A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) (11 page)

But the pictures were real or incredible fakes and sometimes you have to balance everything out and make a decision. Most of the time making a decision, any decision, was better than waiting.

So I made a decision and told Osserman to get a tape recorder. When it came in I told him everything, including finding the package, the roses, the note, everything I could remember. Nothing I supposed or suspected. When I was done a uniformed cop brought me my belt, wallet and pocket knife and Lester and I went downstairs to the street. He gave me a lift home in a beat-up Volvo he kept in good working order himself on the weekends, when he wasn’t playing softball or getting juiced.

He drove badly for about five minutes and finally pulled over, took a slim flask from his briefcase and swallowed convulsively as the sharp stench of peppermint schnapps filled the air.

“Jesus. Sweet Jesus Christ.”

It was dusk and dragonflies were filling the air, part of an environmentally friendly assault on mosquitoes. Those vampires were one of the biggest drawbacks of Manitoba as far as I was concerned, so I watched the predators flit around and thought about what I’d been told and what I’d seen in the cop office.

In prison you run into the occasional minor-league psychopath. More often you’d find the sociopaths, but Ms. Paris had encountered the real deal—a full-blown sadistic sexual psychopath. And those did not go to prison; those end up in asylums mostly. Occasionally I’d run into them out on the streets or working their way through the court system. On the street they generally slipped into crime because they couldn’t function in society and they didn’t last too long, as they didn’t have great control over their needs and urges.

In the court system they generally tripped warning signals along the way and were escorted into solitary cells so cons didn’t spend much time with them.

Once or twice though I’d found them or they’d found me. There’d been a pimp in Edmonton who liked to turn out young girls, younger every month, until he was putting ten-and eleven-year-olds out on the street to service businessmen going to work to sell oil or coming home after a hard day buying oil. He kept his girls in perfect control and they were known for their willingness to do absolutely anything. Finally one of the girls got friendly with another streetwalker, who found out the girls were all from the same town up near the Yukon border, a place called Hazard. The girl had told the other hooker something else too, something she hadn’t told anyone else, not ever.

The next day the hooker found me in the bar I was propping up and traded me an eight ball of coke and two hours of sex for a chopped and channelled Iver Johnson .30 calibre carbine I’d been intending to keep for myself. She put it in a shopping bag and the next morning she unloaded on the pimp as he walked out of his favourite corner store eating a drumstick ice-cream cone.

She’d opened fire from thirty feet away and kept walking towards the man as the small-calibre bullets kept him upright and twitching. At about ten feet her magazine had run dry and she’d reloaded with another thirty-round magazine and finished him. Then she’d dropped the gun and walked away.

The coroner had pulled forty-nine soft-nosed surplus World War II lead bullets from the body.

They’d never caught the hooker.

Over time the girls the pimp had brought left. Just melted away into the street and were gone.

Another time I’d run into a guy in prison who thought that bugs were eating his nervous system and the only way to keep them out was to make little cuts on his arms and legs to let them out. The cops caught him for public indecency—he’d masturbated on the window of a downtown Montreal restaurant—and had put him into remand while awaiting trial. In remand he hadn’t been able to get his hands on a knife so pressure had built up.

At least I think that’s what happened.

When they’d given him a job in the kitchen though he’d been happy as a pig in shit and had lasted all the way to lunch when he’d gone out of his way to sharpen a medium-sized skinning knife. That clued the prison cook finally, because he was making vegetable soup (opening cans anyway) and grilled cheese sandwiches (white bread with Velveeta and margarine). None of which really required a knife to make. When the cook had looked for the guy though it had been too late, he’d already cut off six fingers and was most of the way through his wrist. The guy bled out while the alarms filled the fucking place with sounds of panic and excitement.

In the car Lester wasn’t doing too well.

“Sweet Jesus Christ.” Lester repeated himself and I shook my head and took the flask away, capped it and put it into his briefcase.

“No, Lester, Jesus has nothing to do with any of this. Take me home.”

Outside of my place I thanked him and got out, and then I leaned back in. “Lester? What do I owe you?”

