Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (14 page)

CHAPTER 26

PARTY HAT

E
ver get the certainty that you are missing something? You pat your pocket for your wallet, for your phone. Everything is where it should be, but you still feel the gap, the nagging sensation of incompleteness that gnaws at the soul like an itch.

I was scratching my neck when it came to me.

“So nice, and certainly unexpected, to see you again, Victor,” said Timothy in the atrium at Boyds. “I must say, your diplomatic bag does you more than justice. It makes you seem almost—how should I put it?—diplomatic. And that tie, a Lanvin, is it not?”

“So it is, Timothy.”

“Have you been shopping without me?”

“Let’s say I acquisitioned it on my own.”

“Well done, Victor. Things are looking up for you, stylewise at least. So, what are we after today? A scarf perhaps? A few perfect pieces of Brioni hosiery? Or have you finally come to your senses and decided to cast away that shapeless navy-blue tent in favor of a suit more becoming?”

“Becoming what, Timothy?”

“Becoming a man of import, Victor. A man to be reckoned with.”

“And that depends on the suit?”

“What else would it depend on?”

“Character? Intellect?”

“Are we here to joke, Victor, is that it? Are we here to clown around? Because if so, then your current suit is more than adequate—one could even say, perfect. Now, we don’t normally carry red foam noses in stock, but I could order one just for you.”

“Armani?”

“Party City.”

“Well, that might have to wait, and so will the suit. What I’m looking for now, Timothy, is a hat. Something with a snappy brim. Something like a fedora.”

“Does that mean you want a fedora?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Yes, well, I’ve grown accustomed to that with you, Victor. Tell me, why this sudden and cracked impulse to buy a hat?”

“I’ve found myself in a new line of work, and I have some strange urge to dress the part. The formal shoes are unusable at the moment, fortunately, but the bag is perfect. Still, I feel like I’m missing something. My new line is the realm of politics, where I meet in old-style steak houses and drink hard liquor laced with absinthe. The kind of line where I slip through the shadows and say things like ‘Hello, friend, do you by chance have a minute for a few words off the record?’ ”

“Oh, I see. It’s like that, is it?”

“Yes, it’s like that.”

“Politics is a dirty game, Victor.”

“Dirtier than selling rags at Boyds?”

“No. Now I could sell you a fedora, yes, in all manner of color, made of all manner of material. But with the normal fedora’s wide flat brim you would look like a hood from the 1930s, hardly the image you should be conveying.”

“It sounds about right to me.”

“But it has no sense of irony, Victor, and politics without irony is insufferable.”

“And politics with irony?”

“The same, alas. With headgear, Victor, you must choose carefully. Nothing says as much about a man’s life goals as a hat. A man in a beret wants to be Camus. A man in a baseball cap wants still to be a child. Neither can be taken seriously. So tell me, Victor, what is it you want to be in this world?”

The third and most difficult of Timothy’s questions. What did I want to be? Gangster, ironist, existentialist? Lawyer, bagman, thief? I was so busy playing the role that had landed on my head I had lost my own sense of direction.

“I . . . I don’t know, Timothy.”

“Isn’t it time to find out? But until you do, let’s maybe go with something that fits what you truly are now, something young and sharp, with a limp sense of humor. How about a trilby?”

“Isn’t he the senior senator from Rhode Island?”

“Learn your terms, Victor. A trilby is a fedora with a narrow brim and low crown. I happen to have one in a gorgeous rabbit-hair felt with a gray band, which would fit your face perfectly. And trust me, that is not an easy thing to find, considering your face. But you can’t just get the hat, Victor.”

“No?”

“Oh, no. Alone the hat would look like a peacock feather taped onto a chicken. Do you perhaps have a raincoat?”

“It’s not raining.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I like umbrellas.”

“We sell them, too, but this has nothing to do with the weather. Think of something tan and fitted with a belt rakishly tied in the back. With your bag and a jaunty trilby and a coat such as that, Victor, you will be a specimen to be reckoned with, I promise you that.”

“A specimen? Like a virus on a slide under a microscope?”

“It is politics, isn’t it?”

“That it is.”

“And how will you be paying?”

“American Express,” I said.

