And you can booby-trap anything. With practice you can gimmick a body, a book, a door, clothes, condoms, a whistle, pets, beer, windows, and plates. You can do cigarettes, lighters, stoves, bathrooms, cars, and letters.
You can even booby-trap a vagina.
I knew the triggers. Pressure could be a trigger, cutting a wire could work too, opening a door could pull a pin, walking into a room could set off a cheap radar security device, and the heat sensor used to control lighting in a room could set off anything you could imagine. A trap could be set to detonate when an electrical current was interrupted, or on pressure, or on the absence of pressure. You could use a handyman’s level to make a motion-sensitive trigger and you could make a command detonator with a garage door opener, or a cell phone, or a pager. It was even possible, I’d heard, to set up a trigger that would go off when someone breathed.
And what I knew, Smiley could know, which made coming home… a little nerve wracking. Because I would have wired the place in a serious way.
Which meant he would have done exactly the same thing.
Trick to avoiding booby traps and ambushes number one is: don’t go in by the normal entry way. Instead I went next door to the Kilpatricks’ and knocked politely. The wife answered, “Oh, hi Montgomery.”
She’s the only person still alive who uses my full name. My grandmother, gone and buried, did it but she’s not around any more.
“Hi. Can I borrow a ladder and your upstairs window?”
She stared at me. Not too long ago she and her husband had tried to run Claire and me out of town by leaving threatening notes and such. When I’d found out I’d hurt her husband fairly badly and scared both of them quite a lot and now I was babysitting their grandchild.
Go figure.
“Ummm. Sure?”
The ladder was in their garage. I picked it up and carried it through the house, carefully while Mrs. Kilpatrick ran ahead of me and kept offering me coffee or maybe a beer and would I like a cookie?
“No. Thank you but no.”
Upstairs I found a window in the main bedroom that faced my bedroom in our house with maybe eleven or twelve feet between us. Carefully opening the window first I laid the ladder down until it reached the sill. I adjusted it twice until I was sure.
“You know, I changed my mind about that cookie.”
“Oh, sure.” And off she bustled. While I was waiting I checked my bag and made sure the tools and gun were in place. When she brought the cookie (one of those soft-on-the-inside chocolate chip ones) and I’d eaten it I climbed onto the ladder and started to crawl across to my own window with the backpack strapped to my belly where I could easily reach it.
“Thanks, and can you pull the ladder back when the window’s open?”
“Sure. May I ask what you’re doing?”
“You probably don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I do. Really.”
“It’s called mouse-holing. It’s a way of moving from one house to another by soldiers without leaving the house and exposing themselves to enemy fire. This is one way; another is to use explosives to blow through the walls of adjoining buildings.”
“Oh. Well. Yes. Right.”
And off I went. At my window I drew the Swiss Army knife and puzzled briefly over the blades. My in-laws had given it to me while I was in prison with the little file extended and CAKE TO FOLLOW engraved on the handle. It had, of course, been immediately confiscated, but one of the screws had shown it to me through a pane of bullet-proof glass before it had ended up in storage. The whole thing still rankled, but I now found the thinnest blade on the knife and went to work on the sill, sliding the knife past the layers of paint and dirt and using it to slowly push the hook out of the way.
While I did that I watched the room carefully but saw nothing that leaped out as wrong. I did, however, note that the shades were open, whereas Claire and I always drew them, and that the door was shut, whereas I always left it open to promote air circulation.
When I had the window up I put my legs over the sill and gestured for Mrs. Kilpatrick to pull the ladder in while mouthing, “Thanks!”
With my back to the window I kept my legs up and used the time to really examine the floor but there was nothing out of place. No wires, no devices, nothing other than the open curtains and the closed door to tell me that anyone had even been here since Claire and I had fled. There were also no noises in the house, no sounds of someone running up the stairs with a gun or something like that.
I did not want to step onto the floor so I sat there and thought and stared and thought some more. The term booby trap is a relatively old one. Originally it comes from the term balbus; the Latin word for stammering, which the Romans thought meant the speaker was stupid. A little later on the English used the term booby to describe really stupid seabirds which were easy to catch and kill. From there it became used for all sorts of descriptions, culminating by the middle of the eighteen hundreds when it was used to describe a trap used to catch an idiot, because they, whoever “they” were, would have to trigger it themselves.
And because I have a dirty mind I also once looked up the earthier meaning of boob. Apparently it had never meant that breasts were stupid but instead came from the Elizabethan English term bubbies which meant any alcoholic drink. This probably came from the Latin term bibere, to drink.
Which makes me, personally, feel much better. I’d hate to think that breasts were stupid. Mostly I was in favour of them.
After all that raced through my brain I found myself still waiting. Because I did not want to touch the floor.
#44
Finally I lowered myself down, closed the window, and drew the blinds. Only then did I pull the pistol from its holster and take the safety off. The noise was horribly loud but nothing went boom. Then I exhaled and, inch by inch, I went over the cold, cold room, starting at the window, then the futon, the closet, the door, the dresser, the bookcase. Then I opened the door and did every inch of the hallway and the bathroom and the tub, the sink, the toilet, and the linen closet. And then I looked over Fred’s room, the crib, his closet, his dresser, the change table. Ad infinitum, and what did I find?
