Unlikely.
He poured a fresh cup of coffee, sat down on the sofa and began to page through his little black book, spiral bound with a leather cover, what he liked to think of as his Encyclopaedia of Possibilities. He studied the names of all the women he’d conspired to meet during the past eighteen months, studied their descriptions and the names and addresses of the trust companies, banks and credit unions where they worked.
Greg had a large-scale map of the city. Every time he started dating a woman he drove a pink stick pin into the map where she lived. Another pin, a black one, went into the map at the scene of his crime. He was careful that the pins never formed a straight line or followed a predictable direction. Patterns, he knew, were death on criminals in general and bank robbers in particular. He always worked alone, had no friends and stayed sober in the company of strangers.
He had a theory — as long as the cops had to react, they’d always be so many moves behind they might as well be playing on a different board. If he avoided the trap of predictability, the only way they’d ever catch him was because he’d made a seriously stupid mistake. Hilary had been a blonde, the one before her, a redhead. He noted the names of the first half-dozen brunettes listed in his black book, used green pins to fix their work and home addresses on the map.
One of the green pins landed on the same block as a pink pin.
Greg checked his cross index. February, last year, he’d gone out with a woman named Janet Sutton, who worked at a credit union on West Pender. She was the pink pin. The green pin, a woman named Tammy Liebow, was employed by a bank halfway across town. The two women didn’t know each other but had three things in common: their jobs, where they lived, and Greg. He plucked Tammy Liebow’s pin from the map, obliterated her from his past, present and future with a single stroke of his black felt pen.
The next brunette on the list, Barbara Robinson, was a teller at a downtown branch of the Bank of Montreal. Greg tried to place her, failed. Or was she the tall one with the ponytail, liked to spend her time at the track? Greg’s mind fogged over. It was frustrating, he couldn’t pin her down. Had the mole under her chin, smoked skinny menthol cigarettes … Greg dialled the bank’s number, asked to speak to Ms Robinson. The voice at the other end was so detached it was barely human. Greg was put on hold, treated to a Muzak serenade.
He leaned back against the sofa, cracked the mini-blinds and peered warily out. The world had a bleached, faded look. In the park across the street a couple of guys in jeans and sweatshirts were throwing a football around, taking turns being the quarterback and the ham-fisted receiver. As Greg watched, the receiver ran a complicated pass route, turned to catch the ball and crashed headlong into a tree, hit it hard enough to shake loose a storm of yellow leaves that almost buried him as he lay on the grass, unmoving and apparently unconscious.
Interested, Greg cracked the blinds a little further apart. The quarterback trotted over to his pal, knelt down beside him, jumped suddenly to his feet and looked wildly around.
The Muzak was abruptly cut off — right in the middle of the theme from Robin Hood, too. Barbara said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, hello?”
Greg pitched his voice a little higher and said, “You probably don’t remember me, it was quite a while ago, but we bumped into each other in the mall. I was carrying the bowl … ”
“Neil! How are you?”
Greg heaved a sigh of relief. He hadn’t made a note of the name he’d given her. Con man’s block. But it was a lot better than a cell block, you betcha. “I’m fine,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you, but I’ve been out of town … ”
“Where?”
“The Yukon,” said Greg. Now where in hell had that come from? He said, “Did I mention I’m an artist? I was up there painting the moose and caribou, leopards … ”
Barbara knew three moose jokes. Pretty good ones, too. Greg could hardly stop laughing. They traded small talk for a few minutes and then Barbara said she had to take a call on another line. Would he mind holding? It was a game they all loved to play, making Greg wait. He tossed the phone on the sofa and lit a smoke, remembered the guy who’d run into the tree. He was still there, but there was no sign of his pal. Greg exhaled into the thin shafts of light coming through the mini-blinds.
Barbara said, “You still there, Neil?”
“I’d have waited forever,” said Greg.
“If it meant you’d eventually get what you wanted.”
