I had seen Thompson and McMillan-Fowler debating beforehand. They both nodded and Atismak took over speaking.

"... which we will be investigating, although not in relation to you folks."

He smiled briefly and went on. "The provincial tip line received a call indicating that firearms and narcotics were stored here. The call was very specific and believable and we had to check it out."

Claire looked at me, it made sense to her. Me too. "Can my wife and I listen to the recording?"

Atismak shook his head and shrugged. "Sorry. But it wouldn't matter even if you could, whoever it was disguised their voice. They mentioned a Glock pistol along with considerable quant.i.ties of crack cocaine and crank speed, along with PCP and v.i.a.g.r.a. Frankly, Mr. Haaviko, considering your past history, the call sounded credible."

Thompson was trying to say something but we all ignored him and finally he just blurted it out. "v.i.a.g.r.a?"

Atismak looked amused so I answered. "Yeah. It goes for twenty-five dollars US per pill in Russia. It's smuggled to Churchill, put on ships, and offloaded in the Black Seas ports."

I turned back to the Mountie. "Let me guess, it's the details in the call that raised flags for you. That's why you gave me warning of the search and let me have my lawyer present?"

Atismak smiled. "We also put some watchers on you with long lenses last night in the hope you'd move something, which you didn't. You didn't even touch the drugs back there."

His smile was cold and smart. "We're not all bad, Mr. Haaviko."

Then they left, except for Thompson, who walked to the door and looked down the driveway at the cops by the van. His face flushed bright red and he fumbled in his jacket pocket for a silver flask about a pint in size. With trembling fingers he unscrewed the top and took several swallows before putting it away. When all the cars outside had left, so did he.

Claire came over and threaded her arm through mine. "You look concerned."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Someone tried to set me up and didn't care if you and Fred got in the way."

"Who?"

"Walsh, maybe. Robillard. Whoever it was called the cops and claimed we were armed and running drugs for bikers. All in exquisite detail."

"Oh." She held on to my arm and kept a smile on her face but I could feel her whole body go rigid.

"f.u.c.kers."

"Yeah. If we'd had a slightly dumber cop than that Atismak, we would have had the whole riot squad down here. Local cops and not the Mounties."

She turned to face me. "And they would have found something, right?"

"Sure. They would have come down like the wrath of G.o.d, and those weapons outside would have been in here with us. Someone would have started shooting and no one would have been able to prove afterwards it wasn't me or you. Clean, simple, elegant, and some cop becomes a hero, the city gets to avoid embarra.s.sing questions, the world goes on."

We were quiet and she turned and went back for Fred. When she came back, her voice was artificially calm. "So. What are we going to do?"

I shrugged and now I was trembling too. My hands vibrated and my vision tunneled as the adrenalin pumped through me. "I don't know. We tried. I tried, I mean. I really did but I don't want to try anymore."

I was pleading and she kissed Fred on the forehead and he turned to look at me. "Cry havoc," she said.

"Huh?"

She put Fred between us and we made a sandwich hug.

"It's a line from a bad movie with Christopher Walken, 'cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war.' "

"Right."

Neither of us was smiling and she went on. "Or a song by Pink Floyd after Roger Waters left."

"Right, or even a comic book hero."

She squeezed closer and I put my head down to her ear.

"Woof."

Claire answered just as softly.

"Woof."

When the cops were long gone, I took a quick walk around the neighborhood and found a pay phone in the back of a bowling alley. The Red River Community College administration office answered on the third ring.

I said, "h.e.l.lo, this is the alumni a.s.sociation. We're checking the mailing address of one of the graduates for a pamphlet we're producing."

"Ummm. Yes, hold on."

There was a pause and I crossed my fingers, I was playing percentages but that often works just fine.

"Name?"

"Enzio Walsh. Computer course graduate."

She gave me an address in the suburb of Transcona and I thanked her and then held my head against the gla.s.s frame of the booth to feel the coolness.

"Woof."

No one was around and I walked off with my head full of vague thoughts, strung-together memories, and ideas. It was free thought, the same way it had been when I'd been stealing. Elements of ideas, concepts, free floating, diffuse, they would spin together and form something in time, as long as I let them alone. Robillard and Walsh, Walsh and Robillard, but Walsh first.

About a block away, I had the parameters down pat. He was an enemy I couldn't and shouldn't kill but could and should ruin. An enemy full of pride like a frog full of fart and armed with arrogance in his reputation. An enemy backed by his organization.

Some dead French cop said that it is not enough to destroy a man unless you destroy his reputation. But all I wanted was to be free. And have a family. And make a living. Which was actually quite a lot, if you thought about it.

30.

It took me two days to find Robillard's address, using the library records, the phone company, the gas company, and City Hall. Getting to the library was half the fun, taking different routes each time, avoiding any tails, dumping surveillance, if it was there, making an idiot of myself, if it wasn't. Practicing old techniques, moving fast and well.

At the end of the second day, I took a bus out to the St. Norbert end of town and then took a walk around Robillard's neighborhood. His place was on a nice street called Athlone, and it was a ranch house with an attached two-car garage sitting on about four acres of wooded land. I walked by once and then hopped back on the bus and used the same transfer to pay my way downtown.

