An Ordinary Decent Criminal (3 page)

It had taken the cops longer than I’d figured to put my name to my face and prints.

“I would like to speak to a lawyer. It’s not illegal to change your name and I did it all legal and proper. Through the courts. And I’ve done my time, all of it, so I’m not on parole or nothing. I ain’t got no handle.”

A smile split my face.

“So. I would like to speak to a lawyer, I’ve said that before and I’ll say it again. Three men broke into my house and attacked, and I acted in self-defense with a reasonable amount of force to protect myself and my family.”

“A real ODC.”

I’d never heard the term. Finally, I asked, “ODC?”

He picked something pink from between his front teeth and examined it. A half-moon of bright blood appeared on his gums before he tongued it away.

“My Da used to be a prison guard . . .”

“Screw.”

Walsh stopped.

“The term is ‘screw.’ ”

He patted my shoulder roughly.

“Prison guard. In Wormwood Scrubs, in London back in the seventies.”

He shuffled through the papers in his hand, examined one, and then shuffled it back.

“Back in the seventies they started to deal with all sorts, all mixed together. Paddy bomb tossers blowing up school kids. Raghead pedophiles. Nigger arsonists. Along with the regular kind of cons . . .”

He winked at me.

“The ones the screws called ODCs. Ordinary Decent Criminals.”

He shuffled the papers again and then again.

“Guys like you. Burglars. Thieves. Thugs.”

He picked one paper out and held it loosely between two fingers. “Just like you.”

Walsh pushed the paper across to me. “Sign this.”

The paper was blank and I looked it over as Walsh sat there with a pen in his left hand. His smile had finally reached his eyes and triumph glittered there until I spat a mouthful of spit onto the paper and started to laugh slowly. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Dumb. Dumb fucking move.”

His voice was low and he kept smiling. He gathered the papers up and scraped the spit off onto the table edge, then slowly got to his feet and came around to my side of the table. I could have reached him with a kick but I never tried. The stallion design of the Colt was about six inches from the corner of my eye and it drew all my attention.

“Mister Haaviko, we can do this hard or soft, but it will get done.”

I rehearsed it. Lean back. Kick Walsh’s right knee into pudding with my left heel. Kneel and get the gun. Click the safety off (I tried to remember if Colt put their safeties on the left or the right side), twist sideways to aim the gun (hard to do sideways and behind your back but not impossible). Pull the trigger twice. (Cop mantra, “One to the belly, one to the head, makes a man dead.”) Find the keys to the handcuffs (they’re unmistakable, small, light, and with a short, hollow barrel), probably on Walsh’s key ring, open the lock (I’ve done it before blindfolded, in the dark, with a nose full of cocaine, while being shot at). Drop the cuffs. Shoot any cops who come in (I tried to remember how many rounds a Colt carried, six at minimum, up to nine for some of the later models). Get out of the building fast, hijack a car, take a hostage as needed, if needed. Drive away.

I didn’t do any of it.

Walsh’s suit coat was open and it swung heavily around his body. Like there was something in his right-hand pocket, maybe. So maybe the gun in his belt wasn’t his only piece. Maybe it wasn’t even loaded. Maybe he would let me grab the belt piece and pop me with the one in his pocket.

I looked at his right hand and saw that maybe it was trembling just a little. And that the tendons on the back of his hand were rigid, maybe with stress. And I remembered that most cop shops had rules requiring officers not to carry their guns into interview rooms. Maybe Winnipeg was an exception but that made lots of maybes and it was a bad cop looking down at me with contempt in his eyes.

“You are a piece of shit, just like all the rest, and you are not welcome in my town.”

I looked into his eyes and then I blinked and spoke softly. “Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot.”

He nodded in agreement and I went on, “That’s what Batman says. Too.”

His hand trembled and two bright spots appeared on his cheeks and then he went to the door and let two men in. Both were in uniform pants and old T-shirts stained gray at the armpits, and wore Sam Browne belts with empty holsters. They were in their fifties and beefy with beer muscle and one had a fouled anchor tattoo on his forearm.

“Gentlemen, Mister Haaviko here would like to do this the hard way.”

Both cops grinned and the one on the left removed his dental plate to show a gap of about four teeth in front. He dropped the plate in his empty belt holster and I took another breath.

“My name is Samuel Parker and I would like to speak with a lawyer.”

And they beat me. It lasted a long time, most of which I spent screaming.

That didn’t work so I tried crying and then puking. Then I pissed my pants but nothing worked. Sometimes, if you make a big mess, the beatings stop, but it didn’t work this time.

It just went on.

There are rules to taking a beating, jailhouse rules, tried and true. Rule one is to scream because people who inflict pain like to know you’re feeling it, so even if it doesn’t hurt, scream.

Rule two is, if you decide to fight, do it right away before weakening because a good session of torture will tire you right out. Rule three is, if you do fight back, then fight to kill.

Rule four is a corollary to rule two and also the golden rule of all bad guys everywhere, and that’s never kill a cop. You kill a cop, you even hurt a cop, and you’re dead. You may be walking but you’re still dead. Cops don’t let cop killers walk around breathing.

It’s a principle or something.

The cops did it right, nothing minor league about it at all. Open-hand blows hard to the top of the head and keep doing it and you get a concussion without bruises.

A phone book and an old-style billy club or the new-style tonfa riot stick, and take turns beating the book while someone holds it across the perp’s ribs. Do that for long enough and you shake someone’s insides loose.

Slap an open hand into someone’s kidneys and eventually you get blood in the urine; keep going and you can kill someone.

It went on until all three of us were covered in sweat and the room reeked of testosterone, piss, and vomit, and then Walsh came back into the room and showed the paper to me again, only now there was a neatly typed confession.

