Bomber's Law (33 page)

“Yeah-yeah, go ahead,” Dell'Appa said. “Play the violin for me.”

“Bullshit, the violin, violin,” Ernie said. “Stick the violin right up your ass. You guys're makin' me
toast
, without provin' I did anything, even. The federal guys, they come down once a week, and I get brought up in this room. And who do they think they're foolin', they tell me they're doin' a favor, have me brought up here so nobody sees me, the guys onna tier, none of them know what I'm doin'? That I'm seein' the feds once a week? What is this, a
joke
, somethin', huh? I
tell those guys
nothin
', nothin's what I'm tellin' them, an' everyone in here, everyone else, all the other guys know it. Because if I was, I was tellin' them somethin', I wouldn't be still in here now, would I? No, I'd be back out onna street. Because what did they put me in for?
Not
talkin's what they did me for.

“I know all you guys think we're bad guys. Okay, so go ahead, think that. But Christ, that don't mean that we're stupid, we can't figure a fuckin' thing out.” He wheezed an imitation laugh. “I say to them, I told them this. I said: ‘Hey, we're not dummies, for Christ sake. You got us inside, yeah, we know you did that, but we didn't leave our brains in the safe-lock, we came in.'

“And then, what do they do to me then? They say: ‘Hey, that's okay, we know that. Everything's still cool with us. Wanna smoke or a Coke?' And they think I dunno what they're doin'? Shee-it. Keep me up here an hour, I'm not sayin nothin', I know what they want guys onna tier to think there: I'm spillin' my guts out up here. Well, I got bad news for them then: the guys don't. ‘At's the oldest trick inna whole fuckin'
book
, an' everyone knows all about it.”

He forced a laugh. “And now you come in here, now you show up. The Staties're seein' me too. You guys keep this up awhile longer here, CIA'll be comin' in too. I'll have to start holdin' regular hours, appointments an' stuff for you assholes, I get any more popular here. ‘Now lessee, on Mondays the Feebia's here, and Wednesday is State-Police day. So how about Friday, that good for you? I think I can fit you in then. You like mornin' or afternoons better?' ”

“Look,” Dell'Appa said, “the routine's pretty good but you're the one who's wastin' my time. It isn't me wastin' yours. I realize that you've got plenty to waste here, but I'm here to do business, all right? So let's see we can do some of that.”

“What: business?” Ernie said. “What the hell can you do for me? I'm here on the federal contract. They're payin' my room and board thing. They stashed me here 'Cause it's closer'n Danbury, any place else that they got, so it's easier to come down here every fuckin' week and bust my balls for me. Feds the only guys, can come in'n let me out. You, you're a State asshole, can't do nothin' for me. And that's what I just told you, all right? I'm not stupid, okay? I know some things too. And this thing's between me and them. It isn't between me and you.”

“We've been known to make a deal now and then, you know, pal,” Dell'Appa said. “Least you would if you're not really stupid. We talk to the feds—they talk back.”

“Oh, right, willya give me a break, man?” Ernie said. “Just gimme one fuckin' break. The only times you guys talk to each other's when one of you wants to fuck someone over but can't find a way to do it—there's no crime you can charge the guy with. And that's when you call up the feds, or when the feds call you up, and say: ‘Hey, we wanna fuck this poor bastard over, but we can't find no way to do it. We really don't like this poor son-of-a-bitch—see if you can de-ball him, all right?' And you do. Those're the times when you talk.”

“Jesus,” Dell'Appa said, “this's like trying to talk to a stump, for Christ sake. Who the hell do you think you are? Some kind of celebrity gangster, your life's on TV Sunday nights? Get offa the hopper, my friend. No one gives a shit about you. You know who up in Boston knows how long you've been in here—fifty-three days did you say? Nobody. You're the only one who's been counting. As far as the rest of the world's concerned, you don't even exist anymore. They've forgotten about you up there.

