Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (9 page)

CHAPTER 17

THE POLITICS OF HATE

D
o they know who she is?” said Ossana DeMathis, wide green eyes shining in the dim light as she rubbed the tip of her finger along the rim of her cosmo.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then why don’t they give out her name? Calling her Shoeless Joan is abominable.”

“Abominable is the way the press likes it. The more they splash the nickname of a corpse on the cover, the more papers they sell.”

“That’s filthy.”

“News is a filthy business,” I said before downing a slug of my drink. It would have been more impressively hard-boiled, the whole act, if the drink weren’t a Sea Breeze. But, as I like to say, I’m man enough to drink a prissy drink. At least there wasn’t an umbrella in it.

Of all the surprises that came my way the day after the Governor’s Ball, getting the message from Ossana DeMathis asking me out for a drink was the most surprising. And why, when I was still shaken by all I had seen in that alley the night before, had I agreed to have a drink with a woman I barely knew and wasn’t sure I even liked?

Why the hell do you think?

“How did they find out her real name?” she asked.

“I told them.”

“You knew her?”

“A little.”

She leaned forward, lowered her voice, locked her eyes on my own. “How?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? Is it some rule or something?”

“Yes, it is some rule or something.”

“Was it . . . ? Did it . . . ?” She lowered her eyes and ran her finger up and down the stem of her cocktail glass. “Did it have something to do with . . . ?”

“Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t say anything, Ossana, one way or the other.”

“Fine,” she said, leaning back now, tilting her head with calculation. “You’re being quite admirable, I suppose. Most people are not so discreet when it comes to gossip.”

“This is not gossip, this is a murder.”

I took another swig of my drink. We were in a large dark lounge on the nineteenth floor of the Bellevue. Yes, that’s right, the very same hotel where I had been shanghaied by three cops the night before. Even with its lofty dimensions, it was an intimate place, with high trappings and soft lighting, a bar designed for seduction. The question was: Whose? Well, maybe that wasn’t the question. Maybe the question was: Did it matter?

“Why did you call me this afternoon?” I said.

“I wanted to see you.”

“So you could pump me for information about a dead girl?”

“Of course. Why did you agree to come?”

“I like your eyes.”

She smiled, looked down for a moment, lifted her cosmo and took a demure sip, licked her red lips with her pale tongue. “I’ve been told that green eyes are a mark of incipient insanity.”

“Who told you that?”

“My psychiatrist. So what are you going to do about her?”

“About your psychiatrist?”

“About our Joan.”

“That’s not her name. And what do you mean ‘do’? The cops are looking into the murder. They think it’s a robbery. Whatever they think, I’m going to stay out of their way.”

“You’re sure that’s wise?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because they called you to the crime scene and labeled you a person of interest.”

“That’s just Detective McDeiss’s way of wishing me a good morning.”

“And now they’re probably doing what they can to link you to what happened to her. We all know how easy it is for the police to influence statements, to create false identifications, to manufacture evidence. Do you think it’s wise to sit back and let them build a frame around you without your trying to figure out things on your own?”

“I think it’s wise to stay out of McDeiss’s way. Always. Especially when there’s a buffet involved. I’m going to sit back and hope for the best.”

“How has that worked out for you in the past?”

“What’s that on your wrist?”

“My watch?”

“No,” I said. I gently took her right hand and turned it over. On the sweet flat of her wrist was the tattoo of a flock of birds in flight, tiny
v
’s diving and swirling. I rubbed my thumb across the swarm. Her skin was cool and dry.

“Do you like it?” she said.

“I have the urge to kiss it.”

“I was young when I got it. I thought it was an expression of my startling individuality. But have you been to the beach lately? A tattoo is now as individual as a seagull. Do you have one?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On my chest.”

“Let me see.”

I tossed my tie over my shoulder, opened the middle buttons of my shirt, pulled down my white T-shirt. She smiled when she saw it and rubbed her fingers gently over the heart.

“Who is Chantal Adair?” she said.

“She was just a girl, another girl who was murdered.”

“Did you know her?”

“No.”

“Then why did you get it?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

She looked puzzled.

