Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel)

by William Lashner

  He shivers and takes a drink from his glass. He tastes the peat. Ah, the peat. What the hell is peat anyway? Is it scarce? Can he corner the market? Can he be the Peat King? He will have his people look into it. Prisons and peat, they go together like nickels and dimes. The bottle set him back two grand, but no matter how cold he becomes thinking of the sordid squander of his failed marriages, the price of the bottle is enough to warm his blood.

  He knows I am coming and he is not afraid. I am small-time, I am in it for the shakedown, I can be bought with a pocketful of spit. He can read the want in others as if printed in block letters on their foreheads and he has read me clear. I want what everyone else wants, a piece of the swaddled bloated creature he has become. An arm, a cheek, a meaty thigh. Every cause is worthy, every child is deserving. Think of the children, the little children. No matter how much he gives, still they come begging, pleading, never satisfied. Well, fuck the little children. They are vultures, all of them, and he is certain I am just another of the kettle, out to pull from his corpus my own strip of his flesh.

  And he isn’t wrong.

  As I got closer to the tip of the island, the phone rang ever more insistently.

  Melanie. Decline.

  Melanie. Decline.

  I couldn’t turn the phone off because I was using its GPS to get me where I was going. But I was also enjoying evidence of Melanie’s growing worry. It meant I was getting ever nearer to something big, something huge. Close, maybe, to the very truth of things. But what I didn’t know was that I was getting close to the truth of Melanie herself.

  I thought I had Melanie Brooks flat figured out. I believed she had followed the route of an entire generation before us and sold her youthful idealism for mounds of cash. I could admire that; it would have been my preferred career path if I had evidenced any idealism in my youth and I could have found someone to pay me for abandoning it. With Melanie so easily understood, I thought I knew who stood at the center of this story. Me, thank you. Or maybe Jessica Barnes and Amanda Duddleman. Or Ossana DeMathis. Or her brother, the corrupt congressman. Or Bettenhauser, so new to the scene and already bought and paid for. Or maybe the man in Montauk who had done the buying and toward whom I was racing.

  But I was wrong about Melanie. Yes, she had transformed, but not in the way I had imagined. And now, when I think back on all that happened, I think Melanie—and her shocking transformation—is the beating heart of this story. If you understand her, you begin to understand the price we all are paying. I wonder now what she would have said to me if I’d had the temerity to answer her calls. I wonder if then she would have spilled the truth.

  Except I didn’t answer her calls. I wasn’t in the mood to be harangued or dissuaded. I was on a mission.

  Melanie. Decline.

  Melanie. Decline.

  Sloane. Yikes. Accept.

  “It’s all set, Victor,” he said. “It’s running tomorrow, everything, and we’re ready to publish on the website right away when you give us the word.”

  “But you’ll hold off like you promised until I give the word.”

  “Sure, pal, like I promised. But don’t keep us waiting too long.”

  “And you’ll clear me of everything?”

  “You’ll be smelling so sweet they won’t notice the shit hanging off your ears.”

  “Did you get the cover?”

  “Not yet. We need an image that wows.”

  “You pay for pictures, right?”

  “Extra for the cover.”

  “Hold tight and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Will you want the credit?”

  “Hell, no, just the check. Give the credit to Jack Herbert.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Some guy I used to know.”

  When I hung up with Sloane, I checked the GPS. Seven minutes to go. Seven minutes before I’d be face-to-face with the force behind my political rise and fall, the force behind the dance of death we all had suffered through. Seven minutes before I finally had my moment with the son of a bitch. I could barely wait. The phone rang.

  Melanie. Decline.

  From his rooftop deck, the Big Butter can see a car making its way toward the house. The car is old, battered, unclean. It belongs in Montauk like lobster Newburg at a bar mitzvah. He takes another sip of his drink as he hears the car pull to a stop across the street, a car door open and slam shut again.

