Bomber's Law

by George V. Higgins

  He took a deep breath. “So, that’s what I am telling you, you see what I’m saying? I didn’t think you’d do it to me, when you got the job. I saw the possibility, sure, I saw it there, that you’d get rid of me, but somehow I thought: ‘Brian? Nah, Brian’s bigger’n that. He wouldn’t do that to me. He would not do that to anybody, Brian and me maybe don’t always get along, okay, but Brian wouldn’t do a thing like that. Brian is a man.’

  “Well, was I ever fuckin’-wrong on that one. There is one I booted, if you want to add those up, and you won’t need all your fingers, my mistakes in all these years; I booted that one good, kicked it clear to Mars, when I predicted what you would and wouldn’t do, because of what I thought you were, kind of man you were. You’re doin’ it in spades. Well, Jesus, okay, then I’m fucked then. Go ahead and do what you wanna do, willya? Heave me in the fuckin’ street, if that’s what you’re gonna do: ‘Many thanks, all your hard work. Now please go and fuck yourself.’ I can’t stop you and I know it, and you know I know it. I can’t even make it hard for you—you’re the man who’s got the power. You’ve got the power now. But for Christ sake, get it over with. Take the money and go home. You won. You had the cards.”

  Dennison sighed. He looked at Dell’Appa. “I don’t seem to be getting through, Harry,” he said. “You wanna give it a try?”

  “No,” Dell’Appa said.

  “Look,” Dennison said, “try to think of that suggestion as a direct order, a command delivered by a superior officer. Does that help you to gain a better perspective on it?”

  Dell’Appa nodded and exhaled. “I hadn’t looked at it from that angle, sir,” he said. “Yes, sir, I will give it a shot.” He shifted in his chair so that he faced Brennan. “I know you know ’em, Bob, your rights, so I’m not gonna Miranda you here unless you make me do it. I’ve got a form you can sign that’ll do it, take care of it, and that’ll spare both of us the humiliation of me telling you that you’ve got this right, and that right, and then some more rights, after those rights, and you know something? I would appreciate it. I know you don’t like me, and you know I don’t like you, so there is one thing we agree on, and considering the big bagga shit we’re both in here, that we’ve got ourselves in, that’s really not such a bad start. In fact, it’s damned miracle. So whaddaya say, sign the form?”

  Brennan stared at him the way a middle-aged man contemplates the young gum-chewing technician named Tricia who is about to tell him how to arrange himself for the trip through the CAT-Scanner cylinder. “You know,” he said, softly in a sorrowfully-reflective tone of voice, “when you first come in here, kid, I thought that you had some promise. A whole lotta promise in fact. Like I always did with alla the young guys, most of the young guys come in. ‘Hey, so he’s young, can’t hold that against him. You also were young once yourself. He maybe knows something, you didn’t notice, didn’t happen to catch your attention, you could end up, you learn somethin’ from him, somethin’ that you didn’t know.’

  “And that’s the attitude I always took, well, attitude that I triedah take, anyway, with alla the new kids come in, all of the time I was here, ever since I first come in. But Jesus H. Christ, you made it impossible. I couldn’t do that with you. You were all over the whole fuckin’ lot here, into this, into that, and then it would be somethin’ else. I couldn’t keep up with you there. I say to myself: ‘Jesus H. Christ, who is this fuckin’ kid? How’d we ever get by without him? And what makes him think that we didn’t, we never got anything done, until he comes through the door and saves us?

  “Because Jesus Christ, that is how you were, then. That’s how you acted back then, and that wasn’t that long ago, either. So, that was the sequence, at least for me, at least as far as I’m concerned, how the two of us there got wrong-footed. You first come in, you’re like everyone else; you’re someone I don’t even know. What I hope is I’m gonna at least like you some, that we will at least get along. Because, after all, I don’t wanna get married, you—I’m married to Margaret already, and one Margaret’s enough for me. I don’t hire and fire here, can’t get rid of you; I’m just one of the regulars, field-hands, myself. I got no power at all. I do what I do, and I go home at night, and then the next day, I come in again. Do some more of my usual stuff, kind of stuff I spent yesterday doin’. Because that is the job that I have. I think that’s the job too, that you also have, and that you can’t get me thrown out of. Well, of course we know that on that one at least, I make a small miscalculation.

