Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) (6 page)

CHAPTER 11

THE CONDOM THIEF

I
have a secret to tell you,” said Congressman Peter DeMathis, the great condom thief. He spoke softly, intimately, and leaned forward, as if he were about to bare the dark root of his soul. He was a decade older than me, tall and handsome in his navy-blue suit, fit as a gymnast, the very image of exactly what I wasn’t, a serious man on the rise. “And this is my secret, as embarrassing as it might be: I still believe in America.”

There was a smatter of applause in the dreary hotel reception room from the troop of fine people who had ponied up to drink cheap zinfandel, eat greasy spinach squares, and shake hands as they got their pockets picked.

“They slop this crap right up,” I said softly to Melanie in the back of the room.

“Like pigs in a sty,” she said.

I reached toward a tray of sautéed pork bits being passed around by a waitress and grabbed two little skewers. “You want one?”

“God, no,” said Melanie. “If I ate at every one of the events I’m forced to attend, I’d end up a blimp. But help yourself.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

“I know it’s not popular or cool to believe in America,” continued the Congressman. “I know all the smart, clever folk will tell you that America’s best days are behind it and that we have no choice but to take our place behind the likes of China and India and Singapore.” A round of boos poured from the crowd, as if he were talking about the New York Mets and not a trio of sovereign allies on the other side of the globe. “But I don’t believe any of this, not a bit, because I believe not just in this country but in its people. Because I believe in you.”

“I can’t believe you work for this guy,” I said.

Melanie turned and looked at me. “I don’t work for him, Victor. Why would I ever want to work for a backbencher like DeMathis?”

“I just thought—”

“Don’t think so much, it doesn’t pay. He couldn’t afford me anyway.”

“Then why are you running his errands?”

“I’m not, you are.”

“I see so much energy just in this room, so much raw ability and desire to make a difference,” said the Congressman. “Think now about all the potential boiling across this land, from sea to shining sea.”

“Somehow this speech is making me hungry,” I said. “Is that shrimp over there?”

“Sure, we’ve taken some shots,” continued the Congressman. “But when I look at this great country of ours, and I see its people ready to saddle up and bring this nation back, I know no barrier is too high, no challenge is too daunting, nothing can get in our way—except maybe ourselves. Which is why I’m in the House of Representatives, and why I’m asking for your support as I prepare to run for reelection.”

The applause rose like a wave out of the paying crowd to wash over the Congressman and he rose on tiptoes to greet it. It was a stirring sight as I stirred a prawn in a beaker of cocktail sauce. The shrimp was as bland as the speech. I took two more.

“I’ve seen government regulations stifle innovation. I’ve seen government interference kill progress. And I’ve seen government-imposed taxes take the profit out of a small business and drive it into bankruptcy. We can outwork, outproduce, outcompete anyone in the world if can we just get the gorilla of the federal government off our backs. That was my purpose in running for Congress in the first place, that’s been my mission during my first three terms in the House, and that’s what I pledge to continue to fight for if the people of the Thirteenth Congressional District see fit to send me back to Washington for another round of battle.”

When I returned from my fishing expedition, Melanie was with a tall, serious man in a dark suit, who stood beside her with his arms crossed, staring with a mournful intensity at the man on the platform waving his hands like a carnival barker.

“Victor,” said Melanie, “I’d like you to meet Tom Mitchum, the Congressman’s chief of staff.”

Without uncrossing his arms or turning his gaze from the Congressman, he said, “So you’re the one I’ve been hearing so much about. The Congressman asked me to thank you personally for your efforts. That’s why we invited you here today.”

“She’s quite the package, that Duddleman.”

Mitchum’s head snapped my way at the name. “We’re all grateful for your tact and discretion.”

“Mostly my discretion, I assume.”

“Be advised, Victor, that Congressman DeMathis intends to change this country.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “I have enough trouble changing my sheets.”

“It won’t be easy, and he can’t do it alone. We need team players, Victor. Are you a team player?”

“There’s no
I
in team,” I said.

Mitchum nodded in satisfaction. “Good,” he said before turning back to gaze at his boss.

“Then again, there’s no
I
in oyster,” I said, “for whatever that’s worth.”

“You can trust Victor, Tom,” said Melanie. “I’ve known him since law school. He’s smart and effective, and he can keep his mouth shut. He’ll be an asset.”

“I hope so,” said Mitchum.

“There’s no
I
in law school either,” I added, “which is peculiar, because I was there with Melanie.”

Melanie elbowed me in the ribs, but Mitchum’s attention was already back on the stage. He nodded at the Congressman’s words as if listening to a favorite old pop song. I figured he had probably heard the speech enough times that he could recite it in the shower.

