Bomber's Law

by George V. Higgins

  “ ‘So,’ Bomber says, ‘if people’re afraid of him now, I’ve got to think they’re right. I’d look out for him myself, I was in the kind of business where I might piss somebody off who tells Joey what to, and who to do it to.’

  “And that’s sort of the way, I guess,” Brennan had said, “the way I’ve started feeling myself. That now that I’ve been watchin’ this guy so long day and night like I have, and he knows it, knows what I’m doin’ to him and not once’s done something to show that it’s getting to him in the slightest, I feel like I’ve gotten to know him a little, you know? Know what it is, makes him tick.”

  “And as a result,” Dell’Appa had said, “you don’t want to arrest him any more.” He had paused for an instant after he said that, but Brennan had not responded. Dell’Appa had sighed. “That’s not a healthy attitude, Bob,” he had said. “That’s not a good way to think.”

  9

  “Well, if you’d followed him all the way down there,” Gayle said that evening. “What is it, about, from Boston? Thirty-five or forty miles or so?” They were eating beef stew that he had made and frozen two weekends before, dipping pieces of French bread into the broth and washing the food down with red table wine. His general responsibility for cooking on the weekends had been among the changes they had improvised in the course of the western Massachusetts detail, found comfortable and pleasant, and for a while at least saw no reason to change.

  “Something like that,” he said. “Little over, little under, an hour, the time you get out of the city and all.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t see why you’re surprised if he made you right off. You said he’s an experienced criminal.”

  “Oh, he is,” he said. “Not a nice person at all, and he’s been at it a good long time now. Been at it a very long time now, in fact, ’way longer’n Carson had the ‘Tonight Show.’ Heck, if you count when he was breakin’ in, breakin’ legs, ’fore he moved up the ladder to doin’ more permanent work that doesn’t take as long to do—though the jobs can be, almost always are, a lot noisier—he got hired before Jack Paar was let go. And if anybody, any one of us—the good guys, I mean—during all those years could’ve nailed him even once, gotten him for even one of those, ah, projects he’s completed so successfully, he would’ve been doing life by now. Maybe many lifes, on-and-after lifes, no question in the world. He’d have so many lifes even cats’d be impressed. So yeah, I would say he’s experienced all right. Uh-huh. Yes indeed.”

  “The projects being the people that he’s killed on orders from higher up,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He may’ve also made some people very tardy, meaning ‘late,’ sua sponte, as the kay-jay judgie-wudgies like to call it, when they decide that if the court doesn’t get cracking and interfere in the proceedings pretty soon, ‘on its own motion,’ it’s begun to look as though the defendant might actually be convicted.”

  “ ‘Kay-jay,’ ” she said.

  “Bomberspeak for ‘knee-jerk,’ as in ‘knee-jerk-liberal,’ ” he said. “That’s the contraction; full-dress is ‘kay-jay-ell.’ Used to be almost an office password, back when I first went in there. Although now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve heard it once this time, since I got back. Not at all. Either the judges’ve shaped up or institutional memory’s fading away along with the guy who invented it. One of the two.

  “Anyway, Short Joey’s got enough status, seniority, juice, whatever you want to call it—meaning all the people in his regional branch, including the ones at the tippy-top, ’re afraid of him enough, as they’ve got damned good reason to be—that if he wanted to take somebody out who hadn’t violated established policy, disobeyed official orders, ratted, mortified a caporegime or some other pompous bozo—moved the folding-metal funeral-chair and put his own car into the boss’s favorite parking space on Richmond Street in the North End or something—he could do it. On his own authority. Without any more approval than the common courtesy to mention to the boss the afternoon before the evening that he was gonna do it, that that night it would get done. The bosses generally not having been the kind of laid-back, what-the-hell guys who would’ve featured it if someone’d left them standing there with dumb expressions on their faces, looking silly, because none of them knew Rinky the Dink was gonna get dead ’til somebody let it slip later. After Rinky’d started to spoil. But as long as he didn’t embarrass them like that, doing something only an asshole’d do—which he isn’t one—well, everything would’ve been perfectly cool. They would not’ve ordered him not to; it would’ve been all right.

