Fall from Grace

by Wayne Arthurson

  “May I help you?” he asked, in that polite and efficient police voice that they probably teach all police at the academy.

  I first introduced myself, name and media affiliation, and then asked if he was the first on the scene. He nodded.

  “Did you find the body?” I asked, quietly noting his name on the badge above his right pocket.

  He shook his head. “Farmer did. He made the mistake of calling us.”

  “Mistake?”

  “Yeah. You see that range road back there?” He gestured with his paper cup to the gravel road behind us. “That is the proverbial county line. City’s on this side, county of Strathcona’s on the other.”

  “Right,” I said, drawing out the word. “Out of your jurisdiction.”

  “You bet. As soon as I saw that, I called the EPS boys, so they could handle it.”

  “So you didn’t see the body or touch it.”

  “Didn’t even step into the field once I realized where it was, thank God.”

  “Why thank God?”

  He paused, his face showing concern. “You’re not going to quote me, are ya? I mean, if you want to know something about the case, you should talk to your friends in the tent.” This was his way of saying he had seen everything that had transpired.

  “Naw, the EPS guys gave me all the information. I’m just naturally curious. Can’t help it, comes with the job description. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.” I let the sentence fall but didn’t move. I waited to see if he would answer. He might have, but since he was a cop, he would realize what I was doing and wish me a good morning, in that nice polite and efficient way the Mounties have of saying, ‘It’s time for you to get the fuck out of here now.’ All other cops try to emulate that tone, and while a few can do it pretty well, only a Mountie can pull it off with such ease.

  But it didn’t come. “Thank God means I get to go home and watch the hockey game after my shift is done today instead of filing the paperwork on another one of these.”

  “You mean there have been others?” I said, smelling a bigger story than just a body in a field.

  “Only a few in the last bunch of years since I’ve been stationed here. Three, four tops.”

  Three or four could be a lot or not much, depending on how long this Mountie had been stationed in Strathcona. If it had been just a couple of years, it was a lot; if it was five to ten, it was pretty average. “So you’ve been here long?”

  He shrugged. “Five years, I guess. But this is my second time. My first happened right out of the Depot and that was, what, fifteen years ago, so I’m including that in there as well.”

  I deflated, realizing that three to four dead bodies in a field over a twenty-year period was nothing; there was no larger story, just the one I had written in my head.

  “Oh, well, thanks for your time. I better head back to the city and file my story.”

  “You have yourself a nice morning,” the Mountie said, without any hidden meaning.

  3

  I was expected back at the paper, but instead of heading into downtown, I took a left on Fiftieth Street and followed it until the industrial zone faded into residential. I trolled through the neighborhood until I found a 1960s-style strip mall that housed your typical neighborhood shops such as a place that sold knitting supplies, a butcher shop, a bank, one of those payday loan spots, a pizza delivery spot called Double AA Pizza, plus an independent convenience store, originally run by a family of Chinese immigrants in the sixties, then passed on to the Lebanese for the seventies and eighties, and was probably now in the hands of some family from the Indian subcontinent. There was also a possibility that the Punjabis had moved on and immigrants from the Sudan or Eritrea had taken over.

  Also in the mall was the ubiquitous liquor store, one that no doubt popped up during the Klein revolution of the nineties in which the selling of liquor was taken out of the hands of the provincial government and given over to the private sector.

  Probably the only good decision ever made during King Ralph’s fourteen-year reign over the province, because instead of being able to buy liquor at one of only twelve Alberta Liquor Control Board (ALCB) stores, with hours limited from noon to 10 P.M. and no sales on Sundays, you could now buy it from one of countless small corner liquor stores that popped into existence the instant the legislation was signed. Nothing like an ex-journalist in power to make booze more readily available. Don’t even ask me about the legal gambling options, because I could go on.

  But of all the stores in the strip, it was the bank I was looking for. I was still feeling a bit jittery from seeing the body in the tent so I felt the need to take care of a bit of business to get myself back into the world before filing my story. Even though the actual news deadline was midnight, I knew I would have to write a few paragraphs for the online edition of the paper.

  I had a couple of hours before that deadline, and in the paper business, two hours before deadline is an eternity. I could write and file the full story about the body in the field, highly readable and factual, in twenty minutes, even less if I was pushed. So writing a few paragraphs for the online edition was peanuts. I had plenty of time. Still, one of the city editors would be on my butt the instant I walked in the door, so I knew I had to be quick.

  There were plenty of empty parking spots right outside the front doors of the bank but I parked a ways away, snuggled in between a large, burgundy pickup and a late-model domestic sedan, an old-man car ’cause the only ones who seemed to drive those things were men sixty years old and over.

  After stepping out of my car, I waited a bit by the car, letting my glasses darken to the outside light. One good thing about having a regular job again was the availability of benefits. As part of the strike settlement, the paper gave each staffer five hundred bucks a year as a benefit top-up, for items not covered under the basic plan. Even though I had been a scab, I got the same deal, pretty much covering the cost of my new glasses.

