Bomber's Law Read online

  FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EBOOK EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2012

  Copyright © 1993 by George V. Higgins

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York, in 1993.

  Vintage Crime is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Cardon Phillip Webb

  eISBN: 978-0-345-80467-9

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  1

  The early-morning, late-November sun began to come in low and slow and cold and pale over the railroad bridge at the Dockett Street commuter-train stop on the Dedham–West Roxbury line, cheap-glittering the dirty windows on the southerly side of the yellow cinderblock auto-body shop—the sign on the roof in tall, hollow, red-plastic letters read: BUDDYS’ YOUR BRUISED CAR’S BEST BUDDY—and Dell’Appa writhed in the passenger bucket seat of the blue-and-white Chevy Blazer. He exhaled loudly.

  “Keep yah shirt on, pally,” Brennan said complacently in the driver’s seat. “Some days he’s early and some days he’s late, and most days he isn’t: he’s on time. I assume he must go in early sometimes, and then sometimes they have him come in late. But naturally, I never know; it’s not like I’d know in advance. It isn’t like they’re tellin’ me. Call me up and say: ‘Early, tamarra. Tamarra he’s goin’ in early.’ So I never know, the day before, which day is gonna be which. So, you wanna see Joey—which, I assume that you do; I think you better, since you’re gonna be the one follows the guy now—you gotta come early. Be patient. Stay late. Or else you just ain’t gonna be sure.

  “You guys, you young guys, you ain’t got it right; you don’t understand: these guys don’t follow our schedule. They don’t care if we’d rather stay up late. They don’t make their plans to suit us. So, we’re gonna follow them? Fine, so we follow them, they can’t stop us, we want to do that. But then we play by their rules then. We don’t like it, the hours they keep? That’s all right with them. They don’t give a shit. It’s not like they ask us to do it, they come ’round and said: ‘Please, follow me.’ ”

  “Ah, fuck you,” Dell’Appa said, “yah big sackah sententious shit.”

  “Oooh,” Brennan said contentedly, sipping on the narrow spout on the locking brown-plastic cover of his Dunkin’ Donuts mug of coffee, “there’s a big one, all right. Got to write that one right down here now, so I don’t forget it. Look it up right up, I get home. What was the word you said there? ‘Sen-tent-shush’—that right? Have I got it right there, what you just said? Just how you spell that word anyway?”

  Dell’Appa scowled but he did not say anything.

  “Yup,” Brennan said, “it’s a great thing, I know, bein’ a real college guy. My kid-brother Dougie, he’s one of you guys, too, he’s got a college degree. I may’ve told you this, did I? As matter of fact, he’s got two of the things, first the first one and then he got a master’s. I guess prolly though his can’t be as good, probably, the first one that he got, I mean. As good as the one that you got. Because that would explain what I didn’t get, when he did it I didn’t get it.

  “ ‘Another one?’ I say, that’s what I say to him there. ‘Jesus Christ, Doug, you already got one of the things. What the hell you need another one for? They’re like tits; they’re like balls? You’re supposed to have two? You look silly with one? Is that it? You’ve got one and you think it looks funny? For Christ sake, look at me, I haven’t got one, I haven’t got any, and I always felt pretty good. Like I was doin’ all right, pretty much on top of things. And I always did pretty good.’ But he says no, this next one’s the master’s, the computer science thing there.” He coughed. “I guess it’s all right, you can stand it,” he said. “If you like all that school shit, I mean.”

  Dell’Appa drank from his large cardboard cup and did not say anything. Brennan had parked the Blazer at the westerly curb of the southbound lane of the approach to the overpass. Except for the windshield the Blazer’s glass was 80 percent sepia-smoked all around, so that those inside it could see out, imperfectly, but no one could see in except by peering over the hood, and a dark-blue curtain on an overhead track behind the seats concealed the cargo area even from front view.

