Bomber's Law (45 page)

Dennison looked at Dell'Appa and tilted his head. Dell'Appa smiled and shook his head. “What can I say, Brian, that you didn't get through just sayin', huh? This here guy, he really is good. The guy is the fuckin' best that there ever was, fuckin' best inna whole fuckin' world. When it comes to trampin' up dust, and layin' down smokescreens, I'll tell you, no one else I know even comes close, let alone anyone who can touch him, compete with him when he's doin' this. Bob Brennan can confuse obfuscation when he wants; he could murk up an enigma. When it comes to creating total bewilderment out of clear and simple reality, well, there's no one can carry his hat.”

“The fuck're you think you're talkin' to here, asshole college-boy,” Brennan said, growling, to Dell'Appa. “Who the fuck do you think you're kiddin' here? You think I don't know what you're doin' to me, you're kissin' the lieutenant's ass alla time here, ever since you come back this office?
Bullshit
, I don't know. I'm not stupid, you know. I know there's a knife right in my fuckin' back, this fuckin' minute, and I know too who put that knife there. And whose fuckin' knife that
fuckin' knife is. It's your fuckin' knife, you tinhorn cocksucker, that's whose fuckin' knife that knife is.

“I was downah Cape seein' Bomber, yesterday, and I told him what you've been doin'. And you know what the Bomber, what he said-ah me? He said: ‘
Bobby
, if I was still up there, you know … if I was still up there in charge, and I was still runnin' that show, that punk wouldn't be doin' this to you, he
couldn't
be doin' this to you, because I wouldn't've,
let
him do it. I'd've had him stomped down so fast he'd be buyin' used suits, get somethin' to fit him, second-hand-me-downs from circus midgets. They just never change, those damn punks never do, you can tell 'em the minute you see 'em, and the worst thing you can do is forget what you saw, when you saw them, the first time you caught sight of the bastards. Because every time that you thought you'd spotted one, it would always turn out you were right. And that's what it always did, always turned out you were right. Every fuckin' damn time. Every last fuckin' time.' ”

“Well, I think we've got to admit it, Harry,” Dennison said, “this gentleman's very generous. He doesn't just give you one
plat du jour
problem, either take it or come back tomorrow, he lays out a whole fuckin' buffet.” He exhaled heavily and looked back at Brennan.

“Now lemme see, Robert,” he said, “where
do
we begin? How to choose from this rich, varied offering? Do I say ‘Okay, so you weren't sick yesterday; all right, since we mustn't defraud Mother Commonwealth here—the old girl takes it so
personally
, you know, her own cops get caught breaking her laws—be sure you put that down as
vacation
, not
sick leave'?

“Or do I say: ‘Well, the insult's ingenious, ringing my ailing rabbi up at long-distance not only to endorse your anger at me but to voice as well his own, and very personal indeed, denunciation of me, using you as his proxy'? Or then again, perhaps, I should choose simply to state the most obvious and egregious among the several scurvy and offensive insubordinations you've just managed to commit all at once, in a bunch, and just tell you to your face that your blasphemy of Bomber is a sorry, pathetically-bare-assed,
out-and-out, fucking, damned
, lie, because anyone who's been in touch with him or with his daughters or his wife since a year ago Thanksgiving—as I have, every week, not that I'm the only one—knows our estimable mentor's been in la-la land since then, as vacant and as cuckoo as the
purest of the blessed angels in the sky. And the fact that I know why you fabricated that mean and contemptible lie—abject, guilty desperation—doesn't mitigate its nastiness at all; it's men who act like you just did who given self-pity a bad name.”

Brennan did not say anything. His face had flushed, gradually becoming dark red, but his gaze did not waver from Dennison's face. “Cut the shit, Lieutenant, all right?” he said in a low voice; it was under his control and did not tremble. “Whaddaya say we quit fucking around here and just get to the fuckin' point, huh? Save everyone's time in this thing, and a whole lot of damned aggravation. You want my badge, my friend? You
got
my badge, my friend. Have someone add up, I've got coming to me, vacation built-up, the bonus for the sick-leave that I never took much of—in all the years I been here I might've taken ten days, max—and I'll go outta here today, retire on terminal leave. You want me out? Okay, I'll clear out, see if some other outfit can still find some use for me, man with the experience I've got, 'sides the AARP, or the Hair Club for Men.”

