Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  “I guess he doesn’t know about us,” I said when my mouth was free.

  “No, of course not. No one can know.”

  “I understand. I wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation.”

  “Oh, Victor, you’re hurt. How charming.”

  “I’m not hurt, I’m just trying to figure out your whole screwy family.”

  “Don’t be impertinent. What did my precious brother want?”

  “It’s private.”

  “It’s my brother, there’s nothing private between us.”

  “Except me fucking you.”

  “Don’t be crude.”

  “I thought that’s what you liked. If you want to know what he asked me, ask him.”

  “But you can’t tell me.”

  “No.”

  “You have rules.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can screw me, but you can’t confide in me.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Lawyers.”

  “Trained to infuriate,” I said, putting on my hat.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE GOODS

  I’m in Stony’s car for a stakeout,” I said.

  “The black Lincoln,” said Hump.

  “What else would I drive?” said Stony.

  “And Stony’s wedged between the steering wheel and the seat like a great suited Buddha. I see these two huge thermoses, one green, one silver, each the size of a rocket ship.”

  “What on earth were you doing in Stony’s car for a stakeout?” said Maud, sitting back, the smoke from her cigarette failing to mask her incredulity. Rosen’s was quiet, neat and empty, except for our corner banquette table, which was covered with empty lowballs, overflowing ashtrays, hats, always hats, and the usual choking cloud of smoke. The Brotherhood was in session.

  “Because of his other line,” I said. “His investigation line.”

  “Stony has an investigation line?” said Miles Schimmeck. “The man hasn’t spied his own pecker in twenty years.”

  “Just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean I don’t know where it is or how to use it,” said Stony.

  “He told me he took a course,” I said.

  “In using his pecker?” said Miles.

  “Investigations, you ninny,” said Stony.

  “Did he try to sell you a new bathroom, too?” said Maud.

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Don’t take him up on that.”

  “’Twas just that once,” said Stony.

  “When it comes to toilets,” said Hump, “once is enough.”

  “So these two huge thermoses, right?” I said. “And I’m thinking, that’s a crapload of coffee. There’s no way we can drink that much in a single night. And then he tells me, he says—”

  “‘Only one of them thermoses is for the coffee,’ ” said Hump.

  Our laughter rose sharply and lingered until it devolved into a fit of coughing. Liquor was swallowed, empty glasses were slammed on the table, cigarettes were lit, more Sazeracs were ordered.

  “You don’t got to tell me about them thermoses,” said Hump. “Stony and me, we had business together one night in Atlanta.”

  “A contractor on the lam who ate the salad and disappeared,” said Stony. “I brought in Hump to make my point.”

  “Stony said it was easier to drive than to fly. Longest damn drive of my life.”

  “That was a four-thermos drive,” said Stony.

  “Well?” said Maud to me.

  “Well, what?” I said.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I might not be great at toilets,” said Stony, “but I always get my man.”

  He had left the school with a glance behind him, like he was skipping out for a bout of truancy. The kind of look you give before you hide behind the trees and pull out a doobie. But he wasn’t a kid planning on stoning away his afternoon; he was Tommy Bettenhauser, AP civics teacher and congressional candidate, sneaking out for something else.

  “Hold on to your hat,” Stony had said, and off we went.

  We trailed him from far behind, so far behind I was sure Stony would lose him. “Pour me some coffee there, Road Dog. From the green thermos.” And I did as we jerked from lane to lane, and Stony only spilled some of it on his tie as we kept moving.

  “Road Dog?”

  “Another of my daddy’s rules,” said Stony. “If you forget a name, just hand out a nickname. No one ever forgets a nickname. You look like a dog I once saw on the side of the road. Ergo.”

  “You forgot my name?”

  “Well, you have two first names. How the hell am I supposed to remember which is which?”

  “Ergo.”

  “That’s right, ergo. Now keep your eyes peeled. I don’t want to lose him.”

  He drove us through the wilds of West Philly, all the way east into an old industrial section, which was on its fifth bout of redevelopment. I looked left and right, peering past the van ahead of us, all the time looking for Bettenhauser’s car and seeing nothing. I had severe doubts about Stony’s technique—he seemed constitutionally unable to keep Bettenhauser’s blue Prius in sight—but he kept moving forward, until he parked on the left side of a busy one-way street and waited for a truck to pass us by before pointing down and across the road.

  A blue Prius. And Tommy Bettenhauser, stepping out. Being greeted with a hug by a pretty woman with thin arms and pale-blonde hair.

  “Well done,” I said.

  “Hand me the camera in the glove compartment.”

  It was a digital SLR with an absurdly long zoom lens. Stony turned it on, unlocked the lens, zoomed it out, and started snapping.

  “Who is she?” I said.

  Click, click.

  “Do we know the relationship?” I said.

  Click, click.

  Arm in arm, Bettenhauser walked with the woman toward the open front door of a row house not far from where he’d parked. Halfway in, he looked back over his shoulder as if searching for ghosts.

  Click, click.

  The door closed behind him.