“You know I’ve gone up against the tax-and-spenders,” said the Congressman, “the big regulators, the bureaucrats, and the entrenched interests that have tried to stifle our voices every step of the way. It’s been a hard road, but we’ve made progress. I’ve introduced scores of bills to knock down the size of the government octopus, and with every bill I get more of my colleague’s votes.”

“Are they serving calamari?” I said, looking around, searching for a tray. “I have a sudden hankering for squid. Perhaps with a bright marinara?”

“Don’t they feed you at work?” said Melanie.

“Where some might see an example of grassroots politics at its most basic, I see dinner.”

“We’re getting closer. Success is at hand. We can do this if we work together. We can make a difference, we will make a difference, and America will rise stronger, wealthier, more influential than ever before. We owe it to ourselves, to the world, and to our children. Thank you for your support, thank you for your vote, thank you for sharing my unabashed love for this country. Thank you, and God bless the United States of America.”

As the crowd applauded and the Congressman stepped down from the stage to be dramatically engulfed by the people, at least the people willing to put up a quick five hundred smackers, Mitchum turned to us once again.

“Why don’t you both come up to the suite after the event. Generally, we only invite our biggest contributors, but the Congressman would like to speak to you personally, Victor.”

“Will there be dessert?”

Mitchum tilted his head quizzically.

“Something sweet yet tart would nicely set off the shrimp.”

“Thank you, Tom,” said Melanie. “Unfortunately, I have an event across town, but Victor will be there. He so looks forward to meeting the Congressman.”

“I do?”

“He does,” said Melanie.

“Splendid,” said Mitchum. “I’ll tell him to expect you, Victor.”

“You’re not coming?” I said after Mitchum had left us to grab DeMathis’s arm.

“An appearance is all they really want from me,” said Melanie. “Just enough to show I care, not enough for anyone to wonder why I’m hanging around. You’ll do fine on your own.”

“I don’t think Mitchum likes me.”

“Tom doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“Boy, did he ever pick the wrong career.”

“Politics can be amusing in an absurdist way, true. But don’t ever forget, Victor, that no matter how ludicrous the whole thing seems from afar, these people take themselves quite seriously. It helps if they think that you take them seriously, too. And it’s safer, to boot. Now wipe the grease from your mouth and grab a stiff drink; you’re about to meet the Congressman.”

“I’m all atwitter.”

“We want him reelected. Do what you can to make that happen, dearheart. But don’t ever forget who you work for.”

“And who’s that, Melanie?”

She smiled like a cat. “Enjoy yourself, Victor, just not too much.”

CHAPTER 12

THE STARE

I
was in a fine hotel suite, drinking a sherry way too good for me, chatting as an equal with a clot of the upper crust and, remarkably, I felt not one whit out of place. It was as if these were my people, with their dandruff, their locked-jaw self-satisfactions, their dry-to-the-point-of-drought senses of humor. Hadn’t I struggled all my life to be in just such a room, to drink just such a wine, to chat uncomfortably about nothing with just these good and ripely bejeweled folk, to laugh at exactly that bad joke and nod at that not-so-sly insinuation? And wasn’t my obsession to join their ranks what created their ranks in the first place? In the midst of it all, as one dowager was complaining about the type of people at Mount Desert Island these days, I had the urge to spread my arms wide and shout out, “Lucy, I’m home!”

“It’s about time we had someone to stand up and tell the truth,” said one desiccated old woman, her throat a chicken’s neck strangling in pearls. She was bent like a wire hanger at the waist, but her hair was dark brown without a speck of gray and she smiled with a strange sexual certainty, her bright dentures stained red with lipstick. “That’s why we love Pete so much—he’s our truth teller.”

“Hear, hear,” I said. “And it helps that he’s not too bad-looking either.”

“I should say not,” said the woman. Her lips twitched as if her medicine had just kicked in. “He is a magnificent animal.”

“And it’s not just his position on taxes that makes him such an attractive politician, yes,” said the hunched, fleshy-faced man with shiny skin and beady eyes. His voice was slow, his tan was deep, he wore a red plaid jacket, and his shirt collar was open to reveal a thick golden chain.

“What is his position on taxes?” I said.

“Against,” said the man.

“Hear, hear,” I said again.

“But it’s also that the Congressman recognizes that government regulations are strangling us all.”

“You’re right, Norton,” said the woman. “You’re so right.”

“Why, in our bank,” said a rotund man in a three-piece suit, his face so soft and round he resembled a constipated baby, “we have divisions of clerks toiling all day just to keep us from running afoul of their silly regulations.”

“It’s a crime,” I said.

