Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (8 page)

Call me bagman.

CHAPTER 15

COVER BOY

T
he morning after the trauma of the Governor’s Ball, still shaken from the blood and the death, I emerged from my office stairwell to find my waiting room stuffed full as a Thanksgiving turkey. It is hard to express the strangeness of such an occurrence. In the last year, physics students from Drexel University had taken to using my waiting room to examine the peculiar properties of a vacuum. And yet there they were, filling my chairs and leaning against my walls, the washed and unwashed alike, men in suits, women with scraggly teeth, young and old, the haggard, as well as slicks in Haggar slacks, all waiting for a chance to speak to . . . to . . .

“Mr. Carl, do you have a moment to . . . ?”

“Mr. Carl? Can I perhaps . . . ?”

“Before you go, Mr. Carl . . .”

I lifted a hand to quiet the calls as I edged my way through the throng. My secretary, Ellie, sitting at the desk that guarded the route to my office, stopped her typing, looked up, and gave me a happy smile. Pretty and young, with a wide freckled face, my secretary normally read romance novels to while away the hours when I didn’t have enough work to keep her busy, which was most of the time. But she was sitting tall at her desk when I came into the office that morning, tap-tapping on the computer keyboard, giving the fraudulent appearance to those in the waiting room that my practice was thriving. She was a gem, that Ellie.

“What are they doing here?” I said softly.

“They came for you, Mr. Carl.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because of the paper.”

“Paper?”

“I tried to call you.”

“It was a tough night,” I said. “I turned off my phone.”

“Then you didn’t see the
Daily News
?”

“No.”

She reached into a drawer, pulled out the tabloid, dropped it onto the desk. Staring up at me from the front page was a smarmy man in a tux stooping beneath yellow police tape. His face, washed pale by the flash, looked up with an expression of unadulterated guilt.
S
HOELESS
J
OAN
blared the headline, and then, beneath the pale, guilty face, the subheading
B
AGMAN
S
NAGGED IN
M
URDER
W
EB
.
When I realized the smarm staring up with a face full of guilt was me, I quickly turned the paper over.

“What do they all want? Are they here in protest?”

“No, Mr. Carl, they’re here to hire you.”

“Hire me?”

“I’ve made a list of the order they arrived and gave them client intake forms. I’m creating file folders for each of them.”

“Thank you, Ellie,” I said. “Just give me a minute before you send anyone in.”

I snatched the newspaper off the desk, fled to my office, shut the door behind me. The article was short—the
Daily News
is not known for its in-depth reporting. Under the byline of Harvey Sloane, it offered some fuzzy facts about the murder, relayed a statement from McDeiss that described the victim’s condition and the missing shoes without giving a name, and then got to the meat of it, as far as I was concerned.

Victor Carl, an attorney and reputed bagman for a powerful local politician, was brought to the scene by a detective and two uniformed officers to aid in the identification of the victim. Carl made no statement other than threatening this reporter’s life and limb. He did leave, however, the contents of his stomach at the crime scene. McDeiss stated only that Carl was a person of interest in the investigation.

I snapped the paper closed, rolled it tight, stuck it in a drawer. How nice of Sloane to include that bit about my weak stomach, and how nice of McDeiss to rope me in as a person of interest. We all know what a person of interest is: he’s the guy they intend to arrest right after their appointment at the nail salon.

Could I be in a finer mess?

Just then, with my stomach still roiled from the sight of poor Jessica Barnes, I wasn’t in any state to deal with all these people in my waiting room. I would have to send them away; I needed time to plan things out. I put my head in my hands and drew a deep breath to settle my nerves when there was a knock.

“What?” I said.

The man who came through the door was in his thirties, quite short, squat, and poorly shaven, carrying a paper lunch bag and a blue file. He swung around with surprising grace as he closed the door.

“The lady at the desk—pretty damn cute, I might add, well done—she said I should give this to you.”

He tossed the blue file onto my desk before he hopped into one of the client chairs.

I opened the file. Inside was one of our client intake forms, filled out with a name, Anthony Pelozzo, a South Philly address, two phone numbers, and a work location listed as Pelozzo Meats. Under “referral attorney” he had simply written “The Daily News.”

“So, Mr. Pelozzo is it?”

“Call me Guy.”

“Guy, then. How can I help you today, Guy? You left the space for your legal issue blank.”

“Oh, I got an issue. Issues, actually. First, can I get personal for a moment? Your secretary . . . She’s kind of . . . I was wondering . . .”

“No,” I said.

“Okay, good. No offense meant. I’m just recently divorced and it’s been a long time since I been looking and, I got to tell you, it’s like a Golden Corral out there. You know how it is.”

“I know how it is. So, your issue, is it matrimonial?”

“What, the divorce? Nah, that was easy. Her attorney took care of it for us both. Saved a hell of a lot in legal fees. She got everything and I got out, so in the end we both got what we wanted. Now my best friend is stuck with her, the sap. This is like a different thing. I saw your picture in the paper and I suddenly thought that maybe you could help me out here.”

“Go ahead.”