  “And now,” Stony had said, “we wait. Do me a favor, Road Dog, and hand over the silver thermos.”

  “What did you get out of it, your little surveillance?” said Maud.

  “Photographs,” said Stony. “A lovely couple, all hugs and kisses. Printed out in grainy black and white to give the snaps a nicely sordid quality. Nothing spells vice like black and white.”

  “I got to give you credit there, Stony,” said Miles Schimmeck. “You always had an eye. Who are you slipping them pictures to?”

  “They’re not mine to slip,” said Stony.

  “Stony told me I ought to give them to the press,” I said. “That I should let some daring reporter do the dirty work so I could sit back and let the scandal rage without my fingerprints.”

  “Too iffy,” said Miles. “Some editor with scruples might spike the whole thing.”

  “An editor with scruples?” said Maud. “I heard of one once.”

  “He was riding a unicorn,” said Hump.

  “Aubrey,” called out Stony. “Five more.”

  “Give them to the wife,” said Miles. “That always delivers the biggest bang. And then you get the leaving-the-race-for-the-good-of-the-family speech, which never fails to crack me up.”

  “The wife angle works unless she’s a regular Patti Page,” said Hump, “who decides to stand by her man.”

  “I hate that standing-by-their-man nonsense,” said Stony. “There ought to be a law against that.”

  “It was Tammy Wynette,” said Maud.

  “Who the hell cares?” said Miles.

  “Mr. Wynette.”

  “One copy to the wife, another to the newspaper, a third to some TV
weather-chick looking to be taken seriously by the news director,” said Miles. “Cover all your bases. That’s old school.”

  “What’s new school?” I said.

  “Just give it to a PAC,” said Maud.

  Miles and Hump and Stony grumbled at the suggestion even as they nodded in acquiescence.

  “Let those fat bastards turn it into a commercial,” said Maud. “Let them blast it twenty-four-seven over the airwaves until the public can’t bear the sight of it or him.”

  “That way,” said Hump, “it don’t even need to be true.”

  “And your boss can pump up all self-righteous,” said Miles, “and deny he had anything to do with it.”

  “It’s too damn easy,” said Stony. “The Big Butter takes all the art out of it.”

  “It’s a crime, what they done to the business,” said Miles. “Before them we was like Briggsy said, princes of the city. Now it’s scraps from the scrap heap for us if we’re lucky. It ain’t the same as it was.”

  “What is?” said Hump.

  “Me,” said Miles. “I’m the same. I got the same hair I had when I was sixteen.”

  “Just not as much of it,” said Stony.

  “I got plenty still,” said Miles, serious as all hell as he rubbed a hand over that precious comb-over. “One thing I always had was a good head of hair.”

  Aubrey brought over the drinks and there was quiet as the barman laid them one by one before us. Stony raised his glass in a toast and we joined in.

  “To Miles’s hair,” he said.

  “To Miles’s hair,” we said back.

  “Long may it wave,” said Stony.

  We assented, we drank, Miles Schimmeck looked around, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  “My hair, it ain’t wavy,” he said.

  “Sure it is, Miles,” said Hump. “It’s waving good-bye.”

  “A bunch of stinking kidders,” said Miles before he took a long inhale from his cigarette. “Hey, Hump, remember a few years back, one of your ward boys was having a problem with his landlord. His family was staring an eviction in the face. Out on the street in the middle of the winter.”

  “I remember.”

  “Turned out this guy’s landlord was having trouble with a court case. One slim envelope in the right hand and everyone’s problem was solved. And we got a record turnout in that ward the next election. That’s the way the game used to be played. That’s the way the city used to work.”

  “Anyone in my territory had a problem,” said Hump, “they went to their ward leader, who came to me.”

  “And we took care of things for each other,” said Miles.

  “Indeed.”

  “But not no more,” said Miles.

  “We don’t matter like we did,” said Maud. “When the Big Butter can pour Wall Street money into any race it chooses, the little guys get forgotten. Why waste capital on a single worker here or a single family there when there are batches of television ads to run?”

  “It’s the new American way,” said Hump, “and it counts us out.”

  “Stop your whining and look alert,” said Stony. “We’ve got company.”

  And there he came, walking past the rows of empty tables, pointing at Aubrey the barman as if Aubrey were a dear personal friend he was spotting from the red carpet, sucking his teeth and sauntering toward us as if we were his bestest pals in all the world. We snatched up our drinks to fortify ourselves as he came closer. With orthopedic shoes, schlumpy jacket on a schlump of a frame, thick tie, ink-stained fingers, yellow teeth, he was a form of life even lower than the lice crawling through his thinning hair.

  Harvey Sloane, ace reporter, and like a rocky-road addict, always looking for a scoop.

  CHAPTER 31

  PRESS CONFERENCE

  Well, well, well. What have we here?” said Sloane as he reached our table. “Never has there been such a disreputable contingent of political rascals meeting in this fair city since Frank Rizzo drank alone.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay the hell out of Rosen’s?” said Stony.

