An Ordinary Decent Criminal (17 page)

“Wonderful. There were Elena and I and the owner of the hotel lounge and her bartender. They came later. Everything was fine until we switched to vodka paralyzers.”

She shuddered again.

“Vodka and Kahlua and Coke and milk. Never again. God did not intend for those things to ever be mixed together.”

When she was finished eating, I shooed her off for a needed shower and sat watching the rain. It was very soothing. Finally Fred fell asleep and I tucked him into his crib. Claire came down, wearing jeans and a sweater. She asked, “So, what are your plans for today?”

“Well, most of today is gone, but I was thinking of getting more resumes and then checking out the archery shop and seeing if the owner needs any help. He’s weird.”

It was said matter of factly and I took the dishes into the kitchen and put them in the sink before assembling a sandwich from a tomato and some lettuce. Claire followed me and pulled a sack of frozen peas out of the fridge’s freezer and put them on her forehead.

“There’s an implied
but
. As in he’s weird, but . . .”

“There’s no but here. The little guy’s just simply weird. After that, I was thinking of heading down to the library and checking out our friends.”

She stood with her eyes closed and pressed the peas to her head. They tasted like shit and we never ate them but we kept a bag around in case of injury. She sensed I was looking and opened one eye. “What do you want?”

“I’m thinking lustful thoughts.”

“Good. That would be a good thing. Can we wait ’til I sober up?”

I brushed the crumbs into the sink and kissed the tip of her nose. “If we must. Um, Claire?”

“I said later.”

She waited but I didn’t add anything more, so she kissed me and then I left.

At the archery shop there were a half-dozen boxes to unload and I had it done in just under half an hour. The driver had blanched when he’d seen me waiting for him and he’d even gone so far as to help pull the boxes off the truck. Up close, he’d smelled of stale sweat and old urine.

I said, “Thanks.”

He ignored me and squealed the truck down the alley and out of sight. When the boxes were inside, I went back to the owner. He was busy with a bow on a big workbench beside the cash register.

Sitting on a bench nearby was a young couple, both pretty as puppies, drinking bottled water and discussing being young and in love. Frank interrupted my thoughts. “Finished?”

“All done.”

He snorted. “Hell, I shouldn’t pay you the full amount.”

I waited with my hands clasped behind my back and he went on.

“But a deal’s a deal. Here, try this.”

He handed me the bow he was working on and I held it awkwardly.

“Bear Two compound bow. About ten years old and absolutely nothing wrong with it. The owner just traded it to me for a new one. Archers are like camera freaks, they got to have the latest and the greatest, they’re always trading up to a new model.”

I raised the bow and pulled the string back to my ear.

“Yep. You’re a natural. You want the bow?”

He said it casually and I looked at him suspiciously.

“How much?”

“Eighty bucks and I’ll throw in three arrows. No tax.”

I put the bow down and shook my head. “Sorry, I haven’t got the money right now.”

“Sixty? Shit, try it out first.”

He made me hold the bow again and measured my arm before pulling a pair of battered fiberglass arrows from a quiver nailed to the wall. I walked down to the line painted on the floor and faced the target at the end of the room. It was twenty yards away and appeared to be the size of a quarter. The old man startled me as he padded up silently behind me.

“Nock the arrow just above the brass bead. Draw the string back below your ear. Sight through the little ring woven into the string, and line it up with the target and this.”

He touched the topmost peg on an aluminum rack just above the grip.

“And let the string roll off your fingers.”

I did and missed and tried again. Then I trudged back and did it again. And again. By the time I stopped, my whole upper body ached and I glanced at the clock. “Jesus.”

Two and a half hours had passed. I lowered the bow and headed
back to the front of the store and laid the bow down on the counter. The old man was back at his seat and he didn’t even look up as he carefully glued a new nock into a camouflage-patterned arrow.

“So, eighty, right?”

I massaged my left hand where the string had rubbed away the skin.

“I thought it was sixty.”

His hands didn’t stop working as he studiously ignored me.

“How about this? I’ll come back each week for the next two months, no charge, to help with your deliveries.”

“Four months.”

“Two and a half.”

“Three?”

“Three.”

The old man agreed and then looked up and smiled. Before he could answer, I went on. “And, I get six arrows.”

“Fine. But I keep the bow for the next month as collateral.”

We shook on it and I tried to figure out how to tell Claire about my new toy as I walked down Main Street. I had the address of the library from the archery shop’s phone book, so I stopped at a bus stop and checked the routes. No problem, one bus would get me there.

On the way I had my eyes open for a tail, either cops or cons. Cops I probably wouldn’t see, they could run a boxcar tail on me with a dozen undercover cops ahead and behind me, switching every few minutes and connected by radios. They could change jackets, hats, whatever, move ahead of me, use cars to leapfrog, all things that were tough to counteract.

No one really said it better than Dashiell Hammett back in the 1920s in California. He said there were four rules for shadowing. Keep behind your subject as much as possible. Never try to hide from him. Act in a natural matter, no matter what happens. And, last, never meet his eye. Cops knew all the rules and broke some of them on occasion, but the basics, the essentials, remained untouched.

As for the cops themselves, there were two things they couldn’t change, shoes and attitude, and for both of those, being on foot gave me the best chance to spot a tail. Shoes because nobody wants to change their footwear over and over again. Attitude because a cop is a cop is a cop is a cop is a cop. Also, they hate to walk, most of them have good teeth, and they all carry guns, which pull their pants and coats out of true.