  “Well, hey, that’s how you make reputations. Pontius Pilate may not’ve been that bad a procurator, we don’t know, got no way of knowing, this late date, he got assigned to Judea. But, boy, look what happened when he got his big case, when old Pontius got his biggest case: fucked it up, major-league, big-time. Said: ‘Okay, my finding is: Rome’s got no beef with him. That means that I turn him loose here. But, all of you Jews there, you want him, you got him. Take Jesus and get the fuck out of here, all right? I’m sickah wastin’ my time with this shit, all these petty damned argments you got. Now get him the fuck out of here.’ And that’s the end of old Pontius there, far as the history books go. That guy is finished, kaput and road-kill, kiss his sorry ass good-bye one last time.

  “But anyway, chances are, when you first come in here, I’m gonna work with you here. I’m not gonna have any choice, if somebody’s brought you in, right? And, life is easier, I always believe, if all of the people who work in one place can get along with each other, you know? If they can just get along.

  “Well,” Brennan said, “you know, it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter at all. A lot of things don’t, like that, matter, you find out as you go along. That they didn’t matter at all. You got into that business with that little girl there, what’s her name, Linda, and she was what, nineteen, eighteen or so, nineteen? Too young for you, anyway, ‘way too young for a guy your age, and a married guy, too, don’t leave that out. Which anyway I thought was a terrible thing, and you knew because I told you that. I had the balls, told you right to your face, that you’re not bein’ fair to anyone here, anyone who’s involved in it. Your own nice young wife, a good woman who loves you, or your kid, and quite obvious, no matter what she said, not fair to Linda, not fair to the rest of us, work in this office, can’t help seein’ what’s goin’ on here, right under our very own noses. Women and men both’re talkin’; not like they’re all blind there, you know, they can see—so what do you think that was doin’, what effect that had on morale? And for that reason, all by itself, not even fair to yourself.

  “Here you are, a young guy, with a whole lotta promise, and you’re gettin’ a real bad reputation. You don’t know what you’re doin’, yourself. ‘Yeah, I know, I know he’s smart, even bother tellin’ me how bright he is. Or he works hard, I know that, too, or he dresses neat, or even that he’s been around. I don’t care how much talent, guy brings to the job; I don’t want him doin’ it here. Comin’ in and disruptin’ my whole operation, chasin’ every tight skirt in the place. Next thing you know, I bring him in here, I’ll have ’em all suin’ me. For harassment, just for havin’ the bastard around. And you think I want that kindah shit? He’ll have me so I’m spendin’ all of my time with lawyers who’re defendin’ me, ’stead of on what I ought to be doin’ with lawyers: puttin’ more bad guys in jail. So, no, nothin’ doin’. I don’t want him in here, a damn cocksman on my watch, just can’t have that happenin’ here.’

  “So, yeah, sure, I know, I took it upon myself, which you know there was nothin’, obliged me, it’s not like I hadda do it, I just felt like I hadda, is all. Because this business just hadda stop. It couldn’t keep on goin’ on like it was like that, just couldn’t keep goin’ on. So then, and then what did I do? What I did was I warned you myself there, and this was early, you shouldn’t be doin’ what you were. Because it wasn’t right, and you’re gonna get hurt, a lotta nice people’re gonna. And so what do you do, I do that? You do what young guys like you are always’re doin
’: first you denied it, you lied all about it, what the whole fuckin’ world knows you’re doin’, and when I said ‘Bullshit,’ which was just what it was, bullshit was all that it was, you told me to go mind my own fuckin’ business and keep my fuckin’ nose outta yours.

