Bomber's Law (23 page)

“ ‘But, and this was the problem, it still didn't matter. It wouldn't. And you could see that, right then, that same night. The body still wasn't big enough for the work he wanted to do, and it was never gonna be, either. He couldn't've been much more'n, I'd say, five-eight, maybe nine inches, but that would've been the maximum. He wasn't no five-foot ten-inches tall, no matter what they said. Which meant his arms, his reach, his fuckin' wingspan, it wasn't long enough. He did have long arms, sure. That's what they always said when a kid came up who had it in every other respect, had it in everything but his size, how big he was: “Yeah, but lookit his arms. Got arms on him like a gorilla. Knuckles scrape onna ground when he walks.” “Yeah, but that's not because his arms're so long; for this kid it's that his legs're too short—the ground's up too close to him there.” For the rest of him, the legs were, I mean. Probably his arms were about what you'd expect on a guy six feet tall, maybe a little more, but not much. Thirty-four-inch reach, say? Never be enough.

“ ‘So it was too bad, but it wasn't gonna happen, not even from Day One. He was never gonna have the kind of reach that'd let him stand back at the right range and fight light-heavyweights. Or a heavyweight, obviously, too. Not with a reach like that. Put him up against a guy just as powerful as he was, which the real ranked light-heavies and heavyweights were, at least back then, and most likely a real boxer, too, with two or three more inches of reach? Guy like that'd just stand back in the next town over and beat the shit out of him from there. The only way he'd ever have even a chance of beating someone like that'd be if he could somehow get himself in under what was coming at him all the time, and hit the bigger guy so hard before he could react that even if he only got him once the hands'd have to drop. And then he could just wade in. Not saying that that couldn't happen, or that it wouldn't happen, but not more'n twice. By then at the latest it'd be over, because the guy he met up with would've had a manager who would've seen this kid fight, and therefore would've known how to defense him: never let him get inside. And after that day, night, he would never get a rematch, because by then it'd be obvious to even assholes what to do.

“ ‘You see what I'm tellin' you?' Bomber says. ‘Short Joey Moss had one tough break: got born with a body the wrong size for doing what he could've, and he would've, done with it, if he'd've had the right-size one. No question inna world about it. He would have been a champ, champion of the world, wearin' that big Hickock belt with the diamonds and jewels on it—worth twenty-five thousand bucks, I think it was they said, they used to claim back then; that would've been, in those days, two years' fuckin' salary for a successful man—doin'
anything
he wanted. Just struttin' through his life, every day of it, for all the rest of it. People always would've known him. He would've always seen them nudge each other, right? When he came into a room.

“ ‘ “See that guy, just come in? That guy over there? That there's Short Joey Moss. He was champion the world.” That's what they would've said. And if anybody ever asked me whether I think now, seeing how he's ended up, what his life's turned out to be, all the real bad things he's done—that we fuckin'
know
he's done; we just can't prove them yet—if I think part of the reason might be that he got pissed off at God, or fate, or just bad luck, whatever did it to him, and
decided to get even? Yeah, I do think that. You can bet I do. That's what I would've done, I think; I think I might have gone and done something like that myself.

“ ‘So,' Bomber says, ‘if people're afraid of him now, I've got to think they're right. I'd look out for him myself, I was in the kind of business where I might piss somebody off who tells Joey what to, and who to do it to.'

“And that's sort of the way, I guess,” Brennan had said, “the way I've started feeling myself. That now that I've been watchin' this guy so long day and night like I have, and he knows it, knows what I'm doin' to him and not once's done something to show that it's getting to him in the slightest, I feel like I've gotten to know him a little, you know? Know what it is, makes him tick.”

“And as a result,” Dell'Appa had said, “you don't want to arrest him any more.” He had paused for an instant after he said that, but Brennan had not responded. Dell'Appa had sighed. “That's not a healthy attitude, Bob,” he had said. “That's not a good way to think.”

