By the time I was done I had used one roll of tape and most of the second.
Then I searched the place, not tearing it apart but not leaving much undone either. In the master bedroom I found her purse and his wallet and confiscated the sixty-some odd bucks therein, along with eight credit cards. It all went into a royal blue silk pillowcase along with the good jewelry from her mahogany jewel box and the hardened leather case in the top drawer of his dresser. Then I went through the kitchen and found $430 in tens in a baggie at the bottom of the flour bowl.
In the very masculine study I found a gun safe built into a closet. Ten seconds with the pry bar pulled the lock out. Inside were two over and under twelve-gauge Weatherby shotguns (about $3500 each) and a Sako model 85 bolt-action rifle in .338 calibre (about $2000). The ammunition was in a separate locked box on the floor of the closet. Beside it was an antique teak case with brass fittings that held thirty-nine small gold coins sealed in plastic coin condoms and marked 1726 CHRS REGN VING IMPER. On the other side of each coin was the date 2007 and an engraving of Queen Elizabeth II.
I took the guns, the ammunition, and the pillowcase full of loot, and laid it all out on the workbench in front of the Jarelskis who were now conscious and stirring. I placed the Exacto knives in a neat row, parallel to the edge of the table, and loaded one shotgun with two shells full of #6 buckshot. Then I loaded the rifle.
The noise of me loading the weapons made the Jarelskis freeze in place.
While they were immobile and blind, I searched through the tools in the shop and found a set of clamps, a hacksaw with a fresh blade, and some unused sandpaper. Those I laid beside the unloaded shotgun. Then I pulled the balaclava down over my face and turned back to my prisoners to tear the tape off their eyes. As they adjusted to the light I spoke in the coldest, roughest voice I could manage:
“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t kill you now?”
#27
The Jarelskis both went into spasms of motion, threatening to overturn the chairs, and I just waited. The choke hold produced a horrible headache, almost migraine level, combined with nausea, exhaustion, and a sense of dislocation. Neither would be feeling good and their fear was heightened because I’d tied them together. They had no hope; neither could possibly believe the other would be saving them.
They were alone. Together but alone.
And they were in their own house, trussed up and trapped. They were surrounded by power tools with dire cultural values attached: the chainsaw, machete, and car battery with jumper cables. In the minds of most North Americans those translated into The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th and American Psycho. And facing them was a guy in a bright red jogging suit with a balaclava over his face making him look like the generic terrorist.
I would be surprised if they weren’t scared.
Eventually they stopped struggling. “My brother got a hotshot in your crack house,” I said. “An armload of pure crystal when he was used to stepped-on-shit. It blew his heart out like a candle.”
I didn’t have a brother; frankly, I didn’t have much of any family but the Jarelskis didn’t know that. While I talked I clamped the unloaded shotgun to the table and went to work with the hacksaw, cruelly and viciously ruining the beautiful lines of the weapon by cutting the fifty-five-centimetre barrels down to an easily concealable twenty.
“I already talked to the fuckwad you had running the place. I eventually found him and he talked. The cops’ll find the body by the smell …”
The cut-off barrels rang like bells on the concrete floor. I flipped the weapon around and started on the fine-grained walnut stock, cutting it into a pistol grip. In my peripheral vision I could see them staring at each other and shifting their eyes frantically from side to side.
“You hired a tough little prick there. It took him an hour before he gave you up. Blunted two razors before he gave in.”
I raised my head and admired the shotgun.
“Pretty good.”
One shotgun was finished. I pulled the rounds from the first one, loaded the sawed-down gun, put the first one in the clamps, and repeated my handiwork. When I was finished I loaded it and then poked through the contents of the pillowcase and discarded two fake pearl earrings, a watch I wasn’t sure about, and the box the coins had come in. I found a leather backpack under the workbench and loaded it with the shotguns, ammo, and loot, and then I turned back to my prisoners.
“Any last words before I send you screaming to hell?”
Their eyes were pleading and I reached over with the tip of one of the Exacto knives and carefully cut the gag off the man, who sputtered out, “You’re making a mistake.”
I sat back against the workbench. “People always say that. What are you going to do, offer me money? Offer me your wife? Offer me everything?”
He begged and I felt disgusted as he whispered, “I’ll give you anything!”
I took a deep breath and screamed into his face. “I WANT MY BROTHER BACK!”
There was silence in the room. I stood back and said, “What the fuck is the point.”
I flicked the Exacto knife into the air, caught it easily by the handle, and said cheerily, “Time to die.”
The man was shaking his head and beside him his wife was shaking hers. His voice was earnest: “You’ve got the wrong people … we don’t know anything about no crack house. You gotta believe me!”
“Fuck this! Your name is Jarelski, your wife is Tho. You own a house in the North End. It was destroyed by flooding a little while ago. The house was run by a real beauty that I caught and who gave you up. Right?”
