Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  I leaned forward, brushed my lips across her eye, and then put my mouth at her ear. “Who are you imagining when you can’t see my face? Colin?”

  “Are you obsessed with Colin Frost, Victor? My God, you sound jealous.”

  I kissed her neck. “It’s just that I thought I saw him tonight.”

  “Impossible. The facility he’s in is very secure. It doesn’t allow its patients to just up and leave as they will.”

  “Prudent policy.”

  She bent her head back, exposing her long pale neck. “I’ve been waiting.”

  I had the bright vampiric urge to take a bite, a large one, a real mouthful. Instead, I let go of her hair, looked at my hand, pulled a strand of red from between my fingers. She turned her head to face me as I put the strand into my shirt pocket and I stared into those eyes, so wide, so green, green as jade, so accomplished at hiding what was behind them.

  “I’m sorry you waited for nothing,” I said, “but I’m no longer in the mood. A bloody murder tends to do that to me. Not to mention the hours I was held for questioning by the police, and then the hostile interrogation by Detective McDeiss. But at least my absence gave you the opportunity to look around my apartment. For cigarettes, I mean.”

  “Sometimes I just have such an urge. Did you take the lock of my hair as a keepsake?”

  “Something to moon over on full moons. It’s not here, you know. It was when they first came up here looking for it. But they missed it. That’s the problem with hiring drug addicts to do your dirty work. I think you would have been clever enough to find it—I’m sure of it, actually—except it’s not here anymore.”

  “What are you talking about, Victor?”

  “Let’s not be coy when just a few hours before we were screwing like unhinged rodents. I’m talking about the proof Jessica Barnes gave to me. You asked for it, your brother asked for it, Melanie Brooks asked for it, even Detective McDeiss pressed me for it. Everybody so desperately wants it, but I don’t have it anymore.”

  “That’s too bad. It would have been useful to have.”

  “How far does it go, you shilling for your brother? Is screwing me part of the job?”

  “We all have unpleasant duties.”

  “Don’t we,” I said, and then I leaned forward again and kissed her. And she kissed me back, with a bit of urgency in her tongue now, the kind of urgency that would have boiled my blood just a few hours before. I made it seem like it was hard to pull away, I made it seem like I wasn’t ready to vomit into her mouth.

  “The reporter who was murdered was young and bright and idealistic,” I said, “and remarkably pretty. She was getting her life together. Her future would undoubtedly have been brilliant.”

  “You sound like you were a little in love with her.”

  “I liked her, very much, actually.” I backed away to get a gander at the whole of her. “But it was your brother who was in love with her.”

  “My brother has his unfortunate infatuations,” she said a little too quickly. She pulled her legs further beneath her. There was an expression of distaste, as if she had eaten a rotten clam, but there was no shock or puzzlement, no wondering what was what.

  Maybe there had been a bulletin on the radio. Maybe she had been texted the news by her brother. Or maybe she had peeked at my phone while I was in the shower and gave the order herself. Maybe she was a pawn in someone else’s game. Or maybe she was a murderous bitch who needed to be put down. Maybe she was a damsel in distress. Yeah, that was it, and I was Richard the Lionheart back from the Crusades.

  “The reporter was looking into the Shoeless Joan murder,” I said. “And wouldn’t you know it, she ended up shoeless herself. It’s become a dangerous business, this whole thing, and I have to tell you, Ossana, I have the strange feeling that I might be the next one to lose my footwear.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Victor. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Neither does death. That’s why you didn’t find what you were looking for. It was too hot for me, too damn dangerous. I gave it away.”

  A twitch and an impatient tightening of her lips. “That was imprudent of you. To whom?”

  “To someone with very explicit instructions on what to do with it if anything happens to me.”

  “That’s the best you could do?”

  “I’m not clever enough to have devised something richer.”

  “What ever am I going to do with you?”

  “Keep me alive,” I said. “Keep me employed.”

  And those words, like an incantation, magically eased her concern. I was still on a line, her line, her brother’s line, on the line of this whole political world of easy money and easier virtue. She stood up, lifted her arms in the air and stretched like a cat. She took a step forward, placing her arms atop her head so that I could see the flock of birds fluttering on her wrist.

  “You still want to work for my brother?”

  “I still want to be paid by him.”

  “At least you’re true to form, I’ll give you that. I love men without surprises.”

  “I know where I’ve been, I’m not going back.”

  “But there is something different about you, Victor, a new taste I can’t quite put my tongue on.”

  “I’m seeing everything more clearly.”

  “Even me?”

  “Especially you.”

  She took another step forward, and another. She lowered her arms onto my shoulders and tilted her head so that her green eyes stared up into my own. “And what do you see, Victor?”

  “That you were right about your darkness being darker than mine.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” She pulled my head close and kissed me, tried to slip her tongue through my unmoving lips, was checked by my teeth. “Oh my, I see why you like it like that. It’s like kissing a dead man, what could be richer? Are you going to fuck me now?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be anything you want. Cheerleader. Corpse. A cheerleader’s corpse.”