While the bus jerked and spasmed through very little traffic, my hand itched for a gun and my veins itched for the heroin rush and my nose itched for the c.o.ke and my throat itched for the whisky, and my eyes itched for seeing the bad things. Taking what I wanted and not taking any s.h.i.t and wanting things and not giving a rat's a.s.s ...

We pa.s.sed by a p.a.w.n shop. Source of all good things, knives, money, guns, so my hand was right near the stop cord. Pull it and walk in, nail whoever the f.u.c.k was behind the counter with a fist between the eyes and then a knee to the jaw. Flip the sign in the window to CLOSED CLOSED. Lock the door. Do unpleasant things to the shopkeeper until he handed over the money, the guns, the videotape of me coming in.

It was all eighteen inches away. And that would be the start. Acid to take you away and gra.s.s to smooth the ride. Cash on the barrelhead and sleek, slick, steel instruments of destruction. Headlines and blurred camera images. Fast cars and that crazed, myopic, adrenalin rush.

The voice inside my head said, Hey. Just one more time. Help me out, help yourself out, do some good.

Against all that old s.h.i.t was a baby who, when born, measured exactly as long as the distance from the tip of my fingers to the crook of my arm. Waking up with the same beloved breath on the back of my neck. Yard work and house work. Something to own that wasn't stolen, borrowed, or bought with blood.

My hand relaxed. I was going to bend, not break.

And then the p.a.w.n shop was gone.

That night Claire and I made love until I couldn't even remember my name.

The next morning I left much before dawn and played all my little avoid-the-tail games and moved on foot until I could steal a bike and then by bike to Transcona. About a mile past Walsh's house, there was a big junkyard surrounded by a wooden fence topped with razor wire, so I paused there and threw the bike over the fence to land behind a pile of gutted cars. Towering high into the sky over the fence was a bright yellow crane hoisting a ma.s.sive electromagnet and I paused to admire it before walking back. It was almost 8:00 when I reached Walsh's bungalow and it was still ice-cold out with a bitter wind.

Cops are hyper-stressed most of the time; there really are people trying to get them. For that reason I stayed far away, walking once past the front of the place using a brisk race-walker's stride, no one looks twice at those guys. Walsh had a small bungalow with attached garage, thick hedges between him and his neighbors, and a smallish backyard, carefully fenced in.

Changing my pace and my jacket, I walked along the back alley and saw that the property ended in a field with an old railway line cutting neatly across it.

Through his fence I could see a neatly manicured lawn, a fieldstone patio area, and a small shed. But no toys that indicated children, and no patches of dog c.r.a.p or urine that indicated pets.

Back front and about a block away, I waited until Walsh had left in a small Corolla and then walked up his driveway to where a dark gray van sat in front of the attached double garage. I took my hand out of my jacket pocket and looked at the para compa.s.s resting in my gloved palm. I'd picked it up at a marine supply house in Prince Edward Island, prepping for a score that hadn't worked out, and I'd kept it since. Sailors used it on small boats but it was strong enough to detect magnetic fields, like those around alarm systems, at close range, and it was small enough to be easily concealed. I was using it to check for an alarm on the van. In my pocket was a flexible metal shim and a Robertson screwdriver to strip the steering column and start the engine once I was in.

Some jays sang nearby as I held the compa.s.s near the body of the van and slowly walked around it, watching for the needle to deflect. Nothing happened but the needle took a little dip near the front driver's side wheel.

"Nah. Nothing's that easy."

I circled the van and came back to the same place and felt around until I found a small, magnetized box where Walsh had put a spare set of house and car keys. I opened the box and slid into the van. In the back there was a nice set-up with a chair on a heavy-duty rotating bracket, some shelves, a locker built into the back of the driver's chair, and a little cooler resting between the seats. I left everything in place and arranged myself behind the steering wheel.

My palms were sweaty under the gloves and I turned on the ignition, holding my breath. It would be just like a cop to install some kind of extra gimmick in his own car, parked in his own yard, but nothing happened.

The van started on the first try and I turned it off and fingered the house key.

Oh well, nothing ventured.

31.

Walsh had a nice place but very masculine. The front door opened right onto a living room with dark wood paneling on the walls, black leather and chrome steel couches and chairs. The furniture all faced a pale birchwood entertainment unit from Ikea that covered one side of the room. A stereo, good TV, DVD player, and so on were all prominently displayed along with racks of movies and music. In the corner near the closet, there was a stand-up bar that showed signs of use, big gla.s.ses and supplies of Johnny Walker Blue and Gold scotch, Hennesey cognac, Drambuie, Jack Daniel's bourbon. Hard liquor for hard men.

No books but magazines on tabletops: guns, computers, cars, fitness, self-defense.

Under the coffee table was a Bushnell s.p.a.cemaster Spotting scope, about six hundred dollars' worth of quality optics, and one of those ashtrays with a built-in fan to suck up smoke.

