I took it and read it. It was simple. I was contracting to provide unnamed services for an unnamed period of time. It was very open and very vague and very full of legal crap. I read it and looked at Gwen. “There is mention of an initial payment of $5,000. Do you have it?”
“I do.”
She gave it to me from out of the wallet, a thin sheaf of fifty new hundreds so crisp I cut a thumb. I counted it and checked the serial numbers for repeats but the bills were either real or such good queer I could pass them painlessly. Reynolds and Devanter were definitely paying their way.
So I signed the contracts and the receipts and kept one copy of each and then showed Gwen out. As I closed the door Claire said, “Nice girl.”
I fanned the money and said, “Not really.”
Claire looked thoughtful. “A natural redhead? I wonder.”
I shuffled the money and handed her five bills. “I got another five if you can find out.”
“It’s a deal.”
After Claire left I thought for about ten seconds. If you pull a gun on me I will distrust you. So I distrusted Devanter and Reynolds. I thought for another ten seconds and then I called Dean Pritchard. “Mr. Pritchard? This is Monty Haaviko. I’ve thought about your offer and I’d like to accept. Could I meet whoever hired you? Who would be the person who wants to hire me?”
He was speaking on a cell phone and his voice came in scratchy. “Certainly. Let me give him a call and we’ll set something up. Can Brenda and I meet with you today though? There’s not much time to get all this organized.”
We made a date for six at a restaurant and bakery I know and then I wrangled children for the rest of the day. Since it was hot, my wrangling consisted of turning on a sprinkler in the backyard and letting the kids rampage. As the grass also needed watering I felt this was an effective strategy. For supper I made spaghetti and sauce with a recipe from an Italian lady whose three sons played with my kids occasionally. She had given me not only the recipe but also eight tomatoes from the greenhouse she had built on top of her garage.
When she told me that I was amazed. “You built a greenhouse on top of your garage?”
She was slim and prim and looked maybe nineteen. She always sat in the corner of the parks, in the shade, knitting and watching her kids with her dark eyes and a slight downturn of her mouth as though she disapproved. The sound of her clashing needles had first drawn me when we’d originally met that spring. Later she decided she could trust me a little and when I asked about the greenhouse she looked at me with round eyes. “Of course! Store tomatoes taste just awful.”
The next day she brought the recipe on an index card along with the tomatoes in an old, creased paper bag and so I made spaghetti. And it was a tremendous success, which had nothing to do with my skills as a chef.
By quarter to six I was at the commercial bakery on Main that I liked; the one run by the Greek family. It had five round tables under an awning around the side, which made it a good place to meet.
When I’d first come to town I’d visited the place and fallen in love with the coffee and the pastries. Me and the owners had gotten along fine until a psycho cop named Walsh had tried to run me out of town. But that had been more than a year ago.
There were two other patrons at the place, an old man sitting by himself and drinking a small cup of coffee beside an aboriginal child, maybe eleven, wearing designer jeans, eating a cream horn and reading Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy.
I sat down and a fattish young man with dark, curly hair, blue eyes and a silver stud in his eyebrow came out holding a menu. He was wearing white overalls and an apron and tucked into his apron was the worn wooden handle of a hammer.
“I thought we told you not to come back.”
“You did.”
“Yet you come back.” He sounded amazed.
“I do. Fancy that.”
“You are a crook.” He said it flatly and the old man looked up and so did the kid. Their faces were blank and the kid carefully put one finger down on his book as though to mark an idea.
I kept facing the waiter. “I was. Now I’m meeting some people. Can we be friends?”
“No.”
“Okay. Can I meet some people here?”
“No.”
I got up to leave and the waiter watched me. Before I could reach the sidewalk he said, “You didn’t threaten me.”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“I thought you would.”
It made me laugh. “No. I told you, I want to sit here and have coffee and Danishes for which I will pay you. And I’ll even tip you. While I am here I want to meet some respectable people. Basically I want to smooth over the damage done by Sergeant Walsh last year when he called your family and told all those truths to you. Threatening you would not help me do any of that.”
“You say Walsh told the truth?”
“Yes.” Walsh had gone around to every business in the neighbourhood when I’d first come to Winnipeg, telling everyone about my criminal past while trying to drive me out of the city. The fallout from that monumental fuckup never seemed to end.
“So you are a bad guy?” He probed and the old man and the kid kept watching.
“I was one. Maybe I still am. But right now I want to have coffee and Danishes here and meet some people. Even bad guys have to drink coffee and eat Danishes and meet with people.”
The man glanced back towards the bakery and I saw a huge fat man filling the doorway. He was maybe six foot five and easily 400 pounds and looked like the guy in front of me at 150 percent magnification. His head descended once abruptly and he went back in.
“You can stay.” The waiter was magnanimous.
“Thank you. Could I get a large coffee with cream and sugar and a cheese Danish?”
I ate it with hunger and licked the tips of my fingers and drank some coffee which had improved a little since the last time I was there. Someone had told me that Muslims licked their fingers when eating because they never knew what part of the food held God’s blessing. I did it because I liked the taste.