“We know what we’re doing,” said the beady-eyed man. “They just need to leave us alone and let us do it. Unleash us all and hear us roar.”

“Growl,” I said.

The woman with the pearls laughed and put her hand on my forearm. “Don’t be naughty,” she said with her naughtiest smile. “I’m Connie.”

“Victor.”

“Do you dance, Victor?”

“Not very well.”

“Well, who cares about that?”

And here is the mystery of the whole event. I agreed with each and every one of them about everything, and not just out of my normal sycophantic politeness to the wildly wealthy, but wholeheartedly and emphatically. When they complained about their taxes, in my heart I complained too, even though I paid less in taxes than Connie paid for pedicures. When they mocked those on the public dole, I too mocked away, even though the bulk of my income last year was paid by the state for my court-appointed cases. I might not be the one percent (well, the upper one percent) but, by God, I aspired, and in that room, among those people, I let my deepest aspirations guide me.

“Mr. Carl, what a pleasant surprise,” came a soft voice from behind. When I turned and saw her, my heart lurched. It was the thin wide-eyed woman from the courtroom at Colin’s hearing, pale and serene, wearing a soft blue dress that fell from her narrow shoulders and over her breasts like a gentle waterfall.

“A last-minute invite,” I said.

“Do you really like sherry?”

“Who doesn’t adore a good sherry?”

“Come along and I’ll get you a real drink,” she said, softly placing her hand on my forearm.

I excused myself from my new best friends with some false intimacy, a mild quip, and an embarrassing bark of a laugh, before I let the woman lead me to the little bar in the corner, where she ordered me up something with vodka.

“I was in the courtroom for Colin Frost’s hearing,” she said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you how impressive you were.”

“Sometimes the law works as it’s supposed to.”

“But sometimes it’s the lawyer, and I think that was one of those times. You were wonderful. I told my brother all about it.”

“Your brother?”

“Pete. The Congressman. I’m Ossana DeMathis.”

“The Congressman’s sister,” I said, nodding, like it all made sense. “I thought you were somehow related to Colin.”

“He’s just a friend. He’s doing well in rehab, actually, if you’re interested. I don’t have much experience in these things. Does it ever work? I mean really, or is an addict always an addict?”

“An addict is always an addict, but rehab can get him off the drugs and save his life. I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen it fail. It usually depends on what the patient has waiting for him on the outside.”

“Oh,” she said flatly, as if she meant
Poor Colin.

Oh,
I thought with a pleasing sense of possibility.
Poor Colin.

She took a sip of her drink and looked around. “Don’t you just hate these things?”

“Free food, free drink, all these swell people?”

She laughed, which was both gratifying and strange, because I wasn’t trying to be funny.

“You’re not giving my brother gobs of money like the rest of them, are you?”

“I make it a point never to give money to politicians.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“They’ll just spend it to buy my vote. I figure it pays to avoid the middleman.”

“In a room like this, keep such impeccable logic to yourself. You can’t imagine the carnage if that idea spread. See that man over there in the terrible plaid jacket? Norton Grosset. He made his money in drugs, or finance, or something.”

“Does it matter?”

“Never. What matters is how much he has. It is astounding.”

The hunched old man seemed to morph in front of my eyes; he grew taller, stronger, smarter, younger, his hair grew thicker, his soul washed clean. Astounding indeed.

“Norton is one of my brother’s biggest supporters. He alone pays for every other commercial we put on the air. Apparently, he owns everything.”

“Including your brother?”

“Don’t be impertinent. My brother can’t be bought.” She took a sip of her drink. “Only rented. So if you’re not here to throw your money into the pit, why the appearance?”

“Apparently, your brother wants to meet me.”

“Yes, I would think so. Especially with Colin out of commission. Colin was so useful. Oh, speak of the devil.” She waved her drink to the side. “And Mrs. Devil.”

I turned suddenly and there he was, Congressman DeMathis and a stately woman, slightly older than he, the two glad-handing their way toward us.

“He must have been a precocious child,” I said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I need a drink,” said Mrs. DeMathis, reaching us before her husband. She was a pretty yet formidable woman, with clenched teeth and upswept hair. On her black dress she had clasped a brooch of a lizard with ruby eyes. “And who is this, Ossana, one of your pets?”

“It’s Victor Carl,” said Ossana. “The lawyer who represented Colin.”

“Oh, Victor, of course. Yes, we heard all about the court case. Good work, that. Thank you for coming. And you’ve already been snatched up by Ossana, so you’re in sure hands. Splendid.”

“Can I order you something?” I said.

“Just a touch of bourbon, dear. Neat. Maybe more than a touch.”