  “In case you haven’t heard, Mulroney, it’s a free country. But don’t worry your three chins about it, I didn’t come for you. If I need to talk to you, I can just rattle the Dumpster behind police headquarters. No, I came for your pal Victor.”

  “Lucky me,” I said.

  “Last time we spoke, Victor, your precise words were, and I quote, ‘I’m nobody’s bagman.’ And yet you’ve been bouncing around town with a bag stuffed with money and a god-awful hat. And now here you are, yukking it up with the rest of these ticks on the body politic.”

  “Tick tock tick,” said Maud.

  “So, Victor, care to change your previous denial?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “The atmosphere in here has turned,” said Maud, crushing out her cigarette and standing. “I need fresh air.”

  “Give my regards to the mayor, Maud,” said Sloane, “and tell him that we’re looking into that courthouse deal you sold him on. Tell him it’s like a rotting goat head the way it stinks, and that the maggot crawling out of the eye has got your name on it.”

  “It’s a clean deal,” said Maud.

  “Sure, as clean as the rest of this foul little gathering.”

  “What’s the problem?” said Miles Schimmeck, grabbing his hat and sliding around the booth after Maud made her exit. “I showered last week.”

  “I’ll stop the presses on that, Schimmeck. You know our latest exposé of Traffic Court has your name in it. Better get a lawyer.”

  “I got me a mouthpiece,” said Miles. “Victor here.”

  “Did I ever tell you what happened to my father?” said Stony.

  “Over and over,” said Miles.

  “Then you know when the wretches of the press show up, it’s time to go.”

  “You’re abandoning me to this?” I said.

  “Indeed we are,” said Hump, grabbing his hat.

  “Like rats leaving a sinking ship,” said Sloane.

  “And with a song in our hearts,” said Stony. “‘Taps.’ Try to stay off the front page, Road Dog.”

  I watched the three men crush out their cigarettes, grab hold of their bags, set their hats in place. They hustled out of the restaurant like they were each wearing sunglasses, and the farmer’s wife was chasing them with a knife.

  Sloane watched them leave with a raised eyebrow and then slid into the banquette across from me. He cleared a space at the table for his little memo pad, leaned forward, paged forward, rubbed his teeth with a forefinger.

  “You’re in the shit, Victor,” said Sloane.

  “That’s what you came to tell me?”

  “Truth is, I came to help you, unlike those creeps you’re drinking with, who will end up burying you if they have their way. You might not know it, but I’m the best friend you’ve still got.”

  “If that’s true, I am in the shit.”

  “I hear you might have something for me.”

  “Is that what you heard?”

  “Victor, sweetheart, it’s just you and me now. We can cut the adversarial act we put on for your friends, capiche? Don’t be coy, give it up to Papa.”

  I knew what he was after: the photographs Stony had snapped of Bettenhauser and the blonde. It seemed the most ordinary of things to pull the envelope from my diplomatic bag and slip it across the table. After all, what came more naturally to a bagman than pulling out an envelope and slipping it across a table? And yet I wondered how he knew about the photographs. Something in me smelled a rat, though I suspected, even then, that the rat in that deal was sitting across from Sloane.

  “I got nothing,” I said after a long moment of thought. “Sorry.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Where’d you hear I had something for yo
u, anyway?”

  “A little birdie. Well, not so little.”

  “If something comes up, you’ll be my first call.”

  “That’s wise. I am so looking forward to some new scandal to grab all of our attentions. But until then, we’re stuck with the old ones, so I wonder if I can get a comment on some scuttlebutt that’s been scuttling around police headquarters. I’m going to tell you what I heard and then I’ll take down your comments word for word.” He poked the memo pad with the point of his pen. “Ready?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “I heard you are more than a person of interest in the murder case of poor Jessica Barnes. I heard you have become suspect number one.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I have my sources. Any comment?”

  “No comment,” I said.

  Sloane wrote it down dutifully. “Here’s the story that’s being spread. You made a payoff to this Jessica Barnes at a bar called the Franklin, a payoff to keep her from spilling on the Congressman.”

  I tried to keep my head still, tried to keep my gaze from wavering.

  “You gave her an envelope filled with money and then, when she left the bar, you left right after. The story then goes that you followed her, you called out her name, caught up with her, led her into an alley. And there, you killed her through repeated and savage blows with a hammer to her face.”

  Something rolled into my eye and started it to stinging. I tried to blink the stinging away, but my efforts failed. I blinked harder.

  “You killed her for the money, so they’re saying, and you killed her to keep her quiet, and you left her to bleed to death in that stinking alley. And after you killed her, you put the cash in your pocket, ditched the hammer and her shoes, and went home to put on your tuxedo so you could party with the governor.”

  I tried to stay still, still as a statue, but my hands tightened, one in the other, until the knuckles cracked, and my face twitched like an electrified monkey.

  “Any comment?” said Sloane.

  “No comment,” I said.

  “No gasps of disbelief?”

  “Gasp,” I said.

  “No protestations of innocence?”

  “I’m Jewish,” I said.

  Sloane smiled as he wrote it all down.