The Vendetta
The Story of Dangerfield's Dad
An homage to raw unadulterated power
Chapter one: The World's Greatest Fishing Knife
Is that an illusion? Was he seeing things? It looks exactly like Keith, the guy he spent a month tearing up weeds with in June (and part of July) in the backyard of Mister Sissons property in West Meadowlark. But how could this be? It was 700 miles away and more than a month ago. The motorcycle was a Honda 75 and the guy was wearing a helmet but it was clearly Keith when he turned toward Dale and drove over to stop on the road beside him.
"Dale! What are you doing here? Where are you staying?"
"Nowhere. I was down at Peachland. I left this morning and I am going to camp beside the lake."
"That's not possible. The cops will roust you for sure. You can stay with me. I am at my brother's house for the summer. He will let you crash for a couple nights."
This was a spot of unexpected good luck, which took a moment to process. He didn't hesitate to accept, almost without any thought whatsoever.
Overall, 1969 had been unkind so far. Suddenly this wasn't the case. He was experiencing a change of fortune, which began mere days ago, while he was riding his ten speed from Kelowna to Peachland. He found a wallet on the side of the highway. A $20 bill was sticking out of the bill fold. He felt overdue for a run of good luck, so allowed it to begin. There was another $6 tucked neatly in the wallet.
The traffic was raising dust beside the shopping centre in South Kelowna where this peculiar rendezvous was taking place, and moments later he rolled his ten speed up the sidewalk and unloaded his gear into the house where Keith's older brother was starting a young family.
For the first time this summer, he could stop and smell the roses. And the breeze, and the rich Okanagan air with orchards under irrigation and radiant sunshine with never a cloud in the sky.
They climbed to the attic, "I thought your big plan for the rest of summer was to ride your bike to Jasper with your friends."
"Yah, that plan fell apart." Nothing had gone as planned. Yet somehow life worked itself out, didn't it? He found $26 in the wallet laying on the shoulder, a princely sum t0 go into his pocket. Returning the ID and other contents was still a matter of debate. He had t0 discuss it.
"So I shipped my bike to Vernon and rode to Peachland to meet Tim Collins. His mom and dad said I could stay at their rented cabin for a few days," which Dale reduced to three days because they made him feel as welcome as bubonic plague. There was a load of bad blood going on. The trip was a wash.
Yes, he was a mere 14, but he had the bike and the gear so he felt liberated, with 26 extra dollars, he felt rich when he rode away from the Peachland beach front cabin this morning.
"And Mister and Missus Collins just let ya go?"
Dale laughed. "What?" He was taken aback. "Of course. What are they going to do?"
"Well, Dale," said Keith, "my fuckin brother and sister in law do not want to let you go. They're for calling the cops to get you home."
"What? I am set. I know exactly what I am doing. Here. Look at this," and Dale handed the baby blue colored wallet to Keith upstairs in the attic room with a couple of cots. Dale spent summers in the company of dragonflies and mosquitos and cadis flies in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buried in the wilderness of the Canadian Shield with his father a few hundred yards gone in either direction searching for the elusive 2lb rainbow trout, leaving Dale to cope with nature by puffing on a cigar and occasionally dipping his line in the water. He didn't actually take up the cigars until he was age 9. These were the headwaters to the Athabasca, the North Saskatchewan, and the watershed of the Canadian prairies, home to grizzly bears, black bears, wolverines, badgers, and other big feral creatures such as the moose, and deer. Never once did any of these animals cross his path. And he was in it from age 7.
"This is what you found? Geez. Seems kind of heavy."
"You think so? I kept the $26. I want to turn the wallet in to the RCMP."
"Yah you should. And put the money back. This poor Indian lady from Washington probably needs it more than you."
He looked at the straw-haired yokel, same age as him, 14, probably riding the motorcycle illegally, who was a hard worker a few weeks ago in Sissons' demon weed patch, "I know. I feel guilty. But I'm keeping it. Don't tell your brother. You got a driver's license?"
"Fuck you. It's too heavy," Keith kept assessing the wallet, putting it down on his cot, then returning to it, weighing it, something neither of the Collins boys had done a few days ago. When Dale arrived at the Collins' little cabin beside Okanagan Lake bearing this fresh reward for his travails, the boys said keep the money, toss the wallet, and kept it hush hush with their parents.
Dale kept the money, and hid the wallet deep inside his saddlebag. He was living on instinct at 14 years of age when he decided upon an early departure from the Collins tribe. It was the end of his friendship with Tim, and it was a jagged end to a few disturbing events.
"Hey!" Keith yelled, and held the wallet open, suddenly bulging with cash. The secret pocket held a large number of $20 bills. They were Canadian bills, even though the wallet belonged to an American Nez Pierce Tribal Member, and Keith started pulling the money out but handed the wallet to Dale.
"Let's count it." It was $420. Dale put another $40 in his pocket, gave the wallet and $380 to his friend Keith, and they went downstairs to report this to the big brother. The police were called, and now Dale was $66 dollars richer than he was when he arrived in the Okanagan.
