An Ordinary Decent Criminal Read Online Free PDF Page A

tenuous. It was a line stolen from late-night TV and pleasant because it was shared. She went on, “Vampires and Superman both.”
    Claire’s eyes were alight with pleasure and twinkled with humourbut her mouth was grim and she held herself rigidly between me and the cop. She was spoiling for a fight and I couldn’t and wouldn’t argue with her.
    “Yeah.”
    The pill went into the top of my cheek, where it was dry and cool, and I could feel it nestled there, a bitter and metallic memento. My body ached with the memory of the drug, the sweet forgetfulness that lay therein and the surcease from the pain and the altered state it would bring. Claire squeezed my hand again and brought me quickly away from that line of thinking. I was intellectualizing the addiction and that was a bad sign.
    She said, “You’re stronger than that.”
    She was right and wrong at the same time. I was stronger than the pills with her and Fred there, but the pills were stronger than me if I was alone. I nodded anyway. “So you called the lawyer?”
    Claire switched Fred to her left arm and snorted.
    “It took a while. The cops didn’t let me go until past one and Ramirez called a cab, which got me to a hotel. I took the file case with your papers after the cops looked through it and phoned from the hotel. I reached your old lawyer in Calgary and he gave me a name here in town. He sounded happy to hear from you.”
    I couldn’t nod, there was a monitoring tube up my nose and a brace across my neck, but I rolled my eyes. “I always paid on time.”
    She shrugged and switched Fred to the other arm. “Yeah, he’s a vulture, but a good vulture.”
    “True.”
    She shifted Fred again and a frown creased her forehead. “How we gonna afford the shyster?”
    It was almost a whisper and I motioned her close. The cop shifted a little in her chair, but didn’t do anything. “Legal aid. It’s a good case, lots of publicity. The money will come from the province and so will the lawyer.”
    She leaned back and her eyes narrowed at the sight of the restraintson my wrists. “You’ve changed. I know that. Isn’t it obvious? Can’t all the cops and all the cons and all the rest see? You’ve gone straight.”
    It was a plea, a demand, a complaint, and there was no answer I could make. She leaned down and kissed me gently but the effect was ruined when Fred tried to pull the tube out of my nose. She raised her head and patted my shoulder.
    “They just don’t realize that I’ll pull your lungs out if you fuck up again. Oh, well. I’ll see you tomorrow, so behave. Tomorrow we’ll roast ’em. But for now, sleep.”
    And I did, but it took a long time to forget about the pill slowly dissolving and numbing my whole mouth and reminding me of what I had been. It’s not like I ever really stopped being addicted, I just stopped doing the drugs.
    Something pinched my foot gently through the sheet and I woke up slick with sweat and trembling with remembered pain. The room was dark and there were low snores coming from the cop’s chair.
    “Claire?”
    Someone had drawn the curtain around the bed, shutting out all the lights except for the watch lights down low on the walls to stop people from tripping on obstacles.
    “No, not Claire.”
    The voice was unfamiliar and I adjusted my left hand into a striking surface before I remembered the handcuffs. Then I stopped and waited.
    “Monty, my man. Remember me?”
    I didn’t and he flipped on a penlight with a piece of electrician’s tape over the lens. The tape was pierced with a pinhole and I could see a vaguely familiar face in the silken thread of light.
    “No.”
    On second thought, he was still no one I knew, and my heart drummed tightly. He waited for a second and then shut off the light, but his image floated there, a sharp-planed face, a Canadian mixtureof Scot and Cree with wide nostrils and a thin nose. He was wearing loose-fitting hospital greens and looked toned and lean.
    I remembered what