Read Online Bomber's Law by George V. Higgins - Free Book Online

worse’n we are, about those kinds of things. They’re much quicker to notice it when something that they’re doing, that they’ve got a perfect right to do; something that nobody’s got any right to stop them from doing; but just the same there really isn’t any need for them to be doing that particular thing right then, and that particular thing at that particular point in time—putting makeup on, but doing it right at the table in the restaurant, maybe, instead of going to the ladies’ room—is really getting on someone’s nerves? It’s really getting their goat. Well, a woman’ll notice that, always. And the minute, hell,
the second
, that she does, bang, that’s it. She’s gonna do it some more. A lot more. Even if she’s finished, and doesn’t need to, do it any more. If it’s the lipstick-and-makeup thing, she’s gonna put on so much of it, and screw around with it so long, that if you timed her without seeing what it really was that she was doing, you would think that she was grooming a big old poodle for a dog-show on TV from Madison Square Garden. Or maybe a whole horse, for a horse-show.”
    Brennan paused and reflected. “I think it’s because when a woman deliberately does things that she knows’ll really get on somebodyelse’s nerves, really yank their chain for them, there is usually not the slightest chance that the person that she’s pissing off like that is gonna say to her, like they would to you and me, and sincerely mean it: ‘
Oh
-kay, that creases it. If you do that once more, I’m gonna get out of this chair, which I don’t wanna do because I got my feet up and I’m all nice and comfortable, and I’m gonna haul off and hit you so hard inna mouth that when your first grandchildren start getting born, they’ll all need Polident too.’
    â€œI’m not talkin’ about the Buddies of this world here now, the Buddies that whack their women around for no reason. Or the hookers that fight worse’n men do, the street-whores protecting their corner. They got nothing to do with this here. What I’m talking about with respectable women like Laura, an’ it doesn’t matter if they’re black or white, is … I’m not saying they should get bopped when they deliberately piss other people off. What I’m saying to you here is that they don’t even ever get warned, you know,
threatened
, with a good shot upside the head, if they don’t cut it out and start behaving themselves. Not that either one of us’d ever do it, go ahead and actually
do
it or anything, hit a woman like that, I mean, but still, the way things are it’s not even something that they even have to even, you know, even
think
about. So as far as they’re concerned there isn’t any reason to behave themselves if they’re having any fun at all when they’re
mis
-behaving. See?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Dell’Appa said. “Lemme sleep on it, get back to you on it in the morning.”
    â€œWell,” Brennan said, “on their way to the various schools, Laura and the kids apparently see this house where there obviously lives somebody as nutty as Laura. And that other nutbag’d already gone and draped the trees all over with the toilet paper, and it took them awhile, Laura and the kids, to figure out it’s supposed to be, in the dark with some lights on it people’re supposed to think it’s Hallowe’en ghosts. In the trees, and they think: ‘Wow, what a real great …’ ”
    Brennan leaned forward fast in the seat and stared at the outside rearview mirror. Dell’Appa looked at his watch. It read 7:09. “Nope,” Brennan said, relaxing again, “that’s not him. I thought it was him for a minute, comin’ to catch the seven-fourteen. He’s done that some times. But today isn’t