His face was haunted. “Oh. I’ll try to run it by the Legal Aid system. They should cover it, if they don’t I’ll run it by the crown—you were helping the cops so they might have a little coin. Glad I could help. If no one can cover it then I’ll send you a bill, ’kay?”

“Definitely. I’d still be in there if it wasn’t for you. May I make a suggestion?”

He got defensive. “About my drinking?”

“No. Drink yourself to death if you want. It’s your choice. No, I wanted to suggest you do something nice for your wife. It’ll help. And then she might have sex with you. And that is a sure cure for this kind of shit.”

He snorted. “That doesn’t happen. Not anymore.”

“Suck it up, buttercup. You’ve just gotten a big mouthful of death and the best way to wash the taste of it away is through life.”

“What makes you an expert?”

I looked Lester in the eye until he turned away, then I said, “Experience. Make love to a women you genuinely respect and like. If not your wife then someone else. Just make sure you like and respect her.”

He drove away and I went inside to where Claire was waiting, drinking coffee at the dining room table with the crowbar and bayonet in front of her.

She kissed me when I came in and followed me to the phone in the kitchen without asking any questions. Lester’s home number was in the book and I called it and spoke to his wife, Elizabeth, whom I’d met two or three times. She was a nice lady but tense. When you’re married to a drunk you get tense.

“Elizabeth? This is Monty.”

“Is Les all right?”

“He’s fine. He saw some gruesome photographs and heard a pretty bad story today. He’s on his way home but he’s shaky.”

Claire’s eyes asked questions and I kissed her again as Elizabeth asked, “How drunk is he?”

“Pretty drunk. But he’s not handling it very well. He’s shaky.”

She snorted into the phone. “It’s an excuse …”

“No, Elizabeth, he saw thirty-four eight-by-ten glossy colour post mortem photographs of a young woman who was raped and tortured to death over a six-hour period.”

“Oh.” Her voice got small.

“I have no idea why he drinks in general but right now he has a reason to do so. I just thought I should tell you so you’re ready.”

She said “oh” again and then waited in silence before asking, “What do you think I should do?”

“Me? I’d make him a stiff cup of coffee, lace it with Viagra, pour it down his throat and then fuck his brains out. He’s feeling dead right now.”

Claire’s eyes got wide and Elizabeth laughed harshly into the phone. “You assume a lot.”

“Yep. You can tell me to fuck off if you want. It’s okay, you wouldn’t be the first and I might even do it for you.”

She thought about it. “Is Claire there? Put her on?”

I handed the phone over and listened in as she said, “Claire, make sure your idiot husband can’t hear.”

“Sure, Liz. He’s in the other room.” Claire held the phone at an angle so I could hear better.

“Okay, hon. Did you hear what he said? What do you think?”

“I think,” my wife smiled and unzipped my pants with her free hand, “you should go put on that little dress your husband likes, you know.”

Elizabeth sounded concerned and serious. “The one that lifts and separates?”

“That’s the one.” Claire pulled me out of my pants and started to massage me. She’d learned a trick from a gay friend of hers in Edmonton and she was doing the one with the wrist twist that worked really, really well. Despite myself I was responding. Claire spoke brightly into the phone, “Then fuck his lights out.”

“What about you?”

Claire winked at me. “I’m going to do exactly the same thing. Only I’m going to wear the birthday present I bought Monty. I told you about that.”

“Right. Oh, happy birthday Monty.”

I couldn’t help myself, I was supposed to be in the other room but I answered anyway. In my defence, I was distracted. “Thanks, Elizabeth.”

She laughed, only this time it was lower in her throat. “Stupid Monty. Really stupid. I’m amazed you got away with being a thief for so long.”

Claire kissed the phone wetly and hung it up. We put Fred to bed and then Claire showed me my birthday present. Then she did two things we only do on special occasions and that cheered me up so much I forgot I wanted a drink and I did three things in return that I generally save for making points after I’ve made serious mistakes.

T
he next morning my joining the race for the police commission was in the news and I had to unplug the phone because every reporter in the universe wanted to talk to me. I did however listen to the news and found out I was the only one running against Rumer for the position of chief commissioner and that eight people were running for the remaining five seats.

