Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

“I think so. Yes.”

  “No,” I said. “You weren’t.” I turned to Melanie. “This is what I mean. Any lie he tells will be as obvious as a slap in the face.”

  “Let’s give it another go, sir,” said Melanie. “I know you’re a member of Congress and it’s hard to overcome your first instinct, but let’s try to tell the truth. Where were you last night?”

  The Congressman, disheveled and disoriented, put his face in his hands. They must teach this in congressman school, how to take a distraught pose so that the audience can’t see your lying eyes. There was a pause and there was a sob. I leaned back in my chair. There are moments in life when I fervently wished I smoked—after sex, while drinking Sazeracs at Rosen’s, while sitting on the toilet in a gas station bathroom—and this was another.

  “I was out,” he said finally.

  “Where?” said Melanie.

  “Just out.”

  “With who?”

  “Alone.”

  “You can do better.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t. I had a couple of drinks at a bar on Locust early in the evening—you can check that out—and then I went looking for her.”

  “For who exactly?”

  “For Amanda.”

  This is where I would have let out a long exhale.

  “She wasn’t answering my calls. She wasn’t answering my texts. I was calling and I was texting and she wasn’t answering. So I went out to find her.”

  “Where did you go?” said Melanie.

  “To her house. I banged on the door, I walked around to look into the back windows. I rattled a window and called out her name. I was crazy.”

  “Crazy how?” said Melanie.

  “Crazy angry. Crazy with desire. Crazy in love.”

  “I’m getting a sense of your possible defense,” I said.

  Melanie gave me a look that meant ‘Shut up,’ and said, “And then?”

  “And then she responded to one of my texts. She told me she was going to some club to see a band she liked. Some rock club. So I went.”

  “You went to the club?” I said. “Union Transfer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you buy a ticket?”

  “They wouldn’t let me in without one.”

  “And you a congressman. Imagine that. And you gave your ticket to the bouncer.”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?”

  “About eleven or so. I searched the place for her. It was like a sea of Amandas. A thousand young girls who looked just like her. Every time I was certain I spotted her, I’d grab hold, but it turned out to be some other girl. And the looks in these girls’ eyes. It was a humiliation. I tried to ask if anyone knew her, but the band was loud, and no one could understand me, and the kids were dancing like nothing mattered but the music, like I didn’t matter. I was in the middle of someone else’s nightmare. Then I looked up and I saw her, on the rail, looking down at me, her face cold.”

  “What did you do?” I said.

  “I charged up the stairs and I grabbed hold of each of her arms in joy, so happy to see her. And she shrank away as if . . . as if I were attacking her. ‘Amanda,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’ And she said, with that same cold expression, ‘I’m seeing a show.’ And I said ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And she said, ‘No.’ And I said ‘Why not?’ And she said, ‘We’re through.’ We’re through.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I shook her. I shook her and shouted, ‘What are you saying?’ And she shouted back, ‘Go away, Pete. It’s over. I know.’ ‘Know what?’ I said. And I admit I squeezed her arms, and I admit I shook her. I was hurt and angry and desperate and I shook her. And then someone grabbed me by the neck and pulled me away.”

  “Who?”

  “Some kid.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. He was skinny, bearded, in some flannel shirt. Just a punk. She must have been with him, but it made no sense. How could she be with him? She was ambitious, she’d gone to Barnard. I’m somebody, I have money. It didn’t make sense. But when he pulled me off her and pushed me away, I realized what I had been doing, how I had been acting. Crazy. Like a crazy man. And I looked at Amanda and tried to apologize, and all she did was shake her head at me before she turned away.”

  “And that made you angry,” I said.

  “It made me sad.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I left,” he said.

  “After you killed her?”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “But you loved her.”

  “Yes. My God, yes, like a sickness.”

  “Then how could you leave her? She rejected you, humiliated you. How could you leave her without doing something, anything?”

  “Because when she shook her head at me and then turned away, I saw something that horrified me.”

  “What?”

  “I saw myself. The way she saw me. The way that kid she was with saw me. The way all those girls I had thought were Amanda had seen me when I accosted them. I saw myself, what I had become. My God, I am a United States congressman and I was acting like a pathetic fool, not just with her but in every part of my life. In the way she turned from me, I saw myself, and I couldn’t get away from the sight fast enough.”

  “And then what?”

  “I drove around, for hours, and then came home, ashamed, and fell asleep in the guest room. And I woke up into this nightmare.”

  “And that’s the truth? All of it?” I said.

  “Yes, I swear.”

  “You might have to, at that.”

  “What should I do with the police?”

  “Tell them everything, just like you told us,” said Melanie. “Help them any way you can. When they make a statement, they should be glowing about your cooperation. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now go take a shower. Comb your hair, put on a suit. Today’s an important day, Congressman. Today is the day you save your career.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Yes. Right. I can do that.”