  “And just the kinda thing that I figured would happen, and told you would happen, well, that was exactly what happened, exactly what I said would happen: you got broomed outta here until Linda got transferred, into the AG’s office there, which Linda did not want to be transferred to, transferred to that job over there, so she quit—way you acted there, what you did then, well, it all ended up, it ended up makin’ her quit, and so now she is out of a job. Unemployed. And also, I hear, pretty mad at you these days, because she now thinks the same thing I did, I told you: what happened was all of your fault, guy your age fooling round with her then, when she was still just a kid, before she could even buy a legal beer. She wouldn’t rub your dick now, if she ran into you, not if what I hear’s true; she would kick you right in the balls.

  “And, I dunno how your wife feels about you, after what you did to her there, but without even knowin’ I would still bet, Gayle hasn’t been able, forget. And she never will be, able to, either; much as I’m sure that she would like to, she’ll never be able to do it. She won’t be able to ever forget, how you embarrassed her with that thing. With that shitty thing that you did. And I also know, I don’t care what you say, you can say anything that you want, but I know that that is the actual reason that you’re doing this to me, now, the reason why you engineered it, and why it’s all happening now.

  “And that is why you got Brian involved: it’s all purely because, you’ve hated my guts, ever since you got caught and detached there. You blame me for all of what happened to you, tellin’ yourself it’s all my fault. I think you maybe got yourself now so you’re even believin’ it, too, you even believe I did all that; I was somehow responsible for it. Well, go ahead, pal, that’s what you wanna do, it doesn’t matter to me. All that does is show how much of a true asshole you really fuckin’ are—can make yourself believe shit like that.”

  “Well, whaddaya think, Brian?” Dell’Appa said. “My reading of that is that Bob doesn’t think he needs to be advised of his rights because he thinks he’s just gonna bullshit and brazen his way through all of this, until he comes out whole on the other side, maybe a little rumpled and disheveled, but still with his pension rights and his reputation intact, maybe even a recommendation. So I’d better give him his rights anyway, because if he’s gotten that far out of touch from this planet he’s not competent right now to decide to waive his rights and therefore needs a firm reminder.”

  “Ahh, fuck you,” Brennan said. “Fuck the whole bunch of you two guys here. Gimme the damned form and I’ll sign it.” He scrawled his signature largely through, over and around the block provided and scaled it back onto Dennison’s desk.

  Dennison nodded at Dell’Appa. “Okay, Harry,” he said, “having no choice in the matter, I suppose you might as well just sort of outline for Bob’s benefit, as a matter of collegial and professional courtesy, what we’ve gotten so far. And, if he chooses to take some advantage from it, well, that would be a definite plus. From our point of view as much as his own.”

  “Okay,” Dell’Appa said. He faced Brennan. “You pegged me pretty good there, Bob,” he said. “That was a stupid thing I did, with and to Linda, and a lot of damage did result, to several people. So you were right about those things. But you were more modest than you should’ve been about your contribution to that damage, because you and I both knew that I was in the process of breaking it off with Linda, trying to manage it without having her continue to go into hysterics every time I came into the office, when you confronted me. Never have I seen a bottom-feeder striking such a righteous pose about his filthy habit.

  “And you also know, although you probably won’t admit it now, that Linda’s tears were in fact how you’d found out that I was having an affair with her. That until she started going to pieces whenever she saw me, you didn’t have the slightest inkling of it. That in fact you never knew anything about the affair at all, until I’d come to my senses and it’d started to be over. And finally, you know very well that Gayle never had a whiff of any of it, any suspicion at all, of what I’d been doing, until you, you malignant-fucking-meddlesome-lying-old-cocksucking-shiteating bastard, took it upon yourself, to borrow your self-righteous phrase, to call her up and fill her in, not only with what happened to be true about the whole episode, but also with a lot more gory details that added a lot to the color but didn’t happen to be true. In other words, you did the same thing to Gayle that you tried to do to us today with your cock-and-bull story about seeing Bomber: you lied.

  “You told Gayle about Linda having to have had our child aborted, for example: admittedly very juicy stuff; but not true. If Linda was ever pregnant while I was sleeping with her, or had to have an abortion, she never mentioned it to me, and I think she would’ve, you know?

