Bomber's Law

by George V. Higgins

  “Mercy,” Dell’Appa said. “I assume Short Joey would have none of this disgusting, perverted business and told them sharply to stop all their foolishness and put their trousers back on at once.”

  “No,” Brennan said thoughtfully, “as a matter of fact, he did not. I suppose it was a matter of Joe being such an obliging guy, you know? He was always well-known for that. If he happened to see that you needed some help, and he was the guy that could help you, well, he’d pitch right in and help you out, even without bein’ asked. Always been that way. You could ask anybody. They would all tell you that. He might think that what you want is kind of strange, maybe even a little kinky, but if you’re a friend of his and it wouldn’t hurt anyone else, well, he would do his very best to make sure that you would get it. So, if these two guys both wanted him to take their own pool cues and stick them up their asses for them, well, they were over twenty-one, adults too, just like Danny—who was he to argue? They got their cookies that way, what business of his was it?

  “And so he went and he did it. Shoved those sticks up them so far it looked like they hadda be gonna come right out of their mouths, or their noses or something, any minute there now. They’re both screaming, of course, at first, when he first does it to them, starts it up them there, they holler pretty good, but when he really gets that wood up there good and deep, well, from what the people said it was like someone’s getting murdered. All kinds of stuff gushing out of their mouths, vomit and bile and so forth, and blood just spraying out of their ass. Things tearing an’ rippin’ an’ breakin’, inside. Like they were two fountains of blood. They said they wanted him to help them out with this? Well, they come to the right guy for that. Short Joey helped them out, all right, and when he’s got them things in as far as it looks like they’ll go, then he gets the chalk and he goes around to where their heads are, and they’re both passed out now, alla pain I suppose, and chalks their noses for them, right there.”

  “Jesus,” Dell’Appa said.

  “Oh, I’m here to tell you,” Brennan said. “Those DPW guys never got their rocks off like that before, or since, is what I think—now that they know the kinda chances they both took. They hadda both go to the hospital, in fact, emergency surgery there for internal bleeding. And a good thing they did, too, people said; those two guys could’ve died there, I guess, and the docs were surprised that they didn’t. But they didn’t complain. Never complained. Not then and not afterwards, either. Not one word did you hear out of those guys, not a peep did they say about Joe. Some people afterwards, I understand, might not’ve known all the facts in the thing, told them they should file complaints there, charge Joey with A and B, maybe even DW there. Which I suppose a pool-cue would be, a dangerous weapon, I mean; if a cigarette is if you use it on purpose to burn another person, I would think if somebody else took a damned pool-cue and rammed it hard right up your ass, rippin’ your guts all apart, that would be A and B, all right, and that pool-cue’d be the dangerous weapon. But nope, they just didn’t look at it that way, not those two DPW guys. They just said: ‘Nope. Wasn’t that way at all.’ Way they told it, it was something they’d asked for, asked for themselves, something they’d decided that they wanted done one night when they’d had too much to drink. And pretty obviously now, after what happened, well, they wished they didn’t. But it was all still totally their own idea.”

  “Remarkable,” Dell’Appa said.

  “Oh, you bet,” Brennan said. “But that’s a big part the reason, anyway. Why what Danny does when he’s in a place, well, it’s always perfectly great. No matter what Danny does. He could whip out his dick and pee on the floor, or shit in the umbrella stand, if they had one. That would be just as all right. Just let Joey know, if Dan ever did something like that—which in fact I don’t think he has, ever; if he did, nobody I talked to ever heard of it, or at least mentioned it to me—and Joey will discipline Dan. But don’t take it out on Danny yourself, because that is what Joey don’t like. And nobody in his right mind wants to do something Joey doesn’t like. So that’s how safe our Danny is. Daniel Mossi is so safe I doubt it’s even ever crossed his mind, how helpless he really is. Or would be if it weren’t for his brother. We all should have brothers like that.”

