Bomber's Law

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, five 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.'