Tales of the Bagman

by B C Bell

  It hurt to move. His whole body felt like one big bruise. He rubbed his eyes and then grabbed his ankle, checking his body for wounds. He couldn’t believe Spider’s gang hadn’t got a punch in. He hurt too much.

  “Man that is a nice suit. I can see why you’d want to keep it on,” Crankshaft said out of the side of his mouth.

  Mac groaned again, remembering the night before, while he continued to pat and grasp his thighs and ribs without saying a word. He was checking for bullet holes, still unable to believe he could hurt this much without having a wound. “You sure know how to cheer a guy up, don’t you, Crank?”

  “Hey, I let you sleep in, didn’t I?” Crankshaft picked up the notebook and rifled through it. It was three quarters full of Mac’s writing. “You know I hate to ask—”

  “Then don’t,” Mac said, grabbing the notebook back.

  He flipped through the pages, noticing it was full of questions about Slots, Spider, the cops, and a rogue’s gallery of not so savory characters from his past. The back half of the notebook seemed to be dedicated to the chemistry book, with notations from the table of elements and formulas. He didn’t remember writing any of it. He leaned forward in the seat, dropped the notebook on the floorboard and clenched both hands around the back of his neck. He stared down at the notebook, picked it back up. “Were you writing in here, Crank?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Don’t remember? This thing’s full of chemistry notes.”

  “Yeah, I thought you were getting ready to go back to school.”

  “I don’t know chemistry, Crank. This stuff’s all Greek to me,” Mac said, flipping back through the notebook.

  “So why did you have me go get all that other junk?” Crankshaft pointed to a box under Mac’s workbench.

  Mac just sat there with a blank look on his face.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Yesterday. You were thumbing through that chemistry book all day. Making notes. I was trying to get you into some clean clothes, get you to wash up. I had to force you to eat sandwiches, and you just kept scrawling in that notebook all day. Sent me out to get a bunch of beakers and test tubes. Chemistry stuff.”

  “Waitaminnit. Are you telling me I stayed here in the garage all day?”

  “You barely stepped out of the car, Mac.”

  “Crank. I don’t remember.”

  One of Crankshaft’s eyebrows arched up, before both of them joined, wrinkled together in a worried look.

  “Last thing I remember was taking out Spider Donlan’s gang yesterday morning. They were trying to take me out. Then my apartment house burned down.”

  “Made yesterday’s paper. You didn’t seem too concerned with it though. Just kept writing in that notebook, sleeping, then writing some more.”

  “And I was down here all day?”

  “Yeah, all day. You must’ve got a concussion or something.”

  “I remember being beat up all day long… and I was really, really tired…” Mac ran his hand across his scalp looking for a lump. He leaned over to show it to Crankshaft. “See. Nothing.”

  “Strange. You ever do any sleepwalking when you were a kid, anything like that?”

  “Now that you mention it… My dad, he woke me up outside the house a few times in my pajamas. Said I was wandering out in the yard, talking to myself on the sidewalk. Of course, I used it as an excuse to raid the pantry. That was about all it ever amounted to.”

  “Well then I was right all along. You’re crazy.” Crankshaft nodded his head and looked at the box full of lab equipment in the corner. “Or, you were sleepwalking. You want me to take that chemistry stuff back to the wholesaler? I still got a receipt.”

  “No, not yet. There might have been a method to my madness. I might have been sleepwalking. Or, I might have been so wound up I couldn’t sleep and just kept going till I was out on my feet.” Mac’s stomach made a groaning sound that echoed off the concrete walls. His fingertips moved to his forehead to steady it. “I gotta get something to eat. I’m weak. Light headed...”

  “Light-headed, crazy, sleepwalking—you’re just not right, boy. Come on to the office, we’ll get something to eat.”

  “No hot dogs. I been living on the things.” Mac opened the car door, and Crankshaft helped him out of the car, almost carrying him across the floor.

  “Hamburger it is—with fries. I’ll even spring for a milkshake.”

