Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (22 page)

CHAPTER 37

OBLIGATORY DINER VISIT

T
he man in the booth fed like a lion devouring a hyena, with great resolve and entirely too much satisfaction. Watching him eat from across the length of the old Oak Lane Diner on Broad Street, with its stainless-steel walls and bow-tied counterman, it almost seemed he was in a good mood, which confused me; for a moment I wondered if I was staring at the wrong man. Then he raised his gaze from the pile on the plate before him, saw me standing by the pies, and scowled like he had found a cockroach in his food.

I didn’t wait for an invitation before crossing the floor, placing my bag on the bench seat across from him, and scooting in beside it. “Thanks for waving me over,” I said.

“The first meal sets the tone for the entire day,” said Detective McDeiss. “That’s why I prefer to eat alone.”

“You want to stay undisturbed, don’t follow habits so regular that every cop in the division knows where you’ll be. I have a gift for you.”

“I am a public servant. I can’t accept your gifts.”

“You’ll accept this,” I said, taking out an envelope and passing it across the table. He stared at it for a long time before carving out a piece of ham steak, sticking it in the yolk of his egg, and then dipping it in his grits. He held the concoction in front of him and cocked an eyebrow.

“Money?” he said. “To buy your way out of a murder rap?”

“No.”

“Too bad.” He put the ham, yolk, and grits into his mouth, letting his eyes flutter for just a moment as he chewed and swallowed. “I would have loved busting your ass for attempted bribery.”

“It’s a sample of hair to be matched up with that blood smear I gave you in the club, the one Jessica Barnes gave to me.”

“Whose hair?”

“The Congressman’s sister’s.”

“And why do I want to match it up?”

“Because it’s as close as I’m going to get to a sample of the Congressman’s DNA. Your forensics people should be able to determine if there’s a link.”

“And if there is, what then?”

“Then I might be able to tell you what this all is about.”

“Take a stab at it now. We don’t even know who the smear is from. It could be the blood of a goat.”

“Right now it’s all just supposition and surmise. Amanda might have found the connection, but they killed her before she could tell me.”

“They. The same ‘they’ you told me about at the club.”

“That’s right.”

“You calmed down any?”

“No.”

“It was a thing to see, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“The way you were acting, red-faced and crazy, Armbruster thought you had gone off the deep end.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you didn’t have a deep end, that you were all shallows.”

“You got that right.”

“Armbruster came up with the idea that it was guilt that was getting to you, like you were hearing heartbeats beneath the floorboards.”

“I don’t think Armbruster likes me.”

“He doesn’t. But when I reminded him that you were a lawyer, that put the end to any idea of you actually being capable of feeling guilt.” He stared at me for a moment before buttering his toast and smearing a dollop of grape jam atop the butter. “Still, Armbruster couldn’t help but wonder why you were so damn upset.”

“She was a good kid with a future.”

“They’re all good kids and they all have futures.”

There was something gratifyingly bitter about his words, like it was getting to him, the whole damn job. And for a moment we both remembered the way she’d looked, Amanda Duddleman, with her throat slashed and her head cocked weirdly and her sweater pulled up into the wound to stanch the blood so that it didn’t pour out copiously enough to grab someone’s immediate attention. The second I saw that shoeless leg, I knew that she was dead, but still the grotesque sight of her was like a kick in the gut, the kind that keeps kicking.

McDeiss took a bite of his purpled toast, swallowed it down with the rest of his coffee, signaled to the waitress for another cup. He sliced through the rest of the ham as he waited for the waitress to come over with a pot.

“Thanks, Shirley.”

“Your friend want anything?”

“He’s not a friend,” said McDeiss, “and he has to be on his way.”

“Too bad.”

“Sure is.”

When she had moved on to the next table, he started dumping in the sugar and the cream.

“I sent Armbruster down to check out the rehab facility you told us about,” he said. “They assured him that Colin Frost was on location the night of the murder, that he hasn’t left the facility since he was brought in three weeks ago. That’s their firm policy for the first month. No exceptions, and their security is very tight. He would have had to sign himself out to leave and he didn’t.”

“They’re wrong.”

“Someone’s wrong. And Miss Duddleman’s editor had no notes on her research. There was nothing on her person or at her house regarding anything of great interest she might have found.”

“They must have taken her notebook after they killed her.”

“After Colin Frost, escaped from his rehab, killed her.”

“That’s right. You saw the text.”

“Yeah, I saw the text.”