“I was thinking along the lines of a little bit of candlelight and a whole lot of wine,” said Greg.
Barbara giggled. He was starting to remember the details now, the rhythms of Neil’s speech, the way Neil carried himself, how Neil tossed his head when his hair fell into his eyes, Neil’s shy, corner-of-the-mouth smile, the jaunty way Neil flicked his cigarette butts into the gutter as he was walking down the street. His fondness for foreign films, interest in sports. Greg liked the idea of being an artist. It gave him all the reason he needed to have an artistic temperament. Fly off the handle, in other words.
“And a good steak,” he said to Barbara. “You like venison? There’s a place I know about where they keep the animals down in the basement in a big cage. You can choose one and shoot it, no extra charge.”
Barbara said, “Neil, are you on drugs?”
Greg denied it.
Barbara said, “Me, neither, but I wish I was. This place is so boring.”
“How can money be boring?” Greg asked her.
“When all you do with it all day long is count it out and smile and hand it over to strangers, that’s when it’s boring.”
“Sounds like you need a night out on the town, Barb.”
“Pick me up at seven?”
Greg said, “Okay.” But too late; she’d already hung up.
There was an ambulance up on the boulevard by the park, and a couple of burly-looking guys in whites were loading the football star on to a stretcher. Greg was a little surprised. He hadn’t heard a siren. He went into the bedroom, checked out the closet. If he was an artist, he’d better wear black.
Was it Neil who wore the chip diamond in his ear? He was going to have to crank up the computer, check it out … Greg stripped, letting his clothes fall where they may. He went into the bathroom and stared at his body in the mirror.
No doubt about it, he was starting to look a little chunky. Time to cut back on the pizza. Was it Robert De Niro who starred in the fight movie Raging Bull, and deliberately put on fifty pounds so he’d look and feel right for the role? Greg admired the actor’s dedication to his craft. He brought up his hands, hunched his shoulders and danced around a little, feinted with a left hook and then drove a hard right into the mirror, jagged lines suddenly leaping across the glass. Greg glared at De Niro’s reflected image. He said, “Want another one, fat boy?” and lashed out at the mirror again, the blow shattering the glass, fragments of Greg’s face exploding, pieces of his face crashing into the sink, gone.
Greg picked a sliver of glass out of his fist, sucked away the blood. He needed a shower. He needed to find a new way to comb his hair. Comb it straight back. Was it long enough to go for the pony tail look? He whinnied softly, ran his fingers through his hair, pulled it away from his forehead, jockeyed to find a piece of mirror he could look into. Yeah, very nice. With his hair swept back, his eyes looked larger, and darker. He looked a bit like the famous actor Michael Douglas in Wall Street. What about a moustache? Greg tried to remember when he’d first met Barbara. Months ago, he’d had plenty of time to grow any kind of moustache he liked. But what style would a bank clerk find attractive?
Greg went into the bedroom, turned on his Macintosh and summoned up Neil’s electronic image on the computer’s big colour screen. Neil had a bandit’s moustache, wide and droopy. His hair was dyed black, cut short. No part. Neil had really bushy eyelashes, so bushy they dominated his face. His eyes were amazingly blue. Greg smiled. He had a weakness for blue eyes — it was ridiculous, but they
made him feel special.
He used the computer’s mouse to trim the moustache, accidently cut away too much on one side, so it looked lopsided. Now he resembled Adolf Hitler on a bad day. He worked the mouse, gave himself a cowlick. Fired up a cigarette, added sideburns and a pirate’s eyepatch, blacked out a front tooth.
Ash from his cigarette exploded on the keyboard. He tilted his head and blew the ash away.
Enough goofing around. He wiped the changes. Neil’s original image filled the screen. He turned on the printer and punched up a dot-matrix colour printout, then cleared the screen and called up Barbara’s file.
