Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  “Thank you,” I said. “I guess now it will be everyone and me at the ball, as long as I get my chores done first.”

  “Yes, well,” said the Congressman, suddenly standing with me. “I didn’t ask you up just to invite you to a party. I have further need of your services. You see, I’m in the middle of a situation.”

  “With Ms. Duddleman?”

  “No, thank God. You’ve taken care of her, for the time being at least. I’m going to have to break it off with her, if I could just figure out how.”

  “In private,” I said. “And after the sex. But this doesn’t concern her, then?”

  “No, it’s something else, something that might need your especial talents.”

  “And what talents are those?”

  “Discretion. Trustworthiness. I’ve been told I can trust you.”

  “By whom?”

  “Is it true, Victor?”

  “Of course it’s true,” I said. “I’m a lawyer.”

  “A sense of humor helps, too, I suppose.”

  “And don’t forget avarice. I rate very highly on avarice.”

  “What is your normal rate, Mr. Carl?”

  “Lately it’s been two hundred and fifty an hour.”

  “I’ll double it for this, plus expenses. And I’ll pay you in cash.”

  “Cash is good,” I said. “Cash is handy.” I sat down again and leaned back. “Handy as a third hand. So what is your situation there, Congressman?”

  He stared down at me for a moment before looking away. It’s a bad sign when a politician breaks off the stare. It either means the Apocalypse is nigh or he’s about to actually tell the truth.

  “It seems,” he said, “I’m being blackmailed.”

  CHAPTER 13

  THE BAG

  I needed a bag for the job, and my usual briefcase wouldn’t do. An old battered black thing with hard sides, it wasn’t expandable enough to shovel in mountains of cash. Worse still, in a more optimistic time in my career I had paid to have my initials embossed between the locks, as if to announce my imminent arrival at the broad wooden doorway of success. Knock knock. Who’s not there?

  Now, for the position in which I had somehow found myself, I needed something new, something absolutely noninitialed; I needed a bag worthy of the work. And I knew exactly where to get it.

  “Welcome to Boyds, sir. My name is Timothy. How may I help you?”

  This was the very first time I met Timothy, a few days before I bought my tux and those horrid shoes. Boyds wasn’t far from my office and, with every intention of taking utter advantage of the Congressman’s offer to pay my expenses, I thought I’d just poke around on my own and discreetly see what they had available. But the moment I stepped through the wide glass doors under the blue canopy and into Philadelphia’s grand emporium of high taste and higher prices, Timothy appeared, conjured as if by magic. He took his place close by my side, making it easier, I suppose, to slip his hand into my pocket.

  “I’m looking for a briefcase,” I said.

  “Anything specific?”

  “Something plain, no designer labels, nothing that stands out.”

  “Sort of like yourself, I presume?”

  “Is that an insult, Timothy?”

  “I am only here to help you, sir.”

  “My name’s Victor.”

  “Good, so we’re friends already. Do you have a color in mind, Victor?”

  “Brown.”

  “Of course.”

  “Something big and brown, with soft sides.”

  “Are we thinking of a saddle-style bag, with all kinds of masculine belts and buckles? Are we planning to ride out on the range with our spiffy new case, Victor?”

  “No buckles, no belts.”

  “Good choice, sir. I’m going to like you. Tell me, is that tie a Dolcepunta?”

  “No.”

  “Somehow I didn’t think so. Follow me, Victor. We don’t specialize in the nondescript, but I’ll see what we can do.”

  Timothy ushered me up the stairs to the Boyds luggage department and spread his arms wide to indicate the selection.

  “Let’s talk about details now,” said Timothy, “because one thing I’ve found in this world is that the details oh so matter. How brown do you want it?”

  “Brown as bark.”

  “And you’re adamant about that.”

  “It only seems proper.”

  “Not black, which is ever more stylish in a professional setting? Not alligator, which has a predator’s aura? Not something with a splash of color?”

  “Brown as mud.”

  “Fine.”

  “Brown as bourbon.”

  “Yes, I get it. Brown as a june bug on a banyan tree. What about our other details? Do you want this to be a portfolio style with zipper top or do you want an overhang to protect the documents? Do you want it to be single or double clasp? Do you want your initials embossed or burned into the leather?”

  “I need a clasp that locks securely, I want no initials of any kind anywhere on the bag, and as for a closure—maybe I’ll leave that up to you.”

  “Excellent,” said Timothy, his eyes brightening. “So tell me, Victor, just so we make the right choice: What do you intend to put into your new bag?” This was the first of Timothy’s three queries, and the only one for which I had a ready answer.

  “Money,” I said. “Other people’s money, and lots of it.”

  “Oh, very good. Other people’s money is always the best kind. I think you need a bag with jaws, Victor. Something with a mouth wide enough to swallow whatever you place into its gullet but then one that snaps closed with such force you inevitably fear for your fingers.”

  “Sounds charming, Timothy.”

  “Doesn’t it, though? A bag as hungry as a shark.”

  “A brown shark.”

  “Oh, yes. And it just so happens we have exactly such a bag in stock.”

