An Ordinary Decent Criminal

by Michael Van Rooy

  I wished I had a cigarette, or even a pipe or chewing tobacco. When you’ve stopped smoking, it’s hard to find something to do right after making love. Except sleep, and women hate it when you fall asleep right away, which I think is patently unfair, they should take it as a compliment. ‘She was so good, she took all my energy.’ Claire disagrees, however. She nudged me and I went on.

  “I wasn’t asleep. A jury wants cops to be hard on crooks. It appeals to their sense of community outrage. Therefore, they always start with a bias favoring the police. In this case we might be able to convince them that Walsh had nothing to do with the actual beating and then they might end up being mad at him for not reporting it in the first place. Or he might toss the other cops to the wolves and claim he tried to stop them.”

  She waited.

  “Before it goes to the jury, though, the claim has to go through LERA. Gods knows what they’ll do. From what I can tell, it’s a rat’s nest of political infighting, union favoritism, and bureaucratic favoritism. It’s in the province’s best interests to champion Walsh as a cop who didn’t resort to violence but tried to stop it. In order to do that successfully, though, they have to admit that the beating took place in the first place.”

  “You’re right. That’s confusing. So what exactly is LERA?”

  “The Law Enforcement Review Agency. Any complaints against cops have to be proved to their satisfaction first. Before it can go to trial.”

  “Sounds like double jeopardy.”

  “It is. You have to prove a case against the cops before you can try to prove a case against the cops.”

  “Shitty. But you’re letting Walsh go, that’s what it sounds like.”

  “No. Not really, but I can’t prove he hit me, on top of which, it’s also the truth. Walsh didn’t hit me. Not much, anyway. He convinced Fitzpatrick and Cairns to do the heavy work.”

  Fred started to cry downstairs but we both ignored it for a minute.

  “You also realize that it’s going to make every other cop hate Walsh by leaving him off the indictment. They’re gonna wonder if he cut a deal somewhere along the way.”

  I held her close for a too-brief moment and then went to get Fred.

  “The thought never even crossed my mind.”

  She kissed me and laughed.

  19

  The next day we cleaned the house, read the latest note taped to our front door (which read, “RAPIST!”), and talked things through. We agreed we had to find out more about Walsh, Cairns, Fitzpatrick, and the three dead boys before I could talk to anyone or ask the right questions. Midway through the day, I sent Claire off to find a phone booth and call the archives of the Winnipeg Free Press. She came back an hour later, grinning like a teenager. “Mission accomplished, mon capitaine.”

  “What happened?”

  She curtsied. “I was walking by the fire hall and some of the boys were playing volleyball. They stopped and whistled. Very good for morale.”

  “I see.”

  “They were sweet. Very encouraging.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t keep you busy enough.”

  “Yep. Now about the Free Press: you can’t get into the archives, but copies of back issues are kept in the main library downtown. Both hard copies and stuff on microfilm.”

  My face fell. It would take me years to go through back issues without an index of some kind.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I told her.

  “You’re right. That’s probably why I asked for this two-page list of articles involving assorted ne’er-do-wells.”

  “For that you get a kiss.”

  She accepted and we went back to more mundane household tasks.

  By that evening I was feeling more and more nervous about Claire and her date with Elena. It ended with Fred and me following her upstairs as she prepared to go out.

  “No, no, you go. Fred and I will be fine.”

  Claire had pulled on black stockings and was busy smoothing out a pale gray skirt. I watched her breasts sway and thought dirty thoughts as she looked around for her bra. She smoothed down her hair and glanced around. “Where’s my bra?”

  “I don’t know but don’t even think about the hardships we’ll be put through.”

  Fred crawled from the closet with the bra held in his gums. It caught momentarily on a loose floorboard and he pulled until it snapped back. Claire took it and handed him off.

  “Nice try.”

  Fred gurgled and we both sat down to watch Claire get dressed. I changed tack and scratched Fred’s back through his cotton shirt. With the body contact, he sighed and groaned and gurgled.

