Tales of the Bagman

by B C Bell

  He opened his eyes and wondered if he was still alive.

  The sky spun above him, along with a man sticking his head out of the third story of the building Mac had just skied down. The man took off his glasses, wiped them with a handkerchief and put them back on, then stared down at Mac, twisting his head back and forth.

  Mac inhaled and it hurt. Where there’s pain there’s life. He inhaled again, clenched his teeth, and tried to sit up. He was alive… He was pretty sure. The man in the window began to applaud.

  Mac tried to stand up and fell down again, the city skyline still spinning around him. He blinked his eyes and stared at his hands, then clenched his palms to his face momentarily, ordering himself not to pass out.

  He had to move. In the last five minutes he’d gone from being a curiosity to a roadside attraction. Lurching to his feet, pitching forward, then around, he stumbled zombie-like to the rear of the building, his left hand clenched around his right shoulder.

  Was his arm dislocated? Didn’t matter. He had to move.

  He looked down the back of the building he’d landed on. No stairs. It figured. He clenched his left hand around the tile on top of the parapet, and simply fell over the roof’s edge. Hanging limply by his hand, his feet hung about a foot over the ledge of a window. When he let go, his feet bounced off the ledge. He landed on his ass, legs outstretched in the alley.

  Forcing himself on hands and knees, he crawled up the wall of the pawn shop to a standing position and looked through the window. It was wired, tinted, and dark. Nobody coming out of the shop.

  A good thing, his breath sputtered in his own beaten form of a chuckle. He crossed the alley to another running perpendicular, away from Wabash toward Michigan Avenue and the lake. Once outside the view of the man in the window, he ditched his mask. He checked the time on his wristwatch, grateful it was on his left hand, unsure if he could have moved his right.

  It was a quarter of noon. Dammit. He had a one o’clock appointment with a Mr. Vincent Dinaldi to sign the lease for a cigar store—and he really liked this one’s location—he’d be just around the corner from his friend Crankshaft’s garage.

  But he still had to pass the leasing agent’s inspection for respectability—with a dislocated arm, in a ragged, filthy suit, and a pair of shoes with the shine scraped off. Oh, and a wounded shin from a midget wiseguy.

  No problem, he told himself, I’m a hero. He didn’t believe a word of it.

  After hailing a cab, waving a wad of cash in the air to get him to stop, Mac stepped into a drugstore and then a men’s store on Wacker Drive. He wrapped himself in some bandages and a size forty-four tall, blue-gray suit. He tipped the kid in the store to shine what was left of the shoes. Then forgot about the shine, and told the kid just to make them look black.

  He hopped in another cab and headed up North to Lincoln Avenue. Outside the door, he stopped to collect himself. He was sweating; He hadn’t been able to take off his new suit coat, for fear he couldn’t get it back on. It was already 1:15 PM. He was late.

  Late? He still wasn’t sure he wasn’t dearly departed. He scheduled his death for after the realtor’s appointment, took a deep breath, faked a smile and walked in the door.

  It was a small space. He had been in it before, back when it was a bar, before prohibition. Even then it had been just that, a bar, with space to sit maybe five tables next to the wall. Mac planned to open the front of the place up in the summer time to encourage foot traffic, put the counter in front and a walk-in humidor in the back, along with various other sundries: candy, magazines, newspapers. The place was empty, dusty, and everything had been removed except for the bare walls. At least they’d left the door to the stockroom. He’d have to put in some framing and plaster work. Not a problem.

  “Hello-o is anybody here?” Mac knocked on the wall. He looked around, but didn’t see anybody in front.

  A stout, Italian man with an apron and a waxed handlebar mustache stepped out of the back. Mr. Stephano, from Stephano’s Grocery over on Southport.

  Mac stepped back and smiled. “Mr. Stephano. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  Mac’s whole face lit up, he couldn’t help it. He’d known Stephano most of his life, grown up trying to talk him down on candy prices at the corner store. Ran numbers from the place while he was in school, even took protection money from him. Not that he’d ever had to beat on the old man. Stephano had never had any hard feelings about paying protection; he’d always considered it the price of doing business.

