Thief

by Greg Curtis

  Using his wits he’d cooked his own goose most thoroughly.

  He’d gone to the James’ after school that day, and told them that Billy had died and that the police were coming for them. It was gas chamber time. Of course there was no death penalty in Canada, never had been, but they were too stupid to know that. It had been worth the new bruises to see the fear in their eyes. After all, his father was the cop, so he should know. The two boys had run for their home as fast as they could, hoping no doubt to hide all the stuff they’d stolen off the other kids, and tell their father so he could somehow save them.

  Mr James was a rigger, a large angry powerhouse of a human being and not a nice man to deal with. No doubt the two of them thought he’d beat up the law or something. But he wasn’t about to let them have that dream for long.

  While they were still running he’d called in a peeping Tom report at Mrs. Hunt’s house. She lived directly across the street from the James’ house. And so by the time the two of them got there, the only police car in town was already waiting, directly in front of their home, exactly as he intended, while his father was busy searching the grounds.

  The boys had done exactly what he’d expected then, they’d panicked and run for hell and high water, not daring to go home, not when they thought the police were already there, hunting them. Looking back he realized, their father had probably been as rough on them as they were on everybody else. Maybe even worse. There was something ingrained in their violence. But he hadn’t guessed that then, and if he had, would he really have cared? Even now he didn’t know.

  The boys had spent the first night in someone’s garage, hiding under a truck tarpaulin, while the whole town went looking for the missing boys. The creator only knew what dark fears had run through the boys’ minds as they’d hidden there, watching the whole town hunting them. The next night they’d spent at the disused truck stop, while the town went absolutely berserk with worry. On the third day the town had called in the army to help in the search, while the two boys had managed to smuggle themselves aboard a truck heading south.

  And all the while Michael had known both the intoxicating feeling of power as they’d run, and the ice-cold terror of being caught. As the days went by, and the town went into mass hysteria, the guilt and fear had grown in him like an evil weed. But he hadn’t told anyone what he’d done. It couldn’t have helped any, since he didn’t know where the boys were either. At least that was what he’d told himself. In truth he’d just been scared.

  Finally of course it had all fallen apart, as he should have known it would. The boys had been stopped at the city. Trying to steal food they were caught easily, and taken to the local police station. Thereafter they’d spilled everything. About their actions, about Billy, and about him. Of course they didn’t know about the radio part or the fake call. But his father did. In about two seconds he’d put it all together and then found the radio hidden under Michael’s bed.

  That was a bad day.

  Unlike the James’ father, his dad had never raised his voice to him let alone his hand. He’d simply spoken - a punishment far worse. His voice had been like the sound of a bell tolling for the dead, and the look in his eyes told more of his pain than anything else. For Michael it was as though a knife had been plunged into his heart, and then twisted. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, but disaster had followed swiftly. In a single action he’d lost his father more permanently than if he’d shot him.

  He’d tried to explain, all that day and the next, and the next, he’d desperately tried to explain, but it hadn’t been enough. He’d compromised his father’s job, he’d lied and cheated, and he’d nearly been responsible for the disappearance of two boys who could have run into anything in the big city. Above all he’d lied to his family, by omission, by not coming to them with everything he knew at the beginning and by not confessing later. It was like talking to a stone cold brick wall. The man he loved with everything he had, the father he admired and wanted to grow up to be like, had become a statue.

  A week later he’d been packed off to boarding school in Montreal, where his Aunt Mabel had promised to look after him. Aunt Mabel was his mother’s eldest sister and a devoutly religious woman. She was known for speaking her mind in public, and was a strong believer in law and order. It was hoped she’d take his waywardness and mould him into a fine upstanding citizen.

  He still remembered the last sight he’d ever seen of his family at the bus depot. His father had been grim, his face a grim mask of death, while his mother had cried like the end of the world was upon them. His little sister too had cried, though she was surely too young then to even know why she was crying. But at least then he’d hoped this would only be for a few months. His mother had promised him he could come home when he was truly sorry for what he’d done. He cried for the entire sixteen hours of that bus ride, wondering how he could ever make it up to them.

  Unfortunately for him, things were not as he’d been told. Were they ever?

  His very Christian Aunt Mabel had actually been an alcoholic, and worse still, an alcoholic with a bad temper and financial problems. She’d taken him out of the private school they’d sent him to on the first day, and with that and the monies his family gave her every month to send him there, managed to support her addiction. All the letters he’d sent back to his home begging for forgiveness, she’d kept back, not ever wanting him and more importantly, his money to leave her. All the reports she sent to his folks told of his evil ways and the need for the church in his life. A crock and a half. His very Christian Aunt Mabel hadn’t even been in a church in all the years he lived with her, though she’d preached endlessly.

