An Ordinary Decent Criminal by Michael Van Rooy

to meet him at the courthouse and he’d tried twice to talk with me in private at the hospital and in the prison van, but the cops had been adamantly on some timetable all their own. He’d finally put his foot down when they’d tried to slip me in the back prisoner’s entrance to the courthouse, but we still hadn’t had a chance to talk.
    “Very good. No way anyone can put too big a spin on what you gave ’em and there were too many people recording to not get out at least one or two accurate versions. I wonder how they found out we were coming this morning, though?”
    Somebody opened the doors to the courthouse and we went into the big foyer.
    “Last night I asked Claire to call in exclusive tips to all the stations in town,” I said.
    He looked at me with respect mixed with his hangover. “I never would have thought of that.”
    I tried to look bashful and failed. “Well, that’s the difference between being a shit-kicker ex-thief and a big-time lawyer.”
    Thompson grunted and we went on.
    The Crown prosecuting attorney we’d drawn had an office on the third floor of the older court building. Her name was Nancy McMillan-Fowler and that was all Thompson could tell me as we waited in the hall. He kept looking at me and opening his mouth to talk, but the cops were thick around us and the reporters were not far off.
    Finally, she opened the door and ushered us in. She was plain, almost ugly, thinly built with good bones and fine skin. She was wearing a simple, gray, tailored suit that emphasized her shoulders and minimized her ass and she’d splurged for some makeup, maybe because she expected to have to talk to the press later. Behind her the intercom buzzed and she turned and picked up the headset. “Yes?”
    She had a good voice and she could use it well, bringing it from a tenor to an alto and back again, and probably capable of filling it with disbelief, passion, or contempt as needed. “No. No. Yes. No. Never. Fine.”
    Then there was a long pause.
    “I said okay.”
    She pressed the disconnect bar on the phone and reached someone new. “Please bring your recorder with you. We’ll need a record of this.”
    She leaned over the big steel desk in the middle of the room and squared her files before finally coming around to shake Thompson’s hand. I held mine out but she ignored it and went back to the desk to sit down.
    “Good morning, I am Thompson and I am the counsel for Mr. Parker.”
    “And this is . . . ?”
    “Samuel Parker.”
    She looked at me and her eyes turned to slits. “You mean Montgomery Haaviko.”
    I grinned. “It was Haaviko, it’s not anymore. Pleased to meet you.”
    I held out my hand again and she ignored it again. Then she drummed her fingers briefly as a woman in a plain black dress came in with a stenograph machine.
    “All right, gentlemen. I trust you don’t mind if I keep a record of this meeting?”
    Thompson sat down in a really cheap chair that creaked like an old man farting and nodded as he opened his briefcase on his lap. “Oh no. We’re going to tape this as well.”
    He looked very confident and the prosecutor shuffled the files on her desk from pile to pile until her confidence came back, “So you’re going to plead?”
    I answered, “No.”
    Thompson interrupted and talked fast. “Oh no. No plea, let’s go to trial. Quickly, too. How’s next week? Maybe the week after?”
    She focused on me and reshuffled her files. “Do you know what you’re doing? Three murders in the commission of a felony? You’ve been in prison before but do you really know what you’re doing?”
    Thompson started looking through his briefcase. “How about the week after? That’s good too.”
    She raised her voice until it was almost a shout. “Is this some kind of joke?”
    Thompson slid a file across to her. “No joke. Look at this.”
    She held the manilla file and scanned it quickly. “A doctor’s report from a Dr. Leung stating that Mr. Haaviko/Parker has bruised