  “Mac stepped back and smiled. ‘Mr. Stephano.’”

  Until Mac became The Bagman. Mac had been in the old man’s store the day he first put the bag over his head, and he had reason to believe Stephano might know it.

  “Hey, fancy pants gangster. How are ya?” Stephano said with sarcastic gentility.

  “Mac, Mr. Stephano. My friends call me Mac.”

  “Yeah, it’s just…” Mac had told Mr. Stephano his name was Anthony the last time he’d introduced himself. It was one of many aliases he’d adopted over the years.

  “My real name’s Mac. I was supposed to meet a Mr. Vincent Dinaldi here.”

  “Vinnie’s my brother-in-law. Lemme guess, he was Mr. Bigshot on the phone. Thinks he’s real estate’s king. Can’t even pay rent on a barber shop.”

  “Oh, I was under the impression he owned the building?”

  “Did you hear me?” Stephano said. “The schmuck can’t even pay the rent on a barber shop. My sister, she gonna reform him, make him big American businessman. Can’t even drive a truck. I own this place. I’m the big shot real estate’s man. Stephano Dinaldi.” He held out his hand and Mac shook it.

  “Mr. Dinaldi. I like it.” It was the same thing Stephano had said when Mac had introduced himself as Anthony. “Never mind that I’ve been calling you Mr. Stephano for twenty years.”

  “Ah, Stephano, Dinaldi, Potato, Potahto. You really want to rent this place? You through with that fancy pants gangster stuff? Is forty a month. Good location.”

  “You got it.”

  “OK, then you got it. What you gonna do with it though?”

  “I’m going to open a cigar store. Magazines, candy, sundries.”

  “Sundries, I love that word. Sundrie-e-s,” Stephano said with a thick Italian S, savoring every syllable. “I don’t know what it means though. Is like little things?”

  “Yeah, little things, like you’d forget you might need. Candy, nail clippers, cards maybe.”

  “Good. I’m glad you go honest. You become big American sundry businessman now. Stay away from those ‘gats and dames.’”

  “You know as well as I do, Mr. Stephano, half the customers are ‘gats and dames.’”

  “Ah, you know how to handle that. Just do the right thing.” Stephano pulled a contract out of his apron. “Oh, you need paper bags, I got a guy. Cheap.”

  Mac did a double take. The old man had to know. Or did he? Why wouldn’t he just come right out and say it? “Uh, thanks, Mr. Stephano—I mean, Mr. Dinaldi.”

  “I told you—potato, potahto. Just call me Stephano. You’re a good kid, Mac.”

  And by two o’clock he was set to run a cigar store—as long as he didn’t install any of the shelves higher than his shoulder, because the way his arm felt, he wouldn’t be able to reach them. Meanwhile, he still needed to go home and wash up. His suit was sticking to him. He wound up falling asleep in the bathtub, listening to the Cubs game on the radio.

  ***

  When Mac woke up, Chicago had lost by two in the eighth, he still had some tar from the pawn shop roof stuck to his back, and his extremities were wrinkled up like prunes. He sloughed the tar off and then checked his schedule, which luckily consisted of not much. After getting dressed, he decided he might feel better if he ate something.

 
He strolled west, toward the corner of Lincoln and Addison, watching the traffic and listening to the bells of St. Alphonsus call in the evening. Soon the church bells were replaced by the ringing of the trolley and the workers headed home for the day. He bought a late edition of the Tribune at a newsstand then, without stopping to look at the headlines, stepped into a hot dog stand under the “El.” Leaning on the counter to eat, he looked out the window to see how far he had actually fallen earlier in the day. It was still four stories.

