The main difference between my sister and I was that
when I stole it was deliberate as opposed to spur of the moment. I
worried about her because careful did not enter into the equation when
you were a kleptomaniac. She was in therapy for it and smoked a lot in
an effort to keep her hands busy, but sometimes the compulsion was
strong, and
the object ended up in her pocket so fast.
Embarrassment would set in first, pushing her towards the
handiest escape route, then fear kept her going. I was standing in the
alley where they found her body, wondering if I could retrace her steps,
figure out what she had taken from where, so I could find the person
responsible for her death. Just another grubby downtown alley, the sort
most people would never dare venture down at night, merely sad and worn
in the pale light of a cool spring day.
The chalk outline was still there. The outline of where her body
was found. The police were treating it as the work of a psychopath,
based on the fact that she was not sexually assaulted and the assumption
that nothing was taken. This was just a random attack as
far as they were concerned, the work of some animal who beat her bloody
with their fists before stabbing her to death.
I wasn't going to share my theory with the police. No sense
sullying my sister's reputation by bringing theft into it, especially
when it wouldn't help them much anyway. Solving this crime was up to me.
Not only on account of it being a family matter that needed to be
personally dealt with in the Old Testament fashion of an eye for an
eye, but more so because I had the insight. We were close, Veronica and
I. Only two years apart. I understood how she thought, and today I
needed to put myself in her head, walk where she walked yesterday, and
see the world through her eyes.
"What did you take?" I asked the chalk outline, shaking
my head, "You picked up the wrong thing, belonging to the wrong
guy, and now you're gone. What was it, Veronica?"
I could see her face so clearly in my mind's eye. Not the
expressionless husk I encountered in the morgue, I could see her in all
her glory, talking with such passion about her classes at art school. We
met for dinner yesterday. I hugged her outside of the
restaurant with one arm while flagging down a taxi with the other. I had
no idea that would be the last time. I offered to drop her off anywhere,
assuring her I would cover the fare, but Veronica turned me down because
she loved to walk. The trouble with that was how certain things caught
her eye along the way.
Down at the morgue this morning, when I was identifying the body,
the detective told me they figured the time of death was around eight or
nine, which would've put it shortly after dark - an hour or two after we
parted. I knew which direction she was walking when the taxi pulled away
and where the body was found, I needed to fill in the
blanks in between.
Not as much of a needle in a haystack as it sounded, because I
knew the items she snatched were always somehow linked to her state of
mind at the time. I understood that because I was the only person other
than her therapist who ever heard about these incidents. I liked to
believe she felt free to discuss this with me just because of how
close we were as brother and sister, but what really made it easy for
her was knowing I stole for a living, so how I could I pass judgment?
She struggled with a psychological disorder, while I exercised my
own free will. I deliberately planned my robberies to minimize risk and
maximize personal gain, with the sole aim of maintaining my dissolute
lifestyle. Veronica was an artist who snatched objects because they were
springboards to completing thoughts, a means to making art happen. The
objects themselves were rarely worth anything, and even when they were
it did not rate taking to a fence.
She threw them away when she was done, too embarrassed to
consider sneaking the objects back. I once joked about how she was like
one of those dryers that occasionally made a sock disappear for no
apparent reason, except she had arms and legs, and walked all around the
city. There was never any avarice or malice involved. Nothing deserving
the treatment she received at the hands of the person I intended to
kill.
They would be the first person to die at my hands. I was a thief,
not a killer; but Veronica's death had to be avenged. The person who
took her away from me would be punished. No one could ever love,
understand, and accept me the way Veronica did. That was taken away from
me forever, for no good reason.
Standing by the chalk outline, I knew I was likely only a block
or two away from where she picked up the object that sealed her fate,
but I was better off going all the way back to the restaurant first, and
taking it from there. I flagged down a taxi. While I sat in the back I
could feel my anger seething, molten at the core. My hand slipped
around the grip of the pistol in the pocket of my black leather jacket,
fingering it obsessively like a rosary.
The form of expression my sister chose was painting, each canvas
dense with the symbols of an internal dialogue, often sparked by
incidents of kleptomania. When I cast my mind back to our conversation
over dinner, I recalled her making references to Alice in Wonderland
over and over and again. I knew that game well enough from growing up
with her; she liked to play with laying the symbols of a well known
story, fable, or folktale over the landscape around her, transforming
both the symbols in the story and the landscape at the same time,
creating something distinct yet vaguely familiar.