  And so it was that while I stood before the imposing front door of a grand old estate in the tony town of Devon, listening to a scrum of dogs howling on the other side, I gripped in my palm a lovely brown diplomatic bag from some Italian manufacturer whose name I couldn’t pronounce. The bag, handcrafted from the finest leathers in Florence, had broad, sloped shoulders and clean lines and well-tanned sides. Its skin was burnished with oak and chestnut tannins. It felt solid in my hand, personal and perfect. It felt like an extension of my very self, except with better breeding. And what Timothy had assured me as he described the bag’s features with loving detail had turned out to be true. With the bag in my possession I was stronger, swifter, more clever, more sly, my smile was wider, my cock was thicker, my possibilities had grown exponentially.

  When the door opened, a pack of wild dogs, each the size of a hobbit’s foot, swarmed out of the entranceway and yelped with utter savagery at my ankles. And in the gap from where the dogs had rushed, a blond man in a tight double-breasted suit gave me an appraising look, taking in my scuffed wing tips, my tie, my sterling designer bag.

  “I suppose you’re the one,” he said, his prim voice twisted to the east with just a hint of the British Isles, letting me know I might as well have been something left on the doorstep by the dogs themselves. The way his face scrunched at the sight of me, he looked like the wrong end of roast squab.

  “I suppose I am,” I said. “I’m looking for Mrs. Devereaux. I believe I’m expected.”

  “Oh, you’re expected, all right. But I’ll let you know right here and now that I don’t approve of any of this. And you should be warned that I’m a lawyer.”

  “A real honest-to-God lawyer, with a certificate and everything? I haven’t been so frightened since I last visited the urologist.”

  “Oh, Reginald, who is there?” came a scratch of a voice from the inside of the house. The dogs, at h
earing the voice, jumped and yapped and rushed away from me, streaming past Reginald’s glossy black shoes like a mischief of rats. “Oh, hello, you darlings,” cooed the scratch. “You wonderful naughty darlings. Yes. Yes, you are. Yes.”

  “It is a man with a briefcase,” said Reginald.

  “Then let him in, dear. What are you waiting for?”

  “You know how I feel about this,” said Reginald. “I have made my opinion clear.”

  “Oh, clam up, Reginald,” I said, giving him an intended unintentional jab with the bag as I brushed by. “This is just a social visit, and I’ve been tested and cleared. By my urologist.”

  Through the doorway I entered a huge center hall with an arched wooden ceiling and a black-and-white marble floor. It was a Gothic church of money, with paintings of fox hunts on the walls and a great wrought iron chandelier threatening from above. Presiding over the congregation of the leaping and yelping toys was the same old woman I had met at the cocktail reception after the Congressman’s speech. Her unnaturally brown hair covered her face as her bent back bent ever further so that she could reach down and scratch one after the other of her vile little dogs. Connie her name was, I recalled, and from that posture, she looked up at me and smiled mischievously.

  “Oh, so it is you,” she said. “I was wondering who he would send, with Colin out of commission. It is so good to see that you have joined the cause. Victor, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that was it. And it’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Devereaux.”

  “The nice young man says it’s nice to see me again,” she said to her dogs. “Isn’t it funny, my darlings, that whenever anyone is pumping me for money, they are ever so happy to see me?” She looked up again, straightening her spine as much as she was able. “And how is our dear friend Peter?”

  “Grateful that you can help him in a time of need.”

  “I find him so invigorating. He understands our travails and our value to this country, and he is quite good-looking, too, don’t you think? Did he say wonderful things about me?”

  “Only the most wonderful.”

  “That jaw of his, I just want to devour it with my teeth. Don’t you just want to devour it with your teeth?”

  “Let me send him away,” said Reginald, still standing by the still-open door. “There are ways to do this properly and legally, and filling this man’s bag is not one of them.”

  “Quiet down, dear, and shut the door. The draft is not healthy for the dogs. Victor and I have ever so much to discuss. Be a darling and call in Heywood, please.”

  “It is a mistake.”

  “But it is my mistake to make, Reginald, and my money, and you are in my employ, so fetch Heywood before I grow impatient.”

  Reginald held his ground for a moment, staring at me with something pinched on his arrogant face, before he slammed the front door shut and stalked out of the center hall in an officially snitty huff.

  “Friendly guy, that Reginald,” I said.

  “He’s a bit territorial for a lawyer,” said Mrs. Devereaux, reaching out and taking hold of my arm. “But Peter knows he can always depend on me. We have so few champions, we must take care of those who step up for us. It is not easy being envied so.”

  “Yes, it must be difficult.”

  “You can only imagine our burdens, Victor. The backbone of the country, and still subjected to so much scorn. Everyone needs their protectors, even us. But enough politics. Come and talk.”

  Slowly she turned and slowly she led me toward a room off the back of the hall. “So what is the problem this time? I was told you needed a substantial sum of money, and in cash. Is that right?”

  “That is correct, Mrs. Devereaux.”

  “Oh, Victor, call me Connie—all the best people do.”

  “Connie.”

  “Lovely. So tell me, Victor darling. What is this cash for?”

  “You don’t really want to know, do you, Connie?”

