By the time Bomber Lawrence took mandatory retirement as commanding officer of the Detective Division at state headquarters in Boston, the surveillance files indicated that Short Joey Mossi had regulated at least eleven people out of competition with the mob. A year later Brian Dennison, Bomber's successor, had impatiently concluded that Mossi's tracker, Detective Sergeant Brennan, was unlikely to nail Joey before Brennan himself reached retirement age. Dennison's move is to recall to headquarters a banished detective to watch Brennan watch Short Joey. It's only after Harry Dell'Appa returns from the tamer precincts of western Massachusetts that we come to appreciate the primacy of Bomber's Law.