And, deep down inside, I was never sure of the next time I would eat.
A little after six Dean Pritchard and Brenda Geraghty showed up in a dark-blue, low-end BMW sedan and came in with huge smiles on their faces. They each carried slim leather briefcases with brass fittings and Brenda wore a narrow fanny bag around her thin hips as well.
They said, almost in unison, “SO glad you accepted!”
They ordered coffee and biscotti and were somewhat ticked over the absence of espresso, lattes, chai or imperial cookies (I concealed the knowledge that I had no idea what an “imperial cookie” was). As they dosed their coffee I watched them and wondered which one had ratted me out to Devanter, because it pretty much had to be one of them. When they were comfortable I started. “You want me to run for the position of chief of the police commission?”
“Yes.” Dean spoke and both he and Brenda had notepads of canary-yellow paper out with mechanical pencils ready to go.
“So, I guess we need a contract between us ensuring you’ll cover the expenses. However, please, explain to me what exactly it is you want me to do.”
Brenda spoke up and made boxes on her sheet of paper. “Okay. The way it currently works is that the mayor is in charge in the city. Beneath his office is an appointed cabinet— I guess cabinet is the best word—who are elected and who support him no matter what and beneath that is the city council, also elected. The mayor orders the specific departments who report directly to him, however, not to the council or the cabinet.”
She looked at me expectantly and I nodded understanding. “The new plan is to have a police council put in place. That would provide oversight to the police department specifically and deal with budgeting issues, complaints, staffing and so on, anything having to do with the police.”
“Winnipeg doesn’t have this already?”
“No. Most cities do though; we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re
copying an existing system and putting it into place.”
I thought about it. “Okay. Currently how are the police responsible to the city?”
“Through the mayor. They also have a union and massive grass roots support, so they can bring considerable political force to apply through any elected official whenever and however they feel it is needed.”
She said it blandly and I could imagine the network of politics in city hall with all the authority ending with a single individual. It didn’t sound very pretty. “Who proposed the police council?”
“The mayor.”
I wondered why. The current setup had all the tools in the hands of the mayor’s office; he had absolute control over the police force, so why would he want to give any of it up? My dead friend Smiley had said, “This is the truth: Some people like to fuck. Some people like money. And some people like power.”
Politicians liked power; it was pretty much in their job description. So why give it away?
I filed the question away. “So there is going to be a police council, suggested by the mayor and elected by the populace.”
“Right. To enhance the accountability of the police force and to prevent crime.”
She said it straight-faced and I checked Dean but he wasn’t smiling either.
“Okay.”
“The mayor is having special elections to choose six people for the board. five regular members and one chief commissioner. The regular commissioners were supposed to represent Districts 1, 2, 3, the East District and District 6. However, that has …”
I stared at her. “You made that up.”
Dean answered, sounding puzzled. “No. You’re in District 3 but the chief can be from anywhere.”
I interrupted. “The City of Winnipeg Police Department is divided into districts numbered 1 to 3 consecutively. Then an East district. And a District 6. Is that right?”
They both answered, “Sure.”
I ordered another Danish and more coffee and Dean gave me a thumbnail sketch of the history of the force. “Originally there were thirteen separate forces in the city as it expanded. They all started being incorporated in 1874. In 1972 they began to be amalgamated into one force, and this was finished in 1974. Right now there are 1,682 members of the police force with a chief, a deputy, superintendents, inspectors, staff sergeants, sergeants, patrol/detective sergeants, constables and a variety of non-sworn members.”
“How many wear uniforms or carry guns? Or both.”
Brenda answered, “1,326. 1,142 men and 184 women. 1,109 Caucasian, 142 Aboriginal, 24 Black, 5 Filipino, 26 Asian and 20 others. To cover a city of 653,000 with a racial demographic of mostly white with 64,000 being aboriginal, 14,000 Black, 37,000 Filipino, and 38,000 assorted Asians with a post-tax median income of around $23,000, with women generally bringing in around $3,000 less.”
Dean listed things off on his fingers. “There’s a bicycle unit, a SWAT unit, a canine unit, a horse-mounted unit, the whole schmear—even a river patrol unit. No aerial unit though. That’s been a bone of contention in the past that can be engaged as needed by any politician to gain support by the police. It’s a pretty extensive force.”
Brenda smiled sweetly. “We’re going to put together a package about your district—individuals, incomes, race, sex, employment—and then the city as a whole. Then we’ll talk some more and get this whole thing started. Districts vote for individual commission members but the chief gets voted on by everyone and Dean’s going to put your name in today. All you have to do is sign.”
I swallowed and realized this was one of those key weird moments in life where things would change. I also realized I had no idea what to do. That’s why I said, “Fine.”
Dean produced the required legal forms, all filled in, and I signed where necessary. Then they told me that they’d set up a date to meet my benefactor, paid for coffee and everything else and vanished softly away.
I made sure they tipped well. A good Danish is hard to find, after all.
