An Ordinary Decent Criminal (9 page)

The cop still had the phone.

“What about Stiles?”

“The felon you stopped from assaulting a cop? They just want to forget about that entirely. It’s a bitch of a thing to try to explain to a jury.”

“Um, Thompson? That’s the cop who got drugged behind you.”

“Oh.”

He turned and looked at her and then back at me. “Did she say thanks?”

The cop blushed and focused on talking to someone on the other end of the line.

“Yes. So how long I am looking at for the shooting?”

He made a big deal about thinking about it. “A month. Like that.”

“Nah. I don’t think so, it’s in their best interests to let it slide. All or nothing.”

The cop came over and dropped the phone on the bed. Then she removed the restraints and slapped them against her leg. “It’s true. See you around, killer.”

My lawyer watched her go and yawned again. “I don’t think she likes you.”

“Breaks my heart. So you’re still representing me?”

“Yes. I thought about you. You’re a pretty reprehensible human being.”

“Yep.”

“Not gonna try to defend yourself to me?”

I grinned and shook my head. “Fuck you. I’m not responsible for your morals. That’s your problem. I have enough trouble with my own.”

Thompson patted my arm. “Right. Anyhow, the reason I’m still here is because I hate being forced to do anything. I hate being conned. I hate being manipulated. I hate being threatened.”

“Which is what Walsh was doing? Is doing?”

“Right.”

He stared at me. “Plus, I believe you. Part of the way, at least.”

“Thanks.”

He left and I turned on the TV at the end of the bed. I’d been watching it a lot, not enjoying it but watching it. The local stations, the morning shows, the afternoon talk shows, the early afternoon news, the soap operas, the kids’ shows. At first the cops had monitored what I’d watched, but soon their interest had waned and they’d started to ignore both it and I. Or is it I and it? Me and it?

In their minds I had become meat they had to watch. Nothing more.

I’d watched the TV but hadn’t paid attention to anything but the credits at the end of the shows. Producers, directors, writers, researchers, the faces in front of the cameras, and the people behind the machines, proper spellings, names, titles. Those I had remembered, repeating them endlessly and silently until they became my mantra.

When the nurses had given me newspapers, I’d memorized more names. Not the crime reporters, those guys had to be in the pockets of the cops in order to do their work effectively. So I concentrated on the political reporters, the guys doing the town hall work, not the guys doing the editorials or the opinion pieces. Opinions I could get anywhere. They were like tits and balls, everybody had two, and I needed facts.

A very shy nurse-in-training came in and froze when she saw no cop.

I said, “C’mon in. Charges have been dropped.”

She was pretty and olive, a Filipino girl with a beautiful complexion and the movements of a dancer. She blushed and changed the plastic bag that the catheter fed and then she danced out on the tips of her toes.

Winnipeg had two daily papers and four local TV stations. By the time the cops decided to let me go, I had the names of five people
who might know something and who might talk to me. That was when the TV caught my attention again.

“The police are not releasing the name of a local businessman who was rescued from a bizarre situation this morning . . .”

It was a local news show, the noon report.

“According to confidential sources, the businessman was found in the living room of his house after he had failed to show up to open his store. He had been tied into a chair and surrounded by more than a dozen containers of gasoline, which were wired to explode a device strapped to his own body. Although the police managed to rescue the man, he has so far refused to offer any explanation or indeed to help the police with their inquiries.”

I shut the TV off. With criminals it’s always about money or power. With amateurs it’s about revenge or sex. Wiring a businessman to go boom was what? Whatever it was, wasn’t my problem, though, so I stopped thinking about it and tried to sleep.

“The things you do to avoid real work.”

Claire held my arm tightly until my balance returned and I could move again in the big park area near the hospital. From where we were, we could see the women’s hospital across the street, but I was concentrating on not falling and didn’t have time for sightseeing. Fred was rolling in the grass and trying to eat a black and white moth, all the while kicking the hell out of his stroller.

I said, “I hate that stroller, you know that, don’t you?”

Claire squeezed my arm. The stroller had been a gift from her parents, a very deliberate insult to me about the things I couldn’t afford for my family and for that reason I hated it. I focused on that hate until I was on level ground and Claire could let me go.

“I know, but it does transform into four separate, useful shapes.”

I swayed and nodded and that hurt. Actually, everything hurt. Behind me was a rolling IV stand carrying glucose that dumped into a vein buried in my right arm. I would have preferred to use my left arm but the veins there had long since been scarred into leathery armor by heroin and crystal meth and cocaine injections.

Dr. Leung had advised against my little walk but Claire had promised I’d behave and so she watched and waited while I stood there. Fred wanted more stuff and he proceeded to look for other things he shouldn’t eat.

“You just gonna stand there?”

Claire grinned to take the sting out and I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Nope. Watch.”

It was a cross between a deep knee bend and a controlled collapse and then I raised back up.

She clapped loudly and Fred rolled over to look for the cause of all the excitement.

“Bravo. And for an encore?”

“I may pee without aid or assistance.”

She made a face at me as I sagged down again and sweat poured out to stain my gown at the throat and crotch. After I’d done six of the bends, I sat down on the ground and started to lean back and forth, covering maybe six inches of an arc per time. After ten of these, I had to stop and rest, and Claire kissed me.

“My hero. How does it feel?”

“Hurts.”

My breath was coming in short gasps and there were spots in front of my eyes.

“How?” Her voice was low and soft so I rolled myself onto a nearby bench and she kissed me again.

