Bomber's Law (37 page)

“Oh,” Dell'Appa said, “I misunderstood then. I thought you said that the reason you did this was because you were looking for more work. Second odd-jobs, to make spending money.”

“Well, I was, doing that,” Ernie said. “I needed to make some more money. But I didn't look at stayin' with Danny like something that would make me money. I looked at it more as a favor a guy, who needed a favor from me.”

“And who, if you helped him on this occasion, might find some work for you in the future,” Dell'Appa said.

“Yeah,” Ernie said, “that was what I had in mind. Sure. I knew why he was askin', could I help him out. There wasn't no doubt in my mind. Always before, when somethin' came up, after his dad went in the rest home, and he hadda go outta town, if Dan couldn't go with him, one reason or other, he would have Chuckie come over. And Chuckie would do what I did. Well, like I said, by the time he asked me, I knew about Chuckie, and he sure was not coming over. And I also knew that in the past there, him and Chuckie'd done business. Not partners exactly, but you get the idea. Him and Chuckie'd done things together.”

“What does Danny carry in the briefcase?” Dell'Appa said.

“That attaché case he has got, you mean?” Ernie said. “That little red attaché case he's got?”

“Yeah,” Dell'Appa said. “What's in it? He's like the Queen of fuckin' England with her goddamned fuckin' handbag that she's always got with her, and I don't know what's in that, either, and I'd like to know. What the fuck that Danny Mossi's got inside the briefcase that he carries every day.”

“I don't know,” Ernie said, frowning. “I never seen inside it and I never asked him that. Why? Why you want to know?”

“Because I'm the type of guy that likes to know things,” Dell'Appa said. “I just like to know.”

“Well, I can't help you there,” Ernie said, “because I don't know myself. I was just over there that one time, over there that once, after Chuckie disappeared, when they thought he went away. You know what I mean.”

“I'm not sure I do,” Dell'Appa said. “Let me see if I do get it here. What you're telling me, if I'm getting it right, is that Chuckie and Joe were a Frick-and-Frack combo. Partners in mayhem. A team. An underworld enforcement SWAT team. They worked for the bosses, principally Franco, during the wars of the Irish. When the dumb Micks forgot what the game was about—making money, not havin' gunfights—and got to dukin' it out with each other, instead, usin' sidearms instead of their fists.”

“What,”
Ernie said. “I didn't say nothin' 'bout that. I don't know nothing 'bout that.”

“Half-true,” Dell'Appa said. “You didn't
say
anything about it, no, but you do know all about it. Everyone who's been around since the turnip-truck rolled through last Wednesday knows all about what went on. The role Franco carved out for himself during the wars was the same as Switzerland's is in world wars: he was the neutral banker for both sides. ‘Whyn't you and him fight, I'll hold the coats, and then when you get through, heal the winner and bury the loser, all for a reasonable price. Namely: every last piece of the business you fools're fighting over, instead of running right and making lots of money.' ”

“I never heard nothin' like that,” Ernie said, shaking his head positively.

“Oh, sure you did,” Dell'Appa said, reassuringly, “and you also
heard, just like everybody else did, why Santa's elves'd gone to work out of season, the late winter of that year you stayed with Danny in the summer, and'd gift-wrapped Chuckie's head for PD Boston. Because informed and usually highly-reliable sources had it Chuckie'd been gettin' far too chummy and chatty with the homicide division. That he'd been whispering to a cop who was a cousin of his about some of the Irish lads that Chuckie didn't like himself—hated actually, competitors of his loan-sharking business—but Franco wouldn't let him put them out of business—and also out of life, as well, while he was at it. So Chuckie's idea was to have his cousin the cop do the dirty work for him, getting rid of his rivals for him without getting Franco mad at him at the same time. I suppose when Franco found out what skulduggery Chuckie was up to he must've been annoyed. Probably thought it wouldn't be too good for his own business, word got out that one of Franco's bone-breakers was collaboratin' with the cops about some of Franco's own payin' clients. Trading with the enemy, they would've seen it as; a clear breach of neutrality there. So Franco told Joey to scrag his friend Chuckie, and present his head, but no longer talkin', to all Chuckie's friends at the cop-house. And Joey, reliable like always, did as he was told and knocked his pal off.”

