The Doomsday Bag

by Michael Avallone

  I wondered if the missing Bagman was a known fact to the state police. I didn't wonder about the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover was sure to be in on that secret.

  He wasn't in his fifth-floor office and after the state troopers delivered me into the hands of an agent named Rowles, I was led down the long, gunmetal-gray corridor to a little room where I was sure they kept the whips, the beds of nails, and the racks. But Rowles fooled me. He was a medium-sized, athletic-looking guy with a face like a Florida ad. Sun, beach, and surfing. He exuded smiles, health, and vitality. You kept picturing him in a two-piece cabana outfit instead of the sober gray suit he was wearing. He also looked about thirty-five which is par for the course. I didn't have to wonder where Hoover was. Probably at the White House getting the bad news from the Chief.

  Rowles was going to interview me alone, obviously. There was no one else in the room. We had a desk, a couple of chairs, and an open window all to ourselves. It was a room loaded with files, too. Thick black binders choked about three tiers of shelving running around three sides of the place. All mysteriously marked alphabetically from A to Z. Each letter was represented by about ten volumes.

  "May I smoke?" I asked.

  "Go ahead. This won't take us too long." He hadn't sat down. Just took a corner of the desk and looked down at me as if we were going to talk man to man. Or agent to suspect.

  "Hope not. I could eat a horse I'm so hungry."

  He kept on smiling. "Where did you get the pass?"

  "Which one?"

  He didn't stop smiling. He suddenly held up the blue laminated Safe Conduct card. The rest of my junk was on the desk next to his hip.

  "You can read, can't you?"

  "Oh, yes, I can. It's because I can that I'm asking. I've been with this scene for fifteen years now and I've never seen a pass like this one. Is it a forgery?"

  "It was given to me by your boss and mine. Simple as that. Go ahead and confirm it or you'll be wasting your time and my lunch hour."

  "That's being done right now. If we can get a line through. Lots of activity going on today. You wouldn't know—" He broke off and his smile thinned. "While we're waiting suppose you give me your version of what happened on the highway."

  "Somebody tried to nail me. Happens all the time where I come from. I've put too many people away. Their relatives are always trying to get even—sometimes they themselves when their stretches are up."

  He considered that. "I'll admit your name isn't exactly unknown to me, though we've never met until now. You've got a track record in Washington. I know that and I've heard the Director mention you often in rather glowing terms. You've helped us crack a few Commie setups in the past. But I'd appreciate your telling me about the highway deal anyway. While we're waiting for proof of your credentials. Fair enough? We like to cooperate with the state police and while this may not develop to be actually in our jurisdiction—well, one hand washes the other?"

  "Rowles," I said, "stop windjamming. Don't talk down to me. That gets my back up. You got questions? Ask them."

  He frowned but he didn't get angry. His Director didn't like agents who made blunders, no matter how small. I'd heard about Hoover.

  "What were you doing in that cab?"

  "Too easy. Going from the White House to the Carlton Hotel where I am staying. I'm an expert witness in Cornell's subcommittee investigations on unfair Big Business practices." He must have known that.

  I didn't have time to lie. Thomas Miflow might have jotted his last fare down on his trip ticket even as we pulled away from Seventeenth Street. I'd been too preoccupied to notice. I couldn't risk a boner that Rowles could easily check.

  "What were you doing in the White House?"

  "Social call on an old friend. I was in town. He wanted to see me. He gave me the pass to make my stay easy in D.C. He knows how I like to snoop around."

  "Go on. What's the rest of it?"

  With my cigarette lit, I watched the blazing tip of it and told him. About the souped-up Plymouth, the tanned faces of the two men with fedoras and how they had caught up with Miflow and me and pump-gunned him into oblivion. I also included the Oregon license plates with the number I had remembered. Training is everything. As busy as I'd been trying to stay alive, my eyes had consciously recorded the fatal numerals.

  He let me finish without interruption and then looked idly at the watch on his wrist. Then he turned around, without getting off the desk, and brought a phone receiver into view. He raised it to his mouth, still looking at me. He had hardly glanced at Leonard Kanin's file folder.

