Bomber's Law Read online

  “That isn’t what I’m sayin’,” Brennan said with weariness. “If you’d ever give me a chance to finish, you’d know it isn’t. The swimming lessons and the riding lessons, all the other stuff: I’m all for that, all right? I agree with you. What I’m trying to tell you is that when Doug and Laura’s kids go swimming, go to learn to swim, Laura goes swimming too. When the kids’re gonna go onna pony rides, and so they’re putting on their black jackets, and their special tan pants, and their hundred-dollar fancy boots, and their special little black hats that look like the derbies there, but they’re really hard hats you could wear on a construction site and have a whole bucket of hot rivets drop on your head from thirty stories up, without gettin’ a hair outta place, guess who’s also putting on the whole damned horsie uniform? Laura is, is who. By the time Dougie’s little family’s all ready to go down the Blue Hills Reservation there and ride the little ponies, they’ve got on enough horse-clothes that cost a whole shitload of money that if you put it all together and used it to buy a horse instead, you could buy at least one of them that maybe wasn’t quite fast enough to beat the other horsies in the tenth, the dogfood race, onna card at Upsan Downs, but still can walk and eat and shit, and then you’d have your own. Your own living, breathing horse. You could ride him any time, in your own old clothes and your big brother’s hockey helmet. Any time you liked.

  “And that is what I mean, that’s the sort of thing I mean. That’s what Laura does, that’s the kind of thing she does and she did on Hallowe’en. And then ten days later, the same thing. It didn’t make no sense the first time, made no sense at all, so naturally, first chance she got, the first excuse she had, she did it all again. The woman isn’t right. She gets all excited and so forth about something new that she’s going to do with the kids, and how great it’s gonna be for them, that pretty soon she’s completely forgotten what it really is that they’re gonna do, and why it was gonna be so great for the kids. And then all she can think about is all the new things she’s gonna need to do this, and how many of them. And that’s what they always end up doing: getting dressed up in new outfits, messing around with a bunch of new gadgets, and making no sense at all. And she did it again, Hallowe’en.”

  “What: ‘she did’?” Dell’Appa said.

  “With the toilet paper,” Brennan said. “Doug goes off to work this particular morning, just before Hallowe’en, and I guess it seemed safe enough. Laura’s acting normal, right? Normal as she ever does. She’s making breakfast for the kids, and they’re all excited, like little kids always get ’fore Hallowe’en, about what they’re gonna be, what they’re gonna go as, how they’re gonna be dressed up when they go out Hallowe’en—nothing wrong with that. So Doug goes out, gets in his car, and he goes off to his office. And he puts in his regular day’s work, prolly makes thirty grand, maybe forty; goes from there to the gym, works out an hour. Then he showers, gets dressed, and goes home. Where he gets a little surprise. The big red maples, both sides of the driveway, the shrubs and the dogwoods, all that stuff? Every single tree, every single shrub, every single anything that’s in that goddamned yard and’s got a branch on it that isn’t right down on the ground: every goddamned one of them is draped with toilet paper.”

  “Toilet paper,” Dell’Appa said, “hanging from the trees and stuff?”

  “You got it,” Brennan said. “Seems that after Doug left for work, Laura and the kids got so interested, talking about the costumes that she’s making for the three of them, just the kids, now for Hallowe’en—so far as I heard, I don’t think Laura’s planning to go out with them wearin’ a tall, pointy black hat and a long pointy nose, ridin’ on a carpet-sweeper or something, although I could be wrong on that—that they lose all track of time and the kids miss the school bus. Well, two of them miss the school bus and the other one misses the kindergarten minivan. So Laura has to take them. In her new BMW wagon.”

  “Hey,” Dell’Appa said, “nice, but nice. That’s a pretty pricey item.”