I was wearing the coat and the hat when I returned to my office to find Maud sitting in my waiting room, legs crossed, arms crossed, smoke rising like a thin blade from her cigarette. It felt, in its strange way, as if the hat and belted raincoat had somehow summoned a member of the Brotherhood. And was that an expression of amusement on her face at my new look?

My secretary, Ellie, a sign on her desk stating T
HANK
Y
OU FOR
N
OT
S
MOKING
, lifted her hands in helplessness.

“There’s no smoking in the office,” I said.

“With that getup?” said Maud.

I tossed the hat onto the top of a file cabinet, where it spun for a hopeful turn before skidding off the metal onto the floor.

When we were situated in my office proper—me behind my desk and Maud, still smoldering, in a client chair—I leaned back and waited. She was a hard mark, that Maud, her eyes squinted to hide her impatience. She was one of those women so quick and competent that she was continually furious to be required to slow down for the rest of us. Just by looking, you could see the strength of her bones, all flats and angles, a bizarre yet sturdy geometric figure. She scared me, but I kept a level expression to keep from letting on.

“What are the rules?” she said, finally.

“Are we talking chess?” I said.

“This conversation.”

“A lawyer’s office is a little like a confessional in Vegas. What you say here stays here.”

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She looked around for an ashtray that wasn’t there and then squeezed the cigarette to death with her fingertips before placing the corpse in her purse. “I need your help.”

“You need the help of a fool with a bag?”

“A little harsh, that, I admit.”

“Maybe accurate, too.”

“That goes without saying.”

“You’re forgiven.”

“I didn’t ask for forgiveness.”

“And yet here you are.”

“I need the help of a lawyer.”

“I don’t doubt it. Apparently, one of your gang is being followed by the police. I got picked up just for talking to you.”

“Next time go out the back. I need a lawyer who can help me with a delicate situation, and Stony suggested I come to you.”

“How delicate?”

“There’s a girl involved.”

“Funny how in delicate situations there always seems to be a girl involved.”

“This one needs help.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Immigration.”

“Is she legal?”

“Would there be a problem if she was legal?”

“I could give you the name of a good immigration lawyer.”

“I don’t need the name of a good immigration lawyer. I have nothing but the names of good immigration lawyers.”

“And all the good immigration lawyers have told you it’s hopeless?”

“Nothing to be done.”

“You must be pretty desperate to seek help from the likes of me. Did she do anything criminal, this girl?”

“Beyond overstaying her visa?”

“Yes, beyond overstaying her visa.”

“No.”

“And no one else in the Brotherhood can help?”

“This is federal.”

“Ah, yes, now I see. I’m not good enough for your club, but I’m plenty good enough to put myself and my contacts on the line for some girl I’ve never met.”

“She’s not just some girl.”

“They never are, Maud, are they?”

“No.”

“You stuck me with the check,” I said.

“Funny how that happened.”

“You’re not even sorry.”

“I don’t traffic in regrets.”

“You’re not even telling me how wonderful she is, how raw her deal is, all the good I’ll be doing.”

“Would any of that matter?”

“No.”

“You might have a future after all.”

I looked at her closely. Strong and wary, she’d be a bad enemy and a good friend. I had enough of the former and too few of the latter.

I took a pad and pen out of my desk and leaned forward. “Okay,” I said. “Tell me what I need to know.”

The girl’s named was Lyudmila Porishkova. She had slipped into the country on a tourist visa and, after developing a taste for filter cigarettes, American football, and hamburgers, had decided to stay. It’s not so hard to stay hidden in the shadows, and all would have been fine except someone at the job she worked, a travel agency where she helped book tourist trips to the fleshpots of Belarus, had notified Immigration. Lyudmila had just been promoted from travel-agent trainee. Nothing ruffles feathers like a promotion. The immigration cops arrested her in the midst of booking a week’s sojourn to Minsk for a bald-headed computer programmer from Cherry Hill.

