An Ordinary Decent Criminal (15 page)

“I see.”

“Now, I have to go. Please tell your listeners that they’re safe. The Winnipeg police force is on the job.”

“Thank you officer. This is Simon Maniuk, signing off.”

Claire flipped the radio off. “Comments?”

“Hmmm? Cops here have a toy and they like using it, that’s no big surprise, cops always have toys. Walsh is used to being interviewed and likes it. Anything else?”

“Right. Actually I was talking about the whole suicide by police sniper. Any ideas?”

“Yep. They’re cowards. They want to die and they don’t want to pull their own trigger.”

She grabbed Fred and hugged him tightly and I hesitated. “There’s more. There was an old man in Millhaven, eyes black as pieces of graphite from a pencil, face always slack, hair like fine wire, bad skin, grainy and gray. He killed his kids with a hatchet after he got divorced.”

“Why?”

“Claimed his wife would be ruined without him and he couldn’t do that to the kids. It wouldn’t be fair for them to watch her fall apart.”

“What happened?”

“To the old man? He was on serious tranquilizers, real zombie time. They screwed up on his meds schedule one night and he cut the big vein in his groin with a pop-top off a can of Diet Coke. Or was it Pepsi? Bled out, anyway.”

Claire was silent and her brow was furrowed in thought before it suddenly cleared. “Aha, the magic penis theory.”

Despite myself, I started to laugh. “The what?”

“The magic penis. Poke the woman with it and she’ll be changed forever. All men are convinced. The guy in Millhaven believed that and acted.”

I couldn’t help myself, I looked down. “You mean it’s not magic?”

She hugged Fred some more and he squealed.

“It’s good, it’s not that good.”

She stood up and kissed me before whispering in my ear. “Don’t tell the penis that, though.”

“I won’t. I’m going for a walk, I’ll be back soon.”

She nodded. “I’ll put your dinner in the oven.”

“Shit, I forgot . . .”

Claire stuck her tongue out at me. “I know, lots to think about. Go.”

So I went, my pockets full of quarters, looking for a pay phone a long way from the house and with my head full of various ideas. Most of them unpleasant and some of them downright evil.

As far as walks go, it was productive. Once I found a pay phone, I made sure a few more reporters were still working. I also got to know my neighborhood a little better, checked out ways into it and ways out. Criminal habits, know your routes of escape, just in case you have to use them. Learn the lay of the land, how the area is put together, how the patterns of foot and vehicle traffic interact, where the bottlenecks are. Learn what was there and what was not. I’d been home ten minutes only when the phone rang and I was closest, so I answered. When I put the phone down and turned to Claire, she was drinking a cup of reheated coffee by the sink.

“I’m fired.”

She put her cup down. “Why?”

“Marquez didn’t say. He just said he didn’t need some piece of shit like me and don’t come in tomorrow.”

I let it sink in. “I’ve never been fired before.”

Her eyes went opaque for a moment and then she took another sip. “Go talk to Marquez.”

“Why?”

She grunted in an unladylike fashion and poured the rest of the cup into the sink. “Why not? It beats sitting around and not knowing.”

I looked at the phone and started to pick it up, when she stopped me. “Go in person.”

I nodded and turned to get my windbreaker again.

“I didn’t mean that you should do it now.”

“No time like the present.”

Outside, it had started to drizzle and I raised the collar of my jacket and wished it was a little warmer. It took me ten minutes to walk the distance and when I was near, I paused and checked the store out. I could see two shoppers through the window so I waited ’til they left before going in.

“Hello, Mr. Marquez.”

He looked up when the door closed and his hand flashed down and came up with a length of pool cue. I raised my hands and let my back touch the door while his voice trembled with rage and fear.

“Get-the-fuck-OUT!”

He ran his words together and they rose to a scream.

When I answered, my voice was calm and level. This level of aggression was something I understood. It made me feel comfortable. “Sure. Right away. Immediately.”

I just stood there and didn’t move. When Marquez’s hand stopped shaking, I went on. “Why am I being fired?”

“Why? You’re a fucking thief,
un meutrier, un apache!
”

French was not my strong suit. I could order a beer, a hooker, and tell someone to open a safe, but that was about my limit.

“Well, I understand thief and murderer but what’s the last one?”

The pool cue trembled with his pulse as he answered. “A gangster. I found out you belonged to a motorcycle gang.”

I didn’t say a word and he went on. “So it’s true, right?”

My eyes were loosely focused on the cue as I answered. “Most of it. I never belonged to a gang, though. Not much of a joiner, I guess.”

Marquez’s fingers whitened and I knew he was about to start swinging.
If he did, I’d take his shots and then move around into the register area and tear him apart. I’d been hit before and just thinking about the pain and release made me feel better. He must have seen something in my face because he flinched and lowered the stick a bit. “But the rest was real?”

The whole discussion was pointless and I turned to leave. For some reason, though, I stopped and answered.

“Yes. It happened, I did time. Now I’m just trying to get by.”

His brows furrowed in thought. “But, you were a criminal, right?”

His voice cracked like he wanted to believe something and my head throbbed. All of a sudden I wished for about eight lines of good coke and twenty ounces of Grand Marnier, and that scared the living shit out of me.

“Fuck you. Here, tell you what, I remove from you the necessity of ever believing anything can ever change.”

Marquez didn’t say a word and I went on in a gentler tone. “Never mind. You owe me for two days. Mail it tomorrow.”

And I left. The rain had let up and I could see for miles in all directions. There were no tall buildings nearby and the rain had cleaned the pollution out of the air. The prairie sky stretched out all around and shrank the city and my problems down to nothing at all. For a second I longed for a fight, someone to swing at and someone to swing at me. Bones to break, people to hurt, blood to spill. Then that feeling faded too.