In every way you can imagine, Dale felt robbed by Tim Collins, and by extension, the entire Collins family, until now. In a desperately real way, Dale felt betrayed by Tim Collins. Last spring, Dale let Tim in on a secret, he had a key to his Dad's pearl white '65 VW Beetle, a four year old car in pristine condition. One weekend he invited Tim to go joyriding while the folks were away. Tim smashed the VW engine-first into the back bumper on a welders truck parked on 149 street.
Dale was savvy to Tim's cavalier commitment to the debt from popping the clutch. Tim owed $200 of the $400 repair bill. Dale shouldered his half, then some, for being the instigating car thief. All this had been worked out judiciously by the lawyer, Codliverchuk, on the day of the incident. Or so Dale had been led to believe. This trip from Edmonton to Peachland was about the cash. They didn't speak a word of it in the confines of the lake-side cabin. Dale left, twenty-six whole dollars richer, thanks to the Collins, in some backhanded fashion no one could fathom.
Dale sat on his cot pondering the difference between Keith and Tim. Tim advised keeping the $26. So had Tim's older brother, the one who used to drive a Valiant 3 speed on the floor, a long gear lever looked comical but proved functional, as Dale recollected from the one or two occasions he rode in the car, back before hell proper had descended. (It seemed so long ago. It was 5 months.) What would those two goofs say about the $440?
As a way to placate his hosts, Dale was prepared to talk to Keith's brother, but Dale had to mosey along, and this he did once the dust cleared with the wallet and the cops. What could they say? Now is the time for all good fly fishermen to buy the fish-gutting knife of their dreams.
Chapter Two: The Vendetta Begins
Harney Codliverchuk, L.L.B., Q.C., had been satisfied with the direction things were taking, after all, it was his planning to perfection, it was the consummation of multiple agenda points in a large play for total control, plus, it was the severe destruction of a dirty little fucker who deserved to be snuffed before he starts on a path to further deviation.
Personal empire building would not be interrupted, colored or flavored in any way by this tangential interlocutor, a thorn in his side from the instant he encountered him, someone who represents foul play, contributory negligence personified. If he could go back in history and prevent the birth of Hitler, go back in history and prevent the birth of Genghis Khan who inflicted so much terror upon Harney's Ukrainian ancestors, or go back in history and prevent the birth of Dale MacAdam, he would choose the latter. According to Dale MacAdam's mother, and his sister, the kid was the devil, and both of those cunts were evil enough to know. Even so, Harney was stunned when the mother said, "Yes," to the proposal to put a life insurance policy on her kid.
It began because Harney does not resist the temptation of young, fresh, delinquent school girls, the promiscuous ones are extraordinary in two ways. Irresistible to his rock hard libido stick, and incredibly fecund sources of huge bonus income, legitimately derived from the most illegitimate of resources. Baby making, out of wedlock, with unnamed fathers.
He doesn't brag about it. He lives on the trading of human skin. One of his trading floors is the arena of justice. Harney Codliverchuk is working his way to a position of supreme power, the kind of power any, any man envies. Harney is politically aligned enough with the trough-addicted Liberals to appoint judges to the bench.
People kill for advantage like this. You would not believe the level of scumbag Harney has squeezed into a chair on 'the bench' in the courts of the Province of Alberta. He likes to joke about the truth about where he finds his best candidates for judge: Alcoholics Anonymous or the other 12 step recovery program, even Weight Watchers. He recommends the 'slipper.' This makes for extremely malleable judges in Harney's arena. He is passing this knowledge on to his acolyte. There won't be an honest judge in Edmonton for the next 50 fucking years.
Harney encounters legal opportunities in a steady stream. He is in the perfect position to dip into lawlessness at his convenience, and engage on demand sexual intercourse with a non stop flow of young, willing or compliant pussy. He is a warden, court appointed guardian, of the court of family justice, and he specializes in rounding up runaways. Here in the middle of the sexual revolution on a waves of a baby boom, he was in the business of containing errant pussy, by law, and leading it to the Pineview Home for Unwed Mothers, and business was fucking booming, because there's no such thing as containing errant pussy.
One of those fetching ones he encountered in a previous spring had been an extended probation leading to recurring sexual frenzy for the past year of her incarceration. Until she shoved her stupid, self-centered and self-indulgent little brother into the picture. And this little prick figured he was some kind of gift to humanity. He also believed himself entitled to free legal advice from Harney. This was Dale's most objectionable trait. Attempting to out criminal the chief criminal, wickedly obnoxious fucking kid.
The kid was what this frantic long distance phone call was about from brother Boss Bob who was supposed to keep it simple but always made it complicated, and a bit of a mess, which is to say, unpleasant and unexpected surprises. Boss Bob gave a hearsay account because Boss Bob didn't do the job himself, he hired another guy on the job, and this guy came back pretty shook up over his encounter with the 14 year old kid. Imagine. Turns out the kid is dangerous-as-fuck, and guess what? Boss Bob is somebody who knows danger, after a full stint in World War Two, in the Canadian Navy, and in the thick of it.