  “I’m here to tell you,” Brennan said, “it lists for over forty grand there, and by the time you get through adding on the sales tax and the luxury and all that other crap, you’re gettin’ a lot closer to fifty’n I’d feel comfortable being. Where the cars’re concerned, well, it isn’t like it is with the boats, with Dougie; where cars’re involved, Doug doesn’t stint.

  “But it’s really kind of funny, you know? How often those kids of theirs’re missing buses alla time now, since Doug bought it. When Laura had the Audi sedan, the kids never had this trouble. The buses came at the same times—nothing’s changed on that. And Laura back then always had the kids all ready, waiting for their rides. No big deal. But since the Bimmer comes her way, well, nobody can get started now in time to catch their bus. My own suspicion is—I don’t mind telling you this; I would not say it to Doug—that once they really did miss the buses; the first time, they actually did. So that time it was legit. Laura really hadda do it; she didn’t have a choice. But then, she did it that time, my guess is that she happened to spot someone that she really doesn’t like, looking that new car over and getting the old slow-burn on. I mean: really jealous. Eating their belly out. And that’s where this all comes from.

  “I don’t mean that it’s just Laura,” Brennan said. “That’s not what I’m saying to you here. It’s all women. Women in general. Women’re really mean like that, much worse’n we are, about those kinds of things. They’re much quicker to notice it when something that they’re doing, that they’ve got a perfect right to do; something that nobody’s got any right to stop them from doing; but just the same there really isn’t any need for them to be doing that particular thing right then, and that particular thing at that particular point in time—putting makeup on, but doing it right at the table in the restaurant, maybe, instead of going to the ladies’ room—is really getting on someone’s nerves? It’s really getting their goat. Well, a woman’ll notice that, always. And the minute, hell, the second, that she does, bang, that’s it. She’s gonna do it some more. A lot more. Even if she’s finished, and doesn’t need to, do it any more. If it’s the lipstick-and-makeup thing, she’s gonna put on so much of it, and screw around with it so long, that if you timed her without seeing what it really was that she was doing, you would think that she was grooming a big old poodle for a dog-show on TV from Madison Square Garden. Or maybe a whole horse, for a horse-show.”

  Brennan paused and reflected. “I think it’s because when a woman deliberately does things that she knows’ll really get on somebody else’s nerves, really yank their chain for them, there is usually not the slightest chance that the person that she’s pissing off like that is gonna say to her, like they would to you and me, and sincerely mean it: ‘Oh-kay, that creases it. If you do that once more, I’m gonna get out of this chair, which I don’t wanna do because I got my feet up and I’m all nice and comfortable, and I’m gonna haul off and hit you so hard inna mouth that when your first grandchildren start getting born, they’ll all need Polident too.’

  “I’m not talkin’ about the Buddies of this world here now, the Buddies that whack their women around for no reason. Or the hookers that fight worse’n men do, the street-whores protecting their corner. They got nothing to do with this here. What I’m talking about with respectable women like Laura, an’ it doesn’t matter if they’re black or white, is … I’m not saying they should get bopped when they deliberately piss other people off. What I’m saying to you here is that they don’t even ever get warned, you know, threatened, with a good shot upside the head, if they don’t cut it out and start behaving themselves. Not that either one of us’d ever do it, go ahead and actually do it or anything, hit a woman like that, I mean, but still, the way things are it’s not even something that they even have to even, you know, even think about. So as far as they’re concerned there isn’t any reason to behave themselves if they’re having any fun at all when they’re mis-behaving. See?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dell’Appa said
. “Lemme sleep on it, get back to you on it in the morning.”

  “Well,” Brennan said, “on their way to the various schools, Laura and the kids apparently see this house where there obviously lives somebody as nutty as Laura. And that other nutbag’d already gone and draped the trees all over with the toilet paper, and it took them awhile, Laura and the kids, to figure out it’s supposed to be, in the dark with some lights on it people’re supposed to think it’s Hallowe’en ghosts. In the trees, and they think: ‘Wow, what a real great …’ ”

  Brennan leaned forward fast in the seat and stared at the outside rearview mirror. Dell’Appa looked at his watch. It read 7:09. “Nope,” Brennan said, relaxing again, “that’s not him. I thought it was him for a minute, comin’ to catch the seven-fourteen. He’s done that some times. But today isn’t one of them, I guess.”

