Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  “Ah, I see.”

  “He is quite interested in our work. It meshes very closely with the services he has performed in his own community the last few years.”

  “He’s quite a guy, that Bettenhauser.”

  “And so, as we contemplate the political stances we will take in the future, we are required to think of not just our current footprint, but of the footprint we envision for next year and the year after and so on.”

  “And so forth.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Quite reasonable,” I say.

  I reach forward and take hold of the envelope on the desktop. I open it, thumb the cash, raise my gaze just enough to catch Hanratty’s expectant smile. The son of a bitch is as good as licking his lips. I take out a significant portion of the bills, put the wad I extracted into my jacket pocket, and then slap the slimmed-down envelope back onto the desk.

  “How’s that?” I say.

  “What the hell?” says Hanratty.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of your growth plans. I’ll talk to the Congressman about increasing the donation check we make out to you guys. Buy yourself a few more soccer balls. Heaven knows, the one thing this great country of ours needs is more soccer balls.”

  “But what about . . . ?”

  “What, you want more?” I grab the envelope again, riffle the remaining bills, take another significant sliver, slip it with the other in my pocket, and toss him what remains in the envelope. “We good now?”

  “No,” says Hanratty. “Fuck, no, we’re not good. Where the hell’s Colin?”

  “Colin’s gone. It’s a new day, pal. Here on in, you’ll be dealing with me. My understanding was that everything was based on old understandings. Fine, I’ll go along to get along. But now you’re telling me you’ve been talking to Bettenhauser’s people. And so what we have is not an understanding so much as an auction.”

  I reach over and grab the envelope, take a few more bills to stick inside my pocket, weigh what’s left as if I’m judging the weight of a piece of fish, then toss it back.

  “This should do for an opening bid,” I say as I stand. “Now go see what the war hero and civics teacher is willing to give you in cash, because that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Everything else has to go through the accountants first. My guess is that your new best friend, Bettenhauser, intends to play his first campaign straight. My guess is all you’re going to get from him is a pat on the back and an ‘Attaboy.’ In that case, that thin little envelope is more than enough to buy your ass.”

  “Hey, pal, let’s not get hasty.”

  “Too late, I couldn’t be in more haste. Now if by chance Bettenhauser does give you more, you just let us know and we’ll take back what’s left in the envelope and find some other community organizer a little more grateful to accept our thanks for supporting our run. Otherwise, your mouth stays shut except when it’s kissing Congressman DeMathis’s ass. And if you’re a good boy, and you do all you can to help the cause, after the election maybe we’ll have another talk about cooperation and gratitude. Understand?”

  Hanratty stares a moment, grumbling under his breath.

  “What’s that you say, fuckface?”

  Rule Five: Never buck the Big Butter.

  “And so what did you tell our friend Detective McDeiss, Connie?” I say into her shriveled little ear. I’m getting sloppy on her gin. My arm is around her neck. Her geriatric leg, with its gnarled knob of a foot, is slung over my lap. My job is to keep the old bag happy in the worst way, and this is the worst way.

  “What could I have told him?” she says. “You didn’t tell me anything in the first place.”

  “See?” I say before spilling a wave of gin into my mouth. “I’m cleverer than you give me credit for.”

  “Oh, Victor. I give you nothing but credit. Why, I couldn’t stop talking about you to the nice detective. And he had so many questions. He asked me about a hammer he received from a reporter and whether you had mentioned it. He was trying to get what he could out of me, and he had the physical presence to do it.”

  “Big, isn’t he?”

  “My God, yes. Such a man. I almost swallowed my tongue when I saw him coming up the walk.”

  “Now I’m getting jealous.”

  “Oh, Victor, his advantage is only in bulk, in size, in raw, rugged masculinity.”

  “And what’s my advantage?”

  “You have such nice neat hands.”

  “Are you doing this on purpose?”

  “Kiss me, Victor,” she says, puckering her desiccated mouth, like the blood-red sucker of a leech. “Kiss me hard.”

  “If I kissed you, you’d stay kissed, you little minx.”

  “Oh, you are bad.”

  “But propriety forces me to restrain myself, though it is harder than I ever imagined. So, did you tell him anything, our virulently virile McDeiss?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all. I know how to keep secrets. All I said was to talk to my lawyer.”

  “Which lawyer?”

  “Why, Reginald, of course. Now this is getting tedious. Are you going to kiss me or do I need to call in Heywood?”

  “I have an appointment,” I say, uncoupling, “and I’m sure Heywood will treat you with all the raw disdain you deserve.”

  “Victor, you naughty, naughty boy. One day we are going to dance. Did you relay my dissatisfaction and concerns to the Congressman?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He’s working on it.”

  “Oh dear, he sounds like the repair shop working on my Rolls. You see the bowls on the table?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are empty.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And they’ll stay that way, Victor, until I get something more than empty assurances. We all have our urges to feed, our dark desires to satisfy. And I mean to have mine satisfied. On your way out, please call in Heywood. Heywood, at least, knows how to get paid.”

