Bomber's Law (36 page)

“I don't get it,” Ernie said.

“No,” Dell'Appa said, “well, no, most likely not. I do go on sometimes. Only that it's now common knowledge and's been for several years that Chuckie gave what head he gave—the only one that he had on him, good head or not good, regardless—not because he was real eager to make such a contribution, but because somebody—someone that he knew and trusted, by the name of Joey—shot him in it with a pistol 'fore removing it off him. His head, I mean: removing his
head
off of him. But even though we've known it, and we can guess why Joseph did this, knowing almost certainly that we're absolutely
right, well, all the same it isn't quite what we've had in mind, and
have
in mind, to prosecute him for. And also, well … also because it doesn't quite suit our peculiar needs. We live to have at least one witness, indisputably alive, at a minimum, and ideally also a decedent for whose passing a reasonable jury can muster up at least a twinge of real regret, not one whose assassin they might be tempted to honor at a testimonial dinner. Chuckie didn't qualify on either count. Not as a witness, being dead, of course, but he didn't make it as a victim, either, having been a real bad boy before he got somebody mad enough to make him a real dead one. But pardon the digression. What'd Joey want from you?”

“You think Joe clipped Chuckie?” Ernie said. “You guys think Joe did that, shot Chuckie Damon inna head and then cut his head right off?”

“Well,” Dell'Appa said, “not exactly. That's not exactly what we think. What we actually think is that Joey shot him in the head, yes, making him terminally dead and
much
easier to manage, but not that he then
cut
Chuckie's head off—we think that he then
sawed
the head off Chuckie. With a small electric chainsaw—not as noisy's the big heavy gas ones—also found off Castle Island, hitched to what remained of Chuckie's left thigh with the same length of stout rope formerly connecting his much-meatier corpse to the cinder block tied to it, when it first went into the drink.”

“But him and Chuckie was
friends
,” Ernie said.

“Ah yes, my little chickadee,” Dell'Appa said, “but then, wasn't it all for the best, that way? If you were scouting around for somebody to shoot you right in your very-own, Sunday-best,
head
, and then cut off that head with a chainsaw, well, my dear fellow, whom would you prefer for such sensitive, delicate work? The next stranger you meet on the street, someone whose qualifications—his training, experience, neatness, originality, taste: my
God
: simply
all
of those things, so important on such an occasion when only the very best will do, and that only just barely—someone whom you know absolutely nothing about? Or: a close, trusted, personal
friend
, someone whose work you know well, whose work you've always admired, and who always takes infinite pains? Well, the friend, obviously, I should think. This's certainly not the sort of casual chore you'd want to entrust to some
short-tempered, slovenly, ill-mannered, fly-by-nighter who'd be content to do a slapdash, slipshod job that would embarrass everyone. Besides, touch-hole, do you think Chuckie Damon would've let anybody but a
friend
sit behind him in his car on any night when Chuckie knew, at least suspected, there might be a contract on him? Chuckie wasn't your garden-variety-asshole, you know, even though he trusted his pal and that was a big fatal mistake—he wouldn't've thought it was, at the time that he made it. But would he've trusted a stranger? I personally do not think so; I think that's why Joey got picked for the job.”

Ernie licked his lips and stared at Dell'Appa. A gust of shifting wind drove the gray rain harder and more noisily against the window. Ernie shook his head once. “Nope,” he said, “I don't believe it. Him and Chuckie was friends. Joey would never do that.”

Dell'Appa shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “You wanna believe Joey didn't shoot Chuckie, and then clothesline him with the chainsaw? Certainly your prerogative. Fine by me, absolutely. What'd Joey want you to do for him, right after they found Chuckie's head?”

“It wasn't
right
after,” Ernie said, “I didn't say it was that. I said it was
right around
, after, after they found Chuckie's head.”

Dell'Appa shrugged again. “Okay again: fine by me. We'll agree it was
right around, after.
Just tell me what Joe wanted done.”

“It was pretty easy, really,” Ernie said. “His brother Danny, the retard, he'd just gotten his job, inna financial district downtown. A month or six weeks before that. They were livin' in Roslindale, was it?”

