by Mike Knowles
Miles leaned out the open door. “Do you really want to play Whac-A-Mole on the highway again, kid?”
“He wants me to watch you to make sure that you don’t decide to sell the violin to another buyer.”
“Why you?”
Ilir sighed, “I am his nephew. He trusts me. This whole thing, going outside our crew, was my idea.”
“Smart kid,” Carl said.
“I’m not a kid,” Ilir said.
“He’s a gangster,” Miles said. “An important one, from the sounds of it. A gang star.”
“Ilir, here, went outside for help once,” I said. “It worked then, so he thought, ‘Why wouldn’t it work again?’”
Ilir looked at me. It was a pretty good hard stare. I was sure it could have scared some portion of the civilian population to cross to the other side of the street, but out here, a few clicks from the border in front of a car full of men who had stopped being intimidated by looks long ago, it was a waste of time. “That’s right,” he said.
“Is getting this violin important to you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“‘Yeah’ is how you answer when someone asks you if you want to supersize your meal. It doesn’t belong in this conversation. Is this job important to you?”
Ilir nodded. “It is.”
“Pyrros held out on us, and you went along with it. If this little outing is going to work, you need to be up front about everything.”
“You didn’t need to know who the violin was for, only that you would be paid for it.”
I took Ilir by the throat so fast his hard stare was still there when he landed on his ass. The scary look disappeared when I put the Albanian’s head in the corner of the open door. I took a grip just under the window and closed the door on his head. The door stopped all at once, but I kept pushing. “You don’t get to tell us what we need to know and what we don’t.”
Ilir screamed, but no one who heard him cared.
“I want you to listen close, gangster. Pop quiz, Miles and Carl. Ilir doesn’t mention who the violin is intended for. How could this affect us?”
Ilir’s eyes bulged in his head as the door closed another half of an inch.
Miles leaned over and looked at Ilir. “I got this,” he said.
“We could end up bumping into another crew going after the same thing as us,” Carl said.
“I was going to say that,” Miles said as he slumped back into his spot in a mock snit.
“Correct, Carl, you get a gold star.”
“You ever think about that, Ilir?”
The gangster didn’t respond.
“Speak!”
“No.”
I let the pressure off the kid’s head and he slid onto the pavement cradling his skull.
I looked into the interior of the Jeep. “This change anything for either of you?”
Miles shook his head; Carl gave it some thought. Eventually, the driver shook his head too.
“If this job is important to you, then it’s important enough to get over being shoved around. You can get back in the car, or you can walk up the road to whatever is over that hill. But if you get in, you get in. Understand?”
Ilir only stared.
“You’re a gangster,” I said. “Problem is we don’t need a gangster — we need a heist man. Can you be that?”
“I told you I’m a gangster, not some punk.”
“I said heist man, not gangster.”
“What’s the difference?”
Miles laughed from inside the Jeep. Ilir turned his head and then gave up on the idea and grabbed at his newly sore neck.
“Gangsters are all about telling the world how tough they are and bullshit fights over turf. That’s why Pyrros wants the violin; for turf and rep. A heist man is about the job. He does it for money, not pride, or vanity.”
Ilir looked unsure about what to say.
“I’m asking you if you want to be a gangster on this job or a heist man. A gangster would want revenge for his pride being bruised. A heist man would understand that secrets are dangerous to the job and get over it. A gangster would worry about his rep. A heist man would get back to work.”
I stepped over the kid and got into the back seat. In a minute, Ilir got off the ground and made his choice. He got back into the Jeep. “Let’s go,” he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The line at the Peace Bridge was moving at a steady pace; unfortunately, it was the pace of a paraplegic learning to walk again. A posted sign told us to have our passports and identification ready. I pulled the document with the name Adam Worth printed on the inside next to my picture and waited. Adam Worth didn’t live or breathe, not anymore, but digitally he was an active, upstanding citizen. When I uprooted myself and moved to Toronto, the name I had been using died. On my way out of the city, I stopped at a mailbox I kept and retrieved a package I had hidden inside in a false back. The package contained all of Adam Worth’s ID and papers, and all of it was one hundred percent legit. My uncle was a man who lived his life with his eye on the door — always ready to move and never look back. Growing up he had taught me to always think moves ahead, and as I got better at the game I began to think moves ahead of the moves ahead.
“How far can you run if it all goes south?” he once asked me while we were sitting in a four-door sedan watching for a bookie to leave a bar.
I looked over at my uncle and saw that he had not taken his eyes off the street to ask me. I went back to staring at the bar. “I have enough to get by for a year, maybe more.”
“What if it was more?”
“I could stretch it.”
“This year or more include the price you would have to pay for new ID?”
I shook my head. My uncle didn’t look at me, but he knew that I shook it.
“I could lay low,” I said.
“For a year, but what if you need a year and a half? What if you need two?”
“There are ways to make money,” I said.
