Meaner Things (2 page)

Fifty minutes later I was nearly in. She had watched me closely the whole time, her eyes glued to the movements of my hands and what they were doing. It made me feel proud, not nervous.

The pane had come out easily and I had set it aside very carefully – the edges were razor sharp and a bad cut through my gloves would see me having to abort this entire nocturnal enterprise. Then I’d got to work with the Klein 42-inch bolt cutters. These were the big brute-of-a-thing weighing down my backpack; so long, they stuck out the top like a spade handle and had had to be concealed from sight with a garbage bag. They had done what they do best: made short work of the grid of steel cables.

Next I drilled a small hole through the false ceiling and inspected the room below through a flexible borescope. The night lighting was on, giving the place an eerie orange glow that suited me perfectly. I checked for cameras, motion sensors, sonic devices.

Still nothing to worry about.

I reached for the Milwaukee Compact Hacksaw, checked that its 12-volt lithium-ion battery was fully charged, and cut a square section out of the ceiling, big enough for me to pass through. Then I emptied the backpack and set all the tools aside in a neat pile. Sadly, and expensively, I would have to abandon them. But if everything went as planned, I’d be able to buy ten new sets, or a hundred for that matter.

My partner had already taken the compact rope ladder out of her pack and was unrolling it. The tricky part was finding something strong enough to which to secure the loop at the top. For that it was necessary to thread a second, ordinary rope through the loop. I watched in sombre admiration as she did this, her hands moving neither unusually fast nor slow, her whole demeanour seemingly calm and without nerves. Calmer than me, that’s for sure.

She wrapped the rope twice around the bulbous aluminium air vent we’d decided upon and secured it with the mountaineer’s knots she’d practised. I grabbed the rope ladder up in two arms, leaned over the square hole and dropped it through. It twisted and turned, swayed for several seconds, then gradually became still.

I stuck my head through the opening and inspected our handiwork. The length of the ladder had been educated guesswork and I’d wanted to pack only as much as necessary – it was damned bulky – and I saw now that I’d got it wrong. The bottom end was about a metre and a half short of the floor. Thankfully, this was not a crucial mistake.

“You can do it,” she whispered in my ear.

I turned, surprised she’d broken our tactical silence, and nodded. Leaning close, I mouthed the words “Walk in the park” and saw a small answering smile curve her lips.

I took the two empty backpacks and, with one on each shoulder, swung my leg down into the opening onto the top rung of the ladder.

*

I dropped softly onto the floor, bending my knees to keep from stumbling. For a long moment I stood still, rotating my head from side to side. Nothing moved or stirred. More importantly, no lights – especially red lights – gleamed or flickered. Only the low hum of temperature and humidity control broke the silence.

The long narrow room looked just the same as when I had reconnoitred it as a legitimate student worker. It was by far the largest room in the building, the only one with sufficient space to store really big deliveries, the major displays from the museum several blocks away. That building, like almost all older museums, had run out of every available millimetre of storage space a long time ago. Temporary displays, on loan from other museums or occasionally from private collectors, had to be stashed here whilst awaiting shipment back to their owners.

The Northwest Native Artefacts Exhibition, on loan from Washington State Art Museum, had ended on Sunday, two days ago. That meant the priceless artefacts had had to be boxed up and brought here, where they would remain for a few days until trucks came to ship them back to Seattle.

That would still happen – minus as much as I could carry tonight.

I moved slowly away from the rope ladder, randomly choosing a mound of boxes stacked on one side of the room. Now was the time that alarms would go off if it was going to happen at all. Instead there was only the quiet crump of my rubber soles on the carpeted floor.

Each box was numbered with a long code indicating its precise contents, but without the shipping manifest these were no help to me at all. With a craft knife I slit open several boxes at random and found only stark native masks staring back up at me out of beds of copious wrapping. Such masks were far too big and bulky for my purposes.

I switched to another stack of boxes and quickly found what I was looking for: small objects and lots of them. Relieved, I hauled a box across the floor and inspected its contents under one of the room’s domed ceiling lamps. As I worked my way through the wrapping, the overhead amber light reflected off distinctive shapes and colours of native earrings, bracelets, necklaces, nose rings, lip piercings, amulets and many other blessedly small, extremely valuable, items.