“Somebody gave it to me when I was drugged and passed out,” I said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t get it removed?”

“I’ve grown to like it.”

“You keep a tattoo you didn’t ask for to remember a dead girl you never met.” She pressed her full palm against my flesh; my whole chest froze for a moment from her touch. “You’ve turned your body into a memorial. Deep down, Victor, you’re actually one of the noble ones.”

“Whatever I am deep down,” I said as I buttoned my shirt, “it is not noble. Did you see the way all the politicians looked at me when the police pulled me out of the ball last night?”

“Like you had suddenly developed leprosy.” She examined the pink of her drink for a moment. “What is it like to be stared at like that, as if you’ve suddenly crossed some unforgivable line?”

“I sort of liked it.”

Her green eyes lit up at that. “I don’t understand how.”

There is always the question of how to play it with someone new. Do you act the part they want you to play, the good-guy part or the bad-boy part, the intellectual part, the awkward-as-they-are part? It’s easy enough; the movies have given us all the right lines. Or do you do something radical and tell them one of the truths at the root of your soul, not because you only want to be loved for what you truly are—I don’t want to be loved for what I truly am, my whole life is a sprint from what I truly am—but because telling a foul truth is just a perverse enough strategy in this world of mendacity to spark an interest. And if you go with the truth gambit, which is just as manipulative as the play-a-part gambit, there remains the question of which truth to tell, since there are so many. We are, all of us, like Whitman in containing multitudes. We are, each of us, sad and angry and optimistic and hapless and sweet and sour and innocent and depraved. Which of these truths to expose?

“Do you want to know a truth about me, Ossana?”

“I don’t know,” she said, with a slight smile. “Can I handle the truth?”

I had thought she was a bit stiff, a bit proper, Ossana, the Congressman’s sister, but there was a streak in her that was catching me off guard. Okay, it was time to see how the rawest of my truths worked with green eyes.

“You know all those people at that little masquerade party we attended last night?” I said.

“The Governor’s Ball wasn’t a . . . Yes, okay. All the people in their glittery costumes.”

“The rich and powerful and their wives and their husbands and their lovers and their beards and their lackeys? The truth of the matter is I hate them, all of them, and they can sense it on me like a stink. It’s nothing personal. I happen to hate everyone more successful than I am, which is pretty much everyone. You know what Gandhi said, ‘If you don’t hate something, you end up hating nothing.’ ”

“Did he say that?”

“If he didn’t, he should have. Well, I hate them all, the posers and the flunkies, the players and the pawns, the baldly self-serving puffed up with their self-righteous senses of entitlement. I want to be them, too, I want all their perks and powers—their cars, their houses, their illicit lovers—I want to be them so badly that sometimes I piss blood at night from all the wanting. I want to join their clubs and laugh at their jokes and play golf on their courses and have sex with their daughters and broil like a lobster on the lounge chair right next to their lounge chairs at their swim clubs on the Vineyard. But all of that doesn’t mean I don’t hate them, too. So to have them look at me like I’m a danger to everything they hold most dear, like I’m a leper, well, that’s fine. That’s more than fine. It feeds the soul.”

She took in a breath, as if I had just touched some intimate part of her. “All that hate, my God. It must be poisonous.”

“Not really. It’s a cheerful hate.”

“Does it include my brother?”

“You bet.”

“And me?”

“Were you there with diamonds dripping from your ears?”

“Why do I find all of this thrilling? Why do I suddenly want you to ravish me with your hate?”

“Because you understand the power of it, the way it nourishes the will and fires the spirit and engorges the flesh. My hate is hard and relentless, stiff and thick and unyielding, charging like a stallion across a fertile green meadow. And do you want to know a secret, Ossana?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

I leaned forward and she did too. Our faces were close and our lips were closer. “It lasts a damn sight longer than four hours.”

CHAPTER 18

UNEXPECTED GUEST

T
his is a complete disaster,” said Melanie Brooks to me on the phone after I returned to my apartment, still tipped from the waves of alcohol and lust that had flooded through me at the Bellevue. I sat down casually on my battered red couch, crossed my legs, loosened my tie, winked. I wasn’t alone.

