Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  “And you think I can help.”

  “We do.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s confidential for the moment.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Have I seen worse?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “And if you have to throw up, make sure it goes in your pocket and not on my crime scene.”

  What is it about dead people? We can pass scores of live humans without a second thought, with nary even a first. Whole universes collide about us, each thick with history and insight and wondrous perversion, uncharted territories ripe for exploration, and we barely notice. We are surrounded by the living, and amidst the crowds we think about them as much as fish think about water. But then we come face-to-face with the dead, and our breath catches. Something in the dead stills our unending internal monologue. Something in the dead has its call on us all. Now, standing there as the tarp was about to be pulled away, I would have thought I’d be silently contemplating the mysteries of life and mortality and the void, but I wasn’t. I suppose such questions are better left for those moments when vomit isn’t surging up your throat.

  “Easy now, Carl,” said McDeiss as he put a hand on my shoulder and nodded to Detective Armbruster.

  Armbruster leaned down, reached for the corner of the tarp, looked up at me with a filthy little smile on his face. “You ready?”

  “No.”

  I stood between the bright lights and the thing beneath the slick blue oilcloth, my shadow ominous on the brick wall where the lifeless thing leaned. I shrugged off McDeiss’s hand and stepped forward, into a puddle I hadn’t noticed. The smell was stronger than what had assaulted me before, fresher, almost predatory.

  A snake uncoiled in my gut as Armbruster pulled away the tarp.

  CHAPTER 4

  MEET THE PRESS

  A moment later I was leaning against the old car in the alley, throwing up in great heaving spasms.

  “Did you recognize her?” said McDeiss when I’d reached a lull. He was wisely standing behind me.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, wiped the back of my hand on my black pants. “There wasn’t much to recognize.”

  “They killed her with some sort of tool, apparently a hammer, and then kept going.”

  “Did you find the weapon?”

  “No. Whoever did this cleaned the field up nicely.”

  “That was considerate of them. And no one saw anything or heard anything?”

  “The car abandoned in the alley blocked it off from any onlookers, giving our killer enough privacy to slam away.”

  “Why would somebody do that to her face?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. You recognize her?”

  I had caught a glimpse of what remained of her features before I turned, just a glimpse, but it was enough. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, and the missing pieces were an eye and a cheek and the left side of the forehead. But what remained was specific enough for me to guess the picture on the box top. Yes, I had known the woman. I had just that day sat down in a bar with the woman. And in some pathetic part of my brain I’d believed that I had helped the woman in ways large and small, and I had felt so smugly good about doing it.

  “Her name was Jessica Barnes,” I said, still searching for a draft of clean air. “She lived out in Lancaster.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What the hell, Carl?”

  “It’s privileged.”

  “We have a woman with half her face bashed to pulp and a killer on the loose and you’re talking about privilege?”

  “I met with Ms. Barnes this afternoon on behalf of a client. I had a confidential discussion with her. That’s all I can say.”

  “Did she give you anything?”

  “Detective.”

  “Did you give her money?”

  “Don’t.”

  “How much?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Do you want to see Ms. Barnes again to refresh your memory? Do you want me to shove your ugly face into what is left of hers?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Back to the ball?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  McDeiss sighed. It was a loud, emphatic sigh, world-weary and well practiced, a sigh of resignation to all the stupid lawyers in the world, of which I was just the latest to cross his path.

  “You make my kidneys hurt,” he said finally. “We found an empty manila envelope at the scene with the outline of a stack of something that matched the size of a brick of money. If it was full when she left you, then we have a possible robbery motive. Be clever enough not to tell me what you talked about or why. Just tell me this—was there money in the envelope when she left you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ve told you all I can.”

  “Was it enough money for someone to kill her for it?”

  “Kids are killed for pocket change.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “This was more,” I said. “Are we done here?”

  “I suppose that’s all we’re going to get out of you tonight, but we are not done, not by a long shot.”

  “How did you know to call me?”

  McDeiss gave me the up-and-down, like he was examining a dead shark hanging on a fishing pier. “Look at you, frilled up like a little girl’s doll. You best take care of yourself, Carl. You’re swimming with the nasty now.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Not against them, you can’t. You’re out of your league.”

  “You don’t know my league, Detective.”

  “It’s a shame about the shoes.”

  “Hers?” I said, glancing at the tarp.

  “Yours.”

  I looked down. My shiny tuxedo slippers were smeared with filth, the bows slopped with vomit and blood. “They’ll clean up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He turned away dismissively, like only a cop can, and headed back to his corpse.

  I stood there for a moment, thinking about the sense I’d had earlier that night of having found my place in the world. I thought about the dead woman whom I had tried to help, and the now-missing money I had tried to give her. And I thought about what I was going to do about it all.

