Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  He looked at McDeiss when he said, “I suppose.”

  McDeiss simply nodded.

  “Anything to help the police.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Anything. So here’s the play. Let’s keep the flight plan out of the computer for a couple of days. And if anyone comes in asking for the information, you can send them right to me.”

  I took a card from my jacket pocket, slapped it onto the counter along with two of Mrs. Devereaux’s hundreds, pushed the bundle forward.

  The man turned his head to McDeiss. “Is that what you want, Detective?”

  “Like you said, it’s out of my jurisdiction.”

  “I got you.” He pocketed the bills and gave the card a quick look. “Victor Carl.”

  “You think you can remember that?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Then that’s that.” I gestured to the computer screen. “Sorry about disturbing your . . . hoagie.”

  Outside the office, we stood for a moment and stared at the empty runway. The sun was shining, a light breeze was caressing our cheeks. One could imagine that all was right with the world, but then one would be a fool.

  “You might as well have tied yourself onto a Mayan altar,” said McDeiss, “and sent her a card offering up your heart.”

  “That almost sounds romantic.”

  “Sure, until she comes after you with a knife the size of a marlin.”

  “My guess is you have Armbruster looking for her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And I know you’ve been looking for Colin Frost.”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s the search going?”

  “Poorly.”

  “We need to stop looking for them and get them looking for me. If I spread my card enough places, they’ll take the bait.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I’ll string her along long enough to get the goods before you swoop in with your legions of coppers and save the day.”

  “I might be busy eating lunch when she makes her appearance.”

  “Eat fast,” I said. I looked along the length of the runway and thought about what had happened inside that plane. “Let’s take a ride.”

  We drove the same streets through which we had chased Melanie’s car: the antiquing congestion of Bird-in-Hand, the rural byways leading to Irishtown Road. I didn’t hide behind the mighty oak this time, just pulled up right to the edge of the property and put the car in park. For a moment I eyed the tree that young Calynne had swung on, so innocent and free.

  “Did the technicians give you any details about the DNA they found on the blood and the hair?”

  “Just that it was a match, close enough that it was almost from the same person.”

  “I bet. Do you have a sister, Detective?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “I wonder what that’s like. Because I was an only child, so I missed out on all the sibling stuff. The big brother teaching you the ways of the world. The little brother you can take under your wing and show how to throw a curve. The sister whose room you can slip into in the middle of the night and—”

  “Say what?”

  “Doesn’t every young boy try out his sexual tricks on his sister before taking them out into the big bad world?”

  “No they do not,” said McDeiss, his voice suddenly aggrieved, like I had just shat on his shoe.

  “Well, some do.”

  “Who the hell?”

  “Our friend Nietzsche, for one.”

  “Well, he had a mustache the size of a rodent, what could you expect? Who else?”

  “Think about it. Remember when you said the motive for Jessica Barnes’s murder wasn’t right? How you wondered why Ossana would be so desperate to hide any evidence of the child?”

  “You’re not saying—”

  “He’s a United States congressman,” I said. “Who wouldn’t he screw?”

  McDeiss sat in silence for a long moment before saying, “Every time I think I can no longer be shocked by a politician, I get proven wrong.”

  “You want to know the funny thing? For a brief, naive moment I thought I’d be the barracuda in the cesspool.” I looked off at the house. “Let me go in alone. The grandmother knows me. It should go smoother without your hulking presence.”

  “Hulking?”

  “I just want to tell them that the plane has taken off and the girl is safe, and then drop off my card for when Ossana comes a-calling.”

  I slammed the door shut behind me and walked up the front path. At the front door I rapped on the wood with my knuckles.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Gaughan as if she had opened the door to find a flaming bag of dog crap on her front step. “It’s you.”

  “Do you have a minute, Mrs. Gaughan?”

  “No, actually. Carl, was it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Go away, Carl, now, and leave us be.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that Calynne has been taken someplace safe.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “Now go away.”

  “I know you’ve been concerned and I just wanted to give you an update on her care and to let you know that I’ll do—”

  I stopped my yabbering when I heard a screen door bang in the back of the house, like someone was running somewhere, running from me. But who could ever want to run away from the mild likes of me? Unsure, I took a step forward, until I was no longer on the doorstep, until I was one step farther into the house. And I saw, on the floor in front of the couch, Jessica Barnes’s husband, or the corpse of Jessica Barnes’s husband—it was hard to tell—sprawled and still.

  That was when I looked to my right and saw a gun aimed at my face.

  “Close the door behind you,” said Colin Frost, staring at me from beneath heavy-lidded eyes.

  I turned and glanced at McDeiss in the car before I closed the door. Mrs. Gaughan took a step back and bowed her head. Colin Frost smiled. They had found me all right, the bastards, just like I had expected, but a good bit sooner than I had expected, which, terrifyingly, made all the difference.

