Bomber's Law (29 page)

Dennison looked puzzled. “Bob told you that?” he said. “Where the hell'd he get that idea?”

“From the tapes we've been getting, he said,” Dell'Appa said. “That's what he told me, at least. He said we finally got around to getting the bug in, after all these years he's been buying hot cars, and now we're gonna catch him red-handed in the act, put a stop to it once and for all. And what happens? Nothin's what happens. Now nobody's calling him up anymore, sell him Porsches so hot they're still smokin'.”

“Bob's not on that case,” Dennison said. “He's not assigned anything anywhere near it, not even back-up on that lash-up. Buddy
Royal's Cannon's case. Connie Cannon's got his name, John Finn helping him. And the stuff you're tellin' me Bob's tellin' you there: that isn't part of the case. That's just fiddlin' and diddlin', the normal, usual bullshit you'd get off of any businessman's phone line if you tapped into it in the lags between major transactions. Got basically nothin' to do with the stuff that we're after, the real meat of the case. But even if it was connected, that still doesn't tell me what the hell Bob doing's with it. He's got nothing to do with Buddy Royal. It's none of his detail at all.”

“Oh,” Dell'Appa said. “Well, I dunno then. All I know's what he said to me. Which at least sounded like he really knew a lot. Sounded very well-informed.”

“He shouldn't even've been monitoring those tapes,” Dennison said. “Hell, he shouldn't've even known they were coming in. You sure he said: ‘the tapes'? That he not only knew
about
the tapes and what was coming up on them, but he knew it
from
the tapes? It couldn't've been just some scuttlebutt he happened to've picked up around here, heard at the coffee table or something?” He paused. “Not that that wouldn't also disturb me, I thought Connie'd been being that careless, but it wouldn't concern me as much.”

“No, ‘from the bug' is what he told me,” Dell'Appa said. “He told me for a long time, good many years, everybody knew what this Buddy Royal guy was doin', takin' in hot cars for parts. But it was just that nobody seemed to have time to get a bead on him and croak him. Until finally Buddy's turn came, his number'd come up, and we got the mike in, and then, apparently just as we got it in, all his suppliers went out of business, all his buyers went broke. So as a result all we're listenin'-in on's Buddy's friends callin' him up and yankin' his chain—how his new wife's fuckin' every guy in Boston, and six or eight other towns too, all the way the New Hampshire state line.”

Dennison raised his eyebrows. “Okay, if you say so,” he said, drumming the fingertips of his right hand on the desk and glancing at the phone as he spoke, “but it beats the hell out of me where Bob got his information. Which is fortunately wrong, irrelevant, actually, but that still doesn't change a lot about the basic … Goddamn you, Terry, call back.”

“Why you need the Bloviator?” Dell'Appa said. “If you're getting what you went in for.”

“Because we haven't got enough yet,” Dennison said. “The quality's all right, really first-rate, nasty stuff, nothing wrong with it at all. But the warrant ends tomorrow night. So we need another one, right? An extension, I mean. Whatever the hell they call it. So, yesterday afternoon, when I find out what we're getting, which is what we went in for in the first place, the whole reason for this thing, I check back on the paper and find out it's dead at midnight Friday.
Ergo
, we need another one, and I call Terry on the phone.” He shook his head.

“Terry isn't there,” he said, “and this's not that late in the day. Three-thirty, quarter-four. Terry's secretary doesn't really know where Terry is. I can tell because when Terry's gone out to do something that he should've come back from doing at least two hours ago, she always says: ‘Terry isn't back from court yet.' Which is what she always also says when that's really where he is, and she knew he'd get back late. But when she thinks he isn't still in court, that he's wandered off someplace, she says it in a different tone of voice. She says it like she isn't telling you something; what she's doing's asking you a question. What she's really saying is: ‘I'm almost sure that Terry's having coffee someplace, goofing off this afternoon. But if I tell people that, even though they already knew it, and Terry finds out, he'll get mad. So if I say he's in court, will you pretend you believe that for me, please?' ”

“Jeez, Brian,” Dell'Appa said, “you're a hard man on a guy, aren't you, here. Aren't you the guy who practically made it a tradition in this place, that when the thing you're working on's started making you completely nuts, you tell whoever else's around to say that you're out doing fieldwork, and then you go down to the aquarium? Aren't you the guy who invented that?”