“But then you ain’t laying low.” My uncle went quiet after that. He was somehow able to create a silence so heavy that it made his presence almost impossible to notice even when he was right next to me. In that silence, I watched the street and thought about what my uncle had said. There was a lesson in his words — there was always a lesson.
“How long can you run?” I asked.
My uncle’s cheek twitched as a familiar grin formed on his face. A grin that was cold like the chill that finds its way down the back of your neck — a mean cold grin. “You would run because you’d have no choice — me, I would disappear. There would be no trail to follow because like that —” The snap of his calloused fingers sounded like a hammer being cocked. “I would cease to exist.”
My uncle turned to look at me for the first time in a long time. Something he read on my face didn’t sit well.
“You dream?”
“When I was little, not anymore,” I said.
“But you remember it, right? The dreams.”
I nodded. “Some of them.”
“You ever have a nightmare? Not a bad dream, but a real nightmare. The kind where you wake up and start running because you’re sure whatever was after you ain’t done yet.”
I remembered something like that. It was after my parents had died and I had moved in with my uncle. I had outgrown monsters under my bed and bad dreams — at least I thought I had. The nightmare was something I never forgot. It was as though the bad dream had been written into my memory in permanent marker. I had been fifteen then, and I hadn’t thought about it for years, but the simple mention of it there in that car brought every detail back as though I was still that young boy under the covers on that strange bed inside that foreign house. I remembered the nightmare as well as I remembered my own name, but I said nothing to my uncle.
He read the silence right. “Yeah, you know the kind I mean. There’s a moment when you’re running. This one instant where you realize that there is nothing behind you. That whatever had been chasing you is gone, but gone isn’t the right word because it didn’t really exist in the first place. At least, not the way other things exist.”
I stared at the street and tried not to let my memories show on my face.
“When things go bad, because they will one day, as things always do, I will cease to exist like that thing that chased you out of your bed. I will vanish into nothing because I never really existed like everyone else to begin with. That is the difference between me and you. But it doesn’t have to be.”
I didn’t answer my uncle, and that was fine with him. He wasn’t lying; he never did. He would disappear, but it wouldn’t be like my nightmare. The monster that had chased me in my nightmare hadn’t faded away. It hadn’t stopped existing when I turned around. The monster that followed me out of bed in those moments between sleep and waking that night wasn’t some dark shadow, or fanged demon. It was the man sitting in the seat beside me. The monster became my world until eventually I became it.
Learning the difference between running and vanishing took years. The final step began on the streets. I spent nights on the streets moving from steam grates to alleys to shelters until on the third day I found what I needed. Six-two, brown hair, late twenties. Samuel Bennett came to the city to go to university. He had a good thing going until the dormant schizophrenia broke the surface like a malfunctioning periscope. It took the mental illness two years to undo twenty years of eating vegetables, listening to Mom and Dad, studying hard, and playing fair. Just over five years later, Samuel was a junkie fresh out of a fifth discharge from the psych ward. He had a vial of dwindling prescription medication in his pocket and hepatitis. I pulled Samuel off the streets and put him up in a clean place. I paid for it, furnished it, and kept it stocked with food. I didn’t need Samuel to stay in it; he just needed to be there long enough for a few things to happen. I convinced him, with enough cash for a generous fix, to clean up. I cut his hair and deloused him but left his shaggy beard in place. A few days later, the promise of another handful of bills bought me his company for the afternoon. We visited four government offices and applied for all of the pieces of ID that Samuel had let lapse. The next day, I changed the locks. Samuel dropped back off the grid, while I waited for the new ID to show up in the mail.
If Samuel Bennett had a personal motto, it would have been: life starts at twenty-eight. On paper, Samuel suddenly bloomed into existence after a long hibernation. A few months later Samuel Bennett vanished again when he legally changed his name to Adam Worth. His face was close enough to mine that no one questioned the ID. The absence of a beard was such a huge difference that it eclipsed any other small discrepancies between my face and Samuel’s. The government clerk completing my application took one look at the bearded man in the photo, made a joke about how my chin must have felt cold all of a sudden, and processed the application. The new name obscured the medical history from casual searches, and soon after I was in possession of a clean identity.
Identities, like living things, require attention to stay alive. Adam Worth paid taxes, had an income, had credit cards, got parking tickets. He shopped online and he even travelled domestically. Within a year of the name change, Adam was as real as anyone else. After a decade, he was more respectable than a large percentage of the population.
I wasn’t worried about the ID holding up. I had tested it at the border a couple of times. It had been a risk, but necessary. The papers on Adam Worth were for when the wheels came off. When that happened, crossing the border would be a logical first step. On the run was no time to take my stolen identity out for a test drive. I crossed over at peak hours and got nothing more than a glance into the back seat. On the way back, I got less than that. My papers were solid.
I watched the cars in the lanes beside me first on the left and then on the right. No one had four men inside. There were families, couples, and single drivers. The car was going to stick out. I looked from man to man — no one was fidgeting or looking nervous, not even Ilir.