  “Good Lord,” Dell’Appa said. “And this is the kid the file says is ‘slow,’ ‘slow or slightly retarded’? People can talk him into taking all his clothes off and walking downtown naked, and would if it weren’t for his brother, and this guy is ‘slightly retarded’?”

  Brennan sighed. “Yup,” he said, “the very same. He’s the guy that they mean.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Dell’Appa said, “he can’t have much more than an eighty-I.Q. Just hearing that story, or just looking at him: Either one’d tell you that easy.”

  “He’s not sharp,” Brennan said hopelessly. “There’re some things he can do, but not very many, and if you want him to be able to do one or two of them for a few hours in the morning, a few more in the afternoon, you’d better not expect him to do any more than that. You ask him to do three or four of the things that he can do, you’re gonna confuse him. Screw up his confidence. So then he panics, right? And when he panics then he can’t do anything, any of the things that he actually did learn how to do, in the special classes that he went to. When he gets upset he seems to think that what you want him to do is all of the things he learned to do, only all at once. And he can’t do that.”

  “Have we got any idea, any kind of hard numbers at all, just how retarded he is?” Dell’Appa said.

  Brennan shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I never actually asked anybody, I guess, ’least not that I ever recall now. Never saw any reason to. What’d be the point? Poor kid’s a dummy. What difference would it make, he’s this grade of dummy or that kind? ‘A dummy’s a dummy’s a dummy,’ I say, and if he’s a dummy, that’s it. That’s what he is, and that’s that. How bad off he is doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I know of, ’ll cure man of that, so he won’t be a dummy no more.”

  “Geez,” Dell’Appa said, as the man in black with the attache case reached the apex of the bridge, about even with the front bumper of the Blazer. “You wanna be careful there, Robert, make sure all that milk of human kindness you’ve got washin’ around in your gut there doesn’t curdle and upset your tummy.”

  5

  “Hey, for what it’s worth, I feel sorry for him,” Brennan said. “Naturally I do, like anyone would. But: ‘for what it’s worth,’ and that ain’t a hell of a lot. What good does it do him, or anyone else, if I feel sorry for him? Even if you feel sorry for him. Big-hearted fella like you are, how much good does that do the guy? Not much, if it’s me that you’re askin’. Sure, it must be tough on a person, be simple like that. Know you’re not right and you never will be quite right, no matter how much school you go to. And really tough, too, on the family—his mother and father, I mean. I’m sure glad my own kids were all all right. Go through your whole life, all the rest of your life, after something like that’s happened to you? Wonderin’, maybe, it’s something you did, you or your wife was the reason? Don’t envy the people that that happens to. Must be a terrible thing.

  “But what does that do for anyone here? Me or you feelin’ sorry, for Danny or them, sorry for any of them. His poor mother, Teresa? She died years ago, Eighty-two or so, maybe; eighty-three, might’ve been. I dunno—somewhere in there. People feelin’ sorry for her, she had the idiot son? Didn’t do her much good when she’s still alive, sure won’t do her any good now.

  “And his father, Luigi,” Brennan said, “he’s still alive there, at least. I guess. As far as I know, at least. I didn’t hear yet that he died. But he’s livin’ now, over Don Orione, cross the Tobin Bridge there, and from what I hear, he doesn’t know anyone now. Even people like Joey and Dan, that still go out there to see him. Which they do, give them that, once a week. Credit where credit is due. One’s a dummy and the other one’s a major-league hood, but they’re still his sons, only two kids he ev
er had, and they don’t need anyone tell them: They know what they got to do. Nope, nobody needs to remind them. Every week out they go, year in an’ year out, Dan and Joey drive out to see Pop. Even though Pop stopped tearin’ pages off the calendar some time ago, and can’t tell you who they are, these days. Or who anybody else is, either. His two sons’re just a paira movin’ bodies that now and then come between him anna the sun, in the summer, he’s sitting out on the deck; inna winter the light from the room lamp, they got him inside where it’s warm. So sometimes he’s in their shadows a while, like he was being eclipsed there, but that’s about all their visits mean to him. Danny most likely don’t notice much difference—though maybe he does, I dunno.