  His life for the next few years had become a blur of beatings and emotional abuse, while his loving family became a distant fond memory he clung to for warmth. One day he’d hoped and prayed, they would come for him. But it wasn’t to be. School quickly became his refuge from home, and he’d started doing all the extra-curricular classes he could.

  One day never came.

  His Aunt was killed crossing the road when he was just eleven. Blind drunk she’d stepped in front of a lorry and been killed instantly. Had she suffered? He didn’t know, but he had. Unbelievably, in death she harmed him even more than in life.

  It had begun when he’d found all the letters he’d written to his family, neatly stacked in a shoebox in the bottom of her wardrobe. He’d hated her at that moment, as he’d never hated anyone else in his young life. How could she have done that to him? He’d spent all that time and effort begging for a reprieve, waiting for a rescue that never came, and she’d simply deprived him of all hope without him ever knowing. How could anyone be so mean?

  Her house he quickly found out, she didn’t own, - at roughly the same time he was thrown out into the cold streets, which was the day before her funeral. By the time they’d buried her in a pauper’s grave he’d become a street kid. Because he wasn’t her child the social support agencies never identified him as an orphan, and he had to survive on charity and soup kitchens. Social welfare in those days was far from the support net it was supposed to have become, and life was hard, something he learned early.

  Life thereafter became a battle ground for him. Tossed like a pretzel between church, foster homes and the few homes for wayward boys he’d learned about the mean side of the streets, and the precious few good people that shone brightly among the trash. Most of those families that had taken him in had simply wanted a free labourer, someone to do the chores, and generally stay out of the way. Some were just cold, and some were straight out sadistic, while a few had even more vile intentions for a small child. Beatings, starvation, running away and trying to find some protection from the cold became the norm for him. And always, like his dearly departed Aunt, his would be foster parents spouted the verses of the bible at him, as they beat his skin from his bones.

  Impossible as it might be to accept for the good fathers of the church, the streets were actually safer for him than thei
r parishioners’ homes.

  Crime soon became a way of life for him. Morality wasn’t an issue for a street kid. People with full stomachs and warm feet have morals, street urchins don’t. Crime brought him food, clothes and books to read, and gave him something to live for, an interest and a challenge. It paid his few school fees, and he’d always liked school. What’s more, he found he was good at it. And he liked being good at something. He might be smaller and weaker than others, but as a thief he could get some respect.

  Cat burglary quickly became his forte. His small build and wiry muscles letting him get in to places nobody else could, while his quick wits got him out again. In five years on those mean streets he was never once caught in the act, though several times his so-called friends had dobbed him in. Trust was also not part of his life on the streets, a lesson he had eventually learned.

  By the time he’d graduated from high school, he was also an accomplished criminal with a record long enough to stop him ever getting a job. Crime he found, was a vicious circle. The only way he could support himself was to steal, and the theft kept getting him back on the wrong side of the law, even when they couldn’t prove anything, which was the norm.

  Eventually he’d decided, the only way he was ever going to have a chance at a life was to leave. Not just the city, the country. He had to go somewhere were nobody knew him. A fresh start. That had been the motive for his first bank job.

  He’d cased it for weeks, timing everything down to the last second. It had been ridiculously easy. The two guards always walked in to the bank together while a third stood by the van doors guarding the bags they removed. He’d left a small device in the bank’s rubbish bins that day, and a simple push of the remote control had set it off. The sounds of gunfire and smoke had quickly caused complete confusion while the third guard had run for the van’s front cab and tried to radio in for help. He never even noticed that the van’s back door had shut but not latched properly. A tiny amount of gum had ensured that. And while he was at the front radioing in, Michael had helped himself to two bags at the rear of the van and walked away with them under his coat.

  Twenty thousand dollars that heist had netted him according to the radio, although when he counted it, it seemed somehow much closer to seven. Life, he had discovered, was full of crooks. It was just that some of them were rich enough to get away with it. No doubt the bank’s insurance companies would pay, never knowing they had over paid, and the bank would profit from their loss. He would live with the crumbs, but at that time, seven thousand dollars was still a fortune, more than enough for him to get a fake passport and flee the country.

  In Paris he had set himself up as Mikel the artist. It was a good cover. There were so many of them that another would never be noticed even if he couldn’t paint. And he’d used that cover as he’d returned to crime. It was the only way he knew to live. But at least he’d learned better how to not get caught. Slowly he’d started to amass a fortune from his criminal endeavours, and each new job brought more success than the last. It seemed that he might have only limited life skills as a normal member of society, but his criminal abilities were far less limited.

  Before he was twenty he had over a million pounds in the bank, and none were any the wiser. The police hadn’t even realized that only one man was pulling off many of the heists. It was also then that he started helping out some of the few decent people he’d met along the way. A gift here, a little cash there, and he could start to wipe some of the guilt out of his mind. Always his father’s words were with him, like the proverbial albatross around his neck. He sent moneys back to some of the friends he’d made on the mean streets, but most had no addresses.