Blood seemed to race through my veins. I visualised my well-thumbed copy of the exhibition catalogue and recalled the section in which these same items had been pictured and captioned. The brochure hadn’t given monetary worth and I had spent quite a bit of time researching their values. I’d discovered that these small objects were extremely valuable indeed – and thus highly saleable to the sort of dealers or private collectors who were careful not to ask too many questions. There were plenty of those around. The twenty-five to fifty per cent of retail that I would get for these would add up to a small fortune, and set me up nicely. It would set both of us up nicely.

I slipped the backpacks off my shoulders and got down to the business of filling them. Working quickly, I stuffed the artefacts into their main sections as well as the small pouches at the front and the pockets on each side. Now wasn’t the time to be prissy and worry about damage. These artefacts had survived the vicissitudes of the north-west coast for over a hundred years; they could survive one more short trip. I stuffed the packs until they bulged so full that the zips barely closed, then hoisted one onto my back and the other onto my front.

A feeling of sheer elation, the absolute joy of accomplishment, swelled through me. I’d done it. It had all gone like proverbial clockwork. If only I’d known beforehand that it would be this easy. In time I might even find another old building like this one, with similarly outdated security. Another stupid dinosaur from a non-electronic past.

Tension seeped out of me as I took a last glance around. There was nothing to fear here. If only I’d brought another backpack I could have strapped it around my hips and taken more.

I went back to the ladder and began to climb up. It was awkward with the backpack in front of me but it only slowed me down a little. As I ascended I felt more physically and mentally rejuvenated with each step.

When I reached the false ceiling I paused and looked up through the square hole. She was leaning in so far that she was almost upside down, gripping the ladder with one hand. With her free arm she signalled for me to hurry, a worried look on her face.

*

“What’s up?” I hissed.

She pointed behind her shoulder with her thumb. “I heard something. Give me the backpacks. They’ll catch on the ceiling if you don’t. It’ll be quicker for you.”

Her reasoning made sense and I unhooked the straps of the front pack and passed it up to her, then did the same with the one on my back. Despite their swollen bulk they were still relatively light and I had no trouble thrusting them up to her waiting hand. Both disappeared immediately. Moonlight shone into the gap where she had been.

Suddenly the rope ladder jerked and slipped downwards, and I almost fell off. I was just able to get a firm grip with both hands and stay on. But I was now hanging about a metre down from the ceiling. Cold fear shot through me.

I wondered what the hell was happening.

Thinking about it afterwards, I may have known even then.

The Klein bolt cutters shot through the opening and I jerked my head aside just in time to save myself from a cracked skull. They struck my right shoulder, their forged alloy jaws down-most, and I let out an involuntary cry of pain as I lost control of my right side. I barely managed to hold on with my good arm.

My other tools followed the bolt cutters, but I managed to dodge almost all of them and they did me no harm. The last one to come through was the electric hacksaw. I had no time to swing out of its way and it whizzed about a centimetre in front of my face. Instead of taking an eye out, its serrated blade sliced across my chest, ripped the fabric and made a nasty cut.

What in damnation was coming next? I thought fast, visualised the roof and couldn’t recall seeing any loose bricks lying around there.

The next thing I knew the building’s security alarm went off, screeching and screaming, hellish in my ears.

By now I was battered, bloody and scared stiff. Every muscle in my body was rigid with tension, perspiration soaked my clothes. I was confused about just about everything – except the utter necessity of getting out of here fast. At most, I had a few minutes before the guards arrived, rapidly followed by police.

There was only one way out. I had to get to the top of the step ladder, climb the rope above it hand over hand, and crawl out onto the roof. I shifted one foot up to a higher rung and cautiously ascended a step. Nothing bad happened. I moved my other foot up to the next rung and got a little higher.

The ladder gave way completely and I plummeted to the floor. I crashed feet first and for an instant thought I was okay, then one ankle turned, twisting the ligaments. I screamed in agony and collapsed in a heap.

I remember my head thumping against the thin industrial carpet before my ears became deaf to the alarms, and my world went black.

2.