  He could go downstairs to greet me, but he doesn’t want to greet me. The girl will bring me up, and I will gape at her fresh Wellesley loveliness, and I will understand the base truth of the world: he is fucking her, and I never will. He could put on a Speedo to make himself more presentable, but he doesn’t want to make himself more presentable. Lawyers scuttle around in their suits, but higher species face the world in the raw.

  As he hears footsteps rising up the metal treads of the outdoor stairwell, and the tinkle of conversation between me and the girl, he reaches to the table beside him and from the humidor chooses a thick Cohiba from Cuba. He snips off the pigtail at the foot, flicks a lighter to life, brings the flame to the head, pulls and blows and pulls again as a thick cloud of smoke envelops his face. The puffing of his cheeks sounds like the repetition of a prayer. How much, how much, how much. It is not a matter of whether he can buy me suit and soul—he has bought better men in better suits while pissing in their ears—it is only a matter of the how much.

  He takes the cigar from his mouth and blows a rich plume of smoke. When it comes to the game of how much, no one plays it better than the Big Butter.

  And then suddenly there I am, standing before him. He notes my cut-rate suit, the way my shirt collar chokes my neck, the cheap sheen on my tie, the thick soles of my heavy black shoes. But the bag, he notes, the bag is superb. Maybe, if time permits, he’ll shit in my bag. He can see my eyes dart hither and yon, trying desperately not to gawp at his proud stretch of naked flesh.

  “You don’t mind if I don’t get up, do you?” he says.

  “God, no,” I say.

  “You’ve come all this way, so I suppose you have something to get off your chest.”

  “I want to know why.”

  “Are we talking physics or metaphysics?”

  “I’m talking you and your money and a tax loophole that has become so terribly important that you ended up financing two murders, had me chained to a basement pipe with a gun to my face, and now threaten the future of a little girl. How can you justify such a thing? How dare you?”

  “It must be gratifying to hate me so. It must delight your soul.”

  “It keeps me warm at night.”

  “I prefer Charlotte. Sit down, Victor.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Sit down. Have a cigar. Have a drink. We’ve met before, remember? At the Congressman’s reception. You impressed me then and I’ve heard good things about you since from the suits at Ronin and McCall. I’m sure we can come to some sort of accommodation.”

  “I don’t want an accommodation. Didn’t you hear? You’re responsible for two murders. Your henchman had me chained to a basement pipe with a gun at my face. I only want to see you burn.”

  “I don’t burn, I tan. Sit down, put up your feet. The cigars are from a factory just outside Havana. Quite exclusive. I have them flown in from Britain. Here, I’ll clip the tip for you. And I’ve brought out the good single malt for the occasion. You’ve never tasted anything so fine, trust me.”

  “I’ll choke on it.”

  “You might want to, but at two thousand dollars a bottle, the Scotch goes down too easy to choke on. Sit down, Victor, and let me tell you a story.”

  CHAPTER 53

  HAYM SOLOMON

  Let me tell you a story,” said the naked man with a cigar.

  I intended to stand there, curled like an accusation, and hurl expletives and anger. I intended
to make a stand. But something about the scene, the splendiferous view of Lake Montauk and the Sound beyond, the sun and sky, his slow, ripe voice, something about his dreadful nakedness next to the stunning beauty of the young woman who had led me through the house and up the metal outdoor stairs, her tight tan skirt shifting like a prowling cheetah with each upward step, something about all of it dulled the loathing in me. I was suddenly weary, not just from the long eastward drive, but from my entire life of grasp and fail.

  And so I sat. And out of habitual politeness I took the cigar he proffered, and leaned into the flame he produced, and took hold of the glass of whiskey neat he poured.

  “This is a story of Washington,” said Norton Grosset. “I’m speaking not of the city, but of the man himself, George, with his face on the dollar bill, yes?”

  We were sitting side by side as he told his story, each of us staring across the landscape toward the bright blue of the Sound, which, thankfully, meant I could avoid the view of his roasting flesh. He seemed to delight in his vile appearance: boils, pustules, toenails out of a Japanese horror film, lips like eels.