  “I said to Brian,” Dell’Appa had said to his wife, Gayle, the night before, “I told him. I said: ‘Brian, you know you’re gonna hafta surplus that fuckin’ Blazer submarine when Bob leaves, when he finally does retire, and let him take it with him for a buck or maybe ten. No one else’s gonna want it. No one else’ll ever drive it. The fuckin’ Blazer’s as much his’s the shell is, belongs to the turtle. By now it’s probably gotten so it even smells like him, practically livin’ in it like he does. So, I dunno, do turtles retire? Probably turtles do not. Just keep right on turtling along, ’til the day they drop dead or something. Well, okay then, when the turtles die, when a fuckin’ turtle dies, does another, younger, working turtle come along and take his house? Take his old shell and use it? I don’t think so, Brian. I don’t think turtles do that. Bob built the goddamned fucking thing, put the skylight in the roof, made the periscope box with the mirrors—has anybody ever actually used that? Used that periscope? Actually stuck the box out and taken pictures through it? I never heard of him, and I sure know I’m not gonna. I’d feel like a fool doin’ that. And Con Cannon isn’t either. Johnny Finn, anyone, nobody will. No one but Bob wants that goddamned thing, so let him be the one to fuckin’ have it. Get it the fuck out of here. It’s an embarrassment.’ ”

  “My theory is,” Brennan said, “and not just about Dougie either—Buddy down there, Buddy Royal? And you? All this applies also to you. My theory is that once you start doin’ a thing, you know, it’s like you got used to it, somethin’—you keep doin’ that thing all the time. So like if it’s going to school that you do, then that’s what you do: go to school. And the same with Buddy, all right? You see what I’m sayin’ to you here? He’s runnin’ that chop shop down there. He’s always been runnin’ that chop shop; he’s been runnin’ that chop shop for years.

  “ ‘Oh no, it’s not a chop shop. Body shop. Body shop. Body shop.’ Right. Now can we just cut the shit here please now? Buddy Royal buys stolen cars. And he cuts them up and then he sells the parts, through the midnight auto supply. Four-thousand engine? Eight-thousand engine? Buddy can do better for you. Just tell ’em what you need, and it doesn’t matter, and he’ll have a guy he can call. ‘BMW,’ he’ll say, that’s what you want, ‘Corvette,’ ‘Porsche,’ don’t matter. Whatever you want, Buddy can get, run you about fifty percent. Maybe a third, if you’re lucky—he likes you. Could go as low as a third, you’re buying steady from him. Bucket seats? Radios, tape decks, and that shit? Yup, Buddy can get that for you. Transmission, rear end, fuel-injection system? Custom wheels, fiv
e grand a set? Certainly can, no trouble at all. ‘We’re here to serve you, is all. Just tell us, whatever you want.’ And he’s been doin’ that, years.

  “So, we know this. We also know this, for years we’ve known that he’s doin’ this. And we know, all right? How the AG would feel, we grab Buddy, he calls a press conference.” He deepened his voice. “ ‘We’re cracking down now on organized crime and what makes insurance rates sky high. Today we have broken a stolen-car ring that rooked Bay State drivers out of millions of dollars a year.’ The guy would’ve come right in his own shorts if we’d’ve ever done something, actually let him do that. Well then, so then, why didn’t we, then? Why didn’t we goddamned bust Buddy? It isn’t like we didn’t know. Well, I’ll tell you why: he wasn’t important, as important as what else we had. He was just too far down on our list.”

  Brennan laughed, making a short rough sound like a big unhappy dog complaining about being pushed out of doors into a cold rainy day. “So now Buddy’s number, it finally comes up. We got the wire in on Buddy.”

  “And then, so what happens?” Brennan said. “I’ll tell you what happens: nothin’ happens. Not one thing inna whole fuckin’ world. Two weeks ago fuckin’ Wednesday this is, we get the fuckin’ wire in, so we’re on our second one now, I guess, must be, and so far we haven’t got shit. Must be some guy in New Hampshire or something’s givin’ better prices for fresh hot new Corvettes or something these days, because our good friend Buddy ain’t seen squat, is what our little friend hasn’t seen. Which is Buddy’s fuckin’ luck, of course, but it’s also the same thing with us. It’s just our fuckin’ luck, too.

