A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) (15 page)

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.

I handed her the towel when I was done. “Nice.”

“Isn’t it? A Lightload towel. Disposable.”

“What else do you have in the bag?”

“Everything. I believe in being prepared.”

“A Boy Scout motto.”

“Yep. I used to date them.”

“When you were younger?”

“No.” She turned a bland face towards me and I decided I liked her. Which made me hope she wasn’t the one leaking information to Devanter. Dean came back from the house and said, “She’ll vote for you and isverysorryfortheactionsofherson.”

He said the last quickly and we kept going.

Near the end of the day one of the last houses we came to was a small-framed one where the young woman, maybe eighteen, who opened the door, listened to my spiel and said: “Fantastic. I’ll vote for you if you speak me the truth to the following question.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like to see my breasts?”

Nothing was going to shock me today but that was close and I just stared at the woman and finally said, “Sure.”

She showed me and they were very nice and I told her so. After a minute she pulled down her shirt and closed the door and I went back to Brenda and Dean.

They started to say something and I said, “Enough.”

They agreed. After fourteen hours I was ready to collapse but they were still going strong as they dropped me off at my home. Brenda took their car and went off to compile data at their office and Dean walked away on foot towards Main Street. When they were both out of sight I pulled off my jacket, put on a dark green windbreaker and trotted off after Dean, keeping a half block back.

He never veered, just headed straight towards Main and then took a right. He also never looked back or around and finally turned into a sports bar. I followed a minute later and found him with his arms around a tall, good-looking blonde beside the hostess stand. She resisted him for a second and then kissed him passionately and I faded back and out.

In a nearby bowling alley I used a payphone over the racket and roar of the pin setters and the balls on the hardwood floor. I had the number of the local right wing flake radio station handy and I got through to the night talk show.

“Hi, Jim? This is Action Jackson, you remember me. Long time listener, regular caller. Just wanted to drop a line supporting Rumer Illyanovitch. He’s running for chief cop commissioner. He’s solid, a good egg, and he can take care of the chinks and niggers and kikes. He knows where they all stand and where they should go! Anyhow, great show!”

Then I hung up and went home.

N
othing happened about the Shy Man and I kept campaigning, answering phone calls, doing interviews and otherwise being a good political animal. In between I polished the security of the house until it was practically perfect and worked at spotting the cops around our house. At the same time I was always trying to find the Shy Man.

I found the cops, a rotating series of six men and women working in pairs. One pair on the street in a car, one across the street and down the block in the church tower (they were probably very hot because the church did not have air conditioning) and one across the back alley in a rundown bungalow that no one had ever rented or bought. I knew what the surveillance rooms would be like. Lawn chairs and coolers, microphones and tape recorders, telescopes and newspapers, paperbacks and notebooks, and everywhere piles of pizza boxes and take-out containers. In the past I had broken into those kinds of rooms two or three times, just to find out what the cops really knew.

I imagined I found the Shy Man everywhere but I was never sure. I imagined him in the face of the paper delivery boy, in the jogging fatness of a man trying to recapture his youth, in the tired stride of a meter reader and in the shifty glances of an erstwhile car thief who gave up when he spotted the cops staked out at street level.

I felt the criminal’s paranoia start to seep into my skin and I welcomed it reluctantly. Everyone was against me and Claire and Fred and that was okay. I like long odds and my bad guy optimism buoyed me. But that was psychotic so I stopped thinking that way and went back to watching everyone and everything around me.

And when I had down time I kept trying to get my mind into that of another kind of killer.

On Wednesday, I spent the day campaigning, talking and arguing, absorbing facts and thinking. Then I went home and made roast potatoes, corn and a leg of lamb I’d bought from a butcher. I hadn’t wanted the leg of lamb but it was the only way he’d let me put up a poster in his shop and I’d charged it to the campaign.

At 7:00 we got a package from a delivery company. It was handed to me by an angry woman in her mid-thirties who accepted my signature balefully and then ruined the effect entirely by wishing me a cheery good-night.

Claire and Fred watched as I went into the backyard under the street light just in case it was a bomb. I had shot the streetlight out (okay, Claire had) with a blowgun the year before but the city crew had replaced it and it gave me some light to work with. I also had my pocket knife, a pair of needle-nose pliers and a 6
D
cell Maglight flashlight I had bought while shopping with Virgil. The machined aluminum flashlight was shock and water resistant and pumped out 57,000 candlepower with the xenon bulb, which basically made it an x-ray machine. It also weighed three pounds, was nineteen and a half inches long, about two inches in diameter and made for a handy club—as most cops could attest.

With the light in hand I went over every inch of the package and decided it was wrapped in strange brown paper, tied with strange brown twine and weighed too little to carry anything really dangerous.

When I opened it I found a cardboard box with a bouquet, but not a normal bouquet. There were garlic bulbs, big orange fleshy flowers, long sprigs of tiny pink flowers I couldn’t identify, some walnuts and holding everything together were twists of fresh grass. It was bizarre and while I was staring at it Claire called, “We got another one.”

The package had come from a different delivery company and I opened that one the same way and stared some more. In the box were more dark red roses, but along with them were sprigs of waxy leaves and bright white berries that looked like pearls, red and pink flowers with long yellow growths in the middle, red and white big-headed flowers that looked to be the same species and some pink flowers with very long thin petals. Wrapped around everything were sprigs of dark green plant that smelled like pickles.

I showed it to Claire and she didn’t understand either. Then we both locked the house up tight and slept uneasily.

The florist up on Main the next morning was young and pretty and looked at me like I was an idiot, so I repeated myself. “What are these?”

“Orange lilies. And the long pink flower buds are amaranthus. And that is garlic and the others are walnuts. While this,” she held it up for me to see, “is what we call grass.”