DÉJÀ VU

Present
day

I’d been waiting for this day for nearly ten years. I didn’t know that beforehand, of course.

It was a normal Monday afternoon in mid-May, the hot sun shining from a cloudless Vancouver sky, baking the clean pavements and sidewalks. I was enjoying the second of my two days off work per week, just an average guy relaxing after a jog around McDougal Park.

Now I was sitting in the coffee shop around the corner from where I lived. It’s a place I’d patronised a thousand times before. I was talking to my friend Charles Farrell, colloquially known as Charlie Farley, a jack of all trades whom I’d first met years ago when we both worked as counter clerks in a jewellery store on Cambie Street not far from here. Since then Charlie and I had both moved on to other things, but we’d kept in touch.

We’d been chatting for about twenty minutes and Charlie was his usual inquisitive self. In other words, nosy.

“Got any vacation planned?” he asked.

“Nope. No money. How about yourself?”

He snorted in disgust. “Never take the things. Anyway, my clients wouldn’t like it.”

I looked at Charlie’s pasty white arms and face, and acknowledged he wasn’t the sun-worshipping sort. “OK, I get it. Business must be booming.”

Charlie’s business, since he’d struck out on his own, consisted of what he grandiosely called ‘security consultancy’. He even had some rather grubby business cards proclaiming that fact. As far as I could see, it involved a lot of tinkering in his garage with alarms and padlocks.

“Not too bad. Just installed a big safe last week. Things at the bookstore getting any better?”

“Not really,” I replied, “The boss’s still talking about more layoffs.”

“More?”

“Two part-timers gone already, I could be next.”

“You’ve been there a long time?”

“Nearly three years. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe.” The truth was, I was very unsafe indeed. “But at least he finally agreed to move me from candles and crap back to books again. From here on I’m supposed to hover around the true crime, maps, reference and how-to-write sections.”

“Didn’t you used to be at crime fiction?”

“Yeah, but he said I got too distracted there.”

Charlie probably grinned at that, I don’t know. I wasn’t looking.

“I guess the summer is your slack time of year?”

“Slacker?” My brain only registered a jumble of words. “Yeah, he thinks that too.”

“Something wrong?” Charlie asked. I finally looked at him and saw that he was giving me his distinctive wrinkly-browed examination.

I shook my head slightly, more to clear my thoughts than signal dissent. “Nothing,” I replied uncommittedly.

“You seem a bit distracted,” he said, turning to look in the direction I’d just purposely refrained from gazing. Charlie saw himself as a lifelong student of the human condition and was keenly perceptive when it came to personal foibles. In other words, he was a hard man to fool.

His eyes rested on the slim, blonde-haired woman sitting in the other half of the L-shaped coffee bar. She was perched on a high stool in front of a sunny window, gazing outside at the bright May afternoon, while sipping a latte. I’d noticed her when Charlie and I had come in, as must have every other man in the place. The long, honey-tanned legs in short shorts, the wide-necked top that hung partly off one shoulder, revealing perfect collar bones and the promise of much, much more . . . she might have strolled straight off some downtown catwalk and into this little café.

It was hard for a man to peel his eyes away from her and even harder for this particular man. She’d sent my heart racing, that’s for sure, but not from desire. I’d recognised her immediately and it scared the hell out of me. To confirm it, I’d been watching her ever since.

I was almost certain it was Emma Virtanen, the woman who had betrayed and nearly killed me a decade back.

*

Then she’d vanished. I’d like to claim that I’d been searching for her ever since. That would sound suitably manly and vengeful, wouldn’t it? The truth is, as soon as I’d got my life back together after that escapade, I’d immediately begun pushing the entire episode – and her – into the past. That was the old . . . gulp . . . criminal Michael Malone; this is the new, straight one. That’s how I thought of it anyway. I guess it’s what psychologists might call a ‘coping mechanism’.

It had been a long time but I was almost certain it was her. Every so often she turned her head a little and I got a better look. Despite sunglasses and long blonde tresses partially obscuring her face, the little turned-up nose and high cheek bones were a perfect match for my memories, and I was willing to bet there were slightly slanted Finnish grey-green eyes behind the sunglasses. Over the last ten years I’d often dreamed about those eyes. Not fantasies though, more like nightmares.

