An Ordinary Decent Criminal Part 17

"Oh, it's just common courtesy."

I filed that away. Thieves don't do that. If someone invites you out, then they pay, it's only right. "Can I also get about twenty dollars from you, right now?"

She gave it to me and I explained. "It's for our neighbors. The next time they want to come over uninvited, I want to give 'em a treat."

The sun was only starting to cut through the clouds when I reached the hardware store. It was an oddity, a small store still owned by a person and not a corporation. When the door swung open, a small bell made a cheerful noise and the owner, a slim, white-haired man with prominent teeth, came out of the back room. When he saw me, he blanched and started to recoil, but when he recovered he came forward much more aggressively and stopped only a few feet from my face. "I don't have a job here for you."

I stared at the old man and put my hands behind my back. "I don't think I asked for one."

The shop was full of racks and shelves of tools and fasteners, strange devices and spools of wire and chain. When I looked back at the old man, he was biting his lower lip.

"You mean you're just here to buy something?"

I walked past him and he put the countertop between us. As I wandered the aisles I could feel his eyes on me, peering myopically from the big mirrors in each corner of the store. It was kind of funny as I watched him watch me keeping a careful watch on him. As we did that, I filled a shopping basket with odds and ends: some heavy-gauge wire, a pair of cheap wire cutters, two pounds of two-inch-long roofing nails, some flexible lengths of plastic designed to be used for trim, and a big ball of twine. At the register, the old man spoke harshly, like his throat had been burned. "Will that be all?"

He kept jars of glue behind the counter and I pointed at the rack. "A jar of an epoxy resin."

When it was in front of me I read the instructions and the old man tallied up my bill on a very new cash register. He mumbled something I couldn't quite hear so I smiled and asked, "What was that?"

"Nothing."

"Oh. It sounded like sniffer sniffer."

The old man glared some more and I paid him.

"Have a nice day."

That was too much for the old man. "You too, Mr. Haaviko, you too."

Outside, I thought about heading home but turned the other way. Where had he learned my name? To check out a theory, I went to the bakery, where the young waiter I'd met before was making change for an ugly lady with a big box of Danishes. When he saw me, his face shut down and he muttered in a dull voice, "Oh."

I nodded to him and sat down at one of the tables while he vanished into the building. After five minutes I went back to the counter and yelled. "Coffee. Please."

It took five minutes before he slopped the cup down in front of me and turned and trotted away.

"Curious."

I ran a finger around the edge of the cup and felt the cracks and chips and finally dipped my finger into the liquid itself to find it cold. When I tasted it, I discovered it was bitter as well. I glanced up to see the waiter's head pull back into the doorway.

I left exact change and walked back home. Claire greeted me with another letter.

"We got a notice to evict immediately. What do you want to do?"

I brushed past her and laid the stuff I'd bought out on the kitchen counter. "Call her up. Tell her I have to go to Brandon but I'll be back soon."

"And if she presses ..."

"Be evasive. Tell her I had a relapse."

When she asked a relapse of what, I blew her a kiss. "Make something up."

The bus for Brandon left at 1:15, I'd checked the schedule. It cost me twenty-three dollars and a few cents for a round-trip ticket. Just outside of town I went up to the driver and crossed the yellow line beyond which pa.s.sengers are not supposed to go.

"Can you let me off here?"

The highway was empty and he pulled over.

"This isn't Brandon, you know."

"Are you sure?"

The driver let me go. Five minutes later the bus to Winnipeg showed up and I waved it down with my ticket and wallet in hand.

"I'm glad you stopped."

The driver, a short Native woman who was slowly turning from muscular to obese, didn't say a word while she took my sixteen-dollar fare.

I sat down in the seat behind her, where I could hear if she used the radio, and said brightly, "I almost ended up in Brandon. Can you believe that?"

She didn't say a word and a few minutes later I was back in Winnipeg.

24.