He’d met her on a Friday, four months ago to the day. The bank had an escalator at one end that gave access to a minimall. Greg had loitered on a bench outside the Sky Train station across the street, sipping a warm Coke and smoking, watching the world go by. It was a bright, sunny day in late June. He’d figured that she’d want to eat her lunch outside, catch a few early-summer rays. But no. She took the escalator down to the mall and Greg was forced to play catchup, was almost whacked by a taxi as he crossed the street against the light. By the time he made it to the escalator, she was gone.
Sitting there in front of the computer, he remembered frantically patrolling the mall, checking out the shops and restaurants, working hard to avoid making eye contact with the sales clerks as he hung out by the door to the public washroom. He couldn’t find her anywhere. It was as if she’d jumped inside her purse, vanished. He ran around the mall for three-quarters of an hour, then gave up the hunt and loitered near the escalator until he saw her strolling towards him, idling along as if she didn’t much care whether she made it back to work on time, or not.
He cut in front of her as she turned to look at a frantic MTV video showing on a television in the window of a record store. She walked right over him, her spike heel coming down hard. Greg grunted in genuine pain, staggered and dropped the cheap punchbowl he’d bought at a discount glassware store and been carrying around for what seemed like his entire life.
Greg smiled, remembering. The woman who’d sold him the punchbowl asked him if it was a gift and Greg said no and she asked him if he was hosting a party, maybe even a wedding. He told her he was buying the bowl because he wanted something that would break when he dropped it. He remembered the way the light faded from her eyes, as she realized he wasn’t kidding.
And suddenly Greg was remembering the way the light leaked out of Garcia Lorca Mendez’s eyes, how the huge black pupils swallowed the irises as Mendez fought the gathering darkness, and lost.
Greg shuddered, dragged his mind back to the mall. The punchbowl was in a plastic carry bag, but even so, there was lots of glass to be picked up.
Barbara, apologizing like mad, hiked up her skirt and pitched right in. Greg had cut himself on that day, as well, been nicked by a chunk of punchbowl as he’d picked it up off the mall floor. He still couldn’t say if he’d injured himself by accident or design. Luckily, Barbara always kept a bandaid in her purse in case she tore a nail. By now they were sitting on a bench, Greg watching her as she wound the bandaid around his finger. As she ministered to him she asked him if it hurt. He gave her a spicy grin and said to tell the truth it felt pretty good. She smiled back, holding her own, and offered to pay for a replacement punchbowl. He said no, it was his fault, introduced himself, told her he was an artist, a painter. Had she heard of him? She wasn’t sure. Maybe. It was possible. She said she had to get back to work. She didn’t sound too happy about it. He asked her what she did and she told him what he already knew.
He watched her walk away, didn’t avert his eyes when she reached the escalator, turned and waved.
He waited until a week had gone by and then dropped by the bank, asked her to lunch as she changed a ten for him. She’d told him she’d love to, but couldn’t make it. Greg told her he wanted to paint her. She blushed and he thought he had her, but all she said was maybe some other time … Greg never pushed. Like the man said,
Wanna be your sweetheart baby
yes I do yes l do yes I do
but if you don’t feel the same
as me, babe
well then you and me are through.
So Greg wrote off the punchbowl and moved on, concentrated on Hilary, the most promising of several women he’d met and seduced earlier in the year. Worked his ass off to make her fall in love with him. Stole her heart and then emptied her cash drawer, knew from the look of fear in her eyes how badly she needed him for support, how much she’d miss him when he was gone. His big moment, and the trigger-happy cop blew it for both of them.
On the other hand, by the time he made it to Hilary’s apartment, he’d calmed down enough to realize that she’d really be traumatized, desperately in need of what he had to offer.
But the way it worked out, Greg did all the work of setting her up and it was Randy who’d waltzed in to take advantage.
This thing with Barbara was nothing but smoke. He was running scared, had instinctively turned and headed for familiar ground — the business of setting women up and knocking them down, and getting paid to do it.