Harney listens to Boss Bob give his report. Boss Bob goes into details of a frightful event, but it wasn't the trauma Harney was expecting. Boss Bob gives the details received from his operative. Boss Bob often repeats things twice. If you don't have it by then, you aren't getting it from Boss Bob.
"My guy got the fright of his fucking life, Harney. My guy got the fright of his fucking life, And he is totally pissed at me about the lack of warning. Totally pissed about the lack of warning."
Harney's target had competed for a couple of city championships in hockey, his dad bragged about the kid's scoring prowess. "I told you he is competitive." Harney knew hockey players who did the scoring didn't do the fighting, so this was unexpected news about a surprise attack.
From the report of the guy's surveillance, he started off saying it had been a boring fucking morning, last he heard the kid was riding his bike from Kelowna to Vernon. "He rode his bike like you said he would."
Harney expected him to be camping in the town of Vernon beside Lake Kalamalka. The intel said the kid was a camper. Instead he went to the bus depot and put his bike on a Greyhound. An hour later he stood out to the highway hitchhiking. Boss Bob's operative said the kid was hard to miss because you don't see a lot of skinny 14 year old kids hitchhiking alone on a highway at night.
The operative picked the kid up on the outskirts of the town of Vernon. The kid told the operative he was going to Salmon Arm. "It was evening, and a warm August night. The kid said he wouldn't get in the truck unless my guy was going non stop to Salmon Arm. My guy reassured him this was the plan. And away they went."
And this is when it gets interesting. Apparently the operative intends to have a little fun with the kid before he finishes the job. "So he drives him north toward the town of Salmon Arm, and this is Wednesday evening, so the highway is deserted. About twenty miles up this lonely stretch of highway, the operative pulls over to the left and parks the camper beside the highway. He decides it's the place to do it. But the kid doesn't go along initially. He gets out of the pickup and crosses the highway to stick out his thumb. He was disgusted but didn't express any disappointment. "My guy thinks the kid got away. An hour passes. No cars go by along the highway, and it's approaching midnight." The operative hears a knock on his camper door.
Boss Bob says the kid comes in, they have coffee, kid asks about his tattoos, "Navy," he told him.
The kid said they look familiar because his dad has the same tattoos on his forearm.
"My guy puts him on the bunk above the cab, lays down beside him, has his dick up stiff as a board, and, Snap."
"What?" Harney asked, "Snap?"
"it's the noise an eight-inch razor-sharp stiletto made flashing toward my guy's hard-on, so my guy jumped down and threw the kid's gear out the door and backed away while the smirky shit went to the exit. He said he managed to give the little fucker a shove out the door. But it wasn't a toy knife. He said the kid laughed after landing on his feet in the dark like a fucking black cat and asked him if he wanted more. It scared him. "Same tattoos, buddy, excapt my old man ain't a queer, aasshole. And neither am I!"
The knife was gone. The kid had gathered his gear and sprinted across the highway in a matter of seconds, cussing as he went, and whooping with joy because it was just in time to flag a pickup truck with a crowd of rowdy travelers in the open truck box. My guy said Indians stopped and the kid disappeared into the darkest night my guy has seen in his life.
"He ended pursuit or interest in your target, Harv. He said he isn't about to lose his dick for ten grand. He wants to be paid in full. Or he said you're the one who's gonna lose your dick. He did say, the kid shipped his bike to Jasper and is riding to Hinton to meet up with his dad, and go fishing."
Uh shit. This is unexpected. It was also a real costly. Life insurance policies don't pay for living expenses, and don't come cheap either, and the trollop mother won't be picking up the tab for $10,000. She said, it's not her fault if it doesn't work out.
The sister, that's another story. She has Harney's kid on the way, which covers expenses in this fuck up. She told people it was parthenogenesis from her brother raping her a few months ago. Harney gave her the crazy story from a crazy Nun he knew in Mundare.
Maybe she said it was her father and possibly the neighborhood dogs and cats. Harney didn't care. Harney sold the kid to the Sisters of Multiple Broken Covenants and Hymens, including the child trafficking when something arrives. This side game amounted to fuck around money. And this fuck around money went down the drain. How fucking hard can it be to kill one wimpy looking 14 year old delinquent?
Meanwhile the psychopath little broad is turning 16 soon, and says she never sleeps, because she craves Harney's dick, she says, but he knows it's because sleeping interrupts her from making up malicious excuses for her shitty attitude, about anybody who crossed her path, except Harney, because he is the law.
People are pieces of shit, it's so easy to spin them for a payday. It takes training. The idiot in the camper will get his lesson. A shot in the back of the head from Boss Bob. And the dangerous person disguised as a kid appears to have made a career for himself of surviving Harney Codliverchuk.