  “And how is that, Connie?”

  “He delivers, sweetie. That’s what it’s all about. Do you know how to deliver?”

  Rule Four: Politicians rise and politicians fall; make sure you don’t fall with them.

  There’s an Escalade circling, looking for a parking spot. I grab hold of Duddleman and pull her close, like we’re making out, as the car passes for a second time. She smells like lilac and coconut. For verisimilitude, I kiss her. She tastes like youth and argyle sweaters and earnestness. I have the sudden urge to discuss Kierkegaard, that wily Dane.

  “I’m glad to see you, too, Kip,” she says, still in my fake embrace.

  “McDeiss got the hammer, I heard.”

  “He almost put me in jail for not telling him how I got hold of it. But then he started in talking about you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I’d never met you. He didn’t believe me, but he let me go, so I was free to head up to Lancaster to find out what I could on our Jessica Barnes.”

  “And?”

  “Nada.” She pushes me away. “I trudged all through that stinking city, and I didn’t find a single thing. I even got hold of Jessica’s drunken mother.”

  “How was she?”

  “Drunk.”

  “Husband?”

  “Disappeared. No one knows where he is.”

  “Did you try the local bars?”

  “I went to his regular haunt, a dump called the Starting Gate. He hadn’t been there since the murder. He’s lurched out of sight.”

  “And you showed everyone the picture of the Congressman?”

  “No one recognized him, neither friends nor family. I also showed the photograph around at shops, restaurants and motels, anything near her home and a few places downtown. Nothing. If they did tryst up there, then
they did it in absolute secrecy.”

  “As you would expect from a politician.”

  “I can tell you from experience, Victor, that he’s not that careful. And I also have to tell you, from what I know, she’s not his type.”

  “What is his type?”

  “DeMathis likes the young and ambitious, the overeducated, the easily captivated. He likes to tell stories, give advice, remind you who he is. He needs to be adored, and Jessica Barnes wasn’t the adoring type. She might have been pretty enough for him, but she wasn’t a woman to be awed by power or position. And she was devoted to her husband, even though he lost his job and drank too much. I can’t see her and the Congressman hooking up.” She pauses a moment and looks down at her hands. “She was too good for him.”

  “You developed a pretty detailed portrait.”

  “I wish I had known her,” she says.

  “I think you have the first installment of your story. The truth behind Shoeless Joan.”

  “It’s too late. The police released the victim’s name two days ago. Jessica Barnes’s story has already been written in the dailies.”

  “But not like you’d write it. It would take a hell of writer to do her justice. A family shipwrecked by the Great Recession, the unemployed husband drinking away his frustrations, the sick daughter, the woman trying to find a way out, only to be found dead in Philadelphia.”

  “It does sound like a story,” she says. “Except for the daughter thing. There was no daughter.”

  “Of course there was.”

  “No, Victor. She didn’t have any children. She couldn’t. That was something the mother blathered on about between swallows and smokes. There was a medical issue. Jessica couldn’t have kids.”

  I turn away to face the row of parked cars and the long line of red lights indicating all the taken spaces. Was there no daughter? Had Jessica Barnes been feeding me a line, parading a sick girl across the marble table between us, all in a successful effort to get me to raise my offer? Had every step of our meeting, from her hesitant entrance to her raw red hands, been part of a con? Had I been played like a sucker by a pro?

  The very thought is delicious and I so want to believe it. But even as I let the hope rise to the surface of my consciousness, I know it to be false. And suddenly I understand exactly what the smear of blood is that Jessica Barnes had given me.

  “There is a daughter,” I say while still looking out at the long line of parked cars. “Adopted, or just given to Jessica Barnes to care for without the papers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Jessica’s mother didn’t tell you to protect the little girl. She’s with Jessica’s husband somewhere, hiding out. My guess is they fear the daughter’s next.”

  “Why would Jessica be killed because of her daughter?”

  “That’s the question. Find the daughter and you’ll find your story.”

  “But Kip, I don’t know how.”

  “If it was easy, any old reporter could do it, but you say you’re not any old reporter. So use your especial talents, your smarts, your charm. Deconstruct the problem and find a solution on the slant. But I’ll give you another lead. The little girl has a condition, something to do with excess copper in the blood. She isn’t allowed to eat shrimp. There’s a doctor treating her, with a name like Patticake or something. The doctor might get you a lead.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Everyone has something to teach you, Duddleman, if you can bear to stay quiet enough to listen. And now I want you to listen to this. Whatever you’re trying to learn, someone wants to keep hidden in the worst way, as Jessica Barnes found out. Be careful, and if you get scared, pull out.”

  “I won’t get scared,” she says. And that scares me.

  Rule Three: Hard liquor keeps the bile down.

  “He stares me down and grumbles under his breath like a surly teen, and so I say to him, I say, ‘What’s that you say, fuckface?’ ”

  “And what does the blubberer say to that?” says Stony.