Dennison and Dell'Appa looked at each other and shook their heads almost simultaneously. Dennison focused his eyes on his hands on the top of his desk and frowned, shaking his head again. He looked up at Brennan. He cleared his throat. “Bob,” he said, “we've had our differences in the course of working together many years. Would've been a miracle if we hadn't, I suppose, two men with such very different styles, different ways of looking at things and different ways of going about them, thrown in together as long as we have been, over twenty years. But good Christ, man, as many times as I could've throttled you; and as many times, I'm sure at least as many, as you were tempted to use your service revolver to persuade me of your point of view, overcome my stubborness; and as hard as it must've been for you, when I succeeded Bomber in this job I know you wanted …”

“More'n ‘wanted,' ” Brennan said. “I was also told, I was fuckin' all-but-
promised
, by two people over Bomber, that when he took retirement I'd be next line for this job. And I would've had it, too, if this AG and this governor hadn't been so damned determined to just throw out all the tried-'n-true ways that've worked for generations, and the men who've worked with them, all the men who've made them work and were the reason that they did, and just turn the whole
division over to the punks like him.” He jerked his head at Dell'Appa, then fixed his eyes back on Dennison.

“They didn't pick you because I did anything wrong, or there was something bad in my record. They did it because there was one thing you did so much better'n I did that I couldn't compete with you on it, and I wouldn't've if I could have—kissing civilian, executive asses. The way I was trained in this job, the way that Bomber trained me, I was trained that this is a paramilitary operation that we're involved in here every day, and that we're a kind of domestic soldier, and that's why we behave like soldiers do: because that's what we are.

“Now I know that a lot of asses get kissed and sucked-on in the military, too, especially in peacetime, and I know that pretty often that's what pays off there, but I know too what I was told: it wasn't going to happen here. This was going on merit only, strictly merit, all the way. Wasn't one man, told me that, two men told me that. It was even in the papers, inna gossip columns there, all the inside-political stuff there, that I was the one next in line for this job when the Bomber finally stepped down. And then he did, and it was time, the time'd come for them to do it, to deliver on what they said, give it to me, and what did they do then? They turned around and fucked me, up the front and down the back. That was what they did to me, those dirty rotten bastards: they gave me a royal fucking, fucked me right up the fucking ass.

“Okay, that's the history lesson. That's how we all got here today, in our places here. So here I am, and there you are, with your little stooge here nodding, every word you say, logging-in his smoochies now, so that when you retire, he'll take over your place here and get his own ass kissed, by his own seven dwarfs. I sit here and you guys can double-team me all you want, pound me to a fuckin' boneless bloody pulp, and there isn't one damned thing on this whole fuckin' earth that I can do about it. What a thing to have to say, after all the years of being what I've been in this outfit, what a fuckin' thing to say, fuckin' thing to have to say.”

He took a deep breath. “So, that's what I am telling you, you see what I'm saying? I didn't think you'd do it to me, when you got the job. I saw the possibility, sure, I saw it there, that you'd get rid of me, but somehow I thought: ‘Brian? Nah, Brian's bigger'n that. He wouldn't do that to me. He would not do that to anybody, Brian and
me maybe don't always get along, okay, but Brian wouldn't do a thing like that. Brian is a man.'

“Well, was I ever fuckin'-wrong on that one. There is one I booted, if you want to add those up, and you won't need all your fingers, my mistakes in all these years; I booted that one good, kicked it clear to Mars, when I predicted what you would and wouldn't do, because of what I thought you were, kind of man you were. You're doin' it in spades. Well, Jesus, okay, then I'm fucked then. Go ahead and do what you wanna do, willya? Heave me in the fuckin' street, if that's what you're gonna do: ‘Many thanks, all your hard work. Now please go and fuck yourself.' I can't stop you and I know it, and you know I know it. I can't even make it hard for you—you're the man who's got the power. You've got the power now. But for Christ sake, get it over with. Take the money and go home. You won. You had the cards.”