  Sometimes a man’s got to take a stand. Sometimes a man has to yank away the curtain of deceit and reveal the truth of things. Sometimes a man needs to step out of his own little prison of greed and desire and do what he knows to be right. And that’s when I decided, right then and there, what to do about the murder of Jessica Barnes.

  Nothing. I was going to do nothing.

  I wasn’t some savior out to salve some deep public wound, I wasn’t some knight errant out to right some grievous wrong. I was in a different game now, the political game, in which every sap was out for himself. See what I mean when I said politics was right up my stinking alley? I couldn’t have been more of a natural if my last name had been Kennedy or Bush.

  Warmed by my decision to let the investigation into the murder of Jessica Barnes flow on without my involvement or interference, I flipped up the collar of my jacket, jammed my hands deep into its pockets, and headed out of the alley. I was just ducking beneath the tape, trying hard to appear as incognito as the tuxedo allowed, when a flash of something hit my face.

  “Victor Carl, what a pleasant surprise.”

  Through the miasma of my light-burned vision, I searched for the owner of this hiss of a voice, and felt my stomach plummet even further when I found it. Short and pug-like, with bad hair, bad teeth, and rubbery brown orthopedic shoes, he was as unimpressive a specimen as could be
found outside of a microscopic slide.

  “What are you doing here, Sloane?” I said to the political reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. “This isn’t your usual beat.”

  “It surely wasn’t until you showed up. Smile.” He raised his camera. Flash flash.

  “Take another picture and you’ll be digging that camera out of your dentures.”

  “When I heard the call on my radio, I was just sitting at home, twiddling my thumbs.”

  “Twiddling something.”

  “I thought I ought to check it out, for the good of the public. They do have the right to know. And then, imagine my delight when you showed up. Hard work is so rarely rewarded. Who’s dead?”

  “No one you need worry about.”

  “I’m not worried, just curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About why the police called Congressman DeMathis’s bagman to a murder scene.”

  “He’s here? Where?”

  “Don’t get cute, Carl, you don’t have the face for it. What’s the connection between DeMathis and the victim?”

  I took a step forward and wagged a finger. “Careful what you print, Sloane, or we’ll sue you and your paper both into a barrel.”

  “I’m a reporter for a print newspaper; what could you do to us that the iPad hasn’t already done?”

  “Then I’ll cut off your dick, and stick it up your ass.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Just get it right.”

  “Oh, Victor, I always strive to get it right.”

  “Then tell it true. I’m nobody’s bagman.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Then what exactly are you?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead I gave the ink-stained wretch a threatening sneer, which I fear came off more like a fit of gas, before heading south on Twentieth Street, away from Sloane’s camera, away from McDeiss, from the dead woman, from the whole stinking ball of mess. And all I had was Sloane’s final question ringing in my ears.

  Knock knock. Who’s there?

  That’s the way every good story begins, and the joke was on me, because I didn’t anymore have an answer. Something foul had washed over me, or I had fallen into a pit, or I had fallen into my future, I couldn’t yet tell. All I knew for certain, other than that I wouldn’t come out unscathed, was how it started and where.

  It started for me in the criminal courts building in Philadelphia, at the lowest moment of my lowly career.

  CHAPTER 5

  MELANIE BROOKS

  Just a few weeks prior to the ball, before ever I entered the blighted realm of politics, my career was neck-deep in the crapper. To say my legal business just then was fallow was to insult fields all across the Midwest. My roster of clients had deserted me, my billable hours had dwindled, my practice was going south so fast it was already playing shuffleboard in Boca. You can blame it on the recession; I surely did.

  The legal world is as riven by caste as the most hidebound outpost in the Hindu Kush. There are the top dwellers in their office towers, cruising the lush feeding grounds of the high-powered corporate world. These denizens of Big Law are slow and fat on the proteins of their prey, but I learned long ago that you underestimate their predatory viciousness at your own peril. In the depths of the Great Recession, with their feeding grounds thinned, they were forced to dive lower to satisfy their insatiable hunger, snatching smaller fish from the mouths of second-order predators. And so these lower-level meat eaters, lesser firms with lesser reputations but no less hunger, plunged ever deeper to grab what scraps remained, reducing their fees and taking clients and cases from the jaws of even lesser firms. And so on, and so forth, and so it went.

  As a lawyer, I was a cheerful bottom-feeder, used to crawling through the muck of society, surviving on what leavings had fallen from the flashing jaws of those above. My practice was a desolate territory of bounced checks, lying clients, and lost causes, but it was mine, and within its bounds I could find enough scraps to hammer out a living. Imagine my surprise, then, when amidst this debris of failure that I called home, I sighted in the distance other suited carnivores sifting through the garbage. First one, and then four, and then scores, flashing me abashed smiles before they went back to foraging what before had been exclusively mine.