  “So, where you going?”

  “Out. Elena didn’t know. I suggested coffee. Anyplace you recommend?”

  “Sure. There’s a Greek-run bakery on Main but I don’t know how late it stays open. Good coffee and great pastries.”

  She finished dressing and kissed us both. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  Fred had crawled off my lap and was wrestling with a ferocious pillow. As I watched, the pillow began to gain the upper hand and I had to push them both back onto the futon. Outside, Renfield howled in despair. We’d chained him in the yard to remind him that he was, in fact, a dog and not a person, and he bitterly resented the whole thing. I kissed Claire again.

  “Have fun.”

  Claire came home when the sun was coming up and I met her at the top of the stairs. She hiccupped loudly and held her stomach with both hands.

  “Oh my God.”

  I took her arm and led her into the bedroom, where she stood and swayed as I pulled her clothes off.

  “That was fun.”

  She smelled like cigarette smoke and beer and rye whisky. When she was naked, I put her down on the clean sheets and covered her up. There was a fan in the corner of the room and I turned it on for white noise and to get rid of some of the smell, and then I kissed her on the lips, which also tasted of smoke, rye whisky, and beer.

  “Hiccup.”

  She had already started to snore as I left the room. Downstairs, the sun was shining in brightly through the living room window and I stood and listened intently to the silence. Then I picked up the crowbar from the umbrella rack and took a short grip on it before letting Renfield in from the back porch. When he came in, he wagged at me ferociously and jumped up to stick his blunt head into my crotch.

  “Dumb dog.”

  He sat down at my hand gesture and I gave him a commercial dog treat made out of rice and dried meat by-products, which he chomped up with much pleasure. He followed me as I turned on the coffee maker and then went to the front of the house. There, pinned to the wall under the mailbox with a cheap, no-spring switchblade, was the expected note. I pulled both down and went inside to read.

  “LEAVE, KILLER!”

  Again it was red crayon on brown paper and I folded it up and put it with the others in the kitchen. Then I looked at the knife. It was brand new and the edge of the switchblade had recently been sharpened, but cheap steel is cheap steel, so I broke it in two and dumped it into the garbage.

  In the kitchen I flipped on the radio and caught two good songs, Dean Martin’s up-tempo “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” and The Who’s “Boris the Spider.” Then a puerile announcer came on and announced that the Winnipeg Police were looking for some fugitive from Vancouver who was believed to be “in the city and armed and dangerous.” The station had a description of him, right down to the car he was driving, and I listened through the rest of the news and into the next set of songs, then poured myself some coffee and waited for Fred to wake up.

  20

  Claire woke up some time past 1:00 when Fred and I were in the front room watching the thunderclouds and listening to the rain fall. Every now and then the thunder would crash and Renfield would come galloping in and try to tuck his head under my arm. The baby and I loved the noise and we clapped with each bright flash of light and each peal of thunder. We were busy clapping rhythmically when Claire came down i
n her dressing gown and grimly tottered over to where we sat on the rug.

  “Good morning.”

  Fred made a happy noise and received a kiss. I made a similar noise and was gifted with one too. The dog kept whimpering and tried to force his head right through the floor under the coffee table.

  “Good afternoon. Here, sit. I’ll get you coffee.”

  She sat down and Fred climbed into her lap and started to point outside as the rain redoubled in force. In the kitchen I turned on the coffee maker and put some bread in to burn. By the time the toast was buttered, a half-pot had finished brewing and I balanced a cup and the toast and went back out to the two of them. Outside, the rain continued to fall.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  She sounded very pathetic and took tiny bites out of the toast. I sat down behind her and started to rub her shoulders through her dressing gown. One sleeve slipped down and I could see the top of her right shoulder.

  “Oh-ho.”

  She took a very small sip of coffee and turned a bloodshot eye towards me. “What?”

  “You’ve been busy, you harlot, you. There’s a huge hickey, a veritable love bite, on your neck.”