  “So, we think—which means we’re pretty damned sure, as sure as we’ll ever be without a resounding guilty verdict, and a sentence, and him off safely rotting in the pentitentiary for his many wicked deeds—that he’s done eleven guys in the normal course of business. Which would be evidence enough, if we just had some evidence, that he’s been an industrious fellow indeed, proof he’s not a nice person at all. But we also have to keep in mind that he could’ve done somebody who was dumb enough to hurt his retarded brother, or just pissed him off personally, say, and those decedents, too, casualties of any volunteer work he might’ve done, they’d have to be added to his Lifelist, as the birders like to say. And that he would’ve done some other somebodies, too, and did, most likely, I guess, if he ever got provoked. If what Brennan believes is true.”

  “You mean the business with the pool-cues,” she said. He nodded. “But isn’t that also in the files? That’s what you told me last night.”

  “Sure is,” he said, “but Brennan-the-guy-who-told-it-to-me’s also Brennan-the-guy-who-put-it-in-there. In the files. Now there’s no doubt in my mind that when Bob wrote that report, he believed that what he put in it was the solemn-gospel truth. And that, when he recited it to me today, somewhat, ah, what—improved? Yeah, colorized a little, like the old black-and-white movies that TN-TV shows now, all tarted-up, but basically the same story, that he still believes it’s true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it was true or it is true, true when he wrote it down then, or true now, when he tells it—either one of those times. Somebody Mossi works for, maybe Mossi his own self, could’ve made the whole thing up, years and years ago, and then when it was ready, put it out on the street.

  “See, a guy in Mossi’s line of work, it’s to his advantage, have a lot of urban legend floating around out there in the world about him. How mean and cruel and absolutely merciless, how cold and relentless he truly is, when he goes out on a job. The more cheap hoods who get convinced, just by the gaudy patter, that anyone who happens to piss off a boss that Joey works for is as good as dead. The boss who can call up Joey if somebody hurts his feelings, forgets he’s a man of Respect; or, God forbid, the guy who’s stupid enough to piss off Pal Joey himself, well, anyone who does that should just go from wherever he is when he does it right on down to his nearest funeral parlor and ask for Salvatore. ‘Sal knows about these things. Sal’s the man to see.’ Pick out the box he likes best, to be laid out in. Sit down with Sal to work out how many nights he’ll be waked and all the other petty details. Whether there’s room left in the family plot or he should tell the wife, if he ever sees her again, to go down to the cemetery, buy another lot. And whether he wants that lovely young girl, Donna Ventre, that junior cheerleader with the gorgeous hogans on her from the parish high school, to sing ‘Ave Maria,’ which’ll be an additional fifty bucks on the tab, he does—no more’n twenty of it’ll actually wind up in Donna’s wallet, but that’s probably just as well; she’ll only spend it on cigarettes anyway, and ruin that lovely voice. Or if it’ll be okay with the family, he thinks they’ll be satisfied, if the song’s just played on the organ at the Mass. Which is included in the hundred-twenty-five that you got to pay anyway, for the church.

  “The more guys that think that way, the more wise-guys there are who’re far too smart to ever fall for those stories about albino alligators in the city sewer systems, because they themselves, personally, ’v
e never seen one, but’re smart enough to believe a really scary story about Joe Mossi, because they have seen him, quite naturally the fewer guys there’ll likely turn out to be who annoy the boss on purpose, bother Danny Mossi, or otherwise call Short Joe’s attention to themselves.”

  “The age of public relations,” she said. “We’ve all got to hustle, I guess. Even the murderers advertise. Do they have a rating code, maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “If they don’t, they should. Three little revolvers next to the guy’s listing, right? That’d mean he’s the best in the business. Very expensive. No credit cards. Closed Sundays, all major holidays, except on emergency basis. No checks, credit cards: strictly cash, half in advance, unless you’re a regular customer; balance payable in full on delivery. Extremely inconvenient terms for delinquent accounts. You get casual with this gentleman, he won’t stop at just ruining your good credit standing and canceling all of your accounts; what he’ll do is cancel you.”

  “Is he?” she said. “The best in the business, I mean?”