“Only the aquarium variation was mine,” Dennison said. “The original theme was by Bomber, back in the days of afternoon baseball when ballgames were feasible workdays. But I think the aquarium's better. It's climate-controlled and open all year, two definite advantages for the harried Boston executive, and I for one find it soothing. No man should go through life without porpoise. And anyway, when you've reached stymie on a thing, it helps to visit something, any
animal, that looks sillier'n you've made yourself feel. The Red Sox don't, anymore; all that bunch does now is look stupid. Penguins and harbor seals fill the bill, if an innocent free-play period's called for.”

“Well,” Dell'Appa said, “how do you know Terry hadn't come to stymie too, just like you have, so he either had to go fuck off or else check in for observation?”

“I don't,” Dennison said, “and it wouldn't matter if I did. Because even if he did have a good reason, he should've timed it better, for a day when I wasn't going to be the one who had to talk to him.”

“Oh,” Dell'Appa said, “now I get it. Yeah. Well, I can see where that would make a difference, now you've explained it and all, all of the ramifications. If your elevator's stuck three floors from the top, it's okay to go out and play—unless Lieutenant Dennison might decide to come looking for you. In which case, postpone it 'til you're sure.”

“Right,” Dennison said, “the whole secret here—” His phone rang and he seized it.

“Yeah, Terry,” he said, before the caller could possibly have greeted him or identified himself, “where the hell've you been?” He listened. “Never mind ‘the traffic this morning,' ” he said. “In the first place I don't believe you—I know very well what held you up was you overslept or you were getting laid or something. And in the second place, it was yesterday when I had to talk to you anyway, so where the hell were you then?” He listened again. “Okay then,” he said, “I forgive you. Not that I believe any of that cock-and-bull story you just told me there, but leaving that aside, what we need here's either an extension of the paper that we've got on Buddy Royal, or a new piece of paper entirely. The one we got now dies twelve-oh-one Friday, and we haven't got as much shit in our bucket to plaster all over the motherfucker's I'd like to have, you take it in before the grand jury.”

He paused. “No,” he said, “I don't care. Doesn't matter a rat's ass to me. If you think a whole new one'd most likely be safer, by all means let's get a new one. I'll send Cannon up to see you
instanter
, chop-chop. Make a new affidavit up pronto. Judge'll give you another closed session? This morning?” He nodded. “Okay then, good,” he said. “That's very good there. Yeah, I'll send Cannon right up.”

He depressed a different button on the console, lighting a new
line. He listened. He said: “Connie. Yeah. I got him. Just now. No, I don't know where he was. He told me he was at the Social Law Library, but of course we both know that's a lie. You ask him, you have to know. See what kind of answer you get.” He listened, grinning. “Connie, Connie,” he said, “you don't ever listen to me. I keep tellin' you, you aren't listening. You've got to stop, you've just got to stop, lettin' guys intimidate you just because they got law degrees. You got too much respect for attorneys. It's not healthful.” He began to laugh. “Corporal,” he said, “that is not language appropriate for use by a professional person for description of other professional persons, of either gender, is that clear? Correct. So, when you see Terry … yes, right now of course, go on up … correct, you are not to call him a cocksucker, 'kay?” He nodded. “Correct,” he said, “you can't call him that bad name either.”

He replaced the handset in the cradle and smirked. “I
love
this shit,” he said, “every bit of it. I
live
for this part of it, that's what I do. This's the part that I live for. Takin' down some guy like him. You get a guy like Buddy Royal, a no-good, scheming-little, dirty-pants, snotty-nosed
bastard
, thinks he's so goddamned smart and we're such fuckin' stupid dummies, we not only cannot catch him doin' what he's really doin', we're not even smart enough to know what it is? I
looove
takin' those assholes down. It's like havin' ice cream and cake.

“All these goddamned
years
he's been sittin' out there in that clapped-out, fly-blown shop of his down next by the railroad tracks there, laughin' with his good-for-nothin' rat-ass buddies at what jerks we are, and how he's of course immortal—
that kindah stuff pisses me off.
Especially since, as a matter of fact, in Buddy's case here, he was right—we couldn't do steam-shit about it.”