“It’s knives in the small of my back. Short ones with wide blades. Never enough to kill, just to wound. They go peck-peck-peck.”

Fred was eating a dandelion and Claire rescued the bright yellow flower and then sat back to listen. She listened brilliantly and understood and when she didn’t understand, she’d ask about specifics. When she didn’t agree, she’d wait and make her point afterwards.

“The knives come with each breath. With each inhalation and exhalation and movement. They peck when I even think about moving but that’s not real. That’s just psychology.”

I got up and did the whole routine all over again. Claire watched and wrestled with Fred for a bit and the sun just shone down.

When we were back in my room, Claire saw an audio tape on the bed and handed it to me along with a note that read “LISTEN TO ME.” When asked nicely, the peppermint nurse lent me someone’s portable stereo and I listened to a conversation caught in the middle.

“Be it ever so humble.”

It was Claire speaking dryly and politely and it was a good recording.

“Could be worse.”

That was Thompson and then he grunted and repeated, “Could be worse.”

Sounds of glasses and ice and liquid coming through very clear and then Claire spoke up. “Here, I’m not gonna drink alone.”

Clinking sound like a toast and then Thompson, “Lawyers’ lunch.”

The sound of another drink, maybe two being filled.

“How bad is it?”

“Seen worse, seen better. The Crown should know something’s bush about it all and, well, maybe they’ll do the right thing.”

“And . . . ?”

“Then they’ll drop the charges. Or they’ll come on hard, depending on local politics, and then we’ll go to appeals and the Crown will continue to press hard or let us go. If they press hard, then we go to the provincial Court of Appeal. Beyond that there’s the Supreme Court, where I’ve never been.”

Thompson kept speaking and I could hear him drinking. “That’s simplified but basically true. The Crown can drop the case now, or during the preliminary hearings, or in the court during the case, or during appeals, or during re-appeals or anywhere else that seems good to them.”

There was a long pause and then he went on, with his voice
sounding progressively slurred. “We’ve only got to win once. They’ve got to win every single time.”

She spoke up, still dryly, still without passion. “Monty used to say the whole system was like a starfish. Once it started eating you, it couldn’t stop, it was built to start eating and its very nature prevented it from stopping. The whole thing was to avoid getting tasted in the first place.”

“Yeah. The system can’t afford to stop once it starts, they can’t afford to admit they make mistakes. My dad was in the army and he used to say, ‘Never complain, never explain.’ It applies to the law too.”

More drinking.

“Been hearing some stuff about Sam. Rough stuff. Bad stuff. Doesn’t match what seems to be happening. Married, straight, and respectable. He even has a baby son, who is where by the way?”

“I left him with a friend.”

“I thought you had just come into town, you found a friend that quick? Did you know someone here before?”

“No. A woman called Ramirez is watching Fred. She’s one of the cops who arrested Sam. We both have kids and started talking when I tried to go down to the station house and Sam was on his way to the hospital. She thinks I’m okay. Just making some bad choices.”

“Well, shave my ass, a cop. See, this is a nice town, lived here all my life and I can definitely say it’s a nice town. So which one is the real Sam? Married? Straight and true? Respectable? Thief? Killer? Drug addict? Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy?”

Claire laughed. “He was one and now he’s the other. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the drinks.”

There was a gasp, a female one. Then the sound of kissing and the sound of cloth on cloth, then skin on skin.

I looked across at Claire, who was sitting on the chair at the end of the bed and bouncing Fred on her knee.

The sound of skin on skin kept coming, then the sounds of more kissing, then gasps and the creaking of a bed, moans, sighs, gasps.

Across the room, Claire was chucking Fred under the chin and making him laugh. On the tape, the noises petered out and then I heard Claire again. “Well, keep in touch. Anything you need, just give me a call.”

Thompson, his voice completely slurring. “Sure.”

“Do you want me to call a cab?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

Sound of a door shutting and a lock closing, then she laughed.

“I never will understand . . .”

When the tape was over, I handed it over to her.

“Ummm. Sweetheart?”

She was putting the headphones on and trying to stop Fred from biting his own toes. “Yes?”

“Did you sleep with Thompson?”

“No. Why? Should I?”

I looked out the window but there were no answers there.

“Then we have a problem. Someone really doesn’t like us.”

Claire listened to the tape and rewound it to the start before answering slowly. “I think you’re right.”

She said it calmly enough but I could see that she was angry. Her brows were drawn together and her lips were tight and narrow. She exhaled and spoke. “What are we going to do about it?”

I thought about breaking the tape into small pieces but I reconsidered. “I don’t know yet.”

Two tiny red spots appeared on her cheeks, signs of strong emotion. “When you’re done with him or her, then they’re mine.”

She exhaled through her nose and listened to the tape for a second time. “Okay. Some of it seems to be part of a conversation that Thompson and I had at my hotel room the night after you were arrested. He came by to introduce himself and ask me some questions.”

I looked at her quizzically. “To your hotel room? He came to your hotel room?”

She laughed but it sounded brittle. “Yes. Very un-lawyer-like. He
called before he came and asked a few questions, and he could have asked the rest of them over the phone but he came over instead. Actually, I thought he was going to dump you.”

Claire patted Fred down and checked his diaper.

“When he got up to the room, though, he was flushed and angry. Sort of scared and smelling of booze and cigarettes. Does he smoke?”

I had to think about that and a series of images of my lawyer flashed through my mind’s eye. Smokers have tells, twitches, just like any other addict, but there are also a bunch of physical signs that hadn’t been there.