Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (11 page)

CHAPTER 21

ROSEN’S

I
n the midst of crisis, the heart yearns for brotherhood.

Rosen’s was an old-style steak joint on Twenty-Third Street, infused with nicotine and trimmed in red leather, with a surly barman in a plaid vest and a menu that hadn’t changed in decades. While other restaurants threw themselves into each new style of modernist cuisine, with their organic produce and sous vide cooking baths, Rosen’s had kept to the basics: meat, potatoes, a sprig of parsley, all of it doused with butter, accompanied by a mouthful of smoke to dull the taste, and a lowball of hard liquor to wash it down. It was so retro it had burst into style a few years back as a hipster hangout, before all the young hip things realized that Rosen’s wasn’t trying to be clever, it was simply preserved in amber. Since then, the younger crowd had found its way to craft-cocktail lounges and upscale bowling alleys, leaving Rosen’s to the same clientele it had served for half a century: the stiff and the drunk, the blue-haired, the red-nosed.

Above the bar was a sign, S
MOKING
P
ROHIBITED
, but that was obviously for the benefit of the L&I examiners when they came in for their yearly inspections, because the law it represented was being roundly disregarded. And why not? If it was good enough for the ’50s, it was good enough for Rosen’s.

“Victor, my friend, over here,” said Stony Mulroney, waving his cigarette in the air as he gestured to a large round table surrounded by a red banquette. “You’re just the man what we’ve been talking about.”

“That’s a frightening thought,” I said as I stood before them, bag in my grip. Along with Stony sat three others, two men and a woman, the four of them with their own bags set by their sides, the men’s hats on the table. They were a strange, hard-boiled crew, with their cigarettes and their squat, ruddy drinks, enveloped by a veil of smoke as if it were a cloud of their own plots and schemes.

“Victor,” said Stony, “this here is Hump.”

Hump was tall and slim with close-cropped hair, and ears that stuck out like plane wings. He stood as if to politely greet me. I reached out a hand and he took it, but didn’t shake it. Instead, he squeezed it tight and twisted it around my back as he slipped behind me and roughly patted me down.

“What the hell?”

“Just a precaution, friend,” said Stony.

“I’m not armed.”

“We’re not looking for no gun,” said the third man at the table, a scrawny piece of gristle with a spectacularly bad comb-over and a sour mouth.

“You don’t think—”

“We don’t get paid to think,” said the gristly little man, and in his case I didn’t doubt it. Small as a child, he had a sparrow’s chin, a pinched nose, a broad forehead. His leather jacket fit him oddly, as if he hadn’t taken the hanger out before putting it on. But beyond all that was that comb-over, a sparse swoop of thin strands that barely dimmed the shine off his oversized dome. His comb-over was less attempted fraud and more a piece of performance art. It deserved an ovation, enshrinement in some hall of fame of self-delusion.

“He be clean,” said Hump behind me in a deep baritone with a Southern twist.

“I told you he’d be clean,” said Stony. “Victor doesn’t work for anyone but his own damn self, like the rest of us.”

“Stony tells us you’re the new Colin Frost,” said the woman. Her eyes were coldly blue, her blonde hair was hacked short, her face was pockmarked, her body was all sharp edges and angles. There was something rangy and old-fashioned about her, something of the prairie; she was a straightened piece of rusted barbed wire. “What happened to the old one?”

“Rehab.”

“About time he started stepping,” said the comb-over man. “Twelve steps off a pier.”

“Take a seat,” said the woman. “Have a drink.”

I sat down next to Stony, setting my bag on the bench beside me like the rest of them.

“Sazerac okay?” said Stony.

“I never had one.”

“You’ll like it,” said Hump.

“Hump is a transplant up from New Orleans,” said the woman, fiddling with a new and unlit cigarette.

“I started working for a fellow named Pampy,” said Hump. “We was in the parking lot business. Later I covered the Ninth Ward for a host of them aldermen.”

“Till the water covered it better,” said the little man.

“When he came up north after Katrina,” said the woman, “Hump brought along his favorite drink, the Sazerac, a New Orleans specialty. We’ve taken a fancy to it.”

“Nothing not to fancy,” said Hump.

“What’s it like?” I said.