He took the lunch bag off his lap and placed it on the desk. This was not a new and shiny bag, this was old and wrinkled and well stained, like it had been carrying ham-and-cheese for six months straight. He shoved it toward me; I backed away as if it held a ripe piece of Limburger.

“What’s the matter?” said Pelozzo.

“Is that your lunch?”

“Are you trying to be funny? It’s my issue. Look inside.”

“Do I have to?”

“What kind of operation you running here?”

“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “Courage above all.”

I took hold of the bag, opened it slightly, peeked inside. No moldy lunch, just stacks of paper slips. I pulled one out. A parking ticket for a Chevy Impala. I took out another, and then another.

“To be truthful,” he said, “I don’t got no explanation or excuse, they just keep piling up.”

“That happens when you park illegally.”

“How the hell can you not in this town? The only legal place anymore is the middle of Broad Street and they’ll be ticketing that next. And the meter maids they got working, my God, what a bunch of vultures.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“Including late fees and penalties?”

“The whole ball of wax.”

“Maybe seventy-five hundred, give or take.”

“Which means more like nine thousand.”

“Ten, actually. Which is why I’m here. Vic, you’re the bagman, right? You got clout with them downtown big boys—that’s what the papers said. You think you can fix them things for me?”

“You want me to fix your parking tickets?”

“Why else do you think I’m here?”

“Okay, I see.” I put the parking slips carefully back in the bag, closed it up, leaned back in my chair, considered Guy Pelozzo for a moment.

He thought I had clout with the downtown big boys, but I had no clout with the downtown big boys. He thought I could fix his parking tickets, but I couldn’t fix a loose screw with a screwdriver. The rules of professional responsibility and basic standards of ethics required that I disabuse him of his addled notions and send him on his way. And yet . . .

What was a parking ticket, actually, but an opening demand in a negotiation between a car owner and the parking authority? And who better to handle such a negotiation than a card-carrying member of the bar association? And taking care of this bag of citations sooner rather than later could only adhere to Guy Pelozzo’s benefit.

Where some in law school specialized in criminal law or copyright or environmental affairs, I specialized in raw opportunism. I had fallen into something, and, like a drunken tourist in Pamplona, I was going to run with that bull until it gored me through the liver.

“I’ll need a thousand-dollar retainer,” I said without an ounce of waver in my voice.

“Will cash be okay?” said Guy, pulling out a wad the size of a fist.

“Cash is always okay, Guy. Leave the bag, get a receipt from my secretary, and I’ll be in touch.”

“Vic, I appreciate this.”

“It’s what I do, Guy, it’s what I do. But can I ask a question? With that wad, you could probably pay the whole thing off and still have enough left for new tires. Why go through me?”

“I didn’t just fall off a boat here, Victor. I know the way the city works. You know someone, right?”

“Yes, I know someone.”

“Well, in this city, you got to know someone who knows someone to get anything done, you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do, Guy. And I suppose, today, that someone is me. On your way out, please tell my secretary to send in the next on the list.”

CHAPTER 16

STONY MULRONEY

T
here was a real-estate developer from Mayfair in a shaggy suit who had run into a zoning problem for the apartment building he was trying to renovate. There was a woman who wanted to cut her tax assessment by 50 percent. There was a strip-club owner who was getting hassled by the Department of Licenses and Inspections. There was a Pakistani restaurateur who wanted help getting her liquor license. There was a sea of folk who were anxious to throw their money at me so I could grease for them the grinding wheels of government, all because a slimy political reporter had written that I carried a bag filled with cash all about the town. And to each of them I gave a warm and comforting smile, and from each of them I received a retainer, and I told each of them I would do what I could to make the city bureaucracy work for and not against them.

Is this a wonderful world or what?

“Hello, friend. Do you by chance have a minute for a few words off the record?”

The man in my doorway with the sharp, high-pitched voice, a voice like a grinding siren, was fat. I could use all kinds of politically correct terms to describe him, like stout or portly, but his very fatness precluded their utility. He was a series of circles—head, belly, thighs—a walking snowman in a black suit. His features were squashed flat by the fat in his face, his fingers were like overstuffed sausages. In one hand he held a soft-sided black satchel, in the other a gray fedora placed over his heart.

Ellie came running up behind him, a yellow slip in her hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carl,” she said. “He got right by me before I could stop him. He refused to fill out an intake sheet.”

“Now why in the wide world,” said the man, “would I want to fill out a silly piece of paper?”

“Because it helps the process,” I said. “Go back to the reception area with my secretary and fill out a client intake form like everyone else. After that we can talk.”

“You have the wrong impression, Victor. I’m not a client, and I hope never to be one.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m a colleague. Of sorts.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“No, I’m not a lawyer, thank the heavens. I’m a professional man. I just want to have a word, you know, as a fellow member of the Guild.” He lifted his bag and rapped the doorframe with a fat knuckle. “You might find it worth your while.”

I thought about it for a moment. This whole day was about unlikely opportunity. “It’s all right, Ellie,” I said. “I’ll take care of this.”

“I also took a phone message for you, Mr. Carl,” she said, stepping past the man and placing the message slip on my desk.