  • • •

  “Yeah,” Gayle said slowly, that night at the table, turning her knife back and forth beside her plate and frowning at it, drawing the word out as though it had been an extremely fine thread of some delicate fabric that would fray and then break if pulled too hard, “remember back before Roy was conceived, when we were still living in Brighton? And I was still doing my training research? Remember that patient I had? That mild mousey young woman from Everett who dressed like she was Miss Jane Marple in real life, and looked like her, too, even though she was fifty years younger, but then turned out to have that, well, rather unusual habit?”

  “Sure,” he said, “the cockgazer-spinster. Male subway riders were complaining. She wanted what she didn’t have. But, geez, Brennan? I doubt that it’s that. The old bastard does have four kids.”

  “Oh,” she said, “not penis-envy, no. Money. But it amounts to the same thing. His younger brother’s success is something he doesn’t have. But he can’t be jealous of it, as he could—and most likely would—if someone else had it. No, no. To disapprove of Dougie’s big money would disapprove of himself, if he did that. He’d be a jealous big brother. So instead he disapproves of Doug’s pretty wife—and I’ll bet, I would bet, his good wife’s plain, and he ignores her—but he puts it in terms of her conduct. And now even his mother agrees.”

  Dell’Appa didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, that could be.”

  “Now, Natty Bumpo,” Gayle said, slyly smiling, “wanna talk about how come he’s so glad to see you back from your wilderness days? Since you claim you mean him no harm?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said.

  3

  Late Monday afternoon Lieutenant Dennison had been careful in all respects. “No need for hastiness, Harry,” he had said to Dell’Appa. “No call for concern. Take your time. Proceed calmly. Be of the best possible cheer. People and things change so constantly, but so gradually, that when—heck, because—we’re around them all the time, we don’t even notice what’s going on until the whole commotion’s over. And then, when we start trying to figure out just when the whole rigamarole started, and what we’ve got on our hands now, we get slam-dunked again. Our watches’re no good. The calendar’s what’s called for. And when we do get the main time-frame sorted out, well, we have to deal with the inner clock.

  “See, while everything else was changing, so were we. We were changing too. You’ve been gone almost a year. A whole year that Bob’s spent adding to that file, Short Joey’s file. While you were out of here, loose in the woods by yourself, as far as he’s concerned—because you weren’t where you could see him, watch him like a hawk, and he wasn’t watching you, because he couldn’t see you either—during that year he was changing. Just like the file that he was working on was changing. And like you were, too, yourself. Independently of one another. So was I.

  “Well, there’s no need to get all lathered up when that happens, let alone when it finally dawns on you that it happened. Take your time. Like I’ve had to. Like we all’ve had to, one reason or another. I’ve got a brand-new house.”

  “What was the matter with your old house?” Dell’Appa had said. “The house in Canton, right? With the sunken living room, picture window, overlooking the golf course? One good strong lefty golfer with a nasty slice, you’re getting fresh air up the ass? I thought you and Tory liked that house. Never understood quite why, but I did get that impression.”

  “And you were right,” Dennison had said. “We liked it very much. But we don’t live in it any more. Because we changed. Or we got changed. Against our will. Amounts to the same thing, I guess, although I’d bet if it was your idea, you’d like it a lot better. Lemme give you directions to the Dennison ancestral home we now occupy in Westport.