He’d played out the shooting over and over again. Initially he’d been sure that Mendez had fired first — the guy yelled something and Greg had turned towards him and the crazy fool fired without warning. Or had they both pulled at the same time, Mendez popping him in his two hundred and fifty dollars plus postage and handling charges mail-order Kevlar vest as Greg shot up the bank? Or did Mendez react in self-defence, shoot only after Greg’d started burning rounds? One thing for sure, he remembered the heavy, wet sound as the first bullet had slammed into the man.
And he remembered Mendez’s face going blank and then looking betrayed, remembered him falling, dying as he dropped.
Where was the truth? Greg wasn’t sure. But he knew that his heart had been filled with terror. He’d made a snap decision not to fall down easy. He wasn’t even sure any longer that he’d noticed if Mendez was armed.
Either way, if the cops nabbed him, he was looking at armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, a possible count of first degree murder. And snatching the cabby, what was that? Kidnapping, unlawful confinement? He’d go down forever, minimum.
His best bet was to get rid of the spreadsheets and badge, throw everything he owned into his car and get out of the city. But if he left town, he’d be turning his back on maybe the only chance in his life to make a major score.
What was the point of whacking Mendez, if he didn’t take advantage? The poor guy would’ve died in vain. A waste.
Greg stared at his computer screen. He lit a fresh cigarette and took the mouse for a stroll, using it as an eraser to wipe his electronic image from the screen.
Fifteen
The sun was low on the horizon, dropping fast.
Parker turned on the heater, rubbed her hands briskly together.
Willows stared out the windshield. The graveyard had brought back a wealth of memories. He was thinking about the partner Claire Parker had replaced. Norm Burroughs had died after a long and painful battle with cancer more than five years ago. A lot had changed, since then. Willows’ wife had left him, taken Sean and Annie with her. He and Parker had become a little too close.
His thoughts turned to Parker. She’d graduated first in her class at the Academy, immediately gone undercover. Narcotics exploited her freshness, her vulnerability. Trial by fire. Her job was to buy soft drugs at street level, dime bags of marijuana, a gram or two of coke. Spend two or three months hanging out with the lowlife dealer trash cluttering the Granville Street strip. By the time she’d finished, narcotics had a millionaire wholesaler on the rack, as well as a truckload of smaller dealers. Parker was good in court, too, remained poised and articulate under pressure.
Impressive credentials and good timing. Bradley had snatched Parker out of the Oakridge sub-station, dropped her in Willows’ lap while Norm was still fighting it out in the cancer ward at Royal Columbian. Naturally Willows resented the
way Bradley had trampled all over his fierce loyalty to Burroughs, the circumstances of Parker’s promotion. It wasn’t her fault things had happened the way they did, but who else was there to blame? He hadn’t made it easy for her, those first few weeks.
Then they’d got into a situation, and Parker had come through, saved his cop bacon. They’d had a few drinks, celebrating. A week or so later Norm had died, and of course they’d had a few more drinks, commiserating, and become a little too close, skittered away.
Then Sheila finally lost patience with the constant uncertainty, fear, and bullshit, lost patience with being married to a guy who was married to his job. Took the kids, took a walk.
Cops. When you chose a partner, it was like being married but taking an oath of celibacy. You shared every damn thing but sex. When your partner was a female, not even that rule applied. Jack and Claire had been off and on lovers for a long time. More often than not the relationship didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Sometimes it seemed they were on a fast track to disaster. Willows was unsure as to which situation he preferred.
A couple of months ago, at summer’s end, he and Parker and his two kids had spent a lazy week together at Long Beach, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Sean and Annie had met Parker several times before their parents split up. Neither of them indicated that they thought there was anything odd about the situation, had adjusted to Parker’s presence in the adjoining cabin with an ease and simplicity that Willows found somewhat unsettling. He’d wondered if the children had previously experienced a similar situation while with their mother in Toronto. But hadn’t asked. At the end of the vacation, Willows had reluctantly put his children on a plane back to Toronto.
Fall Down Easy Page 14