“You know what happened to you, little man? You pissed somebody off, back two months ago, made some busy fed take notice of you. That was one dumb mistake. Whoever it was noticed you for a day and said: ‘Hey, who is this little shit? What's with the attitude here? He needs a good kick in the balls.' ”

“Bullshit,” Ernie said, but his gaze wavered. “They wanted Chico and they thought, they thought I'd give him to them. Well, maybe they will get him, but they won't get him from me, and that's what they know now and that's why I'm in here now.”

Dell'Appa laughed. “Is that so?” he said. “Is that really fuckin' so. You know what you've got, Ernie? You've got the faith of fuckin' martyrs. Only yours's not in Jesus; yours is in your government. You really think that what they tell you is what's really goin' on? And that if it happens to be what is goin' on today, it'll still be what they're doin' eight weeks from today? Boy, the politicians must love you. You're just what they always hoped for: the guy who not only hears what they say when they're running for the office and actually believes it, but goes right on believin', after they're elected, that is what they're gonna do. Infuckincredible. It's a good thing for you, my
friend, you weren't born with a pussy, I think—you'd still believe that all the boys'll still respect you in the morning. You're such a perfect asshole you oughta pose bare-ass for the new proctologists.”

“Ah, fuck you,” Ernie said, moistening his lips and making small quick movements with his hands back and forth on the table. “Just fuck you and shut up.”

Dell'Appa chuckled a few times. “You know what you were, you jerk?” he said. “No, you're weren't always wrong. When they got you indicted and hauled your ass in, yeah, they were after Chico. They did have a hard-on for Chico, just like they still've got one, and sooner or later either they'll get him or else we will, and Chico'll go to the can. Well, fifty-three days ago, or whenever it was that they bagged you, one of those feds who's been after Chico'd had the idea you could and would sink him. As you certainly could, but as you've refused to do. This kind of disappointed the G-man, because if you'd've been nice enough to come coco with him, he could've closed Chico's file that he's bored with now because he's been on it so long, and start chasing somebody else. But his attitude now, since you've managed to convince him you're not going to help him out after all, has got to be: ‘Hey, what the hell? You win some, you lose some. It was still worth a try. And the guy is a stat, another sure
guilty
, to go in the yearly report.' He's working on some new approach, now; he has been for over a month.”

“You prolly don't even know what the fucker's name is,” Ernie said, frowning and using the fingers of his right hand to rub the tips of the fingers on his left. “The fucker who put me in here—you don't even know who he is.”

“That's right, I don't,” Dell'Appa said. “And I don't need to know, either, need to know who he is. Because I know
what
he is, and once you know that you don't need to know which one—they all think and act just the same. They're just like us, Ernie—we're all alike too. Everyone has to study the book, and then everyone goes by the book. Just like you guys're all alike too; you just go by your own different book.

“Your problem is that in our books there's nothing about being friends with people who go by what's in your book. So that's why you don't find us generally friendly, 'less you're being real nice to us. Your
teachers in Sunday School may've told you baptism put you on a first-name basis with Jesus. For all I know, maybe it did, and you are. But not where the feds're concerned, you aren't; He's got no reciprocity with them. If you're not helping them, as you aren't, then they aren't gonna know you from the next load of goats. They don't even know you as
Nugent.
You'd be lucky to rate a ‘hey, you.' You ought to be grateful they still come to see you—judge must've ordered them to.”

Ernie snuffled. He rubbed his nose with the first knuckles of his right hand. “You don't know, though,” he said. “You're just fuckin' sayin' that.”

“No,” Dell'Appa said, “no I'm not. You've got that part wrong. You're the one ‘just fuckin' sayin',' the one who doesn't know shit. Unless you're lying to me, of course, as I think you are, so you do know that I know, that I'm
not
just fuckin' sayin' any fuckin' thing at all.”

He smiled. Ernie's gaze wavered. “Sure you do,” Dell'Appa said. “What I'm telling you's the truth, and you know it is. It hadn't crossed your mind until you heard me say it to you, which was of course part of the reason that you didn't want to hear it. Made you feel pretty silly, right? This great pose that you've been striking, standing up and going through, real go-through guy for Chico, how impressed the feds must be? Pretty devastating, must be, realizing after all this time that here you've been putting on this big fifty-three-day act for a bunch of total strangers, and the no-good heartless bastards haven't even watched you, up there on the stage, since the end of the first week or so. Now you know where you lost your thumb; it was up your own ass all the time.”