  “Crank, if I didn’t know you I’d think you were a saint.”

  The sunlight hurt Mac’s eyes. When they reached the sheet metal shack of Crankshaft’s office, Mac impaled a newspaper section onto a nail above the window—Crankshaft’s version of a curtain. The ace mechanic suddenly remembered something else that had been in the Tribune.

  “You might want to take a look at the rest of the news, see what else you missed,” Crankshaft said. He was standing in the door, but he hadn’t left yet.

  Mac sat behind the desk, struggling to lower himself into the seat. “Cubs beat the Giants?”

  “Not the box scores, genius. You said something about “‘Spider Donlan’s gang’ earlier.”

  “Yeah, I shot half of ‘em up…” Mac peered from one side of the desk to the other, as if taking inventory of what was on it. He still looked confused. “Why? Spider in jail?”

  “He’s dead.” The door slammed itself shut and Crankshaft headed across the lot.

  “Well, I didn’t kill him,” Mac said, as if Crankshaft were still there. He rested his elbows on the desk and put his head in his hands. Pulling open the desk drawer, he found the same bottle of whiskey he’d been drinking from the night before last. He took a slug, thinking it couldn’t hurt his head any worse, and then checked the level of the bottle. Almost the same. So why couldn’t he remember what he’d been doing yesterday?

  A half an hour later he was wolfing down his second cheeseburger and dripping mustard on page six where Crankshaft had opened the newspaper to reveal a headline reading:

  Second Wood Alcohol Poisoning Tied to Mob Links

  The four inch article below said that suspected organized crime member Jonathan “Spider” Donlan was the second criminal in two weeks to be killed by methanol poisoning. They hadn’t bothered to mention whether police suspected foul play on this one. Mac doubted it was suicide.

  “So you think Spider was working for Slots, too?” Crankshaft said rhetorically, grabbing one of Mac’s fries.

  “Had to be. He not only died the same way Anthony did, but I’m almost positive he’s the one that burned down my house.”

  “So Slots knows you bailed out of the rackets.” Crankshaft waved his hand in the air nonchalantly, as if it were nothing. “And he’s out to get you.”

  “Most likely. Or…” Mac scratched his head, leaned back in his chair and talked through a mouthful of burger. “…since McCreedy said Spider was the one who pulled the bank messenger heist, Slots was in on that one, too—and he’s figured out I’m The Bagman.”

  Crankshaft sat up on the edge of his chair. “Wait a minute. Did you say ‘McCreedy?’ Was this guy the hero cop?”

  Mac told him about staking out the Lincoln Men’s Club, how he had been forced to question a police officer he’d put in a garbage can, and then told the cop to get out of town. Crankshaft’s eyebrows arched down along with the sides of his mouth. He picked up the newspaper and turned to page one, revealing a story headlined:

  Hero Policeman Drowns in Lake Michigan

  Mac grabbed the paper so fast, he tore it. The Police Department’s statement read that hero Officer Daniel McCreedy’s body had been found floating next to a rented boat off Stony Island. The boat belonged to an agency whose statement was that while it had been stolen the night before, they had not had time to report t
he small craft. Detectives believed that McCreedy might have been working on a case privately since he was a well known part-time security officer and may have been branching into investigation.

  “The only thing McCreedy kept secure was himself,” Mac said. “And he wasn’t very good at that. This guy was murdered, Crank—and ten to one odds say the cops are covering for him, because it wouldn’t be good publicity to have a hero flatfoot exposed as a felon.”

  “Hey, I can almost understand how your elastic morality would get all bent out of shape about a crooked cop, but don’t you think you’ve got a bigger problem to work on?” Crankshaft wadded the condiment soaked newspaper into a ball and pitched it into the trashcan. “Like maybe getting out of town, seeing as how Slots wants to kill you without even offering you a deal you can’t refuse.”

