The cats turned toward the little grass “lawn,” bunched together, and lay down, stock-still. The professor turned to his guest and grinned.
“It’s better with an orchestra.”
Finlayson stood quiet and amazed.
“I see you cannot speak,” Swain said. “Your reaction is a common one and typical of those who first experience our little exhibition. It has taken me many years to produce the zoological marvel you have just witnessed. As a result, we have topped the bill across this great land and in the capitals of Europe. I daresay that nowhere in the world is there an amusement remotely similar to Swain’s Rats and Cats.”
Fin tried to speak but his mouth was dry. Swain took a pitcher of water from a nearby stand and poured it into a thumb-marked glass. The ratcatcher took a long draught and wiped his mouth on his dirty sleeve.
“What’s this got to do with me?”
Swain’s brow knitted tightly. “Way back when, I had time to haunt the wharfs and alleys, seeking out the finest specimens. I found number six there, Romulus, in an infested theater in Brooklyn when he frightened Miss Fanny Brice into leaping on to the nearest chair.”
He reached beneath the platform again. From a large paper bag, he produced several handfuls of dried corn and sprinkled it on the floor. Immediately the rats leaped from the platform and began to gorge themselves. The cats remained in place.
“As an expert, you likely know that, even with the finest of care, the lifespan of
“You want some rats?”
“Mr. Finlayson, I am asking far more than that. I am proposing that you become the official ratcatcher for Swain’s Rats and Cats. In this capacity, you will perform the duties such as have been your living, but that living shall be far more comfortable. I will pay you the sum of thirty dollars per capture, up to forty dollars for a swollen female of fine size. Once our business is established and mutual trust confirmed, I propose to rent a facility here in which you will breed new stars for me. New Romuluses! New Dutches! New Esmeraldas and Kittys and Whiskers!”
Fin eyed the little man suspiciously. “Thirty dollars for a rat?”
“Thirty dollars for the
Finlayson looked pained. “Do you want me to sign a paper? I can’t read or write.”
“No, no, my boy. All I want is for you catch me big, fat, healthy rats. Rats that will honor your skill as they delight and amaze theatergoers the world over.”
Swain whistled the first six notes of “Liebestraum” and the rats immediately stopped eating and took up their positions on the track. Then he reached into his watch pocket.
“Our first performance begins in five minutes. Here’s a ducket for the show. What you have seen is only a portion of what my little friends can do. I’m sure that once you’ve absorbed the complete performance, you’ll wish to be a part of their success. Afterward, we’ll repair to Wexler’s for the poison of your choice and a toast to your fortune and mine own.”
Jimmy O’Mara jammed his cigar in his mouth, puffing on it hard. Finlayson had only just come in from his nightly rounds and Jimmy was ready to pour some arsenic in his ear. His customers had begun to complain.
Only last night, Fatso Eagan, the owner of a particularly nasty fox terrier named Billy, had bitched him out royal over the declining quality of his bouts.
“May’s well pick posies as bring Billy here,” he said. “These rats what yous’ve been getting act like ladies at a icecream social. It’s six weeks in a row Billy’s kilt ’em all in under one-thirty. Nobody’s layin’ down shit for wagers and I’m losin’ money. Now I know they didn’t close down the refinery. Where’d all them nice, big sugar rats go, Baltimore?”
“Mebbe they croaked a’ the diabetes,” Jimmy said.
Fatso’s eyes narrowed beneath his huge brows. He shifted the chew in his cheeks from left to right and hocked. The spittoon rang like a new telephone.
“G’head and laugh,” Fatso said, “but I can count. Last week they was twenty guys in here. Week before was thirty, week before that, near fifty. You’re shrinkin’ like balls in a blizzard, palsy-walsy. And until you get some rats in here wanna kill my dog, guess I’ll hie me over the Camden side. I hear they got a pit there, one dog fights the other.”
Jimmy’s hollow cheeks lengthened in disgust. “Fuckin’ barbaric.”
Now he nearly bit through the cigar as Finlayson stood before him and emptied his sack into the pit. Twenty- odd rats spilled out and ran squealing for the ring’s edges. They were small and thin, cowards each not more than six months old. O’Mara surveyed them for a few seconds.
“Mice,” he said.
“I’m real sorry, Jimmy,” Fin said. “I don’t know if they’ve shut the sugar lockers tighter or they finally brought in their own catchers, but it’s like I’ve told ya-these past few months the pickins has been slim.”
“Mebbe,” Jimmy said, “or mebbe anymore, you’re not a proper ratcatcher.”
Finlayson’s face became a wound. “Whadaya mean, Jimmy? Ain’t I spent most my life bringin’ you the best?”
“Yesterday and a nickel rides the horse car, m’boy. Look at you. You used to be the pitcher of your occupation-dressed in rags with that stable’s manure attached. Same shirt and collar every day. Never could tell if it was gray from dye or dirt. And the stink! I could always tell you was comin’ before you ever hit the door. That popcorn smell of rats mixed with your own sweat and the blood from where you’d been bit. It did a man’s heart good to inhale that smell and know there was a true professional about the premises, a man you could trust. Now look at you.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I was up Big Hearted John’s on Tuesday to buy a shirt and John tells me you been in. He says you bought that new coat and tie you’re wearin’ and what a bargain it was. Then I go to pay my bill at Mitford’s and the old man tells me you lit out and were holed up at the Caledonia Hotel. Now, the Cal’s a flea circus and them clothes are just what some guinea didn’t pick up after alteration. But for a ratcatcher, it’s like rentin’ out Vair-sye and wearin’ soup and fish. You ain’t dressin’ the part no more, bucko, nor actin’ it neither.”
Jimmy took the cigar from his mouth and crushed it on the floor. Then he turned to the poor excuse for vermin Fin had spent the night collecting.
“I can’t use these,” he said. “You can either drown ’em or I’ll set Blackie on ’em just for practice. Besides, it looks like the game’s dead. I’m sure as hell outta business.”
Finlayson made to say something but the words stuck sideways like fish bones. He certainly couldn’t tell O’Mara that twenty of the refinery’s finest specimens were presently in training to replace and enlarge Swain’s current troupe, or that thirty more were at this moment rutting in a series of breeding cages in the basement of Knox’s Triangle Saloon. In the preceding six months, Swain had paid him nearly one thousand dollars for his rats: more than he usually earned in five years. As for his clothing, it reflected his new station, as would the clothes of any man who’s come up in the world. Yes, he was still a ratcatcher, filthy and despised by the decent. But now, instead of being a supplier to a dying sport, he was a man of show business, a talent scout as it were, bringing new performers to a public blessed by a six-day work week and a hunger for amusement in the leisure time between factory and church. Finlayson took the canvas bag and turned toward the door. Jimmy O’Mara had already lit another cigar and turned to his ledgers.
Outside, autumn had come. The clouds gathering all night had broken into a gentle rain. Fin turned up his collar and crossed Delaware Avenue. He made a right onto Kenilworth and found the Schooner already open.
Without a word, Henry Kulky placed two shots on the bar and then pulled the tap for Fin’s Esslinger. Except for the two men, the bar was empty. It wouldn’t begin to fill until eleven when the dockworkers came off graveyard. As Fin downed the whiskeys he measured Henry’s silence. After all these years he knew his good quiet from his