“Well, if you'd followed him all the way down there,” Gayle said that evening. “What is it, about, from Boston? Thirty-five or forty miles or so?” They were eating beef stew that he had made and frozen two weekends before, dipping pieces of French bread into the broth and washing the food down with red table wine. His general responsibility for cooking on the weekends had been among the changes they had improvised in the course of the western Massachusetts detail, found comfortable and pleasant, and for a while at least saw no reason to change.

“Something like that,” he said. “Little over, little under, an hour, the time you get out of the city and all.”

“Well,” she said, “I don't see why you're surprised if he made you right off. You said he's an experienced criminal.”

“Oh, he is,” he said. “Not a nice person at all, and he's been at it a good long time now. Been at it a very long time now, in fact, 'way longer'n Carson had the ‘Tonight Show.' Heck, if you count when he was breakin' in, breakin' legs, 'fore he moved up the ladder to doin' more permanent work that doesn't take as long to do—though the jobs can be, almost always are, a lot noisier—he got hired before Jack Paar was let go. And if anybody, any one of us—the good guys, I mean—during all those years could've nailed him even once, gotten him for even one of those, ah,
projects
he's completed so successfully, he would've been doing life by now. Maybe many lifes, on-and-after lifes, no question in the world. He'd have so many lifes even cats'd be impressed. So yeah, I would say he's experienced all right. Uh-
huh.
Yes indeed.”

“The projects being the people that he's killed on orders from higher up,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “He may've also made some people very tardy, meaning ‘late,'
sua sponte
, as the kay-jay judgie-wudgies like to call it, when they decide that if the court doesn't get cracking and interfere in the proceedings pretty soon, ‘on its own motion,' it's begun to look as though the defendant might actually be convicted.”

“ ‘Kay-jay,' ” she said.

“Bomberspeak for ‘knee-jerk,' as in ‘knee-jerk-liberal,' ” he said. “That's the contraction; full-dress is ‘kay-jay-ell.' Used to be almost an office password, back when I first went in there. Although now that I think of it, I don't think I've heard it once this time, since I got back. Not at all. Either the judges've shaped up or institutional memory's fading away along with the guy who invented it. One of the two.

“Anyway, Short Joey's got enough status, seniority, juice, whatever you want to call it—meaning all the people in his regional branch, including the ones at the tippy-top, 're afraid of him enough, as they've got damned good reason to be—that if he wanted to take somebody out who
hadn't
violated established policy, disobeyed official orders, ratted, mortified a caporegime or some other pompous bozo—moved the folding-metal funeral-chair and put his own car into the boss's favorite parking space on Richmond Street in the
North End or something—he could do it. On his own authority. Without any more approval than the common courtesy to mention to the boss the afternoon before the evening that he was gonna do it, that that night it would get done. The bosses generally not having been the kind of laid-back, what-the-hell guys who would've featured it if someone'd left them standing there with dumb expressions on their faces, looking silly, because none of them knew Rinky the Dink was gonna get dead 'til somebody let it slip later. After Rinky'd started to spoil. But as long as he didn't embarrass them like that, doing something only an asshole'd do—which he isn't one—well, everything would've been perfectly cool. They would not've ordered him not to; it would've been all right.

“So, we
think
—which means we're pretty damned sure, as sure as we'll ever be without a resounding guilty verdict,
and
a sentence, and him off safely rotting in the pentitentiary for his many wicked deeds—that he's done eleven guys in the normal course of business. Which would be evidence enough, if we just had some evidence, that he's been an industrious fellow indeed,
proof
he's not a nice person at all. But we also have to keep in mind that he could've done somebody who was dumb enough to hurt his retarded brother, or just pissed him off personally, say, and those decedents, too, casualties of any volunteer work he might've done, they'd have to be added to his Lifelist, as the birders like to say. And that he
would've
done some other somebodies, too, and did, most likely, I guess, if he ever got provoked. If what Brennan believes is true.”

“You mean the business with the pool-cues,” she said. He nodded. “But isn't that also in the files? That's what you told me last night.”