  “McCreedy was already packing his bags and it doesn’t seem to have done him any good. No, unless Slots knows I’m The Bagman, I’m not even sure he knows I exist. Spider’s the one who tried to kill me, and he’s the lowest man on the totem pole.”

  “That totem pole’s going to collapse if the low men on it keep getting killed.”

  “You got a point. Maybe if I keep swinging an axe the whole thing’ll collapse.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Crankshaft shook his head, sighed. “What I meant was—” He watched Mac get up and walk for the door as if he were late for an appointment. “What I meant was be careful… Here.” Crankshaft tossed Mac a pair of extra large coveralls. “Put that on till you get yourself some clothes. Way you’re dressed, they wouldn’t serve you at a soup kitchen.”

  Mac looked down at his clothes. He’d been so preoccupied he’d forgotten his pants were mostly rags. He smiled with half his mouth. “Thanks, Crank.”

  “Yeah, well, I ever go crazy I’d want somebody to look out for me. Look, it’s almost five o’clock. If you hurry you can still make it down the street and at least pick up some work clothes.”

  “Can I take the Packard?”

  “You expecting trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  Crankshaft sighed, again. “Wait a minute. I got a present for you.” He opened the bottom desk drawer and tossed Mac something that looked like a chamois cloth, the soft, leather kind used for polishing cars.

  Mac caught it left-handed and spread it between his fingers. Tubular in design, the cloth had two small eyeholes toward the top of the leather side, and laces in back like a corset. “A mask?” Mac said. “I thought you were against this whole secret identity thing?”

  “I am. Seriously, I think you should stop right now. But it wasn’t my idea. Coco made it for you. Sort of a thank you, I guess… Said she couldn’t figure out how you could turn your head and see what was going on with that stupid bag on it, and that it was only a matter of time before somebody tore it off.”

  “So she knows who I am?”

  “A guy who runs around town wearing a bag on his head probably shouldn’t question the intelligence of others, Mac.”

  “Well, wow… I don’t know what to say, Crank. A chamois leather mask—damn, I’m gonna look like a professional.” Mac held it up and peered through the eyeholes. Not only did it cover his entire face, but it was open at the top. “I guess you’ll be able to see my hair, but—hey, I won’t have to squeeze my hat on over a bag anymore.”

  “Yeah, I’d really hate for you to have to hide your hair-do. You tighten it around your face with those leather straps on the side, like work gloves—and she put a collar button on the part that goes around your neck, so nobody but me can strangle you with it.” Crankshaft waved his hand in a get-out-of-here fashion. “I’d tell you to come back in one piece, but you already lost your marbles. Now go!”

  Mac pulled the coveralls on over his shoulder holster and zipped them up to his chest, then checked to make sure he still had his gloves in his pocket. He was expecting trouble. He stepped out of the office and across the lot to the suped up Packard. He already had the keys.

  Chapter V

  Poison

  It may have looked like Mac McCullough had parked in front of the Army Surplus store, but he was already thinking like The Bagman. He didn’t pick up any work clothes. Instead he went next door, to a theater supply that specialized in make-up and costumes. The girl behind the counter was obviously trying to close the store, but still managed to show Mac how to apply some of the make-up. He purchased some face putty and a line pencil, some spirit gum, and a set of bushy eyebrows. Then he drove directly to Carson Pirie Scott on State Street; they were open late.

  He zipped off his coverall in order to gain faster service and garnered more than a few stares as he walked down the aisle in the rags that had been his new suit. By the time he reached the men’s department, the sole of one shoe was slapping against the floor. After a discussion with the manager regarding the difference between a department store and a flop house, Mac grabbed two suits off the sales rack and strode back out wearing a blue-gray three-piece with a snap brim fedora and new shoes. He stashed the extra suit in the trunk. If he kept destroying all his clothes at the rate he had been, it might just come in handy.