  She craned her neck at it and grunted. “I wish. Actually, we went dancing. There was this big kid, a wannabe cowboy, who put the moves on me and gave me a massage every time I slowed down. He had thick wrists.”

  I was rubbing her shoulders and stayed away from the bruise as she continued. “It was a lousy massage.”

  “A likely story. Changing the subject, he asks, did you have a good time?”

  “Wonderful. There were Elena and I and the owner of the hotel lounge and her bartender. They came later. Everything was fine until we switched to vodka paralyzers.”

  She shuddered again.

  “Vodka and Kahlua and Coke and milk. Never again. God did not intend for those things to ever be mixed together.”

  When she was finished eating, I shooed her off for a needed shower and sat watching the rain. It was very soothing. Finally Fred fell asleep and I tucked him into his crib. Claire came down, wearing jeans and a sweater. She asked, “So, what are your plans for today?”

  “Well, most of today is gone, but I was thinking of getting more resumes and then checking out the archery shop and seeing if the owner needs any help. He’s weird.”

  It was said matter of factly and I took the dishes into the kitchen and put them in the sink before assembling a sandwich from a tomato and some lettuce. Claire followed me and pulled a sack of frozen peas out of the fridge’s freezer and put them on her forehead.

  “There’s an implied but. As in he’s weird, but . . .”

  “There’s no but here. The little guy’s just simply weird. After that, I was thinking of heading down to the library and checking out our friends.”

  She stood with her eyes closed and pressed the peas to her head. They tasted like shit and we never ate them but we kept a bag around in case of injury. She sensed I was looking and opened one eye. “What do you want?”

  “I’m thinking lustful thoughts.”

  “Good. That would be a good thing. Can we wait ’til I sober up?”

  I brushed the crumbs into the sink and kissed the tip of her nose. “If we must. Um, Claire?”

  “I said later.”

  She waited but I didn’t add anything more, so she kissed me and then I left.

  At the archery shop there were a half-dozen boxes to unload and I had it done in just under half an hour. The driver had blanched when he’d seen me waiting for him and he’d even gone so far as to help pull the boxes off the truck. Up close, he’d smelled of stale sweat and old urine.

  I said, “Thanks.”

  He ignored me and squealed the truck down the alley and out of sight. When the boxes were inside, I went back to the owner. He was busy with a bow on a big workbench beside the cash register.

  Sitting on a bench nearby was a young couple, both pretty as puppies, drinking bottled water and discussing being young and in love. Frank interrupted my thoughts. “Finished?”

  “All done.”

  He snorted. “Hell, I shouldn’t pay you the full amount.”

  I waited with my hands clasped behind my back and he went on.

  “But a deal’s a deal. Here, try this.”

  He handed me the bow he was working on and I held it awkwardly.

  “Bear Two compound bow. About ten years old and absolutely nothing wrong with it. The owner just traded it to me for a new one. Archers are like camera freaks, they got to have the latest and the greatest, they’re always trading up to a new model.”

  I raised the bow and pulled the string back to my ear.

  “Yep. You’re a natural. You want the bow?”

  He said it casually and I looked at him suspiciously.

  “How much?”

  “Eighty bucks and I’ll throw in three arrows. No tax.”

  I put the bow down and shook my head. “Sorry, I haven’t got the money right now.”

  “Sixty? Shit, try it out first.”

  He made me hold the bow again and measured my arm before pulling a pair of battered fiberglass arrows from a quiver nailed to the wall. I walked down to the line painted on the floor and faced the target at the end of the room. It was twenty yards away and appeared to be the size of a quarter. The old man startled me as he padded up silently behind me.

  “Nock the arrow just above the brass bead. Draw the string back below your ear. Sight through the little ring woven into the string, and line it up with the target and this.”

  He touched the topmost peg on an aluminum rack just above the grip.

  “And let the string roll off your fingers.”