  And so it was that, like a Jewish peddler in the Old West, I found myself calling out my wares as I traveled from courtroom to courtroom: “Plea agreements, motions to suppress, trials of any stripe, DUIs half-price.” Let me assure you, begging for work in the criminal courts is not why you lock yourself in the law library for three years and bury yourself in debt. What you’re after is a cushy job in some huge law firm with an expense account, a handcrafted suit of the finest New Zealand wool, and a silken-haired secretary named Mimi with hips that knew what they were all about. What you’re after is everything and a cigar. But there I was, sitting in some random courtroom, hoping to put a pitiable amount of change in my pocket, which meant what I had was squat.

  “Do you have a case before me today, Mr. Carl?” said old Judge Winston. Ruddy-faced and arrogant, he had spied me sitting in his courtroom as he scuttled in, sans robe, to speak with his clerk.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Just here for a hope?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, from what I understand, our defendant this afternoon is well represented, so you might try fishing in another pond.”

  “Thank you for the advice, sir.”

  “And don’t look so hungry all the time,” said the good judge. “It makes my stomach twitch.”

  If it wasn’t for the humiliation, I might have laughed along with the rest of those in the courtroom as I slunk out the door, but the humiliation was real and my feigned chuckle died like a butchered frog in my throat. It is one thing for your career to hit an all-time low, it is quite another for it to become such a public jibe that judges feel free to crack jokes, and smarmy assistant district attorneys, with their steady government paychecks, laugh with impunity.

  I fled Judge Winston’s courtroom and slumped red-eyed and desperate in the hallway, wondering about the opportunities for rug salesmen in the city: “How about a lovely Berber for your rec room? It is such a sturdy weave.”

  “Victor? Victor Carl? Is that you?”

  I pulled myself out of Carpet City and saw a woman calling to me whom I was sure I had never seen before. Dressed in scarlet, she was thin and sharp with long legs, spiked heels, and a look in her eye that was hard and predatory both. You know the look, you can see it in Realtors and exotic dancers on the prowl. And she was flat-out gorgeous, model gorgeous. If I had seen her before, I would have remembered her absolutely, yet even as she approached, with golden bangles jangling, her sharp chin and raised cheekbones drew a blank.

  “It’s me all right,” I said.

  “How are you doing, dearheart? It’s been so long.”

  “It certainly has.”

  “You look . . . good.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “But you, you look fabulous.”

  Her hard smile turned girlish. “Why, thank you, Victor. That’s so sweet of you.”

  “So how have you been?”

  “Just marvy, I must say. And you?”

  “Dandy. Dandy randy roo.”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

  “Not a whit.”

  “I guess I should be flattered. I’m Melanie. Melanie Brooks. From law school.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I tilted my chin and looked closer and, yes, there she was, something soft and earnest encased within that hard, stunning exterior. “Melanie?”

  “Present and accounted for,” she said, laughing.

  “Melanie, my God, look at you.”
/>   “The new me,” she said, posing for just a moment. “All pressed and pleated. Do you like?”

  “Oh my, yes. What the hell happened?”

  “Life.”

  “Well, I must say, it’s been a darn sight better to you than it has to me.”

  Melanie Brooks was in my study group our first year of law school. She was pudgy and somber, quite serious and committed to the cause, with her tight mouth and Angela Davis afro. More than anything, she was sincere, tooth-achingly sincere. Every case was analyzed for its sociopolitical implications, every discussion was about race or class or the rape of the poor, or about rape itself. Save the homeless, save the whales, equal pay for equal work, civil rights, gay rights, dolphin rights. No beef because of the methane; no eggs because of the cages; no McDonald’s out of sheer principle. I can still hear her preaching in our group as I tried just to get through Torts. “You can make a difference. We all can. Life is all about making a difference.” She was the best of us in many ways, yet her sincerity always felt like a nail being rubbed across your eyeball. That was what made it so hard to recognize her in this red-clad predator-eyed incarnation with the straightened hair and glossed lips. Yes, physically she had changed, thinned and hardened and polished up in a way I could never have imagined, but even more than that, her sincerity had somehow been battered to death like a baby seal.

  “I’ve read all about your exploits in the papers, Victor. I’d say congratulations are in order. You’ve made a name for yourself like you always wanted.”

  “Notoriety is not the same as success.”

  “Oh, give it time.”

  “I’ve given it plenty of time.”

  “Good things are on the way, I’ve no doubt. I’d love to catch up and chat about the old times but I’m due in court with”—she opened her bag, took out a document, gave it a quick scan—“Judge Winston, apparently. I have a criminal matter.”

  She pulled me aside and nodded toward a man in a long leather jacket standing a bit down the hallway. He was tall and bearded, stick-thin and mournful, and he stared at me with pale eyes as cold and flat as winter slate.

  “Colin Frost,” said Melanie. “The poor man is up on a heroin rap and we’ve got a motion to suppress, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I hate making a fool of myself in court, and I was so hoping someone would cover it for me, but here I am.”