  For a while there, he’d had a life he could almost be proud of. He was comfortable, fed, housed and clothed. He had many friends and acquaintances with which he could enjoy the long days and nights, even if he never told them what he truly did for a living. He trusted them, but only so far. Trust could have landed him in jail for many years. He could sooth his conscience with the gifts, and massage his ego with his successes. It might not be perfect, but it was something.

  Then had come the crime lords, ripping into his life with a vengeance. Drugs, racketeering, gambling, murder and prostitution were their calling cards. He’d always tried to steer clear of them; life while perhaps not perfect was something he wanted to keep hold of. Samantha hadn’t been so lucky. She had been his lover for three short wonderful years and one of the most fabulous things in his life, yet somehow he’d never guessed that she had a drug habit. Even now he kicked himself for his ignorance. He should have seen it, he’d seen so many others taking that terrible path. But he hadn’t. There are none so blind as those in love. Nor any so pathetic.

  One day he’d come home to find her dead on their bed. She’d had no more money left, having sold her entire life’s worth of possessions for one last hit, and she’d made it a big one. He nearly died of self-loathing when he found her. He’d had money but had never told her. How could he have told her he was loaded without having to reveal what he did? Yet even to his own ears it was a pathetic excuse. He could have paid the dealers off and then put her in a recovery programme. Doctors and nurses could have cared for her, bringing her back to health. But instead she’d killed herself, and it was entirely his fault.

  The shock alone was crushing. He’d loved Samantha as he hadn’t loved anyone since his family had sent him packing. She had been a wonderful, joyous woman, generous of heart, compassionate, and in love with life and living. It had made it so much harder to understand what had happened. On some level he still hadn’t accepted it. Perhaps he never would.

  But even her death wasn’t the ultimate darkness that was to blight his soul. For the evil that was organised crime wasn’t through with her yet. Even dead and buried she still owed them money, and since she couldn’t pay, they decided he should. But not just him. Her family, sister, brother, and parents all owed them, and they meant to collect.

  Three men had turned up at his apartment while he was still grieving over her body, stolen everything they could lay their hands on, and beaten him to a pulp. What they didn’t steal they destroyed, setting the building on fire as they left. Why, he’d never known. Perhaps it was to cover their tracks. Maybe it was just something to do.

  Either way as he’d lain there on the floor in agony, unable to move, and watching the flames licking at his boots he’d learned to hate with his entire being. When the firemen had carried him out, he’d learned to give thanks. And while the doctors had tended his injuries, he’d mastered revenge. They’d never understood why he laughed like a hyena through the long hours as they set his bones, thinking him demented from the pain. Perhaps it was better they hadn’t. They wouldn’t have understood. Her family might have though.

  While he was still recovering in the hospital from the beating the gangsters gave him, Samantha’s sister was raped, her brother shot and her parents had their house and shop burnt to the ground. In desperation the family had taken out a huge bank loan to pay the hit men, and then had their arms broken for being late. They couldn’t even go to the police since the gangsters owned them. Completely out numbered and trying to save what remained of their family, the Steines had given in to urban terrorism and lost everything including two of their three children in silence. They hadn’t had a choice.

  But Mikel had a choice, and he was mad. Angrier than he’d ever been in his life. Angrier and far more dangerous. The rage that possessed him was as nothing he’d ever known, a living, breathing entity that screamed inside him. But it was his mind that guided it, making it truly lethal. Once more the thugs were hurting his friends and family, breaking their bones, destroying his life. It was Billy all over again. And there was no way in Hell he’d let that happen again. But this time he was older and wiser. He knew that there was always a price to pay for getting caught, often a price more expensive than mere money. He knew he had to be careful. He planned accordingly.

  It had taken him le
ss than a week to destroy that entire crime family. A week that must have seemed like an eternity in Hell for them. In three lightening fast raids over three short nights he had taken more than five million francs in cash from them and left behind staggering amounts of drugs for the police to find. Their illegal gambling halls he torched as they had torched his home. A few judiciously placed bugs, a few calls to the police and another forty odd members went to the slammer in a dozen separate incidents.

  Finally he’d taken down the grandfather of the group, a snake eyed maggot of a man, who pretended to be some form of lord or prince. He had simply gone to sleep one night in his bed and awoke stark naked in a locked bank with all the sirens going off at once. Must have damn near had a heart attack.

  The three men who’d attacked him and his lover’s family, he’d reserved a special place in hell for. He’d ratted them out to their boss as their betrayers and then ensured they shared the same jail with him. Word was they hadn’t done well in prison. In days they’d all broken their arms and legs in separate accidents. They’d been gang raped possibly because the police had charged them also with child sex abuse after another anonymous tip off, and finally they’d been stabbed, though sadly not killed.