A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) (5 page)

Brenda’s nose twitched and she reminded me of someone I’d known somewhere else. They both gathered up their briefcases and allowed themselves to be graciously escorted out of the house. Only then did Claire and I return to dinner.

I was eating the salad when I looked up and saw that Claire’s face was bright red with repressed laughter. I put down my fork. “Let it out before you explode.”

Her laughter was clear and rich and filled the whole bottom half of the house and made me smile myself. In the living room Fred looked up from his Megablox and then went back to work on his wall.

“Okay, it is funny.”

“Funny? It’s hilarious! How many ex-cons get propositioned for an elected position? It’s beautiful! You gonna take them up on it?”

“No. I’m not really a political type, you know?”

Her eyes twinkled across the cold food. “Oh no. You’re a thief and a thug, an arsonist, a killer and a thoroughly bad man.”

“Don’t forget my twisted sexual desires.”

She smiled. “Never. That’s why I married you.”

Later in the night I untangled my legs from Claire’s and rolled over onto my side. “I think that broke some laws.”

“Good.” She purred. “Got to keep you in practice. Although I think that last one put a kink in my neck.”

“Excellent.”

“Yep. I think that last one was illegal in Texas.”

“Everything is illegal in Texas. Illegal or mandatory.”

I pulled her close and whispered five or six things into her ear and she stretched against me. “A thief and a thug. But not a politician at all. That would be a step down.”

Eventually we fell asleep.

T
he next morning I made breakfast and got Claire off to work while accepting the delivery of Jacob and Rachel. Then they watched a DVD of David Attenborough’s
The Life of Birds
(also from the movie store) while I did the dishes. Afterwards we headed out to make a tour of the playgrounds and see who was up and about. Along the way I had some nice conversations with a few mothers and grandmothers and many small children of varying ages and genders.

It was boring but a living. That eight-hour day with my son (and friends) paid $50 for the privilege of watching him grow up.

It beat the hell out of stealing for a living. Or gang-banging, dealing dope, pimping whores, cooking meth, growing weed, smuggling, arson, fencing or any of my other previous delightful careers. Although I still missed the buzz and lift of cocaine and PCP and acid. Not to mention the comforting angry blankness of booze and hash and heroin. And the adrenal rush of theft and violence.

Life’s a trade, right?

When we got back home I made ham and cheese sandwiches for an early lunch and was settling down to some quiet colouring time with the kids when the doorbell rang. The kids liked colouring time because I encouraged them to go outside the lines on all occasions and at any opportunity. Still, I had to answer the door—Renfield’s damn barking ensured that.

“Yes?” I spoke through the crack with the crowbar behind my back. On the stoop outside was a tanned man wearing a dark brown three-piece suit with a dark blue shirt and a muted brown and green tie. He seemed overdressed in the mid-June sunshine and I saw no reason to let him in.

“Mr. Haaviko? My name is Alastair Reynolds and I’m a lawyer …”

Strike one. I’m not a huge fan of lawyers, unless they’re my lawyer. Even then it’s pretty much a tossup. The guy kept talking. “… who’s representing a client who would very much like to …”

Strike two. Someone sent a lawyer as a flunky. Not cool.

“ … meet with you.”

Strike three. On general principle.

I opened the door to give me more options. “I don’t want to talk to you or your boss.”

He reached into his right front pocket and I braced myself. The pocket was small but bulging. Enough space for a small semi-auto, like a .22, .25 or .32 or a larger calibre derringer. Also enough room for pepper spray or a folding knife.

I watched. If his hand came out holding something in the palm I’d assume it was a weapon and kick him in the face, hard. Then I’d take him apart properly with the crowbar. If he brought out something in his fingers I wouldn’t hurt him. I braced myself and kept the smile plastered in place.

His fingers came out with a wad of bills held together with a money clip shaped like a gold Pacman. He counted out ten bills from the inside of the roll and handed them over.

“One thousand. A grand. Just to talk with my client. Just to listen to what he has to say.”

