THERE’S THIS TIM Hortons near King and Shanley St. in Kitchener. It’s busy today. One employee is attending to the counter while the drive-thru is keeping the rest of the staff busy. There’s a lineup right now, so I’m sitting at a table in the corner. It’s all windows, so I’m having a hard time figuring out where to sit. I like to have my back against a wall for reasons I’m not going to get into here. Okay, it’s for safety reasons. Whenever possible, I try to sit with a view of the room, and without a gun pointed at my face.
When I began writing this blog, I started brainstorming ideas for names. You know, you name the blog something interesting; it gets people interested in the story. I’m a bit of a noir film nut, so here are some ideas I came up with:
Out of the Blog
I Wake Up Blogging
The Blog Sleep
The Blog Dahlia
Shadow of a Blog
So Dark the Blog
Bury My Blog
Blog Me Deadly
For You I Die, Blogging
The Woman in the Blog
I laughed out loud at a couple of these, and a few of the other patrons looked up at me, and now I feel self-conscious. Oh well.
Let’s start with the bailiff job.
Vijay owed a favor to a partner who did some bailiff work in Ontario. He hooked me up with them. I wasn’t licensed, so I just served as the intimidating muscle guy. I’m not very intimidating in person, but I can kick the crap out of someone if I need to. It’s one of the many skills I picked up on my journey. To compensate for my regular appearance, I dressed as intimidating as I could and acted like a tough guy.
I think bailiffs in Canada are a little different from those in the U.S. Here, they’re the ones who serve legal orders and papers, take back properties, and even evict tenants when necessary. They handle many related tasks in the legal and property world. They’re the jerks who repossess your car or serve you warrants. Bailiffs also provide security for witnesses and escort prisoners to and from courts. And I wasn’t an official one, but I was helping out.
I helped serve warrants, changed a few locks, intimidated a few people, but I genuinely hated doing that stuff. It didn’t even pay all that well. So, after a couple of weeks of it, I asked Vijay if he had anything else.
He gave me a security job. It was a cushy one; something I could do forever. It was a night shift, so I had to sleep during the day, but I’ve done shift work before. I did a whole summer on nights at a factory that made boxes. I was just about to make some kind of boxing joke, but I could feel the groans from commenters all the way over here.
The night shift was a lifestyle change, but something I could adapt to. The job was at a bank, so there was some legitimacy. It was great at first: I got to sit in front of a wall of monitors and work on my sketching. I did nothing the whole night, and by the end of the week, I’d filled my sketchbook. The money wasn’t bad, and it was consistent. There wasn’t much for me to do.
Then someone robbed the bank. Broke in during one of my shifts. I noticed them right away and called the security company and the police. But the response time was too slow, and I got impatient, so I went down there with a telescoping baton and … I wasn’t supposed to have a telescoping baton. The company didn’t issue me a gun, and policy dictated that if a robbery took place, I was supposed to call the police and sit on my hands.
Also, some things may have exploded, but nothing they could trace back to me. I’m still not a hundred percent sure what they were after. Money, I guess.
I captured the robbers. They were doing a pretty lousy job of it, and I ended up breaking a few bones. The cops seemed happy enough, but the bank’s people were a little cagey in their response. On the one hand, they were glad to not be robbed. On the other, I apparently interfered with their insurance claim by foiling the criminals. They didn’t want me back after that.
Interestingly, the bailiff did want me back. But I’d already burned that bridge.
I again asked Vijay if there was something for me. He gave me a job that was more … how do I say this? More in the private investigator wheelhouse. Something that involved a little snooping.