Bomber's Law

by George V. Higgins

  “And by Jesus,” she said, toasting him with the glass, “give me credit for that, and give you credit, too. Harry, you’ve done it, just what I said, you came back and you’ve begun getting even. What do you call this, on your mental agenda? ‘Item One: Brennan, Robert, Sergeant Bob’? ‘Okay, that takes care of that motherfucker. Cross him offa the list there, that’s one down. On to the next entry here.’ How many more, ’ve you got to go, ’fore you get down to me?”

  “Go to bed, Gayle,” he said, “like you’ve told me to do, nights when I’ve done what you’ve done tonight. Sleep’s all that remains for that day, and nothing’s very much fun.”

  She stared at him. “ ‘Item X,’ ” she said slowly, “ ‘Gayle Fairhurst Dell’Appa.’ Come on, tell me: I know I’m on it. And now I would like to know. Well, sort of, I wanna—I don’t really, wanna, but I know I should wanna, ’Cause I have got work to do here, work, aheadah me here, and I should get, get started on it. I should be beginnin’, gettin’ started again here, plannin’ ah … rest of my life.” She lifted the glass and drained it.

  “Oh, sorry,” Brennan said, finding Dell’Appa in Dennison’s office when he opened the door and came in. “Rosie said that you wanted, see me, boss. Didn’t just mean to barge in.”

  “You’re not, Bob,” Dennison said, “barging in here, I mean. I did want to see you, as soon’s you came in. And Harry here’s part of the meeting. Come in. Close the door. Have a seat.”

  Brennan frowned. “Uh-huh,” he said, “I see.” He turned his back partially to them, so that the roll of middle-aged stoutness bulging his shirt at his waist, topping the walnut butt of the old Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 holstered on his belt above his right kidney, stood out in better relief, and closed the door very slowly and carefully, not making much noise at all. He turned again toward the desk and smiled, turning his head to include each of them individually, making little mincing steps to the vacant chair at the right corner of the front of Dennison’s desk. He sat down gingerly, like a man with a sacroiliac problem he has learned from sharp pain had better not be trifled with, and folded his hands in his lap. He nodded. He smiled again, without showing any of his teeth, chipmunking his cheeks fatly for them, so that Dell’Appa for the first time noticed a general just-awakened puffiness about the man, as though not only the flesh around his eyes but his entire physique had commenced retaining fluids to excess. “Well, here I am, boss,” he said, “seeing you seeing me, seeing you, just like you had in mind there. I don’t seem to have a scorecard-line-up with me, though, for today’s game, you know? Didn’t pick one up, my way in. So I’m not sure which one we’re playing. Which game I mean, you’re playing today.”

  Dennison looked at Dell’Appa, smiling and raising his eyebrows. Dell’Appa imitated him, adding a shrug. Dennison looked back at Brennan. “You’re good, Bob,” he said, “you are good. Can’t take that away from you, can they.”

  “Hope not, Lieutenant,” Brennan said, preserving the bulging smile. “Man’s got to have something, can hang onto in this stormy world. I’d like to think I got that.”

  “So then, Bob,” Dennison said, “you’re fully recovered and back on the job, we can take it?”

  Brennan relaxed his facial muscles and shook his head once. “Well, I don’t know about all of that,” he said, “not sure of quite all of that. I’m pretty-well recovered, I guess, from the flu I mean—sure hope you guys don’t get what I had. But as for that part about ‘back on the job,’ I’m not really sure about that. The ‘back’ part, that’s right; I’m right here; you can see me. But the ‘job’ part, that’s harder, that part I’m not sure of. I know when I left here last Friday, I think it was, days all sort of blend, you know, with each other, blend together, you run a high fever. Hard to say, then, later on, pin something down, when it happened there, which one was which. But I’m pretty sure it was Friday, and I know when I went home to be sick privately, I did leave a job at my desk.”

  He shook his head and widened his eyes. “It isn’t there now, though,” he said. “I came in this morning, thought it’d be there, right where it always’s been. But son of a bitch, the fool thing wasn’t there, and now I can’t find it anyplace now; it’s just nowhere to be found. I’ve looked high and low, under this, top of that, well, you both know how it gets, we all had it happen to us, most normal thing inna world. You’re sittin’ at home and you hear the phone ring, phone rings and you’re reading, all right? You know what you do because we all do this, we all do the exact same thing. Once we’re past forty, at least.”