“You know her?” Charlie asked, perceptive as ever.

I shrugged. “I think she was in one of my courses at university.” A half-lie like that was usually enough to throw him off the scent.

“You should go over and say hello,” he replied.

“I’m not even sure it’s her,” I countered.

“If I wasn’t a four-foot ten, hunchback garden gnome, I’d go over there myself.”

Despite my preoccupation, that got a grin out of me. Charlie, duly self-effacing, was exaggerating, but not by that much. He’s actually about five-six, and markedly round shouldered due to spending several hours a day hunched over the workbench in his garage. His hobby, when not out ‘security consulting’, is fiddling around with electronics, so he’s a bit squinty-eyed too. He wouldn’t win any Adonis lookalike contests, and he knew it.

Normally I’d have countered with some silly smart remark of my own and my mistake was not to do so now. He must have sensed my distraction and knew that I wasn’t being straight with him. Typically, he seized on it like a sewer rat gnawing at a chunk of suet.

“More than a friend was she?” he asked.

I now had a decision to make. Charlie was my best mate and knew about most of my . . . youthful . . . indiscretions, including the rooftop adventure. He had also chalked up some youthful indiscretions of his own, including a short stay at Fraser Valley Correctional Centre. Then there was his abrupt exit from the employ of the jewellery store, perhaps because the boss found out about the short stay at the correctional centre. After that, he wouldn’t allow Charlie’s name to be mentioned ever again.

So Charlie was a trusted confidant. At the same time, he was an opinionated sort and I didn’t want him pushing me one way or the other about this. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

“Nope, she’s a looker, that’s all, probably just some empty-headed eye candy.” The lie left a bad taste in my mouth.

“OK.” He raised his mug and finished the last dregs of his mocha latte. “It’s time to get going.”

“Yup,” I agreed. My dark roast was long gone, but I’d barely tasted it. Even when I wasn’t looking at her, she was still front and centre in my mind.

As we went out the glass double doors I stole one last look. She kept staring out the window and never gave us a glance.

We strolled half a block down the street to where Charlie had parked his 1978 Buick Regal, surely one of the ugliest cars ever made. The blazing sun toasted my back and made my armpits perspire. Summer had come early to the West Coast this year. Charlie jangled an immense bunch of keys in his hand as he walked. My thoughts remained back in the café.

Charlie got into his trusty rust bucket, slammed the door and wound the window half down. He squirmed on the cracked
faux
leather seat, no doubt molten hot from the sun, and pulled on his seat belt.

“Bye, Charlie,” I called out, “Say hi to Bo and Daisy for me,” referring to Charlie’s two beloved hamsters.

“Oh, they died,” he replied nonchalantly. He grinned and gave me a little A-OK hand sign before easing out into the traffic flow, as if somehow he knew what I was about to do. Maybe he did.

As soon as he was gone, I turned and went back to the café, still deep in thought. Speaking to her would be difficult. What the hell would I say? What could I say? The anger in me was really boiling up now. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I’d end up shouting at her, demanding answers, screaming out the questions I’d had for her all those years ago. She might even call the police and get me arrested. I could see the scenario unfolding in my mind as I walked.

It wasn’t as if I could ever forgive her anyway. Talking wouldn’t change that. Maybe it really was best to let sleeping dogs lie I told myself. Still, I needed to take one last look at her for the record; I had to make absolutely certain it was her. I’d stand where she couldn’t see me, speak some hard words of condemnation to her in my head, and leave.

Then with any luck, I’d never lay eyes on her again. That would be it.

By the time I got there, my heart was pounding and my body was rigid with tension. I unclenched my fists and told myself to relax.

My fatal blunder was not to look through the window first. That would at least have given me a second or two to turn on my heel. Instead, I marched straight up to the heavy door and swung it open.

She stood there in front of me, close enough to reach out and touch. It was her all right. The sunglasses were off now and the grey slanted eyes, genetically Mongol or Slav or whatever it was that she had once told me, were fixed on mine. She was observing, reading me, just as she’d always done.

“Hello, Michael, long time, no see.”

The accumulated anger of a decade erupted inside me, hot as lava, and I wanted to kill her on the spot.