I bit my tongue, emotions getting the better of me, thinking
about unfinished paintings back at her apartment that would never be
completed. How would Alice, the urban landscape, and our post-modern
experience have come together under my sister's brush? That was
something we were never going to know. Her killer robbed us of that.
I got out of the cab in front of the restaurant. They were going
to be open for lunch in about an hour, but it was empty then, locked up
and quiet. Looking through the window I could see the ghosts of last
night dining, she and I among them, so carefree. The vision stung me, so
I turned away, heading up the sidewalk, very conscious of the bullet
waiting in the chamber of my gun. I scanned the streetscape, trying to
see it through my sister's eyes.
At the corner there were men at work, orange barriers set up
around an open manhole, extension cords and hoses snaking down into the
depths from the back of a panel van. Were they there yesterday too? Did
Veronica think rabbit hole when she saw it? I could picture her dodging
cars to get a closer look, peering down the hole, wondering if any of
this could be used, so I ran over as soon as I saw a break in the
traffic.
A workman in a hard hat was climbing out when I got there, just a
few seconds ahead of a bus blaring its horn. He looked at me like he
thought I was crazy.
"I know this is going to sound strange, but
I was wondering if you or anyone in your crew remembers a woman coming
by here yesterday, early in the evening? A brunette with a leopard skin
beret."
"I didn't see her," he said, "But I heard about
the leopard skin hat. Some whacked out chick wanted to come down, look
around. Said she was a painter. No idea how many regulations that would
break, the liability issues, the paperwork, do any of us look like
fucking tour guides?"
"I'm trying to retrace her steps, I need to speak with the
guy who talked to her yesterday."
"You a cop?"
"No, I'm her brother."
"The way I heard it, Vic told her to get that pretty ass of
hers back on the sidewalk, and keep moving…end of story. In case you
hadn't noticed, we're busy working here."
"I just want to know if Vic saw which way she went."
"Why? She got lost?"
There must have been something that flashed in my eyes because I
could see right away how he regretted being flippant.
"Murdered, actually," I told him, "Which is why
knowing which way she went matters."
"I'll go ask Vic," he said, disappearing fast.
Five minutes later his head poked back up.
"Thataway," he pointed, "Dodged incoming
traffic to make the corner, then kept to the sidewalk, heading
downhill."
I dodged incoming traffic, barely making the corner, then
kept to the sidewalk heading downhill. I scanned the storefronts on both
sides of the street, trying to think like Veronica, alert for
connections to looking glasses, hookah smoking caterpillars, Cheshire
cats, mad hatters, and playing cards. I was watching for reflecting
surfaces
that caught the eye, head shops, signs with pictures of cats, people
with funny hats, poker clubs, all sorts of possible permutations and
confabulations.
Nothing on the first block made me stop and look twice, on
the second block I felt I was trying too hard, grasping at straws,
letting emotion cloud my vision when I barged into businesses, expecting
my sister's last steps to flash before my eyes. Back out on the
sidewalk, I tried to make myself calm down, focus. Veronica would have
been taking the world around her in stride, allowing the object to
manifest itself to her, not pushing in any way.
Halfway down the third block I lost patience. For all I
knew she hadn't even walked this far, turning left or right a block or
two back. The gun made it hard to concentrate on what Veronica may have
seen; so full of bullets needing to be fired, it had no other purpose.
I ducked into the nearest alley, intending to stash the gun someplace
while I retraced my steps free of its distraction; that was when I saw
my sister's leopard skin beret perched on the head of a crack whore
stumbling past a dumpster.
The gun suddenly had an immediate use, and there was an
appropriate object to unleash my fury on. I was all over her like an
avenging angel, knocking her down to the dirty pavement, waving the gun
in her face, demanding answers. She gave up all she knew in a torrent,
like vomit spewing out of her.
A drug dealer named Eel tossed the beret to her after he
killed my sister right before her very eyes, while she was just walking
down the alley, minding her own business; told her she was welcome to it
because he'd got his own hat back. She kept it because Eel was so
obviously crazed and vicious, random and brutal, that she felt he might
slice her open a week from now if he happened to see her without the hat
on, like he'd be insulted or something.
So Eel was the mad hatter, and Veronica swiped his hat.
