Bomber's Law Read online

  Beyond Brennan’s left shoulder, entering Dell’Appa’s field of vision from the left, the sidewalk commuter procession on the other side of the roadway now presented among the almost-uniformed office-workers a man whose costume and behavior did not match the generic description. He carried an oxblood attaché case, the elegant two-inches-slim model favored by many of the other morning walkers, but he did not carry it in the same way. He flourished it in the carefree, loosey-goosey manner of an adolescent boy idly but still elaborately tricky-dribbling a basketball on his way to a playground court for a pick-up game of Horse. He swung it back and forth in patterns alternating between tight figure-eights and straight fore-and-aft arcs, each variation traveling about eighteen inches, first beyond and then behind his right knee. This required the other pedestrians to slow down and hang back to allow him to lead, or veer wide if they wanted to pass him, so that he would have plenty of room. But Dell’Appa observed no frowns of annoyance or exchanges of insults and gestures between the non-conforming man and the briefly-detouring pedestrians. Everyone involved, first in creation of the inconvenience and then accommodation to it, seemed to find it an ordinary, unremarkable feature of the daily walk to the 7:48.

  The unusual man also tried to walk with the loose-jointed gait that gifted young athletes either possess from birth or acquire by considerable practice, but he couldn’t bring it off, despite all his obvious planning and effort and someone’s fairly considerable expense. He wore premium-grade high-top sneakers. Dell’Appa recognized them as a brand of footgear he had seen aggressively and repeatedly advertised by relatively-young and highly-muscular, to-him-generic celebrities, during prime-time network telecasts of professional sports. They wore the sneakers and pretended to glide through heavy workouts while shouting provocatively, superciliously, or contemptuously at each another and also anyone who might be watching.

  Those lithe people on TV mildly annoyed Dell’Appa. They were apparently known and admired so widely and well (though not by Dell’Appa or any one of his friends; Gayle said he had only to be patient, predicting that when Roy was a year or two older, he would update Harry’s education much more thoroughly and often than he could possibly wish, “at eighty or a hundred bucks’ tuition per pair,” she said, “every time his feet grow another half-size or some kid who’s two years taller takes a rebound away from him”) that their full names, cavalierly unstated in the ads, had obviously been deemed superfluous by the sneaker-maker and his advertising outfit. This meant that the advertising people had talked the manufacturer into paying the performers truly enormous sums of money for the antic services filmed for the ads that in turn cost so much to broadcast. And those combined expenses of production and broadcast exposure explained why the sneakers had to be priced at retail out of the reach of anyone except celebrities so recognizably richly-famous (except by Dell’Appa and his friends) that they didn’t have to buy them; according to the sports pages in the newspaper, the sneaker-manufacturers who hired the scintillating people to make the ads also gave them carload-lots of the footwear for nothing.

  Which in turn meant that Harry was right and the whole exercise was a charade. The manufacturers had no reason to care at all what sort of people wore the sneakers out into the real world, what they did once they were out in it, or even if anyone actually did put on those fancy shoes and go out. For the manufacturers it would be perfectly all right if all the flashy damned things that were purchased for real money, or shoplifted out of heavily-insured inventories, remained forever thereafter in the gaudy boxes, shoved ’way to the backs of darkened shameful closets, so long as the well-funded escapees from reality and normally-functioning sanity in sufficient numbers first underwent mood aberrations sufficiently severe and persisting long enough to cause them to march in columns of bunches into mall-stores and cough up the listed prices that not only paid for the stars and the ads, but made the sneaker-people very rich indeed.

  So, while the man on the Dockett Street bridge wearing that particular pair on that pale, bright November morning certainly would not have been one of the typical buyers projected to the maker by the media-buy people who devised the TV-ad campaigns; would plainly never be able to enjoy whatever wonderful athletic advantages the maker had engineered into the footgear; and looked like a pathetic fool wearing it in public, all of that would have been a matter of complete indifference to the sneaker-maker. Either the feckless man himself had gullibly purchased the shoes, or someone whose reason had been overcome by generous love for the sneakered man (unless it was weariness of his wheedling and pleading) had paid over the cash for those cruel shoes, supplying the props for a pitiable show and at the same time making the charade a rousing triumph by giving the maker his profit.