“I still don't believe that,” Ernie said. “You can say it as much as you want to, all right? I still don't believe he would do that.”

“Okay,” Dell'Appa said, “still perfectly fine by me. You can believe whatever you want, no matter how silly it is. How long did Joey stay gone when he went, while you stayed with Danny ten years back?”

“Little over a week or so, I guess,” Ernie said. “I'm not really sure now, it's so long ago, but a week or ten days or so, in there. I got used to it pretty fast, goin' there when I got through work, gettin' up with Danny, the mornin', makin' sure he made work on time, and then goin' home, back to bed. It wasn't like I'd like to be doin' it alla the time, but still, I didn't mind doin' it there.”

“And did Joey give you some more jobs?” Dell'Appa said.

Ernie became uneasy. He frowned again, shifted in the chair, straightened up and folded his hands in his lap. He nodded. “Well, yeah, I guess you could say that. It wasn't as though he got me new jobs, but when he had somethin' that might be worth money, a way to make money, he'd let me in on it there.”

“Sure,” Dell'Appa said, “because now he trusted you now, now that you took care of Danny. He did trust you, too, didn't he?”

“Well, jeez, I mean, sure, ‘trusted me,' ” Ernie said. “But not just because I stayed with Danny. He wouldn't've asked me to stay with Danny, he didn't, like,
know
me, and trust me some first.”

“Sure,” Dell'Appa said, “and the reason he trusted you first like that, right off, was because you'd come to him recommended. He knew you were workin' for Reno. And Reno was Chico's own personal laundry-man, Chico's own currency-washer. Chico washed off his dough in the cab-fare deposits that Reno made at his bank there.”

“I dunno that,” Ernie said. “I never knew nothin' like that.”

“Yes you did,” Dell'Appa said. “You knew it just as well then and you know it just as well today as you know that I'm sittin' here, this very minute right now. That was why Joey trusted you, right from the start, and why you did what Joe wanted done. Because your boss was Reno, and his boss was Chico, and Franco was Chico's boss, right? And Franco directly, no middleman, Franco was Joey's boss, too. So when Chico'd vouched for you, when your dad went to jail—for not squealin' on Chico, among other things, just like you've been refusing to do for all of these past fifty-three days, carryin' on the honored family tradition here in upstanding praiseworthy fashion—well then, Reno hired you on the spot. Which in turn meant that when Franco's guy, Joey, needed a trustworthy kid, to stay with his brother a while, while Joe went on loan out to Gary, Indiana, to kill a nice fellow there. Guy by the name of Walter Biowker who presented some serious logistical problems to the local hierarchy desiring him to be dead. Walter knew all the local stone-killers on sight, also by habit and method, having done some of that type of work his own self, so setting him up to be get slain, as they say, was no simple task for house-bound. That was why Outta-town Joe hadda go, or someone like Joe in that line of work that Walter'd never worked with, so his face and his work wouldn't be so familiar to Walter that he'd head for the high timber as soon as he spotted the guy coming towards him. Joey said fine, but he'd need a kid who could keep an eye on his brother. Franco told Joey that Chico had someone, a kid that he'd put in with Reno, and Reno'd said he's all right, he'd done good. And Chico's kid Reno'd said that about, well, that had to've been you, didn't it? Sure it did, no one else even came close: faithful Ernie,
none other than you, you were that trustworthy lad, unlaid hack of the woebegone countenance. So now, all right? Tell me, quit horsin' around here, what business did Joe send your way, after you'd served him well too?”

“
Nothin'
, I told you,” Ernie said, “I already told you that: nothin'. I never went on jobs with Joe. If Joey was even, doin' jobs there, if he was goin' on jobs when I knew him. I never knew nothin' 'bout that. You got to believe me on that.”