The woman tapped her cigarette on the table. “Close your eyes and think of the woman who haunts your dreams. You know who she is. Imagine now she’s smoking a cigarette, menthol, and drinking a rye whiskey stirred with a licorice twist. And then she leans forward and kisses you long and soft, swirling her tongue across your teeth.” The woman lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, let the smoke out in a slow, narrow stream. “That’s a Sazerac.”

“Yes, please,” I said.

“Aubrey,” shouted Stony to the barman. “Two Sazeracs for the guest, and another round for the rest of us.”

“Two?”

“Before he entered the business, my daddy was a Marine,” said Stony, “and he taught us never to leave a soldier behind.”

“Nice bag,” said the woman, nodding to my briefcase. “Italian?”

“Yes, actually. I figured if I was getting in the game, I’d do it in style.”

“I knew a man carried an Italian bag that pretty, once,” she said. “He was so proud of it, showed it off like it was a rosy-cheeked baby. He went on endlessly about the quality of the workmanship, the softness of the leather. He got six years.”

“You’d be better off ditching the bag and picking up a sledge or a saw, something useful,” said the little man.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s going to hell is why, the whole business. The money is passing us by, but the feds sure as hell ain’t. We used to have twenty at every meeting, with armies trying to get in. Now there are more behind bars than at the bar. It’s just us left. We’re a dying breed.”

“Don’t mind Miles,” said the woman. “He’s a pisser and a moaner.”

“Sure I piss and I moan, I got what they call a weak stream, but that don’t mean I’m wrong about the business.”

“Well, I sort of fell into this new line,” I said, “and so I’ll take whatever advice I can get. I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

“As soon as we saw your mug in the paper, we knew that,” said the little man.

“Yeah,” I said, “that was unfortunate.”

“Indeed,” said Hump.

When the drinks came, I lifted up the rosy-red lowball with a twist of lemon peel sliding across the bottom and admired the richness of the color.

“Wow,” I said after the first sip. “What’s that taste?”

“It’s the Peychaud’s,” said Hump. “That there’s the bitters. I have it shipped up from home special, so Aubrey won’t be putting that Angostura crap in it.”

“A cube of sugar,” said the woman, “a dash of Peychaud’s, two jiggers of rye, the whole thing stirred and then poured in a glass rinsed with a little Duplais Verte.”

“That there’s the absinthe,” said Hump.

“No,” I said.

“Indeed,” said Hump.

“Take my word for it,” said Stony. “Nothing settles the digestion like a good distillation of wormwood.”

As I drank my first Sazerac, wincing with each sip, Stony made the introductions. Hump handled the wilds of North Philly, hauling his bag from shop to shop, taking the envelopes all through the year and then passing out street money on Election Day. And Hump was the one to see if anyone was messing with the salad.

“Salad?” I said.

“The payload,” said the comb-over man.

“Ahh, yes.”

“Anyone helping himself to the salad, you see Hump,” said Stony.

“I take care of things for a price,” said Hump.

“You and me,” I said to Hump, “we need to talk.”

“And this beautiful rose,” said Stony, “is Maud.”

The woman, looking more like a thorn than a blossom, smoked impassively.

“Maud handles the city administration. If you want anything zoned, anything cleaned up or knocked down, anything cleared or shut down by Licenses and Inspections, anything from the Sheriff, the Prothonotary, the Register of Wills, anything anywhere in city hall, no matter how high up, she’s the one you want to talk to. And she’s a great friend of the mayor’s.”

“I introduced him to his wife,” said Maud.

“It’s a good thing,” said Stony, “that His Honor doesn’t hold grudges. And this sour grape, this bite-sized piece of municipal corruption, is the one and only Miles Schimmeck.”

The little man bowed at the table so that the top of his head under his comb-over glistened in the light.

“Miles handles all levels of the courts: Traffic, Municipal, Family, Common Pleas, Commonwealth, all the way up to the top. If you want influence in a custody battle, in a sentencing, if you want your DUI dismissed or your driver’s license reinstated or your appeal looked upon with favor, Schimmeck is your man.”

“It sounds like something, but truth is, it’s not so hard,” said Miles Schimmeck.

“You don’t need to tell us that,” said Maud. “Buying a judge in this town is as tough as buying a tomato.”

“Cheaper too,” said Schimmeck. “But they’re so ungrateful when you do it. Hey, if you don’t want the salad, don’t go to the salad bar, I always say. I don’t need the griping. But even them judges, the greediest clan in all creation, are closing down on the likes of me. The game’s changing.”

