An Ordinary Decent Criminal (32 page)

Again I locked the door and checked the suite out: reception area, two offices, one much bigger than the other. Windows with alarm wires set into the glass. Conference room with a big wooden table and comfortable chairs for six people, and a big, wall-mounted entertainment unit with sliding dark wood panels.

Inside the entertainment unit was a big TV along with a VCR, probably for viewing video wills. It took fifteen minutes to figure out the wires and separate the TV from the VCR and stuff the VCR into my pack. Followed by all the necessary cables, like video and audio.

The security guard made another noisy, clompy, sighing, sweep of the building, this time with a big flashlight throwing a lance of brilliant light ahead of her as she went. I checked the cell phone and found it was 8:05 on the dot. When the guard had headed upstairs, I looked through the rest of the office and finally found a bright orange extension cord in the closet of the bigger office, tucked away in the back.

At 8:15 the guard stomped back down the stairs to her post. I waited but I could hear nothing else so I kept working.

I wrapped a jacket around the cord and tied it around the backpack, and then snooped around and found two blank VCR tapes still wrapped in plastic in the receptionist’s desk. I took one and sat down to wait. At 9:06 the guard came down the outside corridor, shining her bright light into every office and then continuing upstairs.

At 9:09 I opened the door, slipped out, locking the door behind me, and moved down the stairs, keeping near the edges where there’d be less creaking. At the top of the second-floor landing I leaned down and checked just in case she had a partner, but there was no one. At 9:10 I was outside and sprinting away from the building.

“Nice night for a walk, huh?”

There were three girls and two boys, about sixteen, standing under a street light, and the first boy was grinning as he went on. “Nothing to wear, huh.”

They all laughed at that and one of the girls brushed her short hair back from her eyes. “You forgot your shoes, man.”

“Oh.” I sat down and put them on and one of the girls gave me a hand up.

“Thanks.”

I still had the tools I’d used so I walked a distance before tossing the toothbrush with the gloves wrapped around it into the muddy Assiniboine River, where they vanished like they’d never been. On my way back towards a big government building and a bus route, I detoured to check out a statue blocked from view by a concrete wall and found that it was supposed to be in commemoration of Louis Riel, one of Canada’s more endearing madmen-slash-politicians-slash-rebels-slash-saviors. I stared at the twisted nightmare and then patted its flank.

“I know just how you feel, pal.”

Claire woke me up by sinking her fine teeth into the side of my neck.

“Okay. I’m awake.”

She bit harder.

“No, really, I mean it. I’m awake. Honest.”

She growled and shook her head and Renfield came over to sit about six inches in front of my face. He tilted his head down and to the side and flared his ears, and I realized that he was probably thinking that Claire’s actions meant I was no longer Alpha male. His tail wagged half-heartedly and I figured he was possibly considering eating me. Claire let me go and Renfield slowly stopped wagging.

Claire looked over at me and smiled. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

I cuffed the dog in the head and he rolled onto his back. Claire watched as I went down on all fours and grabbed his throat with my teeth and growled into his ruff.

“What are you doing?”

I spat fur free and got to my feet. “I’m showing the dog who’s boss. And then I’m going back to sleep.”

She cuffed me with an open hand and growled again, which made Renfield roll over and wag his tail. I laughed and kissed her. “Okay, okay, I’ve been wrong before.”

She let me pull on my bathrobe before I went downstairs and midway down the dog caught up. I scratched him behind one ear. “Man’s best friend, my ass.”

Claire forced me into the kitchen and started me boiling eggs. Many eggs, lots of eggs, six dozen, to be exact. She had bought them the day before from a woman who sold them out of the back of her pickup, fresh from her farm. No tax and no packaging. To boil them all at the same time I needed every pot we owned.

“This is an unreasonable number of eggs.”

She stood beside the kitchen table and peeled potatoes into a garbage bag. “It is.”

The last eggs went in and I turned the burners on full.

“Why?”

“Egg salad and deviled eggs. Two dozen for the salad and the rest for hors d’oeuvres. You need to cook them for eight minutes at a full boil.”

I sighed and sat down to watch the clock. At least it wasn’t a difficult job. Claire came over and put a cutting board on my lap along with a bundle of green onions and a sharp knife.

“Cut them fine.”

After the eggs I started to make iced tea. Five gallons of the stuff.

“This is silly.”

Claire had two large bricks of butter she was whipping, one with garlic and one plain, that were supposed to go with the six dozen Kaiser buns I was still supposed to go get.

“No. It’s a barbecue. Hot out, remember.”

It was hard to forget that while I was stirring boiling water and adding cups of refined sugar and chugs of honey. According to Claire, the lemon went in later. She finished the butter and went out to check on the meat she had hung in the back landing.

“Perfect.”

She had bought beef ribs and cheap cross-cut roasts and flank steaks and all the worst and cheapest cuts of meat, and now she intended to serve them.

“Some help here.”

With my help we brought them down and laid them out on the kitchen table. She made her final scoring cuts and then started piling them on specific plates, depending on the size and the length of cooking time. As she worked, she rubbed handfuls of garlic and rosemary into the meat and then started to shovel about half of it into the oven, at which point I complained.

“That’s not a barbecue.”

“You poor sap. It’s not the cooking method that’s important, it’s the sauce.”

She gestured at the stove top where a pot was slowly roiling. Then she carried the rest of the meat out to our hibachi, a huge charcoal grill that had been our first purchase together. She had apparently started the fire before she’d bit me, and now plumes of smoke and steam emerged as she forked the meat on. I was curious, she had made the sauce when I wasn’t there, so I finally asked, “So what’s in the sauce?”

