It was nasty, inaccurate and fairly useless at any long range.
But up close it would wreck someone’s day entirely. The hollow-point bullets wouldn’t penetrate too many walls and staring down four third-of-an-inch-wide barrels at the same time would cause most people to reconsider their options.
I left it there but took a few seconds to open the side plate and use the pliers to twist the firing pin a little off centre. With luck that would mean he’d get misfires if he ever tried to shoot the damn thing.
Once everything was locked away again I fired up the laptop and was pleased to find it wasn’t password protected. If it had been I would have had to search for the code but I was sure it would have been written down, it always was somewhere handy. Generally on a back page of an address book or on a piece of paper hidden in a book or under a blotter or even taped somewhere handy. But in this case I got a cheerful loading page and I was in.
First things first. I went to the start menu and then connected and disconnected the Internet. Apparently the office ran off a password-coded wireless router somewhere. But that wasn’t important right now; first I had some work to do.
There were two forms in a file labelled legal forms, one a generic letter with Reynolds’s name, address and so on designed to be cut and pasted into an email to a target. It ended with the typical: “This communication, including its attachments, if any, is confidential and intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed, and may contain proprietary and/or privileged material. Any unauthorized review, disclosure, copying, other distribution of this communication or taking of any action in reliance on its contents is strictly prohibited …”
Then a second letter, this one more formal and designed to be attached. It began with a rude little:
Attention: (insert name)
Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. (insert name)
Re: (Action—Defamation/Libel/etc.)
Please be advised that we are counsel for Mr./Mrs./Ms. (client).
We are informed by Mr./Mrs./Ms. (client) that you have been … etc.
And then lots and lots of space for whatever incomprehensible legal mumbo-jumbo was necessary. It ended with:
I trust that this formal notification shall suffice to prevent any … etc.
Yours truly,
Reynolds and Lake LLP
Per:
Alastair Reynolds
(in a fake computerized signature and then typed) and CC at the very bottom.
This was going to be easy.
First I copied the letters a few dozen times and then I opened up Alastair’s address book and cut and pasted until my fingers were sore. Now each letter was addressed to one of Reynolds’s business associates and clients and claimed they were defaming Cornelius Devanter. With that done I fired up the Internet Explorer and cut and pasted email messages and attached letters to them for another hour.
Each time I hit “send” and each time the Explorer did not send as it was not connected to the Internet. But it stored each letter and attachment.
And as soon as the Internet was fixed the letters would all go out.
And the shit would hit the fan.
So much fun.
I shut down the computer and put it back in place. Then I tossed the secretary’s desk and found her list of passwords in a file neatly labelled “Pass Codes” in her desk. The code for the wireless connection was “Beelzebub” so I memorized it and put everything back where it belonged. Only then did I climb back into the ceiling and make my way to the closet. There I settled in uncomfortably to wait.
At 7:00 the guard came into the bathroom and peed.
Thirty minutes later two young men came in and I could hear them arguing about who had gotten more drunk the night before. When they left I pulled off my stocking mask and came out of the closet to find the coast was clear. I was at risk for a few seconds while I rearranged the cleaning supplies I’d moved but then I was done. In the farthest toilet stall I pulled off both pairs of gloves and cleaned myself up with wet paper towels and duct tape and stuffed everything into another garbage bag. I put that garbage bag into my shirt to give me a fat belly.
Then I left, heading back through the garage and fixing the door with one hand as I went.
#37
I got minor grief from Claire and Elena who were both sitting in my kitchen, drinking coffee and chatting about nothing in particular.
“Hey-hey, the missing link returns.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“You first.”
I kissed Claire and hugged Elena and they both wrinkled their noses. Elena said, “You smell foul.”
I had changed back into my normal clothes in the alley after retrieving my wallet and so on. She was right; I did smell foul from having my clothes lying in the garbage. “Meetings with business people. Too long without a shower.”
“Ah.” She pulled a sheet of paper towards her and wrote, “Anything?”
I shook my head and said, “That’s where I’m heading. What about Fred?”
Claire answered, “Veronica is bringing him to work with her.”
Elena got up to leave. “Work calls. Thanks, Claire.”
She smiled and it was lopsided. “Anytime.”
I went into the shower and scrubbed off the filth. Then Claire joined me and that worked better than coffee at waking me up.
Because I had to work though I also chugged a pot when I was finally dry.
Brenda, Dean and I hit the west end of the city. More walking and talking. More worries about rising crime rates and rising taxes and no one wanted to hear that the crime rates were falling. And no one wanted to know I could do nothing about the taxes.
Every little while Brenda or Dean would go make phone calls and once I did a radio interview via cell phone while sitting at a park bench, eating a smokie dog with relish and mustard. At my feet a narrow creek ran towards a bigger one and a dead fat-headed fish caught in bulrush stems swayed in the current. Clustered around its eyes and anus were a legion of crayfish and water beetles eating their way in to where the good stuff was located.