Chapter Three: Harney grows a beard
Dale was intuitive enough to realize quickly he made a mistake consulting this guy. Dale had found it awkward to explain things to the lawyer who showed up out of thin air, Harney Codliverchuk.
Why had Dale cut a key and stolen the VW? That was the lawyer's main concern. In fact, Mr. Codliverchuk, 'Harney' was quite torn up about the boys leaving the scene and taking the car from the accident, because Dale and Brian Collins pushed the smashed '65 Pearl White VW Beetle through a corridor of neighborhood back alleys to park it in the MacAdam garage, where they met the lawyer.
Well it was simple. The cast iron metal back bumper of the gigantic welder's truck which Brian here smashed didn't happen to have a scratch. Dale had brushed off a few flecks of paint. They pushed the car into the immediate convenience of a downhill alley and up the lane for a block, across one street, into another alley, a basic police report of activities. For some fucking reason, Codliverchuk wasn't having any of it. He seemed unwilling to accept that Brian Collins was being made responsible for smashing the car while Dale was in Tooke's Grocery.
"I'm not worried about the police. There was no damage to the other vehicle. I want Brian here to pay for half the damage. He wasn't a passenger. He smashed the car.
"Yes. It was lawless, but I am not a delinquent."
Dale opted to inform Mr. Codliverchuk that when his Dad catches him red-handed, it will be a week of the silent treatment, then a resumption of normal life, because Dale isn't guilty. Dale would soon be handed the keys, grudgingly, "Straight to the store," Sure, "No fuck around stopping to cut keys, for this car, or that house, or the other car."
Dale explained to this lawyer who showed up at his sister's insistence because their parents were out of town, that he had his learner's permit, "Had it the day after my birthday last November." He got the key cut one afternoon where he works part-time at a hardware store. It seemed convenient to have one.
"It was criminal."
Dale agreed to listen to the dressing down he was receiving from Mr. Codliverchuk because he wanted a legal position on the damages, and he continued to defend it by stating he logged at least 5,000 miles behind the wheel of various types of cars and trucks since the age of 10.
Dale told Mr. Codliverchuk the only thing preventing him from driving without supervision was his jealous older sister, and his cranky mother. He said his old man trusted him with the wheel of a car and the handle of a loaded gun. "I've been gutting fish since I was a toddler."
Mr. Codliverchuk seemed entirely unable and unwilling to listen. Dale was equally sure other 14 year old kids were unable to relate. He felt squeezed between childhood and adulthood.
Chapter Four
One night the previous winter Harney was hovering in the rink shack waiting for his kid to finish a hockey practice. Young MacAdam was loitering in the other room with young Bill Maher and Jack Dawson , perhaps the homeliest kid Harney ever saw. "How do you break a Ukrainian's forefinger," said MacAdam.
The dressing room of wooden benches was otherwise empty. "Punch him in the nose! How do you keep the flies off the bride at a Ukrainian wedding? Leave a pile of shit in the corner."
Harney stepped around the corner and the laughter stopped.
"I'll stop telling those jokes," said MacAdam.
The three youth sitting in the Tacks hockey skates on their feet, waving their Northland sticks, sat still, and quiet.
Harney left the warm building to the 20 below Fahrenheit of Edmonton winter. He stuck his head back in the boy's dressing room. "Why don't you fucking cunts go scrape the ice before they close the building and kick you back to delinquent hall?"
Two of these pricks were not his cup of tea. The third was a target. The reports from his mother were unbelievable, Harney painted a bullseye on the kid's forehead. He was gonna die. Keep telling those racist jokes, kid.
As time went on, Harney kept an obsessive eye out for Dale MacAdam. He was convinced he had to do something about him. Harney was sure there was an opportunity, and Harney continued under the spurious reasons a contentious woman can provide, lies gross enough to excuse the making of easy money.
Harney now had a confederate, a student, and was impressed by his student for one reason more than any other. The student had Churchillian determination, which is to say, he was determined to divert money and death at the expense of others, in this particular regard impressive indeed. He would have a body count by age 25, and be worth millions, and never lifted a finger.
Harney found a man with a license to kill. What makes this man perfect is he is small enough to go where no one else can fit, where no one else belongs.
This young man was Charlie Manson with a haircut and a silk suit with a top of law class pedigree, which he would soon be finishing in Codliverchuk's law office, an articling law student. He was local, a fraternity man from the same frat house and law school as Harney .
The man had been scouted due to his astonishing high marks. Harney could see in his acolyte's eyes flashing behind custom fit gold-rim spectacles, there is structure in this man's brain, and it says, "Kill." He doesn't belong in polite society. He must elevate to oversee society, and rule it with an iron fist, and a deadly aim on specific targets. He must be an assassin.
The young chap shared a few physical characteristics with Harney. He had small feet like Harney. He was self-conscious about this. He was of modest stature, yet managed to stand out in a crowd. But he could disappear; equally useful attributes. His best trait was snooping. He expended a lot of energy on this.