  Melanie and I watched him stand unsteadily and shuffle toward the door. It wouldn’t take him long to get dressed and all spiffed-up, it wouldn’t take him long to don his suit of power and play his role. Maybe the son of a bitch could squeeze out of this.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “Pathetic.”

  “You don’t think he killed her, do you?”

  “He doesn’t have it in him. At heart he’s a coward, that’s what makes him such a useful politician. Show me a coward and I’ll show you a vote.”

  “So can he do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Save his career.”

  “Oh, Victor, the moment he opened his mouth I knew he was toast. By this time next year our Congressman DeMathis will be selling Italian water ice out of a cart. But until then, he’s still our baby.”

  CHAPTER 37

  OBLIGATORY DINER VISIT

  The man in the booth fed like a lion devouring a hyena, with great resolve and entirely too much satisfaction. Watching him eat from across the length of the old Oak Lane Diner on Broad Street, with its stainless-steel walls and bow-tied counterman, it almost seemed he was in a good mood, which confused me; for a moment I wondered if I was staring at the wrong man. Then he raised his gaze from the pile on the plate before him, saw me standing by the pies, and scowled like he had found a cockroach in his food.

  I didn’t wait for an invitation before crossing the floor, placing my bag on the bench seat across from him, and scooting in beside it. “Thanks for waving me over,” I said.

  “The first meal sets the tone for the entire day,” said Detective McDeiss. “That’s why I prefer to eat alone.”

  “You want to stay undisturbed, don
’t follow habits so regular that every cop in the division knows where you’ll be. I have a gift for you.”

  “I am a public servant. I can’t accept your gifts.”

  “You’ll accept this,” I said, taking out an envelope and passing it across the table. He stared at it for a long time before carving out a piece of ham steak, sticking it in the yolk of his egg, and then dipping it in his grits. He held the concoction in front of him and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Money?” he said. “To buy your way out of a murder rap?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.” He put the ham, yolk, and grits into his mouth, letting his eyes flutter for just a moment as he chewed and swallowed. “I would have loved busting your ass for attempted bribery.”

  “It’s a sample of hair to be matched up with that blood smear I gave you in the club, the one Jessica Barnes gave to me.”

  “Whose hair?”

  “The Congressman’s sister’s.”

  “And why do I want to match it up?”

  “Because it’s as close as I’m going to get to a sample of the Congressman’s DNA. Your forensics people should be able to determine if there’s a link.”

  “And if there is, what then?”

  “Then I might be able to tell you what this all is about.”

  “Take a stab at it now. We don’t even know who the smear is from. It could be the blood of a goat.”

  “Right now it’s all just supposition and surmise. Amanda might have found the connection, but they killed her before she could tell me.”

  “They. The same ‘they’ you told me about at the club.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You calmed down any?”

  “No.”

  “It was a thing to see, wasn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “The way you were acting, red-faced and crazy, Armbruster thought you had gone off the deep end.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you didn’t have a deep end, that you were all shallows.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Armbruster came up with the idea that it was guilt that was getting to you, like you were hearing heartbeats beneath the floorboards.”

  “I don’t think Armbruster likes me.”

  “He doesn’t. But when I reminded him that you were a lawyer, that put the end to any idea of you actually being capable of feeling guilt.” He stared at me for a moment before buttering his toast and smearing a dollop of grape jam atop the butter. “Still, Armbruster couldn’t help but wonder why you were so damn upset.”

  “She was a good kid with a future.”

  “They’re all good kids and they all have futures.”

  There was something gratifyingly bitter about his words, like it was getting to him, the whole damn job. And for a moment we both remembered the way she’d looked, Amanda Duddleman, with her throat slashed and her head cocked weirdly and her sweater pulled up into the wound to stanch the blood so that it didn’t pour out copiously enough to grab someone’s immediate attention. The second I saw that shoeless leg, I knew that she was dead, but still the grotesque sight of her was like a kick in the gut, the kind that keeps kicking.

  McDeiss took a bite of his purpled toast, swallowed it down with the rest of his coffee, signaled to the waitress for another cup. He sliced through the rest of the ham as he waited for the waitress to come over with a pot.

  “Thanks, Shirley.”

  “Your friend want anything?”

  “He’s not a friend,” said McDeiss, “and he has to be on his way.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Sure is.”

  When she had moved on to the next table, he started dumping in the sugar and the cream.

  “I sent Armbruster down to check out the rehab facility you told us about,” he said. “They assured him that Colin Frost was on location the night of the murder, that he hasn’t left the facility since he was brought in three weeks ago. That’s their firm policy for the first month. No exceptions, and their security is very tight. He would have had to sign himself out to leave and he didn’t.”

  “They’re wrong.”

  “Someone’s wrong. And Miss Duddleman’s editor had no notes on her research. There was nothing on her person or at her house regarding anything of great interest she might have found.”

