Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [86]
“Blood and everything. Wow. Just like on TV. It’s on the dirt too. How’d you guys do that? Like, how’d you know he was gonna shoot you, and not the other dude? Wait’ll I tell the kids on the block. Wow. Mom’s gonna be pissed about your shirt, but hey, it’s like reality TV. Or something, right? I’ll tell her the badass dude with the gun did it. All right? That’s what we’ll tell her, okay? I mean, she won’t care if it’s like a famous person who made a mess. Dad? You can get up now. The other actors left. It’s just the crazy lady and me. Dad? Hey, Dad.”
THE RATCATCHER
BY GERALD KOLPAN
South Street
Finlayson blinked in the sun. He would normally be asleep at close to ten in the morning, but old Mitford had told him to make the sacrifice. Whoever it was that wanted him was willing to pay, and as Finlayson needed to pay Mitford, he was keeping the appointment in both their interests.
Standing outside the Hippodrome, Finlayson realized he had never been inside it, or any other theater. But then, entertainment cost money and there wasn’t much of that in his line of work. He figured that any week he could keep his belly from talking and get drunk enough to stand his life, he was on velvet. Play-actors and Chautauqua speakers were for Rittenhouse Square ladies and fairy boys, anyway. Besides, he did his business at night when they did theirs, and his quarry wasn’t about to wait around while he sat through the last act of Alice Sit-by-the-Fire.
Until today, Finlayson’s routine had seldom varied: he woke at three in the afternoon, made up his pallet on the floor of Mitford’s stable, and ate a buttered roll purchased from Kelem’s delicatessen the night before. Then he grabbed his canvas duck bag and headed for the Franklin Refinery docks. This was, in his opinion, the place to find the city’s best rats, fed on the sugar that came in from Cuba until their small eyes fairly crusted over.
Last night had been good. His traps contained four large brown captives, all alive and fit to kill. The average Norway weighed about a pound, but you could always count on a Franklin rat to go four to eight ounces more than that. They were lively fellows too: full of sugar for energy and fresh vegetables for strength and stamina. He always said that a Franklin rat was the king of the Delaware, able to jump right from the river to a ship’s deck or swim across to Camden using only its tail as an engine. Putting one end of each trap into the bag, he tripped a spring to open its gate and dumped the screaming occupants inside. The sack vibrating like a saloon on election night, he walked down Delaware Avenue to Pemberton Street and turned left into Pier 34. Once inside, he made his way to the office of Jimmy O’Mara.
Jimmy ran what was probably the last rat-baiting operation in Pennsylvania, maybe the last in America. On Wednesday nights, he would welcome between fifty and sixty diehards to his pit in an unused storeroom. The first hour was devoted to beer and whiskey, so by the time the trainers arrived, they were greeted with whistles and applause. As the men cursed and cheered, each trainer would place his dog on a cargo scale to be weighed. Jimmy would then step to the edge of the pit and deposit a corresponding number of rats onto its dirt floor. If the dog weighed fifteen pounds, he would fight fifteen rats; twenty pounds, twenty rats, and so on. Based on each dog’s reputation and breeding, the spectators would place bets on the amount of time it would take for the dog to kill all the rats. The man who came closest won.
Finlayson’s rats were highly prized for their size and ferocity and Jimmy could always count on them to go down fighting, lunging at an eye or tearing at an ear.
Ordinarily there was not a word exchanged between O’Mara and Finlayson. The ratcatcher unloaded his prisoners into a large barrel and Jimmy counted them. He paid twentyfive cents for each one, thirty-five if a rat was particularly large and aggressive.
His earnings in his pocket, Finlayson nodded and left.