  It had been almost three years since I had had new glasses and the world looked pretty wonky the first time I put on my new lenses. Everything was beautifully clear, in perfect focus, but it was a little disconcerting. It took me only a week or so to get used to the new glasses, but it had been only about six months since I had become a solid citizen, with a real job and a real place to live, and I still was not used to it. Every time I took a walk downtown, I had to consciously remind myself not to ask people for spare change. I would adjust, I knew that, but it was a gradual process.

  My piece of banking business was short and quick. If luck was on my side, I could get it done in less than a couple minutes and then I’d be back to work before anyone realized I was out longer than expected. Or I wouldn’t. The odds were about evenly balanced, which to a gambler like me are probably the best I could get anywhere.

  When my glasses reached the desired darkness, I adjusted my ball cap so that the brim hung a little lower over my face, and walked up to the bank and stepped through the doors. I grabbed a form from the dispenser, scribbled on it, and since there was nobody waiting, stepped to the front of the line. Three of the four tellers were helping other customers; the one without a customer was sorting bills into a pile and writing a few figures on a sheet of paper.

  My heart rate increased slightly and I started to breathe through my mouth, as my mind gave birth to a pang of worry. I felt an urge to look up at the cameras and around for any other staff or recently arrived customers, but that would only draw attention to myself. The goal was to make myself as inconspicuous and undistinguishable as possible. No doubt there would be photos, maybe even video footage, of my presence, but I knew they would mostly show a white guy with a ball cap and sunglasses, as normal as you could find in this city. I could be anyone.

  I took a slow, deep breath, and allowed everything to slow down for me. In a few seconds, I was back to my normal self, a bit nervous but outwardly calm and collected.

  The teller made eye contact with me and, with a smile, invited m
e to step forward. I did, without returning the smile, and slid the deposit sheet forward, holding it tight to the counter with three fingers.

  The teller glanced down at the deposit slip and his smile faded. The hand reaching for the slip jerked back as if it was escaping from a mousetrap. His eyes widened as, for another second or two, he looked back at what I had written on the deposit slip:

  “Please give me all your money. Sorry and Thank you.”

  He looked up, insulted, but worried. I knew that he was searching in my eyes for the joke, but I shook my head. “Quickly please,” I said, glancing down at the slip to remind him why I was there. “And thank you very much,” I added. Nothing like a few thank yous, and pleases in the right places, even when it’s a command for no dye packs, please, to give them efficiency in their manner.

  The teller gave me another look, but this time it was a deeper one. I gave him nothing in response; no emotion, no blinks, no smiles, just a blank face. I had no gun, no knife, no weapon of any kind, and there wasn’t even a threat in my note, but the instant the teller looked back in my eyes, I knew I would successfully rob this bank.

  South of the border, with their armed security guards, even in the smallest bank in the smallest town, this would be just another form of suicide. But up here in the Great White North, with our slightly tougher gun laws, our overriding sense of the rule of the law (thanks to the Mounties for that), and a nationwide system of banks with centralized training and procedures, things were a bit easier. Robbing a bank like this wasn’t that difficult, even without threats or a weapon.

  It’s a lot like gambling. When you step up to the teller and hand over the note, you’ve got to have a certain recklessness, a “who gives a shit because it’s only money/life/jail/death” attitude. You’ve got to show the teller that you mean business. They may think that you don’t have a gun or any sort of weapon but you can’t let them trust that feeling. They have to believe that you are serious about what you are doing and that they had better do what you’ve asked or there’ll be trouble.

  Maybe it’s my outward appearance of calm and my polite attitude that pushes these tellers to realize that I’m not someone to be trifled with, I don’t know. I guess that’s why the poker-playing reporters at the paper are reluctant to invite me to their games. When there’s a hand with big money at stake, the only thing I worry about is the basic poker stuff, whether the odds of my hand winning are good and/or if I’m being bluffed. Nothing else. I don’t worry about whether I can afford to lose that money, whether I’ll lose that month’s rent or grocery money or car payment with my bet. I’ve already lost everything in my life due to gambling, so a few hundred or even a few thousand bucks makes no difference to me. You can’t truly gamble if you focus on that kind of stuff, and it’s a weird sort of freedom. So when there’s a big pot at stake, I’m not calculating the cost of the bet on my life, job, and family because I’ve made and lost that bet already. More than once.

  Then again, the reaction of tellers probably has nothing to do with me, and more to do with their training that tells them to give the money without a fuss. Even with the dramatic nature of robbing a bank, everything always seemed to go so smoothly that the other tellers and customers usually couldn’t tell the bank was being robbed. It was almost as if it was starting to lose its appeal. But I had to watch out for that because that kind of attitude would only drive me to the casinos, and once I walked though those doors, there was no coming out. This kind of gambling seemed a lot safer. Strange, but that’s just the way it was for me.

  Outside the bank, barely five minutes after I strolled in, I walked toward the parking lot. Running would attract attention. I weaved in and out of the parked cars, even stepping into the convenience store to buy a couple of lottery tickets before heading back into the parking lot. By then, I already had removed my cap and opened my jacket to make a slight change in my appearance.