Under my pillow on the futon was an oldie but goodie that took me a few minutes to identify. Back from the USSR, folks, an old Soviet Russian F-1 fragmentation grenade, originally produced way back in the days when the Nazis were knocking on Stalin’s gates.
I stared at the damn thing and sweated despite the cold, and for a moment I distracted myself by wondering why it was so cold. Then I had to think about the grenade again. There are two kinds of grenades, defensive and offensive. Offensive grenades are to be used by your glorious troops as they charge forward against their inhuman enemies, so they contain relatively little explosive, and produce relatively little shrapnel. Then there are defensive grenades, which are designed to be used against your inhuman enemies as they charge the defences occupied by your glorious troops. They have a big charge of explosive and produce a lot of shrapnel.
The F-1 was a defensive grenade that dumps sharp bits of metal at high rates of speed out to twenty or thirty meters. The pin had been pulled and was held in place by the weight of the grenade on the spoon. Lie on the pillow and the grenade moves, the spoon flies off, and three to four seconds later those little bits of shrapnel go flying off in all directions. I wondered where Smiley had gotten the grenade and then I taped the spoon into immobility with duct tape and moved on. Only now I was moving even more slowly if that was possible.
Why was it so cold? I almost turned the thermostat up but then I stopped and decided to check out the whole house, and that was a good thing. Here and there were hidden big Remington .44 magnum hollow points and twelve-gauge double-ought buckshot rounds set up with spring triggers to make real toe poppers. Not enough to kill if you stepped on them, just enough to blow your foot into hamburger. And they were set in door jambs and under overturned shoes and under carefully loosened floorboards.
And there w
ere two more of the Soviet grenades, one balanced over a doorway and one tucked behind a book on its shelf. So the next time I needed to read Joy of Cooking, like to find out how to boil water, boom. There were also a couple of surgical rubber bands stretched back here and there and ending in blades taken from carpet-cutting utility knives, all hung at eye level.
And every light bulb in the whole house had been drilled and tapped and filled with black powder and copper BB’s or gasoline and laundry soap. Turn on the light and bang, instant napalm or instant shrapnel.
In the umbrella holder by the front door Smiley had gotten cute, and it took me twenty minutes just to figure out what I was looking at. Finally I identified them and used some tape to make them harmless: a pair of cyanide dispensers, used in the States to kill coyotes and wolves. Push down on here and powdered cyanide would come shooting out over there, poof, a cloud of dust. And if it worked on wolves it would work on a person.
The pièce de résistance was in the basement, and I almost missed it. I was exhausted by the time I reached the basement but I couldn’t stop.
If you ignored the trip wire at the top of the stairs and the gasoline-filled liquor bottles packed around the water heater, the basement was clear. The water heater was an old trick, when the boob(y) comes home, he turns on the hot water (which he will do at some point), which lowers the amount of water in the tank, which makes the tank fill, and the heater turn on. And when the heater turns on the flames touch the wicks you’ve set up and boom.
I was feeling insulted that Smiley had tried that on me when I knelt down and noticed the furnace itself, sitting there, untouched. Why untouched? It would be the only thing in the house that hadn’t been gimmicked.
With trembling hands I took the cover off the furnace and looked down into the pan that was not part of any furnace ever built.
“Shit.”
He had rigged the furnace to kill everything in my house. Everything, Fred and Claire and me. It would have killed Renfield and Thor and every insect and spider that dwelled in the dark corners of the basement and every mouse in the wainscoting. And then it would kill anyone who came to check on the bodies. And those who were not killed would suffer from permanent and irreversible brain and neurological damage.
I thought very hard and realized that all the rest of the traps were designed to distract from the main one. And I felt a little bit of awe about Smiley’s work ethic.
“Shit.”
Hate is sometimes a mild word.
It made me wonder about Marie, about whether Smiley was stalking her right now, setting her up.
#45
I loaded the backpack with the stuff Smiley had left for me, the grenades and the razors, the cartridges and the other implements of destruction, and when it was full I found a suitcase and filled that too. In the basement I picked up the Bionic Ear and a few useful tools and packed them away as well and left, this time by the front door.
I had the backpack and shoulder bag slung and the suitcase in my left hand. In my right hand was one of Smiley’s hand grenades with the tape removed and only my fingers holding the spoon down. So if he showed up and shot me I would drop the bomb and boom. Or if he showed up and tried to talk to me I could lob it at him and boom. And then I could pull the gun and shoot the shit out of whatever was left. Three blocks from home I stopped at a phone booth and called for a cab. When it arrived I climbed in and re-taped the bomb in my pocket without taking it out. We headed downtown to Osborne Village, where I would wait until dark to climb under the bridge and dump the various bad things in the Assiniboine River.