“My opponent is too close to the police. Over the past five years, since he’s retired, he’s attended …” Dean mouthed the number eight to me. “Eight police funerals around the country. He is a member of four fraternal police organizations and still banks at the Police Credit Union. Do you expect him to be dispassionate when it comes to his brothers in blue?”
The interviewer yammered on for a while and then I got my turn. “Actually, ‘brother’ is his term. And it’s good that he still has that loyalty. But a police commission requires a dispassionate, logical and doubting point of view. And that Mr. Illyanovitch does not possess. Hell, he’s refused to testify against fellow police officers three times in the past for various reasons.”
Dean nodded vigorously. He was good at finding out information, very good indeed.
“My final message is vote for me. Vote for change.”
The host thanked me and hung up and I went back to more walking and more talking.
At six a four-door sedan without whitewalls and with way too many antennas showed up and Sergeant Osserman got out. For a second I just stared at his skull face and puppy-dog brown eyes and wanted to kill him or main him but the feeling passed.
“Mr. Haaviko.”
“Hello, Sergeant Osserman. And how are you?”
“Good. Can we talk for a bit? Maybe in the car? The mosquitoes are biting something fierce.”
They were. I was still getting used to Manitoba mosquitoes. They seemed more persistent than any others I’d run into over the years. But a rule with cops is never to get into a car with them, never to get into any space they controlled, so I suggested we talk right where we were.
“Just wondering about the bracelet. Any more packages from the guy?”
“Not a one. Have you found out anything new?”
His bland little brown eyes focussed on mine and he lied, “Nothing, nothing at all.”
&nb
sp; Osserman had nothing else to say and he stood there on the sidewalk and looked off into the distance. I wondered how he had found me and decided he could have called either Dean or Brenda or he could have had me followed. I didn’t really have a third option.
Finally I turned to him. “Mr. Osserman, I never had a chance to ask you; what do you think of me running for the commission?”
Osserman shrugged. “Not much. I’m not political.”
“No opinions on it at all?”
“Not really. I’m not sure how much the commission actually does. But I wish you luck.”
“Really?”
He gave a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, really.”
Then he left and I stood there and finally decided I believed him. Brenda and Dean had kept about ten feet away during the conversation and now they wandered back slowly.
“Hey, did Sergeant Osserman call either of you to find out where we were today?”
They both looked at me blankly and shook their heads, which meant that Osserman was having me followed and whoever was doing it was really good. This worried me because I was operating at maximum paranoia, which meant I should have noticed something. Although perhaps that was professional ego.
Dean gave me a lift home and Brenda rotated in her seat and handed me a small black leather case.
“Here. A present from us.” Inside was a Nokia cell phone and charger. “It already has our numbers programmed in.”
“Thanks.” I hated cell phones, they removed privacy, cops could trace them through broadcast towers to find out exactly where the user was and any idiot with forty dollars worth of electronics could overhear your conversations. I also knew a guy whose phone had rung while he was burglarizing an apartment, which sent him to the can for two years plus a day.
Brenda just looked at me and smiled. “You hate it, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Learn to deal with it.” She grinned. “Like my friend says, it’s time to put your big girl panties on.”
She turned around back to her laptop and left me alone with my cell phone. Which promptly rang so I answered and found Reese on the other end.
“Hello sir, this is your lawyer speaking.”
“A lawyer. One of my lawyers.”
Reese was smart. By announcing he was my lawyer he was serving notice to anyone listening in that this was a privileged phone call.
“Same thing. Just wanted to tell you that the dummy is in place. It’ll be announced tomorrow at noon.”
“Why noon?”
“To max out on publicity. And we’re doing it on Tuesday because you only announce things on Friday if you want them to be ignored.”
“Makes sense. Anything I should do?”
“Just relax. It’ll be fun.” There was a long pause. “We should talk.”
“We should? Why?”
“Certain things happened to a friend of ours.” I wondered if he was talking about Reynolds. “And I want to discuss them with you.”
“Sure. Soon.”
“Now might be a good time.”
“Later, like you said. Just relax. It’ll be fun.”
He growled and hung up on me but he was right, it was fun.
#38
The announcement went out at noon but at 9:00 that morning I was in a used computer place way down in Saint James paying $350 cash for a battered laptop already loaded with basic software. It was two years old and slow as molasses but it had a wireless hook-up and the battery would last for an hour or so before needing a recharge. I had chosen the shop because they didn’t have surveillance cameras, despite the fact that I was wearing a basic disguise of non-corrective glasses and a baseball hat.
I had left my work cell phone at home and at 9:15 I phoned Reynolds and Lake and got hold of Reynolds via his secretary. When he answered and told me he was in his office I told him I was a potential client and on my way over. Then I hung up before he could accept or refuse.