  “No.”

  “Frightened?”

  “Terrified.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open, I promise.”

  “That would only make it worse.”

  “And if I told you I had nothing to do with the reporter’s murder?”

  “It wouldn’t matter.”

  “I had nothing to do with her murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But you do believe me.”

  “No.”

  She pushed herself away and turned, but not before I caught the beginnings of the smile she was trying to hide. “Oh, how cruel you are, to think me capable of such a thing.”

  “But not as cruel as you.”

  “No, Victor, that’s right,” she said, sloughing the shirt from her shoulders, baring the line of her back, the double question mark of her ass. As she began to walk away, she turned her head and flashed that smile like a punch to the jaw. “You could never be as cruel as me.”

  “My God,” I said, in admiration of her body, her balls, the anarchy that glowed like a bonfire in those bright-green eyes. “This political line is rougher than I ever imagined.”

  CHAPTER 35

  THE BAD WIFE

  The night was sleepless, tortured and fat.

  With my heart racing, I tossed and turned and bashed my fist against my forehead, unable to stop thinking about Amanda Duddleman and Jessica Barnes, about Ossana’s body, about my own brutal culpability. The night seemed to last for a week and through it all I tortured myself, remembering the two women I had wanted to help, both ending up bloodied and dead. I tried to fix on exactly what I should have done instead of what I did, I juggled the possibilities until they smashed like eggs on the floor about me. It was impossible and useless and I was unable to stop going through it all over and again. In th
e midst of the dark turmoil, the sky outside my window became smudged with gray, and my heart slowed, and weariness snuck up on my thoughts like a thief and began to pull me down to sleep without my even knowing it. And just at that moment the phone rang.

  It is always just at that moment that the phone rings.

  “Who found her?” said the voice on the line. There were no niceties, no preliminaries, which was a relief. I didn’t want any damn niceties just then. I sat up, scratching at my eyes.

  “Melanie?”

  “Who found her, Victor?”

  I checked the clock. Five forty-five. “Give me a minute to get myself together.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have been your first call.”

  “They can check these things now. Do you want them asking why I called you instead of the police?”

  “Then I should have been second.”

  “They would have checked that, too.”

  “But there are things I can do. Jesus, this is a bloody mess.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do the police know? Do they know about her relationship with—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dammit. How?”

  “I told them.”

  “Victor.”

  “They would have found out sooner rather than later. You think Duddleman didn’t tell a friend, tell all her Barnard roommates? She probably had it posted on Facebook under her relationship status. Whatever her generation is, it is not discreet. It didn’t make sense to hide it up front when it would have tumbled out in a few hours anyway.”

  “We should have been consulted.”

  “Calm down, Melanie. If I had called you, the police would be at your door right now asking why.”

  “We need to meet.”

  “Okay.”

  “The Congressman’s house. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seven.”

  “Tonight?”

  “This morning, Victor. And don’t make me wait.”

  Congressman DeMathis’s gerrymandered district was shaped like a writhing snake that had swallowed a gopher. The district had the tip of its tail in Lancaster, its distended belly in one of the more rural Philadelphia suburbs, and its shovel-shaped head sticking into a small fashionable part of the city proper. More than once the district had been referred to as an abomination during the redistricting deliberations, but those who decried its shape didn’t have the votes to abort it, and so the hideous creature was birthed into this world to do its damage. Congressman DeMathis lived in a fashionable stone house in the fashionable part of the city that had been included in the district by State Senator DeMathis purely, it was said, to allow him to run for the congressional seat. I tended to doubt that story; was it really believable to imagine such a craven act on the part of a public servant?

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Mrs. DeMathis, who startled at seeing me at the red front door. “Well, don’t just stand there, come in.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She looked at me for a moment after I stepped inside. “Your eyes are so bruised you look like you’ve been in a fight.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “I made some coffee. How do you take it?”

  “Black,” I said.

  “Good for you. My husband is still getting ready. Let me pour you a cup.”

  I followed her into a kitchen swathed with granite and dark wood cabinets. The coffee she handed me in a flowered teacup was hot and bitter and quite good, with hints of vanilla and hazelnut. You notice the little things when the big, wide world has collapsed around you. You notice the little things because that’s all you have left. Mrs. DeMathis, in a dress and heels—imagine that at seven in the morning—poured a dash of bourbon into her cup, and then another dash, leaving just enough room for a splash of caffeine. She wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest at having me see her doctor her coffee so early in the day. She brought the cup to her thin lips and swallowed like an asthmatic swallowing a breath of fresh air.

  “So what brings you scuttling here so early in the morning, Victor? Something horrible, I assume.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Involving my husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it be public?”

  “Most likely.”

