On Home Break-ins
Once inside, be fast and methodical. Wear gloves and keep them on. Never take them off under any circumstances. You’d be surprised at how many burglars remove their gloves in order to pick their nose. I cannot stress this strongly enough: Don’t leave fingerprints anywhere! Not even in your nose!
I typed it all up, word for word. I didn’t leave anything out. I did the whole thing without sleep. There was electricity running through me. I couldn’t turn it off. Here’s another one I remember:
On Bribery
When bribing officers of the law, a common technique is to drop the money on the floor in front of the officer in question and say in a casual voice, “Did you drop that?” This is risky because of the possibility of the officer saying, “Yes I did. Cheers,” and arresting you after he’s pocketed the money. While no bribery ploy is guaranteed, I recommend just coming out and saying, “So. You take bribes or what?” This way, if he doesn’t, and charges you with attempting to bribe an officer, you can defend yourself by explaining that you never actually offered a bribe, which you didn’t; you were inquiring about the honesty of the person arresting you and were simply on the lookout for hypocrisy.
His logic was infallible. Even the chapter headings made me whirl with joy:
Motiveless Crimes: Why?
Armed Robbery: Laughing All the Way from the Bank
Crime and Fashion: Balaclavas Are Always In
The Police and You: How to Spot a Crooked Cop by His Shoes
The chapter titled “Pickpocketing: An Intimate Crime” had a line in it that said, “If you have to unzip it, it’s not a pocket. Remove your hand immediately!” Can you argue with that? No, you can’t. I can remember some of the other chapter headings. There was
Assault: Bruising Your Enemies
Blame: Framing Your Friends
Manslaughter: Oops!
Escaping Custody: Walk, Don’t Run
Love: The Real Informer
Crimes of Passion: Hot-Headed Murder
Crimes of Perversion: For Lovers Only
It was an exhaustive tome. He’d left nothing out. No crime was too small, as was covered in Chapter 13: “Misdemeanors and Other Nonprofit Crimes: Jaywalking, Loitering, Graffiti, Littering, Joyriding, and Public Nudity.” When Harry said this was to be the definitive work, he wasn’t kidding!
I left the house at dawn, buzzing with speculation. Would Harry ever get this crazy book published? Who would publish it? How would the public react?
When I stepped outside, I noticed a campfire smoking in the cold morning and, beside it, four sleeping reporters camped out under the trees. When did they get there? A shiver ran through me. Their presence meant one of only three things: either Terry had committed another crime or he’d been arrested or he was dead. I wanted to shake them awake and ask them which it was, but I didn’t dare, not when I was on my way over to Harry’s- a lesser fugitive, sure, but a fugitive all the same. I let the reporters have their sleep, wished them all nightmares, and walked to the bus stop.
I heard footsteps behind me. I grimaced, expecting police or a gaggle of reporters. It was neither. It was my mother in her beige nightgown and bare feet. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in decades. She must have sneaked past the reporters too.
“Where are you going at this hour of the morning? Are you going to see Terry?”
“No, Mum, I don’t know where he is.”
She gripped me by the arm. I saw something terrible in her eyes. They looked like they’d been crying, draining her body of salt and other essential minerals. Her illness was taking its toll. She was already thinner, already old. She said somberly, “There’s been another attack. It was on the radio. This time another cricketer- they found him with his head bashed in and a cricket ball stuffed in his mouth. They’re saying your brother did it. Why, why are they saying he did it?”
“Because he probably did it.”
She slapped me hard across the face. “Don’t say that! It’s a lie! Find Terry and tell him to go to the police. If he hides, it just makes him look guilty.”
The bus came while she was still babbling hysterically. “And if you can’t find Terry, then for God’s sake, find that double!”
I stepped onto the bus and found a seat. As it drove off, I looked out the window at my mother. She rested one hand against a tree while picking gravel off the soles of her feet with the other.
I arrived at Harry’s to see him glaring at me through the front window. As I entered, I resisted a powerful urge to hug him.
“What are you doing here?” Harry shouted in my face. “I was hoping I wouldn’t see you until you finished! You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you? Fucker! Traitor! You’ve had an attack of conscience! Why don’t you get out of here and go join a monastery, you bloody hypocrite!”
Resisting a smile, I pulled the manuscript from the brown satchel and waved it in his face. His eyes widened.
“Is this…”
My smile couldn’t contain itself any longer. I let it explode.
“So quick?”
“I had great words to work with.”
Harry dived for the manuscript and flicked through it excitedly. When he reached the end, he turned back to the front page. I stood there awhile before realizing that he was going to read the thing to the end. I went into the backyard, which was drenched in sunlight. The pool was now an enormous fetid swamp. The lawn was overgrown with weeds. The metal frames of the banana chairs were brown with rust. I stretched out on one and looked up at the sky. Clouds shaped like pregnant bellies were floating through it. My lids closed and I drifted languidly into sleep. Before I got there, in the half dreamworld, I thought I saw Terry hiding out in one of the clouds. I saw him pull the soft fluffy veil over his face whenever a plane sailed by. Then I fell asleep.
I woke sweating. The sun was sitting on me. Blinking through the bright light, I could see the silhouette of Harry’s head. It seemed enormous. When he leaned into the shadows, I saw him beaming at me. He sat on the edge of my banana chair and locked me in a tight embrace, covering me in kisses. He even kissed me on the mouth, which was revolting, but I took it in the spirit it was given.
“You’ve done me a wonderful service, Martin. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
“There was another attack,” I said.
“Yeah, heard it on the radio. Stupid bugger.”
“Any word from him? Any idea where he might be?”
Harry shook his head sadly. “He’s become a true-blue celebrity. He can’t avoid the coppers too much longer. Famous faces make lousy fugitives.”
“Do you think, if they catch up with him, he’ll go quietly?”
“Not bloody likely,” he said, picking up his manuscript and stroking it as though it were a thigh. “Come on. Let’s go make some noise of our own.”
Finding a publisher wasn’t going to be easy, and not only because of the risky content. Harry was a fugitive. If we went to a publisher with Harry’s name plastered all over the manuscript, we might get more than a simple rejection. It was possible one of the publishers might call the police. A double rejection! After much arguing, I managed to persuade Harry that we should keep his identity secret until the last possible minute- right up to the moment of printing we’d withhold the author’s name. But Harry still wanted to come along to choose the publishing house most worthy of his tome. It seemed impossible. He was a wanted man- not in Terry’s league, but police don’t forget to look for escaped criminals just because the press isn’t in love with them. On top of that, Harry’s leg had gotten so bad he could hardly walk. Unfortunately, nothing I could say would dissuade him from personally guiding his legacy into print. It was all too vital to leave in my inexperienced hands.