M
arie and I were back in the SUV heading east again and drinking coffee and I, personally, was feeling pretty damn guilty indeed. I had almost, almost, asked for decaf but what’s the point in that? So I dealt with my guilt by ignoring it and spent the time thinking about the tools and equipment in the back of the car and what I could do with them. After about a 100 klicks she spoke up. “So what happens next?”
“I set up protection around your camp and we finalize the delivery arrangements. Should take us maybe two days, maybe a little longer.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“I do. Not a great one, but I do have a plan.”
“So tell me.”
“Let’s wait until Don and Al are there as well, that way I can tell everybody at once.”
At the campsite both men were waiting, drinking cans of Olympia Ale beer and sitting in the screened-in porch while contemplating the afternoon. We drove up and I shook
hands with both of them before asking Al, “Shouldn’t you be fishing?”
“I am. I have two nets out right now.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“Sure, but rods are for losers. Dynamite works even better. So does cranking, but those hand-powered generators are hard to find these days.”
He squinted. “And didn’t you used to look different?”
He said it straight and I smiled. “I’m wearing my own face today.”
“That’s good.”
Don came over wearing a plain black three-piece suit with a painfully starched shirt and pencil-thin string tie done up tight around his neck. His handshake was hearty, and up close he smelled of mothballs and beer and very faintly of cows. I shook his hand and he looked closely at my face. “Are you a Mennonite?”
“No. I’m kind of a mutt, really. A little of this and a little of that.”
He nodded and went on, “I’m a Mennonite. Glad you’re not one of us though.”
“Why?”
He just shrugged. “Because then we’d argue about God.”
He turned and led me inside and kept talking. “And I hate that.”
We all sat around the table to talk, and at my request Don laid the aerial photographs out again.
“The original plan was to head out in the outboards at night and make landings using a pre-programmed GPS system. Right?”
The two men nodded, Marie was listening carefully, and I shook my head. “That’s not really going to work. Boats
travelling at night make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention. There’s also the chance that Greg talked to other people besides Sam about your original plans, so we’re going to change things around. Mess things up a little.”
Al spoke, “So what’s your idea?”
“It’s about eighty-four klicks round trip, right?” Don nodded agreement. “So that’s a long way. What’s this?”
I tapped a spot on the map and Al answered, “An island, tiny, maybe ten, twelve metres across with a few pines and bushes. If the water’s really high most of it’s under water except for a big clump of pines and scrub oak on top. It’s nothing special.”
“It’s also ten klicks from your destination?”
Both men agreed.
“So. One of you leaves in the morning with your cargo, four people plus you both and Marie. You reach the island and Marie drops you all off. Then you and the travellers just wait there until evening. At around midnight you put the travellers in two birch canoes that are already there. We equip with electric engines and you whisper in the last ten klicks, drop them off and come back to the island. The next morning Marie picks you up.”
Al and Don didn’t say a word but Marie finally asked, “Why is that plan better?”
“The illegality of the whole thing is concentrated in the last ten-kilometre rush. There’s nothing illegal about taking people on a boat ride and there’s nothing illegal about Al and Don getting lost out on the lake.”
Don asked, “What about the radar?”
I shook my head. “Radar doesn’t work so well against wood, shouldn’t work very well against birchbark either, plus canoes are so low to the surface of the water that the waves
will interfere with the pick-up. And no fast engine means no wake to track from above.”
Al traced lines with his fingertip. “Where are we going to get electric engines?”
I handed him a flyer from my back pocket that I had folded in two. “Any sporting goods store. We’ll use trolling engines; they run off a twelve-volt battery and they’re about $300 or so.”
Don shook his head. “That won’t work, not over that kind of distance; those things just barely push your boat along.”
“In a big boat they push you along, true, but in a canoe, you’ll fly. And you can carry a couple of extra batteries in case.”
He kept looking at the pictures. “Okay, how do we find the drop-off point? And how do we find the way back once we’ve dropped off the travellers?”