The kitchen was small and functional and full of appliances. The bathroom was equally small and had a well-thumbed selection of Playboy Playboy, Penthouse Penthouse, and Maxim Maxim magazines in a rack beside the tub. His medicine cabinet was full of vitamin supplements, herbal compounds (what the h.e.l.l was St. John's Wort or even ginseng for that matter?), condoms (ribbed and regular), and a big bottle of industrial-strength pain medication with codeine. magazines in a rack beside the tub. His medicine cabinet was full of vitamin supplements, herbal compounds (what the h.e.l.l was St. John's Wort or even ginseng for that matter?), condoms (ribbed and regular), and a big bottle of industrial-strength pain medication with codeine.

As I moved through the rooms, I listened but didn't hear a thing.

The dining room had been turned into a study with narrow tables along all the walls holding too many computers. I shook my head and counted: eighteen towers, three laptops, sixteen screens of various sizes, along with three printers. And stuff I'd never seen before.

Along one wall was a bookshelf full of manuals and a three-drawer file cabinet full of warranties. The one window in the room had been sealed with a great deal of care and laid over it was a patch of corkboard that reached from throat height to the ceiling.

Pinned to that were about fifty pictures of me and Claire and Fred; at home, in the yard, shopping, in the hospital, on the street, working at the convenience store. The pictures were printed on computer paper, not standard photographic stock.

Off to the side were six pictures grouped together, pictures of Robillard talking to someone I couldn't identify in the front seat of a Taurus station wagon down the street from my place. Pictures of Robillard walking. Pictures of Robillard driving out of my neighborhood in a big SUV.

I wanted to check the computers but didn't know anything about how they worked, so I stuck with what I knew. Under one desk I found a barrel safe bolted into the floor. The lock was a good one, twenty million possible combinations, but the steel was s.h.i.t and I could have opened it with a claw hammer in about two seconds. I left it alone.

There were two bedrooms. Walsh had turned one into a storeroom by filling it with boxes upon boxes of stuff. At the same time, he had left an open s.p.a.ce down the center, where he'd strung a length of braided steel wire upon which to hang his clothes, all his clothes, right down to underwear and socks, which hung on their own little hangers.

The second bedroom was his own with a big, expensive mattress on an antique cherrywood frame, two matching end tables, and a small vanity table set into the wall with a huge mirror that did double duty for s.e.xual stimulus and grooming. In the drawers of the vanity, I found more condoms, breath spray, nail grooming equipment, a selection of cigars sealed in aluminum cases, and a pair of Zippo lighters.

I resisted the temptation to put pinholes in the condoms and kept looking.

Where the closet had been, Walsh had installed a Sentry 14 gun safe. Steel frame and full construction with a combination lock. Capable of holding fourteen long guns. Locked, of course.

I stared at the closed door for a moment and then retraced my way back to the filing cabinet in the study, where I found a sheaf of warranties. A Taurus Raging Bull magnum revolver in .44, Ruger Model 77 bolt-action rifle in .30-06, a Browning Buck pistol in .22, a Mossberg Model 500 pump shotgun in 12 gauge. There were also bills of sale for more weapons bought at gun shows and second hand. A Ruger ranch rifle in 7.62 Russian, a Derringer in .45 ACP, a Colt Commander pistol in .45 bought at a place called Gunsite down in New Mexico. The bill for that was over twenty-five hundred, US. About four times more than a Colt should have cost.

I backtracked some more. In the living room there were three framed diplomas, all for Walsh. One for graduating from Red River. One for graduating from the Cooper Gunsite pistol course down in the States, where he had apparently gone to learn combat shooting. The last was for graduating cop school.

If Walsh had a Colt worth two and a half grand from Gunsite, then it would have been accurized and modified. Which meant he knew how to shoot.

Back to the warranties. Grown-up toys, a Nikon SLR digital camera bought at a police auction, a Meridian GPS Gold system from a local sporting goods store, black combat fatigues from a mail order company called US Cavalry, body armor from Second Chance, good knives from Gerber and Buck, a laser range finder from Leica, night vision binoculars from Bushnell, the warranty for the spotting scope in the living room, and surveillance equipment like bug finders and sonic amplifiers from a variety of companies, most of them in England. I put the papers back.

Downstairs the bas.e.m.e.nt was unfinished but Walsh had a weight bench set up with free weights, a Bowflex gym, as well as a stationary bike and a treadmill. Beside the racked weights was a big punching bag about a yard long, a heavy-duty Everlast, which I checked out for wear marks and found quite a few low and on the left-hand side and some centered.

I reached his garage through the kitchen. It had been turned into a workshop with woodworking tools, billets of lumber, and many racks of tools. There was nothing that jumped out so I closed the door softly and stood there. I could have done a lot of things. I could have broken into his gun safe, loaded a shotgun, pointed it at groin level down the front hall, and set up twine to trigger it when he opened the door.

I could have cut the bolts through on his weights. Or wired his gas stove. Or sawn halfway through the stairs leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Or drilled a hole into his tub with a live wire from his bas.e.m.e.nt and painted the end white. Or spilled black powder around his hot water heater. Or dissolved codeine invisibly into his whisky.

But I didn't.

I stopped in the living room and collected the Bushnell telescope and stole his van.