Bomber's Law

by George V. Higgins

  “Harry, Harry,” Dennison said, “didn’t it seem kinda funny to you, when Brennan or whoever it was first started tellin’ you about what a car-thief Buddy was, and everybody knew it, that we hadn’t been able to catch him? Considerin’ how smart you know we are, and what public heroes this would’ve made all of us, if we’d collared one of those kingpins whose larcenous trade’s driven everybody’s car-insurance bills right out of sight? If everybody knew Buddy’s doin’ this, all these years, and if the Governor and the Secretary, both of those fine gentlemen along with the AG, too, would’ve had a simultaneous orgasm—‘The earth moved for me, dears; was it good for you dears, too?’—to hold a news conference the day we hauled him in in irons, why the hell weren’t we smart enough to postpone catchin’ one more boring drug-smuggler, which’ll make us one small headline on page forty-six for one day when we pull it off, and put a full-court press on Buddy, ’til we had him in the can? Had his head on a pike. They would’ve given us a day in our honor, had a parade down Com Ave. for us, if we’d’ve done that for them. So why didn’t we, then?

  “For the obvious reason,” Dennison said, “and that’s another rule I learn from Bomber: If you can’t catch a guy doin’ what you know he’s doin’, and you’re satisfied you haven’t lost your grip, then maybe it’s because you’re wrong; he isn’t doin’, mainly, what you think he’s doin’, only now and then.

  “Mainly he is doin’ somethin’ else, which you don’t catch him doin’ ’Cause you never look for that. It’s like the guy who went out through the factory gates every Friday night for thirty years, pushing a wheelbarrow fulla straw. And every Friday night the same guard pawed through the straw and never once found a damned thing. So the guy finally gets to retirement age, and his last Friday night on the job the guard at the gate says to him: ‘Aw right. Tonight I’m not even gonna search the barrow. Just tell me: I know you’ve been stealing something all these years, what the hell were you takin’?’ And the fella says: ‘Simple. Wheelbarrows.”

  “Well, that’s what Buddy’s been doin’. Buddy does take stolen cars, and he does cut them up. And he does sell the parts, and that’s all illegal, right. But the point is that Santa Claus, that lazy bastard, works about half as many days a year doing what he does as Buddy works at dissecting hot cars, see? Buddy’s a chopper, yes indeed he is, just like the guy you knew in high school was the biggest swordsman. He’s done it, yeah, but not often; just something he learned how to do a long time ago, he’s a kid—now more like something he can do if he likes when things’re slow—to fill up time. All the rest’s talk: what he wants people thinking, not what he’s got going down.

  “All those parts,” Dennison said, “almost all the parts he had—and he had a lot of them, a real big inventory; always had plenty on hand—were perfectly legit, as more’n a couple of our guys found out when they busted in on him three times, Buddy splittin’ his pants, he was laughing so hard, makin’ idiots out of the cops. It’s selling hot parts that’s your felony, Jack. Second-hand parts, salvage and scrap? Why, child, those’re perfectly legal.

  “That was why we couldn’t catch him doing it, doing what the whole town knew that he’d been doing all along: he wasn’t doing it. Buddy’d made it all up, by himself, what he is and what he’s been doin’.”

  “Yeah,” Dell’Appa said, “but why would a guy do that then?”

  “To camouflage the sewer-business that he’s really doing,” Dennison said. “Buddy’s a regional distribution manager here in a child-pornography ring. Stuff gets made outta state, mostly out of the country. Europe, the Orient, someplace—Central America maybe. Not that the same product isn’t made here, right here in this great republic, but the feds’re real tough on the scumbags they catch, so the high-grade filth is imported. Then it gets shipped in to Buddy and people like Buddy, and they store it here, for reshipment. Buddy reships in trucks full of crushed junkers, crates of parts leaving his place. The reason we never found what we were lookin’ for, hot parts, was because hot parts weren’t there. And we never found what really was there, because we never looked for it.”

  “Brennan, then,” Dell’Appa said slowly, “Brennan then doesn’t know this. Because if he did, he would’ve told me.”

  “And that’s why I’m damned glad he didn’t,” Dennison said. “For one thing, he’s got no reason to know it, and …”

  “And what’s the other thing?” Dell’Appa said.