  “The story happened during the War of Independence,” said Grosset. “The British were on their hind legs in Yorktown, and Washington, camped with his army in Philadelphia, was desperate to head down to Virginia and finish the Limeys off.”

  Grosset spoke in a slow growl, a voice from a different era, an unhurried voice designed to send chills up the spines of chairmen of the board.

  “Washington saw a way to win the war and forge a new country. But there was a catch, see. He needed twenty thousand dollars to make the march, see. Yet he was broke, and so was the whole damn country. Broke. Not a penny to be had. The enterprise was teetering. Think of it as a start-up in its death throes. Nothing sadder than that, let me tell you. Résumés flying out the door, employees stealing whatever they can carry: computer monitors, chairs. And the smell. It has a smell, failure, like potato chips and dead squirrels.”

  “I hate that smell.”

  “So what did Washington say? He didn’t say, ‘Too bad.’ And he didn’t say, ‘Hell, we’ll march on down for nothing,’ because let me tell you, no one does anything for nothing. You get me, Carl?”

  “I get you.”

  “So what Washington said instead was this: ‘Send for Haym Solomon.’ How’s the cigar?”

  “Thick.”

  “Legend has it the dimensions of this particular cigar were designed to approximate the penis of Che Guevara. The cigar master went to every bordello in Havana to make a model based on the descriptions from Che’s favorite whores.”

  I pulled the cigar out of my mouth and stared at it.

  “Smooth?” said Grosset.

  “Quite,” I said before taking another mouthful of smoke.

  The sky was high, the sun was hot, the cigars were phallic, the Scotch whiskey tasted like money pure on the tongue, oily with hints of oak and breast. The woman who had led me up the stairs to the rooftop deck with that animalistic ass, a woman named Charlotte, had spoken in such glowing terms—Norton is so brilliant, such a clear thinker, it’s a magnificent opportunity to work with one of the leading—that it was obvious she was sleeping with him, which somehow made the view all the more precious and the taste of the whiskey all the more rich.

  “Who was Haym Solomon?” I said.

  “He was a Jew from Philadelphia, like you, but not like you at all, because Haym Solomon understood money.”

  “I understand money,” I said, failing to keep the pout out of my voice.

  “You understand that you don’t have enough, yes, but everything else, its rhythms and harmonies, its magical abilities, the way to get it to spread its legs, all of it is a mystery to you. But not to Haym Solomon. He was in finance. That’s right, a one-percenter. Those hippie wannabes who are allergic to showers would be occupying him if they had a chance. More Scotch?”

  I looked down at my glass, realized it was empty, let him pour me another.

  “And what did this Haym Solomon, this moneyman, this one-percenter do when Washington came begging?” said Grosset. “I’ll tell you what he did. He came through, that’s what he did. He found Washington his cash, and Washington made it down to Yorktown, and he cornholed that Cornwallis with his pretty white wig, and we won the war. Hurrah.”

  I lifted my glass. “Three cheers for the Jew from Philadelphia.”

  “Three cheers indeed. Haym Solomon is why your teeth are pearly and why you didn’t get buggered in grade school. You see the point here, don’t you, Carl? It’s fun to mock us, we know that—fat cats who tip poorly and piss on the poor—but you need us, too. Your cell phone, your Facebook, every aspect of your vaunted modern life, we financed it all. Every dollar that gets made gets made because of us. Every dollar we pull in, we make twenty for the rest of the world. We’re underpaid. And still you despise us for it. Why is that?”

  “The pissing-on-the-poor part might be a clue.”

  “You think we have it easy, don’t you? You think it’s all tea cakes and young tits and holidays in the Hamptons.”

  I looked around at my surroundings. “It’s not?”

  “Do you see any tea cakes? But there’s also envy and spite, bitterness and rage, all directed at us for one reason, and one reason only: because we risked what others didn’t have the courage to risk and we’ve reaped our rewards. You know why we buy politicians, Carl? To even up the odds. The mob would tear us apart if they had their way, and then where would the country be? Twenty dollars created for every dollar we rake in, remember that. Take us down and what do you have? Not just bedlam, but depression, spreading slicks of poverty, a great march in reverse back to the mud.”