That was how she ended up a chalk outline in an alley not far from here.
The whore explained that Eel was an up-and-comer with a reputation in
the neighborhood for being especially bold and cruel. A white boy with a
shaved head, Lucifer beard, the tattoo of an eel coiled around one
forearm, a Clockwork Orange style bowler hat and a preference for shirts
with dragons on them. He was not going to be hard to spot.
I doubted Veronica would've been so foolhardy as to swipe
it right off the head of a thug like that, so I assumed he must have
left it unattended for a moment and that was when Veronica's fingers
itched. Was it just the hat all by itself that caught her eye, or had
Veronica picked it up because she saw him put it down, attracted because
it was connected to him, already picturing how a new painting might
work, with a mad hatter inspired by this psychopathic show-off and the
gritty wonderland he strutted through?
However it went down, Eel must have noticed the hat was
gone and made Veronica as the thief. Pursuit followed, then capture and
slaughter, as if this was his own private Serengeti. I figured that
likely narrowed it down to a radius of two blocks from where her body
was found (Veronica could run, but Eel sounded like a leopard when
roused). Assuming he'd put his precious hat down before my sister swiped
it, Eel must have been somewhere he frequented often enough that he felt
reasonably secure, a place accessible to the street, where Veronica
could grab the hat and run.
I went back to the spot she was murdered, imagined a grid,
and moved out from there in a deliberate search pattern. Forty minutes
later I spotted Eel sitting with companions at a place called TheRabbit
Foot, sliding doors pulled aside to open the front to the
street. I went in, choosing a table where I could sit close enough to
overhear their conversation but have my back turned to them, as if
minding my own business while keeping an eye on their reflection in the
mirror tiles on a nearby pillar.
There were two men and one woman sitting with Eel. One guy
looked like a college kid, way out of his league, there to score a
supply for the campus, and the other was a biker who obviously didn't
give a damn about what anyone thought. The blonde's fleeting beauty was
already being eroded by drug addiction and physical abuse. Eel was
holdingcourt, running off at the mouth.
"If we were fighting a war in some jungle-place, I'd
sign up for the army like that," he snapped his fingers,
"Front of the line. Bust my balls to get over there. Then go AWOL
and hook up with one of those crazy-ass warlords do whatever shit they
like, or pull a Colonel Kurtz and get some cannibal tribe to treat me
like a god. Fuck Iraq, what's
anyone going to do out in the middle of the desert except get his head
blown off? We should be over in like Nigeria, kicking the crap out of
them for their oil, or taking over one of those countries has tons of
diamond mines."
He turned to the skinny blonde, running a hand up her
leather-clad thigh.
"Don't you think I'd look good on a throne of skulls with
diamonds in the eye sockets, baby?"
She stared at him star struck, licked her lips, made a
catlike noise low in her throat as she reached up for the brim of his
hat.
"Let me rub that beautiful bald head of
yours," she said, "It makes me so hot."
Anger flashed across his face, wiping away that dopey leer. He
knocked her fingers away with a backhand slap.
"You forget what happened yesterday?"
"Sorry," she gasped, fear brimming over in her eyes,
hands trembling as she moved them up near her face in case he tried to
smack her.
"You got a hole in your head where your brains leak out? We
were sitting right here when it happened. I let you talk me into taking
my lucky hat off and that slinky bitch swipes it right off the table.
You should've seen what I did when I caught up with her. I ought to give
you a taste of that, see if it improves your fucking memory after you
get out of the hospital, maybe knock a little sense into you."
"Geez, man," the college kid said, "It's just a
hat. Sure, you should've slapped her out for taking it, but you didn't
have to kill her. You want to risk a murder rap and do time for
something dumb like that?"
"This isn't just any hat," he replied through gritted
teeth, clenching and unclenching his fists as his blood pressure rose
higher, "This hat belonged to Idi Amin, the African dictator who
killed thousands of people with his own hands, to make his juju
stronger. The crocodiles grew fat off the corpses he fed them. The man
was a titan. He didn't take shit from anybody."
"Juju?" the biker snickered, "What's with all this
witchdoctor crap, and talking about running around the jungle like
Tarzan? Feeding the fucking crocodiles – c'mon. Your father was
potato-head Irish and your mother's a Polack. Hate to break it to you
blue eyes, but doing the voodoo isn't in your genes – whether you got
a magic hat or not."