  “You got me thinking, the other day there,” Dennison said, “when you were doin’ all that pissing and moaning about how Bob’s files on Joe Mossi don’t measure up, and how come. I didn’t agree with you at the time, but when you said you couldn’t understand how a man with his background could screw up a case so completely without doing it on purpose, having that in mind, it sort of stuck in my mind. At first it was ‘Nah, Bob wouldn’t do that. Bob wouldn’t go inna the tank.’ But then I’m driving home that night and it’s still naggin’ at me, little different perspective, that maybe you could be right. ’Cause, no question my mind I believe you, all right? What you’re telling me’s in Bob’s files. I believe you that somethin’ is wrong. But what?

  “ ‘It couldn’t’ve happened by accident,’ I think. ‘If he did it he did it on purpose. But what the hell could that purpose be? What’d make him do that, for Christ sake?’ I think: ‘Why would Bob Brennan leave out stuff from reports when someone like Mossi’s involved? If he’s not afraid,’ and I don’t think that Bob’s that, ‘and he isn’t corrupt,’—I’d be very surprised if he was, much pride as he takes in this job—‘then what on earth would’ve been enough, make the guy say scrotum diem, just flat-out bag the job like this?’ ”

  “You come up with any answers?” Dell’Appa said.

  “Hell no,” Dennison said. “It’s your job to come up with the answers, once you’ve raised the questions for me. And don’t think I don’t appreciate it, either, you alerting me like you did there, just because in a few short days or so I start pushing harder on you for them here.”

  “Oh, great,” Dell’Appa said. “First you give me an assignment that develops bad personal habits—I was never a gamblin’ man and I sure can’t afford to become one, and now you’re expecting results? I may have to start filing grievances here, keep putting in new rules like this.”

  Dennison laughed. “How much of a beating’d you take?” he said. “I knew a guy once that followed the dogs, followed them faithfully, done it for years, and he claimed he didn’t even like it. Never had liked it, in fact. He said the only reason that he did it was that there was a dog-race within driving distance, where he lived, every day, every night of the year. He wasn’t married, never had been, so: no kids. No relatives left, he lived alone; didn’t like watching sports on the weekends and he didn’t like staying home nights. So that’s why he followed the dogs. ‘I maybe drop eight bucks, I maybe win ten. I can afford it, and either way, right? Gives me something to do, I’m bettin’ the dogs, besides sit by myself drinking beer. I said: ‘You drink beer at the track, don’t you, though?’ He said: ‘Sure, but that’s not alone. I’m not alone when I’m there.’ I always figured he was probably just scared of sex, with women, with men, either one. Or maybe not scared exactly; maybe just not interested. I mean, I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t think a man’s chances getting laid’d be that great at a dog-track.”

  “Jeez, I dunno about that,” Dell’Appa said. “The kid who brought me my lunch yesterday looked to me like she’d be good for it, and it wouldn’t’ve taken much either. And then there was this broad, I’d say forty-five or six, took the seat right next to me after Mossi left; she was very friendly. Very anxious to make sure a newcomer to the place—well, at least someone she hadn’t noticed around there before, and I got the distinct impression there aren’t very many she doesn’t notice, on arrival—felt right at home right off. ‘Hiya, handsome,’ she says to me, nice black-hair dye-job, not too much eye-stuff on, got a butt hangin’ out of her mouth, ‘didn’t see you around
here before. Anyone usin’ this seat?’ ”

  “Ah, yes,” Dennison said. “ ‘Well hel-lo, sailor-boy, feel like havin’ some fun? Like buyin’ a drink for a lady?’ ”

  “No, not like that,” Dell’Appa said. “Sister Mary Fred: no, she wasn’t that, but she wasn’t a working-girl either. More in the nature of looking for company: not really shopping, just browsing. But there’s no law I ever heard of that says when you’re just looking you have to rule out more’n that, and there’s no harm in choosing new company with that possibility in mind.

