An Ordinary Decent Criminal (27 page)

I scratched my chin and lifted my hat a bit while I ran my finger down the invoice.

“Nope. Guess Rachel’s gonna make me earn my pay. Let’s see, Dremel, assorted hand tools, five pounds of assorted nails, five pounds of assorted screws, three tarps, three sets of overalls, five hundred yards of heavy-gauge copper wire, twenty yards stainless steel chain, and a dolly. Looks good.”

I signed the bill illegibly and was given a copy in return.

“Thanks. I haven’t used one of the Dremels before, does the battery come powered up?”

“No. You’ve got to plug it into a standard power outlet for about two hours to get a full charge.”

I loaded the dolly into the van and lowered it onto its side where it wouldn’t move. Then I put the boxes on the passenger seat and on the floor beside the dolly.

“Thanks.”

Scott nodded. “Good luck.”

I grunted and drove away.

Walsh had a copy of the
Sherlock Homes Guide to Winnipeg
map in the compartment under the passenger’s seat and I opened it beside me as I drove. I was still short of cash and I was running out of time and energy. On the north side of the city was another big shopping mall. I aimed towards that and parked nearby beside a small hotel with a big beer vendor built into one corner.

The vendor was covered in glass and neon signs and right past it were a half-dozen stalls for cars, each with a separate electrical plug and a freshly painted sign that read “not for block heaters.” I ran an electrical cord from one of the plugs through the passenger’s side window of the van and plugged in the Dremel. When I finished that, I changed back into my suit and overcoat, both of which were starting to look wrinkled.

While I was closing the van door, I realized a young guy in an Adidas track suit was leaning against the wall and watching me. He was slightly built with thin, ropy muscles and in his late teens or early twenties with pale blue eyes, the deep tan you get from skiing, and short brown hair that stuck out from under a baseball cap that advertised Moosehead beer.

“Howdy.”

He nodded at my parking space. “Those are for staff only.”

“Sorry.”

He shrugged. “Not that I care but you should know that those plugs only run for half an hour and then shut down for an hour. That’s when they’re on and I don’t think they’re on this month.”

“That’s cheap.”

He shrugged again and lifted a coffee mug that advertised a strip bar and some event called “Legs! Legs! Legs!” “That’s the owners. Lithuanian-Poles. Cheap through and through. Stingy.”

I looked at the cord and the van and thought. He went on.

“You need power for what?”

“Hmmm? To recharge the batteries on some power tools.”

He drank some more coffee. “I could help. Run the line into the vendor and plug it in the back outlet.”

“How much would it cost?”

“How long do you need?”

“Two hours. Two and a half.”

“That’ll work fine. Twenty bucks?”

“Ten?”

“ ’Kay.”

I nodded and the kid took the plug through the door behind him before holding his hand out to me. The bill vanished and I shook his hand to seal the deal.

“You are . . . ?”

“Seth Varaniuk. My grandparents own the place.”

He spat carefully onto the concrete from between his two front teeth.

“Okay, Seth. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

All that done and I still needed cash, that hadn’t changed. The new mall was maybe three times as big as the first one and I wandered it with my hands in my pockets and my eyes moving over everything. There were electronic stores and music stores, watch repair places and banks, stores selling jewelry and more selling overpriced women’s clothes. Stuff you wouldn’t believe or need or want or wish on your
worst enemy. Halfway through, I had to stop to rest and sat down on a bench across from a giant sporting goods store.

When I’d recovered, I went into the place and used some of the last of my cash to buy an assortment of hats, some better quality hand tools, and a cordless electric glue gun. There were racks of lockers near the information kiosk so I put my purchases there and kept looking. All through the mall I found things I could use but nothing to help my central problem, which remained money.

A song from the creepy movie
Cabaret
went through my mind. “A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound . . .”

Or Pink Floyd. ’Cause it’s all about the Floyd and the
Dark Side of the Moon.

“Money . . .”

I bought ten yards of rocket ignition fuse from a hobby store. The clerk was looking down the blouse of the lady behind me in line so I also pocketed a set of Exacto knives and some electrical tape. At a Radio Shack I picked up AA batteries, copper wire, and a cheap-model Polaroid camera and film. At a big drugstore I found an electric toothbrush, a box of cotton pads, some double-sided carpet tape, a tube of generic super glue, and a package of latex gloves. Which took care of the rest of the money.

When I went back to the locker, I noticed a woman feeding a five-dollar bill into a bright red machine beside the information kiosk. The machine licked the bill in, chirped, and then dumped five loonies out for change through a slot in the bottom.

I said, “Praise the Lord.”

The woman, a tight-faced bottle-blonde with big pores spaced far apart, turned to me and frowned. She looked as though she was in her late fifties and hadn’t enjoyed a single day of her adult life. “You should not blaspheme. It’s not proper.”

I grinned broadly. “I agree and I’m not.”

She stared coldly at me and her lips pursed tightly, so I asked her gently. “Have you accepted Jesus as your own personal savior?”

She nodded once abruptly and walked away briskly but I kept smiling because I’d found the missing cash I needed. To make sure, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a quarter, which I let roll onto the floor and under the drink machine beside the change machine.

“Oops.”

No one seemed to be watching and there were no cameras that I noticed, so I leaned down between the machines to retrieve my change. Amid the dust bunnies the cash machine was attached to the wall by a quarter-inch steel chain that ran through a narrow pipe welded to the bottom of the unit.

The power cord was a normal, rubberized one that ran straight from a hole in the wall to the machine itself and no plug was visible. I was very careful to touch nothing with my fingers or palms.