  He glanced at Dell’Appa. “Most of you kids wouldn’t know about this yet. But you will, never fear, in good time.” He looked back at Dennison. “But you know this, you’re one of us older folks: all it takes for it is, the phone rings—we forget what we did with our glasses. Say ‘Oh shit, who the hell can this be, callin’ at this fuckin’ hour? When I’m trynah relax, for Chrissake.’ Get outta the chair, take your glasses off, go an’ answer the thing. Which as often as not, and we all know this too, it’s prolly a wrong fuckin’ number.

  “Some asshole didn’t bother, look it up right, didn’t watch what he’s doin’, he dialed it, so he calls you up instead, bothered you? Well, that’s just too bad then, fuck you. He can even get mad when you tell him you won’t, look up the right number for him. I had people do that, swear at me when I wouldn’t, after they called me up by mistake, like it was my fault or something.” He made his voice a nasal falsetto: “ ‘But I’m callin’ from outta state, Mister. I ain’t got no phone-book for there.’ ” He resumed his normal voice. “ ‘I don’t give a shit—call up Information. That’s what they’re there for: find numbers.’ I show no mercy the bastards. ‘No prisoners. Shoot the wounded’: that’s what I say.

  “Back when I was Uniform, had the fuckin’ whistle, I used to blow it at those guys. I’d get home from days-on, I got my days-off, keep that whistle right by the phone. And when I would get a wrong-number guy—and we got a shitload of wrong numbers then; our number was almost the same as the priest-house, I think it was one digit off, from Saint Andrew’s rectory there. And every Sunday, and Easter and Christmas—Christmas, Jesus, was awful, alla the people that go once a year, dunno know what time that anythin’ is, call after call after call”—in the whining falsetto again—“ ‘What time’s midnight Mass gonna be?’ And I would say, oh very polite, naturally: ‘Just a moment, please,’ and I’d grab that whistle. Give them a full blast, right in their ear. Although of course I dunno what it did, church attendance, the monthly collection. Prolly didn’t help much, the assholes think their pure holy priests’re hurtin’ their poor ears like that: ‘Go to mass there? Think I’m nuts? No, I ain’t goin’ there; the priest at Saint Andrew’s ’S crazy.’ Priests had’ve known, they might not’ve liked it.

  “But anyway, that’s what you get, you get every time, you just had yourself one of those fuckers, and then you come back, you sit down in the chair, an’ it never fails, the goddamned glasses are gone, they took off, your fuckin’ glasses aren’t there. One wrong number, you lose twenny minutes or so, lookin’ for those goddamned glasses. You could’ve been enjoyin’ yourself, hey, you even were, that’s what you were doin’, before that fuckin’ phone rang. You were enjoyin’ yourself, there havin’ a nice, quiet-good time, and now what’re you? All pissed off.

  “Well, this’ll surprise you, I know it will, because I know that it surprised me, I found out it happened, this mornin’. The exact same thing we’ve all had with our glasses, our car-keys, our left glove, your best pair-ah pliers; all of that stuff disappears, and we get sort of used to it there. It gets so it’s almost like: we expect it, that stuff’s gonna vanish on us. An’ when it does, well, yeah, we’re pissed off then too, it’s not just losin’ our glasses that does it, but we’re certainly not really surprised. We forget where we put everything, get to our age, sometimes how old we even are. You get used to it after a while.

  “But this morning, I am surprised. This’s t
he first time I can ever remember, that I had this happen to me. Had a job disappear, just like that.” He snapped the thumb and middle of his left hand, making a crisp report. “It happened my father, a long time ago, he had it happen to him. But in his case it wasn’t just his job that vanished, it was a whole fuckin’ store, an entire supermarket, A and P there, he had disappear on him—they closed down the whole place he worked. So it wasn’t just him, that lost his job, it was everyone else that he’d worked with for years, they lost their jobs, too. People he’d known for thirty and forty, one of them forty-two years? Hey, this was no joke, when that happened. To some of them, all those hard-workin’ people, lost their job, outta work, onna street. ‘Thanks for all your help, all you done for us here, the past forty-five years, but now get the fuck outta here, willya? We ain’t got no more use for you.’

