She smiled.
That night we pulled the drapes closed and I took some remnants of canvas and heavy thread along with a six-foot length of six-inch tensor bandage and made a holster Claire could wear all the time. It fit at the base of her spine, under her pants or skirt, and it was almost unnoticeable as long as she always wore her shirt out. Since the Beretta was so small (less than five inches long and less than an inch thick) and light, it was easy for her to get used to it.
When the holster was ready I got her to strip to underwear and a bra and put it on. Then I made her practise drawing it quickly, right hand and then left. Over and over again.
Actually, it was kind of sexy to watch.
When we had to talk we wrote it down on scraps of paper, just in case the cops had the place bugged.
While she was practising I took the opportunity to rip some seams out of one of Claire’s favourite leather jackets and insert a ten-inch plastic knitting needle down her spine. The brass tip stuck out just behind her neck and she could draw that with either hand but other than that it was unnoticeable. Since it was plastic it bent with her movements and it was flexible enough to slide easily between ribs as needed.
When I was done we headed down to the basement. We went into the corner where I filled a garbage pail with water from the tap and had her stand on a chair over it. When she was ready I had her pull the gun and fire a single shot straight down into the water.
Crack.
It was an insignificant noise and the bullet went into the water maybe a foot before losing momentum and drifting the rest of the way.
She wrote, “It works.”
“Any problems with the recoil?”
Claire just shook her head. She had fired rifles and shotguns with her dad over the years so she was no stranger to guns. I handed her the revolver and she fired that as well.
Bang!
Much more authoritative.
She holstered the gun and I gathered up the spent shells and bullets and put them in my pocket for disposal. Upstairs I wrote her a note to remind her, “The Beretta is always double action so squeeze and that’s it. Seven rounds left, which is more than enough.”
I checked Claire’s purse. She had a Mini-Mag flashlight (useful to find door locks in the dark and to give weight and a rigid surface in a punch), a nice Gerber Guardian Back-Up knife sewn into the side (great for opening letters and slitting throats as needed). She also had a whistle and a can of pepper bear spray but those were obviously for defence.
Claire watched me closely as I checked the house. Doors, windows and locks. Upstairs I turned on the internal alarm I’d built when Smiley, an ex-con friend of mine, had lived with us. If anyone came up the stairs it would trigger a light display which I put on my side of the bed.
Then I took the door off its hinges from Fred’s room and used two pieces of thread to tie it into place on the stairs. If anyone came upstairs quickly they’d break the thread and it would make a hell of a racket as they went skiing away, not lethal but loud and disorienting. Claire took Fred and his mattress into our room and put him in a corner nearest to her.
I looked around and froze, standing there. Finally Claire put her hand on my arm and led me to bed.
I didn’t dream that night.
I’m not sure I even slept.
#21
The next morning I phoned Mr. Reese. His secretary had a slightly nasal east-coast accent but put me through to him as soon as she heard my name and the first thing he said was, “Call me Virgil. What do you need?”
“Thanks, Virgil. I need to quit, actually.”
He was silent and then laughed and it was kind of cold and amused. “You can’t quit.”
“I have to. I have a serious personal problem that I have to deal with.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I can’t discuss it over the phone.”
“Are you serious?” He answered his own question. “Yes, you are.”
I started again. “Yes. I have to quit …” and he interrupted me, “I’ll be right over. Thirty minutes. Please wait.”
He made it in less than twenty. On my way to the door I kissed Claire and she showed me the gun at her back and the Gerber knife tucked behind her neck under her hair. It made me feel better.
I sat down and wondered whether I trusted Virgil. My reflex was to say no. But the whole situation was so complex, it didn’t feel like a setup. Everyone wanted something—Virgil wanted to help Cornelius, Devanter wanted to win, Cornelius wanted Devanter to lose.
None of it added up to Virgil being part of the Shy Man problem. And he might be an ally—if he kept paying me then I’d have the money to help deal with the Shy Man. Even run, if we had too.
I wrote it out on a pad of paper and showed it to Claire and she nodded.
When Virgil came in I showed him the paper on which I had written, “The cops have the place bugged.”
He nodded and sat down.
And we started to write copious notes back and forth.
Claire and Fred sat in the living room while I “talked” to Virgil. Claire read over our shoulders and Fred kept himself plugged in via earphones to the television watching a thirty-three-year-old recording of a Muppet Show starring ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
When I had explained everything Virgil shook his head and said out loud, “I’ll be honest. I thought maybe Devanter had gotten to you. Offered you more money or something.”
“No.” I wrote down the rest of my answer. “If that had happened I would have strung you all along with copious quantities of bullshit and lies, collapsed my campaign at the last moment and collected from both sides.”
He stared at me and so did Claire. Then he said slowly, “You are a very corrupt individual.”
“You mean neither of you thought of that?”
“No.” They both answered and I felt pretty bad about myself. But then I had never claimed to be a gentleman.
Virgil closed his eyes and patted the dog. After six or seven minutes he opened his eyes and said slowly, “Do you have a dollar?”
