An Ordinary Decent Criminal (33 page)

At 10:00 the next morning I reached Walsh’s car and walked past it, looking for the camera marked with 250. I had on dark sunglasses so I could look up with impunity and I remembered the angles so I found the camera in three minutes.

There I paused and looked around but there were no other cameras nearby. I was in a blind spot at the base of a pillar about ten yards from Walsh’s car. Above me was the camera, set onto a steel platform bolted into the concrete; above that were heavy-duty air vents.

It took only seconds to jump onto the hood of a pickup truck and climb on top of one of the vents. The vent creaked but held and I had maybe two feet of space, which was just barely enough for my purposes. After laying out the tools from the backpack, I went to work, stopping to listen every few minutes for anyone coming or going.

I still had the car antenna I’d stolen from the parking garage days before and I’d used a clamp to attach a young girl’s compact to the end. With that and some practice, I managed to get a look at the back of the camera a yard under me, using the small mirror. On the back of the unit were two, big, female receptacles, one for video and one for
audio, and only the video was plugged in to a thin line leading into a hole drilled into the concrete. I checked through the accessories I’d bought the day before at a Radio Shack and found something that matched and fitted it first to the VCR, which I’d wrapped in a clear plastic bag. The VCR stayed on top of the vent and I started looking for a power source.

Again I was lucky. Less than three yards away there was a plug set into the wall, for what I don’t know. Since the garage was indoors, they wouldn’t need to run block heaters in the winter. The Dremel had a heavy-duty drill that served to put holes in the vent and into those I screwed two dull silver hooks to hold the extension cord until it reached the concrete pillar.

Then I hopped back onto the pickup truck and drilled more holes down the pillar until I could run the extension cord in a professional fashion to the outlet. I plugged it in and checked the VCR.

“12:00. 12:00. 12:00.”

The blank tape went in and I folded the plastic back into place over everything and pressed the Stop button on the VCR. Twice I’d had to stop for cars or drivers walking to work, but I still had time as I checked that the wires from the VCR were dangling in the right spot, just below and to the side of the camera. With everything in place, I got into the blind spot of the camera and waited.

I emptied my pockets into the backpack, change, wallet, knife, but I kept the cell phone, I’d need that. I was wearing a dark blue windbreaker and a pair of loose track pants with tennis shoes laced tightly.

I had a few tricks to match Walsh’s. Around my left forearm from just below my wrist to just past my elbow, I had on a plastic and aluminum guard. It had cost fifteen dollars (with tax) at a sporting goods store and its purpose was to keep skateboarders and in-line skaters from fractured wrists and hands. The hand guard came down over my palm and ended in a raised bit of plastic so I still had most of my dexterity.

Under the jacket I was wearing a sleeveless rubber T-shirt a half-inch
thick. I had bought it over the counter at a sex shop that catered to fetishists of all sorts. I was hot and sweaty and really couldn’t see the sexual appeal of rubber, but so it goes. It had taken twenty-eight minutes to put it on in a pay toilet and I was wearing it in case Walsh was carrying a Taser.

I was also wearing a hockey player’s cup. Which made me feel a little more secure.

After I’d stretched the muscles in my back and legs, I picked up the phone and made my call.

He answered on the third ring. “Walsh here.”

“Walsh, this is Monty Haaviko. I’m waiting by your car. In the carpark. I figure we got some talking to do.”

Then I hung up and crushed the phone before pitching it away. And I stood there, feeling my blood singing through my veins and my lungs expanding and contracting. Feeling every fiber of muscle and bone and sinew.

The backpack went up on the vent beside the VCR and I took the opportunity to unfasten the connectors on the camera and plug in my own. Then I flipped on the machine to Record and hopped down again.

I wanted to run and hide. I wanted to get a good rifle and a good scope. I wanted to knife Walsh or blow him up or ambush him in a dark alley. I wanted for none of this to have ever happened. I wanted to turn myself inside out and vanish. I wanted a cold beer and a hot pretzel. But mostly I wanted to run. Hard and fast.

Instead, I waited.

Nearby the elevator
pinged
and I could feel Walsh approaching. I gambled with myself that he’d be alone, that he’d be ready to play his tricks, and when he came around the corner he was almost at a jog. His face split into a grin and he made a broad gesture with his hands to throw his arms open and show the butt of the Colt tucked into his belt.

“Here I am.”

He walked towards me on the tips of his toes, bouncing with energy. I could imagine what was going on in his head: his life was turning to shit, none of the cops would talk to him, no one trusted him, listened to him, adored him. In fact, no one liked him anymore. And right in front of him was me, the source of all his suffering. Although he couldn’t prove a thing. And even if I wasn’t the source, then I was something upon which he could vent his rage. A bad man, an evil man.

So I smiled back and started the whole thing.

He was a yard away with his suit coat unbuttoned and his arms outstretched.

“Go for it.”

So I did.

His right-hand coat pocket was heavy so I went for that with my right hand. The steel of the gun was cold as I dipped it out while I slammed my left palm into the center of his chest and drove him back.

“ ’Kay. Now what?”

His face went pale with panic and fear as his hand scrabbled at the big pistol at his waist.

“Wait-wait-wait!”

“C’mon, Walsh, go for it.”

The pistol in my hand was tiny, a two-shot derringer over and under pistol. Inaccurate at more than two yards, practically unrifled. A gambler’s gun, a hustler’s gun, an ugly gun.

“You can’t shoot a cop.”

My face tightened. “Not with this.”

The gun broke open just before the trigger and two little shotgun
shells popped into my left hand: .410 shotgun shells loaded into the .45 caliber gun, just a load of copper BBs over a wad of powder. Up close, one shot would scrape a face down to the bone like a cheese grater.