He shoveled a few more forkfuls of his breakfast into his maw while staring out at me from beneath his brow, mopped his plate with another piece of toast, washed everything down with the coffee.

“Look, Carl, I don’t blame you for kicking at the wall when you saw her, but you can’t be accusing everyone and his brother willy-nilly and expect to get anywhere. You threw nine suspects under the bus within the first two minutes of our arrival last night. The Congressman, his sister, his chief of staff, the widow Devereaux and her in-house lawyer, an entire law firm, the law firm’s secret client, a drug addict, the drug addict’s pal.”

“Give me time and I’ll give you ten more.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. We talked to your congressman yesterday morning. He says he didn’t do it. He says he was there, and that’s been verified, but he says he left before it happened.”

“Do you believe him?”

“We don’t disbelieve him at the moment. And he seems cooperative enough. Why don’t you emulate him, give us everything you know, and stay the hell out of it while we do what we need to do?”

“From what I can tell, all you’re doing is collecting corpses minus their shoes.”

He stared at me a bit more and then pushed his plate away. “You’re killing my appetite.”

I looked down; the plate was as clean as if polished.

“How did your prints get on that hammer again?” he said.

“I told you the story. After that break-in, I found it in my apartment. Colin must have planted it when he was searching for Jessica Barnes’s proof. But before he planted it, and after he knocked me out, he must have put my prints on it.”

“Yes, that is what you told us.”

“And your tests will show that the blood wasn’t wet when my prints were made. I gave the hammer to Amanda to give to you so you would have the hammer for your tests without linking it to me.”

“Quite a story.”

“You don’t really think I—”

“I don’t think; I follow the evidence.”

“I liked her and I tried to help her. I liked Jessica Barnes and I tried to help her, too.”

“Remind me never to ask for your assistance.” He looked at me, a spark of compassion in his eyes. “Maybe you ought to have some coffee. And a little something sweet. Their pies are mighty fine.”

“I used to think criminal law was rough. I used to think dealing with mobsters and hit men and felons of the worst stripe had prepared me for whatever crowd I fell into. That politics would be a piece of layer cake in comparison. How naive could I be? What a stinking craphole. Something needs to be done about these people.”

“And you’re the one to do it?”

“I’m the man with the bag. I know their secrets.” I stood from the table, grabbed hold of my attaché. “Don’t worry your little self about it, Detective. It’s only two murders. Nothing to sweat about in the great scheme of things. But while you’re sitting on your ass enjoying your morning coffee, I’ll be out on the streets, following in the footsteps of a ghost.”

CHAPTER 38

DEAD PRESIDENT

W
hat the hell do you want?” came a voice from inside the house.

We were standing at the still-closed front door of a stone twin on Queen Street in Lancaster, about an hour and a half west of Philadelphia. You know you’re getting close when you pass the cows and the silos, the square Amish buggies with the red triangles affixed to their bumpers, the National Christmas Center with its walk-through Nativity scene. You know you’re there when you pass the Dutch Wonderland amusement park, and the windmill where they sell shoofly pie. Now we were in a neighborhood of narrow alleyways and heaving cement and houses cracked by age. I assumed there was a genteel part of Lancaster somewhere, but this certainly wasn’t it. On the other side of the street from the small twin was the Woodward Hill Cemetery, overrun, creepy, with a dead president interred.

“Mrs. Gaughan?” I said.

“Who wants her?”

“We’re here to tell her we’re sorry for her loss.”

“You just did, now go away.”

“And we have some questions.”

“She isn’t talking to any more reporters.”

“We’re not reporters,” I said.

“Then why the hell would I talk to you?”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “And I’m here to help.”

It’s the hoariest line in the book, usually the start of a bad joke involving a judge, a shark, and two dancing girls, but every now and then it opens a door. Just a crack, maybe, but enough for an overweight bagman with a black suit and matching fedora to stick a shoe in the gap to keep it from closing.

“A lawyer, huh?” said the woman, whose one bloodshot eye appeared in the crack. With a surfeit of suspicion she eyed Stony, with his black stomper wedged in her door, and then me. “You’re not the first to come around looking for a payday. Do I know you? I think I know you.”

“You don’t know me,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve seen your picture somewhere,” she said, and I didn’t doubt it.

Stony took off his hat and swept it in front of him with a low bow. “May we come in, Mrs. Gaughan? I think you’ll be wanting to talk to us.”

“Are you a lawyer, too?”

