Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (15 page)

There wasn’t much to being a bagman, I was learning. It was just a matter of knowing the rules.

CHAPTER 27

THE BRIGGS MULRONEY RULES FOR ASPIRING BAGMEN

I
t is not enough to pick up the money and lay it down again. It is not enough to run your errands to the letter. As with every worthy piece of corruption, there is an art to it all.

“My father, may he rest in peace, he taught me the trade,” said Stony Mulroney, “and the rules that went with it. Are you drinking that or watching the ice melt?”

We were at the table at Rosen’s, just the two of us, in the otherwise empty establishment. Stony leaned forward in the booth, his hat on the table next to my new trilby, his glass half-full, his cigarette lit, his sharp voice whetted to a knife’s edge. I lifted my glass, swallowed an oversized gulp, winced. This was not a Sazerac, but an old-fashioned concoction of bourbon, sugar, and bitters over a single cube of ice. It tasted like hard cases and backhanded deals and the moist environs of the Sternwood conservatory.

“In the old days, before Hump showed up in our fair town with his Sazeracs,” said Stony, “this is what the old men drank when they discussed their murky trade. My daddy brought me here back in the day when I was just a boy, brought me here to meet the crew. I can still see all the old scarred faces, beneath dark fedoras with snap brims and feathers in their bands. They all knew Frank, they all screwed showgirls from the Latin Casino, they all drove Cadillacs. In a town of nobodies they were somebodies, and this is what they drank. It seems right to drink the old drink, given the nature of our enterprise today.”

“Enterprise?”

“Order us both another,” said Stony. “Maybe two, to be efficient.”

“You in a rush, Stony?”

“A man the size of me is bound to die young and leave an impressive corpse; I don’t have time for half measures. And neither did my father. In his world there was a way to do a thing, and he passed the way of it on to the rest of us. Now, since you’ve stepped into our world, for your felonious edification I’m going to give the way of the bag to you. Eight sturdy rules in inverse order: the Briggs Mulroney Rules for Aspiring Bagmen. And don’t take notes.”

“Is that one of the rules?”

“That’s just common sense.”

And then he laid them out for me, one by one, each illuminated with legends of the old days, when dinosaurs with cigarettes and cruel hats roamed the streets. And here they are for your own sweet edification, illuminated with stories of my own: the rules of the game, as passed on from Briggs Mulroney to Stony Mulroney to Victor Carl to you.

Rule Eight
:
A bagman’s tools are twofold: greed, to fill his bag, and fear, to keep his grip.

The handoff is to be smooth, quiet, like something out of a spy novel. The instructions in the letter are explicit. An envelope, folded into a newspaper, passed like a football on a Statue of Liberty play: look left, handoff right. The recipient is a union leader with a sterling reputation for integrity; it is as important to us as to him that this reputation be maintained. He insists we keep our distance. The deal is as simple as dirt.

I stuff the envelope with the stuffing from my bag and use a rubber band to keep the envelope inside the paper. I spot him walking toward me on the street. I know him from his picture in the paper. As he approaches, I turn my shoulder. We brush up one against the other and, quick as that, in the crook of his arm, the paper now rests. He moves on, I move on, the deal as neat and clean as an obituary.

When it’s done, I turn and watch him go. He walks away from me with calm, unhurried steps. He deftly slips the paper from his left arm to his right. He turns a corner and disappears from view. This job couldn’t be easier.

A few minutes later I step into a Starbucks, order an overpriced coffee, black, let it burn the roof of my mouth as I look for a seat. I find one at a small table, across from a man reading a newspaper. I place my bag on the floor, toss my hat onto the table, sit down heavily.

“I actually like the coffee,” I say. “It’s the rest of it I hate, the whole grinding Seattle vision crap that pisses me off.”

“Okay,” says the man at the table without looking up, letting me know how welcome the disturbance is.

“I’d pay more, actually, if they put it in one of those blue paper cups they give out at Greek diners. You know what I mean? ‘We are happy to serve you.’ I’d pay more if they just stopped being so stinking precious. And you want to know something else? In the whole damn book, there’s only one boring character. Ahab, Ishmael, Queequeg, Stubb: great, great, great, great. Not to mention the whale. But upright Starbuck? Yawn. They should have named the place Stubbs. I’d go to Stubbs for coffee any day. Starbuck was a scold and a prig.”