  “My, my,” Dennison said, “still drivin’ all the ladies nuts, are you, Harry? Girls just won’t leave you alone? Must be all you can do, keep your ego under control.” He paused. “But you’d better though, hadn’t you, pal? Don’t want Gayle making any more calls now, do we? ‘Where does Harry go nights to get supper?’ ‘Gee, Gayle, we assumed he went home.’ ”

  “Brian,” Dell’Appa said, “don’t start lettin’ your imagination run wild with you again, all right? Everything’s kosher with Gayle nowadays, no suspicions breaking loose now out of hand. The waitress’s a teenager, twenty at the most. Sure, a good-looking-enough kid, but no blushing-violet stuff; this one’s tougher’n a loanshark with a pocket calculator, just waiting to find out how far she can get in this world, on her back with all her clothes off, except maybe a garter-belt, something. Right now, according to Mossi, she’s markin’ time, floor-showin’ the merchandise much as she can, memorizin’ her lines for when she’s the star of her own little la vie en rose. Time being what she’s doin’s walkin’ on the wild side with her sister’s husband, two-bit hood from someplace down in Rhode Island, Pawtucket’d be my hunch, gettin’ her thrills’n chills that way, meetin’ and greetin’ the players.

  “She’ll get a better offer pretty soon, doin’ that, and three or four years from now, she’s moved up in grade a few times, been the girlfriend a few different guys, nothin’ too serious, nice and relaxed, some of the older ones, you know? Guys with a dollar to spend and the yachts, all of that stuff like that there—‘Hey, take it easy, relax’—doing what’ll amount to some discreet high-grade hookin’? This is a comfortable life. She’ll be on retainer through all this, of course, no dime-a-dance stuff, so no one’ll say that it’s hookin’; boss don’t like it if you call his girl a whore. And somewhere along the way, ’Cause she’s a thoughtful girl and this kind of work is seasonal, doesn’t last at all, she’ll latch onto a protegé, some boss’s protegé, strike up a friendship with him. So when the boss’s through with her, ready for a newer model, the kid’ll be able, make brownie points with him, takin’ her off the man’s hands. The boss’ll think he thought it up.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dennison said, “well, a short career, perhaps, not very appealing to anyone outside of the life, but a merry one, still, I suppose.”

  “You think she’ll actually mind?” Dell’Appa said. “I knew a woman, sophomore year of college, we happened to draw the same English class. And she reminded me some, well, this kid yesterday reminded me of her a little, ’S what it actually was. And we got to know each other, this’s long before I met Gayle, and finally it got to the point where looked to me like it’d become a question of what the hell we were going to do next. Because she was really a good-looking girl, and I was getting involved with her. So, the way I looked at it was: Were we either going to break up, or were we going move in together and see what we had. So I told her that, and she said, well, she guessed that meant we were going to break up, because even though she really liked me a lot and all, and there was no question that the sex’d been, well, certainly acceptable—the physical attraction was unquestionably there—she had other things to think about too. She was from almost the same kind of family background as mine—she didn’t actually use the term, most likely just didn’t occur to her, but she would’ve if she’d thought of it: wage slave—and while she certainly wouldn’t say there was anything wrong with that kind of life, wrong with going to work every day and earning a salary, even a pretty good one, like my father’d always made, because you had to if you had an eating habit, that wasn’t what she had in mind as a way she intended to spend her life. So she was keeping herself unattached—which for her meant frequent sleep-overs, yes, but no long-term shacking-up—as she went along, until she either found what she wanted ‘or I turn thirty,’ she told me. ‘After which if I haven’t found the kind of man I’ve got in mind, I’ll have to start lowering my requirements.’ ”

  “Christ,” Dennison said, “she say she hoped you’d reapply if you were still interested and nothing’d turned up that met her requirements by then?”

  Dell’Appa laughed. “Well, she wasn’t quite that cold-blooded. Almost, but not quite. She just took a very practical point of view about her body and everything else she had to offer. ‘My ass is my principal asset. That’s what I’ve got to trade. If I’m going to get anywhere impressive in this life, I’ve got to peddle it very carefully, real conservatively, and that means only to somebody that I really do like a lot—I insist on that; I’d never screw a man I didn’t really like, as I happen to, you—and who also has a lot of money. Which you happen not to.’ It was all very calm and dispassionate and all, and I had no trouble at all understanding what she meant.

