Meaner Things
Authors: David Anderson
© David Anderson 2015
David Anderson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For
Joanne
and
Brendan
,
as
always
.
And
for
Kit
Schindell
,
my
lifeline
at
a
very
low
time
.
‘When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed, we do not believe it; unless it appears that there might have been the wish to obtain some of those which we designated meaner things, or else a fear of losing them. For truly they are beautiful and comely.’ – St. Augustine,
Confessions
, Book II, Chapter V
‘No pressure, no diamonds.’ – attributed to Thomas Carlyle
Table of Contents
WALK IN THE PARK
Ten
years
ago
If we were going to steal it, it was now or never.
We’d left the university campus half an hour ago, driven downtown in her old Mini, dropped off the backpacks, and parked in a quiet alley nearby. It was a five minute walk to our destination and we passed no-one. On the average Tuesday night there were very few people on the streets in this part of the city.
In the memorial garden of the church we fished out our packs from where we’d hidden them under a tree and hoisted them on our backs before making our way out to the street.
I looked around me into the dank gloom. It was approaching midnight and the block was silent and deserted. I peered into my partner’s face, looking – hoping, perhaps – for hesitation, doubt, second thoughts, but she gave me only a curt nod from under her black toque. She was the steady one. I was about to whisper some words of assurance, as much for myself as for her, then decided against it. We had agreed to speak only if absolutely necessary once the job was on. The sound of voices, even muted, could carry surprising distances in the quiet of night.
Instead, I shot out my arm and did a gentle knuckle touch. It was best to start as we meant to finish. This time, her eyes, black as coal under the streetlights, gleamed encouragement back at me.
I eased my heavy backpack off my shoulders, making sure that the tall protrusion sticking out the top of it, shrouded in a black garbage bag, didn’t clink against the pavement. Another quick glance around and I was ready.
Come on, I urged myself, get on with it. He who hesitates is lost . . .
In a practiced movement I lifted the backpack with both hands and shoved it up onto the scaffolding plank above my head.
God, it was heavy. I had to ignore that and get a move on.
I reached up, grasped the round, cold metal scaffolding and hauled myself onto the cross plank. Lying almost prone I felt fear swell in my gut, hardening in my chest.
Committed now. No turning back.
I took a deep breath and straightened up, grabbed the handle at the top of the pack and lifted it up onto my back. It was crucial to get up as quickly as possible and I immediately began working my way higher. Well above the street I’d be safe.
At least for a while.
I climbed steadily, the leaden backpack slowing me down and making my arms ache. When I paused I could hear her following behind me. During the weeks of planning I’d sometimes wondered if she would chicken out at the last moment. But tonight I’d known deep down that she wouldn’t. She was totally committed; more so than me.
About two thirds up, I stopped to rest. Now that I was high above the street my night sight had sharpened considerably. Lightly panting, I scanned the well-lit street below for any passers-by, especially any looking up, wondering what was going on. None caught my eye.
I switched my attention to the slim, dark figure climbing carefully up to me. Nearly every centimetre of her pale skin was concealed in black clothing. She moved her hands and feet, her whole body, smoothly and rhythmically, seemingly without fear, as if born to it. My nerves suddenly went away and I smiled for the first time that night.
With her I could do this.
I turned before she reached me and climbed up to the workers’ platform at the top of the scaffolding that ran all the way along two sides of the Orthodox church. Whatever the workers were doing, renewing the exterior envelope of the building I supposed, it looked like they had nearly finished the job. There was a lot less mess scattered around than on my previous visits.
Another reason it had to be tonight or never.
I worked my way along the platform, round the corner to the opposite end, and reached up over the roof overhang. Feeling along the gutter with my fingers, for one terrible moment I thought what I was searching for was gone – discovered by one of the workers and tidied up with the rest of their stuff. Then my fingertips found it and I expelled a tense, noisy breath, relieved.
I stood on tiptoe and slid the long, narrow plank out of its dirty niche. It was heavy and wet and I took my time. One fumble could mean that tonight was over. I sensed her right behind me, thought I felt a warm waft of her breath on my cheek.
We each took an end of the plank and carried it a little way back along the platform, setting it down at the point nearest to the warehouse next door. Here, between the two buildings, there were no street lights below us and we were safe from observation from the ground. From street level I knew it looked like a mere step across from scaffolding to warehouse roof. In reality it was nearly three metres.
So far we’d only committed minor trespassing. The church probably wouldn’t even press charges; that was about to change.
Just as I felt doubts well up, her gloved hand curled around mine. Her touch stilled the wave of hesitation going through me. I turned and smiled grimly at her, straining to make out her features in the gloom. A wide mouth beneath high cheekbones, a lock of blonde hair peeping out from under the toque, a hint of a gleam in her grey-green eyes. As always, she empowered me. With a great heave that took most of my strength I hauled the plank upright and we manoeuvred it across the void. It was only just long enough.
Again I checked the space below and the streets on either side.
All clear.
Not giving myself any more time to think about it, I crept out along the plank.
*
Two thirds of the way over, I looked down. About twenty-five metres below me rusted iron railings surrounded the warehouse, relics from when the building had been one of Vancouver’s first banks. They were the spiked kind of railings, each vertical rod topped by an ornate
fleur
-
de
-
lis
. Sure, they were relatively blunt
fleurs
-
de
-
lis
, but at the velocity I’d be falling they would still impale my body and I’d bleed like a stuck pig. I tried to stop shuddering at the thought and crawled on.
On the far side I turned and held the end of the plank with both hands until she was over too. I helped her up on to her feet and hugged her tight.