This relationship could be lifelong, because, to be perfectly honest, Harney was in love. Best of all, he's smart enough to impress the Jews. Harney needs to put a hook in him for the Jews. The King of the Jews, not the fake one, the actual. He even mixes and matches well, and nothing could not be more important to Harney, to the world. Mostly to Harney.
The best hooks are vaginas. Conveniently he knew one vagina that seemed to be coming in handy.
Having run out of patience on the file, and being pestered to act by the kid's extraordinarily greedy mother, Harney began plotting another shot at an early demise for Dale MacAdam, surrounding his 18th birthday. The window on policy secrecy was closing due to MacAdam reaching adulthood, so Codliverchuk was now willing to admit he wanted to kill the young man simply for the satisfaction.
He had taken a few shots with the help of Boss Bob, who was grooming Harney's new beard (and co-conspirator) to up the ante. The hatred Harney has for young MacAdam is out of most peoples depth. His new man soon articling for the law is fully engaged, and working dynamically on the issue. While Harney is convinced the way to resolve his problem with MacAdam is to eliminate him, he is not entirely in control of the situation at the moment.
To this end, he had Boss Bob working on it, and Harney learned the new beard was an even bigger help to Boss Bob than Harney could ever be. He's presently sinking his slippery little pecker into the MacAdam's 19 year old sister. This gives Harney minute by minute accounts of Dale MacAdam's whereabouts. Everybody knows, most accidents happen close to home.
The acolyte's timing made the process unfold sooner than expected on this summer evening of 1973.
Harney was momentarily ecstatic with the news about Dale MacAdam, who drove a tampered Mustang into a light pole on 149 street at about 6 p.m., nearly killing two young female hitchhikers who gave a full report to the Edmonton Police Service. There were the usual Boss Bob fuck ups to deal with. Much to Codliverchuk's immediate dismay, the police made a rudimentary inspection of the totaled Mustang to draw attention to the fact the owner of the car would be the liable party instead of the temporary operator, so Harney intercepted the police report on the damaged Mustang.
Yes, this report showed a broken tie-rod end on the right front wheel, which the police interpreted as the car being broken when the car was handed to Dale MacAdam. Boss Bob reported, "Look, the Mustang belonged to his roommate, the kid he rented your old suite with, the two bedroom apartment on 149." Harney listened to Boss Bob repeat himself before proceeding to finish the story. "So I inspected the buddy's vehicle last night and conveniently found the front right tie-rod to be defective. Since I figured MacAdam would be the passenger, I helped it along, you know, early in the a.m.. Unfortunately MacAdam was driving the car and he was alone. But it was a miracle he didn't die. Those light poles crumble so easy nowadays."
Harney made a couple of phone calls but it was the acolyte who volunteered enthusiastically to bury the evidence as deep as the coal mines in the North Saskatchewan River Valley of Edmonton, painting the injured party out to be the Norbigging family with their loss of a vehicle to this reckless hooligan, instead of the target who nearly took the collateral damage of two young females with him.
Harney spoke to his police connections but maintained a small leverage over the Norbiggings due to their criminal negligence (abetted by Boss Bob, a man handy with a wrench, a screwdriver, and other tools). Harney raged at himself at how he was barely able to stay one step ahead of this punk who he wanted to demolish for the big pay day. Somehow the kid keeps slipping the noose. And it's fucking aggravating. This is turning into a bitter vendetta. And you would think he had bigger fish to fry. He does. That's what this is all about.
Harvey finds it fascinating to watch the construction of a chimera with lethal teeth to be used to inflict damage on specified targets. The dangerous beast is never unleashed until the situation has been fully assessed, reported, estimated, assigned, and executed. Among his many missions in life, Harney was going to erase a form of bias from the world, which this boy repeatedly displays. His sister told Harney about one of the earliest manifestations of this kid's perversity and psychopathic traits. Apparently the child yelled, "There goes a -- n--!" when the Cadillac convertible carrying an Edmonton superstar footballer's wife rolled past the corner, and the little fucker barked out the N-word. Four year old Dale playing with cars and blocking the sewer, no doubt attracted to the marvelous new 1958 convertible Cadillac containing a couple of football star wives with the top down. Dale's sister had been standing close enough to the back door to both witness and disappear to testify, about this seismic transgression.
Harney erased inside information from the sister about MacAdam's grandmother reading Huckleberry Finn to the 4 years old boy on her lap (and the sister two years older) over the course of a few preceding Sundays. Of course by then Dale must have heard the N-word all 219 times it was used by Mark Twain in this American literary opus, which may or may not have been intended to suppress racism in the United States late in the 19th century.
Harney knew the beautiful wife of the football star couldn't imagine any role adding context to a Mark Twain narrative for a 4 year old towhead mucking about in the only week of summer in the frozen northern territory of Canada, where black folk are few and far between, historically, and presently. The sister reported Dale got two rounds of beatings, first from mom, then a belt lashing at 5:30 p.m., promptly. The aforementioned chimera under construction would be a life-long false narrative about Dale MacAdam being a white supremacist (from birth!). This one has teeth. (Deflection. A legal tactic.)