She was putting meat on the grill and whistling merrily. “Secret recipe. Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Rotting pork and beef fat along with really rotted anchovies, although minnows will do. All that gets simmered along with garlic, bay leaves, oregano, salt and pepper. Then white and yellow onions, more garlic and chili peppers. Then you add in tomatoes, dry mustard, and some dry red wine. To get a really good flavor you use hickory wood, which was why I started cooking the sauce two days ago.”

“Minnows?”

“Minnows. The shiny ones are best.”

“Gag.”

She looked beatific. “I told you you didn’t want to know.”

She shooed me out.

I brought buns back from the bakery. “Much left to do?”

“Not really. There’s the cutlery to set up and the Caesar salad to be assembled.”

“So can I have a shower?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Wish ya would. Shave too, if you don’t mind.”

There was nothing to do but wait for the guests. And then they began to arrive and I had my hands full all over again. As I took coats from guests, I wondered if I was wasting my time. And as I wondered I worked, taking coats, smiling, playing the host.

All the guests came, at least I think they did. There were our neighbors from all sides, Ramirez and her mousy husband and quiet son. Thompson and his wife showed up a little late, but that was fine, at least they showed. Vanessa Rose showed up with a hulking boyfriend and they brought good will and cheer and an understated optimism that everything would be all right. The first thing Vanessa did was take me aside and tell me her boss had reconsidered and that we could keep the house for the full lease. Claire accepted this as our due and conned Vanessa into helping to baste the meat.

The weather was good so we set up in the backyard. Claire had reminded me not to put out the booby traps the night before, so I didn’t have the extra chore of dealing with that. I have no skill with small talk so I handed out iced tea, grinned, shook hands, handed out plates of meat and salad, thanked people, agreed the weather was nice, hid the last of the beer from my lawyer, although he had brought it himself. That made his wife pleased with me.

More greetings, more thank-yous, more schmoozing. More small talk.

Thompson took me aside and asked if I’d heard.

“Heard what?”

He was very loud. “Walsh. Burp. He’s in deep shit . . .”

There was one of those strange pauses in the conversation so everyone heard him.

“. . . he’s apparently been spying on a neighbor, he’s accused of trying to steal his own car for insurance, he got insubordinate with some RCMP honcho. He’s falling apart.”

Thompson’s wife walked over and grabbed his arm. “It’s time to leave.”

“Apart. Hic. ’Scuse me.”

He started to say something to his wife and then he took a good look at the corners of her mouth. Then he agreed and they both left. Gradually, the rest of the party left too, fading away like mist and leaving behind litter and good feelings and, if not love, then an absence of fear. And when they were all gone, Claire and I cleaned up and laughed and then we went inside and made love and I fell asleep with my arms around her and hers around me.

I woke up at 5:00 in the morning and lay there. Claire still had her arms around me but I had rolled over onto my back at some point and above me there were dark shadow stains on the ceiling, the predawn blackness by which all others were measured.

In the quiet and the still, with my wife sighing, my dog snoring, my son whimpering, and my mouse walking very slowly on its wheel, I listened to my mind and my instincts.

In Walsh’s house he had a framed diploma that showed he had gone to a very good combat shooting school. I had looked it up on a computer hooked to the Internet in the University of Winnipeg’s library and found that the school taught “Combat Pistol Craft,” along with fast draws and instinctive shooting. Unlike many other schools, though, Walsh’s also encouraged students to carry a backup weapon and the instructors recommended something small but of large caliber,
like a derringer or something similar. The logic being that most small, concealable guns were in smaller, weaker calibers. But derringers could hold one, two, even four shots and could be found in very large calibers indeed.

In Walsh’s house were myriads of toys for grown-ups. He liked toys. He liked gimmicks. Tricks. He liked fancy. He had certificates showing he was good with batons and shotguns, unarmed combat and collapsible clubs, Tasers and first aid. He liked being a cop with a cop’s tools and toys.

Claire sighed some more and outside a crow made an unlovely sound.

In Walsh’s house his punching bag had slick spots on the left-hand side and low. As though he punched mostly with his right hand and aimed for the torso. Or else he kicked with his right leg.

In Walsh’s house in his filing cabinet had been pistol targets marked ten yards with the center X blown away. Also rifle targets marked three hundred yards with groupings of five and four shots you could cover with the palm of your hand. But there were also pistol targets marked five yards with a scattering of five or six tiny holes all across. From what?

In Walsh’s career he had killed several times. He liked it. He was good at it and people were happy when he did it. Twice, bad guys had taken his pistol away from him and he’d killed them. What with, the accounts weren’t precise. Maybe with a backup gun he carried.

It was possible to lose a gun once in a struggle, but twice? That was carelessness. Cops aren’t supposed to do that, they’re trained not to lose their guns.

Walsh liked the adulation he received. He liked being tricky. He was vain. And proud. And he liked to do it all himself.

So maybe Walsh had let the bad guys take his main gun. Which made them real bad to anyone who heard the story. And made Walsh into an almost-victim. Until he shot them. And became a hero.

When he’d interrogated me he’d almost waved his Colt in my face. Why?

So I’d take it.

And he’d shoot me. With the backup gun he was trained to use. And he’d be a hero again. Which he liked.

Outside, the crow made another noise, which was answered by another bird farther away.

Suddenly I knew what to do. I’d been willing to set it up so Walsh would beat the shit out of me and someone would film it. Someone like my wife or my lawyer or Atismak. But this was better. What I now had in mind was much better.

I woke Claire up with a long kiss that grew in insistency. When she was fully awake we made love and the whole fucking world waited. And outside the crows sang to their gods and, for all I knew, their gods sang back.