  “We’ve been after Buddy, what? Two, three, five years? I don’t even remember, it’s been so long. So long he’s been in there, doin’ what he does, and we always knew he was doin’ it, and so’d everyone else. Cop stops a guy speedin’, he ran a stop sign; no brake lights; some damned thing like that, he didn’t get a new sticker, he’s writin’ the guy up and what’s the guy say? What does the guy always say? Well, he doesn’t like it, gettin’ a ticket, he doesn’t think it should cost him, but it’s gonna cost him, he can see that, so what can he do about that? He can give the cop a small ration, his shit, because what has he got to lose now? He’s already gettin’ the ticket.

  “And what does he say, when he wants to do that? They all say the same fuckin’ thing. They say: ‘Hey, Ossifer, sir, ’stead of bustin’ our chops, we’re just mindin’ our own fuckin’ business, jackin’ up our insurance like this, whyn’t you guys sometime go’n get Buddy Royal? You know who Buddy is, right? Guy under the bridge there, hot-car operation? Sure, you guys know all about that. So then whyn’tcha do something to him, ’stead of givin’ all of us here a hard time here? What is he, some friend of yours there? Like that mechanic over in Holbrook there, good friends with alla the cops, and the Staties then finally go in and bust him, receivin’, the stuff that he had his friends go in and steal there, while all his good buddies on the police force’re standin’ guard, lookouts for him. Buddy got somethin’ like that there with you guys?’

  “Now lemme ask you this: what’re you gonna say? What’re you gonna say to this guy? Are you gonna say: ‘Well, yeah, sure, we know, we all know what Buddy is doin’. But Buddy’s low level, he’s not a big guy, he isn’t priority with us. We only go after the big guys, you know? The Francos and bad guys like you that run stop signs. We haven’t got time to chase Buddies around. He isn’t big enough for us.’

  “You gonna say that to a guy, this guy that’s been bustin’ your balls? So he can just go and call up some talk show and say, he’ll probably use his own cellular phone, phone he’s got right in his car—maybe forgot to stop at a stop sign, or get a new sticker there, but he remembered, get that phone in all right: ‘You know what this cop just said to me? He said sure they know, you bet they all know, what goddamned Buddy Royal is doin’ and what it ends up costing us, and he said, he told me, that that doesn’t matter, they don’t even give a good shit. What they care about’s who’s got his sticker, his new inspection sticker, not the guy who is cutting up cars. “He’s just a fuckin’ annoyance. Some kind of a nuisance or somethin’.’ ” Yeah, you do that and you won’t get thanked.

  “But then, then we finally go in and do it,” Brennan said morosely, “Buddy’s number finally comes up, like you knew that some day it just hadda. And then what do we get? A guy jerkin’ his chain is the game highlights of it, some guy who’s got no respect for him. Because most guys, you know, they don’t dare to say to him: ‘Hey, Buddy, you little piece-ah shit.’ Because you know, well, maybe you wouldn’t, but he thinks he’s a real desperado. Capone in his mind’s not as big as he is, John Gotti or Raymond, any of them guys. No one’s as big as Buddy Royal. Well, maybe Capone, but the rest of them guys? Buddy eats their lunch all the time. If you take Buddy’s word for it, I mean, but you’d be a fool if you did, because he is completely full of it.

  “But most of the guys that he does business with, they’re not gonna say this to him. They’re not gonna say to him: ‘Buddy, you asshole,’ because then he might get mad at them, you know? And this they don’t want to have happen. Because, let’s say, you tap out onna weekend. All teams that you bet on, every one won, they all won but they lost onna spread. And on Settle-up Day, which’s Tuesday, like always, your book’s gonna wanna see money. None of your fuckin’ excuses, all right? You’re gonna get healthy next fuckin’ week, he’ll just carry you over ’til then? And the this and the that and the other, all if he’ll just carry you? ‘Uh-uh, sorry, no-no, can’t do that. Nobody runs no tabs here. Management policy here.’ And so then, what do you do?