  “If he isn’t,” he said, “you’re not gonna catch me or Brian—or Bomber or Bob, as far as that goes—admitting it any time soon. For a good many years now he’s managed to avoid every trap we’ve set up to catch him. So either he’s pretty damned good or we’re pretty damned stupid, and that more or less determines our opinion. Publicly we think he’s Bre’r Fox.”

  “Well then,” Gayle said, “if you have to say he’s that smart then you have to admit he must be pretty good by now at such things as noticing when someone’s following him. He could’ve just been watching in the mirror today for Bob Brennan, when by luck he spotted you. Wondering what’d happened to Bob, since he’s been so used to having him around all the time. Like a guardian angel or something. Of course without knowing how many other cars happened to be on the road, besides the two of you, once you’d left Twenty-four, I don’t really know … And then, when he didn’t see the Blazer, but he did see whatever you were driving, however distinctive that might have been, taking exactly the same turns and everything …”

  “I had that new Lexus coupe the narcos nabbed from that contractor up in Newburyport,” he said. “It’s either very distinctive, because you know what it is, what it can do and how much it costs, or else you don’t know what it is or any of those other intimidating details, and you don’t give a shit either, so to you it’s not distinctive at all. To you it looks exactly the same’s every other one of those hippy new coupes designed in a wind-tunnel: like a slope-nosed, fast-moving, four-wheeled, Fabergé egg.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know you had that. How’d you like it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a nice car,” he said. “Course how much I like it’s really not much more’n an academic question, considering that buying one of those units for our very own wouldn’t leave us much more’n pushcart-lunch money out of forty grand. Which the last time I looked was approximately twenty-five grand more’n we should even think about spending on road-going trinkets.”

  “That much,” she said.

  “Times’ve changed,” he said. “The best things in life now cost plenty.” He paused, then said slyly: “Unless you’d want to consider, say, setting our little boy free, and then investing what we’re spending on his incarceration on some root-tee-toot hot wheels.”

  Without shifting her gaze she smiled a very small smile and said: “Which you, of course, much rather would.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Car or no car, I still would.”

  She shook her head twice, very slightly, hardly moving it at all. “We’ve been through all this a hundred times, Harry,” she said, her voice soft and caressing. “You agreed to it when we were first deciding whether to get married. The Abbey’s a fourth-generation tradition for boys in my family. We all feel very strongly about it.”

  “I know,” he said, “but it isn’t in mine. I agreed to it, yeah, but before I knew, really knew what I’d signed the kid up for. He was always at home when I got home at night. Even last year, while I was out west there, yeah, he was asleep, by the time I got home. But still, it was better’n this. I could look in his room and see him, at least say ‘Good night’ to the kid. Now I’m back home again, every night, and I don’t even have that much—at least it was better’n this.” He hesitated. “I wasn’t ready for this, that’s all, Gayle. I just wasn’t ready for how it would be, when we really drove up there, and left him and came back without him. I know your father and your brothers all went there …”

  “And all of my nephews, too,” she said. “Don’t leave them out of this either. All five of the nephews were Abbey.”

  “I know,” he said, “and I don’t deny they’re all good men now. Maybe if some of Roy’s cousins were still there, if maybe he had them around, to sort of back him up, you know? Maybe then I wouldn’t feel this way. But seven years old? Jesus Gayle, when the kid’s just turned seven? He’s barely seven years old? I dunno, I just think it’s too soon, now. Now, now maybe I know what I didn’t know then, back before we got married: Seven years old is too early. Seven is just too damned too young. To be sent to New Hampshire alone.”

  She sighed. “We’re not going to reopen this, Harry,” she said. “I don’t want to go through it again.”

  “Life sucks, and then you die,” he said.

  “And when you get up in the night,” she said, “it’s always three in the morning, and somebody’s left the seat up.”

  Route 106 westbound met 138 southbound at a four-cornered intersection occupied at each angle by a one-story retail establishment designed and constructed in confident reliance on two invariable characteristics of persons traveling by motor vehicle. The first is that such persons welcome if they do not in fact absolutely require at every such four-way intersection a choice of familiar products—gasoline and engine-oil; nationally-advertised fast foods; the usual packaged products available in franchised convenience stores—the vast majority of said products either to be pumped or poured into their motor vehicles, or to be ingested, chewed if necessary, and swallowed into their bodies. And that such persons will therefore appreciatively interrupt their journeys to purchase the products at a profit to the thoughtful businessman. The second principle is that without exception the end products of all liquids or solids sold to and consumed by travelers consist solely and entirely of virtually-invisible gases and vapors just as odorlessly insubstantial as those of the gasoline burned in the engines.