I shrugged. “Use compass headings and dead reckoning. So many minutes southwest, then reverse it on the way back. It’ll take some practice but it should work fine. Have the pick-up crew carry a flashlight with a coloured lens to signal you in the final stretch. We can make a couple of practice runs.”
Marie spoke up, “It’ll be cold out there.”
I nodded and handed over another flyer. “Yep. So everyone dresses warm. We can buy full-body Ski-doo suits for the travellers, wrap them in Mylar space blankets and give them hand warmers. When we drop them off we have them strip down to their normal clothes. As for Al and Don, they can do the same thing; there is extra-heavy-duty, heavy-weather stuff we can buy for them. We have them pull on Mylar ponchos and everything should be fine.”
“Why the Mylar?”
“Blocks radiant heat. That way no one shows up on infrared sensors.”
Marie said dryly, “I suppose you have …” Before she could finish I handed her some more flyers and then left them alone to think while I went to work on the outside of the cabins. It had been awhile since the contract with Marie had started and I was way behind in prepping the camp and making it secure.
Outside the birds and small animals were starting to become agitated as the seasons changed, going into overdrive looking for food and a warm place to sleep/hibernate/whatever. And they seemed to be everywhere; small red squirrels moving purposefully in the trees, blue and grey jays darting past on unknown errands, and chipmunks darting through the leaf litter with bulging cheeks. I wondered about deer and other animals and realized they were probably asleep. The problem with the campsite was not to provide security but to provide a warning if anyone approached from land or water. Fortunately, since the camp was on the end of a narrow peninsula sticking out into the lake, it wouldn’t be as hard as it could have been.
I started with vibration sensors, little plastic security devices I’d spray-painted black and mottled green that ran off a nine-volt battery. I put eight of those thirty metres from the cabin, screwed securely to the sides of trees. Running from each unit was a strand of Spiderwire, unbreakable fishing line stretching out four to six metres to another tree. Touch the line and the sensor goes off, touch the sensor and the sensor goes off, breathe and the sensor goes off. Each line was set about sixty centimetres above ground level, out of the way of squirrels and chipmunks but right at knee height for most two-legged folks.
Next came twelve little passive infrared motion sensors with a fifteen-metre range; six at the thirty-metre limit pointing out, and six at the three-metre mark, also pointing out.
Those I put three metres up because most people never look up, just forward and at ground level.
All those sensors were hooked into a central receiving unit which I put in the main cabin. If any of the sensors were disturbed, the system would light up and a siren would start blowing. In case anyone cut the power, I hooked the panel up to an emergency battery pack that was supposed to be used for computers, and would give three hours of juice.
To back those up I also set up ten portable units with built-in alarms. They were motion sensors as well, with a ten metre range and would chirp in an alarming fashion if anything came near them. They went on metre-high sticks that could be planted anywhere, and moved in seconds.
Four hours later Al and Don and Marie were still talking as I unpacked two home monitoring systems which fed data along cables (harder to jam) to television units. Each system could handle three cameras, which I installed outside the cabins. In addition, each camera was hooked to a motion sensor alarm that would give a nice warning and start filming anytime anyone moved too close.
It would have been quicker to let Marie and friends help, but I needed the quiet to work and they would have asked questions. I also had a desire to keep my own secrets. The last layer of defence was distinctly non-technological and consisted of sixty of my very own homemade trip wires, each attached to fifteen-millimetre white flares, the kind campers are supposed to carry in case they become lost. The traps were made out of mouse traps and lengths of PVC pipe, and if the wire was cut or disturbed, the mouse trap would snap down on a blank .22 cartridge, which would provide an audible warning. These I bought at a sports supply store; they were supposed to be used in starter pistols. The cartridge would trigger
a 14,000-candlepower white flare which would go straight up seventy metres and burn for about five seconds. Those suckers I scattered everywhere, each attached to metre lengths of fishing line.