The man looks up now, jaw muscles working. “What are you doing?” he says.

“Did it go off okay, our little switcherooni? I felt like I was in a 1930’s movie. I could even see the camera pans and the cuts as we approached. ‘Get the paper,’ says the director. ‘Now the hand.’ ”

“This defeats the whole purpose, you fool,” he says, wrapping his paper and standing.

“Don’t make me shout after you as you rush to the door,” I say calmly. “That’s a scene that’s not so easily forgotten.”

“What do you want?” he says through grinding teeth.

“To stop pretending to be what we’re not. I’m the guy who brings the money. You’re the guy who gets the money and delivers on his promises. I’m the guy you face if you don’t deliver. And later, when it goes as we both hope, we get to do this all over again. The raw truth is quite bracing, isn’t it? I’ve always thought meeting face-to-face is so valuable.”

“I have to go.”

“Well, if it can’t be avoided. But we’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”

I give him a quiet toast with my coffee as he storms away. He trails anger like a cloud, causing a few glances in his direction. Bad form. I take a sip of the coffee. It is a bit cooler now and I can taste the dark bitterness of the roast. I have to admit, despite it all, I do like the coffee.

Rule Seven
:
The street is our stage, the bag holds our tricks, and we never reveal our secrets.

Outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Callowhill Street, I’m in full battle regalia: beige raincoat despite the sunny skies, heavy brown diplomatic bag, my gray trilby. When I catch my reflection in a storefront, it’s like Inspector Gadget is on the loose.

“Did you get the time right?” says Maud, standing next to me. She is tall in her heels. Bright-red lipstick marks the filter of her cigarette.

“I got the time right.”

“Someone is late.”

“It’s the federal government.”

“That’s right,” she says. “How much did it cost?”

“Plenty.”

“I’ll pay whatever it is.”

“It’s covered.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“A hundred thousand dollars,” I say.

“Well, if you’re covering it.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you do it?”

“A single phone call.”

“To whom?”

“Oh, Maud, you know better than that. Let’s just say I had one Monopoly card and I played it.”

“For me?”

“For Lyudmila. Poor little thing. It feels good to do good.”

She stares at me sideways before a mordant laugh kicks the smoke out of her lungs.

We’re surrounded by families of all colors and shapes waiting outside the office. There are chairs inside, but there is no smoking and so we are all outside in a choking cloud of nervous hope. The door opens and a young man walks through it to be enveloped by his family. An older woman is hugged by her son. A couple hurries out, arms around each other.

And then: a tall, lovely woman with bobbed black hair and lips like ripe peaches. She steps out slowly, hesitantly. Her heels are spikes. She towers over the waiting families. Maud drops her cigarette and twists her shoe to kill it. The woman steps toward Maud, and Maud steps toward the woman until they are face-to-face, staring one at the other, not embracing in a grateful hug, not touching in any way, but staring stares alone that could rip the clothes off lesser figures.

Before they walk off, side by side, still not touching, but leaning one toward the other as if from some accelerated gravity, Maud comes over to me. She raises her eyebrow as if to say it is all just a little thing, but even the act itself is an acknowledgment of its falsity. And then she leans forward and kisses me on the lips and it is as startling as being kissed by a cobra.

“See you Thursday,” she says.

Rule Six
:
No matter the size of the cake, the bagman always takes his cut.

“We’ve got such plans for the organization,” says Hanratty, leaning back at his desk. He is big and bald and wears a blue-and-yellow tracksuit with three thick lines down the side. Scattered about the office are racks of basketballs, peaks of neon traffic cones, bags of soccer balls. The envelope remains untouched on his desktop. “We’re spreading out, expanding our footprint and offerings. There are so many kids we still need to reach.”

“The Congressman has always been supportive of your good work.”

“We know that, and are quite appreciative. But things are in flux.”

“Flux?” I say.

“An organization like ours, it has two choices: we grow or we wither. And our mission is too important for us to wither. We can’t do business anymore as if nothing in the future will change. As our footprint grows, so does our influence. We’ve been speaking to Mr. Bettenhauser’s people.”

“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.”