An Ordinary Decent Criminal (20 page)

“Spare any change?”

It was only a short distance to walk and three people panhandled me. The first was a man in his late fifties with scars from bad acne all across his cheeks. He smelled minty fresh but I shook my head and kept walking. “Sorry, tapped out.”

I considered the term ‘tapped out.’ I seemed to remember that the term came from bartenders who drew from the big kegs of beer. When they were opened, someone would have to drive in a spigot, thus tapping them. When they were empty they would be ‘tapped out.’ Of course, the same ideas and terminologies also applied to maple trees but that didn’t strike me as being very romantic.

Halfway to Edmonton Street I veered into Portage Place, a big shopping mall, and then down into the parkade underneath. I’d left the house without a weapon except for my Swiss Army knife, on the off chance someone searched me, but being unheeled made me a little nervous. The knife had been a wedding gift from Claire’s parents, they’d given it with the file extended and they’d had the handle engraved with the motto ‘cake to follow’ and it vaguely annoyed me each time I used it. In the parkade that file served to cut off a telescoping radio antenna from an older model Chevrolet sedan. When it was free, I pushed the antenna shut and then tucked it into my right-hand jacket pocket.

I headed up the stairs out of the parkade, put my knife in the left-hand pocket, and whistled cheerfully. No one suspects someone who’s whistling because nervous people don’t whistle, their mouths are dry. Therefore, my theory is that when you whistle, people will not suspect you of anything. Although it’s probably a lie, it does make me feel better.

The stairway emptied onto the main floor, and I went to the information kiosk and asked the guard for directions.

“It’s just across Portage behind me and then you head to your right for about a block.”

Behind the guard I watched a bank of TV monitors and saw two
guys wearing black pants and white shirts with Sam Browne belts walk up to a car that looked familiar. I realized that the car they were approaching was the one that had donated the antenna, so I thanked the guard and left.

“Uh, right.”

There was some kind of huge sale going on, which packed the whole area in the center of the mall with people scrambling for footwear, and I felt much better outside. Before I’d gone six feet, though, another person panhandled me, this one a pale woman with dark blue hair and blond roots. I stared at the snake tattoos on her face and shook my head.

“Well, fuck you.”

She said it politely enough so I kept on going and thought about other stuff. I didn’t think I’d actually get into a fight but if I did, then the antenna would give me a long reach to bring an opponent in close for the knife. Although the blade was only three inches long, it would serve. It was as sharp as a razor, perhaps sharper, and three inches in the right place would kill anyone. The antenna was longer but it was just for dramatic effect, somewhat annoying but mostly distracting. It was the knife that would kill.

It was uncommonly warm downtown and the buildings blocked out some of the wind. The clouds were very high up and scattered. I passed by a bookstore named Book Fair and made a mental note to stop back after I’d done my business. Claire could use something new to read. As I walked past the store, the idea of using the pocket knife as a weapon triggered a memory and finally it came to me that Lawrence Sanders had written a book about a pathetic female serial killer who’d killed using a Swiss Army knife. There was something else, though . . .

A panhandler, a new one, interrupted me.

“Could I have a dollar for coffee?”

The request chased the idea from my mind and I stopped in mid-stride.
The panhandler was in his twenties with dark skin and brown eyes. His hair had been cut short and he was fingering a stocking cap as he talked to me.

“No.”

I started to walk on and then I turned back. “Why don’t you just work?”

“Don’t want to.”

“Then why don’t you steal?”

“Okay. Stick ’em up.”

He said it listlessly and I walked on, trying not to smile. It was when I was about three doors down from the short and squat office building that housed the residency office that the other element of Sanders’s story came to me. The killer had worn a bracelet that read ‘why not?’ With my memory satisfied, I went up the stairs happily and into the reception area, where a secretary took an interest.

“May I help you?”

The woman was polite and faked attention fairly well. She was also quite photogenic, with red hair and brown eyes and a nice torso, from what I could see. When she smiled, I noticed a little bit of green stuck to one tooth.

“Why not?”

She stared at me blankly and I went on. “I mean to say, yes. I need to ask someone a few questions about the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants.”

“Certainly. Do you have an appointment?”

There was no one else in the waiting room and I shook my head.

“Well, if you want to take a seat, I’ll speak with Mrs. Claren.”

Before I even reached my Naugahyde chair in the far corner, she was on the phone. I had picked up a fishing magazine and was leafing through it when the receptionist spoke again.

“It’ll be only a few minutes.”

She made it sound like it was some kind of honor so I nodded in
appreciation and she beamed at me. A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with shockingly white hair came out of the back offices and motioned for me to follow.

“Mr. . . . ?”

I offered to shake her hand and passed her a business card. “Leung, Dr. Leung actually.”

The doctor had been rather casual with his cards in the hospital so I’d pocketed a few dozen, just in case. She looked at my clothes somewhat askance and I chuckled loud and long.

“I know. I don’t look like a doctor.”

“Well, actually I was thinking that you didn’t look Chinese.”

I smiled. “Oh. Well. You see, in 1905 the Germans invaded Shanghai . . .”

I let it trail off and she led me into a plain little office where she sat behind a cheap desk with her back to the window, which overlooked a long, narrow alley full of clean garbage cans. In a few corners there was still dirty snow, black almost with soot and full of leaves and twigs and empty bottles of hair spray. Down the block, three kids were huddled in a brightly painted doorway and passing a cigarette back and forth, and when the cigarette was down to practically nothing, one of the kids started to strip down a handful of thrown-away butts for the remaining shards of tobacco. When he had enough, he anted up for a piece of rolling paper and made a new cigarette, which they lit and began passing around. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing but I’d done the same thing enough times to know the motions by heart.