“Pull it after us,” she whispered, “Stash it along the roof.”
I frowned. “You know we can’t,” I replied, “The plank stays here in case we need a quick exit. It’s pitch black, no-one can see it.” Strange that she wanted to change the plan at this point. We’d gone over it a hundred times.
I felt her lips touch my neck and the tension in me dissipated. I shuffled along the guttering, past a window set into the roof. It could have given me a useful line of sight into the building but the accumulated grime of decades totally obscured my view. I left it well alone and kept going until I reached the building’s ancient water tanks. Their strong supporting structure provided me with a climbing frame up to the flat part of the roof.
Once over the parapet, I slipped around to the rear of the building and peered over the edge. Below me, in the courtyard near the back exit, there stood a grey security hut. Inside it, as I’d managed to confirm during previous night-time reconnoitres, sat a lone security guard with a portable TV set. Faint sounds floated up to my ears from the hut’s open window.
Late night TV. Sports or a movie. Good.
I quickly scanned the surrounding buildings. All around, downtown skyscrapers soared into the sky, dwarfing the elderly structure on whose roof I now stood. Most were office towers, their windows dark, but that didn’t necessarily mean that no-one was there. Despite the shadowy gloom of the warehouse roof, we could still be observed from any of hundreds of windows – if someone happened to be looking in exactly our direction. It would only take one cleaner to look out, notice suspicious figures on the roof and call the cops. It was a risk I’d deemed remote, therefore acceptable. Now I wasn’t so sure.
To my left sat the squat, square mass of the adjacent church. Faint lights flickered through stained glass windows. They were the ever-present candles.
Nothing to worry about there.
The church’s round, striated roof pushed up into the night sky like a giant Christian fist protesting secular darkness. A small cross at the dome’s apex attracted my gaze. For a minute I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It seemed to be accusing me, branding its image into my brain.
God knew what I was doing. But He wouldn’t tell any tales.
I shook my head and scolded myself for getting distracted, instead of concentrating fully on my immediate surroundings. In the middle of the warehouse roof stood a rectangular structure with an outward opening door that allowed access to the roof from inside the building. A short flight of steps led up to it. I tiptoed up the steps, opened my backpack and took out two wooden wedges. With a short-handled hammer, its striking surface silenced by a thin rubber coating, I tapped the wedges firmly into place. One went above, between the top edge of the door and the lintel; the second below, between the door’s bottom edge and the concrete step.
That would do the trick nicely.
If we were detected, the wedges would delay any security guard’s intent on rushing the roof, thereby providing us with precious extra seconds to escape.
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best was my motto. Cheesy, I know.
I turned and gave her a quick nod. All preparations were completed. We walked gingerly over to the domed glass canopy that was our real target.
*
I knelt in front of it; my track-suited knees pressing on the rough lead lining around the edge. It was an old building, constructed close to a hundred years ago. Ancient by Vancouver standards.
For my purposes: the older, the better.
I took a small, powerful flashlight from my backpack and inspected the window frame minutely for wires or pressure pads. It was very unlikely that any would have been added in the short time since I’d last been here, but it was best to take no chances.
I could find nothing suspicious.
Shading the flashlight with my palm, I then focused the thin beam downward through the glass and traced the outline of the next obstacle, a wire grill covering the well of the window. It sounded feeble enough: just wire criss-crossing the round void. But these wires were centimetre-thick steel cables. An awkward, even formidable barrier. But, passable nevertheless.
Under the steel cables was a false ceiling. A major benefit of targeting an old building like this one was that changes and adaptations had been added
ad
hoc
over many years. At some point in this building’s history, someone had decided to add a false ceiling under the domed glass area of the roof. Perhaps it was aesthetically pleasing, and no doubt it saved on heating bills. Whatever the reason, eventually the dome above had been forgotten about. Such realities were pure gold to me.
This building’s age also meant, of course, that security features had been added piecemeal, rather than integrated into the construction plans the way they would be in a new public building. Instead of motion sensors, video cameras, and the whole complicated paraphernalia of modern electronic buildings, this warehouse was still sticking to traditional methods. A security guard patrolled outside in the yard. Inside there were two more guards, plus locked, alarmed doors with keypad admission, and windows alarmed with pressure pads. But with trucks making and taking deliveries after hours and other unpredictable times, motion detectors were eschewed in favour of real live human beings letting people in and out and keeping an eye on the truck crews while they went about their business.
I knew all this from having worked here last summer as assistant janitor to help pay off a student loan. I’d even managed to stay behind a couple of evenings and go exploring when there were no regular staff around and the offices were empty. The security guards kept to themselves, in their glass-panelled booth in the foyer, rarely straying from their overstuffed armchairs and microwave oven, unless it was to stomp off for a bathroom break.
Tonight’s rooftop adventure was simply me going back to work, but in a much more lucrative way. In the next couple of hours I hoped to earn a lot more than minimum wage.
I pressed my face close to the glass dome and checked the ceiling for traces of wiring or other fittings. There were none evident. It looked like nothing had changed. There could be an alarm recently installed on the other side, but that was unlikely as the whole point of such devices was to conceal them from casual view. But it was possible nevertheless, and another calculated risk I’d judged worth taking.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Another of my cheesy expressions.
I took a glass cutter out of my backpack and ran it around the inside edge of one of the large panes at the rim of the dome. Then I unpeeled an adhesive pad, pressed it tightly over the cut area and, taking the hammer in my free hand, gave the pane a good, hard smack.
A frisson of excitement ran down my spine. The game was on.
*