“The more, the merrier.”

When the drink was in hand, she lifted it lightly. “To a new friend of Ossana’s,” said Mrs. DeMathis. “She has so few. And a clean-shaven one to boot, how refreshing. One gets so bored with the literal. Oh, Pete dear,” said Mrs. DeMathis as the Congressman approached. “Do you know the lawyer Victor Carl, the one who sprung Colin? Is that the correct word, Mr. Carl? I do like to get my jargon right.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“I know Victor by reputation only,” said Congressman DeMathis, advancing energetically and grabbing my hand. “Thank you for coming. This is a pleasure.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” said the Congressman, stepping ever forward, so close I had to resist the urge to step back. He tilted his head so that he was staring right into my eyes. “We have much to talk about.”

“Do we?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, staring all the while.

I need to stop here and discuss the political stare, employed in various levels of success by politicians of every rank. There must be a course they take. Maybe taught by Charles Manson.

Imagine a drunk at a bar, spying a strange woman across the way who inflames his sodden soul. Imagine he gazes unblinking at her as he pounds his bourbon and builds within his derangement a castle of desire. Within this castle is the perfected life, shared with this strange woman at the bar. She is no longer flesh and blood, she is a symbol of everything he ever wanted and never could have. After one drink too many, with a courage born of his alcohol and her objectification, he rises from his stool and staggers to the woman, bores in closely, and stares. His foul breath washes over her, he’s so close she recoils, her discomfort is unmistakable. And all the while he stares. And stares. As if in the very act of staring he can capture her whole.

This is the stare that comes closest to the political stare. At a fund-raising event, or a rally, or just at the local soft-serve shop, the politician will swoop in close and stare so intently your breath is snatched away. The purpose of the stare is to make you believe, if only for a moment, that there is nothing more important in the world to this politician than you. It is not true—other than your vote or your money, the politician doesn’t give a damn—but its falsity makes it all the more potent. You can feel within its intensity the desire for it to be true, the abject need to grab hold of you and make you believe the lie, the sweaty desperation of it.

If you’ve never been pinned by the intensity of a politician’s stare, like a butterfly pinned to a lepidopterist’s display, consider yourself lucky. In the depths of campaign season, in the middle of the night, all across the land, citizens rise from their dreams with shouts of horror. As their significant others shake them out of their nightmares, all these poor souls are able to say, amidst gasping breaths, is, “The stare, my God, the stare.”

“I want you to know I’m not proud of myself, Victor,” said Congressman DeMathis. “My marriage these last few years has devolved into something I could never have imagined.”

The fund-raising gathering had broken up and the two of us had repaired to a small office in the suite. I expected cigars and more of the sherry, but all I got was another dose of the stare. Better than some doses I have contracted in the past, but not by much.

“My wife and I are little more than a convenience to each other now. That was not what I ever wanted, but circumstances and my position give us little choice but to maintain the facade. And so I have gone outside my marriage to satisfy my natural masculine needs.”

“I suppose the strip joints were all closed,” I said. I was sitting as far back in my chair as I could manage. He was sitting in a chair set up just across from me, leaning forward, a hand uncomfortably set on my knee. “Congressman, you don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“But I feel as if I do.”

“Truth is, and you shouldn’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t give a crap.”

He pulled back a bit, startled, and then continued as if I couldn’t be serious. “I just want you to understand how I became involved with Ms. Duddleman.”

“I understand as much as I need to understand. I’m sure it was slowly at first and then in a rush.”

“She is quite stunning, isn’t she?”

“She’s that, all right.”

“Okay, you don’t want to talk about it, fair enough. But I do want to thank you for the way you handled her. I was beside myself when she called that night, terrified that she would do something crazy.”

“You know her better than I do.”

“And with Colin in rehab, I was at a loss. That’s why I phoned Melanie. Now, I don’t know what you did or what you said, but Amanda called me after your visit and apologized and promised never to behave like that again. And more importantly, she had a serenity in her voice that was startling. Can I ask you how you calmed her so?”

“You do know she went to Barnard, don’t you?”

“She’s made that clear.”

“Just take it from there, and buy your own condoms.” I slapped the chair, stood, and prepared to flee from his stare. I could feel it in my eyeballs like an itch. “I was glad to help.”

“I must say, Victor, it is rare to find such professionalism and competence.”

“You must spend too much time on Capitol Hill. Any two-bit attorney in Philadelphia could have done just as well. But don’t hesitate to call me again if you need someone two-bit—I could use the work.”

“There’s a party for the governor coming up, a black-tie ball at the Bellevue. I’d like you to come. As my guest. A little thank-you. Everyone will be there.”