Christmas Stalkings (25 page)

I wanted something a bit subtler than that. I wanted to hurt Parker in his pride and his wallet at the same time, I wanted to cost him money and make him look foolish, and, if possible, I wanted him to know who’d done it without him being able to do anything about it. It wouldn’t be easy getting past all those pugs that Parker used as waiters to look out for him.

About three-quarters of the way through our term—me and The Boozer had both of us still a couple of months to do—I got an idea. Or rather, I got the last piece of an idea I’d been putting together for a few months. Ideas are like that with me.

The first part of the idea came from a cell mate I’d had at the beginning of my stretch. He’d got ninety days for impersonating a Salvation Army man. You know, going door to door, soliciting contributions and giving you a blessing with the receipt. What he’d done, he’d got a Salvation Army cap one night from the hostel when no one was watching, and another night he got a pad of receipts off the desk in the office, and with a black raincoat and a shirt and tie he looked the part perfectly. He said he picked up five hundred a night, easy, in a district like Deer Park. A lot of people gave him checks, of course, which he threw away, but he didn’t count on them calling the office when the checks didn’t go through. (A lot of people
deserve
to be inside.) Two months later the coppers were waiting for him. He should have worked it for a week, then stayed off the streets for at least six months, as a Sally Ann collector, I mean. There’s plenty of other things he could have been doing. But he got greedy and silly and they caught up with him taking up a collection round the Bunch of Grapes on Kingston Road. So that’s where I got a bit of an idea.

I got the second part of my idea at a prison concert. You had to attend, and there was this citizen on the bill, singing a lot of old-fashioned songs. “Sons of Toil and Sorrow” was one. “A Bachelor Gay Am I” was another. In prison, I ask you. Some of the younger cons thought he’d made the songs up himself. And it wasn’t just the choice of song. He couldn’t sing. He was terrible—loud and embarrassing, hooting and hollering away, the veins sticking out all over his neck as he tried to get near the notes. The others nick-named him Danny Boy, which he said was his signature tune. I thought, you should stick to hymns, buddy, because he reminded me exactly of a carol singer who used to sing with a Salvation Army band when I was a kid.

Then I realized that I had it.

All I needed was a trumpet player and someone on the accordion, and we were all set

Me and The Boozer were both sprung in October and we moved in together. My wife had visited me once to tell me not to try going home again, ever, and Boozer had no home, so we found this little apartment on Queen Street near the bail and parole unit where we had to appear from time to time.

We were both on welfare, of course, at first; then we both found jobs of the kind that offered no temptation, and that no one else wanted. The Boozer got taken on at a car wash, and I found a situation in a coal-and-wood yard, filling fifty-pound sacks with coal. Neither of us needed the work. Boozer had gone down protesting his innocence, so he still had his loot stashed away, but he couldn’t touch it for a few months because they were watching him. As for me, I was always the saving kind.

Did I tell you what I got shipped for? I sell hot merchandise on the streets. You’ve seen me, or someone like me, if you’ve ever gone shopping along the
Danforth
. I’m the one who jumps out of a car and opens a suitcase full of Ralph Lauren sweatshirts that I am prepared to let go for a third of the price, quick, before the cops come. You buy them because you think they’re stolen, which is the impression I’m trying to create, but in point of fact I buy them off a Pakistani jobber on
Spadina
for five dollars each. I’d

pay ten if they weren’t seconds and the polo player looked a bit more authentic. I’ve sold them all—fake Chanel Number 5, fake Gucci, Roots, the lot. Anything to appeal to the crook in you. Sometimes the odd case of warmish goods does come my way, but I prefer to deal in legit rubbish if I can get it.

So there I was, unloading a
suitcaseful
of shirts that had withstood a warehouse fire, good shirts if a bit smoky, and the fuzz nabbed me for being an accomplice to a dip.

I was working the dim-sum crowd on the corner of
Spadina
and
Dundas
on a Sunday morning and I was just heading for my car to load up again, when someone shouted his wallet was gone, and then another shouted, and then another. Before you knew it, two martial-arts experts grabbed me and the cops were called and I got twelve months. I never even saw the dip.

But to get back to my story. First I had to get a couple of musicians. That wasn’t easy until I bumped into one in the lineup at the bail and parole unit, a guy I’d known inside who played in the prison band. He played trumpet or cornet really, when he wasn’t doing time for stealing car radios. He found me a trombone player. Then I had a real piece of luck because right after that 1 ran into the original authentic terrible hymn singer from the prison concert.

At first he wouldn’t hear of it, but I went to work on him and he saw the virtue in what we were planning and promised to think it over. The next time we met, he agreed. I should have known.

We decided we could manage without an accordion player.

Now we had to get some uniforms. All we really
needed were the caps. The trumpet player used to be a legit chauffeur and he still had his old black jacket, and he thought he could put his hand on some others. The owner of the limousine fleet kept a bundle of uniforms in his garage storeroom, and Digger Ray assured us that getting access to them would not be a problem. Digger Ray was the trombone player. He was Australian and his specialty was playing the fake sucker in crooked card games, but he’d done a few B and E jobs. Toothy Maclean lifted the caps for us while The Boozer created a disturbance during prayers at the Salvation Army shelter. (He started crying and repenting right in the middle of a prayer and Toothy got all the caps from the office while they were comforting him.)

Now The Boozer had to line up three or four cooperating citizens who would be unknown to Clyde Parker,
fellas
who didn’t use the Old Bush. It wasn’t easy, but Boozer came up with three guys who hardly ever drank—not too common among his acquaintance, I can tell you—and once they heard about it they were keen to be included. So we were set. Now I had to go to work. I had the trickiest job of all.