Claire did. I tossed the gold-coloured coin to him and he put it into his watch pocket. “You’re my client now. So everything you tell me is confidential. This is my advice; the cops are watching the house, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to hang around and help your wife?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re in the race you’re in the public eye.” He wrote quickly. “That fact might keep the killer away. The race will also provide you with money so your wife doesn’t have to work. Lastly, if you win you can pressure the police to do more.”
I spoke out loud. “Okay. All that sounds legitimate.”
“However. If you’re not in the race then …” He wrote, “… it’s you against the Shy Man with limited resources. Mano a mano.” He turned to Claire and said, “Your decision.”
It surprised me. “How is it her decision?”
“It’s her life. So that makes it her decision.”
Claire stared at me unblinkingly and I just stood there immobile and she finally nodded. “Stay in the race. It seems to give us more options that way.”
Answers, complaints raced through my head but I didn’t say anything. The bad guy part of my brain stepped back and let me look at the problem dispassionately. She was right and he was right and if they were wrong then I could still dump the race and follow my instincts.
“’Kay.”
I was supposed to work on my campaign but I phoned Dean and Brenda and left that in their capable hands while telling Virgil to come shopping with me.
I took Claire and Fred to Buttes, the local archery range where I work sometimes, and dropped them off there with Frank, who’s a nice guy, albeit a little screwy. The lanes were full of a Christian boys’ and girls’ club and I felt both Claire and Fred were pretty safe.
While Virgil drove I thought.
We stopped at a big-box hardware store, where I spent $
600 of the old man’s money. Then we went to a sporting goods store and I blew another $300. After that there was a hobby store, a gun store that dealt primarily to cops and lastly I hit a libertarian natural food store in the south end.
When everything was loaded I looked around and said, “Ouch.”
Virgil looked at me over the top of a soft-serve ice cream cone he had bought from a vendor. “What?”
“Spending money hurts. Especially when you’ve earned it instead of stolen it honestly.”
He slapped me on the back. “You’ll get used to it, princess. Are we done now? Because I have clients who pay more than a dollar a day waiting …”
After dropping me off in front of my house with my purchases, he took off. Once all the stuff was inside I went back to Buttes and collected my wife and son.
When supper was finished I went to work with the decorative iron grills I’d bought, each two feet high, four feet long and made up of one-inch round wrought iron bars. Once I’d sharpened the ends properly (and illegally) with a file I used the recommended hardware and used them on the inside of the windows. Four covered the front window, three more covered the windows on the side of the house and more went on over the spare bedroom and kitchen windows. Then I did the same for the windows upstairs and the ones in the basement.
I hooked up radar alarms in each room of the house. They ran off attached nine-volt batteries and would trigger a foghorn if anything bigger than a mouse moved, and I set them to run from eleven at night to seven in the morning. Keeping the dog Renfield under control would be a pain but not impossible—he generally liked to sleep in the same room as us anyway.
While I was working with some six-inch lengths of iron pipe my eyes started to droop and I had to go to sleep.
The next morning I used the new Dremel multi-tool I had bought and finished with the pipes, attaching butt plates, cutting an L shape through the surface into the cavity and installing heavy duty springs and sliding metal bolts at the same time. The hard part was getting the handle into the bolt while it was in the pipe, but when it was done I had five simple-looking zip guns. Each looked vaguely like a pen and could reliably fire a single .32 calibre shell with a twist of a thumb.
I spray-painted them silver and put them aside to dry while I finished testing the last couple of gimmicks I’d bought. Then I invited Claire down to the basement where I was working and showed her the tool bench.
She looked at it all and shrugged theatrically. Then I wrote out my notes and took her through the items, one at a time.
First up was the lighter I’d taken from the assholes at the fair. It didn’t look very prepossessing, a three-inch by two-inch rectangle made out of a dull grey metal. She took the paper from my hand and wrote, “Looks like a lighter.”
I answered, “It is!”
She looked disgusted and I jotted down that it was a butane lighter with an electric ignition and burned at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt steel, hot enough to fire a crematorium and reliable enough to light in a rainstorm. I wrote that if she ignited it and touched the flame to anyone they would quickly become interested in other things.
Claire looked impressed and put the lighter in her purse.
I showed her the rest, a plastic vial of pills a couple of inches long, and wrote speed on the paper and that she should take it if someone drugged her. It was ephedrine, from the ma huang plant in China, an appetite suppressant, a decongestant and a fairly powerful stimulant. I had no idea how the Shy Man kidnapped his ladies but if he used drugs then he probably used a narcotic or hypnotic. Amphetamines worked really well at overriding both of those and the pills were legal in Canada. Ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine were also the base ingredient of crystal meth.
As a recovering drug addict I really wanted to take them instead of giving them to Claire but I resisted.
There was also a copy of a Smith and Wesson police handcuff key in case the Shy Man used handcuffs. And there was a single-edged razor, to be hidden because I knew he used ropes. I let Claire think about where to put those where they’d be most useful. I normally sewed them into shirt and pants cuffs but that was me. If I needed them I could pick the threads free with my fingernails and then I’d be free. As Claire was a better seamstress than me I was sure she’d have a better idea.