A new window opening to our immediate right shot us to second in line. The car in front of us had barely stopped before it was waved through. Carl said, “Looks like we got a good lane,” before he stepped on the gas.
“Keep your answers short,” I said out loud, but really just to Ilir. “Any questions are for Carl unless the guy asks you directly.”
The Jeep stopped next to the window and the border cop said, “Passports please.” The woman who collected the four documents was short, maybe five-two, with red hair and a deep tan — the lifelong kind that would eventually erode wrinkles deep into her face. She already had plenty around her mouth and eyes — too many for a woman in her forties. Pretty was long gone; now, she was fighting against ugly with all her might. The border cop checked the passports and then went to the computer to run the vehicle. When she finished typing, she craned her neck to look inside the car. The tinted windows gave her some trouble and earned the back seat extra attention.
“Purpose of visit?”
Carl shifted in his seat a little and said, “We’re all going to an information session at Samaritan College.”
“What kind of information session?” The woman asked the question with no sign of personal interest.
“It’s on adult education,” Carl said.
The cop’s eyes narrowed on Ilir. “All of you?”
Miles leaned through the gap between the two front seats. “We all got laid off a month or so back. We’re going to this session to figure out if we meet the criteria for a second career in a different field.”
Miles’ good looks were like a whirlpool that pulled in attention instead of water. The border cop forgot about Carl and focused on the con man. “What field?” She wasn’t flirting, but she wasn’t ignoring him either.
Miles smiled a genuine-looking smile — the kind the Grinch smiled when his heart grew two sizes too big. “Don’t laugh, but we’re looking into nursing.”
The border agent didn’t laugh, she didn’t crack more than a thin smile, but that was okay — the fractional smile was all the opening Miles needed. “The company we worked for shipped off the whole operation to Mexico. The whole factory is being outsourced. Manufacturing is dying back home. The only thing growing is health care.” Miles put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “That’s ’cause guys like this mug over here are keeping them in business. He’s had a heart attack, and kidney stones twice. They say it’s the salt that does it. It was the last bout that gave us the idea of coming here. We were in visiting our sick friend here when the nurse comes in to check his vitals. After she left, I said, ‘Hell, the kid,’” Miles gave Ilir’s shoulder a playful shake. “‘He could do that.’ Then, it dawned on me. We could all do that. Good money, good pension, good —”
The border agent cut him off by extending her arm and the four passports. “Have a good day, sir.”
Miles looked as though he was suddenly embarrassed for talking too much. “You too, ma’am. And thanks for not laughing.”
Carl eased on the gas and rolled away from the window. He was careful to leave the window down until we were fifty metres from the cop sheds. “That was good, Miles,” Carl said. “Real good.”
Carl was wrong; it was better than good. The talking was on point, personal but without any real details, and — most importantly — he never used names. Carl was his “sick friend” and Ilir was “kid.” Miles saw that Carl’s mechanic responses were drawing more attention than they were meant to, and he must have realized that questions for each of us were coming. Four people meant a high probability of a mistake and a mistake at the border would have meant an end to the job.
“Thanks, Carl, but it was easy. The way she was checking you out, I could have said anything and she would have waved us
through. She was captivated by you, buddy. I think it’s the moustache. You and me should hit a few bars when this is over. I could be your wingman. Or we could both grow moustaches. Think of the trouble we could cause then. Ilir, can you grow a moustache?”
Carl turned the radio up loud enough to drown out Miles.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At ten minutes to curtain, the concert hadn’t sold out. From the look of the last-minute turnout, there was little chance it would. The show was in its fourth and final week and everyone who had wanted to see blown-up mascot-sized versions of their child’s favourite television characters had already shown up and done their time in kiddie gen-pop. The final concert was the only show at the Samuel Hall for the next three days. We had no choice but to stop there first.
We got an odd look from the teenager working the ticket booth. There was no way around it, really. If we bought tickets alone, or in pairs, it still would have seemed odd. Four men buying twelve tickets at once was the best option. It said we were each with two other people, and most people’s brains would automatically assume a wife and child. We each pitched in fifty bucks and I slid the money through the small opening in the Plexiglas divider separating the teenager from the customers.
The change came back with a few small bills, some coins, and a suspicious glance.
“We’re not into kids,” Miles said.
The teenager looked surprised, but unconvinced.
“Seriously, it’s the puppets we’re into. It’s a fetish. I don’t know if it’s the life-sized thing, or the softness, but —”
I cut in. “Quit being an asshole and go find the kids before they all have to pee again.”
Carl pulled Miles away. I watched the con man go for a split second and realized that what I was looking at was a natural talker. He had probably been a con man when he was five. He had a gift, the same kind of thing Gretzky or Jordan had when they were kids. The difference was Gretzky and Jordan had a system they had to work their way through before they became pros. Con men don’t have a farm team before they get to the big leagues. Miles had probably gotten by on talent his whole life. But he would need more than just talent if he ever wanted to do more than get by.