Harney was supplied further intricate details, such as the bicycle theft he conducted around the same time, when he was age 4. The day she started school in the fall she lost her brand new bicycle to the the kid who absconded with her 2 wheeler and started hanging around with older boys. She didn't keep close track, she said, but she knew it was the awful Baker boy and his gang of dirt lump throwing bullies down 147 street.
Don't forget Harney watched his self-conscious Ukrainian older brother overcome a debilitating and humiliating stutter. Boss Bob used to stutter, which he resolved superficially by repeating whole sentences, with Harney's encouragement, usually at the beginning of a conversation or at a high point. The acolyte had mentioned annoyance at the repetition, until Harney supplied the explanation, which did nothing to reduce the acolyte's frustration with doing business with Boss Bob. Harney was okay with this. The young lawyer was turning out to be good criminal material. They will be traveling in different circles once the practice of law commences for the acolyte.
Harney didn't know better than the next guy how come so many lawyers were unable to tell right from wrong except as it fits the narrative, which essentially comes down to billing.
But the acolyte was different. He was exceptional at finding his way without a single hint of moral compass, requiring no direction whatsoever to find the weakness to be exploited in whoever sits in front of him. Harney noted one thing the man detested. Notorious Chicago killer Richard Speck. The acolyte had an obsession with Richard Speck, it seemed, and this made Harney shudder. The acolyte found it arousing to talk about a psychopathic man who massacred 8 nurses a few short years before, in 1966. "It was his tattoo that tipped off the police. 'Born to Raise Hell'"
Harney told him one time, "You should write a book about it."
"Maybe I will," he replied, nonchalantly, from a large conference table stacked with file boxes pertaining to the laws in the Province of Alberta and extremely lucrative world-leading oil industry now a prized possession of his marquee client. "Or get the same fucking tattoo." Harney was one of the only people on Earth aware the King had recently purchased the Crown of Alberta, including the oil.
Harney told the acolyte to get to quit jerking off to dreams of dead nurses in this fucking office and work on putting the fix on those Alberta oil royalties for, "the fucking King of the Jews. I have an extracurricular assignment for you coming up. It has to do with your new flame's - -"
"Don't tell me. I don't need distractions at the moment." Sparkling answer. Indeed these legislative affairs of stratospheric wealth are the priority. The intelligence report from the girlfriend can wait.
Harney knew he got little more than juicy details on the kid to begin with, then he was supplied intricate details, such as a bicycle theft he did at the age 4. The day she started school in the fall the kid ascended with her new 2 wheeler and started hanging around with older boys. She didn't keep close track, she said but she knew it was the awful Baker boy and his gang of dirt lump throwing bullies down 147 street. After the garage consult arranged by his horny sister and the failed murder attempt arranged by Boss Bob to occur outside Vernon, B.C, 20 miles up Hwy 97A, Harney received different information about the kid. He continued to see a tremendous flow of information on the target but it became part of a surveillance of whereabouts and diary of associations and occasionally influence on behavior, instead of a catalogue of masturbatory schedules.
Harney had her deliver the strongest hash oil from Montreal to her brother, for instance, which wired the kid up tight as drum at age 15. This level of Boss Bob intervention and intelligence changed entirely with the arrival of the acolyte. Under his tutelage she became an active member of the team out to take down Dale MacAdam.
Harney tells himself it is love but in truth his affection for the acolyte is the unfettered access to a scurrilous and murderous knave. It helps he's one who really, truly believes in fraternity, binding contracts, and inside information, and picking the right people to team up for a Vendetta. They don't need a fucking clue about what they're doing. He knows that too.
There was an invisible basis for this man to have a destiny as a high flying assassin with unassailable wealth and influence far beyond his diminutive stature. Watching him walk on a downtown street with a confederate, you would never mistake him for an assassin. You might mistake him for a statue of a small child pissing in a fountain. Harney kept the human trafficking enterprise under wraps around the Acolyte and pretty much everybody else except the Priest in the Confessional.
Harney figured conservatively he had arranged 50 of these adoptions with minimum buy-in of $20,000 (this was on a sliding scale), for a net to Harney of $1.5 million in the past five years. Sharing information about this trafficking would cost him a substantial share.
The number of his own seeds trafficked was small, not insignificant, but not Genghis Khan numbers. The legal work was nil in this area, since he had other articling students do it. He did veer into more complicated affairs such as life insurance on delinquent youth. One of these paid off recently, at the same time as Boss Bob undid the tie rod on the Mustang, he managed to get a load of seriously untainted heroin into the hands of one of Harney's insured. The kid's overdose netted Harney a cool $100,000.