  “Simple. What you do there is, you get somebody’s ’Vette, somebody’s pretty-new ’Vette that you saw his blonde honey there out drivin’ one day, you’re just goin’ downah the store, and you take it to Buddy and Buddy will take it—it’s just like you went to a bank. Bada-bing, bada-boom, you got four or five grand, go see Mike the Book and he’s happy. He’s happy; you gave him the dough you owed him. You’re happy; you’re not gettin’ beat up. And Buddy is happy, he’s got a new ’Vette, so he’s gonna make a few bucks. Everyone inna whole world is happy again—’cept for maybe the guy had the ’Vette and his honey. Those two people, they’re probably not. But everyone else is, and that includes you, and that’s why you give Buddy no shit, piss him off so he doesn’t forget it. Because you always know where Buddy is, where he is going to be, because if you ever needah, you can sell him something, and this is good thing to know.

  “But not this guy,” Brennan said, “this guy that called him up, I forget which day now, I forget which day it was now. I think that it might’ve been last Wednesday there, Wednesday or Thursday or something. Anyway, this guy does not give one good shit about anna-thing, anna-thing in the whole world. He must have a trust fund or somethin’, it’s like. Or maybe some oil wells or something. Because when Buddy starts in with his usual routine, like he does always does, alla time, every time that he gets onna phone, the first thing he does is he warns the guy. ‘Now be careful now what you say here. Because this line’s tapped, you know. They’re after me here. So be careful what you say on it.’ ”

  “How’s he know the line is tapped there?” Dell’Appa said. A Boston inbound commuter train made up of stainless-steel-rib-sided passenger cars salvaged three decades or so before from the shells of moribund New England railroads expiring in the lethal embrace of Conrail, pulled by two antiquated GM diesel engines—ex-Boston & Maine; New York, New Haven & Hartford—demeaned in their fourth and fifth decades of sturdy service by broad midriff stripes of faded purple paint, Easter egg-accented with yellow, passed under the road and stopped briefly at the Plexiglas-shielded, aluminum-framed passenger platform next to the tracks emerging from the southeasterly side of the bridge.

  Brennan craned his neck to look in turn at each of the semitrailer-size outside rearview mirrors he had mounted on the leading edges of the doors of the Blazer. He saw no one. The train
started up again almost at once and pulled away. He looked at his watch. “Six forty-three,” he said. He nodded. “Looks like this’s a regular mornin’, he’s goin’ in at the regular time, the time that he usually does.”

  “Meaning: seven forty-eight,” Dell’Appa said resentfully.

  “Usually, yeah,” Brennan said, settling back again into the seat. “That’s when he usually does. But like I say, you’re never sure. Sure in advance is what I mean, exactly what he will do. What is is if he misses the ones that come before that—well, not misses, exactly, because if he wasn’t here to take a particular one, any particular train, it wasn’t like he tried to, tried to make it but he didn’t; it’s because he didn’t want to, want to take it, take that particular train. Because that’s the way he usually is: regular as regular clockwork. But if they’re up early for some reason, like Joey hasta be somewhere or something, some distance away from here, or it’s one of those unusual days, like I say, unusual but they do happen, when he himself hasta be in early himself. And then it’s been known to happen that he will catch one of the earlier ones. So that’s why we hadda be here. In case he did that today. Because then otherwise you wouldn’t’ve been here to see Joey, when he comes by here with him.”

  “Yeah,” Dell’Appa said, folding his arms across his chest. “Joey. I thought it was him we were after. This Buddy shit, I didn’t know from. So we really are here to see Joey.”

  “Well, you have to do it,” Brennan said. “You know you have to do that, if you’re gonna be followin’ the guy, see what the guy looks like and so forth. And his car, and so forth and so on.”

  “I know what a goddamned old gray Cadillac Sedan de fuckin’ Ville fuckin’ looks like, for Christ fuckin’ sakes,” Dell’Appa said. “Honest to Mother of God.”

  “Well, sure, but not this one,” Brennan said, “not necessarily his one, you don’t, because those things, they don’t all look alike. Especially when they get that old there. It all depends what kind of care they had taken care of them along the line there, you know? After they were new. Everybody knows that. You know that. It’s when they’re all brand new, before anybody hardly even drove them, then they all look the same. Like each other. But now, eight, ten years later, well, the paint and all that stuff? That’s when it all depends. And consequently they don’t all now, they don’t all look the same at all now. So you couldn’t be sure if you had the right one, if I didn’t show you which one.”