  Sirens wailed in the distance but again I walked through the lot, this time directly to my car, the same way a convenience store customer would. The burgundy pickup was still there but the old-man sedan had been replaced by a dark green SUV. I climbed into the car, started it up, and pulled out. I was about a hundred meters away from the strip mall heading north toward the River Valley when I saw in the rearview mirror a couple of cruisers zip across the intersection toward the bank.

  I cruised through the neighborhood, acting like someone looking for an address by leaning forward to look out my side windows every couple of seconds. I did this for another five minutes or so and then turned back onto Fiftieth Street heading north until 101th Avenue. Then I made a right toward downtown and my awaiting deadline.

  4

  The newsroom was what one imagined a major metro newsroom would look like: a large open room filled with clusters of desks, computers, and people typing on keyboards. Since it was about twenty minutes before the online deadline, the place was crowded with reporters of all types and beats pounding out miniature versions of their stories that could be included on the online edition of the paper.

  This was a new thing to me, having two daily deadlines for two different editions of the same paper. But since readership of the actual printed version of the paper had been steadily dropping, there was more and more emphasis on creating an online presence. And with every media outlet and bloggers doing the same thing, the speed at which news had to be processed and delivered had increased exponentially since the last time I had worked. Now, instead of writing one story about the body in the field, I was required to write two: a short one for this online deadline and then a longer, more standard news story for tomorrow’s print issue. Once the print issue was delivered, my longer story would replace the shorter one in the online edition and the cycle would start again.

  During my first couple of weeks back at work, it was a bit of an adjustment to adapt to this new way of delivering news, but the required skills were the same and a deadline was still a deadline. In my two decades of journalism, I had never missed one. Even during the tough times when my life was falling apart. The power of information, the rush of having news that no one else had, and the desire to be the first to break that news or impart that information, was a powerful addiction, sometimes even more powerful than gambling.

  Entering a busy newsroom, with its high ceilings and clattering noise, each individual in a world of his own but everyone joined together in the same united purpose, always reminded me of walking into a casino. The jolt of adrenaline, the quickened heartbeat, and the hope of coming through with a win was almost the same. But unlike a casino, there was always some sort of success in a newsroom, some sort of achievement once the story was written. And with the deadline, there was always an end to your time there. While you could always leave a casino—they did kick you out after a certain time—I could never really come to a conclusion. I always seemed to need something more; even if I was winning, it was never enough.

  I wove my way through the huddles of desks, heading toward the city section, which sat near the northeast corner of the room, roughly sandwiched between the sports and business sections. I was barely fifteen feet away when I was accosted by one of the assistant city editors. Mandy Whittaker was her name; she was a gangly woman in her mid-thirties, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail so that she looked much older than she was, more like an old hippie than an up-and-coming news editor. She was a pretty good assistant CE, smart, competent, and a little hard-nosed, but that was part of the territory.

  When you’re responsible for making sure that twenty reporters get their stories filed on time, and then need to edit those stories and decide which ones go where in the four pages of the city section, you have every right to be a little hard-nosed. Of course, she was a little tougher on me because unlike all the other reporters in the city section, I had not been walking a picket line a couple months ago.

  I had been a scab, was still a scab to many here, someone who had seen the strike as a way of getting a job, even temporarily, at t
he paper, which before the strike had a reputation as one of the best in the country. I wasn’t completely proud of what I had done, but it did get me off the street and into a better situation, and there were a few other things in my background that would be considered worse than being a scab, so I was able to sleep at night.

  That said, the situation at the paper was a little confused because of the strike. Editorial staff and other unionized workers like printers, et cetera, battled management for five long months only to see their union crumble at the hands of Jacob Whyte. The Eastern-based press baron, contrary to union predictions in the early days of the strike, managed to put out a paper every day for those five months, thus keeping the advertising monies rolling while the union coffers were depleted. Of course, Whyte had had the help of a number of scabs, insiders like reporters who had defied the union and stayed at their jobs and outsiders like me. Except for three of us, none of the outsider scabs were given permanent positions; they had neither the talent nor the skill to last long when the real reporters came back. Even though I was a scab, at least I wasn’t one of those insiders who didn’t walk the picket line.

  The animosity between the strikers and the insiders, many of whom had been friends, was deep and infected the newsroom like a nasty boil on the ass. So while Mandy had some trouble cracking the whip on some of her union fellows, she had no trouble using it on me when it was called for. “You’re late, Desroches,” she shouted at me without getting up from her desk.

  “Sorry, boss,” I said with sincerity. “Something came up and it couldn’t be helped.”

  “Just so you know, this isn’t a small-town weekly where you have all week to file your story. Every day’s a deadline here.” It was an obvious crack at me being a scab, because most of the scabs hired during the strike were small-town reporters from weeklies, looking to try work at a daily. Many of the editorial staff thought all of my previous newspaper experience had been at weeklies, but they were wrong. They were also wrong in their contention that working at a weekly was easier; it was only different and, in many ways, tougher.