“West Roxbury, actually,” Dell'Appa said. “Seventy-three Pittman Street, in West Roxbury.”

“Yeah, wherever,” Ernie said, “I guess you must know him, Danny, huh? You know him, Danny, the retard; the brother?”

“I've seen him,” Dell'Appa said. “Saw him taking the train one day, going to work, I suppose. His brother was shadowing him.”

“Inna gray Cadillac, am I right?” Ernie said.

“Inna gray Cadillac, yeah, yeah, you're right,” Dell'Appa said.

“Yeah,” Ernie said, “well, that'd be him, that'd be Danny all right. Danny's a really nice kid. Well, a
kid
: he's not that, I guess, older'n I am, but still he still acts like a kid, like he's still about ten—twelve years old. And Joey still treats him like he is—which I would guess,
far as Joey's concerned, Danny still probably is, always has been 'n always will be: kid brother younger'n him.”

“What kind of work does he do?” Dell'Appa said. “Cleanin' up at McDonald's or something?”

“What's that 'sposed to mean?” Ernie said. “I got a cousin does that, this pizza place over in Belmont, and she's happy doin' it, too. Geraldine's a nice kid, she's a very nice kid, and all of the people she works with, all of them really like her. Geraldine is a very nice kid and it's a nice thing that those people do. Lettin' her have a real job like that, that makes her really feel good, like she's a real person and so forth. Their pizza's still shitty, I never would eat it, but that doesn't mean they're not nice. They give Geraldine somethin' to do. She's still stupid but now she's happy.”

“Calm down, Ernie,” Dell'Appa said. “It's not supposed to mean anything except to ask whether that happens to be what he does. I know at least one of the fast-food outfits's got a program to hire people like that—that's the only reason I said that.”

“Yeah,” Ernie said. “Okay. No. Danny don't work for no restaurant. Danny works for the federal government there. Down there in Government Center, I think. Somewhere down in there anyway.”

For a moment Dell'Appa did not say anything. “Danny works for the federal government,” he said. “Okay, that could explain quite a few things, 've baffled the hell out of me.”

Ernie furrowed his brows. “Like what,” he said, “explain what? Danny works for the GSA there. General Services, you know? Building maintenance, right? Danny's a janitor, one of the buildings, one of the buildings they got. Sweeps the floors and empties wastebaskets; all of that stuff like that. They got one of those job-programs too, GSA does. Hire lots of people like him. Go around to the State schools and all of those places, they'll hire anyone who can work. Danny told me, that time I stayed with him, the ones that come out of the church schools, like he did, or anyplace private like that, they're much better workers, ‘because we're smarter,' than the ones that're in public hospitals when they were kids.”

Ernie paused. “I laughed when he told me that,” he said. “I didn't mean nothin' by it or nothing—just sounded funny to me, this retard braggin' he's smarter, 'n the other retards he works with. I shouldn't've done that, I guess. I guess doing it I hurt his feelings. He
didn't speak to me, rest of that mornin', but he was okay the next day—he can't remember most things the next day, I guess, the next day after they happen.”

“Good thing for you, if he can't,” Dell'Appa said. “If he'd been able to remember 'til Joey came back there, you probably would've wound up with a pool-cue up your ass.”

“You heard about that then there too, I guess, huh?” Ernie said. “Yeah, I guess I was lucky in that there. But I would still guess just the same that no matter how much braggin' Danny and his friends want to do, how they're better, they all must be pretty good workers. They must all do a good job, I guess. Even though they do really stink there. They really smell bad, you're next to them. I hadda go in there one day for a thing, one of the government buildings down there? I hadda go in and get something, an office on the eighth floor. And I went in the elevator just as they're all goin' back to their work from their lunch. Whole bunch of them got in with me. I guess that mustn't matter to them, don't bother them like it would me or you. But just the same, even if it don't, they're used to it so they don't even notice it, they still should give them clean uniforms more there, so they wouldn't smell so bad, I think. You get on the elevator with some of those guys, it's like havin' cat-piss in your bed. But, so, just the same, they give them real jobs they can do, and so what's the matter with that? What's the matter with them doin' that?”