  "204, please," he said.

  After a few seconds, he said, "Rowles, here. What have you got?"

  I ignored him and wondered about the five sticks of chewing gum in my side pocket. Plastic explosive. Chew it into a wad and then throw it against something and—whoosh! These boys sure took chances, unless they had Commander Markham's infernal weapon, too. That one I still didn't quite buy. It smacked of comic books of another kind.

  Rowles hung up the phone and came off the desk. He tugged the possible creases out of his coat. His healthy face, out of place really in such a job, was almost boyishly exuberant.

  "Good-bye, Noon. You're free to go now. If you're in town long enough, pay us a call. The Director said he'd like to see you again."

  "Was that him just now?"

  "No, it wasn't. But he relayed a message. I'm delivering it. Feel flattered. He hasn't time for everybody."

  I stood up, too. Rowles and I were about the same height, which is always to the good in this kind of interview. I looked around for an ashtray and he indicated one on the desk.

  Where the rest of my cards, the .45, and the thick manila file folder on Leonard Kanin lay. He hadn't once looked into the folder. That was something to think about. But everything was now happening a little too fast. I stubbed the Camel to death in a glass tray and replaced all the cards in my wallet. He was watching me as I reholstered the .45 and picked up the file folder. I held out my free left hand.

  He looked surprised, then smiled and flipped the blue laminated card at me with one flick of a finger. I took it and tucked it into my shirt breast pocket.

  "About the cab driver, Rowles—"

  "What about him?"

  "I'd appreciate anything you get on him. Whether he was married. Kids, that sort of stuff."

  He nodded. He didn't have to comment.

  "I'll Xerox any data we come up with and send it to your hotel. Fair enough?"

  "Fair enough. If there's anything unusual about his postmortem, I'd appreciate that, too. If this was a personal beef, I want to get some clue what to look out for."

  His grin was tight. "Ever know anyone who specialized in moving-vehicle rub-outs with pump guns?"

  "No," I said. "Not really. Fact is, now that I think of it, the weapon was a lot like a riot gun. Or something that a Federal agent would carry. Worth thinking about, isn't it?"

  It certainly was but he didn't care for the implications in the remark; especially since he just might know all about the Bagman incident and the really lousy implications in that. So far it had all the earmarks of an inside job.

  "Come on," he said gruffly. "I'll walk you down. That way no one will be stopping you every ten feet as unauthorized personnel."

  "That's good of you."

  With a sarcastic silence between us, we took the elevator and rode down five floors. In the tiled lobby, still gunmetal gray and very unfrivolous-looking, we shook hands in farewell at the glass doors. The world outside was darker than ever. Raindrops were beginning to pelt down and Thomas Miflow would never see this rain or any other. It was a gloomy thought. And the Bagman was still missing. And all I'd accomplished was a fatal arrest, an FBI question-and-answer session, and not one step in the right direction.

  Rowles disappeared into the building again and I hurried down the stone steps. I was still in the very center of all those monuments and shrines to Americanism, Democracy, and Bureaucracy. I could have hit the Lincoln Mem
orial with a BB gun. And if I had the notion, I could have dropped in at the National Archives to read the original manuscript of the Declaration of Independence. But everything looked misty, cold, and unfriendly against a backdrop of dark skies, gently falling rain, and I had had my historic fill of the memorial side of Washington, D.C. The District of Columbia isn't all stone, carved memorials and dates and statues and scrolls. I had to shake off a feeling of musty legend and—death. Miflow's blasted head and shoulders just wouldn't go away.

  Even sight of Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have helped, the mood I was in. And he's always been a safe bet on dog days.

  But it was a day of surprises.

  I couldn't make a move without being spotted. Or so it seemed. I must have had out-of-towner written all over me.

  I recognized the long Lincoln touring car with the uniformed chauffeur in front. I didn't have to check the license plates or the flags of state and office drooping damply over the headlights of the vehicle. Car and livery had VIP written all over it.