  Behind the hot dog stand, on a junk strewn, dusty lot, hidden under the railroad tracks, an eight-foot fence surrounded a shack constructed of wood and sheet metal. No one would have even known it was there if it hadn’t been for the immaculately decorated sign posted above the locked gate. “Crankshaft’s Car Repair and Sales.” It wasn’t the detailed lettering proclaiming the name of the business that caught people’s attention, it was the two foot illustration above it—the silhouette of a doughboy from the Great War, charging over a hill, with a ribbon underneath that read “369th Infantry Division.” Not that Antoine “Crankshaft” Jones was still part of the hardest fighting regiment of the War to End All Wars—but he was proud to have served with The Harlem Hellfighters, and rightly so.

  He was also Mac McCullough’s best friend and, maybe, the only person in the world who knew the truth about the mysterious Bagman. Several weeks ago he’d even made Mac a partner—and let the ex-second story man build a secret, underground garage on his lot. Grudgingly, Crankshaft was still all soldier, even if he’d never admit it.

  Crankshaft didn’t seem to be around and the gate was locked. Mac picked the lock, unchained the gate and let himself in. Never hurt to stay in practice. One of these days he was going to have to get a key, though.

  He opened the door to the shack Crankshaft used for an office and walked through the door beyond it, into the space that Crankshaft used for a garage. A shiny new engine block told him the ace mechanic was working on something. Normally Crankshaft was there sunup to sundown, and it wasn’t quite dark yet. Probably went out for parts.

  Mac was sitting back in Crankshaft’s chair with a shot of whiskey in front of him, watching the bruise on his shin change colors and wondering if he should go get an icepack, when the proprietor stepped through the door. A wiry, middle-aged black man, Crankshaft was just beginning to gray at the temples. His big, burly hands were dirty with engine grease and he was still in his coveralls.

  “Hey, just because you helped me pay off my mortgage doesn’t mean you can drink all my whiskey,” Crankshaft said. “And get out of my chair.”

  Mac obliged him and stood up, his pant leg still hanging above his sizeable calf.

  “You get yourself wounded again? Damn, boy, you’re just accident prone. What did you do this time?” Crankshaft wiped off his hands with a rag and stuck the whiskey bottle back in the drawer.

  “Aw, some smart aleck in a double-breasted suit tried to club ‘The Bagman’ with a bolt cutter.”

  “The Bagman?” Crankshaft sat down. “Let me give you a word of advice, son. Right now, you put a bag over your head, it’s just an invitation for every moron on the street—besides yourself—to beat you up, probably kill you. The place for your head is not in a paper bag, you read?”

  “Loud and clear, but—”

  “‘Yeah, but,’” Crankshaft shook his head. “It’s like shooting skeet with you. I say something, you agree, and then you shoot it down. ‘Yeah, but...’”

  “Ah, wait till you see the late edition. I was just trying to let the public at large know that The Bagman’s not such a bad guy,” Mac said, flinging the paper open so Crankshaft could read the headline.

  “Forget the public at large, OK?” Crankshaft said, ignoring the paper. “Half those people out there think what happens in the movies is real. Fact is, you’ve made enemies on both sides of the law, because you made them look foolish. So far the cops haven’t put a wanted sign around your bag-headed alias because they know you’ve made life miserable for the bad guys. Now the bad guys on the other hand—”

  “—own half the cops, and the newspapers.” Mac said, and threw the paper on the desk. The headline read: Off-Duty Policeman, Bank Courier Foil Robbery Attempt. Below the headline, filling three column spaces, sat a picture of the smiling, milquetoast messenger, and the cop who had abandoned him outside the train station. The caption beneath the picture said: Officer Dan McCreedy and Banker Marvin Ploush: Heroes of the Day.

  “Now how can they do that?” An exasperated Mac pointed at the paper then sliced the air with his hand as if to dismiss it. “I stopped that robbery in broad daylight—with witnesses! I even left a note.” He picked up the paper again, pointing at it to show Crankshaft. “And the cop was in on it, fer cryin’ out loud!” He rolled up the paper and slammed it back down on the desk with a growling sound. “Jeez!”