I was still ready to kick but I took the money with my left hand and checked it out. New-model bills, the ones from 2004 when they dumped $100-plus million into the Canadian financial system using the hundreds. If the money was queer it was good queer: the bills had the holographic stripe, the colour shift thread, the see-through number and the watermark. They also had raised dots and high-contrast numerals, which made them easier for the blind and almost blind to read. Prime Minister Borden was still on the front and on the back was a good map of Canada and a canoe.

I smiled when I thought of the joke of the definition of a Canadian; someone who can make love in a canoe.

I figured the bill was real. They were a bitch to counterfeit. I’d tried way back when. I smiled. “I’ll get my coat.”

Actually I also had to take the kids over to the Kilpatricks’. Mrs. Kilpatrick took them and I gave her one of the hundreds, which made her happy. She immediately gave them a bag of chocolate chip cookies and turned on
Sesame Street
and they zoned out.

Then I went back past Reynolds into my house and changed shoes. The blue and white runners went into the closet and were replaced by the steel-toed oxfords with the reinforced stitching and the good heels. They had been sold as a bartender’s shoe and could resist a ninety-pound beer keg dropped from shoulder height easily enough. They made fine thug shoes.

I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t trust Reynolds. But I’m not stupid.

His car was parked in front of the house, a nice gunmetal grey four-door sedan. He opened all the doors with a clicker attached to his keys and I got in and made myself comfortable. Then we took off.

I
n the car Reynolds told me again that he was a lawyer and a warning bell went off in my head. In general and on principle I don’t like lawyers, so I told him, “I don’t like lawyers.”

“Really?” He sounded amused. “Shakespeare, that ‘let’s kill all the lawyers’ shit?”

He drove pretty badly and I looked him over out of the corner of my eye around the side of my sunglasses. Reynolds was well-built, tanned and healthy, and he moved well. If he was a lawyer he didn’t work at it in an office under a fluorescent bulb.

We whipped under a train bridge and I answered, “Not Shakespeare. Gibbon. He wrote that men who believe, due to experience, that whatever can be fixed within law is right, or, if not right, then allowable, are not useful members of society. Something like that.”

“Ah.” Reynolds turned right and down two blocks and then left. “Well, I make sure I’m useful.”

Inside my head a little voice said, “Useful to whom?” But I didn’t say it.

We got stuck between a pair of idiot tow-truck drivers and construction and I said what I was thinking. “Your car sucks.”

“What? It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar Lexus sedan.”

“It still sucks.”

Reynolds was outraged. “What the hell do you know? This car has a V6 engine, heated leather seats …”

“Still sucks.”

“It’s got six speeds, an aluminum alloy block, an intelligent throttle control, independent temperature control, satellite radio, ten speakers, bucket seats, ten-way power controlled seats, state-of-the-art information display, power moon roof, auto-levelling headlamps, even coat hooks!”

“Amazing. Despite all that, it still sucks. No power, the seats are uncomfortable and the engine is way too loud.”

Reynolds growled at me and then changed the subject. “My client is Mr. Cornelius Devanter. He’s a businessman and he owns factories and manufactories all across Canada and the border states. Along with a shipping company in the Caribbean, a trucking company in Alaska, a chain of hotels and so on.”

“A rich man?”

“Very.”

“I should have asked for more money.”

Reynolds just smiled.

Devanter’s office suite consisted of the entire penultimate floor of a very old and carefully renovated building right downtown. We parked in a modern garage that had grown like a wart out of the side of the older building and then took the elevator up.

Reynolds was still mad about me insulting the car and told me so at great length.

At the right floor the elevator stopped and my tight-assed chauffeur and guide used a swipe card to open the door. There was a second of waiting and then the doors opened onto a large lobby with a single huge, brushed-steel desk in the middle. Behind it were five doors, three on the back wall and one leading off to each side. The receptionist-secretary-assistant behind the desk was a long-haired redhead with a heart-shaped face and graceful legs I admired openly. As I approached the desk the legs scissored twice and I saw a glimpse of forest-green stockings and garters and then I was too close to admire the view.

“May I help you?” She had a calm, cool voice and she wore a dark green wool sweater and skirt against the cold of the air conditioning. Up close I could see her nose had been broken at least once and I found it an exotic touch indeed.