"You don't know shit about it, so why don't you shut
up?"
The biker shrugged.
"Believe whatever you like, I could care less. This
conversation's gone stale anyway and I've already got what I came
for."
He stood up and walked away.
"Fuck you," the mad hatter spit out the words after
him, "Next time you want it, it's double."
He walked on as if he had not heard, so the mad hatter turned his
anger on the college kid instead, daring him to push it. The skinny
blonde took advantage of the diversion to slip away, rather than end up
beaten and abused later that night. She hightailed it out the back way
and down the alley, shooting fearful glances back over her shoulder all
the way.
"You're right," the college kid said, before the Mad
Hatter could put him on the spot, "I don't know anything about that
stuff. I thought it was just a hat. Sorry, man. If it's special, and it
works for you, I'm cool with that. Now that I know better, I can see she
got what she deserved."
That appeased the mad hatter enough for him to sit back in his
chair and stop clenching his fists.
"Damn right this hat is special. And I don't think it was a
coincidence when she swiped it. She knew what she was taking. I could
tell there was something witchy about her. The way she dressed - that
leopard skin hat, and the look in her eye. That's why I had to kill her.
If I let her go, she'd just try to steal it again. She wanted to take my
power from me, take it for herself. Too bad for her," he said,
pausing to spit on the ground, "She lost. I won."
The college kid made a show of checking his watch.
"Wow, is that the time?" he said, trying to look casual
as he got up, "I've got to get going, but it's been good doing
business with you."
They shook hands and he left. I could see the beads of nervous
sweat standing out on his upper lip as he walked by my table. Eel was
just noticing that Blondie was gone too, and I could see it pissed him
off. His audience had disappeared, so he threw money down on the table
and swaggered out onto the street. I followed.
I figured he was carrying the same knife he used on Veronica, at
the very least, but decided a gun was unlikely because of his love
affair with his own brute force. He probably thought guns were for
cowards too squeamish to get up close and personal with their victims.
All I was waiting for was the opportunity to shoot him five or six
times without any witnesses around.
When he finally turned off the street into a deserted alley, I
followed him halfway down before pulling the gun out of my jacket
pocket. He never heard the light-footed thief creeping behind him, till
I decided to make my presence known.
"Hey, Eel."
He turned without any evident fear, taking on a fighter's stance.
"That was my sister you killed last night."
"She shouldn't have stole my hat," he replied matter of
fact, no apology.
"Fuck your hat, " I told him, finger on the trigger.
"This hat belonged to the African dictator, Idi Amin…"
he started to tell me, but I cut him off, not interested in hearing it
all again.
"Well, if that's what it said on e-Bay when you bid on it,
I'm sure it must be true, and hey listen, this won't hurt a bit."
I fired three times, watched him fall back in surprise, hit the
ground flopping like a rag doll, then I stepped forward to fire again
and again and again. The hat rolled off his head, landing upside down in
a puddle of dirty water. Probably posted on e-Bay by some slacker who
bought it for two bucks at a local garage sale, laughing himself
silly as he attributed its pedigree to a bloodthirsty African dictator.
I was a thief, I understood the value of things, I knew what was
worth swiping, and this stupid hat did not even rate spitting on. I left
it there in the puddle as I made my getaway. There was no gain in
murdering him either, no pay off, no value in trade, no entrance fee
paid to anywhere I wanted to go. As a matter of fact, I was going to
be out of pocket in this whole venture, after I ditched the gun.
As for Veronica, there was no accounting for what was gone,
no way to even that score. I should have known before I pulled the
trigger. Eye for an eye balanced nothing, it was just more chalk on the
ground. I could hear sirens approaching, but that did not mean anything
either, there was no telling which crime scene they were on their way
to: a burglary, an assault, a rape, a robbery, or another murder in a
different alley.
So I melted into the foot traffic on the street, becoming
indistinguishable from anyone else, slipping away like the thief I was,
because Life never added up, it just went on till something stopped
it.
Copyright 2007 by
Todd Cameron
Todd Cameron
livesin Vancouver, Canada. He is a working stiff, toiling away in the
collections department of an automotive finance company, leaning on
deadbeats, mopping up after deals gone bad, tracking down skip accounts,
and calling in the repo man. In his spare time he's partial to Jamaican
rum, reading good mysteries, and writing stories.