“Heavens, no, dearie. I’m a man of principle.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pint. “And a man with a bottle, too.”

“Is that all you’ve got?”

“It’s still early.”

“What are we drinking to?” she said.

“Your daughter,” I said.

“Oh Christ,” she said, opening the door wide. “In that case don’t be skimpy with the pour.”

Mrs. Gaughan had been pretty once, the way a Roman ruin had been pretty once, but, like the Roman Empire itself, the structures of her face had now collapsed, leaving it pulpy and red. She was bundled like a sausage in her faded housecoat, and she wore a pair of fuzzy slippers with open fronts to ease her blue, swollen toes.

She told us the story as we sat in her disheveled kitchen, three glasses, one hat, and an ashtray on the tabletop. They were estranged, this mother and her only child. Jessica was ungrateful, headstrong, too independent for her own good. In the last few years, after she married that Barnes, who couldn’t keep a job, they barely spoke. And when Jessica discovered she couldn’t have a baby, that made it even worse. Like Jessica was jealous of her mother, because the mother had been able to do the one great thing that Jessica never could. Sometimes Jessica needed reminding who was who, and Mrs. Gaughan was just the one to do the reminding.

In the time it took her to tell us this, she smoked four cigarettes and finished off the bottle. She drank her liquor without ice and without water; she liked her alcohol neater than her life. And through all the talk, she ignored me completely. But she liked Stony, she understood Stony, they were having a party together, her and Stony, as she told us how miserable a daughter Jessica had been. That was the thing about Stony, he could draw it out of anyone, he just had that ability. It was one of the reasons I had brought him along.

“And so you’ve got no grandchild to keep you company in your old age,” said Stony.

“Good thing, too,” said Mrs. Gaughan, glancing my way. “It’s not like I was going to raise it, with her gone and her husband as worthless as tits on a nun. Been there, done that, and it was no picnic, believe me. Maybe we ought to get another bottle, Stony, make a day of it.”

“We get another bottle,” said Stony, “we’ll be making a night of it.”

“If you insist.”

“Oh, you sly fox, Melinda,” said Stony.

“So what do you think happened to your daughter, Mrs. Gaughan?” I said.

“What do you mean what happened? Someone killed her. That’s why you’re here, right?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“You ask me, it was that lawyer down in Philadelphia that did it. The one she was down there meeting. That ugly one in the tuxedo.”

“Do you know why she was meeting him?”

“For something bad,” she said. “For something awful, and she a married woman. But it had to be something like that if he killed her over it.”

“I don’t think he did it,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m that lawyer.”

“You?” She lowered her chin, staring up at me through iced eyes. “I knew I recognized you. I thought you were here to sue somebody. I thought that’s why you were getting me liquored up, so I’d sign your fee contract.”

“Would it have worked?”

“If Stony here bought another bottle, maybe. Though I signed two already, just to cover my bases.”

“And who would you sue if you had the chance?”

“The one who killed my daughter.”

“And you think that’s me.”

“The papers do.”

“And the papers are never wrong.”

“You came all this way to tell me you didn’t do it?”

“No, ma’am, I came all this way to show you a photograph.”

“Dr. Patusan is seeing patients all day,” said the office receptionist, heavy and pretty with limp brown hair. She sported a lovely smile behind her desk as she blew us off. “He won’t have time to talk to a lawyer.”

“It won’t take long,” said Stony. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Nadine,” she said.

“Ah, Nadine. What a pretty name. Reminds me of a song I used to know. I’m Stony and this here is Victor. Now that we’re all on a first-name basis, can’t you perhaps squeeze us in for just a little meet-and-greet?”

“What is this about?”

“We have some questions about treatments for a childhood condition, something I believe is called Wilson’s disease. We understand that Dr. Patusan is the local expert.”

“We do have some patients, yes.” She looked through her book. “The doctor’s schedule is very tight and there are patients waiting, as you can see. I could give you fifteen minutes a week from Wednesday.”

“A week from Wednesday?”

“Or a week from Friday, if that works better. Does that work better, Stony?”

“Why don’t you pretend we’re drug salesmen with a bagful of gifts,” he said. “Then he’d see us with alacrity for sure.”

“You’re not pretty enough to be drug salesmen,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, now, Nadine, there you go, cutting us to the quick.”