“We’re here,” my guide said, “to meet Mister Devanter.”

He made it sound like it was a holy mission or something. The woman behind the desk nodded and pressed a button on the computer in front of her. There was a low buzzing sound and the double doors directly behind her opened. “He’s waiting.”

We went down a corridor, this one panelled entirely in corkboard with dark oak frames breaking it into sections. Hanging on the walls at all heights were an eclectic mix of paintings in differing sizes.

“Mister Devanter,” again the emphasis, “is a major patron of the arts.”

“Good for him!” I used my happy voice, the one I use to convince the kids I babysat they should do things they didn’t want to do. Stuff like cleaning up their messes and peeing in appropriate places.

“Yes. It is.” Reynolds sounded suspicious.

Okay, maybe I was trying to goad him a little. He was seriously getting on my nerves. He was an officious little prick who reminded me of too many screws. And way too many embezzlers, dentists, insurance agents, pimps and con artists in various prisons over the years.

He paused in front of a big canvas covered in black, red and blue splotches. “This, for example, is a Riopelle.” Reynolds was trying to, a) impress me and b) show me how much money his boss had. And it was, a) not working and b) working.

“Yes, it is.”

Reynolds looked at me with some anger. “Do you even know who Riopelle was?”

He hissed. I wondered if they taught hissing in lawyer school.

“Yes. Riopelle was a modern painter and sculptor from Quebec. Classically trained, which is interesting, fucked around with various surrealists in Paris, later screwed around with inks, water colours and other mediums. Big hockey fan. Died in the early 2000’s. A piece this big and oil on canvas means it’s from his earlier years. What they call a drip painting … maybe worth three hundred thousand?”

“How do you know that?”

I knelt to examine a smaller painting hung at knee level, a gorgeous oil of aspens and birches. The details leapt out at me, the reds and yellows and browns and greens. I lusted after it and tried to read the name. “Oh? Know what? About Riopelles? I used to steal them.” I got to my feet using Reynolds’s arm and the tips of my fingers confirmed the gun under it. He didn’t notice the touch and I went on. “There’s a good market for them, even internationally. Most Canadian collections are really poorly protected, the insurance companies have no trouble handing over ransom and lots of collectors want what they want when they want it. I guess that’s one of those things that makes them collectors and not dealers.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. If you steal on commission you get maybe fifteen percent of the value. So you’d get forty-five thousand for that Riopelle. If you ransom it you get ten percent of the value generally, which is about the same you get from a fence and there are very few fences out there for Canadian paintings. And the risk is a lot higher.”

“Collectors do that?”

“Sure. Scandal adds to value. People always place an extra value on wickedness. That’s one of the reasons
The Scream
is so popular—it’s been stolen so many times. Same with the Hope Diamond. It’s full of history because of the supposed curse, so it’s worth more. I even know people who cream over Spanish
onzas
because they were mined by slave Incas. Anyhow, who did this one?”

I pointed at the painting at my feet and Reynolds answered, “Hmmm. Oh. Peter McConville, a local artist. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Gorgeous.”

It was. I like nice paintings, I just can’t afford them. But I do like pretty things that speak to me. I decided if I ever had money I’d pick one up for Claire.

Reynolds stared into the distance and then shook his head. “I can’t believe it. You just confessed to a crime to me and I’m an officer of the court. How dumb are you?”

He was looking for an edge, I guessed. “Really? And what crime did I confess too?”

“Theft.”

“Know any details?”

“Well … no.”

“Then I confessed to very little, didn’t I?”

At the end of the hall there was another set of double doors and, once through them, I got to meet Mr. Devanter himself.

T
he room beyond the doors was nice, big enough to land a small helicopter. The whole ceiling was cut back to show a loft reached by an old wrought-iron circular staircase. Everything else in the place was new, though; thick windows reaching to the ceiling, inlaid tiles on the floor and ultra-modern black chrome and leather furniture arranged in little conversational spaces. In the middle of the space was a huge desk made out of a single piece of greyish marble supported by steel posts that seemed to flow directly into the floor. Right beside the door we entered was a drafting table and stool.