  The ace mechanic tried not to laugh, a burst of air coming out of his nose. Only a few minutes had passed, but he pulled the bottle back out and poured them both a drink. Mac was pacing back and forth across the office, mumbling under his breath, staring out the cracked window, and slapping one hand into the other. Crankshaft opened the paper and began to read.

  “Kid, you should know by now, ‘Them that has—gets.’ Cops don’t want some mystery man they can’t catch being a hero. And the people with the news don’t want to make waves, just sell papers.”

  “I’m going after that cop,” Mac said. “He was in on it, and I’m going after him.”

  “Whoa, slow down there, kid. You have to pick your battles, and pick the right ones.”

  “What difference does it make, Crank? They’re after me already.”

  “True, but after you and out to get you are two different things. And, I got something to show you.” Crankshaft pushed open the door to the lot and spoke above the rusty, squeaking hinges like the radio announcer for a horror show, “Come with me.”

  Mac managed to mix a near grin with a grimace and stepped outside, newspaper still in hand. Crankshaft led him across the lot, behind a pile of scrap next to a shack about the size of an outhouse. It was the entrance to their new, secret underground garage. Crankshaft stepped down a concrete ramp that served as the driveway and pressed an electric button. Lights came on across the top of the interior. Mac smiled, his eyes reflecting the metal lamps hanging from the ceiling.

  “Wow, nice job, Crank. I don’t know what to say…”

  “Nothing yet, bonehead. Wait till you see this.” Crankshaft stepped over to an automobile with a tarp thrown across the top of it. A month ago, the day Mac had decided to quit his life of crime, he had been forced to steal a Graham “Blue Streak” Eight from the mob. The first thing he had tried to do was get Crankshaft to sell it. Crankshaft had other ideas.

  He pulled the tarp off like a magician revealing a trick and before the fabric hit the ground, Mac’s mouth was wide open in awe.

  “Wow, it doesn’t look like the same car,” Mac said.

  “It’s not.”

  The Graham Eight originally had one of the most influential designs of any automobile of its time. Fitted with a new, eight-cylinder “Blue Streak” engine, the nickname had soon spread from the engine to the car itself. Mac had just happened to steal a stylish, black two-seater, but the car before him had dark windows and was painted a metallic, cobalt blue-gray, almost gunmetal. The trunk, normally strapped to the back of it, sat across the room. It had been painted the same color, but Crankshaft had removed it, giving the car a quicker, leaner look. The sharper design and enclosed fenders almost hid the larger tires and some sort of strange scoop on the right side of the hood.

  “What’s that thing coming out of the hood?” Mac said.

  “Just a vent, so the engine can suck more air if you have to use this.” Crankshaft stepped to the side of the car and folded the hood back, revealing a small r
ed tank resembling an acetylene gas canister. Crankshaft answered before Mac had a chance to ask.

  “It’s a kind of fuel injector. Right now I’ve got it rigged for an alcohol mixture, but I think we might be able to use something akin to nitrogen, if you want to read up on your chemistry. What happens is, you press a button I installed on the steering wheel shaft, and this thing jumps like a bat out of hell. I also modified the suspension, so it’ll take the corners tighter without flipping over—but I still wouldn’t use that button unless you’re in a straightaway. It’s powerful, but unpredictable. I’d say you might be able to get her up to a hundred, a hundred-and-twenty before the wheels fly off.

  “Wow. Crank, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. I just wanted to thank you for helping out my girl Coco.”

  “No, I meant about the windows. How am I supposed to see out?”

  “They’re only dark on the outside, like one of those two way mirrors.”

  “Really?” Mac opened the door and sat behind the wheel. “Holy cow! This is great! Just think, if we could get armor plating and bulletproof glass—”

  “It would weigh so much it couldn’t move. Plus, part of the charm is that it’s not as noticeable as it was when it had that mobster paint job.”

  “I liked that paint job, Crank.”

  “Yeah, I know, it was bright and shiny. But part of the charm now is that it slips up on you. You have to pay attention to it to see how much it stands out. Not only will the mob not spot their own car, chances are it’ll help you keep a lower profile, stay out of trouble.”