  “And that’s what this kid yesterday reminded me of,” he said. “When her career as a bimbo draws to a close down the line, I’ll bet, she really won’t mind at all. She’ll actually feel quite relieved. She’s like most of those broads, when she gets to that age she’ll figure she’s got enough jewelry anyway, plus all the fur coats she needs, and if not being greedy means she won’t have to suck cock anymore, as she’s already decided a long time ago to stop doing as soon as she could, the instant she got the option, well, that is a deal she can live with. Which her new husband won’t know just yet that her personal plans will include, of course, but hey, tough titty, huh? Life’s full of unpleasant surprises—ambitious young hoods get them too.

  “So the marriage’ll get off on the wrong, ah, foot, and it most likely won’t ever recover. Okay, so it won’t last—so what? Lots of marriages don’t, and besides, it’s beyond her control. Her choices’re limited. It’s not like she’s got a choice here between the gunsel and some tinhorn saint that just left the priesthood, you know; for all practical purposes the only kind of guy that she can hope to marry is one that knows already not only knows all about the other hoods she fucked and sucked, but knows all the hoods personally and for years’s been getting, what, a blow-by-blow bedside account, I guess it’d be, of her whole career. But that’s okay, probably, because he’s got to be caught just like she is. Can’t let it bother him, that he’s known all along what her job, ah, entailed, any more’n she could let it bother her while she was doin’ it; what he is’s the cock-equipped gender model of her, the muscular part of the same overall system that gave her a living for pussy.

  “So she’ll give it a shot, get married the first time, the big wedding and all, boss’ll pay for the Cancun honeymoon, and six months later she and her hubby won’t be speakin’; he won’t be comin’ home nights. Two or three years later either they’ll be permanently separated, or maybe even divorced, and she’ll be livin’ on the alimony while she pokes the tennis pro and tells anyone who asks that she’s still in love with what’s-his-name, the wise guy she married back there that she can’t even remember what he looks like anymore. And ten or twelve years down the line, still lookin’ very good, very sharp, she’ll maybe get married again, but this time to some rich divorced guy about fifteen years older she met and screwed on a whim—out at the country club one night. ‘What the hell, huh? Who knows what’ll happen? Older gent like this, nice and refined, ain’t like he’d hit you or something—and if he tried it, you’d deck him. So the worst thing’d be, you got a bad lay. Well, hey, so what, huh? That’s all right: you’d’ve still gotten laid, and gettin’ laid’s never all bad, you got any talent at all.’

  “Cripes, even Mossi warned me about h
er. Although not for my sake: for hers. She’s in the training stage now, being groomed for the rest of her life. She doesn’t realize it all yet, like Joe Mossi does, so she doesn’t understand she maybe shouldn’t have a fling with a cop, that that could hurt. Be like losing her virginity before the Hollywood producer ever saw her. Could ruin her entire career. That was what he had in mind.”

  “The den mother, then,” Dennison said, “the dame with the black hair and butts.”

  “Huh,” Dell’Appa said, “now there I could get into some trouble, without even noticing at first. I got to talking with that woman, neither one of us knows what the other one’s last name is and still wouldn’t be sure if we’d introduced ourselves with them, and within fifteen minutes we were yakkin’ away like we’d known each other for years.”

  “Yeah, those’re the dangerous ones, all right,” Dennison said. “It’s the same with everyone, too. Men and women, makes no difference, either one. Once you reach a certain age it isn’t how much skin’s exposed or how flat the tummies are so much as it’s hittin’ it off like that, you know? Hittin’ it off leads to gettin’ it off. Most people, heck, the mystery went away some years ago, and no matter how much bragging somebody’s doing, I doubt there’s many middle-aged couples that’d really want to spend the day getting laid eight or nine times, even if the men could still do that many shows in a row.”

  “Or ever could, for that matter,” Dell’Appa said.

  “It’s never nice to dispute the accuracy of an older man’s memories,” Dennison said. He paused. “Especially,” he said, “when the reason that you met a lady for the first time might be because an older gentleman’s memory suggested to him that you might enjoy it. As you obviously did.”

  “Like who, ‘older gentleman’?” Dell’Appa said. “The hell’re you talkin’ about, Brian? Some guy tryin’ to set me up?”