I knew how it would go if I played it straight, like a lawyer. I would have called what contacts I had, made an appearance at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Callowhill, schmoozed with the agent in charge of Lyudmila’s case, shared drinks with the supervisor at his favorite bar in the Tenderloin, a joint with bored go-go dancers and pictures of busty burlesque queens in the bathroom. I might have even headed out to the ICE’s contracted detention facility in Lords Valley to talk to the detainee herself. I would have run through the motions, and dutifully kept my hours, and written my letters, and made my petitions, and appeared on Lyudmila’s behalf before the immigration judge, all the while knowing there was nothing to be done. See, Maud would never have come to me if any old lawyer could have done the job. The hearings had gone as could be expected, the deportation order had been signed, Lyudmila’s exit chute had been dusted and greased. Lyudmila was on her way out, never to be allowed to return, unless . . .

“I need something,” I said into the phone after Maud left the office.

“Victor, sweetie, that’s not how it works,” said Melanie Brooks. “I call you when I need something, not the other way around.”

“You’ve given me a job to do.”

“Yes, and you’re being paid well to do it.”

“But I need your help to finish it up.”

“Don’t be wearying, Victor.”

“I’m starting to get a whole new appreciation for Colin Frost’s pernicious habit.”

“What is it you want?”

“There’s a woman named Lyudmila Porishkova who is being held for deportation by Immigration in Philadelphia. I need her released.”

“Let me think about it. Okay, I thought about it. No.”

“Melanie.”

“The Department of Homeland Security is very touchy and very expensive.”

“That’s why I called you.”

“Did you talk to the sister?”

“Yes.”

“And you received the register?”

“I’ve begun working my way down it already. It’s going to be expensive.”

“If you need the bag replenished, we’ll set it up. Stay on the register and off the sister. Do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand.”

“Don’t be naughty, Victor. It’s for your own good. Now do you have any news for me?”

“The police are interviewing the Congressman in a few days about Shoeless Joan.”

“We know.”

“I expect he’ll lie, so it will help if I have an idea of what lies he tells them. I was picked up by the police yesterday and expect to be questioned again.”

“I’ll get the information to you as soon as I can.”

“I’ll say what I can to cover him, but I won’t cover for a killer if it comes to that.”

“Of course not.”

“And don’t think I’m not going to protect myself. I’m going to protect myself at all costs, and everyone should know that.”

“It’s assumed, Victor. I must say, it’s like you were born for this business. Anything on Bettenhauser?”

“Not yet, but I have a lead that I’ll be able to follow if you can get someone to talk to someone at ICE.”

“How are you doing, Victor? Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Entirely too much.”

“And dressing better, also, if the receipts from Boyds are any indication.”

“I’m thinking of getting some new suits, too.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. My partners continue to be impressed despite the problem with the newspaper. If this all works out, we’re thinking of promoting you from temp to full-time contract employee. That would require you to deal with some very impressive people. And impressive people don’t like unimpressive suits. But until then—”

“Be a good boy and do as I’m told.”

“You always were the cleverest one in study group. Not the smartest, mind you, but the most clever. Now what was that name again?”

“Lyudmila,” I said. “Lyudmila Porishkova.”

When I hung up, I leaned back and propped my shoes against the edge of my desk. If I’d had a cigar, I would have lit the thing and polluted the whole of my office with its choking stench of arrogance. Timothy had pointed out that I still didn’t know what I wanted to be in the world, but even so, just then I was feeling pretty good about things.

Someone was coming after me, sure, and I was being set up hard for a murder, sure, and none of that was salutary, sure, but they don’t come after the pilot fish, do they? And it wasn’t like I wasn’t playing the game like a master myself. Here I was, letting others do the hard work for me, while I sat behind the scenes like a fat duck in a still pond. I had Duddleman investigating the Jessica Barnes murder without my fingerprints on anything she did. I had Stony Mulroney working to get me in good with the local union. I had Reginald acting now as my snitch in the Devereaux manse. And now I had Melanie, my ostensible boss, working to save some poor Russian immigrant from the feds so that I would end up owed a favor by a personal friend of the mayor. It had taken me a while, but eventually, like a girl with bouncing braids maneuvering the shifting space between double-Dutch ropes, I had found my rhythm. If just then I had been gripping a lit cigar in my teeth, I would have pulled it from my mouth, blown one large circle, and then sent a series of smaller through the ever-widening hole.