Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal

by Michael Van Rooy

  So I left. At the bar the bartender looked at the slip and said, “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  She looked at it some more and then nodded to herself. “We’ll have to pay you by cheque.”

  She looked scared, like I was going to beat on her over getting paid by cheque. Eventually a manager came and gave me a cheque for $479 and I walked a long way to the McPhillips Street Casino, where I played around with the slots and the table games and washed another $1,133.25 by 2:00.

  When I reached home, Claire had all the children sitting on the floor cross-legged with their hands on their knees, palms upraised.

  “Ohhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm.”

  They all exhaled in unison and it was memorably scary.

  “Oh Mani Padme Hum.”

  The ones who could barely speak squeaked it out, or something vaguely similar. Claire opened an eye and gestured with her head that I should go to the kitchen, where she joined me.

  “That’s creepy.”

  She kissed me. “A little. How goes?”

  “Another $1,600 clean and clear. I have to go down and work on Smiley’s licence and certificate. Is there anything I need to do?”

  “Nope, I’m having a fine time here with the rug rats. Wanna go out tonight?”

  I paused and thought about it and realized that it would be the first time in… a long time. “I’d love to … what about Fred?”

  “Let him find his own date.”

  “I mean a babysitter. Smiley?”

  “No.” Her eyes were dead. “No. Anyone else you can think of?”

  “Sure. Call Martinez-the-cop, she owes you.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Where is Smiley?”

  “Out.” Her dead eyes didn’t invite comment.

  “’Kay, it’s a date. We can wash some more cash.”

  She rolled her eyes and smacked me in the arm. “My husband, last of the romantics, doubles love and business and wonders why I’m thinking of taking lovers. And that’s two for flinching.”

  “Are you?”

  “What?”

  “Thinking of taking lovers.”

  “Nope. Not thinking about it at all.”

  That didn’t sound right but I went back out to try to make Smiley a real, live human citizen. I thought about bringing him with me and letting him help, but I knew from past experience that he wasn’t good wheedling and conning. He was more of a gun-in-your-face kind of guy.

  Which was just fine because I found myself really enjoying the whole process.

  At an Internet café on Osborne Street I rented access and while I waited in line I thought my way through the problem. To be real in the Great White North you needed three pieces of ID, the holy trinity: Driver’s Licence, Social Insurance Number, and a Birth Certificate. Those three let you build everything, bank records, credit rate, and anything else. I had done all that before for various other people for sums of money, and for myself in order to avoid prosecution.

  So I needed to find him those three. But faster than that I should find him something he could show around town as soon as possible. Something other than the prison ID card he had. For that there were a number of possibilities. One was a cheque-cashing card at one of the cheque-cashing stores that charged ridiculous rates of interest. Another was a liquor ID card, one that indicated the bearer was old enough to buy booze, go into bars and such.

  Out of the two the liquor card would be better; it was government approved; so I dialled up the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission on the Internet and found that the ID was pretty well protected. To receive one required three pieces of ID, tough ones, too, like a passport and birth certificate and health card. On the plus side the cost was a very reasonable seventeen dollars. However, the needed information put that card out of easy reach.

  Then I checked the website of one of the bigger cheque-cashing companies. It had thirteen locations in the city, or was it fourteen? Anyhow, they had a lot of stores. Their ID card would cost $1.99, but I’d have to show a photo ID—well, Smiley would have to show a photo ID. I wondered what they’d say when he showed them the prison ID?

  I noted the number and address on a scrap of paper. With that basic info in hand he would have the start of a paper ID. Next was the social insurance number, the laws were tight on that in the post-9-11 world.

  Thinking about that made me pause. Something Claire had told me in 2001 still resonated in my head. I was on my way into prison for something I’d done to someone and we’d been on the phone to each other when the planes had smashed into skyscrapers and pentagons and the Pennsylvania countryside. And Claire had said that she could no longer look into the skies because “… they had turned planes into knives.”

  I’ll never forget that.

  So nineteen Saudi Arabians used box cutters to steal four planes and killed thousands of people in three states, and the world shuddered.

  And a few hundred miles to the north and a few thousand to the west, what happened? I ended up making fake ID at the time, as fast as I could, because I was on my way into prison at the time and needed to pay off as many debts as I could. So the governments of the world tightened up the laws and rules and regulations. And that meant that the value of what I was producing went through the roof and my profit increased.

  Back to SIN’s. Smiley would need an original of his birth certificate, I wondered briefly if he had one. Once he had the original certificate and ten dollars he could get his very own SIN after filling out a form or two. Which meant I needed to find him a birth certificate. I thought he had been born in Vancouver, which meant I had to deal with the Victoria-based BC Bureau of Vital Statistics. On the way into the site I was sidelined by a note that stating over 1000 birth, death, and marriage certificates had been stolen. Made me wonder who had gotten greedy. Also made me wonder how many imaginary people would be created from that one windfall.

