Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal (16 page)

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Authors: Michael van Rooy

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“Right. I guess.”
“Fine. Next up is retail clothing salesperson.” Claire made it sound exciting.
“Would you like to buy these pants?” He said it straight faced and I had to laugh. Which made Claire hit me, so I flinched, which made Smiley say, “And two for flinching. No.”
“All right. Delivery driver.” If Claire was getting tired it wasn’t showing.
Smiley mulled that over. “Do I need a licence?”
“Yes. Can you drive?” I knew he could but Claire didn’t.
“Sure. I’ve just never had one legally. And I sure don’t have a licence in my own name. Is it hard to get one?”
Claire listed things off on her fingers. “You need to pay money, take a test, pay more money and they give you a licence.”
“I can do that.” Smiley sounded confident.
Claire paused and then said slowly, “I just realized something. What ID do you have?”
He dug it out of his pocket. “My prison ID card.”
I took it from him and looked it over with a sense of familiarity and trepidation. A small piece of paper, coated by an amateur in plastic, with a bad picture of Smiley grinning like an idiot in the left-hand corner. In the centre top was his name and beneath that was the information that this person was an inmate of the Correctional Service of Canada, with INMATE written in big letters. On the back it was gridded off with Smiley’s name and the finger-print system number (FPS), which consisted of six digits and a numeral. There was also Smiley’s date of birth, his weight in kilos, his height in inches, eye colour, complexion, and hair colour.
“Your name is Hershel Wiebe?”
Smiley became quietly belligerent and menacing. “You have a problem with that?”
“No, I guess not. I believe that is the kind of question that a Hershel would ask. Explains your enthusiastic acceptance of ‘Smiley’ as a nickname.”
He just glared at me and my wife took the card gently between two fingers. “This won’t do, not at all. It’ll be hard to find a job if the only ID you have is a card certifying you’re a federal inmate.”
Smiley snorted. “You think?”
She ignored the question. “So you’ll need a driver’s licence, a social insurance number, a birth certificate, and a few others. Monty, that’s your job.”
“No problems.”
Everyone leaned back and finally Claire broke the silence and asked, “Now, what’s in the boxes?”
His face lit up. “Presents. A wide-screen LCD television with surround sound, a DVD player, and copies of some of the best westerns ever made.”
He handed me a box and I looked through the titles:
Unforgiven
,
Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
,
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
,
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
,
High Noon
—the list went on, about twenty in total, all westerns. Most of the films were second hand. I looked up at Smiley, speechless, and he just smiled.
“I love this town! I found a movie store in Osborne Village with everything here, all dirt cheap and …” He leaned towards Claire and me. “The clerk was smart and pretty. I like that.”
“Where did you get the money?” I made it sound casual.
He shrugged. “Some people got off their asses and sent it along.”
When he looked at me his eyes were clear and smiling and I had nothing to say, so, while he was putting the system together, I took Claire upstairs. When I fell asleep I dreamt of beautiful women in green dresses while Smiley stood behind a counter asking if I wanted fries with that.
C
laire went jogging with Smiley the next morning. I was feeling physically sore and a little angry, not for any particular reason, just because. However, Fred managed to cheer me up by ramming his head repeatedly into the dog, who was begging for peanut-butter toast at the dining room table. The focus of both was inspiring, Renfield in his large-eyed begging technique and Fred in his determination to go through the dog. Finally he yelled, “Bad DOG!” and I gave in to the begging.
When Renfield had his toast I picked up Fred and bounced him on my knee. “And what makes you so angry today?”
He howled and glared at me. Toddler rage is something special, something different, very incoherent and diffused, very pure in its own way, and right now he was mad at me. So I tickled him until he was out of breath from laughing and then read him the first chapter of
Moby-Dick
while he piled blocks on top of each other. By the time Claire and Smiley were back I was in a fine mood. So was Fred, but both Claire
and Smiley seemed preoccupied, and neither of them would tell me why. When they had both showered and were drinking coffee I asked, “Any plans for today?”
Claire answered. “Gonna go buy Smiley some clothes after dinner.”
He nodded agreement and I asked, “How late will you be? There are a few things I need to do tonight.”
They both looked at me suspiciously and then my wife answered. “We should be done by 9:30 at the latest …”
She trailed off and gave me space to add information, space I ignored. After a long time she cleared her throat and asked me directly, “And what do you have planned for tonight?”
“Nothing at all; well, nothing much.”
She looked at me suspiciously and they both went off, Claire to try to sell houses and apartments and Smiley to try to not be a criminal. And, before I was ready, Jacob and Rachel came, and I just tried to survive the experience of diapers, snacks, wrestling, story time, and utter chaos. When Smiley and Claire came back at 7:00 I took the time to admire their purchases: two sedate three-piece suits, shirts and two pairs of shoes. Also sundries like socks and underwear, and even ties.
“Very nice.”
Smiley’s face was bleak and unhappy. “This is not me, man. Not me at all.”
Claire made sympathetic noises. “It’s not what you were; it’s what you’re trying to become, which is something different.”
He nodded and I headed out. Before I could reach the door, my wife said casually, “So, you off?”
“Yep. Things to do …”
I spent the rest of the evening scouting around Samantha’s houses very quietly and checking Marie’s neighbours for
anything suspicious. In both parts of town there was nothing strange going on at all.
 