  The unusual man lacked style. That would have been entirely bad enough if he had not been able to perceive it when he saw it, but he had an additional misfortune: he was just bright enough to recognize style, to notice grace and study easy confidence, so that in time he had come to believe that if he could learn to display those gifts in the same careless manner as the blessed who possessed them, he would then have the gifts themselves—and then he would not be different, at least not in the bad way, anymore. So he was trying to fake it that morning, as he had on many others and would on many more, and he was failing, as he always had and always would.

  He wore black, heavy-gauge, cotton-twill pants, baggy in the seat, and a blousy, bulky, black, tanker jacket showing a neckband teaser of neon-scarlet sateen, most likely a reliable indication that the jacket was reversible to red-flag to the whole world any in-your-face mood that might overcome its wearer. But Dell’Appa, his anger at Brennan now having receded sufficiently to permit him to think rationally about matters other (and more complex) than bashing Brennan in the teeth; having instantly perceived that this man, his short black hair graying at the temples under the White Sox black-wool cap shielding his happy face, was too white and too old ever to have been prudently allowed, “pastly, presently, or futurely” (as Dennison liked to say when split-infinitively-importuned “to just at least think, okay?” about a transparently-stupid, cockeyed course of action he had quite rightly just summarily rejected—by saying: “not a chance”—and would never authorize, “unless first overtaken by a fit”), by anyone who loved him to risk having any mood like that in a public place, now gradually and belatedly realized that the man was too flat-out handicapped as well.

  He was wearing that entire ensemble to the train-stop in exactly the same jauntily-hopeful mood that boys ten and under wore their Red Sox hats and jackets, and brought their fielder’s gloves, to see games at Fenway Park: so as to be prepared to step right into the starting lineup and serve, should some pregame disaster disable the whole team and require quick assistance from the foresighted boys, to avoid the otherwise-assured (and profoundly-ignominious) disgrace of forfeit (the boys themselves were fully aware that the fantasy was utterly preposterous and so claimed that they brought the gloves “in case of a foul ball,” not even risking the ridicule of their friends by admitting to indulgence of the fantasy, but in secret they harbored it just the same). The man was wearing what his wardrobe offered as his best clothes, and he was carrying the accessory that the other people, in their best clothes as well, recognized as a credential establishing that the person in possession was indisputably a competent adult, on his way to do serious work. In the similar but not identical, nearly-congruent, adjacent world where Dell’Appa now perceived the misfitted man really lived all his life, happy and content, everyone was about ten years old, at most approaching eleven, and he along with all the people whom he met each day in that world, on the Dockett Street bridge or anywhere else that he might take his private planet, would remain at that age forever. Which would be until the day he died, most likely smiling that same serene smile. “Is that him?” Dell’Appa said. “Is that guy there the guy, our guy? The retardate next to the curb?”

  “Yup,” Brennan said with combined grimness and sadness, “that�
�s Danny all right. You’re lookin’ this minute at the safest helpless person in the whole United States. At least ’til the day comes that Short Joey dies, Daniel Mossi’s as safe as an angel. And probably at least as happy. Anywhere he goes, he’s welcome. And everyone who knows Short Joey knows he’d better be, because as dumb as he is, Danny-boy can talk.

  “See, if somebody’s bad to him, bad to Danny,” Brennan said, “well, years ago, some guys were. They were making fun of him one day and stuff, and one thing led to another and the first thing you know they’ve ended up gettin’ him to take his pants off and go to the store bare-ass. There were these two guys, couple short-hittin’ DPW guys, common garden-variety bullshit artists, thought they were some kind of wise guys because they’d faithfully punch in down the State garage every morning, and then they’d adjourn to the poolroom in the Square and spend the whole entire day down there, gettin’ the taxpayers’ money to do it. They even had their own custom pool cues they kept there, ivory grips and plush cases, all that stuff. Far as they’re concerned, the Public Works there, that was just something they did every day, like havin’ a coffee before work, only they got paid for the coffee. But the poolroom was where their real jobs were. And then there was one day when that even bored them, gettin’ paid for hustling pool. So Danny comes in, and that’s what they did to him. With the pants, I mean, and I guess they come to regret it.

