I
spent the next week growing ears and eyes in strange places and double- and triple-checking everything around me. But no Sam, no nothing at all, and at the end of the week I had enough confidence to take the monsters with me on a long walk that touched three separate playgrounds in our neighbourhood. While we played, wreaked havoc, and played some more, I had time to think about tracking down the original owners of the drug house I’d flooded and dealing with them.
Just for practice, just to keep busy.
I sat there and watched the kids play and wondered why I had wrecked the drug house in the first place. The best thing I could come up with was that wrecking the place had been reflex; it had offended my sense of something or other.
A union guy I’d worked with once had said that every employee should keep a hammer handy at all times. Not for work. Just to tap the foreman every now and then to get their attention. Later I found out the union guy had stolen the line from a science fiction novel, but the principle was still sound.
On the way back home with very tired children I passed by the drug house. It was quickly turning grey. The lawn was still littered with garbage and the whole building was plastered with sheets of cardboard and plywood and sealed with bright yellow police caution tape. Already all the surfaces were starting to accumulate a new crop of graffiti and obscenities, some of it beautifully done in curlicues and ornate lettering. I walked around back and saw that one of the boards on the rear door had already been moved, and I figured squatters and runaways had begun moving in.
My nose wrinkled in memory. I’d been in a lot of places like that over the years and the smell was memorable, even unforgettable. With no toilet the inhabitants would piss and shit in dark corners and leave it. With no stove they’d cook over piles of twigs and broken furniture, generally in the sinks or in the basement on concrete. Garbage would be left everywhere, untended. The filth would accumulate and attract small creatures, disease bearing, stealthy and biting. Colonial ants with their workers and queens and larvae, fighting and scavenging and fucking, while in the corners and cracks would be the bedbugs laying four eggs a day, every day. Cockroaches born carrying their eggs already fertilized and waiting, capable of producing 4500 young a year and each female infant being capable of doing the same. Fleas, biting and leaping, incontinent mice darting everywhere, rats, where the conditions were right, nightmarish silverfish, organized termites chewing in the walls, vampiric ticks.
Rabies and hantavirus possible from mammals. Bubonic plague and Lyme disease from their parasites. Hookworms and tapeworms and other parasites from other parasites. A brand new ecosystem, all starting six blocks from my home.
While I was standing there a very thin lady came over and shoved a clipboard in my face: “Sign!”
I signed a false name with my left hand and then asked, “What am I signing?”
“It’s a petition to force the owners of this place to clean it up or tear it down. It’s an eyesore.”
“It is that. So who owns it?”
“We’re not sure, the management company isn’t returning our calls but we’re looking into it.”
“Good for you.”
Me and the monsters went home, had a snack, and then a brisk nap.
Later on, the phone did the double, long-distance ring. The voice on the other end was polite, precise, and very professional. There was nothing in the background to give his location away.
“Am I speaking to Mr. Haaviko?”
“Yep.”
“Mr. Montgomery Haaviko? I have to be positive so please forgive me. Montgomery Haaviko, formerly a federal prisoner?”
I didn’t say anything and he added, “Number…”
He repeated six digits and a letter that I was unlikely to forget but I just waited. The voice repeated it accurately again and I felt myself getting cold and angry. “Who are you?”
“I am Lawrence McQuaid of Chang and McQuaid. I’m a lawyer based out of Vancouver and I have a client who wants to speak with you.”
“Your client is?”
“He is very cautious. He will introduce himself.”
“I see.”
I thought about what the man had said. Then I thought about how far a lawyer would stick his neck out? Perhaps it depended on the fee, perhaps I was being cynical. Probably a lawyer would not break the law, which meant they would not be setting someone up for a murder. Probably but not guaranteed.
The voice repeated the federal prisoner number that had been mine. “Is that you?”
“It was. Have your client call me before he comes anywhere near.”
“That’s up to him.”
“No. Make sure he calls me first. I’m making it your responsibility.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Just as long as it happens. He calls me first. First.”
“And if not?”