At 9:45 I was in the office building and by 9:50 I was back in my favourite bathroom stall and connected to the Internet through “Beelzebub.” I had wiped the computer down with toilet paper moistened with rubbing alcohol and was wearing surgical gloves.
At 9:56 I had found the North American Man/Boy Love Association website and from there I just drifted into two questionable sites that linked to it. Then I went to four other sites newspaper research had recommended to me, sites I didn’t like to think about.
Without looking and without remembering what I saw I clicked on images and short movies and advertisements.
I looked for youth and innocence and I found horrors.
What I was doing was laying a careful track on the Internet. One that would lead anyone examining it straight back to Reynolds’s server.
But it was still unpleasant and disgusting and I wondered if I was, in fact, looking into something similar to the Shy Man’s brain.
At 10:42 the computer battery said it was about to give out so I backed out of “Beelzebub” and shut down. Then I slid the computer into its plastic bag and left.
At 10:58 I dropped the laptop into the second-floor garbage disposal crusher in a downtown mall.
And at 11:45 I was back canvassing old Saint Boniface with Dean and Brenda.
#39
Claire and I met for dinner that night at home and stared at each other while Fred stared at us both.
“I can’t keep doing this.”
“Me either.”
We were talking in circles and eating take-out Italian food that reminded me of being a thief and Claire of failure. I missed making our own meals, the peaceful chaos of babysitting and all the rest.
Claire picked at her salad and sneered at the lettuce. “How much longer?”
We both had pads and pens at our elbows. I started to write while I answered, “The election is in two months. Hopefully it’ll start to slow down soon.”
I wrote: “No idea where S.M. is. No idea how long it will take. Thinking about taking you away from here. Maybe back to Banff, putting you up with your folks and hiring some folks to provide security.”
She read it and slid it back. “No.” She waited. “Well, it might slow down. I hope it does. Maybe we can send Fred to my parents for a visit?”
Fred looked up, pleased someone had used his name.
I ate some spicy sausage and tomato sauce on whole wheat spaghetti and thought about it. I wanted to protect my family but I wasn’t sure if I could. Getting Fred out of harm’s way would help, if I was sure the Shy Man didn’t know where he was. If he got Fred he could make Claire and me do anything.
Absolutely anything.
“That might be an idea.”
And I wrote: “Do your parents still have the mobile home? If they took Fred with them on a tour of the States for a few weeks that would be safe.”
Claire smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”
After supper we burned our notes in the kitchen sink and then made love in the back bedroom while Fred watched an episode of a Samurai Jack cartoon thirty feet away. Every few minutes we would check on him through a crack at the edge of the door.
At eight Reese showed up and he and I took a ride.
Downtown we took a walk around the Forks, an upscale shopping mall and market at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. People had been meeting there for 10,000 years and now it hummed with commerce and yuppies and drunks and trains. Reese and I moved down to the riverfront walkways and moved two abreast along the well-lighted path.
“Brenda tells me that Devanter hit the roof after our dummy came onstage today.”
“I know. He called me on my cell and set up a meeting for tomorrow morning early, at like seven.”
“That is early. He lives in the apartment above his office, did you know that?”
“No. So those early meetings are a way of showing how important and hard-working he is?”
“Pretty much.”
We stepped around two young women kissing.
“Good. Here’s a quote: ‘Bring back the death penalty for killers and rapists and child molesters. That is the way to achieve justice, not this coddling. Mr. Illyanovitch is a good man but he does not have the will to go to the end. And Mr. Haaviko is a lying, cheating and manipulative son of a bitch who cannot begin to understand the world around him.’ And more like that.”
“And the crowd?”
“Loved him. Oh, he’s also pressing charges on you about that fight you two had at the speech.”
“Ah? Interesting. Give me a second.”
I took my cell phone, called Lester’s office and told an assistant to press charges against the dummy as well and to talk to the cops the next morning when he got a chance.
The young woman took down every word and I asked, “Are you recording this?”
“Of course.” She sounded offended.
“Okay. And tell Lester I will of course not speak to the cops without him being present.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Good night.”
And she hung up.
Further down the walkway along the Assiniboine River, Reese and I came upon three young men fishing with spinning rods in the fast current.
Reese stared into the brown water. “So what does the dummy do here? Goodson is not impressed about laying out more cash for this.”
“How much is the dummy costing?”
“Five thousand. He’s a university student, an actor. A good one.”
I absorbed it. “It’ll pay off in the long run.”
“All right. Now, what does the dummy do?”
“He bleeds off votes from Illyanovitch by hitting him at the root of his constituency; we want the dummy to appeal to the law and order crowd. To protect himself from that Illyanovitch will have to start being more right wing and the distance between him and me will grow. We want to give the voters a clear choice.”
A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) Page 17