  Back at the site I double-checked that the cost was $27 with the required information, like where Smiley had been born, who his parents were, and other details. Then I went back and looked up the Manitoba Health system; that card would be useful for Smiley too. In order to have that he’d have to have lived in the province for three months. He’d also have to provide a social insurance number, a health card from somewhere else, his birth certificate, and his driver’s licence.

  So that went onto the back burner and I turned to getting him a driver’s licence. For that he’d need to provide the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation with a birth certificate and a social insurance card. And, of course, some money, like maybe $75 and voila, it would all be done and he’d be a real boy!

  Going over my little pile of scraps I realized I had to start with the birth certificate. It was a joke, but seven years after 9-11 no one seemed to care that it had become even easier to acquire fake ID in the States. Give me an hour on the Internet and a week to make some phone calls and send letters and the ID would start flowing in. I could be from Texas, or New York, South Carolina, or California. Find a newspaper with its files on the Internet, find the name of a baby who died (and probably wasn’t registered with the right authorities), use that info with the bureaucrats, and have the certificate issued.

  All the work made me think fondly of going back into business, just a little. And that way lay madness. Suddenly my time on the computer was up and I had to leave and go find a place to take Claire for dinner. I made my way across town through chaos towards normalcy and away from temptation. To confirm my good intentions I phoned Marie and found out that everything was just fine on her end. Then she asked how I was and I had to hang up.

  I had no idea, frankly, how to answer that.

  #30

  Saturday started very slowly at 7:00. I let Claire sleep while Fred and I played with the dog in the backyard. I raked leaves and the dog and boy destroyed the piles. Smiley woke up before Claire did, coming out into the backyard with his face completely slack and his eyes narrowed into slits against the dim light.
>
  “Hesus Marimba.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No idea.” He watched me work from the stoop.

  I was mildly curious and asked, “Hangover?”

  “No thanks, got one. Went out last night when your lovely wife told me you two were painting the town red …”

  He was quiet and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. With trembling hands he lit it. “Met a nice little hard body. Sweet girl, wanted a nice architect for a husband, or maybe she wanted to do some modelling work or just luck into a really, really nice apartment. Or maybe she wanted to work with animals or little kids.”

  He paused and I encouraged him to go on. “And …”

  “Dumped her and found two trashy-ass semi-pro whores. Somewhere downtown. They were badass chicks, coke off the tip of the little knife one of them kept tucked down the front of her bra, straight shots of Courvoisier and Hpnotiq. Trick shit like that.”

  “And …” Off to the side Fred and Renfield was wrestling. Fred was losing.

  Smiley shrugged. “We had a party. I didn’t touch any chemicals, swear to Christ, but they sure did.”

  Smiley looked at me with bloodshot eyes, waiting for me to judge. When I didn’t he went on, “They used my money and bought coke and ecstasy and grass and crack and crank. VIP’d my ass into a big club somewhere, all red velour and black-patterned carpets …”

  I coughed loudly and Smiley’s face lit up in pleasure. “You’d a loved it; you could hear the dope and whore money getting washed, scrub-scrub-scrub. There were only twenty people there and most of them on the payroll. So we ended up in a private room.”

  He motioned for me to come closer. “I was hitting the bottle hard… I was hitting it pretty hard and couldn’t get it up, limp-dick city …”

  I interrupted gently. “You don’t have to tell me this, man.”

  His face flushed red with anger. “Sure I do. So they started making out with each other … to help me out, I guess, they weren’t getting off on it … and I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Took off. Ran away. Paid the bills first and then ran.”

  Fred tried to bury the dog in leaves and got mad when I started to stuff them into the garbage bag. I gave him that to fight and turned back to Smiley. “It ain’t gonna be easy, man. Stay away from chicks like that. Don’t put yourself in the way of that.”

  “All I want … all I really want is …”

  “What?”

  His face was rigidly anguished. “I don’t fucking know!”

  “’S alright. It’ll pass. Get a shower. Clean yourself up. Then we’ll go running. Changing the subject. Wanna meet a nice girl?”

  He stood up. “What the fuck is that?”

  “You’ll see. It might help.”

  “Might.” He ground the cigarette out on his belt buckle and dropped the butt into his pocket. “Might be nice. I want to tell you something and ask you something.”

  I waited.

  “One, I finally understand what Ol’ Doc Holliday meant at the end, you know when he said, ‘This is funny.’”

  That went past me and I shook off what I was actually thinking. “And?”

  “Never mind. Hey, do you get laid when you date nice girls?”

  I hadn’t seen Claire coming up behind Smiley, but she heard him and said, “Don’t be crude.”

  He looked embarrassed and she went on, “And Monty is not the right person to ask. He doesn’t know any nice girls. Ask me.”

  Smiley turned to me. “Is this true?”

  “Yep. I only know Claire.”

  She looked at me suspiciously and Smiley turned back to her. “So, do you get laid when you date nice girls?” She nodded primly.

  “Sure. But it’ll never happen when and where and why you expect it.”

  Smiley turned back to me. “True?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Energy and joy were creeping back into him and his pleasure was growing along with the bruise on his cheek. “Sounds great. Let’s go.”