When the bus came, I paid my $1.85 and sat near the rear door and saw two young, androgynous people climb up after me. Either of them could be a tail. I memorized their faces and their shoes and then ignored them.

Now, if it was cons following me, friends of the dead kids, then they’d probably do an amateur job because tailing someone was hard work, requiring patience and skill and talent. And lots of practice, something most bad guys would lack. Them, I’d probably spot right away.

At the next stop two more people came through the doors, a man and a woman, and I checked out shoes and faces again. Over the next twenty minutes and eight stops, twelve more people entered and the young people got off and so did the woman, and finally everyone’s faces and shoes started to merge and blend. The bus passed between the library and a church. Then a big hole in the ground with a small shopping mall on the other side, then a powerhouse and a parking lot. Small shops and businesses and coffee places, and, at the end of the street, there was a huge wedding cake of a building with gray limestone walls and windows framed in brass. It stretched up over five storeys and filled a whole block, the side off to the left becoming a parking garage half open to the elements.

It was perfect so that was where I got off.

The moment I hit the door of the store, I started to count in my head. One, one thousand.

Tails are fun. Doing them is fun. Breaking them off is fun. But the funky thing is that you can never be sure that you ever rid yourself of the whole thing. Shit, you can never really be sure you were ever followed in the first place. But even paranoiacs have enemies, so I acted like I was being tailed, which is not a bad idea, although it does make you look like an idiot.

I was in the main Hudson’s Bay department store, a big, open area full of mirrors and cameras and expensive merchandise. Too many clerks, lots of brand names, wide alleys between counters and shelves.

Two, two one thousand.

If there was a tail and they were cops or really organized criminals, they’d have run cars parallel to the bus and maintained contact by radio or cell phones. So they’d be circling the store and dumping off watchers on the entrances to pick me up when I came out. If I came out. And four sides to the store meant four watchers.

Three, three one thousand.

I paused by an elevator and checked where I was on a big plastic map of the store. According to the map, there were exits to three different streets on the main floor and one entrance to the Portage Place Mall on the second floor, plus exits to the parkade on five floors and a big basement full of discount shops.

Four, four one thousand.

So I moved. Straight into the elevator and then up to the fifth floor. Watchers would be just getting out of the cars and hitting the pavement. Whoever was behind me, if there was anyone behind me, might already be in the store. And they might have seen me go up to the fifth floor. Fine.

Out and down to the escalator, run down the escalator to four, to three, to two.

By now, some of the outside watchers would be headed into the store, while the inside watcher would be trying to track me.

Twelve, twelve one thousand.

You can run on escalators, stores don’t mind. You cannot run among the displays—store cops automatically think you’re a thief or insane. Someone to stop in any case, so to avoid this, I walked briskly, pulling off my jacket and folding it into its hood—it was rip-stop nylon and folded small, then I threaded the pull ties through a loop-in belt and I had an ugly bag and a plain, white, long-sleeved shirt.

Thirteen, thirteen one thousand.

Past men’s clothes, some nice jackets, past a furrier, which struck me as odd until I remembered that the store was the Bay. They’d be the last place in the world to stop selling furs. Out the doors and one broad hall led to the mall but a narrow stairway to the right went into another building and down. Bingo.

Fourteen, fourteen one thousand.

Down the stairs and out, almost right across the street from where I got off the bus in the first place. There was an alley to the side and I used it.

Fifteen, fifteen one thousand and end.

I was heading in the right direction and I made it to the library without ever leaving the alley except to cross roads going north or south or both.

“Good afternoon.” The library clerk on the third floor had dark hair, bright red lips, a small mouth, and a ready smile.

“I’ve never done this before. I’m interested in some old issues of the
Free Press
. What do I have to do?”

“Do you know the issues? Some of them are on microfilm and the others are in hard copy.”

I consulted the paper in my pocket and gave her the first three dates I was interested in and a few extra dates to confuse the issue. In case anyone wanted to check what I had searched in the records.

“Hmmm. Those are all still in hard copy, but I can only give you three at a time. Write the first three down here with your name and address.”

She pushed a scrap of paper over to me and I jotted down three issues and the name of Archie Tiers of Corydon Avenue, along with his address. It was a real name and a real address and a real phone number, I’d pulled them out of the phone booth downstairs. A few moments later she brought the first three papers out and I went over to a round table in the corner of the irregularly shaped room where I could keep an eye on the elevator.

I had a pen and paper and there was also a photocopier in the center of the room for long articles, so I started in no particular order.

The first article was from five years ago and involved Walsh in a case where he was accused of assaulting a suspect. I jotted down names and dates and read on. Half of it was spin on how good a cop Walsh was and the other half was how bad the bad guy was. Walsh was a Winnipeg boy, grew up in Transcona, summers at Winnipeg Beach, high school, police academy, good grades, youngest member of the homicide squad at age twenty-one, ERT (Emergency Response Team) member at age twenty-three, detective at this other age, and so on.
Degree in computer science taken outside work at Red River College. No family. No kids.

He was anti-gang (“Punks and cowards”), anti-drug (“Just say no, for losers.”), anti-cop bashing (“Gotta give ’em space to do their hard, hard job.”), anti-lenient sentencing (“Do the crime and you do the time, and it should be hard time.”).

About the guy who claimed the assault. He was a drug dealer, a thief, a pimp, a knocker-over of gas stations. He claimed Walsh had driven him out of the city in an unmarked car after picking him up at gunpoint. Walsh had then stripped his shoes and socks and pants and forced him to walk ten miles back to the city center. It had been January and twenty-five degrees below zero with a wind chill. Walsh claimed the whole case was ridiculous.