Dennison sighed. He looked at Dell'Appa. “I don't seem to be getting through, Harry,” he said. “You wanna give it a try?”

“No,” Dell'Appa said.

“Look,” Dennison said, “try to think of that suggestion as a direct order, a command delivered by a superior officer. Does that help you to gain a better perspective on it?”

Dell'Appa nodded and exhaled. “I hadn't looked at it from that angle, sir,” he said. “Yes, sir, I will give it a shot.” He shifted in his chair so that he faced Brennan. “I know you know 'em, Bob, your rights, so I'm not gonna Miranda you here unless you make me do it. I've got a form you can sign that'll do it, take care of it, and that'll spare both of us the humiliation of me telling you that you've got
this
right, and
that
right, and then some more rights, after those rights, and you know something? I would appreciate it. I know you don't like me, and you know I don't like you, so there is one thing we agree on, and considering the big bagga shit we're both in here, that we've got ourselves in, that's really not such a bad start. In fact, it's damned miracle. So whaddaya say, sign the form?”

Brennan stared at him the way a middle-aged man contemplates the young gum-chewing technician named Tricia who is about to tell him how to arrange himself for the trip through the CAT-Scanner cylinder. “You know,” he said, softly in a sorrowfully-reflective tone of voice, “when you first come in here, kid, I thought that you had
some promise. A whole lotta promise in fact. Like I always did with alla the young guys, most of the young guys come in. ‘Hey, so he's young, can't hold that against him. You also were young once yourself. He maybe knows something, you didn't notice, didn't happen to catch your attention, you could end up, you learn somethin' from him, somethin' that you didn't know.'

“And that's the attitude I always took, well, attitude that I
triedah
take, anyway, with alla the new kids come in, all of the time I was here, ever since
I
first come in. But Jesus H. Christ, you made it impossible. I couldn't do that with you. You were all over the whole fuckin'
lot
here, into
this
, into
that
, and then it would be somethin' else. I couldn't keep up with you there. I say to myself: ‘Jesus H. Christ, who is this fuckin' kid? How'd we ever get by without him? And what makes him think that we didn't, we never got anything done, until he comes through the door and saves us?

“Because Jesus Christ, that is how you were, then. That's how you acted back then, and that wasn't that long ago, either. So, that was the sequence, at least for me, at least as far as I'm concerned, how the two of us there got wrong-footed. You first come in, you're like everyone else; you're someone I don't even know. What I hope is I'm gonna at least like you some, that we will at least get along. Because, after all, I don't wanna get married, you—I'm married to Margaret already, and one Margaret's enough for me. I don't hire and fire here, can't get rid of you; I'm just one of the regulars, field-hands, myself. I got no power at all. I do what I do, and I go home at night, and then the next day, I come in again. Do some more of my usual stuff, kind of stuff I spent yesterday doin'. Because that is the job that I have. I think that's the job too, that you also have, and that you can't get me thrown out of. Well, of course we know that on that one at least, I make a small miscalculation.

“Well, hey, that's how you make reputations. Pontius Pilate may not've been that bad a procurator, we don't know, got no way of knowing, this late date, he got assigned to Judea. But, boy, look what happened when he got his big case, when old Pontius got his biggest case: fucked it up, major-league, big-time. Said: ‘Okay, my finding is: Rome's got no beef with him. That means that I turn him loose here. But, all of you Jews there, you want him, you got him. Take Jesus and
get the fuck out of here, all right? I'm sickah wastin' my time with this shit, all these petty damned argments you got. Now get him the fuck out of here.' And that's the end of old Pontius there, far as the history books go. That guy is finished,
kaput
and road-kill, kiss his sorry ass good-bye one last time.

“But anyway, chances are, when you first come in here, I'm gonna work with you here. I'm not gonna have any choice, if somebody's brought you in, right? And, life is easier, I always believe, if all of the people who work in one place can get along with each other, you know? If they can just get along.