When the time came I threw everything else away except for the three hand grenades. Smiley had taken the pins with him, so I used steel finishing nails as replacements, bending them into place for security. Then I re-taped the grenades with more duct tape and those went into the shoulder bag. I found a bench in that gloriously bohemian part of town and sat there to think some more. So far I wasn’t doing too well on that front, but maybe I’d be lucky.
Where was Smiley and what was he doing right now? And what were his future plans?
My brain was turning up nothing so I went back to basics. Advice drilled into me over an entire career as a criminal: first you wait and watch. And if that doesn’t work, make a plan and follow it. And if that doesn’t work, do something, anything. Because another rule is that it’s better to do something than nothing. The coordinator of a prison-run anger management course had put it thusly: when in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. It had been ten years since I’d taken the course and I wondered if he knew to what use his advice was being put.
So it was back to basics and thinking about what Smiley had done that I knew about. He had shot Tracey and Louis and Samantha and her boyfriend.
Again, why?
With criminals one rule of understanding their behaviour is to follow the money. Always follow the money. Where was the profit here? My brain hummed along and said no idea.
A friendly woman with short hair and glasses wearing a chef’s uniform (including the hat) walked by on Wellington Crescent in front of me and when she saw me she stopped and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Beautiful night, isn’t it?”
She looked around and smiled broadly, “Stunning!”
And she walked on and I felt better; a pretty, happy girl is a kind of medicine. However, I was still thinking about Smiley shooting Sam. I needed more information, which meant I needed to find someone who knew something.
My brain thought about all that and agreed with me.
This led me to … the hockey player whom Sam had used as muscle. I should really talk to him, sooner rather then later. So, with a plan, although one I had no idea how to implement, I wandered off to find someplace to sleep. After a brief internal debate I decided that it was unlikely that the lady who thought the night was stunning would let me stay over at her place, which meant a hotel and a cheap one.
The nearest hotel was cheap and loud and wonderful. It even advertised an amateur wet T-shirt night with cash prizes. And the front desk clerk didn’t blink when I paid in cash and asked for a room in the quiet half of the hotel, away from the bar. When I’d rigged the window with the rope for a quick escape down from the fourth floor to the back alley, I stashed the knife and grenades and pepper spray in useful places. The gun I kept in my belt, ready to use, not the safest place but the only place I had without wearing the damn holster.
With everything set up I realized I was starving so I ordered from a Papa George’s restaurant down the street. The desk clerk had recommended them for Italian-slash-Greek food and he’d also mentioned a Japanese restaurant called Wasabi if I wanted sushi. Actually I wanted both, so I ordered a Greek salad, large meat pizza and a dozen cans of diet Coke from Papa George’s and thirty-six pieces of California roll and another dozen cans of ginger ale from Wasabi, because I have a strong and deep and abiding lust for avocado and crab—even fake crab.
It took forty minutes until the delivery guys came and when they did I paid them (and tipped them well—crooks, even ex-crooks, are good tippers; why, I do not know) with my right hand under a towel and the gun therein. But no Smiley. I dragged over the bureau to cover the door and rigged a Bible and some light bulbs to fall on the floor if anyone tried to force the door itself. Then I took off my underwear and socks and rinsed them in the bathroom sink before hanging them on the shower curtain to dry.
I drank the ginger ale with my food and turned on the television and watched a few minutes each of a series of very strange shows. Some of them were supposed to be real, but weren’t, and others were supposed to be staged, but didn’t seem to have hired real actors. And the whole television universe seemed to be full of hyper-sexed, hyper-beautiful, plastic people with beautiful cars and beautiful houses and no apparent means of support whatsoever. As I watched I felt my mind melt, so finally I panicked and started to flip the channel until I could find a nature documentary. Then I watched David Atte
nborough narrate The Blue Planet about penguins and leopard seals and relaxed as much as I was able. A little later I turned off the lights, including the TV, and rigged some blankets and stuff to look like a body in the bed. A cheap gimmick, but it should attract fire if Smiley decided to become a sniper. Then I crashed on the floor and slept.
The next morning I drank diet Coke (all the caffeine as regular Coke and the chemical sweetener didn’t block the uptake of the drug like sugar did) and ate the rest of the sushi liberally dosed with soya sauce and Japanese horseradish. Leaving the bathroom door open I showered and brushed my teeth with a packet of salt from Papa George’s.
With that done I reached the point of greatest danger and cleaned the gun, emptying the magazine of its copper shells while wearing a pair of gloves. I kept one of the Soviet grenades right by my hip, ready to throw. Then I reloaded the gun, put a shell into the chamber, put the pin back into the grenade and turned the TV back on, this time hunting for local news reports, since I had another two hours before I had to check out.
I was not surprised to find out that the shooting of Sam and boyfriend still topped the news. While I was considering what to do next, the solution to the earlier problem, how to find the hockey player, came to me. I packed up the remainder of the food and the weaponry, put the room back together, and then checked out, buying a brand new baseball hat in the hotel gift shop as a disguise on the way out.
#46
There was an Internet cafe down on Corydon, within walking distance, so I kept to residential streets and watched for Smiley or anyone else I recognized. I had the two bags and I kept my right hand loose at my side ready to pull the gun.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal Page 22