Claire took two of the zip guns that looked remarkably like fat pens now that the silver paint was dry. She balanced them for a few moments and then put them in her purse as well. Then she kissed me and went to make supper. Afterwards she phoned all the parents whose children we babysat and made sure they understood she’d be doing it for awhile.
Most of them sounded relieved when they heard I was out of the picture. But they got really panicky when they found out I was running for police commissioner. I’m not entirely sure why they felt more nervous about me as a public official than as a babysitter.
Then Claire phoned Veronica and explained that she was housebound and to ask her to deliver some paperwork for her to keep up to date while Veronica concentrated on selling. Veronica hemmed for awhile but agreed when Claire offered an extra week of vacation.
While she was doing that I sat there thinking about how to get my brain thinking like that of a monster.
#22
The next morning we campaigned, Brenda and Dean and I. We went from door to door and generally got them slammed in our faces. Brenda or Dean walked first, knocked, talked and then waved me in or away, depending on the response.
I was wearing my only suit, an expensive pale grey two-piece with a black shirt, grey tie and the pair of steel-toed shoes, good for crunching up a kneecap without breaking a toe in case of debate. It was my go-to-trial suit, so old that it was almost back in style.
I looked pretty good so I got waved in more often than not and I’d walk forward confidently to shake hands and start to talk.
“Good morning! My name is Monty Haaviko and I’m running to be the chief commissioner of the new police board. I want your vote on September 13.”
Sometimes they’d say yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes they asked questions like, “What the fuck is the police board?” or “Why do we need a police board?” and sometimes, “Why are you bothering me?”
I got pretty good at some standard answers. “The police board is a citizen-run board that oversees the police department on issues like citizen complaints, public inquiries, criminal investigations and budgets.”
I said that a lot. About the same amount of time as I said, “The police board provides an extra element of oversight of justice and security in the city. It is impartial and supports the police mission.”
And for the “Why are you bothering me?” I just started to apologize and say that I believed it was time for a change here in the city and that things had gotten out of hand.
Between houses Brenda and Dean briefed me on my responses and made suggestions. At first it was annoying but then I realized that their input was helping, it made me more comfortable with questions and responses.
Dean had overheard me at the first house, “Okay, Monty. That was good. Three things to hit though: A) Mention citizen complaints first. In the city most of the complaints against cops come from this district so that’ll make you friends. B) Mention criminal investigations. Lots of people would love to know what actually goes on in a police room so it’s a kind of tease, a hint that someone they know might know something secret. C) Mention budgets. Most voters have a strong response to that issue—either there’s too much money or not enough.”
Brenda agreed. “And watch the voter. If their eyes narrow when you mention the complaints, they’re probably anti-cop, so run with that. Watch their hands; if they clench them they’re feeling strong emotion. Watch their feet: are they being defensive? Watch them and tailor your message.”
And much, much more. I learned a lot from both of them and I learned more when we stopped for lunch at a greasy spoon six blocks from my home. Over acid coffee and kielbasa sausage in a kaiser bun with the best
french fries I’d ever had we talked. And then the two of them took the entire electoral district apart verbally and on a map they laid out on the table.
Benda ate tiny bites while she talked. “District 3. Basically the northwest corner of the city, wealth in the western part, poverty in the centre and south. Lots of crime to be concerned with. It’s the second most crime-prone part of the city after the city centre. Some shootings, lots of break and enter of homes, lots of car thefts, lots of graffiti, lots of marijuana grow operations. So it’s a crime-prone area. However, lots of complaints against the cops over the past ten years. So it’s not an ignorant area. They are aware of their rights in general.”
Dean had finished his lunch and ordered three slices of pie chosen at random. “Right. Mostly a masculine district—lots of families, lots of immigrants, lots of self-created businessmen working out of their homes or in small businesses. The immigrants are mostly from Asia and two factors work with them in our eyes: A) They have a cultural history of distrusting cops. And B) Immigrants generally vote to support the powers that be. Not sure how to handle that.”
He dealt the pie to all of us and I found I could eat it, to my surprise; normally I wasn’t all that fond of desserts. But the politicking was hard work and so I ate the pie and was still hungry.
Brenda cleared her throat. “You were fine today, Monty, just fine. But remember, you only have a few seconds to be memorable and you have to be memorable. When you meet the voter look them directly in the eye and think positive thoughts only. Imagine the voter is beautiful and powerful and believe that.”
Dean polished off his coconut cream and said, “Let’s roll.”
And we were back at it. At one house I received a copy of the Watchtower from an ecstatic young man, a Jehovah’s Witness who assured me it was full of good news I wanted to hear. I agreed to read it if he would consider voting for me and he felt that was equitable.
At another house a four-year-old shot me with a water gun through the screen door and Brenda wordlessly produced a disposable towel about one foot by two from her purse and let me clean myself while Dean talked to the mother.
A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) Page 11