And this targeting obviously included people like Dale MacAdam who was going to be a payday soon. It was a constant source of amusement to Harney how willing some women were to sacrifice a kid for a large insurance payout. Most of them do it on the basis of wanting to know as little as possible. There was a other impetus to Harney's intrigues against MacAdam, however. Those were deep antipathies from pivotal people. MacAdam's psychopathic father had made a few diehard enemies and Harney was legal counsel to one them.
Harney was a proxy for one of the politicians who mattered in this town, and this guy wanted to damage a particular foe, who so happened to be Dale MacAdam's dad, and the politician wanted to wound him too seriously to ever put up another fight.
Harney was able to do many things at once, like, a juggler, instead he ran a criminal juggernaut concocted by he himself, and no one else. He was perfectly happy to let others take the credit when a politician took office, and a dog catcher was appointed, as long as they never forgot who to thank. He was living the dream of making every waking hour of the day billable.
Chapter Five
Harney didn't define the world in black and white for each and every person in it. He was able to separate those individual targets in the middle of a colorful crowd.
One of the people in his colorful life was Dick Hollowaty. Dick grew up with Harney and Boss Bob in Mundare, and Dick had honed his pool game in Codliverchuk's Dad's billiards parlor in the early '40s. Hollowaty used the Codliverchuk pool hall as his own 'Hole in the Wall' hideout for plotting bank robberies occurring across the continent.
These were particularly scurrilous deeds to be concocting in the middle of World War Two, but Dick was too young to join the army and fight, and had no inclination to do so either, like Harney (and unlike Boss Bob). Hollowaty was the go-to when it became apparent Boss Bob's best efforts weren't going to be enough.
Hollowaty was a gangster with impeccable credentials, if you ask Harney. Dick was never on the side of the law and never spoke to the law. Not a word. He climbed the ranks to become a specialist in armed bank robbery and had other valuable skills. He dug a few tunnels into banks, including one in Edmonton for which he did several years. That one cost him the wife and kids, in addition to his freedom.
Dick was free, and his main thing now was to live sparse off hidden loot (from more successful years) stashed in a '58 Buick Roadmaster parked behind the house of pain he occupied on the corner of 93 Avenue and 145 street downing a seemingly endless supply of Molson's. The empties composed a form of box art on the wall of the garage facing the kitchen window, and he only moved in a year ago. Harney had a use for Dick Hollowaty, even if Dick didn't. In particular, Dick had a couple of psychotic kids, one of whom was willing to take instructions, for a price.
There is no record of the several million dollars gone missing from the big bank heist in Edmonton. Harney managed to keep it quiet in the news and with the politicians. They promised Dick a 30 year sentence and he wouldn't see daylight before the end of the century. Dick didn't talk. Many of Dick's partners became wealthy off his achievement. Dick finally walked out of Drumheller Penitentiary after 12 years, and took a Greyhound bus to Edmonton. The money was mostly gone. They left him the getaway car and a few thousand, and he had permission to see his kids.
Harney had every intention of using these kids for various purposes when the time arrives. Meanwhile the Dick problem was solved by the even distribution of a case of beer a day, two on weekends. The best thing for Dick will be to drink himself to death. No hurry. He was parked on the corner, in a rented three bedroom bungalow, the only derelict looking property in the neighbourhood, and he wasn't going anywhere. Harney moved him into the vicinity best suited to Harney's demands.
Harney made inroads as the proxy to the most powerful politician in his orbit, which was something he kept secret, almost as secret as the 'Really Big File,' which he turned over instantly to the Acolyte, who was up and coming in the practice of law, but isn't quite there technically. Which makes him even more useful in the present.
Harney's divorce left him free time (a rare incidence of no billable hours on consecutive days) last summer so he laid complete waste to Mrs. MacAdam on a visit to Jasper Park Lodge. This brutal rape was done to devastating effect on all parties except Harney, like, it was a surgical dismantling of the family. It was a coup de gras on the file's contents.
This is not to say Harney isn't slightly blown away by the dynamic between Don MacAdam and his wife. They appeared bent on out-psychopathing each other (and everybody else within a hundred block radius, goes without saying).
Harney went hunting with the MacAdam father and son one Saturday in the vicinity of Harney's home town. It took place the previous autumn and he watched a disturbing display, Harney saw the young MacAdam tear the heads off the ducks with his teeth. A dozen ducks. This would be cocktail hour chatter in the Switchboard Lounge and Lucifer's Lounge. Doesn't matter there's not a scintilla of truth in it. Harney never saw the opportunity to 'accidentally' blow the head off this kid. On the other hand, Harney didn't get shot either, so it was obvious the kid didn't have a clue about Harney's haunting vendetta.
Harney found it astonishing when Don MacAdam signed on the insurance policy. Out in the field one frosty day watching the two MacAdams' outrunning their spaniel was an eye-opener. Harney wasn't sure how he convinced the father his son was a menace to society, and probably doomed. It was the wife and daughter. They loved the money talk. Nobody intended the kid to see the age of 21. The bigger payout was expected if the kid dies before the age of 21, but before age 18 would be equally fine. The thing is, the kid doesn't know about the insurance policy until he's 21, then the law says he must be informed. Nobody intended to wait till his 21st birthday.