I looked around the waiting room as Stony tried his sweet talk on Nadine. Scattered about were kids and their mothers on colorful chairs, side tables piled with picture books, a little play area with plastic toys and a plastic playhouse, a bulletin board full of photographs of smiling kids. It hadn’t taken long for me to diagnose the daughter Jessica Barnes had told me about, with the excess of copper in her blood; the web will diagnose anything for you, even a hangnail. And it hadn’t taken much longer to find those few doctors in Lancaster who routinely treated Wilson’s disease. Dr. Patusan was the closest thing to Dr. Patticake. Duddleman had surely found it as easily as I had.

“We have questions about one of his patients,” I said. “We won’t be long.”

“Are you a parent of the patient?” she said.

“Heavens, no,” said Stony. “Victor and I are both still looking.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, with another sweet smile aimed at Stony. “But then, of course, Dr. Patusan would not be permitted to talk to you at all. You see, the HIPAA privacy rules are very strict. None of us can say anything about a patient to anyone who is not a parent or a guardian. There are no exceptions.”

“No exceptions?”

“None. And the penalties are quite severe.”

“I’d like to show you a photograph,” I said. I put the picture I had shown Mrs. Gaughan on Nadine’s desk. “This is a friend of mine and I wonder if she was in this office a few days ago looking for Dr. Patusan.”

The receptionist looked at the picture just long enough to recognize it before pushing it away. “Yes,” she said, her smile not as bright, “she was here.”

“And did she get a chance to talk to Dr. Patusan?”

“He wasn’t in that day. He was at a conference.”

“I see. This woman, her name was Amanda Duddleman.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“She was murdered a few nights ago.”

The receptionist’s face registered a good amount of shock, which I was expecting, and then her gaze lifted just a moment to a spot over my shoulder, and then she caught me catching her and she stared at me for a good long moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Yes, it is a tragedy,” said Stony. “She was a fine girl, and all we’re trying to do is trace her steps a bit. Now you say she was here when the doctor was out. Did she come back?”

“No,” said the receptionist.

“How long did she stay?”

“Not long.”

“And what exactly was she asking for?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

As they spoke, I turned around to see what Nadine had looked at as soon as she learned that Duddleman had been murdered. The bulletin board, plastered full of photos. I walked up to it and gave it a good close look. All the smiles, all the bright dresses and baggy baseball uniforms, all the fabulous children with their brilliant futures. But it wasn’t the photographs, so many that each overlapped another in order to fit on the board, that most intrigued me. It was the one empty spot where the cork showed through. I stood at the board and gently pressed my fingers over the spot and waited as Stony and Nadine continued their chatter. I didn’t have to wait long.

Nadine came up beside me, pulled a photograph from the top of the board, placed it over the gap, pinned it to the cork.

“We don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” I said softly enough so that no one else could hear.

“And that’s why you’re here?” said Nadine just as softly. “Not to get anyone in trouble?”

“She was a sweet girl, Amanda. Like you. She came in here, you gave her a photograph, she ended up dead that night, and the photograph wasn’t on her anymore. They killed her for it.”

“My God.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I said. “And I won’t get you involved with the police, I promise.”

“The police?”

“Yes, of course. There’s a murder investigation.”

“I could lose my job.”

“I understand,” I said.

“My family depends on this job.”

“I understand, I do. All I need is for you to do me a favor.”

I have always found cemeteries comforting. No matter the
Sturm und Drang
we’re forced to suffer in our lives, we all end up in the same peaceful place, with fields of grass and tottering stone markers that detail the bare bones of our existences. We’re born, we die, maybe we procreate, and there it is; the rest, as we say in the law, is dicta. And yet, there are always lessons to be learned in a cemetery.

Just then I was sitting in a car, inside the cemetery gates, not far from the august grave of James Buchanan, another son of Pennsylvania who became enmeshed in the brutal game of politics. I couldn’t help but ruminate on how the arc of Buchanan’s career seemed so closely to mirror mine. An unpromising start, a disappointing romantic life punctuated by a failed engagement, and then a swift, seemingly inexorable ascension to sparkling heights followed by an ugly, precipitous fall. Of course, James Buchanan’s height was the presidency of the United States of America and mine was the role of bagman for a second-rate congressman, and so, yes, there was that difference there, I admit. And Buchanan was supposedly gay, and he liked to tend to the White House tulips, and he presided over the disintegration of the Union, so maybe we weren’t as close as I imagined, though I do like tulips. But still, I felt a kinship. Buchanan is generally considered one of the worst presidents in the history of the Republic, and if there is one thing I can always relate to, it is failure.