  “Well, he didn’t like it, my father, I mean, none of ’em liked it a hell of a lot, but at least they weren’t baffled, like I am. They at least knew that it really’d happened and it wasn’t nothin’ that they did themselves, like they were careless or somethin’. Like you’re always readin’ about, seein’ on TV or somethin’, some woman puts her baby onna roofah car, while she gets out her keys to unlock it, and then she gets in, shuts the door, starts it up, she isn’t thinkin’ about it, why should she? It’s all, it’s all perfectly normal, isn’t it? Did her shoppin’, got that done, and now she is doin’ what everyone does after that: what she’s doin’ is, she’s drivin’ home. And she don’t even know, ’til some cop pulls her over, her kid’s still onna roofah the car there. Well, that’s what I feel like I did, like I must’ve done, there, or something, to have this experience I’m havin’ here, havin’ this happen to me.”

  Dennison looked at Dell’Appa and tilted his head. Dell’Appa smiled and shook his head. “What can I say, Brian, that you didn’t get through just sayin’, huh? This here guy, he really is good. The guy is the fuckin’ best that there ever was, fuckin’ best inna whole fuckin’ world. When it comes to trampin’ up dust, and layin’ down smokescreens, I’ll tell you, no one else I know even comes close, let alone anyone who can touch him, compete with him when he’s doin’ this. Bob Brennan can confuse obfuscation when he wants; he could murk up an enigma. When it comes to creating total bewilderment out of clear and simple reality, well, there’s no one can carry his hat.”

  “The fuck’re you think you’re talkin’ to here, asshole college-boy,” Brennan said, growling, to Dell’Appa. “Who the fuck do you think you’re kiddin’ here? You think I don’t know what you’re doin’ to me, you’re kissin’ the lieutenant’s ass alla time here, ever since you come back this office? Bullshit, I don’t know. I’m not stupid, you know. I know there’s a knife right in my fuckin’ back, this fuckin’ minute, and I know too who put that knife there. And whose fuckin’ knife that fuckin’ knife is. It’s your fuckin’ knife, you tinhorn cocksucker, that’s whose fuckin’ knife that knife is.

  “I was downah Cape seein’ Bomber, yesterday, and I told him what you’ve been doin’. And you know what the Bomber, what he said-ah me? He said: ‘Bobby, if I was still up there, you know … if I was still up there in charge, and I was still runnin’ that show, that punk wouldn’t be doin’ this to you, he couldn’t be doin’ this to you, because I wouldn’t’ve, let him do it. I’d’ve had him stomped down so fast he’d be buyin’ used suits, get somethin’ to fit him, second-hand-me-downs from circus midgets. They just never change, those damn punks never do, you can tell ’em the minute you see ’em, and the worst thing you can do is forget what you saw, when you saw them, the first time you caught sight of the bastards. Because every time that you thought you’d spotted one, it would always turn out you were right. And that’s what it always did, always turned out you were right. Every fuckin’ damn time. Every last fuckin’ time.’ ”

  “Well, I think we’ve got to admit it, Harry,” Dennison said, “this gentleman’s very generous. He doesn’t just give you one plat du jour problem, either take it or come back tomorrow, he lays out a whole fuckin’ buffet.” He exhaled heavily and looked back at Brennan.

  “Now lemme see, Robert,” he said, “where do we begin? How to choose from this rich, varied offering? Do I say ‘Okay, so you weren’t sick yesterday; all right, since we mustn’t defraud Mother Commonwealth here—the old girl takes it so personally, you know, her own cops get caught breaking her laws—be sure you put that down as vacation, not sick leave’?