By the time I was done it was dark and Marie drove me home, but not after I told everyone what I’d done to the camp. I didn’t want them taking a walk and wrecking their day.
On the way home I fondled some unused alarm component units I’d pocketed. I’d feel better when they were installed at home.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Smiley.
It was just that I didn’t trust Smiley.
C
laire let me sleep in the next day while she took care of the kids. One of the nice things about her real estate job was that her hours were flexible. It meant she could help with the kids when I had things to do.
If I could only learn how to sell houses, we’d have some equality in our lives.
When I’d gotten dressed I came down and found Smiley sitting in the living room at the coffee table shuffling a deck of cards. He looked at me and cheated brazenly, dealing seconds, and flicking the cards across the table to Claire. She sat with a small pile of wooden matches in front of her and looked up when I came in. The kids were playing, colouring, and reading at their feet.
“We’re playing poker. She thinks she’s good. She also keeps telling me to get a job. Which I am working on.”
I watched him work and commented. “Pretty smooth.”
“Yes, I am.”
His fingers flickered again and the top card stayed in place
and the second flickered out. Claire watched him and folded her hand. “Could we do this without the cheating?”
“Sure. I think I remember how.”
Claire took the cards he offered next and slid them over face down and took his in return. Then she spoke without looking up. “Have fun.”
“At the library?”
“Well, you’re weird that way …”
“If I’m not back in three hours …” My wife and Smiley looked up at me from the cards. “… just wait longer.”
At the library I headed to the reference desk, picked up copies of the papers for the week, and went through them looking for anything odd. Anything that might indicate Smiley was conning me, which translated into anything violent and/or profitable. But there was nothing abnormal. The cops seized two stun guns and a few grams of crack cocaine during a street sweep and claimed it showed the gangs were on the run. A fire alarm revealed a hidden room in a postal worker’s home where over a million pieces of undelivered mail were stored. A confidential informant in a stolen identity scam refused to testify despite having been paid over $80,000 by the police. The party not in power complained about the increased crime rate across Canada while the party in power defended their actions.
But there was nothing that pointed to Smiley being active in the city.
I used the Internet access to run a search and found nothing new, so then I checked out the Government of Manitoba site to find some answers for Smiley. When my time was up I headed back home where the game was still going on. I sat down and held out my hand for the deck.
“Bad news, Smiley.”
“How bad?”
The cards were in my hands and I shuffled backwards and forwards and dealt out five cards each. Smiley looked confused. “No Texas Hold ’em?”
“That’s for wimps. Five card. Two draw. Two card. Table stakes. Each of you suckers gives me five matches.” I gave them my best wolf grin.
They passed the matches and I anted up. “As for the bad, it’s fairly bad but not ‘You’ve got the clap’ bad.”
Claire took two cards, Smiley one, and me two and then Claire folded and Smiley bet a lot. I matched him and took the pot.
Smiley frowned and asked, “So that kind of bad is okay, give me two.”
The cards flew over, Fred came over to look, yelled, “’ARDS!” and wandered away while I took one. I’d played with Smiley before; he had a considerable talent to change plans in midstream if they weren’t going well or if he thought he had a new, better plan. He was flexible, whereas I was stubborn.
His face twitched. “Shitfuck.”
Claire smacked him hard and told him, “No swearing. Not in my house.”
“You swear, so does Monty.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean you can.”
He shook his head in admiration and I went on, “Nice poker face.”
He lost with a queen of hearts and a queen of spades along with three other spades. I held three eights and garbage.
I handed the deck to Claire and five matches back to Smiley.
“What are these for?”
“I borrowed those to raise. They’re yours; the ones I won are mine. Anyhow, the bad news is that the law here in Manitoba is fucked up. You can’t be a bouncer if you have a criminal record …”
We were playing Texas Hold ’em now, with Claire dealing and ignoring my profanity. Smiley took his cards and smiled. “Which would be me.”