  “Dear, you must have me confused with someone else, someone older, with fairer sensibilities and far more tact. I have no tact, and my sensibilities have been hardened over the years. Did you know my husband?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Charles Devereaux the Third. An absolute brute. The things he made me do. My God, Victor, whatever squeamishness I had was burned out of me quite quickly, and without preliminaries, I must add. I could tell you stories, but I won’t, because even if I have no tact, I do have discretion.”

  Just then a tall slab of a man wearing nothing but a short silk robe approached, his exposed chest hairless and gleaming, his long dark hair shining, his jaw like a fist. Mrs. Devereaux reached out a hand until it cupped a mighty pectoral.

  “Heywood dear, I am having a business meeting. Please fill the crystal bowl in the drawing room with the usual.”

  “As you wish, Connie.”

  “Maybe twice the usual. And give me a kiss, dear.”

  Heywood leaned over and slobbered into Mrs. Devereaux’s mouth.

  “Now be gone, you savage. I’ll take care of you later.”

  Heywood gave me a look much like Reginald’s look before taking off. I felt like the new member of a harem.

  “Now come, Victor,” said Mrs. Devereaux, patting my hand. “Spill the messy details. I just adore messy details. It is a matter, I assume, that our congressman wants to keep under wraps, is that it?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “He is such a naughty, naughty boy. I should spank him, don’t you think, Victor? I should put him over my knee and spank him until he cries.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “I think I’m going to like you, Victor. Come along, dear. Perhaps I can get you something to drink. How do you like your liquor?”

  “Strong.”

  “Oh, I am going to like you,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE PAYOFF

  My job was to keep the dirty little blackmailer on a string, to keep him waiting for the next payment and the next, all the while keeping his mouth shut. My job was to hide his truth under a pile of the Devereaux fortune. Not so hard, actually. Give me enough cash and I could bury the Encyclopædia Britannica.

  “I have a package from Washington,” I said into the pay phone when I had dialed the number with a 717 area code.

  “Who? Oh, yes. Right. Yes.” A woman’s voice, quick and nervous. So that’s what it was about, simple and tawdry. And right away I could feel the weakness in her. Good, that would make everything easier.

  “I’ll bring it to you,” I said.

  “No, I don’t want that. Please, you can’t. Not here. Where are you?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “I’ll come to the city, then. Do you have an office?”

  “All I have is a bag. But there’s a bar on Eighteenth off Chestnut. It’s quiet in the early evening. A basement joint called the Franklin. Tomorrow.”

  “I have to work tomorrow. But I can get off Friday afternoon.”

  “Friday will do. Five o’clock.”

  “Thank you. Who am I looking for?”

  “The name’s Herbert, Jack Herbert,” I said, picking out a false two-first-names name to stay as anonymous as possible. “You’ll recognize me. I’ll be the guy in a navy-blue suit with the bright-brown bag.”

  In the Devereaux drawing room I had picked up the money cleanly enough, stacks of bound hundreds laid out in a crystal bowl like after-dinner mints. But no matter how much Connie plied me with drinks and compliments, no matter how cruelly she rubbed my thigh with her bejeweled claw, I didn’t reveal the root reality the Congressman was trying to smother in its crib. You could say it was just another example of my sweet discretion, but I simply didn’t know. Congressman DeMathis had enough discretion of his own not to tell me his most shameful truths. All I had was an address from which I was to
pick up the money, and a phone number with which I was to make arrangements for the payoff.

  I didn’t recognize her right away when she entered the bar. I was sitting at a small table in the middle of the room, my bag on the seat next to me. I nursed a Scotch, neat; my usual Sea Breeze didn’t fit the role I was playing. The Franklin was a long, low-ceilinged joint with leather banquettes and the bar at the back. It was a dimly lit place to conduct adulterous affairs over handcrafted drinks. When she came through the door, hesitantly, clutching her own big brown bag and looking around, lost and nervous, I thought she was stumbling into something wrong with a senior partner at the firm where she typed. But when she saw me in my suit, the only suit in the bar at that hour, she gave a nervous smile.

  I was expecting someone hard and venal, I was expecting a corrupt little blackmailer. What I got was Jessica Barnes.

  “What are you drinking?” I said.

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “It’s a bar. We’re trying to look convivial. Order a drink.”

  “Okay, yes. Just a little something. A white wine spritzer?”

  “I said a drink.”

  “Anything then.”

  “Let’s go mai tai,” I said. “Everything’s cheerier with a mai tai.”

  Jessica Barnes sat stiffly in the chair across from me as I gave the order to the waitress. Whatever I thought about the Congressman personally, I was impressed as hell with his taste: first Duddleman and now this. Jessica was a sturdy woman in her late twenties, wearing a pressed print dress with a flat white collar, and a pair of stolid low pumps. Her shoulders were broad, her hair was fair, her face was round and pretty, her eyes were narrowed as if she were peering at me not across a small marble tabletop but instead across a wide-open plain of dust. Arrange a pea sack around her head like a bonnet and she would have been a Dorothea Lange photograph. I liked her right off.

  What would I have said to poor doomed Jessica Barnes if I could go back in time to that moment in that bar? What would my advice have been?