  “Or do I say: ‘Well, the insult’s ingenious, ringing my ailing rabbi up at long-distance not only to endorse your anger at me but to voice as well his own, and very personal indeed, denunciation of me, using you as his proxy’? Or then again, perhaps, I should choose simply to state the most obvious and egregious among the several scurvy and offensive insubordinations you’ve just managed to commit all at once, in a bunch, and just tell you to your face that your blasphemy of Bomber is a sorry, pathetically-bare-assed, out-and-out, fucking, damned, lie, because anyone who’s been in touch with him or with his daughters or his wife since a year ago Thanksgiving—as I have, every week, not that I’m the only one—knows our estimable mentor’s been in la-la land since then, as vacant and as cuckoo as the purest of the blessed angels in the sky. And the fact that I know why you fabricated that mean and contemptible lie—abject, guilty desperation—doesn’t mitigate its nastiness at all; it’s men who act like you just did who given self-pity a bad name.”

  Brennan did not say anything. His face had flushed, gradually becoming dark red, but his gaze did not waver from Dennison’s face. “Cut the shit, Lieutenant, all right?” he said in a low voice; it was under his control and did not tremble. “Whaddaya say we quit fucking around here and just get to the fuckin’ point, huh? Save everyone’s time in this thing, and a whole lot of damned aggravation. You want my badge, my friend? You got my badge, my friend. Have someone add up, I’ve got coming to me, vacation built-up, the bonus for the sick-leave that I never took much of—in all the years I been here I might’ve taken ten days, max—and I’ll go outta here today, retire on terminal leave. You want me out? Okay, I’ll clear out, see if some other outfit can still find some use for me, man with the experience I’ve got, ’sides the AARP, or the Hair Club for Men.”

  Dennison and Dell’Appa looked at each other and shook their heads almost simultaneously. Dennison focused his eyes on his hands on the top of his desk and frowned, shaking his head again. He looked up at Brennan. He cleared his throat. “Bob,” he said, “we’ve had our differences in the course of working together many years. Would’ve been a miracle if we hadn’t, I suppose, two men with such very different styles, different ways of looking at things and different ways of going about them, thrown in together as long as we have been, over twenty years. But good Christ, man, as many times as I could’ve throttled you; and as many times, I’m sure at least as many, as you were tempted to use your service revolver to persuade me of your point of view, overcome my stubborness; and as hard as it must’ve been for you, when I succeeded Bomber in this job I know you wanted …”

  “More’n ‘wanted,’ ” Brennan said. “I was also told, I was fuckin’ all-but-promised, by two people over Bomber, that when he took retirement I’d be next line for this job. And I would’ve had it, too, if this AG and this governor hadn’t been so damned determined to just throw out all the tried-’n-true ways that’ve worked for generations, and the men who’ve worked with them, all the men who’ve made them work and were the reason that they did, and just turn the whole division over to the punks like him.” He jerked his head at Dell’Appa, then fixed his eyes back on Dennison.

  “They didn’t pick you because I did anything wrong, or there was something bad in my record. They did it because there was one thing you did so much better’n I did that I couldn’t compete with you on it, and I wouldn’t’ve if I could have—kissing civilian, executive asses. The way I was trained in this job, the way that Bomber trained me, I was trained that this is a paramilitary operation
that we’re involved in here every day, and that we’re a kind of domestic soldier, and that’s why we behave like soldiers do: because that’s what we are.

  “Now I know that a lot of asses get kissed and sucked-on in the military, too, especially in peacetime, and I know that pretty often that’s what pays off there, but I know too what I was told: it wasn’t going to happen here. This was going on merit only, strictly merit, all the way. Wasn’t one man, told me that, two men told me that. It was even in the papers, inna gossip columns there, all the inside-political stuff there, that I was the one next in line for this job when the Bomber finally stepped down. And then he did, and it was time, the time’d come for them to do it, to deliver on what they said, give it to me, and what did they do then? They turned around and fucked me, up the front and down the back. That was what they did to me, those dirty rotten bastards: they gave me a royal fucking, fucked me right up the fucking ass.

  “Okay, that’s the history lesson. That’s how we all got here today, in our places here. So here I am, and there you are, with your little stooge here nodding, every word you say, logging-in his smoochies now, so that when you retire, he’ll take over your place here and get his own ass kissed, by his own seven dwarfs. I sit here and you guys can double-team me all you want, pound me to a fuckin’ boneless bloody pulp, and there isn’t one damned thing on this whole fuckin’ earth that I can do about it. What a thing to have to say, after all the years of being what I’ve been in this outfit, what a fuckin’ thing to say, fuckin’ thing to have to say.”