The building that housed the Residential Tenancies Branch was downtown on Edmonton Street, about ten minutes at a real slow walk from the Greyhound bus terminal and about twenty minutes from the library. I was thinking about the persistence of old habits, which was brought about by the fact that I was wearing clothes more suited for stealing than any honest endeavor. I had on a black denim jacket with extra pockets sewn into the reinforced inner lining, the left arm heavy with handmade chain mail around the forearm in case I ran into a dog, and a hidden inner pocket in the back that used to hold handcuff keys and a Gem razor blade in case the cops used plastic cuffs. Even the jeans were gimmicked, they had extra long pockets, good for loot or a gun, and they also had big leather patches sewn into the knees and a.s.s for protection against skids and sc.r.a.pes. To top it off I was wearing a black baseball hat with a broad bill to deal with security cameras. All this and I had absolutely no intention to do anything against the law, although there was a brisk snap in the air, enough to make a young man's fancy turn to theft, murder for profit, and casual arson.

"Spare any change?"

It was only a short distance to walk and three people panhandled me. The first was a man in his late fifties with scars from bad acne all across his cheeks. He smelled minty fresh but I shook my head and kept walking. "Sorry, tapped out."

I considered the term 'tapped out.' I seemed to remember that the term came from bartenders who drew from the big kegs of beer. When they were opened, someone would have to drive in a spigot, thus tapping them. When they were empty they would be 'tapped out.' Of course, the same ideas and terminologies also applied to maple trees but that didn't strike me as being very romantic.

Halfway to Edmonton Street I veered into Portage Place, a big shopping mall, and then down into the parkade underneath. I'd left the house without a weapon except for my Swiss Army knife, on the off chance someone searched me, but being unheeled made me a little nervous. The knife had been a wedding gift from Claire's parents, they'd given it with the file extended and they'd had the handle engraved with the motto 'cake to follow' and it vaguely annoyed me each time I used it. In the parkade that file served to cut off a telescoping radio antenna from an older model Chevrolet sedan. When it was free, I pushed the antenna shut and then tucked it into my right-hand jacket pocket.

I headed up the stairs out of the parkade, put my knife in the left-hand pocket, and whistled cheerfully. No one suspects someone who's whistling because nervous people don't whistle, their mouths are dry. Therefore, my theory is that when you whistle, people will not suspect you of anything. Although it's probably a lie, it does make me feel better.

The stairway emptied onto the main floor, and I went to the information kiosk and asked the guard for directions.

"It's just across Portage behind me and then you head to your right for about a block."

Behind the guard I watched a bank of TV monitors and saw two guys wearing black pants and white shirts with Sam Browne belts walk up to a car that looked familiar. I realized that the car they were approaching was the one that had donated the antenna, so I thanked the guard and left.

"Uh, right."

There was some kind of huge sale going on, which packed the whole area in the center of the mall with people scrambling for footwear, and I felt much better outside. Before I'd gone six feet, though, another person panhandled me, this one a pale woman with dark blue hair and blond roots. I stared at the snake tattoos on her face and shook my head.

"Well, f.u.c.k you."

She said it politely enough so I kept on going and thought about other stuff. I didn't think I'd actually get into a fight but if I did, then the antenna would give me a long reach to bring an opponent in close for the knife. Although the blade was only three inches long, it would serve. It was as sharp as a razor, perhaps sharper, and three inches in the right place would kill anyone. The antenna was longer but it was just for dramatic effect, somewhat annoying but mostly distracting. It was the knife that would kill.

It was uncommonly warm downtown and the buildings blocked out some of the wind. The clouds were very high up and scattered. I pa.s.sed by a bookstore named Book Fair and made a mental note to stop back after I'd done my business. Claire could use something new to read. As I walked past the store, the idea of using the pocket knife as a weapon triggered a memory and finally it came to me that Lawrence Sanders had written a book about a pathetic female serial killer who'd killed using a Swiss Army knife. There was something else, though ...

A panhandler, a new one, interrupted me.

"Could I have a dollar for coffee?"

The request chased the idea from my mind and I stopped in mid-stride. The panhandler was in his twenties with dark skin and brown eyes. His hair had been cut short and he was fingering a stocking cap as he talked to me.

"No."

I started to walk on and then I turned back. "Why don't you just work?"

"Don't want to."

"Then why don't you steal?"

"Okay. Stick 'em up."

He said it listlessly and I walked on, trying not to smile. It was when I was about three doors down from the short and squat office building that housed the residency office that the other element of Sanders's story came to me. The killer had worn a bracelet that read 'why not?' With my memory satisfied, I went up the stairs happily and into the reception area, where a secretary took an interest.

"May I help you?"

The woman was polite and faked attention fairly well. She was also quite photogenic, with red hair and brown eyes and a nice torso, from what I could see. When she smiled, I noticed a little bit of green stuck to one tooth.