“I don't
got
to believe you,” Dell'Appa said, “and I
don't
believe you, either. You're fuckin lyin' to me. Think you're blowin' smoke right up my ass. Somehow you managed to get the idea you can do that, you can fuckin' lie to me, and so somehow I got to convince you right here and right now, you got your head right up your ass. So let me try this out on you here, and see if it changes your mind: tomorrow morning I'm gonna show up in Ev Rollins's law office, all right? I'm gonna have with me a piece of paper that says
subpoena
on it. Meaning: ‘get your buns in before the grand jury in Boston; they wanna hear what you've got to say.' And also says:
duces tecum.
Little more of that Latin for you there; what it means, it means ‘and bring all your papers in with you; they wanna look those over as well.' And lastly it will say:
forthwith.
Meaning: ‘right now, so haul ass, babycakes; we're not waitin' for you to “lose” any your things, our truck's backed up outside, your door. I talked to Ernie yesterday, we had a lovely chat, and he told me some things that made me stop and think. If what this young man says is true, about you and Joe Mossi—and it sure sounds to me like it is, at this point—you should not be permitted to course dogs at licensed pari-mutuel meetings, much less hold a license to practice law in Massachusetts. And that's just for openers. You could very well be facing jail.'

“That's what I'm gonna say to him, Ernie, very first thing in the morning. All of that clear to you so far?”

Ernie licked his lips again and looked away from Dell'Appa. Dell'Appa deliberately raised his left arm, shot his left cuff, and started the stop-watch again.

“Well, I don't know as you could say that he actually
said
it,” Dell'Appa said. “Didn't say it to me, at least—I happened to be the only person who was in the room with him at the time when he made the sounds, and I certainly heard what he said, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say it was really directed at me. He wasn't looking at me when he made them, the sounds he was making …”

“… yes, those noises that did happen nonetheless to be recognizable English words,” Dennison said, “which was probably not by coincidence; we most likely shouldn't over
look
that here, I think.”

“Oh yeah,” Dell'Appa said, “they were words, too, all right, they were words. No question of them being that. But when he uttered them he was gazing off into the distance. It was more like he was thinking
out loud, sort of talking to himself, in some kind of a reverie, you know? Even though there was someone else there, even though I was also there with him.”

“Well, okay,” Dennison said, “I'm not sure I follow, but what was it you heard him say then? In this trance-state you'd put him into?” Dennison, arriving home about twenty minutes after Dell'Appa had located the long maple-lined drive leading to the mauve villa in Westport, had gestured to him to wait in the Lexus in the cold rain until he had gone around to the back and opened the house. Then, holding the front door open as Dell'Appa parked in front of it and trotted up the two steps to the entrance, he had said they would “talk in the drawing room.”

“Gee,” Dell'Appa had said, “I never actually knew anyone with a drawing-room before. There was this kid in grade-school that I knew, had a hare-lip and a cleft palate, but he had corrective surgery and had them fixed. But, a
real drawing-room?
Wow, boy, I am impressed.”

“You can go and fuck yourself at your earliest convenience here, you know,” Dennison had said, ushering him into it.

It was about thirty feet long and at least fifteen feet wide, the walls and the high ceiling as well darkened by carved fruitwood panels two feet square, the floor dark parquet around the edges of an Oriental rug predominantly pastel-blue. They occupied matching navy-blue leather armchairs flanking a low cherry round table. In front of the table was a fireplace set into the inner wall at the center of the room. The fireplace was tiled in an intricate blue-and-white delft scroll design. There was a spray-bouquet of white stock in a white straw-patterned vase in the center. Across the room behind them there were tall French doors framed with dark-blue velvet drapes, giving out over a meadow sloping away from rear of the house. The rain off the bay of the sea to the south of Westport beat more heavily and steadily against the glass than the rain that had come in over the land against the window of the prison-chapel at Plymouth.

“ ‘You son of a son of a bitch,' ” Dell'Appa said. “And then he said it again: ‘You son of a son of a bitch.' Like some kind of mantra or something, something you'd hear an old medicine man say, one of those tanbark-stained, leather-faced, big-mother kahunas, some kind
of kachina-dancer, NBA-sized, enormous from where you're standing, on the ground, up on the top of his mountain, tilting his head back with his eyes closed, defying a thunderhead sky, long spear with white feathers at the point in his right hand, and in his left, a long, fat, angry rattlesnake, his shiny familiar, cellular-phone to the spirit-world, coiling, and poising to strike. And then when he's come down and face to face with you on level ground, he turns out to be five-foot-three and talks with a lisp. He tells you he bought his big scary pet snake in a joke shop; fuckin' thing isn't real at all; it's got a spring like a Slinky inside, runs on four double-A, alkaline batteries he hadda buy separately, ‘and were
they
a bitch to install.' ” He felt chillier than he had at the jail, and shivered inside his tweed jacket.