  “So you’re the last bastion of civilization.”

  “We built this country and rebuilt it over and again. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan. And yes, Noyce and Gates and Jobs. You live in our handiwork, yet your hatred is like a snake twisting around our necks. How would you like to suffer it?”

  “If it comes with the house and the Scotch and Charlotte, I’d take it, and without complaining like a diapered baby.”

  “We’ll have to see about that,” said Grosset. “You’ve accused me of horrible things: thuggery, aiding in the delinquency of a minor, murder. I would be appalled if I even knew what you were talking about.”

  “You paid for all of it.”

  “What I paid for was an equalization of the political process, which is perfectly legal, as the Supreme Court will tell you. My payments were a simple exercise of my First Amendment rights. How my agents pursued my goals was their prerogative. I was never informed of the nuts and bolts of their activities. They were independent contractors, you see. Just like you were an independent contractor.”

  “I didn’t work for you.”

  “Of course you did. You knew you were working for someone; did you truly expect it to be anyone other than me?”

  I swirled the glass, drained it, and winced, not at the bite of the alcohol so much as at the bite of self-recognition.

  “More Scotch? Here, let me pour a few extra fingers. Is that enough? Oh, maybe just a bit more. How is the cigar holding up? Can I get you anything else? I’m sure I can. As you may know, one of my independent contractors went rogue. I am not pleased about what happened to those women. It is a rotten way to do business and he has been dismissed. But the fight is not yet won.”

  “The fight for the loophole.”

  “Exactly.”

  “All this for a loophole.”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t that cruelly venal, even for the likes of you?”

  “Not if it’s worth enough. Think of all the businesses I can nurture with the taxes I’ll save. Twenty to one, Carl. Once that ratio becomes clear, you can’t avoid the responsibility. It is my patriotic duty to raise the populace from their pallid littl
e lives.”

  “And we are so grateful.”

  “But to get it done I need someone new to handle my political affairs.”

  “Some other political hack to be your bagman.”

  “Someone like you.”

  I stared at the amber sloshing in my glass. “You’re offering me a job.”

  “The reports on you were glowing. ‘Clever and effective,’ they said. And I can see both qualities. DeMathis will lose, Bettenhauser will win. Someone needs to keep his money flowing. Washington said, ‘Send for Haym Solomon.’ I am saying, ‘Get me Victor Carl.’ ”

  “Why not Melanie?”

  “I’ve detected in Melanie an agenda of her own. And Ronin and McCall have a peculiar affection for the niceties of the law. I need someone who will go the final mile for me, someone I can trust, because I would pay that someone extravagantly.”

  I looked at the tip of my cigar, smoke rising inexorably from the ash. “I like that word.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “How extravagantly are we talking?”

  “Extravagantly enough so that one of the burdens of the job would be to feel the hate of the masses.”

  “I always wanted to be rich,” I said with a touch of sadness in my voice. He was trying to buy me, of course. He was doing his best to justify it, peddling some crap rationalization for all he was worth, but in truth, he had to justify nothing. All my life I had been waiting to be bought.

  I put the cigar in my teeth and swirled the smoke in my mouth. It tasted dark and mellow and sweet with the sweat of those who picked the tobacco, those who cured it, those who rolled it. It tasted of limousines and houses in the Hamptons and girls like Charlotte. As I stared through the smoke toward the bright blue of the Sound, it was as if I were staring across some mythical sea over which the promise of this very country lay. There, yes, just there, on the far shore. Lurking beneath the waves were deadly shoals, I knew, and perched on outcroppings of rock and sand were Sirens who had called thousands to their deaths, yet still I had spent my life staring across the gulf with futile longing. To hell with the past, I had spent a lifetime beating the oars to find my future there. And now this man, this gross tub of larded greed, was building for me a bridge to the other side.