An Ordinary Decent Criminal Part 15

"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? s.h.i.+t, try it out first."

He made me hold the bow again and measured my arm before pulling a pair of battered fibergla.s.s 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 bra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed. 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 ma.s.saged 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 Das.h.i.+ell 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 att.i.tude, and for both of those, being on foot gave me the best chance to spot a tail. Shoes because n.o.body wants to change their footwear over and over again. Att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 bra.s.s. 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.

21.

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. s.h.i.+t, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 s.h.i.+rt.

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 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 sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.saulting 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 bas.h.i.+ng ("Gotta give 'em s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sault. 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.

Fact: the man had lost two toes due to frostbite, he had spent a week in hospital, and, when he finally came out, he dropped the case and left town. Fact: police maintenance records showed an error of over twenty miles in Walsh's vehicle log. Fact: Saskatchewan police had been doing the same thing to Natives since the mid-seventies, at least, with at least six deaths attributed to death from exposure.

The photocopies cost fifty cents and I went on to the next three papers.

A retiring cop telling tales about Walsh. When he was a young homicide d.i.c.k, Walsh had tackled a man who had stabbed his wife. During the fight Walsh had burned out one of the man's eyes with a lit cigar he had been carrying. The incident had been labeled accidental.

More papers, more stories. Walsh graduating from the computer course. Walsh testifying at the trial of a gang of purported drug dealers. Walsh testifying after the shooting of a bank robber. Walsh before City Council, convincing them to buy a robot to deal with "Fortified drug houses, bombs, gangs, and other areas too dangerous for police officers." Walsh testifying in the defense of a cop accused of shooting a Native leader, who had apparently asked why he was being interrogated by a cop on a side street at three in the morning. Walsh using his new robot to detonate a pipe bomb during a strike at an aeros.p.a.ce plant. Walsh setting up a computer program for the child-abuse department of the police. Walsh in a dozen pictures with the robot dealing with barricades and hostages. Walsh working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on an anti-gang task force. Walsh involved in the arrests of thirty members of the Manitoba Warriors street gang.

Other stories, more information.

The man with the burned-out eye hadn't stabbed his wife and was acquitted. The dead bank robber had been fifteen and carrying paper and a pen, not a gun. The RCMP had asked that Walsh be rea.s.signed, off the task force. In the end, the big gang trial had cost three million dollars and the average conviction involved the crime of being in possession of less than an ounce of gra.s.s. Some wise-a.s.s reporter from the Free Press Free Press described Walsh as being a "cop who solved crimes in his spare time." described Walsh as being a "cop who solved crimes in his spare time."

No one had found that funny.

I noted down the reporters who were pro-Walsh and the ones who weren't, and continued to read.

Fitzpatrick and Cairns were less reported. Old cops from old cop families, described as "true-blue" by an especially obsequious reporter. Staunch members of the Police Union and sufferers of the Blue Flu when a hundred cops called in sick after someone complained when a cop had his picture taken beating a handcuffed suspect. They were nice, solid guys, if you were a cop or a rabid law-and-order kind of citizen.

Another article about cop families told me that their uncles were cops, their fathers were cops, their grandfathers were cops, and, in one case, a mother had been a meter maid. As a matter of fact, their lineage as cops went back to 1919, when the city cops had gone over to the strikers during the great Winnipeg strike and the city had hired a whole new police force of scabs to bust heads.

For the three boys, there was nothing. About Robillard, there was a lot. Arrested for dealing gra.s.s, charges dropped. Picked up in a sweep of fences, no charges laid. Arrested for a.s.sault and battery with weapon (a brush hook), charges dropped by the victim. Arrested for possession of unregistered shotguns, fell apart when another guy copped to it. Arrested for disorderly conduct times four in a.s.sorted downtown bar fights, paid fines in all the cases. Finally, a few brief lines that there had been a marriage ceremony three years ago linking his cart to that of one Sandra, nee Simcoe.

At about ten to nine, the clerk came over and tapped my shoulder. "Time to go."

I stretched and smiled. "Thanks."

The rolls of microfilm went back to the desk and the librarian started to put them away. "It's like they say: you don't have to go home but you can't stay here."

I left laughing and went home.

22.

It was the next day, I'd talked with Claire and we had pretty much agreed that the cops, especially Walsh, looked good for at least some of our current difficulties. I was wandering around the front living room, thinking, when I heard someone coming up the path.

"Knock-Knock Ginger."

I opened the door before the woman outside could touch the bell. She was unfamiliar to me and she stared bug-eyed with something between fear and abject stupidity. "Excuse me?"

She almost dropped the envelope she was holding.

"It was a game we played when I was a child."

She just stared and pushed the envelope into my hands. "Here."

She turned to walk away and her shoulders hunched as though to absorb a blow. At the sidewalk, she turned to see me standing with the unopened letter in my hands. I watched her with my head tilted to the side as she slipped behind the wheel of a new-model car and drove away fast.

Claire came up behind me while I was reading and I handed over the letter without a word. She read it quickly and snorted. "Evicted?"

Fred was wrestling with another pillow under the coffee table and the dog was chewing on a piece of rawhide shaped like a bone. I brushed my hair back with the side of my hand and headed into the kitchen for some water. Claire followed, looking at the envelope.

"There's no postage. Who sent it?"

While the water ran to cold, I answered. "A short woman with green eyes and brown hair. She was wearing a light green pantsuit and driving a silver Lexus sedan."

Claire made a motion with her hands.

"Did she have a lot up here?"

I grinned at the implied chest. "No. Not at all."

"That was Ms. Gantz, our landlord. That means it's official."