Thursday morning started with another run with Smiley. We covered a lot of ground, on Main Street down to the Manitoba Museum and the Planetarium and then up to Salter and back home. On the way we passed the working poor, the dispossessed, the insane, gang members, whores, psychopaths, Jesus freaks, schizophrenics looking for their lost dope, coughers hacking out tuberculosis germs, junkies hunting their fixes, boozehounds looking for another fast drink to shovel the snakes and the shakes back underground.
When we arrived home we were both quietly depressed. Claire had some free time so she took the monsters while I went to wash some more cash. Dressed in my best clothes and carrying a briefcase, I caught the bus and walked to the New Balmoral Hotel on the corner of Balmoral Street and Notre Dame. They opened at 9:00 so I walked in and went to the machines in the back and to the right, changing twenty-five twenties into loonies as I went. Then I sat at a machine and dumped ’em all in, pulling the lever now and again.
When the waitress came by with her plump thighs under a stiff skirt, I admired her until she repeated the question. A few minutes later she brought a shot of vodka and a Coke with ice, and when she was gone the vodka went onto the floor and the Coke was drunk. In forty minutes I’d put all the loonies into the machine, bought three drinks, and lost six dollars the twenty-seven times I’d pulled the lever.
So I left. At the bar the bartender looked at the slip and said, “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
She looked at it some more and then nodded to herself. “We’ll have to pay you by cheque.”
She looked scared, like I was going to beat on her over getting paid by cheque. Eventually a manager came and gave me a cheque for $479 and I walked a long way to the McPhillips Street Casino, where I played around with the slots and the table games and washed another $1,133.25 by 2:00.
 
When I reached home, Claire had all the children sitting on the floor cross-legged with their hands on their knees, palms upraised.
“Ohhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm.”
They all exhaled in unison and it was memorably scary.
“Oh Mani Padme Hum.”
The ones who could barely speak squeaked it out, or something vaguely similar. Claire opened an eye and gestured with her head that I should go to the kitchen, where she joined me.
“That’s creepy.”
She kissed me. “A little. How goes?”
“Another $1,600 clean and clear. I have to go down and work on Smiley’s licence and certificate. Is there anything I need to do?”
“Nope, I’m having a fine time here with the rug rats. Wanna go out tonight?”
I paused and thought about it and realized that it would be the first time in… a long time. “I’d love to … what about Fred?”
“Let him find his own date.”
“I mean a babysitter. Smiley?”
“No.” Her eyes were dead. “No. Anyone else you can think of?”
“Sure. Call Martinez-the-cop, she owes you.”
“That’s true.”
“Where is Smiley?”
“Out.” Her dead eyes didn’t invite comment.
“’Kay, it’s a date. We can wash some more cash.”
She rolled her eyes and smacked me in the arm. “My husband, last of the romantics, doubles love and business and wonders why I’m thinking of taking lovers. And that’s two for flinching.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Thinking of taking lovers.”
“Nope. Not thinking about it at all.”
That didn’t sound right but I went back out to try to make Smiley a real, live human citizen. I thought about bringing him with me and letting him help, but I knew from past experience that he wasn’t good wheedling and conning. He was more of a gun-in-your-face kind of guy.
Which was just fine because I found myself really enjoying the whole process.
 