He nodded. He crooned. “Yeah? Well now we can. Okay now, Buddy, laugh your ass off, gloat all you want, but make sure you're finished in a couple weeks or so, the outside, 'Cause when the grand jury gets through hearing those recordings, you'll be on your way to the penitentiary, my friend, and what'll happen to you in that place you aren't gonna like a bit, not, at a fuckin' bit, at
all.
”

“What?” Dell'Appa said. “What's gonna happen to him?”

“Well, the usual thing, I assume,” Dennison said. “The usual
bridal reception and shower, daisy-chain and the conga-line the boss cons always put on, when the new baby fuckers come in.”

“ ‘Baby-fuckers'?” Dell'Appa said. “I thought Royal's a car-thief, a high-grade, superfly car-thief. Midnight Auto Supply. One of the best ones around.”

“That's what everyone thought,” Dennison said, now just smiling. “That's exactly what everyone thought. They thought it because while Buddy's a born-to-run sleaze-bag, Buddy Royal's clever, and that's what he wanted them thinking. Well, clever he may be, but he isn't as smart as he thinks he is, or he's managed to make people think. Put him down for just standard-bred cute.”

“At doing what?” Dell'Appa said. “If everybody thought he was dealin' in hot cars …”

“Harry, Harry,” Dennison said, “didn't it seem kinda funny to you, when Brennan or whoever it was first started tellin' you about what a car-thief Buddy was, and everybody knew it, that we hadn't been able to
catch
him? Considerin' how smart you know we are, and what public heroes this would've made all of us, if we'd collared one of those kingpins whose larcenous trade's driven everybody's car-insurance bills right out of sight? If everybody knew Buddy's doin' this, all these years, and if the Governor and the Secretary, both of those fine gentlemen along with the AG, too, would've had a simultaneous orgasm—‘The earth moved for
me
, dears; was it good for you dears, too?'—to hold a news conference the day we hauled him in in irons, why the hell weren't we smart enough to postpone catchin' one more boring drug-smuggler, which'll make us one small headline on page forty-six for one day when we pull it off, and put a full-court press on Buddy, 'til we had him in the can? Had his head on a pike. They would've given us a day in our honor, had a parade down Com Ave. for us, if we'd've done that for them. So why didn't we, then?

“For the obvious reason,” Dennison said, “and that's another rule I learn from Bomber: If you can't catch a guy doin' what you know he's doin', and you're satisfied you haven't lost your grip, then maybe it's because you're wrong; he isn't doin', mainly, what you think he's doin', only now and then.

“Mainly he is doin' somethin' else, which you don't catch him doin' 'Cause you never look for that. It's like the guy who went out
through the factory gates every Friday night for thirty years, pushing a wheelbarrow fulla straw. And every Friday night the same guard pawed through the straw and never once found a damned thing. So the guy finally gets to retirement age, and his last Friday night on the job the guard at the gate says to him: ‘Aw right. Tonight I'm not even gonna search the barrow. Just tell me: I know you've been stealing something all these years, what the hell were you takin'?' And the fella says: ‘Simple. Wheelbarrows.”

“Well, that's what Buddy's been doin'. Buddy does take stolen cars, and he does cut them up. And he does sell the parts, and that's all illegal, right. But the point is that Santa Claus, that lazy bastard, works about half as many days a year doing what he does as Buddy works at dissecting hot cars, see? Buddy's a chopper, yes indeed he is, just like the guy you knew in high school was the biggest swordsman. He's done it, yeah, but not often; just something he learned how to do a long time ago, he's a kid—now more like something he can do if he likes when things're slow—to fill up time. All the rest's talk: what he wants people thinking, not what he's got going down.

“All those parts,” Dennison said, “almost all the parts he had—and he had a lot of them, a real big inventory; always had plenty on hand—were perfectly legit, as more'n a couple of our guys found out when they busted in on him three times, Buddy splittin' his pants, he was laughing so hard, makin' idiots out of the cops. It's selling
hot
parts that's your felony, Jack.
Second-hand
parts, salvage and scrap? Why, child, those're perfectly legal.