I left the question hang and he repeated himself twice more before I hung up. When the phone rang again I let it alone but he kept calling. After sixty-two tries during the evening he finally gave up and Claire and I went to bed.
Upstairs I lay in the dark and thought about the next day, about the final touches on the route. No point in doing it early because Marie had to be ready and she wasn’t yet.
Finally I drifted off to sleep.
T
he doorbell rang at half-past two in the morning and I rolled out of bed and jogged downstairs in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. Outside the door was someone I had never expected to see again and when I opened it his face lit up. “Hey, Monty. You scared the piss out of my liar.”
Smiley’s hands were open at his sides and he wore a black canvas windbreaker down to mid-thigh and the dark green oversized shirt and pants the screws give you in prison. You weren’t supposed to take them with you when you left but everyone did because guys who wanted to be bad wore them on the street to advertise. And guys like me sold them to rappers who wrote songs about shooting niggers, stabbing fags in the head, and beating up their bitches.
Smiley wore the clothes when he was out because he liked how they fit.
He was a bad man. As a bad man myself I can say with confidence that he was worse than I had ever been. He was a little shorter than six feet and maybe 180 pounds, solidly
built and covered with tattoos that were hidden from everyday viewers. His hair was short and black and his eyes were pale brown, washed out, and emotionless, except for the smile that constantly played around his lips.
He was always a happy man.
I’d met him three or four times in different prisons over two decades and had worked with him twice in the outside world. Both jobs had gone perfectly, which translated into cash and no heat.
He was very bad and very skilled and he enjoyed it all a lot.
“What do you want?”
“To come in.”
“Sure.”
He came in sideways through the door and his expensive camouflage backpack brushed the frame heavily. He put it down on the floor and looked around the living room.
“Nice place. No television?”
“Can’t afford one and we don’t want one so that works out. Here, we can sit in the dining room.”
I took him back through to the dining table and sat him down with his back to the living room. Then I sat across from him with my back to the wall. “How’d you find me?”
He shrugged. “Easy. Cops tell lawyers all sorts of shit and lawyers talk, you just have to ask ’em nice. My lawyer’s bent as they come and always willing to help someone out for a little extra.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
He chewed on his upper lip and stared at me with his pale eyes that had seen too much. They had seen as much as mine had and maybe more and for the first time I realized how old and tired he looked. There were lines across his forehead and
grey in the stubble on his cheeks, signs of aging that hadn’t been there when I’d last seen him two years before.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Claire ghost down the stairs in her bathrobe and move silently to the umbrella stand by the front door. With impeccable silence she pulled the crowbar out and started to move towards Smiley.
“Someone told me you went straight. That true?”
I shrugged. “You mean flaming or so-so?”
He didn’t understand and elaborated for me, “Off the job. No longer a crook. No longer working. No longer stealing. Honest. A citizen.”
He said it without contempt and I nodded. “Yep. That’s me, a productive member of society. A citizen of the republic.”
“Serial?” He leaned forward in his chair and it creaked. His hands were on the table and his knuckles were bright white with tension.
“I’m straight, serial. Serious as can be.”
He nodded and before I could move he pulled a gun out from under his right arm and put it on the table between us. I swallowed. “Well, you’ve acquired my undivided attention.”
“I wanted to show you I’m serious about what I’m saying. I want to go straight too. I just need a little help. I also need a place to stay and I can pay. But I really need help going straight. I’m serious about that.”
“I believe you.”
He touched the gun with a forefinger. “It’s a Norinco Coach double-barrelled shotgun in twelve gauge. Stock rasped down to a pistol grip, barrel filed down to eighteen centimetres. Remember? Just like Doc Holliday.”
We had discussed Doc in Drumheller prison while jogging on the track and watching out for the baby rattlesnakes that were supposed to be there but I never saw. Doc Holliday had
carried a sawn-down shotgun under his arm attached by a rubber cord, a gun like the one Smiley had put on the table. The point of balance on the concealed piece was kept over the triggers so it always wanted to swing up, but if you wore a coat it kept the barrels pointed down. Open the coat and the piece swings into place, as sweet as pie.