I agreed with him. “Also you’d need to meet …” The matches flicked into the pile and I played expansively, quickly forcing Smiley to fold while Claire met my poker face with one of her own. “… and I quote, ‘minimum competency standards.’”
“Which means?”
Claire answered. “Whatever they want it to mean. So that won’t work.”
She raised me and I raised her and I won and Smiley gathered the cards and dealt. “Wait a minute. There have to be some places hiring under the table … stuff like that.”
“True, but you don’t want that.” Claire shrugged and motioned for me to ante up.
“Why not?”
I answered that one. “You don’t want that because you want to be above board now, completely above board. Honest. Pay your taxes. Walk in the light of the day. Shit like that.”
He’d forgotten. “Right, I want to go straight.”
She won that hand and Smiley won the next two as I folded fast and thought about how to bring up the issue of money. Finally I realized there was no nice way to bring up the subject of money. “I’ll take one card. Smiley, what about the money?”
“Huh? Oh.”
Smiley had mentioned money the night before, money he could contribute to pay his way, and now I was bringing it up.
The hand fell to me. Claire took back the initial five matches I’d borrowed and it was my turn to deal, I went on, “Yeah, that. I want to make sure this deal is fair all around. Claire and I want to do this but there are costs that need to be covered. Living costs money, rent is expensive, food is expensive, electricity and water cost money, and so forth.”
“Of course! That’s cool, so let’s treat this like a real contract between all of us. So what do you want?”
Smiley and I folded, so Claire took the pot and the deal moved on. Smiley kept talking. “Me, I want a real job and a straight life. No crime and no punishment and none of the rest of it.”
He said it deadpan. My wife and I looked at each other and she answered, “Fine, you live in this house. We help you until you’re ready to stand on your own. We help with the apartment, the job, the clothes …”
He was offended. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“You look like a cheap hood.” Claire made it sound okay.
“Well. Shit.”
I defended Smiley. “But it’s true though; Smiley
is
a cheap hood.”
“You’re not helping.” She blew hair out of her eyes and stuck her tongue out.
I won the next hand and raked in the matches while phrasing what I wanted to say to our guest. “That’s what you were. As of now, you’re not.”
The cards flew and bets were made before Smiley spoke again. “So what the fuck am I?”
Claire answered. “You’re in limbo. Consider it a Zen exercise.”
“Zen? Like
And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
?”
“Yes.”
“Never read it.”
She ignored him. “Right now you just exist, drifting in the void that is this world.”
He looked at me. “Sounds deep.”
The cards loved me and I took another hand. “Think of it like this: you’re waiting for the bank to open.”
“Oh.”
Claire brought us back to the main subject. “Now, what do we get out of it?”
He exhaled. “Let me make some calls. I’ve got some cash coming to me.”
Claire asked sweetly, “How much?”
“About ten.”
“Good. Room and board is three hundred a month.”
“That works.” He was silent for awhile and then asked, “Monty, you ever miss it?”
“No.”
“Never.”
“Remember the last one we did?”
“No.”
He wanted to tell the story but I kept saying no and ten minutes later I had cleaned everyone out and the game folded.
That night Claire poked me hard in the ribs while we were in bed. “Do you miss it, and be honest.”
“No.”
She looked directly in my eyes before doing certain things. When she was done she purred low in her throat. “Tell me now.”
My voice was hoarse as I answered, “No.”
She began to move. “Now I believe you.”
When she was asleep I crept out of the house and went out a few blocks until I found a pay phone I’d never used before. There I phoned Marie’s cell and found out that everything was going well and that Don and Al were practising with the canoes and cursing me and my stupid ideas.
I found out no one was sniffing around the route that she could tell and that didn’t make sense at all. Sam should at least be looking around. Quietly, probably, but she should still be looking.
When I made it back home, Smiley met me in the doorway with the crowbar. When he realized who it was he gave me a thumbs up and I went back up to my wife, who was lying serenely in bed with her right hand under the pillow touching the bayonet.