"Why not?"

She stared at me blankly and I went on. "I mean to say, yes. I need to ask someone a few questions about the rights and obligations of landlords and tenants."

"Certainly. Do you have an appointment?"

There was no one else in the waiting room and I shook my head.

"Well, if you want to take a seat, I'll speak with Mrs. Claren."

Before I even reached my Naugahyde chair in the far corner, she was on the phone. I had picked up a fishing magazine and was leafing through it when the receptionist spoke again.

"It'll be only a few minutes."

She made it sound like it was some kind of honor so I nodded in appreciation and she beamed at me. A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with shockingly white hair came out of the back offices and motioned for me to follow.

"Mr. ... ?"

I offered to shake her hand and pa.s.sed her a business card. "Leung, Dr. Leung actually."

The doctor had been rather casual with his cards in the hospital so I'd pocketed a few dozen, just in case. She looked at my clothes somewhat askance and I chuckled loud and long.

"I know. I don't look like a doctor."

"Well, actually I was thinking that you didn't look Chinese."

I smiled. "Oh. Well. You see, in 1905 the Germans invaded Shanghai ..."

I let it trail off and she led me into a plain little office where she sat behind a cheap desk with her back to the window, which overlooked a long, narrow alley full of clean garbage cans. In a few corners there was still dirty snow, black almost with soot and full of leaves and twigs and empty bottles of hair spray. Down the block, three kids were huddled in a brightly painted doorway and pa.s.sing a cigarette back and forth, and when the cigarette was down to practically nothing, one of the kids started to strip down a handful of thrown-away b.u.t.ts for the remaining shards of tobacco. When he had enough, he anted up for a piece of rolling paper and made a new cigarette, which they lit and began pa.s.sing around. I couldn't see exactly what they were doing but I'd done the same thing enough times to know the motions by heart.

"Dr. Leung?"

"Oh, right. Distracted myself for a moment there. Just looking at the kids."

She turned her head and shook it as though she was trying to dislodge something.

"Tsk, tsk. Animals. Filthy animals."

When she turned back to me she was focused on me and the kids were right out of her mind.

"And how can I help you?"

"Right to business, I like that. Actually I'm doing a favor for a patient of mine who's having some troubles with his landlord. My patient is schizophrenic, which he treats with medication. The landlord is, frankly and bluntly, bigoted and wants him to leave."

Mrs. Claren made a little moue with her mouth and stuck out her teeth but I ignored her and kept talking.

"In my professional opinion, it would be criminally wrong to force my patient out onto the street. I'd like to intercede with the landlord and, to do that effectively, I need some information. How, for example, does a landlord go about forcing a tenant out if the tenant does not want to leave?"

She opened a drawer below my level of vision, took out some papers, shuffled them, and then put them right back, apparently into the same drawer. "I didn't know doctors did that kind of thing."

She managed to make it sound insulting and vaguely degrading at the same time.

"They do if they're any good at their job. The oath I signed reads 'First do no harm.' "

She looked at me blankly. "Hmmm. Well, basically a landlord can evict a tenant only under certain circ.u.mstances. I have a pamphlet around here somewhere but this is a synopsis. A tenant can be asked to move out immediately if they don't pay the rent, although they must be given four days' notice. Not paying the security deposit is also grounds, so is a failure to keep the residence clean, damaging the premises, disturbing the neighbors, changing the locks, endangering the safety of the neighbors, or too many people are living in the residence."

She paused and took a drink of water from a big, plastic, p.e.n.i.s-shaped bottle about a quart in size. "Of course, in most of those cases the landlord has to give the tenant a written warning to correct the problem. In my experience, the tenants just ignore the warning."

"I see."

She went on. "The landlords can also ask the tenant to move out if they need the s.p.a.ce back for certain reasons, like demolition, renovations, etc. In those cases the tenant gets three months' written warning to leave."

I listened politely and then asked, "Out of curiosity, just what are the legal obligations of a landlord? What do they have to do?"

"How do you mean?"

"Can a landlord cut off the heating to the property, paint the place with no warning to the tenants, stuff like that?"

"Well, no. A landlord has duties such as maintaining the appearance of the residence, doing repairs, and ensuring the supply of heat, water, and other essential services. They also have to investigate reasonable complaints in a reasonable period of time, and so on. Basic stuff really."