Ernie did not say anything for quite a while. He licked his lips and looked away from Dell'Appa's face, glancing back at it every ten or twenty seconds, until he saw Dell'Appa pronate his left wrist and use his right thumb and forefinger to activate the stopwatch function of the Seiko. Then he fixed his gaze on the watch. Forty-three more seconds went by before he cleared his throat. Dell'Appa pushed the button to reset the stopwatch at zero. “I can't talk about Chico,” Ernie said. “I can't talk about him and I won't.”

“Chico doesn't interest me,” Dell'Appa said. “If Chico gets asked to the junior prom by anyone this year, it won't be me who sends his
corsage; that'll come from the Effa-Bee-Eye. We won't ask him to dance unless and until the Bureau says they've broken up, and everything's over between them.”

“Because Chico did stuff for my father,” Ernie said. “He was real good to my father. And also real good to me.”

“Doesn't interest me in the slightest,” Dell'Appa said. “Joe Mossi's the guy interests me, in the final analysis, all the way down the line. The meantime, of course, also who he hangs with, and what he does with them. Also: why. Everett Rollins, for instance. Ev Rollins.”

Ernie licked his lips again. “I'm, ah,” he said, “I'm missin' lunch while I'm up here, you know.” He jerked his head at the Seiko. “They got separate feeding times for us here, you know? We don't eat with the other guys here; population eats after we do. I don't go with the other guys in isolation, I don't get to eat 'til the next meal. I get pretty hungry, that happens.”

“Which no doubt spoils your memory,” Dell'Appa said. “Yeah, well: not to worry. I'm on good terms with Stan Graham down here, known Captain Graham for years. I've been in this hotel many times. So I mentioned to him, I reminded him when I called yesterday, that I hoped if we did hit it off, you and I, it wouldn't cause you to skip meals. He assured me it wouldn't, just as it hasn't in the past when I've interviewed inmates here before. They'll have a meal waiting for you.”

“ 'Cause I really
am
gettin' hungry,” Ernie said morosely. “ 'Sides, I would rather, I like to eat with the guys. No fun, eatin' alone.”

“Aww,”
Dell'Appa said, “and you see so little of all your playmates, locked up with each other all day and all night. Gimme a break, willya? You guys'd win an Olympic gold medal, if team-synchronized jerkin'-off ever became a recognized sport. This here, what you're doin'? It's much more important 'n tradin' your cookies, his cake. This's your future we're talkin' about. Precious days outta your life. Tell me a tale of Joe Mossi. Tell me what you know about him.”

“I still don't know what you could do for me,” Ernie said. “You didn't tell me that yet.”

“Fuckin' A-Y,” Dell'Appa said. “Fuckin'-A, I didn't do that. That isn't how we make deals. I do that and then I walk outta here after,
after you give me nothin', and you call the ACLU. ‘He said he'd get me out and then get me a pension, and make sure all my teeth'd get fixed. And a date with Madonna, besides. Sue him and sue him again. Make the judge make him get me out.' Right. Up yours, pal. You tell me what you've got that you can give to me. I'll think about it overnight and then I'll get back to you, what I can trade you for it. You don't like it? Fine by me. Rot your ass off in here. But that's the way the deals go down. Ain't no other way.”

“What I did was the night shift down at Reno's onna Lynnway,” Ernie said. “I was the night-man down Reno's, I went in there, 'Cause that's what everyone was—first went in, after he trained. 'Cause no one wanted it, see, eight until four inna mornin', on account of it fucked up their love-life something awful for them. So every time somebody leaves, one of the older guys finds somethin' better, gets called back on a job he got laid off of, maybe their wife gets a job so they don't need to work two themselves no more, well, that meant guys that're still there and'd been Reno's longer, all of those guys'd move up. If they didn't like their particular shift, see? The night-guy'd draw the early-shift then, come in four an' then he'd leave at noon, and whoever got hired to take the old
guy's place'd be the new night-guy again. It'd always been happenin' that way.