“Nothin',” Dell'Appa said, “nothin' at all. Nothin' to do with Danny. But what was it that Joey wanted from you, if we can just move on to that here.”

“Yeah,” Ernie said. He resettled himself in his chair, so that the base of his skull rested on the top of the back of the chair. “Joey hadda go outta town, see? Had some stuff to do outta town. And … I dunno where the hell he was goin', some place out in the Midwest or somethin', coulda been it was Chicago. Anyway, Joey don't like to fly. This's just somethin' about him, he doesn't like gettin' on planes. So when he goes somewhere, has to go someplace, what Joey will do is, he'll drive. I guess he would probably take a train if he hadda, if there was one where he wanted to go and it went when he wanted to go there, but what he likes better is drivin' himself. That's the kind of a guy that he is. Gets in his car and he goes where he goes, and when he's through doin' what he went to do, he gets in
his car and comes back. Any time that he feels like it. So that makes him the one who decides when he leaves, when he goes, when he's goin' some other place, comin' back. No one else can decide 'stead of him. I guess he likes doing that or something.”

“A good many others do, too,” Dell'Appa said.

“Yeah,” Ernie said. He nodded. “I guess lots of people like that.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Jesus,” he said, “I never coughed so much in my life as I coughed since they put me in here.”

“You probably haven't been talkin' enough,” Dell'Appa said. “Your throat's gotten dry from not talkin'. You'd taken advantage of the opportunities, feds've been givin' you here, talked more about Chico, they asked you, this problem might not've come up.”

“Yeah, very funny,” Ernie said. “I said: I won't talk about Chico. I don't know nobody named Chico. Or if I did, what Chico is doin'.”

“Joey's the subject,” Dell'Appa said. “Chico is not our concern here. What did Joey want you to do?”

“Well, like I said,” Ernie said, “Joe said he was goin' away for a while, had somethin' he hadda take care of, and he was lookin' for someone to come and stay in his house with his brother. Because like I said, Danny'd just started his GSA job there, and he didn't have no vacation saved up yet, or Joe would've taken him with him. Because that's what they both always did. If Joey goes somewhere or takes a vacation, he always takes Danny along. 'Cause if Joey don't go, who's he go with? He hasn't got no way to go. Only this time, with no vacation, Danny this time can't go with him. So what Joey was worried was if he's not there, would Danny still get to work all right? And that's what he wanted from me. I get through in the morning to come from down from Reno's and stay inna house there with Danny. Set the alarm-clock for seven o'clock and make sure Danny got up all right. Make his breakfast for him and then drive him to work, this's before he starts takin' the train there, and then at night Joe had somebody else, a woman who lived upstairs from them, to make sure he got home okay, made his dinner and that stuff. He had it all figured out, so Dan would be taken care of.”

“And you said you'd do this for him,” Dell'Appa said.

“Yeah, I did,” Ernie said. “I liked the guy then—like him now. I had no problem with that. It was kind of a pain in the ass for me, yeah, goin' there when I got off from Reno's; sleepin' for maybe two
or three hours, then gettin' right up again, drivin' Danny to work. But from there I went home to my ma's in Revere and I went right back to bed there, so I ended up still gettin' just as much sleep, so it really wasn't that bad.”

“Right,” Dell'Appa said. “And how much did you get paid for this?”

“ ‘Paid,' ” Ernie said. “You mean: how much money did Joey give me? For stayin' with Danny like that?”

“Yeah, that's exactly what I mean,” Dell'Appa said. “What'd Joey pay you for doin' this?”

“Well, Jesus,” Ernie said, “Joe didn't pay me no money. This was just something he asked me to do, that I was doin' for him. It wasn't like, you know, I was
doin'
somethin', somethin' that was makin' him money, so I should've had a cut from it. All I did really, I wouldn't've done, was more drivin' I usually hadda. 'Stead of just goin' home I got off from work, I went down to West Roxbury there. And then I hadda drive back. But that's really all that it was. Just doin' a favor, a guy that I knew. Didn't call for no skill or like that.”