Standing up, I found that the machine was owned by Apex Machine Works, which had been servicing the public’s needs since both 1975 and 1981. That confused me a little but I just smiled and patted the machine gently with the edge of my left hand before emptying my locker and leaving.

Seth, the beer jockey, was gone by the time I reached the hotel but the guy who had replaced him handed over the other end of the cord with no questions and I drove back to the mall. In a far corner of the lot I checked to make sure the Dremel was powered up and then I changed into the overalls. Before I did anything else, I opened the tube of glue and used it to varnish my fingertips until there were no more fingerprints. The glue dried in a couple of seconds and that was that. Then I wiped down the tools and my clipboard.

I opened the attachment pack that came with the Dremel and installed a ceramic saw blade onto the tool and pocketed two replacements. Stealing a set of licences from a random van took only a second and I used four lengths of the carpet tape to stick them over the ones the van was already wearing.

There were some parking spots reserved for emergency vehicles next to the mall’s entrance nearest the change machine. I used one and walked in wearing a gray baseball hat and wheeling the dolly in front of me with the Dremel and a roll of electrician’s tape sticking out my back pocket.

“Howdy.”

The girl behind the information desk was wearing a dark blue jacket and skirt with the name “Candy” in gold lace just over her heart. She looked at me disinterestedly and then went back to reading a glossy brochure. I stood there patiently until she bothered to look up again. “Can I help you?”

“Sure can. You can write Out of Order on a piece of paper and hand it to me so I can put it up. I’m from Apex and they need to recalibrate the cash machine back at the shop. There have been some problems.”

She looked me over and shook her head. “So why don’t you have a, you know, company-insignia-type-thingie on?”

She was writing on a piece of paper and doing it quite elegantly.
I answered. “I’m a private contractor doing salvage and hauling. Apex just contracts me to do the heavy lifting and grunt work.”

She handed me the note.

“Wanna feel my muscles?”

She sneered. I went and posted the sign over the change machine, using her tape, and then knelt down with my back to the desk. There was a small chance the cops might be able to pull fingerprints off the tape or the sign but the odds weren’t good, what with the glue on the tips of my fingers.

There were a few shoppers around but no one paid me any interest as I went to work. In about twenty seconds, the Dremel had cut through the chain. Then I took a deep breath and started on the power cord. I figured I was insulated, using a ceramic saw blade plus the heavy-duty gloves, but if I was wrong, I’d get zapped into a crispy critter right away. In two seconds, though, the machine was free and I was unscathed, so I sealed the cord with electrician’s tape and then taped it to the wall with a big X of tape.

“That’s loud.”

I looked at the girl and shrugged. “Almost done.”

The machine was heavy, around three hundred pounds, and awkward, but I finally walked it out and levered it until the dolly could slide underneath. Then I tied it down with the canvas straps and tested the buckles.

“You’ll get it back in a day or two.”

She went back to reading her brochure, moving her lips slowly.

I wheeled the machine awkwardly out to the van and levered it ungently into the back before tucking the dolly beside it. With that done, I drove away at a sedate pace, stopping behind a convenience store to rip the stolen plates free and dump them down a storm drain.

It was almost 5:00 and getting dark so I kept my eyes open for some place to park and crack the machine. I was starting to feel nervous, when I found a brewery that was being demolished. It was surrounded by a high cyclone fence topped with barbed wire and right
beside was another fenced lot where a produce company kept their trucks. It was just off a minor highway, so, to find me, someone would have to be looking right into the setting sun, heading south, and turning right immediately down a bad gravel road.

“The love of money is the root of all evil.”

A preacher in Drumheller had said that, over and over again. I repeated it as I switched heads on the Dremel and used an expensive tungsten drill bit to make an eighth of an inch hole in each corner of the access hatch in the front of the machine. Then I used one of Walsh’s screwdrivers from his tool kit in the back of the van as a lever and ripped off the whole heavy-gauge plate, pushing it at each hole and moving the unit just a little each time.

“Charity begins at home.”

The preacher had said that too. The machine opened and inside was twelve hundred and fifty dollars, nine hundred in fives and tens, three hundred in loonies and fifty in quarters. I pocketed the cash and dumped the coins into a plastic bag. That was awkward because of the gloves. Then I switched heads on the Dremel and hopped out, kept talking to myself.

“And of course the Petshop Boys, who said, ‘Let’s make lots of money.’ ”

The next bit was the riskiest part of the whole thing so I worked fast to cut a two-yard gash through the fence and into the brewery. And when it was done, I cut a second gash along the bottom and levered the wires inward until they stayed put.

“Allez . . .”

The gutted cash machine slid painfully out of the van.

“. . . Oops.”

There was no need to be gentle so I muscled it upright and walked it through the fence and toppled it into the weeds. If I was lucky, no one would even notice it there. The two Dremel heads and the screwdriver also ended up in the yard. They’d match the cuts and abuse on the cash machine so they had to go. Resealing the fence took a couple
of minutes and four yards of baling wire to lace the cut closed and then I was done.

My stomach grumbled as I started the van so I drove fast to a garish casino nearby. I pulled my suit on in the rear of the van and went in to a poor dinner in an overpriced, well-staffed restaurant under a fake waterfall. No one seemed to mind that I paid for the meal with one-dollar coins and a couple of quarters.

The waitress admitted she had a copy of the
Free Press
in the back and she generously allowed me to read it over coffee while I free-associated through the next set of problems. I was really no closer to where I wanted to be: I had rough ideas.

My coffee grew cold as I stared into space.

“A refill?”

I looked at the waitress and nodded so she poured and left. I folded the paper and put it off to the side. Then I went driving around.