The gun went over my left shoulder and the shells went over my right to tinkle musically among the parked cars, and Walsh went for the Colt. He was good. Fast and trained, but I knew what he was going to do before he did. His right hand drew the pistol while his left pulled a loaded clip from the back of his belt; his right thumb dumped the empty magazine while his left hand turned the full one so he could seat it right. Before the hands could meet in the middle, I stepped forward and slapped the gun away under an SUV ten yards away.

“Next?”

Nothing happened and I watched Walsh carefully, focusing on his belly. Any move he’d make would show there first. As I stood there, I felt the tension leave me. Vanish. My right hand vibrated with the pain of smashing the heavy chunk of metal. I ignored that and stepped back into place. Walsh was breathing hard now.

“C’mon, you know what to do.”

He didn’t do anything for a second and then his left hand came up palm-first towards me while his right drew a tiny, bright orange piece of technology from somewhere. It oriented itself towards me and then there was a puff of air and I was connected to Walsh by two tiny darts trailing lengths of micro-thin copper wire from my chest to his gun. His face went slack and I dropped to one knee.

In front of me a tiny snowstorm of flecks of paper drifted to the tarmac and the Taser hummed. But I didn’t feel it, the rubber shirt kept the current from me. I’d been Tasered before and knew what I was supposed to be doing, spasming slightly, immobile, helpless. Walsh jammed the trigger again and I felt a thin wash of power again, like you’d get from licking a battery. A big battery.

I braced myself on one bent leg and my hand and watched Walsh’s feet less than two yards away. The flecks of paper were between us, a
security feature of the latest models of Tasers, designed to be released whenever the gun fired, while an internal computer recorded time and duration of the shocks. To make it easier for a cop to convince a jury he’d been using reasonable force.

A poacher I knew once said that you can legally shoot anything that walked or crawled, flew or swam if you said the following magical words before you fire: “It was coming right for me.” Cops had learned that right well. How many times had those words been uttered,
I felt threatened and, in my professional opinion, . . . ?

Another wash of power and Walsh stepped forward and brought his foot back to field goal my lights out. And I drove my right fist up into his crotch.

While he was down I tore the wires loose and yanked the Taser out of his nerveless hand. It went over my shoulder too and I unclenched my jaw and waited for him to get up. As I watched, he puked up coffee and raisin bran cereal.

“C’mon, Walsh. Try again, you can do it.”

He rolled to his knees and pulled a short length of metal from somewhere. A flick of his wrist and it was almost a yard long, a collapsible metal baton called an Asp. He swung it inelegantly, clumsily, and I danced back out of the way to give him time to get up.

“Motherfucker, motherfucker, fuckermother.”

He shifted his weight as sweat soaked his collar. I spoke gently, “C’mon, swing batter, swing . . .”

His left hand was towards me again to hold me off and his right held the Asp ready over his shoulder. When the blow came, it whistled, a killing skull breaker aimed at the crown of my head. I caught it on my raised left forearm and felt the plastic and aluminum sheath break. But by then Walsh was commited and completely open and I let one perfect punch go. It started behind my hip and I threw my shoulder first and then my elbow and then my wrist and then the knuckles.

A clumsy and simple jab. Dempsey would have wept. Ali would have spanked me. Tyson would have bitten my ear off. But it worked.

I was aiming at a space six inches past his head and it hit him right on the point of his chin. He paused as I recovered balance. And he didn’t look like much there on the concrete, he didn’t look like much at all.

“. . . and the bloody Red Baron went spinning out of sight . . .”

No one heard me and five minutes later I had the VCR unplugged and in the backpack. Two minutes after that, I was out of the car park and looking for a cab.

A camera-repair place in the North End made ten copies of the tape while I watched. The guy even took fifty dollars to let me do it myself. I kept the original, Thompson received one, Claire ended up with two, and the other seven were mailed to reporters.

And then, with Thompson beside me, I turned myself in to the police before Walsh regained consciousness.

For a while it was touch and go. Walsh’s story of an unprovoked ambush made for some interesting moments as the cops tried to separate me from my lawyer in the little room they had me in. But eventually Claire reached McMillan-Fowler and Atismak and they both saw the tape.

Outside the room with Thompson, maybe thirty cops had gathered. Through the door I could hear them talking, whispering, growling. Thompson and I could both feel the rage growing and he fished out his flask and drained it without offering me anything.

“Jesus. They’re going to lynch you.”

“Yep. The fixes you get me in . . .”

Thompson stared at me and strangled a laugh and outside the voices went on.

“. . . popped his eye right out of his . . .”

“. . . we go in there and drag the liar out and then we SHOOT the motherfucker . . .”

“Walsh, man, who could believe that some little punk . . .”

“. . . heard he ambushed him. Got him with a bat and then heel stomped his face into . . .”

“Fuck that! We protect our own!”

Eventually, though, McMillan-Fowler’s voice cut through.

“All of you! Watch this. Before you do anything truly stupid.”

Then she led me out while the tape was still playing on a big TV/VCR combination in the front of the room.

“Do any of you see an ambush?”

None of the cops said a word.

“Do any of you see a fair fight?”

No one said anything but some of them fidgeted. White men with mustaches and testosterone, rage and indignation.

“I see a fight between an armed man and an unarmed man. If I showed this same tape to a jury, they’d have Walsh doing five years.”

She watched the cops fidget some more.

“Do any of you see anything here to protect?”

No one answered that one, and she and Atismak led me out with Thompson following.

Time passed.

Eventually the press forgot. Eventually the public forgot. I held my tongue and waited for the flames to die down. Against Thompson’s advice, I dropped the suit against the city and the city responded with an apology. We did, however, start a case against Walsh in the civic court and in time even the police union got tired of defending him and he faded away into humiliation, forced retirement, and a court-recommended psychiatric review.