  CHAPTER 48

  TROPHY

  Move and you’re dead,” said Colin Frost, with a slur in his voice. It wasn’t comforting to see him stagger while his gun was still pointed at my face.

  “How’s the rehab going, Colin?”

  “I’m taking it day by day.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Gaughan, her whole body shaking as she backed away. “I tried to warn you.”

  “You did nothing wrong,” I said. “In times like this, always blame the guy with the gun. You know what you are, Colin?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You’re a bad client.”

  He laughed; a spool of drool dripped from his lip.

  “Right now,” I continued, “I’d have to say you’re the worst client I ever had, and if you knew my client list, you would be appalled. I’ve had clients that never paid, that lied to my face, that tried to pick up my secretary, that tried to pick me up. I even once had a client that peed in court, right there at the defense table, while the cop was testifying. From under the table he took out his prick and let loose. On my stinking shoes. But you, high as a circling vulture, with two murders postacquittal and now sticking a gun in my face, you take the prize. Congratulations, and pick up your trophy at the front desk. Worst client ever.”

  “And you don’t think you had it coming?”

  “What did I do other than pull every trick in the book to win your case before making sure you ended up in rehab. I gave you a chance to clean yourself up, to make something of your life.”

  “All while stealing my job and tapping my piece.”

  “Your piece? Ossana?”

  “What did you think?”

  “I
was just filling in,” I said with a shrug. “Someone had to.”

  “How’d you like it?”

  “Not much, either one.”

  “Now maybe you understand.”

  “Now maybe I do.”

  “I hope you came alone, because if not, Jason’s going to have to take care of it, and he gets so sloppy. The good news is, out here no one comes running at the sound of a gunshot. Out here a gunshot is as natural as the rain.”

  So that was the slamming screen door I heard, not someone running from me but the murderous Jason Howard, the skinny kid in the beard who had done in Duddleman and was in on the killing of Jessica Barnes, running out to take care of McDeiss. I had maintained a kernel of optimism even in the face of Colin Frost’s gun, sure that McDeiss would somehow save the day, but that optimism suddenly popped into despair. Who else would I get killed? Was Mrs. Gaughan next? Christ, I was a plague on the land. It scared me, sure, but it pissed me off, too.

  I thought about lunging back to the door to warn McDeiss, but before I could even twitch in that direction, Colin grabbed me by the lapel of my suit jacket and yanked me to the floor. He dropped down, slamming a knee into my chest so hard it felt like I was having a heart attack. I struggled to get loose from the pain, but then he put the muzzle of the gun in my eye, and my struggling froze.

  “Thinking of going somewhere?”

  “Let him alone,” said Mrs. Gaughan.

  “Get the hell upstairs, you witch,” said Colin.

  “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Shut your mouth. If I hear another sound from you, I’ll put a bullet in his brain. Now get the hell upstairs.”

  I couldn’t see her, that brave woman. But I could hear her rush out of the room and up the stairs, could hear her footsteps above us.

  And then came the flush of a toilet from someplace on the lower level. The washing up in a basin. A door opening. The clackity footsteps of high heels on a rough wooden floor. I wasn’t able to turn my head and so I didn’t get a sight of her until she appeared in my half sphere of one-eyed vision. The upward sweep of her bare leg, the tight skirt enfolding her thighs, the starched blouse hanging loose and unbuttoned, the breasts cupped in black lace, the chin jutting, the downward-turned mouth, the wide green eyes ringed with dark mascara staring down, down, with pitiless judgment.

  Even pinned to the floor with a gun in my eye, even knowing what I now knew of what she had been and all she had done, even then, the sight of her standing over me just like that was sexy as blood.

  CHAPTER 49

  NO EXIT

  With Colin’s knee still on my chest and his gun still pressed against my eye, Ossana DeMathis rubbed my bruised cheek with the point of her shiny black shoe. “I’m going to miss you, Victor.”

  “Going somewhere?” I managed to strangle out of my throat.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s getting a bit puritanical here to suit my tastes.”

  “Hell is too puritanical to suit your tastes.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, raising her foot and rubbing her spiked heel roughly across my lips. “One can imagine hell as a locked room filled with judgmental prigs harping on your every act.”

  “One already has.”

  “L’enfer, c’est les autres. I prefer a more self-indulgent destination. Fortunately, there is always Paris.” She turned and walked away. “Put him on the couch.”

  Right after Colin threw me to the sofa, not far from the sprawled body of Matthew Barnes—alive, I could tell now, from the rise of his chest with each breath—there came a knock on the door. Before I could do the calculation of the cowardice of keeping quiet versus the stupidity of shouting out to warn McDeiss, the door opened and Jason Howard, a gun in his hand, stepped inside. Scrawny and bearded, his neck and arms scabbed, he looked at me as he jabbed the gun into his belt.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Nothing. It has always been one of my favorite words, a handy description of the bald truth of my existence. And yet those two empty syllables had never been so full of hope than in that very moment, because the word just then meant not the morass swallowing my life but the instrument of my salvation.