“Dr. Leung?”

“Oh, right. Distracted myself for a moment there. Just looking at the kids.”

She turned her head and shook it as though she was trying to dislodge something.

“Tsk, tsk. Animals. Filthy animals.”

When she turned back to me she was focused on me and the kids were right out of her mind.

“And how can I help you?”

“Right to business, I like that. Actually I’m doing a favor for a patient of mine who’s having some troubles with his landlord. My patient is schizophrenic, which he treats with medication. The landlord is, frankly and bluntly, bigoted and wants him to leave.”

Mrs. Claren made a little moue with her mouth and stuck out her teeth but I ignored her and kept talking.

“In my professional opinion, it would be criminally wrong to force my patient out onto the street. I’d like to intercede with the landlord and, to do that effectively, I need some information. How, for example, does a landlord go about forcing a tenant out if the tenant does not want to leave?”

She opened a drawer below my level of vision, took out some papers, shuffled them, and then put them right back, apparently into the same drawer. “I didn’t know doctors did that kind of thing.”

She managed to make it sound insulting and vaguely degrading at the same time.

“They do if they’re any good at their job. The oath I signed reads ‘First do no harm.’ ”

She looked at me blankly. “Hmmm. Well, basically a landlord can evict a tenant only under certain circumstances. I have a pamphlet around here somewhere but this is a synopsis. A tenant can be asked to move out immediately if they don’t pay the rent, although they must be given four days’ notice. Not paying the security deposit is also grounds, so is a failure to keep the residence clean, damaging the premises, disturbing the neighbors, changing the locks, endangering the safety of the neighbors, or too many people are living in the residence.”

She paused and took a drink of water from a big, plastic, penis-shaped bottle about a quart in size. “Of course, in most of those cases
the landlord has to give the tenant a written warning to correct the problem. In my experience, the tenants just ignore the warning.”

“I see.”

She went on. “The landlords can also ask the tenant to move out if they need the space back for certain reasons, like demolition, renovations, etc. In those cases the tenant gets three months’ written warning to leave.”

I listened politely and then asked, “Out of curiosity, just what are the legal obligations of a landlord? What do they have to do?”

“How do you mean?”

“Can a landlord cut off the heating to the property, paint the place with no warning to the tenants, stuff like that?”

“Well, no. A landlord has duties such as maintaining the appearance of the residence, doing repairs, and ensuring the supply of heat, water, and other essential services. They also have to investigate reasonable complaints in a reasonable period of time, and so on. Basic stuff really.”

She fumbled around in her desk and came up with a pamphlet that she passed over.

“There are some other pamphlets around here. A landlord has to provide a fire alarm on each floor of the property. They have to make sure there are working locks on the exterior doors and they have to provide a written receipt when the rent is paid in cash. They have to guarantee the privacy of the tenant, they can’t just barge in whenever they feel like it.”

I listened and wondered whether there was anything the woman knew that was not neatly encapsulated in some pamphlet.

“And if there are problems between landlord and tenant?”

She drank some more water. Again, she didn’t offer me any. “In that case the Residential Tenancies Branch will investigate and try to mediate. In other cases the police might be called or the Human Rights Commission, but that happens only in the rarest of circumstances.”

I stood up and reached over to shake her limp, uncallused hand
and barely repressed a shudder. “Well, thank you very, very much. I’ll get back to you if I have any problems.”

Then I left, wiping my hands on my pants as I went. In the foyer I went over to where I had been sitting and picked up the magazine I’d been looking at. I held it up until the receptionist noticed.

“Yes?”

“Can I take this with me?”

She looked startled. “No one has ever asked that before.”

She thought about it while I stood there.

“I suppose you could, I mean, it’s just one magazine. Why do you want it, though?”

When I held it open she could see the article I’d been reading. It was titled “Absolutely the World’s Toughest Ten Fish” and was filled with pictures of improbably large fish being caught by very tired-looking men wearing very stupid clothes.

“Actually, I’m kind of embarrassed but I can’t put it down.”

She read the title silently and then favored me with a bright smile. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Anyhow, if you let me take the magazine, I’ll tell you something you may not realize.”

“What?”

“Is it a deal?”

She raised and lowered her head just a little and I leaned in close.

“There’s spinach between your teeth.”

Laughing in the back of her throat, she reached up and touched the exact spot. “This? It’s not spinach. I had an emerald inserted into the enamel of the tooth.”

I looked closely. “Oh.”

Finally, I was out of there. A half hour later I was on a random bus to shake any tail anyone had pinned on me. In my hand was a plastic grocery bag full of previously loved books and a vegetarian submarine sandwich for supper.

By six o’clock that night I was receiving a kiss from my wife and dog while the mouse glared balefully at me from a dry aquarium tank placed carefully in the room’s center.

No one offered so finally I had to ask. “Why is the mouse there?”

Claire kissed me again and smiled gently at the rodent. “He escaped from the cage in our room and tried to make a nest in the futon.”

I walked over and looked at him through the plastic wall. His fur was matted and he was industriously licking it back into order.

“Why is the mouse wet?”

Claire linked her arm through mine.

“Well . . .”

Renfield came over and sat down beside the aquarium and gave me a dimly lit dog-type smile.