I took a quick look. Ossana DeMathis.
“Wants to meet for drinks.”
I felt my blood rise just a bit, even though I figured it was probably just that she had parking tickets of her own.

“Thank you, Ellie,” I said. “Call her back and tell her anyplace after six will work.”

On her way out, Ellie gave the man with the fedora a warning look that would have frightened a bear, but her stare just rolled off the man’s hide like so much drizzle. He smiled at her courteously as she passed, stepped inside my office, and gave me a quick wink before closing the door behind him.

“The name is Stony,” he said, after he managed to squeeze himself down into one of the client chairs. The armrests creaked as he settled in. “Stony Mulroney. Yeah, yeah, I know, like a double Dutch rhyme, but trust me, it’s better than the real thing. My father was Briggs Mulroney—maybe you’ve heard of him?”

“No.”

“’Tis sad the way all the legends are fading. But they still whisper my father’s name with reverence in the stairwells of city hall. Briggs Mulroney: he made strong men weep.” The man put his hat back over his heart and raised his gaze to the ceiling. “May the son of a bitch rest in peace. My father, when he passed on to greener pastures, he passed on his responsibilities to me, including this one. So here I am. And what I came to say, Victor—I can call you Victor?”

“Sure, you can call me Victor.”

“What I’m here to say, Victor, is welcome.”

“Welcome to what?”

“The Gang, the Guild, the Order of the Sazerac, the Club of Kings, the Brotherhood. You’re one of us now.”

“Is that good?”

“My father used to say we are the princes of the street.”

“That sounds good.”

“Yes, sure it is, but give my father a half a bottle of Scotch and he’d sing ‘Danny Boy’ so loudly even the walls would weep. Now, as a friend and as a colleague, I want to give to you a gift of some advice that my father gifted on to me. It kept him in good stead, so long as he listened, and it’s been doing all right by me over the years.”

“And you came by my office just to give me some advice.”

“As a colleague, you know, friendly like. My father, he told me over and again, he said, ‘Stony, always use a rubber.’ ”

I looked at the man and blinked twice.

“Good advice, don’t you think? I mean my father, he knew something of what he was talking about, though if he followed his own advice, I wouldn’t be here, since my mom was just something he had on the side. And beyond that, if he followed his own advice, he’d still be carrying the bag, he would.”

“What did he die of, syphilis?”

“He was too hard a man for that. Syphilis was afraid of catching Briggs Mulroney. He no longer walks among us because he violated a second piece of advice that I’m giving you here and now—and all for free.”

“You’re like a cornucopia of wisdom there, Stony.”

“Scottish, actually, on my father’s side. But see, this is what he told me, this is the specific advice I wanted to pass on. As a colleague. And if my dad had followed his own advice, he’d be the one sitting here, welcoming you to the club, and shooting the breeze. Are you ready for this, Victor? Are you ready for a bracing piece of truth?”

“Fire away.”

“Keep your fucking face out of the papers.”

Stony Mulroney said this with just the right amount of humor to cut the harshness, and just the right amount of harshness to make sure I knew it was less an avuncular piece of advice and more an admonition that I had better take seriously.

“My father,” he continued, “thirty years he made his rounds and no one outside of the business knew his name. He used to tell me that half the job was keeping your fucking face out of the papers. Then he made the front page of the
Inquirer
and two weeks later he was gone. And the thing was, he was shocked as hell. I’ll always remember the expression on his face as we bid him adieu. Briggs Mulroney, looking as if a broad with tits like great mounds of taffy had just jumped out of his cake. You see, he forgot himself. Don’t you be forgetting yourself. It’s not just bad for you, Victor, it’s bad for all of us.”

“Us?”

“There aren’t many of us left, so we need to take care of each other. That’s why I’m here, giving you my father’s good and sound advice.”

“It sounded a little like a threat, Stony.”

“Yes, well, he was that kind of guy, my dad. Listen, we meet up every Thursday, five o’clock, over at Rosen’s. You know the place?”

“On Twenty-Third?”

“That’s it.”

“Who’s we?”

“The Club, the Guild, the Order of the Sazerac, because that’s what we drink, the Brotherhood.”

“The Brotherhood?”

“The Brotherhood of the Bag.”

“Ahh, yes,” I said, as understanding suddenly dawned, like the sun rising on the rocky outcrop of some dim lunar landscape. “How come I’ve never heard of your . . . your organization?”

“We work hard not to be heard of, something you need to learn. Stop on by at Rosen’s, pal, and I’ll introduce you around. It’ll do you good. And if you need any help with anything, you just let me know. Anything. Except I can’t get you a taxi medallion—that’s Maud’s turf—and I don’t work north of Ogontz Avenue, ’cause Hump would have my liver. And criminal courts are too corrupt even for me; it’s like the judges each have six hands. But anything else, you let me know.”

I stared a bit and processed it all and rubbed my jaw before saying, simply, “Anything?”

“That’s the word.”

I opened a desk drawer, took out Guy Pelozzo’s soiled brown paper bag, and tossed it to Stony.

He opened the bag, took a whiff, and smiled, as if instead of stacks of creased and soiled parking tickets, it was filled with freshly baked bread. “Now we’re talking.”