  “Second example, two-parter: I’d told several people in the office I was leaving Gayle to marry Linda, in one version because I’d made her pregnant, in the other because I loved Linda and I didn’t love Gayle any more because she’d put on so much weight before she had Roy and didn’t lose it afterwards. Here again, a very colorful tale that certainly would’ve been interesting, if true, but which in fact was false, in both versions. You sure do have a fetish about pregnancy, though, don’t you, Bob? Is that a flashback to your strict Catholic upbringing, when all the bad girls invariably got knocked-up as punishment, had to go and see Aunt Flossie Crittenden? Or is it just that you’ve been watching too many TV soaps and you’ve hit overload?

  “And, just for a final example here: you told Gayle it was common knowledge around this place, because I’d said it to so many people, that the only reason I’d married her in the first place, and the only reason I was dumping Linda now, was that Gayle’s father’s rich, subsidizing us now with our kid in private school, and when he kicks the bucket we will be very rich, and that’s why I’m hanging in there with my wife: all, to borrow another word from you: bullshit. Gayle’s father’s a doctor with a surgical practice, and he teaches—makes a good living, sure, but he’s very far from rich. Especially after he and his wife, who’s a professor, not a Texarkana-wildcatter, got through sending Gayle and her three brothers through prep school, college, and graduate doctoral programs. Which long process, I, not her parents, have already started paying for, our son’s first year in private school. Contrary to the bullshit that you attributed to me, you soggy squishy piece of human shit.

  “But don’t delude yourself, Bob, not by any means, that the lies you told to Gayle were just a little harmless bullshit, nooooo, not by any means.” Dell’Appa said. “Quite the contrary, it did a lot of harm. Gayle, who is after all a clinical psychologist, and as a result probably has considerably better defenses against attacks of depression than the average person, was so devastated by what you did to her that she had to delay resumption of her work a full year longer than she’d planned to, after Roy was born, because first with what you’d done to her, and second what’d happened to me—that detached duty; which was a direct result of what you’d done to her, what she’d done in her desperation after you’d made her frantic—she didn’t feel she was in good-enough shape herself to be counseling anybody else. And, as you so smugly surmise, she still hasn’t been able to put the whole disaster far enough behind her so that we can try to be approximately as content with each other as an average couple might be. Which, if we ever make it, will never even come close to the way we felt about each other before. But hey, what do you care, huh, shithead? You’re like the fuckin’ mutt that shits and pisses on the Oriental carpet, makes a stain that no solvent on earth short of fire can ever bleach, and leaves an odor that every animal that ever sees that rug will detect on the spot, and immediately shit and piss on that same spot, too.

  “But that’s just your way, i
sn’t it, Bob, that charming way you have about you. If God makes you an offer to come back in your next life as a rattlesnake, you’ll turn him down, won’t you, you snake. You’ll say: ‘No God, it’s not like I would mind, you know, being a viper. I was one of those, in my past life. But if I’m gonna be one, a real one this time, I would still wanna be sneaky, to go with the poison, you know? I’ll come back as a sidewinder there. So’s to sneak up on people from angles. Just like I’ve always done.’

  “As long’s you’ve got a clear picture of what you want to get done, you’ll do anything you have to to do it. A year ago, after we’d had our first few little sparring matches, and I’d told you to go fuck yourself a few times, in front of the other rooks, you decided I hadda go. And because I disobeyed what’s always been my father’s maxim—if you know the hostiles’ve got rifles in the hills, when they come into town for whiskey, for the luvva Mike don’t sell ’em ammunition—it wasn’t very long at all before you had me screwed, blued, and tattooed. If a guy’s got a weakness, and you want the guy down, you’ll find the weakness, and down him.

  “So, knowing that, having learned that about you, and you knowing that I’d learned it, why in the world did you go and show me precisely where your weakness was? Knowing from Day One, when I came back, I would be out to get you. What the hell is it with you? Have you got a death-wish or something?”

  Brennan looked troubled. He shifted in the chair, his thighs bulging in his trousers as he crossed his legs. “I haven’t got that many weaknesses, I know of,” he said. “Margaret says, she’s always said, that I’m no good handling money, so if it was something big we’re buyin’, she had to be there with me. Margaret says she is practical, there. Margaret says also: I’m not.”