  “Poor old Luigi, hard-workin’ guy every day of his life he could still make it down to the shop? All those brutal years he had, mouth’s all fulla nails, he’s hammerin’ heels; day in and day out, he’s half-solin’ shoes, fixin’ handbags, and why does he live this shit life? It’s all he can do, know how to do, to take care of his family and feed them. Including a defective kid, that will stay that way for forever.

  “And now where’s Luigi, after all of that grim shit? He’s in the same exact fix himself as the kid was, and the dummy’s out there most likely believin’, he’s takin’ care of his dad. I dunno. A person didn’t already believe in God, I dunno as I could argue very hard with him he really oughta start, when you see a thing turns out like that.

  “But that’s the way it did turn out, though,” Brennan said. “It did turn out that way. So that leaves the two boys, Short Joey and Dan, able-bodied at least, an’ Joey’s the one that’s in charge. Danny sure couldn’t be. But Joey’s also got some problems of his own, it comes to taking over from his mother and his father, takin’ care his little brother that can’t take care of himself at all. Joe is the oldest, which would mean that even if he wasn’t in the kind of sometimes-noisy work he’s in, the risk’d still be there.

  “Think about it for a minute,” Brennan said. “Suppose if Joe, instead of bein’ what he is, if he was just a farmer, say, kept two pigs inna pen, maybe some chickens for eggs and a big dinner every so often, and a herd of cows out in a pasture. Down in Plympton or someplace. And his idea of a big time was goin’ a Grange meeting, or watchin’ ‘Wheel of Fortune’ or something. Instead of being what he is, ‘Short Joe Mossi outta Boston, guy that never messes up,’ he’s a bog farmer down in Carver, plantin’ cranberries, and every night after his dinner, he’s got to watch TV. Because he’s got this mammoth secret crush on Vanna White, on ‘Wheel-a Fortune’? It wouldn’t make no difference, really. Odds’d still be that he dies before his brother, because Danny’s six years younger’n him. It’s not just in the point-spreads that the numbers are the game—they’re also the game we all play, as a general rule. So that would still be bad enough, if Joey was a farmer, because what difference does it make? The question’s still the same: What does Danny finally do, when Joey’s not around? As he most likely won’t be, some day down the line, when Danny’s still all hale and hearty, a big strong healthy idiot with twenty years to live. I don’t know the answer to that.

  “But now we go and we plug in the other thing, the thing that makes it even worse: Joey’s not a farmer. It’s worse’n if he was. Sure he doesn’t take the chances, he’s famous about that—and that means ‘any chances,’ God forbid the foolish kind. He does not go off half cocked. The thing you always hear about him—an’ this’s from the guys that know, who really oughta know—if someone brings up his name, is that Short Joey gets the call when the job is sensitive, and by that I mean—or I mean they mean, that is—it is really sensitive. That call he always gets. Because he is the man, the man that takes no chances. Unexpected things don’t happen on a Joey job because that’s why it’s Joey’s job: So that kind of thing won’t happen. But still you and I and the lieutenant, and all the other Good Guys who’re after Joey’s ass, who’ve been after it for years, every single one of us knows and so does Joey, too, that no matter how you plan things, how you never take a chance: When you’re doing what he does, you are never really sure. Never absolutely sure.

  “So that’s the second thing with Joey, Joey’s second problem where his brother is concerned. His first one is he’s older, so some day he might not be around while Dummy Dan still is, and his second one … well, his second one is really two more, when you come right down to it. Problem Two and Problem Three. Problem Two is that his work is not the kind of trade where you can ever be completely sure you took no chance at all. You maybe didn’t take any chances that you spotted, and you’ve been at it long enough so when you look something over, you see most things that can go wrong. But that still might leave something that is so completely new that you didn’t recognize it and it slipped right by you there. And the longer that you’ve been at this, or been at anything, the likelier that is. To happen, that is, come along and fuck you up completely. Something new you never noticed, because it was brand-new to you and you did not know what it was.