“The Big Butter’s come to town,” said Hump.

“Big Butter?” I said.

“Big money,” said Maud. “There’s too much of it now.”

I rubbed my hands together. “And that’s a problem?”

“When you have the only canteen in the desert, everybody’s your friend,” said Maud. “Not so in a flood.”

“It’s Noah time,” said Miles, “and none of us now need a fool horning in on our territories.”

“A bagman’s territory is more than just a spot on a map,” said Hump. He took a closed blade from his jacket pocket, flicked it to life, scraped at his thumbnail with the long, shiny blade. “It’s his lifeblood and it needs to be protected. I learned that from my two best teachers, first Pampy and then Katrina.”

I looked around at my drinking companions. Schimmeck was smiling unpleasantly. Maud’s face behind a rising line of smoke was as impassive as the glass in her hand. Hump was staring at me with eyes black as coal. Stony, my new friend Stony, was looking down at the table.

“I guess I know what herpes feels like,” I said.

“It ain’t nothing personal, you understand,” said Hump.

“Actually, it is,” said Miles Schimmeck.

“We can’t afford to have someone like you involved in our business,” said Maud, “taking pieces of our routes, messing up the game for everyone.”

“Someone like me?” I said, my umbrage antennae bristling. “And what exactly is that?”

“A fool with a bag,” said Maud.

“I tell you, he’s okay,” said Stony.

“He’s a lunkhead,” said Miles. “I know a lunkhead when I see one and he’s a lunkhead. No offense.”

“Offense taken,” I said.

“Let me get this right, just so we’re clear,” said Maud. “Out of nowhere, you show up with some overpriced bag and a single client, and you think you’re a member of the club. But already after only a week on the job, one of your payoffs is dead, you’re in the middle of a murder investigation, your picture’s on the front page of the paper, and then you get your home invaded and your apartment trashed and your salad eaten and your own numbskull knocked unconscious.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I cover the Roundhouse,” said Stony.

“You called the police,” said Miles, shaking his head.

“I didn’t,” I said. “A neighbor or somebody did.”

“Does it matter?” said Maud. “There’s always a fed trying to make his bones by making an example of us, and here you come, waltzing down our street, whistling like an idiot. You don’t know our rules, you don’t know our game. You’re just a fool with a bag.”

“We’re better off with you not around,” said Hump.

“Consider this a polite warning,” said Maud.

“You call this polite?” I said.

“Just know that next time we won’t be so well mannered,” said Miles.

“So that’s that,” I said.

“That’s that,” said Maud. “From here on in, know that it will be safer for all of us—”

“Especially for you,” said Miles.

“—if you leave the bags to those who know how to carry them.”

Hump spun the knife in his fingers until it flipped down and stuck straight through the tablecloth into the wood with a solid thwack.

“Sayonara, lunkhead,” said Miles Schimmeck. “It was a pleasure not knowing you.”

So much for brotherhood.

“You don’t look upset,” said Maud, an interested tilt to her head. “You don’t even look surprised.”

“What did Stony call you? The Order of the Sazerac? The Club of Kings? The Brotherhood?”

Hump pulled the knife out of the table, slapped it closed, slipped it back into his jacket. “Briggs always liked his fancy names.”

“So you’re rejecting me. Big stinking deal.” I looked around at the four of them. “I’ve been rejected by better, though I don’t think I’ve ever been rejected by worse, and I’m counting here the chess club in high school. I came here because Stony invited me. I thought I’d get a little companionship, a little advice, maybe a chance to learn from your experience. But when I look around, I figure I’d be better off getting advice from the hookers on Spring Garden. At least they smile when they screw you.”

“Anyone want another drink?” said Stony.

“Can’t,” said Miles Schimmeck. He looked at his watch, snatched up the last of his Sazerac, grabbed his hat, a large-brimmed checkered thing. “I’m due in Municipal Court.”

“And we have that thing,” said Maud to Hump.

“That’s right,” said Hump, snapping down the rest of his drink, grabbing his own hat, short-rimmed and black. “That thing.”

“Another drink for you, Victor?” said Stony.

“I think I’ve had enough.”

“Stinking lightweights, all of you,” said Stony. “When my father was around, we would close this place, and head out to the street roaring.” Stony downed the rest of his drink, lifted his hand, snapped for the barkeep’s attention, raised one finger.