  I did and missed and tried again. Then I trudged back and did it again. And again. By the time I stopped, my whole upper body ached and I glanced at the clock. “Jesus.”

  Two and a half hours had passed. I lowered the bow and headed back to the front of the store and laid the bow down on the counter. The old man was back at his seat and he didn’t even look up as he carefully glued a new nock into a camouflage-patterned arrow.

  “So, eighty, right?”

  I massaged my left hand where the string had rubbed away the skin.

  “I thought it was sixty.”

  His hands didn’t stop working as he studiously ignored me.

  “How about this? I’ll come back each week for the next two months, no charge, to help with your deliveries.”

  “Four months.”

  “Two and a half.”

  “Three?”

  “Three.”

  The old man agreed and then looked up and smiled. Before he could answer, I went on. “And, I get six arrows.”

  “Fine. But I keep the bow for the next month as collateral.”

  We shook on it and I tried to figure out how to tell Claire about my new toy as I walked down Main Street. I had the address of the library from the archery shop’s phone book, so I stopped at a bus stop and checked the routes. No problem, one bus would get me there.

  On the way I had my eyes open for a tail, either cops or cons. Cops I probably wouldn’t see, they could run a boxcar tail on me with a dozen undercover cops ahead and behind me, switching every few minutes and connected by radios. They could change jackets, hats, whatever, move ahead of me, use cars to leapfrog, all things that were tough to counteract.

  No one really said it better than Dashiell Hammett back in the 1920s in California. He said there were four rules for shadowing. Keep behind your subject as much as possible. Never try to hide from him. Act in a natural matter, no matter what happens. And, last, never meet his eye. Cops knew all the rules and broke some of them on occasion, but the basics, the essentials, remained untouched.

  As for the cops themselves, there were two things they couldn’t change, shoes and attitude, and for both of those, being on foot gave me the best chance to spot a tail. Shoes because nobody wants to change their footwear over and over again. Attitude because a cop is a cop
is a cop is a cop is a cop. Also, they hate to walk, most of them have good teeth, and they all carry guns, which pull their pants and coats out of true.

  When the bus came, I paid my $1.85 and sat near the rear door and saw two young, androgynous people climb up after me. Either of them could be a tail. I memorized their faces and their shoes and then ignored them.

  Now, if it was cons following me, friends of the dead kids, then they’d probably do an amateur job because tailing someone was hard work, requiring patience and skill and talent. And lots of practice, something most bad guys would lack. Them, I’d probably spot right away.

  At the next stop two more people came through the doors, a man and a woman, and I checked out shoes and faces again. Over the next twenty minutes and eight stops, twelve more people entered and the young people got off and so did the woman, and finally everyone’s faces and shoes started to merge and blend. The bus passed between the library and a church. Then a big hole in the ground with a small shopping mall on the other side, then a powerhouse and a parking lot. Small shops and businesses and coffee places, and, at the end of the street, there was a huge wedding cake of a building with gray limestone walls and windows framed in brass. It stretched up over five storeys and filled a whole block, the side off to the left becoming a parking garage half open to the elements.

  It was perfect so that was where I got off.

  21

  The moment I hit the door of the store, I started to count in my head. One, one thousand.

  Tails are fun. Doing them is fun. Breaking them off is fun. But the funky thing is that you can never be sure that you ever rid yourself of the whole thing. Shit, you can never really be sure you were ever followed in the first place. But even paranoiacs have enemies, so I acted like I was being tailed, which is not a bad idea, although it does make you look like an idiot.

  I was in the main Hudson’s Bay department store, a big, open area full of mirrors and cameras and expensive merchandise. Too many clerks, lots of brand names, wide alleys between counters and shelves.

  Two, two one thousand.

  If there was a tail and they were cops or really organized criminals, they’d have run cars parallel to the bus and maintained contact by radio or cell phones. So they’d be circling the store and dumping off watchers on the entrances to pick me up when I came out. If I came out. And four sides to the store meant four watchers.