At random I chose a direction and began to walk. The showers began again and the rain splashed hard on the concrete and bounced up past my ankles. Out of curiosity, I reached out with the tip of my tongue and tasted some of the rain and it was sweet and clean, like tears. When I started to get angry again, I walked on a little farther. When I was done thinking about fire and blood and razor blades, I turned back on my path and walked home.

Claire got angrier than I had ever been. She ended up in a mood more suited to an employee of the Spanish Inquisition. “Fucking asshole. I’ll skin his dick and use it as a cape.”

And I’m the one with the reputation and sheet.

“What a colossal jerk-off.”

She was in the same kind of mood as one of those giants from fairy tales. You know, “I’ll break his bones to make my bread.” I was still smiling about it when she glared at me. “Why are you smiling? Why aren’t you pissed?”

“Nothing I can do about it. Also, I was pissed on the walk home. I got over it and now I’m just curious.”

She paused and sat down on the floor. Renfield took this as a sign and came over for a belly scratch. When she didn’t understand exactly what he wanted, he responded by rolling over and waving his legs about until she understood the message. As she scratched, I sat down and she relaxed, dogs are good for that.

“Curious about what?”

Renfield moved towards me and I started to scratch him behind his ears as his doggy smile grew wider and wider.

“Mostly about who told Marquez about me.”

“Whoever sent the notes, that’s obvious.”

“Right. But I still think more than one person sent the notes. Also, there’s the tape, which requires skill and equipment. And a vulgar imagination.”

“All right. Let’s think about this.”

We both sat there and mauled the dog and then she went on.

“The possibilities. Someone from your past, the cops, and friends of the guys you killed. Am I forgetting anything?”

“No.”

“Now for motive. Someone from your past acting for revenge or profit (how they’d get profit out of this, I don’t know), friends of the guys you killed for revenge, and the cops to discredit you.”

“Skip profit. There’s no way to make money here that jumps to mind. That leaves us with revenge and discrediting me. Revenge is self-explanatory and I’ll look into that.”

I thought about it all and continued. “Now, the cops have a good motive. If I leave town for whatever reason or get discredited, then the cops go scot-free.”

Renfield rolled onto his belly and I continued scratching while Claire went and found a dog brush. She brushed for a few moments and then yawned.

“Where did the term ‘scot-free’ come from?”

“Huh?”

I looked up stupidly and she repeated the question.

“Oh. It’s Old English. A bill in a tavern used to be called a ‘scot’ and if the keeper forgot to charge you, then you didn’t have to pay.”

“How do you know that?”

“Tons of time in jail to read. What did you think I did with all that time in there?”

She rolled the dog onto his side and then pulled the clumps of gray and white inner coat hair from the brush.

“I figured you masturbated, tried to escape, smuggled dope, cooked shine, messed with the screws, got into fights . . .”

I interrupted her before she could go on. “Yes, all that, but there was time for the finer things. So we have three possible suspects.”

“Tell me what Marquez said.”

I did, as close to word for word as I could.

“So Marquez knew about the things you went to jail for, is that it?”

I realized that my past had become a sore spot, then I pushed on.

“Right. He called me a killer, a thief, and a gang banger. Now I killed here, in self-defense, and in other places for other reasons, but I was never nailed for those. A thief, well, most of my time inside was for that. Bad guys know both. But a gangster? I danced around the edges but never wore a patch, never wore colors. People from my past wouldn’t call me that. Some of them could do everything, the notes, the booze, and the bugging.”

“Okay.”

She pursed her lips and I thought about kisses but she was still working.

“It’s pretty safe to say that Marquez was not visited by friends of the dead kids. They wouldn’t know about your past, it was a long time ago, and in a far-off land. Friends of the deceased might have the ability to leave the notes and the booze. And maybe bug a hotel room and do some editing.”

Claire looked at my face and patted my knee before leaning across the dog to kiss me.

“I shouldn’t call those thieves ‘kids.’ Think about it this way, if the you of today found the you at sixteen years of age, breaking into the house, what would the today you do?”

“Lousy grammar.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Yep. I’d shoot me. I guess. I’d still feel guilty about it.”

Claire patted me on the knee again. “Right. I’m bloody-minded, though. I would have killed those guys if I had had the chance. I just don’t think I would have had a chance.”

“Thanks. I think I was just damned with faint praise. Still, our note dropper and bugger is probably not a friend of the dead kids. It’s probably not someone from my past, because all my criminal friends think I’m going to fuck up on my own and don’t need any help. Changing the subject gently, he asks, what about your family?”

Claire chose not to respond immediately. Instead, she went back to brushing the dog before speaking. “My family loves me, period, and through me they tolerate you. Right now I’m concerned with your old friends, the ones who hate you. I think they’d shoot you if they were mad at you and this whole thing seems awfully complicated. Making you lose a job is kind of pointless.”

“Right. Okay, now we’re on to the cops. The Crown will be watching them carefully and they won’t want to do anything too stupid. They’d have access to my record and could do the rest with no problem. The records mention gang-related activity, from way back but it’s there, sales of this and that to gangsters. Buying this and that.”

“Wanna be more vague?”

She was grinning and I rolled my eyes.

“In Edmonton I was selling hash oil, LSD, grass, and crystal meth. With the cash I was buying guns, paper, and jewelry, which I’d move east or west and take a profit. In Vancouver I was moving grass south to assorted independents and picking up guns to move back for sale in Edmonton. A nice three-way trade. Happy?”