  “They’d already gotten themselves drunk on beer, this day when he comes in, and it’s just early afternoon. Women out inna stores, shoppin’, kids outta school for the day, all kindsa people around, your normal day, but in the poolroom I guess it was slow. No pigeons around they could hustle. So they decide that what they’ll do is play this little trick on poor old dopey Dan. Now keep in mind what I told you: This’s a good many years ago, before word gets around what Joey can do, what he will do if somebody crosses him, and also before Joe and Danny caught on. So, when these two guys, these assholes, start in tellin’ Danny if he takes his pants off—and this’s January, mind you, I think it was, good and cold anyway; no day you’d want to be out with no pants on, even if that was your ambition—and then he goes out of the poolhall, and down the street, oh, maybe a block and a half, to the newsstand the Greek used to run there, along with the Numbers ’til lunch, the Greek’ll be real pleased to see him. This is what they’re tellin’ Danny, and Danny, bein’ an idiot, somethin’, he’s believin’ this shit. They tell Danny if he goes in and shows the Greek his bare dick and his ass, the Greek’ll be Danny’s friend ever after. Give him Luckies for nothin’, Dan used to smoke those, or else maybe he was gettin’ them for Joey, I dunno, but they’re gonna be free from the Greek. The Greek’ll take Danny the ballgames. He’ll take Danny to Paragon Park, which was still open in summer back then—hell, still existed, too; now it don’t even do that anymore—and they’ll ride on the big Ferris wheel.

  “You can see what these two guys, these two assholes, ’ve got in mind they’re doin’ here: they’re insultin’ the Greek, usin’ Danny. Well, like I say, this’s all years ago, before Joey and Danny catch on that bad people will try to hurt Danny. ‘Bad people’: the fact that there’re bad people around don’t come as news to Joe, being as there’s some would say he’s already one of them himself, or gettin’ there, at least, and the gentlemen he works for are not universally admired. But the bad people he works for and is working to become one of, they are not bad people like these damned ditchdiggers are. The bad people that Joey knows, that always treat him right, they are not the rotten type of people that humiliate the helpless, mortify the weak, and really hurt the poor bastards who they know can’t hit them back. And Joey thinks, he is convinced, that that’s not the same thing at all.

  “Well, that night, after the Public Works guys do that to Danny, he goes home and tells it to Joe. How he did what they told him and went to the Greek’s, left his pants and his Jockey shorts back in the poolroom men’s room and went down the street in the daytime as bare as the day he was born. And the Greek went berserk, Danny goes into the store, his dick bobbin’ around and he’s freezin’. The Greek, he knows that Danny’s not bright, that he didn’t think this thing up. Somebody must’ve made him. So the first thing the Greek does, he gets a blanket from the back and he gets Danny all wrapped up there and then he calls the cops. To come take Danny home. And pretty soon, they do that. The cops come to the store and they see what is going on, and they take Danny home. But first they gotta follow procedure, naturally, so they take Danny down the emergency room, get him examined and so forth. Make sure he didn’t get exposure or something, and that nobody did anything else to him after they talked him into takin’ his pants off but before he goes out in the street. Don’t want somebody suing the City there, sayin’ the cops should’ve done something, they didn’t make sure he was all right. And this takes some time, naturally, like hospitals always do there. But finally they get all the test-results, and he’s all okay, and it’s safe to take Danny home.

  “So the cops do that, they drive Danny home,” Brennan said. “He goes in the house and Joe’s home, a cop goes in with him, and that’s when it begins: the routine the two of them’ve been following ever since the cops that day hadda bring Danny home. Ever since then, if you do something to Danny, that Danny doesn’t like, he’ll go home and he’ll tell Joe. And Joe will listen, very closely. He does not go off half-cocked. But if when Dan is finished and Joe’s got no more questions for him, if Joe decides he doesn’t like what Dan’s just finished telling him, what he says to Joe you did, or you got him to do, well then, the next Mossi you see will be Joe, and he’ll be in a really bad mood. Which is never a pretty sight, I hear. In fact what I hear is that if Joey’s really pissed off, it could even turn out to be your very last sight on this earth. The last thing you ever see.