At two I got a phone call from Dean telling me a lawyer named Virgil Reese would call and set up a meeting with the man who was paying my fare. I said that would be nice and called Claire to come home but I got her partner instead, a woman called Vanessa Rose. She was young and intense and smart, a brunette who rarely wore a bra and who hid her brains behind perpetual cheerfulness.

“Monty? One sec, Claire’s going in for the kill …”

She laughed into the phone and it sounded like running water and then she chanted a rhyme under her breath, “Sign, sign on the dotted line and everything will be just fine.”

“And how are you and your boyfriend? You know, what’s-his-name?”

She laughed again. “I traded him in on a friendlier and healthier model … and, she’s done it. The paper is signed and the deal is done and I’ll go deal with buyer’s remorse and you can talk with your lovely wife.”

Claire came on. “Just sold a big house to a nice couple.”

“Sweet.”

“You bet. What do you need?”

“You to come home. I’ve got a date with a man to talk about being chief commissioner.”

“’Kay. I’ve made like $9,000 split in half anyway so far today, so I can take a break.”

I hung up and tried to figure out why I had ever begun robbing banks in the first place—it could not have been for the money.

Fifteen minutes later a man phoned and told me his name was Virgil Reese and that he’d like to pick me up and introduce me to my employer. I told him that would be fine and he was there thirty minutes later, pulling up in an older-model four-door car I couldn’t identify immediately. Before I could go to meet him he got out and came to the front door carrying a brown paper package which he handed to me. “For your wife.”

I looked at him, surprised. He was in his fifties and wore a black silk suit and canary-yellow shirt with a string tie that emphasized his thinness and pallor. His politeness and poise were otherworldly.

“What is it?”

“A bottle of Benedictine. A smart liquor for a smart lady. And a voucher for the Kai Ping restaurant in the south end—they deliver and their lo mein is fantastic. I’m sorry to say I’ll have to take you away for most of the evening so I figured I should bring your wife dinner as partial recompense.”

Claire came to the door and accepted the package and the man actually kissed the back of her hand. “Virgil Reese, lawyer. You’re a good real estate agent. May I send some clients your way?”

“Certainly. As long as they pay.”

Mr. Reese smiled thinly. “If they didn’t they wouldn’t be my clients.”

“How do you know I’m good?”

“I do my research, ask questions, analyze, consider and think. You have a good reputation.”

Claire put her forefinger on her lips. “Thank you, and keep Monty as long as you want.”

He smiled thinly and handed her an embossed card on heavy stock. “Enjoy the Benedictine. It’s made from a 500- year-old secret recipe of twenty-seven separate herbs, known only by a small number of monks.”

Claire gave her best smile. “I will. And you enjoy my husband. He’s not 500 years old and I’m pretty sure no one knows how he was made.”

Sometimes my wife is a real comedian.

I took the bottle from him and brought it into the kitchen before looking it over. No drill marks on the glass that I could see and the foil on the cork looked pristine. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over but found no imperfections at all, which meant it probably wasn’t poisoned.

I dumped it down the sink anyway.

Upstairs I pulled on my black denim thief’s jacket that I’d had custom made years before by an understanding tailor. It had extra pockets sewn into the reinforced inner lining, steel chain mail around the left arm for dogs and knives and a hidden pocket in the back with a Gem razor blade. I also made sure my pocket knife was in the right pocket and my steel-toed shoes were on my feet. The last thing I did was pocket a little digital tape recorder from Office Depot with new batteries. Then we left.

In the car Mr. Reese waited until I had buckled up before starting the engine which made barely any noise.

“Where are we going?”

“To my employer’s home. It’s up near Riding Mountain National Park, about three hours away.”

“Ah.”

“However, it will give us a chance to talk and I had a secretary pack us a lunch so we won’t be hungry. It’s in the back.”

I looked and there was a real wicker picnic basket right out of a Yogi Bear cartoon on the leather seat behind me.

“Okay, Mr. Reese. Sounds fine.”