bar a small man with grey hair got off his stool and came around to the spigots. He started to draw beer. “I got to get even,” the Digger said to Harrington, “I got to find a way to get even and that’s all there is to it.”

“You’re not gonna do it pushing radios,” Harrington said. “You’re not gonna do it that way, I can tell you right now. You, I think you’re gonna have to find something a lot bigger’n radios to sell, you expect to make that kind of dough.”

“Well, okay,” the Digger said, “that’s what I was thinking.”

“Sure,” Harrington said, “you’re gonna have to sell the place, here.”

“No,” the Digger said.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘No’?” Harrington said. “You haven’t got anything else you can sell. You don’t dress that good, you can’t sell suits. You got a car there, isn’t bad, but you got to get around and you couldn’t get
more’n a grand for it if you sold it anyway. What the hell else can you do, sell your house? Can’t do that. Some guy make you a price on the wife and kids?”

“Well,” the Digger said, “I mean, there’s other ways of raising money.”

“Not without taking chances,” Harrington said. “That kind of money, you either got in the bank and you go in and you take it out, or else you got it in something else and you go the bank and you practically hand it over to them, or else you go the bank with a gun and you say, ‘Gimme everybody else’s money.’ There’s no other way, and that last one, that’s risky.”

“There’s other ways,” the Digger said. “Look, this place. You know what I hadda do, get this place? I hadda get up off the floor, is what I hadda do. Johnny Malloy, I get out of the slammer and Johnny Malloy gives me a job and no shit. Me, I figured, it’s temporary, I got to have something to do. I never had any idea of running a barroom all my life.”

“What’s the matter with running a bar?” Harrington said. “Nothing the matter with that. I wished I had a good bar to run.”

“Sure,” the Digger said, “but that’s it. Takes money, get a bar. I didn’t have money. All I had was a goddamned record. Was all I could do, keep the Probation looking the other way while I was working here. So, Malloy gets the cancer. He knew he had it. He says, there wasn’t anybody else had the money, wanted to buy it. They’re all laying off. He told me that. ‘Wait it out and steal it off the wife, they got in mind. Bastards. I’ll sell it to you for what it’s worth. Not what I could get for it if I was all right and I just wanted to sell. What
it’s worth. That’s about twice what I’m getting offers for.’