Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal (27 page)

I
untied Al and Don and they took me to Marie’s place and she took me in and filled me with guilt and recriminations. I ignored her and called Claire, who arrived two days later, although I didn’t notice at the time because I was drifting, awash in a sea of agony. I was feverish and dreaming the whole mess over and over again, trying to make it come out differently.

Claire sewed the holes in my body together with undyed silk thread and heavy-gauge needles. She used a pair of needle-nosed pliers to push the needle through the astonishing thickness of my skin as I screamed into a rolled-up towel. We salted the wounds with diluted iodine to stop infection. We could have used fresh urine but we agreed that would have been gross.

We were terrified of infection and of doctors both. Infection would have killed me ugly, and doctors would have led to cops, who would have led to jail and a different kind of ending. The wounds went sour quickly, turning septic, and Claire drained them over and over and washed them clean with more iodine and distilled water.

When I could walk without too much pain I started to take the children again, using Marie’s house while I figured out what to do with my own booby-trapped home. And when I was fairly steady and the fever itself broke, I was sent off to deposit the money I’d earned from Marie. My first honest pay,
carefully washed in casinos, earned by helping to smuggle and by theft and assault and assorted violence.

But still the first really large sum of honest money I’d ever made, and I took it to the local bank to deposit it just like a real citizen.

That is where the bank robbery happened. Where I started this, and, you know what?

When I think about it honestly, it was all entirely my fault.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to acknowledge the support and aid of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. I’d like to thank Turnstone Press for their superb editing, advice and support. More thanks goes out to David N., William, Lois, Alison, S

anin, Morgan and Erik for putting up with me. Even more thanks goes out to Robert and T, Kathryn L., Pat S., Rick R., Bill and Joan M., Ron and Carol, Chad and Wendy, Paul and Holly, Wayne T., Joan, Charlene, Mary Lou, Karen, Perry, Tavia and Cameron M. along with others too numerous to mention.

And, as always, my thanks to those in the shadows. Quis ipsos …

Michael Van Rooy was born in Kamloops, BC and raised in Winnipeg. His first book,
An Ordinary Decent Criminal
, won the 2006 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer, and Van Rooy was a finalist for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. He lives with his family in Winnipeg.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com

eISBN 9781429983402

First eBook Edition : June 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Van Rooy, Michael, 1968–

Your friendly neighborhood criminal / Michael Van Rooy.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

1. Ex-convicts—Fiction. 2. Human smuggling—Fiction. 3. Refugees—Fiction. 4. Drug dealers—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4.V3656Y68 2011

813’.6—dc22

2011008786