I was the obvious person to approach Clyde Parker because I’d only been in the Bush once, years ago. I hate the place, always have. It’s the kind of beer parlor where there’s a civil war being fought at every table and the waiters are hired to break up fights, and if you stay until midnight someone will throw up all over your shoes. I like a nice pub, myself.

So Parker didn’t know me and when I approached him he was very wary, at first. I went in two or three times until I was sure who he was, then I got talking to him. Had he heard, I asked, of this fake Salvation
Army band that was going around the pubs collecting? He hadn’t, but if they came near the Old Bush, he’d be ready, he said. He nodded to indicate a couple of his waiters who were lounging against the wall, waiting for orders. I don’t know where he finds them, but they look as if he has to chain them up when the pub is closed. No, no, I said, there’s a better way than that, and then I told him.

People like Parker are born suspicious, but they are also born greedy and very conceited. They think they are smart. So the plan was designed to make Parker feel smart, which it did, and to make him some money, and when he saw the point, he was in.

It was a lovely night, Christmas Eve. About ten o’clock the sky was black and clear with thousands of stars winking away. It must have been like that the night one of them started to move.
I’d’ve
followed it.

Danny Boy had the car and we were to meet at my place. I drove after that We reached the street behind the Bush at ten-fifteen. Zero hour was ten-thirty. We figured four carols, about fifteen minutes, then the collection during one more, and out of there by eleven.

They waited in the car while I slipped across to the pub and made sure Hooligan was in place. Didn’t I mention Hooligan? His real name was
Halligan
, and renaming him Hooligan tells you something about the level of wit in the Don Jail. He was our ace in the hole, the one Parker didn’t know about. Because of him we had to steal another cap, and this time I couldn’t get to one
no
how. Then Toothy remembered that a buddy of his had a dog that his kids had trained to catch Frisbees. It got very good at picking them out
of the air, but the trouble was that when there were no Frisbees to chase, he filled in the time chasing kids and snatching their hats off He was harmless, but parents complained, and they had to keep him locked up. The kids could get him to snatch anyone’s hat by pointing to it and whispering. As I say, Herman never hurt anyone. He could take off your hat from behind clean as a whistle without touching you, just one leap. So we borrowed Herman one night and waited near the Salvation Army shelter and pretty soon out came an officer and set off down
Sherbourne
Street A few minutes later Herman lifted his hat. It fit Hooligan pretty good, too.

I checked that Hooligan was in place, and in we went. Parker had arranged a little clear space by the door, though he pretended to be surprised when we walked in. I approached him, very formal-like, and asked his permission to play some carols and pass round the collection plate. He acted up a bit by shaking his head, then he seemed to change his mind. “All right,” he said. “Four carols.” I looked grateful and swung my arm the way conductors do, and off they went.

A trumpet and a trombone wouldn’t amount to much, you would think, but these
fellas
made them seem just made for the job. Very simple, just the notes, no
twiddly
bits. They were
good.
And of course, there was Danny Boy. He was as good as another trumpet. He didn’t wait for a cue. Just started right in, head back, veins sticking out. He could be heard right in the back of the room, right in the corners. They started with “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” which Danny Boy gave a verse in Latin of, then “Good King Wenceslas” and “We Three Kings,” and finally, one of Danny’s shut-eyed ones, “O Holy Night.” By then we had them. Danny was terrible, of course, but he was very sincere and you could recognize the tunes. I wouldn’t say anyone was crying—this was the Old Bush, after all—but they were quiet. So now we went into “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” very soft, “piano” they call it, and Toothy and I began the rounds with the money bags.

This was Parker’s signal. We was getting something from nearly everyone, a dollar here, two there, a five, then another. There’s a psychology to these things. As soon as someone puts in five dollars, that becomes standard, like the ante in a poker game. People stop fingering their change and open their wallets. After four tables, five was normal. Then Parker spoke. “Gents,” he said. “Gents, this is Christmas Eve.” He paused, looking sincere. “I want to announce that I will match all contributions made tonight toward this good cause.”

“And a free beer all around,” someone shouted.

One of the waiters moved to throw him out, but Parker only hesitated for a second. “Never mind the free beer tonight, of all nights,” he said, implying that free beer was standard on other nights at the Bush. “Tonight is for the others out there.” He waved at the door. “The ones with no beer,” he said.

The arrangement was, of course, that Parker would get half, three-quarters, really, including his own money, but free beer could never be recovered.

The next voice, though, nearly took him off balance, I reached a table where The Boozer had planted one of his cronies, and Boozer gave him a wink from the back of the room, and he jumps up and shouts, “Then here’s fifty dollars.”

Parker looked a bit greasy for a minute, but he caught himself in time to shout, “Good for you.”

Then the fever took hold. The biggest single contribution we got was a hundred dollars, but no one gave less than twenty, and every time I came to one of The Boozer’s cronies he would whip up the excitement with a fresh fifty. We went round the room with Danny Boy crooning away in the background, and when we were done we went back to the counter and emptied the bags onto the bar. Digger Ray and one of the bartenders counted it and Digger made the announcement “Two thousand three hundred and twenty-seven.” Someone shouted, “Your turn now, Parker.”

Parker turned to the barman and held out his hand and received a wad of money which he handed over to Digger. Digger held it up to show it was a lot of money, no need to count it on Christmas Eve, and he swept all the money back into one of the bags and we were ready to go. There was still three minutes on my watch, so I made a little speech, and then, right on time, Hooligan made his entrance.

He was got up like the rest of us—Salvation Army gear, and a little collection box.

We’d rehearsed the next bit carefully.