“Sure is,” he said, “but Brennan-the-guy-who-told-it-to-me's also Brennan-the-guy-who-put-it-in-there. In the files. Now there's no doubt in my mind that when Bob wrote that report, he believed that what he put in it was the solemn-gospel truth. And that, when he recited it to me today, somewhat, ah, what—
improved?
Yeah,
colorized
a little, like the old black-and-white movies that TN-TV shows now, all tarted-up, but basically the same story, that he still believes it's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean it
was
true or it
is
true, true when he wrote it down then, or true now, when he tells it—either one of those times. Somebody Mossi works for, maybe
Mossi his own self, could've made the whole thing up, years and years ago, and then when it was ready, put it out on the street.

“See, a guy in Mossi's line of work, it's to his advantage, have a lot of urban legend floating around out there in the world about him. How mean and cruel and absolutely merciless, how cold and relentless he truly is, when he goes out on a job. The more cheap hoods who get convinced, just by the gaudy patter, that anyone who happens to piss off a boss that Joey works for is as good as dead. The boss who can call up Joey if somebody hurts his
feelings
, forgets he's a man of Respect; or, God forbid, the guy who's stupid enough to piss off Pal Joey
himself
, well, anyone who does that should just go from wherever he is when he does it right on down to his nearest funeral parlor and ask for Salvatore. ‘Sal knows about these things. Sal's the man to see.' Pick out the box he likes best, to be laid out in. Sit down with Sal to work out how many nights he'll be waked and all the other petty details. Whether there's room left in the family plot or he should tell the wife, if he ever sees her again, to go down to the cemetery, buy another lot. And whether he wants that lovely young girl, Donna Ventre, that junior cheerleader with the gorgeous hogans on her from the parish high school, to sing ‘Ave Maria,' which'll be an additional fifty bucks on the tab, he does—no more'n twenty of it'll actually wind up in Donna's wallet, but that's probably just as well; she'll only spend it on cigarettes anyway, and ruin that lovely voice. Or if it'll be okay with the family, he thinks they'll be satisfied, if the song's just played on the organ at the Mass. Which is included in the hundred-twenty-five that you got to pay anyway, for the church.

“The more guys that think that way, the more wise-guys there are who're far too smart to ever fall for those stories about albino alligators in the city sewer systems, because they themselves,
personally
, 've never seen one, but're smart enough to believe a really scary story about Joe Mossi, because they
have
seen
him
, quite naturally the fewer guys there'll likely turn out to be who annoy the boss on purpose, bother Danny Mossi, or otherwise call Short Joe's attention to themselves.”

“The age of public relations,” she said. “We've all got to hustle, I guess. Even the murderers advertise. Do they have a rating code, maybe?”

“I don't know,” he said. “If they don't, they should. Three little revolvers next to the guy's listing, right? That'd mean he's the best in the business. Very expensive. No credit cards. Closed Sundays, all major holidays, except on emergency basis. No checks, credit cards: strictly cash, half in advance, unless you're a regular customer; balance payable in full on delivery. Extremely inconvenient terms for delinquent accounts. You get casual with this gentleman, he won't stop at just ruining your good credit standing and canceling all of your accounts; what he'll do is cancel
you.
”

“Is he?” she said. “The best in the business, I mean?”

“If he isn't,” he said, “you're not gonna catch me or Brian—or Bomber or Bob, as far as that goes—admitting it any time soon. For a good many years now he's managed to avoid every trap we've set up to catch him. So either he's pretty damned good or we're pretty damned stupid, and that more or less determines our opinion. Publicly we think he's Bre'r Fox.”

“Well then,” Gayle said, “if you have to say he's that smart then you have to admit he must be pretty good by now at such things as noticing when someone's following him. He could've just been watching in the mirror today for Bob Brennan, when by luck he spotted you. Wondering what'd happened to Bob, since he's been so used to having him around all the time. Like a guardian angel or something. Of course without knowing how many other cars happened to be on the road, besides the two of you, once you'd left Twenty-four, I don't really know … And then, when he didn't see the Blazer, but he did see whatever you were driving, however distinctive that might have been, taking exactly the same turns and everything …”