“And these?”

“Roses. Hybrids. Mistletoe, a nice specimen. Japonica flowers, not terribly common. Chrysanthemums, very common. A spider flower, not terribly common and then dill. Used in pickling.”

“Thank you. Do they mean anything to you?”

“Nothing at all. Very strange bouquets. Someone with an odd sense of humour?”

“Thanks again. May I put up a poster?”

“For you to be our police commissioner? No, I don’t think so. You’re kind of weird.”

“But I am cute and charming.”

“True.”

“And what if I buy some flowers?”

“Then sure, you can put up a poster entirely because of your cuteness and charm.”

“Thank you.”

I bought a bouquet of twelve white roses with baby’s breath and sent them to a TV news reporter named Mildred Penny-something. She had huge breasts and was given many, many scoops by cops who apparently liked her lisp. I, personally, liked her large breasts.

I
n the evening there was a debate scheduled between me and Rumer at a nearby high school gymnasium. Because of that my minders let me stop early and go home to shower and get ready.

As they dropped me off I turned to Brenda. “You have to understand, this is as pretty as I get.”

She smiled. “Try harder. So what are you going to do?”

“In the debate? I’m going to attack very hard on the corruption of the police and their inefficiency.”

Brenda looked surprised and I thought about what I had said and dismissed it. Attacking the cops directly would never work; I’d just alienate half the audience. But I had no better idea so I said it and decided to come up with something else.

Brenda stopped and I went inside and took a nap and a shower. Afterwards I went out and looked through a file of photos and notes that Brenda had provided of Rumer speaking at events—in one he wore his police dress blues, in another he wore a dark blue power suit, in another he wore a kilt, in another he wore a black suit. In all of them he looked sober and respectable and a member of the power structure.

I thought about my own image and decided not to shave.

When I was clean I went through my closet and picked my clothes with care. Rumer always looked professional, competent, respectable and reliable, so he would probably go for the same kind of look again. I wanted something to contrast—I wanted smart, streetwise and rebellious but I did not want to look scary. For that reason I put on freshly pressed black dress slacks, black oxfords, a dark blue dress shirt and a very old-style battered brown leather jacket that retained a certain class despite its age. Which was only fair since it had cost me $3,000 new ten years before.

I wanted to look hep, smart, Joe everybody, someone you might want to have a beer with.

When I was ready I gathered up my notes and walked downstairs where Claire was watching Fred and the kids and talking business with Veronica. Veronica whistled when I came in and Claire muttered, “Down, girl.”

I charged Chinese takeout to the campaign and we all ate, after which it was time to go to the gym. Veronica stayed and worked on accounts while Claire, Fred and I walked to the high school.

Because of publicity, news reports and general curiosity the gym was already crowded when we arrived. Claire looked at me nervously. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m just fine.” My teeth were gritted and I realized how stressed I actually was. I didn’t like crowds. Crowds meant an absence of anonymity, and danger. I took a deep breath and faked calm as we moved to the front where three podiums had been set up. A thin, colourless man in a pale blue suit that matched his eyes introduced himself as Jim something, the moderator, and showed Claire and Fred to two chairs right in front.

“Mr. Haaviko. You have the podium on the left. Mr. Illyanovitch has the one on the right. I hope that’s all right?’

“Wonderful. Thank you, Jim—may I call you Jim?”

“Certainly. Now we start with a brief announcement from me. Then you both make general remarks. Then we start. Each of you will have an opportunity for rebuttal. At the end the audience can ask questions.”

“Who speaks first?”

Jim looked uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter, not really.”

I climbed up on the stage and looked down at about 100 grey metal chairs that were slowly filling with middle-aged men and women. I’d come early on purpose to get a moment with Jim so I turned to him slowly and reasonably. “Well. If it doesn’t matter can I go first?”

Jim hesitated and then nodded and I knew everything was going to be just fine.

Within twenty minutes the rest of the gymnasium filled up with reporters with cameras and microphones taking polite spaces in the back. With ten minutes to go Rumer Illyanovitch himself showed up, a six-foot-two-inch man with wide shoulders and waist and a delicate step as he moved through the crowd. His wife came in beside him; a slightly shorter brunette in a plain black dress, and behind them came Alastair Reynolds with his foot in a cast and a cane in his hand.

Rumer’s wife and Alastair sat down near Claire and then Jim went forward to speak with Rumer and lead him to the microphone. On the way Rumer spoke intently to Jim and he nodded slowly and then faster. When Rumer was set Jim came towards me. “Mr. Haaviko? Mr. Illyanovitch would like to make the opening remarks. Is that all right?”

“No.”

That made Jim pause. “No?”

“No. I would really like to go first. It’s important to me. Mr. Illyanovitch has spoken on many occasions to the public. I have not. He has expressed his message. I have not. Also, to be petty and juvenile, I got here first and you said I could go first.”

Jim looked pissed but turned and went back to Rumer to tell him. Then he went to his microphone, tapped it and announced, “Good evening everyone, we are here to listen to a debate between Mr. Montgomery Haaviko and Mr. Rumer Illyanovitch. Both men are running for the position of commissioner of the new police commission and this is the first in a series of debates they, and other candidates, will be having prior to the election on September 13.”

Rumer looked stunning in a dark blue suit and brilliant white shirt, he looked professional and competent and trustworthy. His skin was tanned and carefully maintained and his hair had a slight wave. The nails of his hands peeked over the edge of the podium and were buffed and slightly polished.

I took a deep breath and started to talk into the mike.

G
ood evening everybody, thanks for coming. My name is Montgomery Uller Haaviko. I have also been known as Sheridan Potter, Igor Worley, Gerry Timmins and Samuel Parker in the past. I am an ex-thief and former criminal.”