  “Shower first.”

  When he had headed into the house Claire sat down in the exact same spot Smiley had occupied and held the peas tight to her forehead. “Christ, do I have a hangover.”

  “Poor girl. Could be worse.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “How could it be worse?”

  I grabbed Fred before he managed to crawl entirely into an open bag of leaves and suffocate. “It could be me suffering from a hangover instead of you.”

  If looks could kill.

  The two of them agreed to go out that night and find nice girls, and that started them off making phone calls and plans. I was too busy getting ready to go to the Hunter Safety Course, which started at 10:00 and lasted until 6:00, a truly dim way to spend a Saturday. When I arrived home at 7:00, Claire and Smiley were both dressed in new clothes. They looked happy, clean, and gleeful. My wife kissed me and let me sit down in the bedroom for a minute or two before leaving. “So how was school, dear?”

  I glared at her and suspected a pun before clearing my throat. “Hunting is a natural endeavour of the human animal and it’s nothing that the hunter should be embarrassed about. There are rifles and shotguns suitable for hunting.” She motioned for me to go on. “And bows, ha-ha-ha. The whole class laughed until I held up my hand and told them I was using a bow. Then the teacher went on. Do not hunt within 100 metres of the road. Do not shoot unless you know what you are shooting at. And do not shoot anything wearing Day-Glo orange. Unless you’re a cannibal.”

  I changed my socks. “More laughter, followed by an amusing anecdote about an RCMP constable who was arrested for shooting a Styrofoam decoy deer put out by the game wardens. After which he was given a large case of Styrofoam cutlets by his butcher. More class laughter. Followed by a quote from a man I’ve never heard of before, José Ortega Y Gasset, who said, ‘One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.’”

  Claire looked at her watch. “You know, this is interesting but…”

  “Wait. You started this with your wild boar rant, and the rant about how much I owed Frank, and you should hear the end of it. Did you know that wild game has less fat than chicken? Or that hunting is an activity that is much safer than swimming or bicycling? Then a lecture on muzzle-loading muskets, the advances of the percussion system, magazine-fed versus single-shot weapons, orange safety vests, primers, and safeties. This went on for awhile.”

  “So did you pass?”

  “I did.”

  “So can I leave?”

  “You may.”

  And she and Smiley went off to look for nice girls. I dug out the books I’d picked up from the library during the lunch break at the training centre. Gunfighters of the Wild West, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, The Range Wars, and others. Names like Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, William Bonney, Tom Horn, William Brooks, John Wesley Hardin, Patrick Garrett, and Black Bart.

  Fred played quietly with his blocks while the dog snored. We’d brought Thor’s aquarium out into the middle of the room so it could feel it belonged to the family and vice versa. While I read I drank a cup of coffee and thought some long and dark thoughts.

  You can tell a lot about a man by his heroes, and Smiley’s made for interesting reading.

  Black Bart, my favourite. Born in 1829, last seen in 1888, and liked Wells, Fargo and Co. stagecoaches in California, of which he robbed twenty-eight. Caught and served four years in San Quentin and then vanished upon release. Left poetry behind after the robberies, including the ditty:

  I’ve labored long and hard for bread

  For honor and for riches

  But on my corns too long you’ve tread

  You fine haired sons of Bitches.

  Sam Bass robbed the Deadwood Stage four times. An inept and unlucky, thief he died at the age of twenty-seven after being shot in the groin. His sister put up a tombstone that read, “A brav
e man reposes in death here. Why was he not true?”

  In later years the tombstone was chipped away by scavenger hunters until it vanished.

  William Bonney, dead at twenty-one, accused of having shot either twenty-one or no men. His first crime was stealing butter at the age of twenty-one. He was shot to death by his friend Pat Garrett. His last words were, “Quien es?”

  Doc Holliday died at the age of thirty-six from tuberculosis, described by Wyatt Earp as the most dangerous man in Tombstone when Tombstone was a dangerous town. Walking to the gunfight at the OK Corral the three Earp brothers wore frowns and dressed in black while Doc wore a natty grey suit and whistled.

  Like I said before, you can tell a lot about a man by his heroes. The coffee had grown cold and Fred had fallen asleep so I moved very quietly as I refilled my mug and thought deep thoughts. The phone ringing made me jump. It was Marie calling me from a pay phone to tell me they were running a Yugoslavian family across the lake that night. I had told her to give me the occasional call and keep me in the loop in case they needed an enforcer. She didn’t this time. I wished her luck and she hung up.

  And I went back to wondering who the hell my heroes were. When that stopped bothering me I wondered about the heroes Smiley had acquired. Not one of them was a good guy, not really, not seeing them from this place in time. So why would he ever go straight?

  And that question bothered me even more. I thought about the hunter safety course and then I rephrased the philosophy of “One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted” into something more appropriate for thieves. It became “One does not steal in order to make money; on the contrary, one makes money in order to have stolen.”

  When I slept I dreamed and when I woke up I remembered something very important about being a bad guy, about living on reflex and momentum and that there were NO coincidences.