At an Internet café on Osborne Street I rented access and while I waited in line I thought my way through the problem. To be real in the Great White North you needed three pieces of ID, the holy trinity: Driver’s Licence, Social Insurance Number, and a Birth Certificate. Those three let you build everything, bank records, credit rate, and anything else. I had done all that before for various other people for sums of money, and for myself in order to avoid prosecution.
So I needed to find him those three. But faster than that I should find him something he could show around town as soon as possible. Something other than the prison ID card he
had. For that there were a number of possibilities. One was a cheque-cashing card at one of the cheque-cashing stores that charged ridiculous rates of interest. Another was a liquor ID card, one that indicated the bearer was old enough to buy booze, go into bars and such.
Out of the two the liquor card would be better; it was government approved; so I dialled up the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission on the Internet and found that the ID was pretty well protected. To receive one required three pieces of ID, tough ones, too, like a passport and birth certificate and health card. On the plus side the cost was a very reasonable seventeen dollars. However, the needed information put that card out of easy reach.
Then I checked the website of one of the bigger cheque-cashing companies. It had thirteen locations in the city, or was it fourteen? Anyhow, they had a lot of stores. Their ID card would cost $1.99, but I’d have to show a photo ID—well, Smiley would have to show a photo ID. I wondered what they’d say when he showed them the prison ID?
I noted the number and address on a scrap of paper. With that basic info in hand he would have the start of a paper ID. Next was the social insurance number, the laws were tight on that in the post-9-11 world.
Thinking about that made me pause. Something Claire had told me in 2001 still resonated in my head. I was on my way into prison for something I’d done to someone and we’d been on the phone to each other when the planes had smashed into skyscrapers and pentagons and the Pennsylvania countryside. And Claire had said that she could no longer look into the skies because “… they had turned planes into knives.”
I’ll never forget that.
So nineteen Saudi Arabians used box cutters to steal four
planes and killed thousands of people in three states, and the world shuddered.
And a few hundred miles to the north and a few thousand to the west, what happened? I ended up making fake ID at the time, as fast as I could, because I was on my way into prison at the time and needed to pay off as many debts as I could. So the governments of the world tightened up the laws and rules and regulations. And that meant that the value of what I was producing went through the roof and my profit increased.
 
Back to SIN’s. Smiley would need an original of his birth certificate, I wondered briefly if he had one. Once he had the original certificate and ten dollars he could get his very own SIN after filling out a form or two. Which meant I needed to find him a birth certificate. I thought he had been born in Vancouver, which meant I had to deal with the Victoria-based BC Bureau of Vital Statistics. On the way into the site I was sidelined by a note that stating over 1000 birth, death, and marriage certificates had been stolen. Made me wonder who had gotten greedy. Also made me wonder how many imaginary people would be created from that one windfall.
Back at the site I double-checked that the cost was $27 with the required information, like where Smiley had been born, who his parents were, and other details. Then I went back and looked up the Manitoba Health system; that card would be useful for Smiley too. In order to have that he’d have to have lived in the province for three months. He’d also have to provide a social insurance number, a health card from somewhere else, his birth certificate, and his driver’s licence.
So that went onto the back burner and I turned to getting him a driver’s licence. For that he’d need to provide the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation with a birth certificate
and a social insurance card. And, of course, some money, like maybe $75 and voila, it would all be done and he’d be a real boy!
Going over my little pile of scraps I realized I had to start with the birth certificate. It was a joke, but seven years after 9-11 no one seemed to care that it had become even easier to acquire fake ID in the States. Give me an hour on the Internet and a week to make some phone calls and send letters and the ID would start flowing in. I could be from Texas, or New York, South Carolina, or California. Find a newspaper with its files on the Internet, find the name of a baby who died (and probably wasn’t registered with the right authorities), use that info with the bureaucrats, and have the certificate issued.
All the work made me think fondly of going back into business, just a little. And that way lay madness. Suddenly my time on the computer was up and I had to leave and go find a place to take Claire for dinner. I made my way across town through chaos towards normalcy and away from temptation. To confirm my good intentions I phoned Marie and found out that everything was just fine on her end. Then she asked how I was and I had to hang up.
I had no idea, frankly, how to answer that.

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