  “You’ve got to bear with me now,” he had said. “This’s no exaggeration. Don’t get the idea that anything I’m telling you maybe ought to be discounted by at least a dime, most likely a quarter, even fifty-percent, maybe, off the sticker-price. I know how it’s going to sound to you by the time I get through: as though somewhere along the line I must’ve gradually begun to take leave of my wits. You may’ve been pretty sure we were on the same planet when we started out, but you’ll be absolutely certain when I’m finished that somehow I went into a time-warp you didn’t happen to notice, and we’ve come out in different spheres. The only reason you can still see me and hear me is because I did manage to insert myself into a geosynchronous orbit. But I will sound like I’m no longer on earth. Because that’s the way it sounds to everybody—it’s the way it sounded to me when it’d first happened, or I first began to realize it’d happened, and I tried telling it to myself—just to see how it would sound.

  “ ‘Well, no, it’s not actually our house. Well, it is our house, now anyway, but that wasn’t what it was supposed to be. It’s really just the way it sort of worked out. See, this house, where it is and all, this, well, it wasn’t our idea. It was never our idea to buy it is what I mean. Which, as a matter of fact, we didn’t, although we’re certainly buying it now and we’re going to be, and not only for the foreseeable future either; also for the unforeseeable one beyond that. Buying it, that is. For nine more years. At least. Heck, we didn’t even want to move into it, but we more or less had to, and now the reason we moved in, the lady we moved in to be with, well, she isn’t around anymore.

  “Here or anyplace else, really; we had her cremated and scattered her ashes on the wind, room-service, you could call it, for the Buzzards of the Bay, if there’re any still alive. Because that was what she wanted, and one way or the other, whatever Virginia wanted was what you always ended up doing. It shifted, of course, the wind did, while we were right in the midst of doing it, sprinkling Virginia, I mean, so some of her got blown back into our faces—ashes-sprinkling and -scattering. They’re like peeing, I guess: never sprinkle to windward; always sprinkle to leeward. Otherwise you’ll get a good faceful of the dearly departed. ‘Departing,’ I guess I should say, ‘dearly departing,’ and none too gracefully, either. Damned gritty customer, Virginia was, not only when she was alive and but then also after, especially after, we’d had her crispy-crittered. She did have that streak of cussedness, she did. She probably wanted sprinkling her to be a big pain in the ass, too. Just like she’d always been herself, at least when she had a choice. But it doesn’t matter. Not now, anyway. What matters now, when what we’d naturally like to do is move out of the goddamned ark we didn’t want to move into in the first place, is: we can’t. We might as well be in chains.’

  “Now you have to agree with me,” Dennison had said, “the whole story’s plainly preposterous. Completely true, in every respect, of course, but still: sounds completely preposterous. Prisoners. Of our very own house. Which of course it actually isn’t, never was and never will be, because it’s not a house we ever wanted. For a house to be your house, in the actual meaning of the term, it has to be, right from the very beginning, a house that you really want. And this one that we’ve got, we never did. At all. But we’re stuck with the damned thing, just the same.”

  “Cannon said it looks li
ke a horror-movie set,” Dell’Appa had said. “He told me one day when he had to do something in Pittsfield and stopped by for a beer with me in Northampton on his way back here. He said you and Tory’d had him and Jackie to dinner and it’d been a hell of a bad night, thunder and lightning, all that shit, and he said when he first saw that house: ‘I thought I must’ve taken a wrong turn along the way, and I was at the Bates Motel.’ He said Jackie said to him: ‘ “Well, okay, but just dinner. That’s all I’m stayin’ for. Brian may claim this’s Tory’s mother’s house, but I have seen the movie there, and I’m takin’ no showers in that joint.’ ”

  Dennison had laughed. “Well,” he had said, “I wouldn’t argue with him. I don’t agree with him, but I wouldn’t argue with him. To me it looks more like a big Mediterranean-seaside villa designed by somebody, some architect, who knew exactly what the classic design of that genre called for, and understood that his client had a very precise picture of the finished structure in his head, exactly corresponding to the classic design. So the designer, quite prudently, followed it devoutly, and no doubt his client was delighted. And the architect certainly was not.