  Congressman Charles Cornell smiled at me grimly from the interior of the vehicle. The uniformed chauffeur had hopped out to open a rear door for me. I ducked quickly into the Lincoln, grateful for only two things. I didn't have to hunt up a cab and I was escaping a pretty fair drenching. The rain was hammering down in earnest now.

  And still the surprises kept coming.

  There was a woman in the car, sitting next to the Congressman, and she moved over in a velvety glide of white legs, tapering thighs, and yards of white ermine and silken accessories that all looked like a millions bucks on her. I had a flashing impression of a red, red mouth, white, white skin, and dark, dark eyes. In a word, a million-dollar babe.

  I crowded in next to her, as much room as there was in such a fancy car, and Cornell lifted a hand mike and spoke softly into it: "All right, Jimmy. Let's go. The club." He tucked the mike away somewhere at his side, tilted his gray homburg back on his rugged, shrewdly intelligent forehead, and smiled. A thin smile but a smile all the same.

  "You are going to dinner with us. Oh, forgetting my manners. This is Felicia Carr, Ed. I've made the grave mistake of granting her a personal interview. About how the hearings are going. She's rather a trial at times but completely wonderful to look at. Do you agree? Later we can get rid of her and have a real chat—"

  "I agree." I nodded to Felicia Carr. She nodded back, a curt but very feminine nod of her long raven-black hair. It seemed to swirl around her shoulders, though she was hardly moving, and her eyes glittered the way a movie star's are supposed to but seldom do. Agree! The woman was a fourteen-carat knockout. A '42 Lamarr model with 1970 trimmings.

  "Now there's an introduction—I warn you, Mr. Noon. I am very impressed. Sitting between a notable dignitary like Charles Cornell and a vaunted private investigator from mad Manhattan. I promise to ask a lot of questions but I shall pay attention and shut up when asked to. I'm very agreeable, really. I only look bitchy."

  "Lady," I laughed, feeling a little better and relaxing against the deluxe upholstery of the Congressman's private car, "don't go away. I've got a million answers for you."

  She smiled and Charles Cornell grunted, an old-timer shaking his head. I propped Leonard Kanin's file folder on my side of the car, wondering just when I would ever get around to examining it. I'd been interrupted all day. I doubted very much if happily married CC was playing footsie. He just wasn't that sort of male animal. Just a grand old man.

  I had the odd feeling though that the Congressman had not picked me up to discuss my testimony for his subcommittee. I would have bet my office and .45 he wanted to ask me about the Bagman.

  Bad news has a habit of traveling fast in Washington, D.C.

  And unless something vital had happened, the Bagman was now a missing person for all of about six hours.

  Nobody Ever Died from It

  I took my cue from the Congressman. Whatever he wanted to talk about, I would talk about. Felicia Carr was certainly the greatest invention for ailing private eyes since the birth of Eve, but she was a cipher right then. A zero. I had to play it by ear and see exactly where she fit in Charles Cornell's scheme of things.

  What I didn't know about Washington newspaperwomen would fill the Smithsonian Institution, but there was one marvelous balm in the entire arrangement courtesy Charles Cornell, U.S. Congressman. Miss Carr took my mind off everything for the next couple of hours. Thomas Miflow's face went away, Leonard Kanin's dossier lay forgotten on my lap, and I forgot all about missing bagmen and the consequences thereof. I'm only human. There was time enough by morning to get cracking, and who knows—Kanin might come dragging back any second with his tail between his legs, wagging his bag behind him. Lots of screwy things occur in D.C. without benefit of newspaper coverage or the outside world looking in. This just might turn out to be one of those things. But I knew I was whistling past Miflow's corpse. I had been marked for extermination and it had to have been hooked up with what had happened at Convention Hall that afternoon.

  And all I really had to do was remember the Kennedys and Martin Luther King and my mind was back in focus again.

  Like I said, Felicia Carr was a revelation.