“What say? We can go on. We’re not tired.”

The panting of all of us filled the room with echoes and I spoke in a voice raw from screaming. “I want a lawyer.”

Walsh went rigid and the cop with the tattoo grabbed me and held my head immobile.

“Wait, wait.”

When I spoke the grip on me loosened a little. I knew it was crazy as soon as I opened my mouth. Then I yelled. “Give ME the KEYS, you fuzzy sock SUCKER.”

It was the punch line from an old joke, the edited dialogue from
The Usual Suspects,
and I’d seen it in prison the year before with a whole range of maybe eighty cons howling laughter until the screws had shut down the power and killed the water. The line didn’t go over well with the cops, though, and the one with the missing teeth pulled a couple of cotton swabs from a belt pouch along with a can of pepper spray. It was the cop stuff, not as strong as that sold to civilians. Citizens, however, are only supposed to use pepper spray on bears and dogs and those rules don’t apply to cops.

“This will hurt.”

It was a promise. Walsh braced his back against the door and he
watched as the swabs got sprayed with the clear solution and then brandished close enough to make my nose run and my eyes ache.

“Last chance.”

I didn’t do or say anything. The cop behind me pried open my eyelids one at a time and the other one swabbed the naked jelly and I went blind. About a second after that, the shock hit and everything was pulled out of my brain, sucked along by a scream that deafened even me.

“Mr. Haaviko? Can you hear me?”

I nodded to the invisible voice and looked out into fog.

There were shades of color there, and dim shapes, but the room looked neater than the one I’d been in. Did they move me or clean up the mess? How long had I been out? The figure across from me was thin and wearing dark clothes, including an overcoat. Not a cop, unless it was a detective. I was thirsty, my muscles ached and burned, and I was still handcuffed, but the clothes were new and clean and that was a plus.

When I spoke, my voice was ragged with pain. “It’s Parker, actually, I’ve given up Haaviko. Too many memories.”

The shape bobbed its head and I went on.

“I want to see a lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer. Your lawyer if you want me to be. My name is Lester Thompson and my office sent me.”

It took me a while to think that through. When it finally sank in, I wanted to cry but instead I asked a question. “Are you honest?”

It came out as a croak and Mr. Thompson thought for a while before answering, which I felt was a good sign. “Yes.”

He didn’t sound too sure and I smiled to myself. “Fine. You’re hired. Could you please get me a drink of water and get these handcuffs off? I can’t feel my hands.”

He nodded (I think) and went to the door, where I could hear him talking quietly to someone outside. After a few moments, someone came in with a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm water and the keys to the cuffs. After freeing me, he put his keys away and paused as if he was going to say something before walking out. My hands ached as I tried to retrieve some sensation beyond pain by massaging the swollen meat. It was only with difficulty that I avoided rubbing my eyes.

“Okay, Mr. Haaviko, um, Parker, there’s not a lot that I can do. The police have your confession and I’ve seen a copy of it. I don’t think the Crown will deal down past murder two but it could happen. You really shouldn’t have said anything.”

I ignored him and picked up the cup. The water went into my cupped hand and then I bathed each eye and let the water run onto the floor to avoid re-contaminating myself. Water on oleosporin hurts as the capsicum oils are reactivated but there was nothing else I could use. In a few moments they felt better and when I was done with that, I drank the spoonful I had saved and went back to manipulating the pinched and puckered flesh on my wrists.

“Sorry. Pepper spray. I could use more water or ye old Seattle Face Wash but neither seems to be available.”

“Mr. Parker!”

My lawyer was angry but I kept talking, squeaking away, as the pain spiked and swelled.

“Yep. Don’t know if the wash would work here, not in the eyes. It’s a handy little kit, first a bottle with a mixture of vegetable or mineral oil, water, and dish soap, followed by a rinse bottle of water and clean cloth. But it’s gotta be clean.”

“Are you listening, Mr. Parker? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

With my eyes relatively clear, I could see Thompson. He was a skinny man in his mid-twenties with thin lips and pale brown eyes. He was wearing a chocolate brown wool suit with a bright blue power tie and the clothes looked out of place and almost new. On the table in front of him was a thin manilla folder with my name printed on it and on the floor beside him was an expensive aluminum briefcase with a complicated combination lock. He looked excited and ran his fingers through already thinning brown-blond hair and tried not to smile. My stomach turned as I smelled some kind of musky, cheap cologne radiating off him.

“Yes, I heard. Murder two times three, maybe. The police have a confession, kind of. No Crown deals, probably. Is that about it?”

He moved abruptly and awkwardly like a nervous animal and drummed his fingers on the metal tabletop. “Yes.”

I carefully put my weight on my feet and fought more nausea to stretch and rotate my hips and then my shoulders. My whole body ached from the beating but I doubted there’d be any bruising. A professional hijacker I knew briefly in Millhaven Penitentiary had heard it called a “soft tissue workout,” cop and con slang for the new third degree.

“The confession isn’t signed, right?”

“No. But it really doesn’t need to be, there are witnesses who heard you admit that you murdered the three men after an argument.”

Bracing myself against the wall, I started doing isometrics, pushing muscles against tendons and stretching through the pain, beating it into submission. I realized I was wearing orange detention overalls and I briefly wondered where my clothes were and then I put that out of my mind. Vaguely I remembered Walsh playing with my hands and bagging the confession afterwards, which meant the cops would have fingerprints to show I’d read the damn thing if they needed that.

“Yeah. But a signature would’ve been nice. Now we’re going to have to work.”

“What are you talking about?”

Thompson spoke without passion, doodling on a pad of yellow paper with a black and silver Montblanc pen.

“I didn’t make any confession.”