I wondered why I hadn’t seen the gun under his coat. I wondered how rusty I was getting.
He touched the gun again with affection. “Makes for a quick draw. External hammers. KISS.”
Keep it simple, stupid. An external hammer meant you could tell it was cocked just by feel. It was also the safest kind of gun, it was either cocked or ready to fire or uncocked and you couldn’t fire it by accident. My breathing was shallow and the hair on my arms was raised and my bladder wanted to empty. The adrenaline surged through me and sped up my blood flow and gave me the start of a wicked headache. It was flight or fight time and behind him Claire was moving very slowly and very quietly indeed and I tried not to look at her.
“Double-ought pellets in the left barrel for soft targets.” Like people. “A rifled lead slug in the right barrel for hard targets.” Like cops wearing body armour. In both cases the barrel was so short that half the unfired powder would be blown out still burning, which would make a huge mess. That would be all on top of the holes being blown into the target’s body.
“A quality piece of work.”
Smiley licked his lips and flexed his hand. For a moment he stared at it like it belonged to a stranger. Claire was about three feet behind him with the crowbar held to the side and back like a baseball bat.
“Do you know what Doc Holliday’s last words were?”
“No.”
“He was dying from tuberculosis and woke up in pain and alone. He asked for, and drank, a glass of whiskey. Then he said, ‘This is funny.’ And then he died.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you know that his shotgun sold for fifty grand down in Fort Worth about six years ago? The guy who owned it said that his kids had no idea what it was so it wasn’t worth anything to them.”
I nodded. “So?”
“So lots of shit. So I want to go straight and I want you to help me. Like I said, I can pay, but I need a place to stay.”
Claire lowered the crowbar until the end touched the ground, then she spoke. “Monty? Why don’t you find Smiley some coffee?”
He very slowly turned his head until he could see her. The smile didn’t start again until he saw the crowbar. “Claire.”
Claire was speaking with more calm than I felt. “Smiley. You want to stay? You want to go straight?”
“Yes. Honest.” He turned back to me and let the smile flower. “You still have the prettiest girl in the free world.”
Claire nodded. “I’m a woman. And that is true. And if you don’t dump the gun far, far away from here right now, then I’ll beat you to death with this crowbar and bury you in the basement.”
If anything the smile became bigger and he stood up and hooked the shotgun back up under his arm. “And the meanest, prettiest and meanest, bar none.”
He started to leave and Claire stopped him. “Do not ever come into my home with any weapons or drugs or anything even mildly illegal.”
I spoke up, “I’ll come with you and then you can come back.”
Claire looked at me strangely and then followed me upstairs while I dressed—one of our rules is never to fight in front of other people. Upstairs she whispered in my ear, “What are you doing? I do not like Smiley, I do not trust Smiley. Why are we helping him?”
She glared at me and waited for an answer, which I gave after sorting it out in my mind. “I don’t trust him either.”
“So why are we inviting him into our home?”
That made me think. Finally I answered slowly, “I want him close. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s meaner than me.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“True. I have no idea why he’s suddenly shown up and I need to know, that means keeping him very close.”
Claire blew air through her nose. “This is dangerous for me and you and for Fred.”
“Low blow. Having him here is dangerous and having him out there is dangerous too.”
Claire thought about it and nodded reluctantly. I went on, “If there’s a rabid, man-eating tiger with hemorrhoids and a hard-on in my neighbourhood then I want to know where he is all the time. And that means keeping Smiley close while we find out what the fuck is going on.”
“Oh.” She thought about it and then said slowly, “Well then. I want to repeat: you’re putting your family in harm’s way.”
I felt very old. “If Smiley’s here then my family is already in trouble. I just need to know where the trouble is coming from.”
She thought about that and then reluctantly kissed me and
I went with Smiley towards the river. As we left the house Smiley turned back to Claire and did a kind of half-assed bow. “Prettiest and meanest. And smartest. Bar none.”
She smiled herself and then closed the door.