Mr. Jarelski was shaking his head so hard he almost dislocated his neck. “NO! We own the house, yes. But we rented it out. We had no idea what was going on. When the cops told us we were completely surprised.”
I stared at them both for a long time and tapped my chin with the knife.
“No. The guy you hired to run the place gave you up. You’re insulting me.”
Tho was grunting rhythmically and I cut her gag free as well. “No. We never knew anything about any of that! We just rented the place out. We didn’t know anything about nothing else.”
I stood there and shrugged. “Shit. I believe you. I really do. I guess the other guy just gave your names up so I’d cut him slack.”
Relief showed in their eyes but it vanished when I went on, “On the other hand, I also know about the rest of the homes you two own.”
They both got quiet.
The addresses of the rest of the properties had been listed in Ultra Realty files and the newspaper records had been helpful. The police had also helped; they kept a public list of raided houses, including pictures posted on their website. Of the eleven properties owned by the Jarelskis, four had been shut down as marijuana grow operations and one other had been raided on prostitution charges.
Five out of eleven were a significant number and the Jarelskis realized it as the blood drained from their faces. Five out of eleven meant they weren’t being very good landlords at all. I waited until the tension was as high as I could bear and then I went on, “Which means I’ve still got to kill you.”
They were both talking so fast that nothing was comprehensible and I finally shouted, “SHUT UP!”
They did and I went on, “I can’t let you live. You know I tortured and murdered somebody and I broke in here, kidnapped you, and assaulted you. No. There is just way too much jail time on the line.”
They started to babble again and shut up when I said, “But I am sorry.”
Mr. Jarelski was almost in tears. “You can’t be serious! You can trust us; we won’t say a thing to anybody!”
Mrs. Jarelski joined in, “Right. Nothing, not a word!”
I laughed at them. “Sure. You say that now but that’ll change. You’ll change your minds once I’m gone. I’ve seen it happen.”
I put the knife down and picked up the shotgun. “But I’m not a freak. I’ll do it quick and painless, not with the knife.
”
They both just stared at me and I said again, “Who wants to go first?”
Mr. Jarelski swallowed and said very calmly, “What can we do to convince you we won’t go to the cops?”
I sat down on the bench and rubbed the shotgun against my forehead in thought. It had taken them a while to reach this point and I wasn’t sure how to take them the rest of the way to where I wanted them to be. I wanted them to take responsibility for the wrecked house and build a new one. I wanted them to clean up the rest of their properties and keep them clean.
“Hmmm.”
In truth I was rationalizing, trying to convince myself these folks deserved what was happening to them. They had rented a house to drug dealers, apparently without a care in the world. They had accepted a very high rate of rent for that house, which should have tipped them off. And when the house had been destroyed, they hadn’t fixed the problem.
Like Claire would say, they hadn’t done their due diligence at any step of the way. They hadn’t cared. They went through their whole business lives not caring.
I kept making the same noise, “Hmmmm.”
The Jarelskis were both staring at me and both had forgotten to breathe, it was almost funny. Finally I said, “Okay. I’d want some kind of sign of your sincerity; I mean, I don’t really have to kill you if I think you’re honest …”
Mrs. Jarelski jumped on it. “Like money?”
I waved that off. “No. If it was money I’d have to meet you again to get the money and you don’t want that. Right now you don’t know who I am. If you did know who I was, then I’d kill you.”
Mr. Jarelski was confused. “So what do you want?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m here trying to avenge the fuckers who killed my brother. What the fuck do I know?”
Mr. Jarelski started to say something and his wife interrupted him, “Hold on. This is about your brother, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what if we made the house into a memorial to him?”
I scratched my head with the shotgun again. “I don’t know … it’s a pretty fucked-up house … it doesn’t make much of a memorial.”
Mr. Jarelski nodded frantically. “That’s a great idea. We’ll tear down the house and donate the land to the city; they can turn it into a park. We can name it after your brother.”
I pointed the shotgun between his eyes and he blanched. A second later his bladder cut loose and I whispered, “You trying to find out my brother’s name? You trying to find out who I am?”
They both babbled no again and Mrs. Jarelski spoke to me calmly, “No. We can dedicate the park to … the community, whatever. Would that be okay?”
“Sure. That would be … sure. That would be okay.”
They both smiled and I smiled back under my mask. They were probably thinking they had me figured out and conned. They were probably thinking they could just string me along, call the cops, take a vacation somewhere warm while the cops hunted down all the leads and, eventually, caught me. They were probably thinking they had me beat.
People always thought the way they were taught. Businesspeople thought in terms of business games, for them every deal was a hand of poker. Cops thought in terms of cop games, for them every encounter was a game of checkers. Psychiatrists thought of the world in terms of chess.
But bad guys … bad guys played it differently.
For them there were no rules. And I was still a bad guy enough to remember that essential truth. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever be able to forget it at all.