  “They must have taken her notebook after they killed her.”

  “After Colin Frost, escaped from his rehab, killed her.”

  “That’s right. You saw the text.”

  “Yeah, I saw the text.”

  He shoveled a few more forkfuls of his breakfast into his maw while staring out at me from beneath his brow, mopped his plate with another piece of toast, washed everything down with the coffee.

  “Look, Carl, I don’t blame you for kicking at the wall when you saw her, but you can’t be accusing everyone and his brother willy-nilly and expect to get anywhere. You threw nine suspects under the bus within the first two minutes of our arrival last night. The Congressman, his sister, his chief of staff, the widow Devereaux and her in-house lawyer, an entire law firm, the law firm’s secret client, a drug addict, the drug addict’s pal.”

  “Give me time and I’ll give you ten more.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. We talked to your congressman yesterday morning. He says he didn’t do it. He says he was there, and that’s been verified, but he says he left before it happened.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “We don’t disbelieve him at the moment. And he seems cooperative enough. Why don’t you emulate him, give us everything you know, and stay the hell out of it while we do what we need to do?”

  “From what I can tell, all you’re doing is collecting corpses minus their shoes.”

  He stared at me a bit more and then pushed his plate away. “You’re killing my appetite.”

  I looked down; the plate was as clean as if polished.

  “How did your prints get on that hammer again?” he said.

  “I told you the story. After that break-in, I found it in my apartment. Colin must have planted it when he was searching for Jessica Barnes’s proof. But before he planted it, and after he knocked me out, he must have put my prints on it.”

  “Yes, that is what you told us.”

  “And your tests will show that the blood wasn’t wet when my prints were made. I gave the hammer to Amanda to give to you so you would have the hammer for your tests without linking it to me.”

  “Quite a story.”

  “You don’t really think I—”

  “I don’t think; I follow the evidence.”

  “I liked her and I tried to help her. I liked Jessica Barnes and I tried to help her, too.”

  “Remind me never to ask for your assistance.” He looked at me, a spark of compassion in his eyes. “Maybe you ought to have some coffee. And a little something sweet. Their pies are mighty fine.”

  “I used to think criminal law was rough. I used to think dealing with mobsters and hit men and felons of the worst stripe had prepared me for whatever crowd I fell into. That politics would be a piece of layer cake in comparison. How naive could I be? What a stinking craphole. Something needs to be done about these people.”

  “And you’re the one to do it?”

  “I’m the man with the bag. I know their secrets.” I stood from the table, grabbed hold of my attaché. “Don’t worry your little self about it, Detective. It’s only two murders. Nothing to sweat about in the great scheme of things. But while you’re sitting on your ass enjoying your morning coffee, I’ll be out on the streets, following in the footsteps of a ghost.”

  CHAPTER 38

  DEAD PRESIDENT

  What the hell do you want?” came a voice from inside the house.

  We were standing at t
he still-closed front door of a stone twin on Queen Street in Lancaster, about an hour and a half west of Philadelphia. You know you’re getting close when you pass the cows and the silos, the square Amish buggies with the red triangles affixed to their bumpers, the National Christmas Center with its walk-through Nativity scene. You know you’re there when you pass the Dutch Wonderland amusement park, and the windmill where they sell shoofly pie. Now we were in a neighborhood of narrow alleyways and heaving cement and houses cracked by age. I assumed there was a genteel part of Lancaster somewhere, but this certainly wasn’t it. On the other side of the street from the small twin was the Woodward Hill Cemetery, overrun, creepy, with a dead president interred.

  “Mrs. Gaughan?” I said.

  “Who wants her?”

  “We’re here to tell her we’re sorry for her loss.”

  “You just did, now go away.”

  “And we have some questions.”

  “She isn’t talking to any more reporters.”

  “We’re not reporters,” I said.

  “Then why the hell would I talk to you?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “And I’m here to help.”

  It’s the hoariest line in the book, usually the start of a bad joke involving a judge, a shark, and two dancing girls, but every now and then it opens a door. Just a crack, maybe, but enough for an overweight bagman with a black suit and matching fedora to stick a shoe in the gap to keep it from closing.

  “A lawyer, huh?” said the woman, whose one bloodshot eye appeared in the crack. With a surfeit of suspicion she eyed Stony, with his black stomper wedged in her door, and then me. “You’re not the first to come around looking for a payday. Do I know you? I think I know you.”

  “You don’t know me,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ve seen your picture somewhere,” she said, and I didn’t doubt it.

  Stony took off his hat and swept it in front of him with a low bow. “May we come in, Mrs. Gaughan? I think you’ll be wanting to talk to us.”

  “Are you a lawyer, too?”

  “Heavens, no, dearie. I’m a man of principle.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pint. “And a man with a bottle, too.”

  “Is that all you’ve got?”