  “Those two guys from the poolroom, for example: for some reason or other that night, after Joe finds out from Danny and the cops what’d happened to his retarded brother that day, well, it must’ve made him thirsty or something. So Joe decides that what he’s gonna do, after hearin’ that, what he’d really like to do was go out for a beer. And he just happens, you know, to drop in at that very same place where Danny was that afternoon. Reasonable enough, since it’s right there in the Square, short block or two from his house, and the two jokers from the DPW by now’re back from the State garage there, after their hard day’s work punchin’ in inna mornin’ and then out, in the late afternoon. They’re in there and they’re even struttin’ around a little, shootin’ their mouths off, you know? Proud of what they did to Danny that day, tellin’ anybody who’ll listen, and there’s quite a few in there who will.

  “There’s a lotta other people in there, in fact,” Brennan said, “when Joey comes in the door. And nobody bats an eye, right? Well, why should they? Joey comin’ in for a beer’s nothin’ outta the ordinary. It’s a regular neighborhood bar. No one’s surprised, they see Joey—he lives inna neighborhood, right? They always see him around. And where else you expect, he would go for a beer? Normalest thing in the world. And besides now, keep in mind what I told you: This’s before the word really gets out, and everyone knows what Joe does. Then it’s not like today, when he comes inna room, all riled up with the fire in his eye, anna strong men head for the exit.

  “So he goes in, like I say, for a coupla frosties, bagga chips and a Slim Jim or something. And those two guys, the two assholes from the afternoon, they’re in there. Well, naturally, one thing an’ another, they all say ‘Hello’ an’ ‘How yah doin’; ‘Hey, howzit goin’ there, huh?’ each other, including of course them and Joey. Why wouldn’t they, huh? Them and Joey, all say hello to each other. It’s not like they did something to him, they did what they did to his brother that day. Not the way that they see it, at least. Danny’s over twenny-one, isn’t he? So he’s an adult, way they see it. What they did to Danny, they did to him. He wants to do somethin’, to get back at them, well fine, then, let him—let him, and see how far he gets. But Joey? W
hy would he have a beef? They didn’t do nothin’ to Joey. The way those guys see it, they’re all right with Joey—never did nothing to him. All knowing each other like they do, all bein’ the same neighborhood. Hey, these guys known each other for years. And they’re talkin’ and so on, you know how it is, just shootin’ the shit back and forth, nothing unusual at all perfectly run-of-the mill thing, that’s all. And nobody’s paying attention.

  “And then, bang, that’s when it happens. One minute the three of them’re just standin’ around, like everybody else, drinkin’ the beer, just the usual shit, and the next thing you know, it’s the god-damnedest thing, the assholes’re takin’ their pants off. Right out in public, son-of-a gun if those two DPW guys’re not all of a sudden pullin’ their pants off, just as fast as they can, right out in fronta the bar. Alla customers standin’ around, men, mostly men, but some women’re in there with them too, and all them there lookin’ on, starin’ right at ’em, you know? And they get their pants off and then they pull down their shorts, and now they’re just standin’ there, their limp dicks inna breeze, like they always wanted to do that, what they just did, ever since they can remember. They always had a secret wish to stand around with no pants on in the neighborhood bar down the Square. And now there they are, they’re actually doin’ it, just like they always’ve dreamed of. But now it’s like that’s all that they knew—they dunno what they wanna do next. Everything gets very quiet.

  “But that’s when Joey says somethin’. He says somethin’ those Public Works guys. That nobody says later they could hear at the time, even though they’re all standin’ right there next to them, no more’n five feet away. But not a soul hears what he said. And then the Public Works guys, completely bare-ass now still, both of them go over the pool tables, inna middle of the room, and bend down over them, and they beg Short Joey, absolutely fuckin’ beg him, to take their personal, monogrammed, customized pool-cues outta the rack onna wall where they put them, and ram them right up their bare asses.”