So I smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Jarelski and said, “Okay. But I want to leave you something to remember me by. Just so you’re not tempted to go back on your promise.”
They both stared at me stupidly as I cut the bindings on Mr. Jarelski and then taped his hands back together and ushered him upstairs. He told me where his car keys were and I picked them up and took him out to his garage, where a grey Lexus four-door sedan sat with heavily tinted windows. I put him in the back seat and taped him into immobility (including a couple of twists around his face), and only then did I fasten the seat belt securely around him.
He may have been thinking of fighting back but the shotgun in his belly kept him quiet.
After he was safely in the car I brought his wife up to keep him company. Then I went downstairs and returned the Sako rifle to the gun case, placing it inside along with all the ammunition and the gold coins before shutting the door as well as I could. After that I put the jewelry back and replaced the cash in the flour jar. The last think I did was pick up the barrels I’d cut off the shotguns and add those to the backpack along with the shotguns, which I disassembled into four pieces with a small screwdriver for easy disposal.
Then I went into the kitchen and found the cupboard where they kept their liquor. The Jarelskis had an excellent selection and I used bottles of 151-proof dark rum and vodka along with regular 80-proof rye and Scotch.
And no, I didn’t drink any of it.
Although I really wanted to.
When I had the bottles arranged around the coffee maker, I set the automatic timer for 1:30 am and put a rag on the burner (under the pot). Then I tipped over the rum and vodka, soaked the rag, and let it drip and pool into the sink.
The coffee maker would ignite the spilled alcohol, which would run into the garbage pail, which would flare up and ignite the rest of the alcohol. I’d create a fuze with rags, and the fire would spread under the sink, where various chemicals were stored; those would add more heat to the fire, which would then travel into the wooden frame of the house and, voila.
An accidental fire.
A smart fire marshal or cop would probably have suspicions but it would be hard to prove much.
Instead I let the booze pool in the sink without the fuze. There it would smoke and score their granite countertops but do little more.
When I was done I joined the Jarelskis in their car and drove around the block and parked where we could see their kitchen between two houses. I turned in the seat and faced them. “I’m burning your house down.”
Their eyes bulged and I went on, “Because I want you to remember me and I can’t think of a better way. Every time you go into your home from now on I want you to think about it. I want you to think about how safe you are, about how much your home is your castle. You took that safety away from people you don’t even know and you did it for money with your North End house.”
Neither of them tried to say anything, they just stared and I went on, “So you can keep your money, but now I’m taking away your safety and security. Think about that, I can always come back. Or it will be someone like me. That’ll happen if you don’t start paying attention to what’s happening in your houses.”
They were both crying and after awhile a bright red light filled their kitchen and they both groaned into their gags and I left.
Blocks away I slowed down to a walk. The Jarelskis would get loose in time and then they could clean up their home and make their decisions. If they did what they promised, that would be great; my neighbourhood would get a new park. If they didn’t then that would be fine too.
They’d probably be really careful about their business dealings for the rest of their lives.
#28
I changed my clothes back at the church and then I walked home on foot. The shotguns I left one piece at a time in garbage cans and storm drains scattered over a ten-block stretch.
The next morning Claire handed me a piece of paper. “Frank called.”
“Good for him.”
“Wants to know when he should schedule the Hunter’s Safety Course.”
I froze and admitted, “I’d forgotten.”
“You forgot about wild boar?”
“I forgot on purpose. It was very hard.”
“How do you forget about wild boars? I mean, they’re not even that important to me and I can’t forget about them.”
She gave me the paper which had an address, 70 Stevenson Roa
d and starting at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday. She had written underneath it that the class was near Red River College, about an hour or so away by bus. While I was reading she breezed past me on her way to work and I yelled at her back. “It was damn hard to forget about those pigs. You try to forget about giant, blood rending …”
Smiley came down from the bathroom, combing his hair with his fingers. “What, the kids are here already?”
“Very funny. Where you off to today?”
“No idea. Where do you go to find jobs?”
Good question. “An unemployment insurance office maybe? Check the yellow pages.”
The doorbell rang and while Smiley was looking up the number and address I accepted Jacob from his cop mother and Rachel from her mom. By the time I’d gotten them settled Smiley had closed the book and put down the phone. “It’s EI, not UI. Employment Insurance.”
I was confused. “So they help you find a better job than the one you already have? That makes no sense.”
“It’s the government, what do you expect. Time to go.”
In disgust I motioned for him to leave and he batted his eyelids. “Don’t I deserve a kiss?”
“Oh, fuck off!”
Wanna guess the one word Jacob learned?
Claire was back at noon with a bulging briefcase, a travel mug of coffee, and a headache. She entered the house, stared blankly at Rachel, Fred, and Jacob who were (in order) looking at a comic book, colouring in a colouring book, and plotting something while looking adorable.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal Page 14