  All the way in a smooth drive to Cornell's selected place for dinner, she listened attentively while the Congressman underscored a few points about his subcommittee, building to a heartfelt conclusion that he did have enough facts and figures and data to steer a bill past the Steering Committee and, hopefully, for a well-merited Senate endorsement and House approval. During his well-chosen, carefully articulated words, he threw me several bones of praise. Miss Carr took no notes, but I could detect a whiplash intellect at work; one of those steel-trap minds that absorb like a sponge anything they hear. I was sure that she could quote the Congressman down to the smallest conjunction and adverb. Best of all, she never interrupted with a gushy rejoinder or an "Oh, my!" type of remark which some women use to show they have been listening. She was very easy to like and a helluva lot easier to lust after. Her long slender legs, uncompromisingly white, were gently brushed against my knee. There was an aura of fragrance about her that I was sure wasn't any kind of perfume. It had to be her own spoor; a compound of female beauty, soft curves, and bold valleys of womanhood and just plain latent Tiger Lily. Under the ermine which surrounded her exquisite face like a cloud of heavenly Number Nine I was sure was a great lady dying to get out and raise some unpuny Cain. It was fun really to have such a whopping doll as part of the assignment.

  I asked her only one question before Jimmy, Cornell's chauffeur, had successfully navigated between the falling raindrops to park somewhere in a huddled mass of structures and buildings between Fifth and Sixth streets. But even here, you couldn't get away from the glorious facade of the nation's Capitol. I could see the dome lighting up the dark sky with the lights that seemed to blaze eternally.

  "What kind of newspaperwoman?" I asked lightly.

  "Don't you read the Post, Mr. Noon?" She laughed. "No, of course not. You just got here. Well, Infidel, I am owner and sole byline on a syndicated column desperately entitled, "D.C. To Me"—nothing grandiose. Just two sticks of type on the feminine viewpoint as applied to the Hill and politics and the world scene—"

  "You're on the editorial page," Cornell grunted. "In this town, that's not alfalfa. She's really quite good, Ed. A little stiff in the clinches but it's a damned fine column, all in all."

  "Why, thank you, Congressman." She managed a curtsy even while sitting down. "See what a nice old bear he really is, Mr. Noon?"

  "A sweetheart," I agreed. "Tell you what. Tomorrow morning, I'll have the Post sent up to my room and I'll turn to your column first."

  Jimmy was holding the door open for us. Impervious to the rain, unblinking in the blinking neon signs of a We Fix Anything garage just across the street. Cornell's club, if that's what it was, seemed a converted old mansion sort of place, with lofty veranda, pebbled walks, and row upon row of forsythia forming a bordered trail up to the front
door. Which looked massive and oaken. Doorknocker and all. The only thing missing was the iron Negro jockey standing on the grass with his arm out. Knowing Cornell I wasn't surprised it wasn't there. The fighting Democrat from Wisconsin hadn't battled his way to the Hill to play ball even with traditional bigotry.

  There were several Cadillacs, a Jaguar, and one little Volkswagen lined up like a motor pool beyond the shadowy recesses of the house.

  "Not crowded tonight," he murmured, almost to himself. "Don't wonder. Well, it's very secluded as I told you. We'll be able to hold hands with this wench without anyone writing to my wife."

  We both laughed. Felicia Carr and I. It was a nice mutual sound. I pushed some flying fantasies out of my head and helped her along the pebbled walk. Charles Cornell led the way. Tall, distinguished, pride showing in every gesture. Miss Carr was wearing high heels. At one point, she lurched slightly and I steadied her. Her answering squeeze of palm in my hand threw me for a second. Unless I was nuts, the lady liked me almost as much as I did her.

  It was something to think about, Bagman or no Bagman.

  The night was young and she was beautiful.

  To coin a cliché.

  But I still had to find out what was on Congressman Charles Cornell's mind. It couldn't be escargot, cherries jubilee and pots of coffee and a bottle of Cliquot '38, rescued from the wine cellars beneath the club. Snails. I felt like I'd been traveling like one all day.

  As good as all that was—and we all joined him in having the same since it was his party—I waited for him to open up.

  The opportunity didn't come until Felicia Carr excused herself to go to the powder room. No lady has ever managed such a table departure with more charm, poise, and overall class. She was, like I told you, Major League all the way.