“Can we talk about this later?” I said.

“No, we can’t, dearheart. Colin worked for us for years and never had so much as a mention in the press, and here you are, with us for just days, and already you’re on the front page of the
Daily News
. Don’t you know the first rule of this business?”

I looked up at my guest and said, “Always use a rubber?”

“Victor, I’m serious.”

“Then it must be: Keep your fucking face out of the papers.”

“Yes, exactly, and put so succinctly, too.”

“I received this selfsame advice just this afternoon, so you’re not telling me anything new. But I didn’t ask to end up looking guilty as sin on the front page of the paper. It just sort of happened.”

“It is unacceptable.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if Sloane hadn’t been in court that day, and he was only in court that day because of Colin, so it’s not all on me. And, I must say, it has paid some dividends. My waiting room was full this morning and I have a boatload of new clients.”

“Because you’re connected to a murder?”

“No, because they think I’m connected, period.”

“Victor, Victor, what are we going to do with you?”

“Pay me, that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to pay me.”

“Well, at least you’re learning. Tell me the truth now: Are you involved in the murder? Have you gotten in that deep with these snakes?”

“No.”

“But you knew her.”

“I met her once.”

“Because of the Congressman?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? Did you give her something?”

“I gave her what you’d expect me to give her.”

“And what did she give you?”

“I can’t say anything more.”

“Don’t give me that privilege dance. I invented that privilege dance. Remember who you work for.”

“And pray tell, Melanie, exactly who is that?”

“It sure as hell is not DeMathis. He’s a politician, for God’s sake. We don’t work for politicians. You might as well be hauling mounds of manure for a dung beetle.”

“Then maybe it’s time for you to tell me who we really report to.”

“There are levels to everything, and all you need to know is your own level. You’re working for me. Now Sloane will be looking for every opportunity to link you with the Congressman and we can’t have that. But there is still work to be done that will require your special talents. Mrs. Devereaux has more donations to make, there are places those donations must go, and there is still the matter of digging the dirt on Thomas J. Bettenhauser.”

“You know about that?”

“I know my business, and you, dearheart, have become my business. From now on you’ll receive your instructions regarding the Congressman from another source.”

“You?”

“God, no, I have standards. Patience. But once you get your instructions, no freelancing. Follow your instructions to the letter unless I tell you otherwise.”

“You sound sexy when you’re in charge. What are you wearing?”

“Stop it.”

“There used to be a heart beating in there.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you ever?”

“Not anymore. And what a relief that is. You should try it, Victor. I could get you a dose of Depo-Provera, it would do wonders for your disposition. We have a supply on hand to give to candidates who can’t stop their peckers from sabotaging their electoral chances. But I want you to be clear on one thing more. Under no circumstances are you in any way to get in the middle of that murder investigation. You steer clear of the papers, you steer clear of Detective McDeiss, you steer clear of the entire mess.”

“Is that an order?”

“Remember where I found you, desperately clutching the courthouse wall, hoping to stop your spiral into financial ruin.”

“I remember.”

“Make sure you do. Now be a good boy, Victor, and do as you’re told.”

When I hung up, I took a moment to straighten the pleat that should have been in my pants. That last line of Melanie’s had stuck in my throat like a bone. Telling me to do as I was told was one of my mother’s favorite admonitions. The disappointment on her face when I failed her was as close as I would get to a declaration of her love. Since then, not doing what I was told has become as much a habit as a matter of principle. Yet I surely did enjoy the money train I was on since hooking up with Melanie. I took a moment to try to reconcile my dual inclinations.

“Trouble?” said my guest.

“There’s always trouble.”

“I suppose next you’ll be telling me Trouble’s your middle name,” she said.

“More like Shelby.”

“Really?”

“No. My parents didn’t love me enough to give me three names, I’ve only got the two. How many do you have?”

“Five.”

“That figures. Now what again are you doing here?”

Amanda Duddleman leaned forward and clasped her hands together as if she were praying to me, or trying to sell me insurance, one or the other. “I came here tonight, Kip, because I desperately need your help.”