Harney clung to the hope of the big payday, since he was deep in the hole already on this MacAdam file, paying off the homosexual rapist was expensive, because Boss Bob refused to knock off one of his shipmates. It didn't matter, as by this time Harney made a cottage industry of plans so thorough he could vector on MacAdam at any minute of the day from multiple tangents, the mother Harney sodomized in the mountains, the sister he raped in the holding cell, now included the Acolyte standing in as a boyfriend, parking in the driveway at the MacAdam property practically every day of the week lately. These inflection points provided Harney with a stream of detailed information whenever he asked.
Harney puzzled and marveled at how the vendetta grew legs so quickly and seemed to have a mind of its own, as if the conspiracy was on a march to a mission. Such is the true character of a vendetta, he decided. A lot of people want to get in on the punishing attacks to ensue. If the kid didn't have such a questionable taste in jokes, and such a reckless and rebellious nature, and probably deviant proclivities, and certainly delinquent and therefore psychopathic traits which cannot be reversed, he would never have been caught Harney's crosshairs, that, and his promiscuous sibling was a yoke tying him to Harney. It was her idea to make the kid a target in the first place, during his first automobile delinquency, so she instigated the surveillance beginning with the Peachland snare, which Mrs. MacAdam endorsed and assisted (she reported Dale's change of plans when he phoned her from Vernon. All the other plans had been derailed by the kid finding money on the side of the highway. Harney learned about it from Boss Bob when the kid bragged about finding the huge cache of cash in the wallet to the homosexual highwayman, while concealing a purchase of the deadly stiletto.
There's various income streams from an extraordinary array of devious practices in impeccable plausible deniability for the crimes of theft and murder and both. Criminals in real life are not like in the movies. The criminals in the movies take centre stage and often show themselves as criminals or perhaps they get away with things for awhile before they get caught. That is the movies. It's all about the criminals in the movies. But not in real life. You won't know a criminal from a broken porch light. They will be the one with all the principles, the kind of criminal that Harney and the Acolyte are, they have reputations, and principles.
Harney knew his play depended on triangulation and strangulation of the life out of the kid but the kid kept sailing through the shit storms staged by Harney , repeatedly. One night the Mother from Hell called Harney and said Don MacAdam was out of town, so tonight would be a good time to show up at the kid's hockey games. Harney did, and ripped into the kid for disobeying the coach, who, unbeknownst to the kid, was instructed to sink the team's playoff hopes by playing the coach's hapless brother at critical minutes of the game. When Dale MacAdam lost his temper and told the coach to sit the fuck down, Harney leapt from the stands into the bench and the game was over for Dale MacAdam and his 5 player mutiny, end of game, and season, and MacAdam's position of captain. Sometimes Harney hit a homerun the kid couldn't stop. This was one of those nights when he stormed into the dressing room at Jasper Place Arena and screamed obscenities at MacAdam, and, "It wasn't enough you made your coach cry." Harney didn't even know the fucker's name.
When it comes to putting together a 'set-up,' to make a fatality look like an accident, a number of set plays are involved to cement the plausible deniability of all parties. Boss Bob said he had turned to a familiar old confederate, Dick Hollowrat, bank robber, murderer, tunnel rat, and a nimble idea man. It was his plan to make the kid's motorcycle an unmistakable ride through the west end with a distinctive sound, which they had to do on the sly. Boss Bob put a young Canadian Forces cadet on the task who pushed a lot of hash and weed, and happened to be connected to Hollowaty's kids, and the sons of a lawyer criminal associated with the Acolyte. They stole MacAdam's motorcycle while he was doing a short stint in Fort Saskatchewan Provincial Jail, on failing to pay the fine for punching a rookie Edmonton Police Service officer in the late winter. How MacAdam got off with a fine is anybody's guess, probably because he was a rabbit puncher, but Harney found out he was represented by a young lawyer named Sandy Kradenchuk who Harney knows from watching him play for the U of A Golden Bears football team at Varsity Stadium.
Harney's intelligence network is flagging. The sister didn't stay on top of her brother's undertakings. Boss Bob found out the MacAdam kid still worked at the same hardware store where he got the key cut for the stolen VW. In fact the hardware store was no longer a hardware store, it was sporting goods. The report said the kid made friends with the owner's circle of friends which included Kradenchuk, other ex-junior and professional football players, the store owner himself a Welterweight boxing champion, and there was an ex-rodeo bull rider. This power play happened without Harney noticing, as these things occurred somewhat beyond his orbit, which was unacceptable for this target. The kid's old lady was wacked on valium and Bacardi white rum and a useless resource. She was barely aware he was alive. It was aggravating to see the kid continuously slide under the radar of the prevailing authority, which Harney knew for a fact was absolutely he, Harney Codliverchuk. All the bought and paid judges and politicians told him so. Or they disappeared.