  In most cases of death, Cook County usually sent the corpses directly to a funeral home and the mortician would bill the city for any extra cost such as autopsy or blood analysis. Only in particular cases, usually involving big shots or high profile criminals, were the bodies ever sent directly to the coroner. Judging from all the headlines, Mac decided this was a high priority case. The sun had already set when the Packard pulled up across the street from Cook County Hospital, which also just happened to house the Cook County Coroner’s Main Laboratory. Modern medicine’s answer to one stop shopping, Mac thought. If the patient didn’t make it, he didn’t have too far to go.

  He took off his hat, stepped out of the Packard and strolled around the building to the back. It took about five minutes to find the dock where they dropped the bodies off, and another five to steal a lab coat so he could walk around the hospital like one of the help.

  Twenty minutes later the night shift coroner, Dexter Hayden, marched into the stench of a formaldehyde-soaked autopsy room and sighed. Somebody had left two extra bodies, still covered, on gurneys in the back of the room. And Dexter was pulling a ten hour shift. New to the Cook County Coroner’s Office, Dexter had served his internship in Omaha where they might bring in ten bodies a shift on a busy day. And while the Chicago laboratories were streamlined, Cook County Hospital was still headquarters—it was always busy. Dexter wasn’t squeamish about the dead, but sometimes he felt like he worked in the world’s most morbid factory.

  The young doctor read the toe tag of the body on the table and prepared himself mentally. Conditioned by years of training, it still bothered him when he thought about the loss of such a young lady’s life. He pulled the blanket off the body and, in an effort to think of it as more of an object than a person, went right to work slicing open the woman’s chest. He didn’t see the blanket on the gurney behind him sit up. In fact, he didn’t even notice it, until it asked him a question.

  “Man! How do you guys keep your lunch down? Honestly, I don’t think I could do that, y’know? I don’t think I could do it once—much less all day.”

  Dexter jumped, almost dropping the scalpel. Then he tightened his grip and spun around, brandishing it. He looked like he had used a knife for more than lab work before.

  “Whoa! Whoa! No harm intended, pardner,” said the man on the table behind Dexter. He held up two gloved hands and patted the air in caution. “No offense, but the smell of ammonia alone would kill my appetite.” He wore a yellowish-tan colored mask that covered almost his entire face—but you could still tell he was smiling behind it.

  “This is a closed lab, mister! I’d advise you to leave,” the coroner said, holding the knife stiffly at his side. He was tense, but he wasn’t looking for
a fight.

  “Um…” Mac didn’t know what to say. Usually, if he wanted something he’d ask politely—and if that didn’t work, then he’d resort to threats and force. No, this was going to take some finesse. “Look, I’m sorry if I startled you. It wasn’t my intention. Really, you’re doing a job I couldn’t begin to fathom. But the fact is… I could really use some help here.”

  “So could I, mister. But if I have to, I’ll call the guards.” Dexter stepped toward the intercom speaker on the wall.

  “That’s one of them on the gurney there,” Mac said, thumbing over his shoulder at the other corpse, grateful to be back to intimidation. “You call one from the front door, some male nurses, how long you think it’ll be until somebody else gets hurt?” The big man stood up. “All I need is a couple of answers, OK?”

  Dexter’s lips parted. He looked left to the door, then right. “OK, what do you want?”

  “All I need to do is glance at the file of one of your patients—or, uh, clients—or whatever you call ‘em. A dead guy, a cop named McCreedy. You know anything about him?”

  “Mister, a cop dies in Chicago everybody knows about it. A hero cop? Everybody else. ‘Course I know about it. I did the autopsy.”

  “Did he drown?”

  “Hard to say. See, there’s no universally accepted test for drowning. No specific way to prove it. Sometimes there’s fluid in the lungs, sometimes that’s variable. Edema can’t be used as an indicator—”

  “What was your conclusion?” The masked man interrupted.

  “Oh.” It took Dexter a second to catch up. He’d been ready to review the entire case. “He might have drowned… Of course, even if he hadn’t, the amount of wood alcohol in his system alone would have killed him in the next half-hour.” Dexter turned around to get back to work while Mac absorbed what he’d said.