  “He came alone,” said Jason Howard.

  “You sure, dude?” said Colin. “He wasn’t acting like he came alone.”

  “I checked the car, I checked around. Nothing.”

  “Who’s out there?” said Colin to me.

  “No one.”

  “You lie like a lawyer,” said Colin.

  “That’s always been convenient,” I said.

  “I told you I looked,” said Jason. He rubbed his arm across his nose. “There was no one there.”

  “That doesn’t mean he came alone.”

  “Both of you check the windows,” said Ossana. “I’ll deal with Victor.”

  She walked toward the couch with one of those sexy catwalk steps, one high heel placed carefully in front of the other, her shoulders back, her chin tilted down. She stood over me for a moment. “Where is she, Victor?”

  “Why don’t you just forget about her?” I said, softly enough so that only she could hear. “You’re going away—good. Go to Paris and avoid all the uncomfortable questions. Take Colin with you if you’re lonely. He’s a needleful of fun. Just go, but go without her.”

  “A girl needs her mother.”

  “Not that girl, and not her mother.”

  “Your opinion of me has deteriorated markedly.”

  “You shouldn’t have killed Duddleman.”

  “She should have minded her own business.” Ossana took a breath and then fell down onto the couch next to me. She tossed her hair like a frustrated cheerleader and lowered her voice like we were just friends chatting. “It was bad enough she was riding my brother, but then she had to go off snooping. Calynne was decidedly not her business.”

  “Why did you have the baby, anyway? I don’t understand. If you wanted to avoid the scandal, why not just get an abortion?”

  “Love, Victor. Have you ever felt it? Have you ever watched it slip away as your lover started chasing ever-younger fauna? His wife couldn’t give him the child I could, and I thought a child would win him back. But when he saw what I was up to, he insisted I give it up, he pleaded, he broke down in tears. He said his precious career was on the line and he promised if I put it up for adoption we would be like we were before, like the teenagers we once were, making our own rules, living our own secrets, following no one’s conventions but our own.”

  “Excuse me while I gag.”

  “Aren’t we the fifties’ society matron. I listened to him, Victor, and I gave my daughter away, and I hoped. But I should have known better. We no longer could be what we had been. You know he chases these young girls because they remind him of what I was when he first sneaked into my room. That’s why politics is so perfect for him. The halls of Congress are filled with the young and the ever eager.”

  “And they’re all named Jessica or Amanda.”

  “And don’t forget Ashley, there’s always a fucking Ashley in the wings. At first I was just trying to protect our secret, but now I have a purpose far greater than our love: our daughter. And it was you, Victor, who convinced me to stop deferring my maternal responsibilities.”

  “Me?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Please don’t say that. I have enough guilt as it is.”

  “You were so proud of yourself. Ooh, look at me, Victor Carl, all filled with hate. I hate this and I hate that. So dramatic and self-important. Trust me, darling, when it comes to hate, you don’t know the meaning of the word. You might give a good speech, but you screw like a minister. God, I can’t look at you without wanting to kick you in the face.”

  “I want to kick myself in the face, too.”

  “But I figured if you can show your milky emotions so proudly, why mus
t I hide what I truly am?”

  “And what is that, Ossana?”

  “A woman free of the shackles of common morality, free to indulge any impulse, free to journey into the darkest depths of her being, free in the only ways that matter. And that’s the freedom I’m going to pass on to my daughter. I have so much to teach her.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Because you are sadly limited. I will make her in my own image. There are so many delicious boulevards for her to tread. Life, love, sex, art, brioche, absinthe, passion.”

  “Murder and incest.”

  “Why limit ourselves?”

  “What do you do with the shoes?”

  “The shoes?”

  “Do you keep a collection?”

  “Oh, those. Surprisingly, they’re not for me. What would I want with Jessica Barnes’s little working-woman shoes? They’re for Colin.”

  “That Colin is such a pill,” I said.

  “Where is she, Victor? It is time for me to collect my daughter.”

  “Like a debt?”

  “Yes, exactly. And don’t doubt my sincerity on this. Tell me or die, it’s that simple.”

  “It’s not that simple, because I don’t intend to tell you a thing, and I don’t intend to die. Ever, actually, but that’s another sad debate.”

  “Your intentions don’t matter when we have the guns,” said Ossana.

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t intend to tell you where she is, because you’re a sick puppy who killed the only mother that little girl ever knew. You are the last thing that girl needs and I won’t be a part of putting you together. And I don’t intend to die, because right now the police detective I came with, a man named McDeiss who has been looking for all of you, is gathering up the Lancaster police for an assault on this house.”

  “McDeiss is here,” she said, her voice suddenly loud enough for Colin to hear.

  “Where?” said Colin.

  “Check the windows,” said Ossana.

  “He’s bluffing,” said Jason Howard, still looking out the side. “I told you, there’s nothing out there but corn growing. What do they do with all that corn?”