  Mossi, ignoring both principles, caught the traffic-light changing to green in his favor and turned the old gray Cadillac left onto 138 southbound without hesitating at the corner. “Fine, fine, excellent,” Dell’Appa said. “Our man’s kidney and bladder functions are in good working order, apparently unimpaired by prostate enlargement so unfortunately common among men of his age. No indications of frequent need or urge to urinate, so no need to stop and beg some pimpled kid for access to a private toilet. Shows you what clean living’ll do for a chap.” He followed the Cadillac through the turn, allowing a woman approaching eastbound on 106 in a blue Dodge 600 convertible to turn right and precede him behind Mossi’s Cadillac southbound on 138.

  The asphalt parking lot between the westerly edge of the road and the white buildings looming over the Coldstream dogtrack was broad and deep enough to accommodate around 2,500 cars. Since it contained no more than 300 shortly after 11:00 A.M., when Mossi entered it from 138, to Dell’Appa, continuing southbound on 138, it looked enormous, as though started there by someone who’d intended to pave the entire town, maybe the whole county, and had made an impressive beginning, too, until he’d either lost interest in the enterprise or run out of asphalt and quit. Mossi disregarded the painted lines marking off lanes and spaces and took a diagonal approach to the two-story clubhouse west-southwest of the roadway, the old Cadillac hurrying by itself across the man-made desert to the parked cars huddled near the clubhouse like some mechanical buffalo galloping to rejoin a familiar metallic herd. Dell’Appa,
slowing down, drove about half a mile south of the last entrance into the lot before easing the Lexus over onto the shoulder, allowing the cars behind him to pass so that he could make a U-turn and return alone to Coldstream.

  “Well, okay,” he said to Gayle, finishing his stew, “no harm in trying, I guess. The thing of it is, with Mossi, I mean: I’d already given him time. He’s an experienced evildoer, sure, but even though I was born yesterday, it was early. Getting there two hours before post-time for the first race, he wouldn’t’ve had any trouble parking up close to the main gate, and the amount of time I’d given him before I came back and drove in was more’n enough to’ve let him get out of the car, lock it up and then go all the way inside.”

  “And therefore, just for that reason,” she said, “wouldn’t’ve that been just what he wouldn’t’ve done? Done all of those things and just gone right in, precisely because he would’ve been smart enough to know that was just what you’d be expecting him to do? Would be depending on him to do? And so he didn’t? Instead he waited, just inside the door, or whatever they’ve got there, where you couldn’t see him when you drove up, but he could watch you, doing it.”

  “Well obviously,” he had said, “obviously that has to’ve been exactly what he did do. Because the only thing he actually knew—not even knew, really; ‘suspected’ would’ve been the closest he could’ve come to ‘knowing,’ really being sure, up until then—when he saw the Lexus come into that North Dakota of a parking lot there, was that maybe the person in the Lexus was sitting in on his tail for Bob Brennan today, and that was why he’d seen the coupe but he hadn’t seen the Blazer in his rearview since Marie’s.”

  “But when he did see that,” she said, “saw the Lexus pulling in …”

  “Oh, sure,” he said, “no question. Those cars aren’t that common. Oh, it would’ve been possible, sure, course it would’ve, for somebody else, just by coincidence, to’ve driven a maroon SC Three Hundred up from Providence, coming from the opposite direction he and I’d both just come from, pull into the track not ten minutes after he did and the other forty-thousand-dollar maroon sled’d gone by, toward Providence. Possible sure, but not bloody likely. No, once he’d caught me being cute, so he wouldn’t catch me, well then, he’d caught me, hadn’t he? And any doubt he might’ve had about whether I was Brennan for at least today—remember that silly show Dave Maynard used to have on Channel Four, and then Five, on Sunday mornings? The one where fat little girls who couldn’t twirl batons came out in pink majorette costumes with stiff little skirts that stuck out all around them, like their own personal toadstools, the white shako hats and white boots, and they proved it?”