  “So there’s that,” Brennan said, “and then there’s the second part of Problem Two, which is Problem Three, which is us. All of us. All the people that’re on the other side from you, if you happen to be Joey and you do what a Joey does. We don’t approve of what you do, and when I say that what I mean is that we really disapprove. We dislike what you do, pal, we don’t like it, big-time, and who you do it for, and why he’s paying you to be around in case he needs it done again, like he did before. And what you get for doing it, the money that you make, and all the years you’ve made it? That stuff pisses us off, too. So much so that we’ve reached the point where we’ll take either one of you, or anybody else around that can give us one of you, and then we’ll use the one we get for a game of ferret-legging. And if it turns out you’re the player in that dandy game, when it’s over you will wish that you were never born.

  “Now,” Brennan said, nodding toward the rearview mirror on the leading edge of the driver’s-side door of the Blazer, “if you are that poor bastard, with all that on his mind, and as always you would like to get your first look at anyone who might turn out to be the newest cop on your case, before this newest cop can get his first look at you, what you would do this morning would be the same exact thing you’ve done every other morning since the first time you drove down here and you saw this Blazer here. Because you never know in advance if this one is the morning that the newest cop, the new kid ’S picked out to be the first one that he shows up to watch you on your own block.

  “So, every single day what you would do is, you would take your foot off the gas in your Cadillac car and you would creep up nice and slow behind me sitting here, and you’d take a nice long look into my mirror, to watch me watching you. And you’d take your sweet time doing it, just like you’ve also done, every single day, tying up the traffic and not giving a good shit when civilians get pissed off in the cars behind you, because you never do. Because while you’ve seen me many mornings, you also know how cops behave—after all these years of having cops watch you, you know almost as much about cops, if not more, than the cops who’ve been watching you—and when one knows you burned him, years and years ago, and besides, he’s getting stale, chasing you around—so stale his genius-boss now even agrees—there’ll be a new cop on your case. And you’d like a fast first look at him, before he gets his first at you. Which if he’s in my truck with me—as he’s liable to be, so I can play spotter for him, handing you off like a football—you might be able to sneak that look at him right from my mirror, if the new guy doesn’t duck.”

  “I take it Short Joey approaches,” Dell’Appa said, turning his upper body and reaching for the door handle to unlatch and open it, so as to step out and down onto the retrofitted stainless-steel running board, release the passenger seatback, and enter the rear compartment of the truck to hide behind the curtain.

  “You take it correctly, Kemo Sabe,” Brennan said, grabbing him by the left forearm, “but ‘Kemo Sabe’ this morning means:
‘Shit Head,’ because you are not taking it smart.”

  “I thought the drill was, I got into the back and peeked out through the curtain when he came,” Dell’Appa said.

  “It was and it is,” Brennan said. “But the way you’re s’posed to do it, you’re gonna see if you can do it without gettin’ your big fat ass alla way outta truck so you’re lettin’ Short Joe get such good a look at it there he could measure you for new shorts, custom-made, if he wanted. And then, when you’re sure he’s finished doin’ that, seeing what you look like from the back, then givin’ him a nice close look from a different angle of you: a nice profile, from the front, make sure he gets your best side, while you’re leanin’ back outside the truck, before you get back in. Okay?”

  “You told me,” Dell’Appa began, “you told me back the office—”

  “I know what I told you,” Brennan said. “I told you this guy is good. He’s been at it a long time, and no matter how good you are, or how careful you are to be good, sooner or later he’ll make you, he’ll burn you, and more likely sooner’n later. But I also told you—I remember I did, my Alzheimer’s so far’s in control; not like that poor bastard’s, our good mutual friend’s there, that you never did get to meet—the longer you stay invisible to him, the better off we all are. Now what you gotta do is crawl over the console and get in the back, there, right now. He’s stuck at the light down by the fire-station, some fat crossing-guard broad picked his car first in line to stop all the cars for the brats. So, just shut up and get in there.”