Bagmen (A Victor Carl Novel) Read Online Free Page B

long shot.”
    “How did you know to call me?”
    McDeiss gave me the up-and-down, like he was examining a dead shark hanging on a fishing pier. “Look at you, frilled up like a little girl’s doll. You best take care of yourself, Carl. You’re swimming with the nasty now.”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    “Not against them, you can’t. You’re out of your league.”
    “You don’t know my league, Detective.”
    “It’s a shame about the shoes.”
    “Hers?” I said, glancing at the tarp.
    “Yours.”
    I looked down. My shiny tuxedo slippers were smeared with filth, the bows slopped with vomit and blood. “They’ll clean up.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    He turned away dismissively, like only a cop can, and headed back to his corpse.
    I stood there for a moment, thinking about the sense I’d had earlier that night of having found my place in the world. I thought about the dead woman whom I had tried to help, and the now-missing money I had tried to give her. And I thought about what I was going to do about it all.
    Sometimes a man’s got to take a stand. Sometimes a man has to yank away the curtain of deceit and reveal the truth of things. Sometimes a man needs to step out of his own little prison of greed and desire and do what he knows to be right. And that’s when I decided, right then and there, what to do about the murder of Jessica Barnes.
    Nothing. I was going to do nothing.
    I wasn’t some savior out to salve some deep public wound, I wasn’t some knight errant out to right some grievous wrong. I was in a different game now, the political game, in which every sap was out for himself. See what I mean when I said politics was right up my stinking alley? I couldn’t have been more of a natural if my last name had been Kennedy or Bush.
    Warmed by my decision to let the investigation into the murder of Jessica Barnes flow on without my involvement or interference, I flipped up the collar of my jacket, jammed my hands deep into its pockets, and headed out of the alley. I was just ducking beneath the tape, trying hard to appear as incognito as the tuxedo allowed, when a flash of something hit my face.
    “Victor Carl, what a pleasant surprise.”
    Through the miasma of my light-burned vision, I searched for the owner of this hiss of a voice, and felt my stomach plummet even further when I found it. Short and pug-like, with bad hair, bad teeth, and rubbery brown orthopedic shoes, he was as unimpressive a specimen as could be found outside of a microscopic slide.
    “What are you doing here, Sloane?” I said to the political reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News . “This isn’t your usual beat.”
    “It surely wasn’t until you showed up. Smile.” He raised his camera. Flash flash.
    “Take another picture and you’ll be digging that camera out of your dentures.”
    “When I heard the call on my radio, I was just sitting at home, twiddling my thumbs.”
    “Twiddling something.”
    “I thought I ought to check it out, for the good of the public. They do have the right to know. And then, imagine my delight when you showed up. Hard work is so rarely rewarded. Who’s dead?”
    “No one you need worry about.”
    “I’m not worried, just curious.”
    “About what?”
    “About why the police called Congressman DeMathis’s bagman to a murder scene.”
    “He’s here? Where?”
    “Don’t get cute, Carl, you don’t have the face for it. What’s the connection between DeMathis and the victim?”
    I took a step forward and wagged a finger. “Careful what you print, Sloane, or we’ll sue you and your paper both into a barrel.”
    “I’m a reporter for a print newspaper; what could you do to us that the iPad hasn’t already done?”
    “Then I’ll cut off your dick, and stick it up your ass.”
    “Can I quote you on that?”
    “Just get it right.”
    “Oh, Victor, I always strive to get it right.”
    “Then tell it true. I’m nobody’s bagman.”
    “You’re