#14
Two days later I went to a tiny jewellery store off a side street in Saint Boniface. It was an old-fashioned store with a grill just outside the door to give your name and business and then a holding space with another door to open before you could get into the business proper. Inside there were long counters holding rainbows of gems and dozens of ounces of gold and platinum, fashioned into rings, necklaces, brooches, bracelets, earrings and some things I didn’t recognize.
There was good stuff on display—worth a half million easy—and the security was first rate. Steel bars on the windows to back up heavy plastic windows which were visibly alarmed for vibration and breakage. Radar alarms in the room itself, one in the front of the store and one in the rear, both backed up with cameras in slick Plexiglas domes. There were separate alarms on the jewellery cases and a smoke projector in the centre ceiling, designed to fill the room with impenetrable fog if an alarm was tripped. That alone was enough to stop most thieves, it being damn hard to steal anything if you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
I was impressed. And I was even more impressed by the jeweller himself. He was an old white man who looked middle-European, with piercing blue eyes and long white hair gathered in a ponytail. He wore a black suit and tie with a starched white shirt and constantly polished a pair of rimless spectacles with a silk handkerchief monogrammed with E.G.
“You wanted an appraisal, sir?” The ‘sir’ came out slowly and softly like an afterthought. His speech had an accent that was almost scrubbed clean and he looked at me dispassionately, weighing my value and my potential to cause trouble and finding me wanting in both categories.
“Yes, for this.”
I put the bracelet on the counter and the man picked it up with his right hand while his left exchanged his glasses for a monocle. He checked it over carefully, inside and outside and then said, “Interesting.”
He was smiling as he put the bracelet down on a green felt pad that lay on top of the counter and stepped back. The smile stayed on his face as his left hand dipped into his vest pocket and came out with a black, flat-framed pistol. The gun looked like a toy but probably wasn’t.
“You’ll freeze.”
And I did. The old man looked serious and the gun didn’t waver at all. I checked distances by eye and came to the conclusion that he and his gun were out of my reach.
“All I want is an estimate. Nothing more.”
The old man nodded. “You’ll be silent.”
He reached into his front pants pocket and came out with what looked like a television remote. Without taking his eyes off me he pushed two buttons and I heard the doors lock loudly behind me.
The remote went back into his pocket and the old man said, “You’ll be calm. The cops are on their way.”
I relaxed a little. There was nothing I could do, not without risking a bullet. And I could maybe convince the cops but there was no way I convince a bullet and so I waited. Ten minutes later the cops showed up and one knocked loudly with the butt of his skull-buster flashlight. The old man brought the remote out and opened the door, and while he did that he made the pistol disappear. He kept watching me, waiting for me to do something but I just waited too.
When my hands were cuffed the first cop, a dark-skinned, middle-aged man, asked, “So. Mr. Grim, was that a gun I saw?”
The old man, Grim, I guessed, looked offended and horrified. “Of course not! Carrying a firearm is a felony.”
The cop nodded. “So you wouldn’t mind if I searched you?”
“As long as you have a warrant. In which case I’ll call my lawyer to read it for me. My eyesight being so bad, after all.” He smiled sweetly at the cop. “Shall we do all that again? I got no problems dancing to the same tune if you don’t.”
The cop and his partner, a younger white guy whom I recognized, looked at each other and then shook their heads in unison.
“Fine then.” The old man looked a little relieved.
The younger
cop was staring at me with a furrowed brow, trying to remember. His name was Halley and he had been one of the first cops to arrest me when I’d come to town. Realization started to dawn and his partner asked, “Now why did we handcuff this nice man?”
Mr. Grim gestured at the bracelet. “He brought that in; it’s one of Redonda Paris’s pieces.”
Halley looked blank but his partner was startled. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
After that it went fast and I ended up in the back of the Crown Victoria sedan while Halley talked urgently to his partner outside. Inside the shop Mr. Grim looked at me impassively and something must have showed on my face because he finally stepped back into the interior darkness away from me.
The side door opened and the darker cop leaned in. “You Monty Haaviko?”
“Yes.” My first words.
The cop nodded. “Enzio Walsh was a friend of mine.”
I stared at the cop. Just fucking great. Walsh was the cop who had tried to frame me, kill me and run me out of town. By the time the dust had settled he was no longer a cop. He had been forced into retirement and I was still there.
The cop waited until I said, “My lawyer is Lester Thompson.”
The cop nodded and I gave him Lester’s number. I seemed to spend a lot of my life giving cops the name and phone number of my lawyer. The cop slammed the car door and we took off.
#15
The screw pulled the heavy iron door on the holding cell open and pointed with his chin and so in I went. For a few minutes there was silence in the jail cell and then the noise started again. I stood there and it hit me, washed over me and dragged me back in time.
In the corner there was a Black kid who sat on the concrete floor and leaned his forehead against the cold steel bars. The toilets were in the other corner, open to the room, and a dark-skinned Aboriginal man vomited endlessly into a porcelain bowl. And in the centre of the room there was low-keyed screaming from a white teenager who had crammed his sweatshirt into his mouth to muffle it. All that and an FM Rock radio station on one side and a Christian evangelical television show on the other. And everywhere the muttering, coughing, swearing, talking.
A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) Page 7