  “Not a thing, not a damn thing. But he sure as hell grabbed hold of the envelope before I could take anything more out of it.”

  And they all burst out laughing, my new best friends, the Brotherhood of the Bag, barking their guffaws as Stony bangs on the tabletop. We are at Rosen’s, of course, and the table is full of empty glasses and empty hats and ashtrays piled with spent cigarettes.

  “Which surprised the hell out of me,” I say, “because on the dumber-than-he-looks prop bet, I would have taken the over on Hanratty in a blink and lost my hat.”

  More laughter, peals of it, and I join in, my face reddening with hilarity.

  “That’s rich,” says Miles Schimmeck.

  “Indeed,” says Hump.

  “Aubrey,” I call out to the surly bartender. “Five more Sazeracs.”

  And Maud just smiles like a proud mama, holding her cigarette in front of her, squinting as the smoke rises like a scar across her face. It’s her doing, the welcome wagon at Rosen’s, she is the one who has brought me into the club. I now bear the mark of her trust, and here on in I will be her responsibility.

  Stony might be my new best friend, but Maud is the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi—the blue of her eyes and the gold of her hair are a blend of the western sky—and I am in love.

  Rule Two: Everyone has a price, and every price is less than you think.

  “I’m wondering,” I say, “if you saw what Mr. Bettenhauser said in the press the other day.”

  “He’s a war hero,” says the man sitting across from me, speaking in a voice like the pebble-grain grip of a Smith & Wesson. His name is Thompson; he sells guns and shills for the NRA. The word on Thompson is that his support for the Congressman has been wavering, despite the envelopes he’s pocketed in the past. It’s startling how fickle the bought can be; it’s enough to erode my faith in humanity. Thompson avoids my hard gaze by looking into the drink I paid for. “A lot of our members are veterans.”

  “Congressman DeMathis has the utmost respect for veterans,” I say, “and his record on veterans’ affairs has been spotless. I’m referring to Mr. Bettenhauser’s statement on the Second Amendment.”

  Thompson looks up. Jowly and fair-haired, with a bristling crew cut, he raises his chin. “Was it in the paper?”

  “Not yet. Bettenhauser made it at a fund-raising event that he thought was off the record.”

  “Then does it concern us?”

  “Does the Second Amendment concern you? Does the right to shoot the stuffing out of hairy little varmints concern you? Does the vision of federal ATF agents swarming your store and rifling your records and hassling your customers concern you?”

  “Is that what he’s calling for?”

  “He said, and I quote here, about the recent school shootings, that—and here it is, the quote—that, quote, ‘Something needs to be done,’ unquote.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, he did. And I agree with him. Something does need to be done.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “A demonstration,” I said. “Something grand and forceful. You know the drill. Signs, shouted slogans, a show of passion for our constitutional protections. Maybe even a waving American flag to demonstrate love of God and country. Bettenhauser’s speaking to an environmental group at a hotel next week. It would be a perfect place to rally in support of the Constitution. Remember, the surest way to lose your rights is to take them for granted.”

  “Who said that? Reagan?”

  “Sure,” I say, taking an envelope from my bag and passing it across the table. “Saint Ron of the Bushmaster .223. Now here is enough to pay for the wooden posts and the paper and paint and the costs of organizing and putting the notice on your website, along with a small amount for your trouble. Think you can muster twenty to twenty-five?”

>   He waits a bit, making whatever calculation he needs to make to satisfy his scruples, before sliding the envelope into his lap. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “More would be good,” I say.

  “I’ll try.”

  “No violence.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But enough sign shaking to show the passion.”

  “What about the press?”

  “We’ll take care of the press,” I say, “as well as today’s bar bill. Another Maker’s Mark?”

  “Any questions?” said Stony as we finished another hard round of Old Fashioneds. “Anything not clear to your satisfaction?”

  “Right now nothing is clear except the queasiness in my stomach,” I said. The Briggs Mulroney Rules were becoming a muddle of hard liquor and secondhand smoke, but I suppose that’s the way of it in the lower strata of politics. Maybe the lower strata of everything.

  “Wait a second,” I said, shaking my head and feeling my brain slosh about in my skull. “Wait one stinking second. What about rule number one? You didn’t tell me rule number one.”

  “Rule number one,” said Stony, “is the only rule you really need to know.”

  “Well, don’t hold back now.”

  He raised a finger and lifted his chin. “Rule One: It doesn’t matter a whit whose bag he carries or whose ass he wipes, a bagman works only for himself.” When Stony ended the recitation, he lowered his gaze from the heavens to my beady eyes. “And don’t you be forgetting that one.”

  “Don’t worry, that one’s in my DNA.”

  “My father used to tell me that it doesn’t take a genius to carry a bag, but you need to be quick not to let go. The reports I have been getting show you to be quick enough.”

  “Reports?”

  “Oh, Victor, my boy, you don’t think we’d let you roam around our fair city with a bag of cash without keeping tabs. We can’t have you skewing the rates for the rest of us.”