  “So which of his scandals is about to break? Money or sex? I hope it’s money.”

  “It’s not money,” I said.

  “Too bad. I suppose then I should brace myself for all the hullabaloo that comes with the usual sex scandal. You and his other people should know I’ve already decided I won’t stand by his side at the press conference. That is so Pat Nixon in her cloth coat, although, lucky her, that was only about money. No, I couldn’t bear all the knowing looks as I stood there in silent support. ‘Oh, you poor thing. How can you stand it?’ Remember sad little Dina McGreevey? At least my husband sticks his crooked thing only in women.” She took another sip. “So, so many women. It’s just that it is dispiriting when the little indiscretions, with their wide eyes and pert breasts, start talking to the press, giving all the details. The way he touched, the way he kissed, the promises. ‘Oh, we were so, so in love.’ Like that Rielle Hunter with Oprah. It’s enough to make a whole country puke.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “No one’s talking.”

  “No? And yet still you’re here. Then it must be worse than I imagine. What has he done now? My God, what has that man done now?”

  “You need to prepare yourself, Mrs. DeMathis. And you need to know exactly where you and the Congressman were for all of last night.”

  “You sound worried, Victor. You sound like somebody died. Last night.” She took another swallow and stood with the cup just below her lips. After a moment the cup began to shake. “Wait. Just wait one minute. There was a report on the news, a young girl murdered at a rock club of some sort. Is that it? They said she was a graduate of the Ivy League. Pete does like them young and overeducated.”

  “Where were you and your husband last night?”

  “I was here,” she said, “in my usual stupor. The life of a politician’s wife is every bit as exciting as my parents threatened. But Pete, I don’t know. I went to bed alone, I woke up alone, and he was in the guest bedroom as usual when I rose. What did he do, Victor?”

  “Nothing, I’m sure.”

  “Well, I’m sure as hell not sure. I’m not sure of anything. I know what he is capable of. Every sick perversion—things that would melt your soul—every unimaginable cruelty. If you only knew what he has put me through. If you only knew the humiliations. That man is a beast, and I hate him, I hate him, I hate every foul piece of his being.”

  She pulled her cup back as if to throw it at the wall before gaining her composure and draining the coffee-laced bourbon. It seemed to settle her just a bit, the alcohol. Then in one quick motion she threw the cup and saucer at my head.

  I ducked just quickly enough so that the pottery flew past before shattering on the dark wood cabinets and falling to the countertop and floor. I looked behind me at the mess, and the gash in the cabinet door.

  “Nice woodwork,” I said. “Rosewood?”

  “Maple,” she said, restored to an eerie calm. “Stained black. Oh, I think someone is at the door. Are we expecting anyone else?”

  CHAPTER 36

  MORNING TOAST

  The Congressman’s eyes were dull and unfocused, the exact opposite of the political stare at which he was so proficient. He sat in a red wingback chair in his wood-paneled study, still in a robe, his jaw unshaven, his hair mussed, his gaze lifted to some spot far in the horizon. He had been hit in the head with a fastball up and in; I could almost see the mark of the seam on his forehead.

  “We have to get ahead of this
, Congressman,” said Melanie. “We can’t let this turn into a Chandra Levy.”

  “Chandra Levy?” he said, his voice as unfocused as his gaze. “Do I know her?”

  “I’ve no doubt you would have, given the chance,” said Melanie. “What should he do, Victor?”

  “Tell the truth,” I said.

  “Let’s think of something else,” said Melanie. “In this business the truth only gets you into another business.”

  “The police know about the relationship,” I said. “They’ll be coming today, asking all kinds of questions. And don’t doubt that they’ll have done their homework. He can either refuse to say anything, which is an admission of guilt, or he can tell the whole truth and hope the police do their job and solve the damn thing quickly, taking the heat off.”

  “What are the odds of that happening?” said Melanie.

  “Good,” I said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because the lead detective is McDeiss.”

  “The one who hasn’t yet solved the Shoeless Joan case?”

  “He has more leads on this one. My guess is he’ll solve them both together, and solve them fast.”

  “Are there any suspects?”

  “Me,” I said. “But he’ll find others.” I leaned forward, putting my hand on DeMathis’s knee to get his attention. It was my turn to stare. “What we need to do, Congressman, is figure out if the truth is something you should be revealing. Melanie and I are both lawyers, this conversation will be privileged. Nothing you say can be repeated without your assent. So with that out of the way, let me ask you: Were you involved in Amanda Duddleman’s murder in any way?”

  “My God, no. No. Why would I? How could I?”

  “Jealousy,” I said. “And with a knife.”

  “You don’t believe that I . . . You can’t believe that . . .”

  “What I believe doesn’t matter,” I said, which was a lie. What I believed mattered a hell of a lot. I was going to make sure it did.

  “Let’s start with the easy stuff,” said Melanie. “Where were you last night? Were you home?”