Seaweed on the Street Read online

  PRAISE FOR STANLEY EVANS

  “Evans’ combination of [Coast] Salish lore and solid plotting is a winner.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “A fast-paced, entertaining story with enough plot twists to keep the reader guessing.”

  —Times Colonist

  “A mystery novel worth reading and lingering over.”

  —Hamilton Spectator

  “A gritty murder-mystery with some violence and suspense thrown in for good measure.”

  —Oak Bay News

  “Tightly written mystery . . . a pleasure to read.”

  —Comox Valley Record

  “Evans does not disappoint.”

  —WordWorks

  “Well worth reading. Evans knows how to set a scene, creates vivid minor characters, and is capable of spitting out the requisite snappy dialogue.”

  —Monday Magazine

  “An exciting introduction to a Coast Salish cop with a lot more entertaining stories to tell.”

  —Mystery Readers Journal

  “Sharp, calculating and extremely convincing style of writing.”

  —Victoria News

  “Evans is a forceful story teller.”

  —Parksville Qualicum News

  “[An] evocative series.”

  —Montreal Gazette

  “Makes great use of the West Coast aboriginal mythology and religion.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “The writing is wonderful native story telling. Characters are richly drawn . . . I enjoyed this so much that I’m looking for the others in the series.”

  —Hamilton Spectator

  SEAWEED ON THE STREET

  Stanley Evans

  for Aria, Aila, Zoe, Sophie and Claire

  THE WARRIOR RESERVE does not exist. All of the characters, incidents and dialogue in this novel are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, or to real events, is coincidental. Depictions of Native mythology and religion are based on ethnological research and do not necessarily reflect the present-day observances and practices of the Coast Salish people.

  PROLOGUE

  For spirit quest, Jimmy Scow purified himself by 10 days of fasting and bathing and sexual abstinence. Jimmy Scow then spent one more day picking Amanita muscaria — mushrooms common on the northwest coast of British Columbia. Scow’s belly was empty when he put the mushrooms into his medicine bag and walked Canoe Cove way.

  The moon was hanging halfway up the sky.

  Scow lit a driftwood fire on the beach to warm himself. Under the moon, Scow was cold because he was naked. In spite of the cold, Scow covered a large rock with saliva and dived with it into deep seawater. After several dives the powerful spirit Tulmex scornfully informed Jimmy Scow that he deserved no great spirit because his father’s father’s father had been a slave.

  Scow was ashamed. He had not known that his ancestors included slaves. Among the Coast Salish, slaves and their descendants were not merely low-class; they were non-persons, like sasquatches and worms.

  Scow had eaten a handful of mushrooms when Moneypower Badger and Healthpower Mouse came to him. Scow slept on the beach with Badger under one arm and Mouse under the other arm. When Scow awakened he was alone again. Badger and Mouse had returned to the Underworld. Scow built up his fire with driftwood, ate another handful of mushrooms and went down the beach to the sea.

  Moonlight shone on the waves.

  Jimmy Scow squatted on the sand with his feet in the water.

  After a while, a raft of wood grounded on the sand.

  Jimmy Scow got onto the raft and drifted out to sea. A mile offshore, Jimmy Scow splashed water on his head and, finding a heavy rock on the raft, he covered it with saliva and dived into the sea with it. At the bottom of the sea he chanced upon Wolf’s house. Wolf taught Scow how to sing his song. Wolf taught Scow how to make traps for catching salmon and deer. Wolf then offered Scow a stick with a man’s head carved at one end. Scow declined the stick. Daughter of Wolf then took the stick and waved it. Twenty humans — half men and half women — dropped dead at her feet.

  Wolf told Scow that he would become a great warrior as long as he did not stain his hands with blood. He had to roast the first four enemies that he met over a fire.

  Jimmy Scow now accepted the stick and came out of the water.

  After this visit to the Underworld, Scow slept for two days and two nights. In a dream, the first enemy that he met was his mother’s brother. Scow roasted his mother’s brother over a fire. When Scow woke up he got dressed and, with Wolfstick in his medicine bag, he went to the city of Victoria.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My name is Silas Seaweed. Once I was on Victoria’s detective squad. Now that I’m a neighbourhood cop, my office is less than luxurious. There’s a tiny cast-iron fireplace with a brass surround and a battered copper coal scuttle that I use as a wastebasket. The fireplace doesn’t always work properly, but that’s appropriate because I’m a typical cop: I don’t always work properly, either. I have an oak desk and a leather swiveller. A hat stand and two metal filing cabinets and a small floor safe. A couple of chairs for visitors. Except for missing-kid bulletins and a picture of Queen Victoria wearing widow’s weeds, my walls are unadorned.

  The building I operate out of — a three-storey cube of sooty red brick — was erected when the Hudson’s Bay Company still controlled most of western Canada. Originally, my room was a harness shop. Sometimes, when it’s damp out, I smell old leather and saddle soap.

  I’m Coast Salish and I moved in here five years ago. Back then, store-front law-enforcement units manned by Aboriginal policemen were being hailed as bold experiments in social engineering. Nowadays, people complain that I’m running a hangout for the dregs of society. And why not? After all, crooks, drunks, hookers and cops derive from the same socio-economic group. Cops and killers have similar levels of intelligence and ability, and the average murderer can be as charming as all get-out.

  Victoria’s evening rush hour was winding down. On the street outside my office, two blonde hookers were standing at the curb in four-inch heels and minis. Sally was wearing a tight yellow sweater. Chantal had on a white shirt. Both women carried shoulder bags large enough to hold a loaf of bread. Why did they need them? A mystery for me to ponder. A middle-aged john cruised by in a newish VW Jetta and the girls gave him the business, jiggling their hips and strutting like pigeons with their chests out. But the john was a hard sell, and he sped off to look at the birds on Bay Street.

  Vultures were circling too, cruising the downtown area in shiny black cars. A Viper came around the corner and stopped in a restricted zone opposite my office. Jiggs Murphy got out of the driver’s seat, leaned on the car’s roof and smirked at the hookers. Murphy crooked his finger. Obediently, Chantal and Sally tripped across the street and had a short conversation with a man sitting in the Viper’s passenger seat. The man’s name was Alex Cal. After a minute the women reached into their shoulder bags. I saw Cal’s big hand appear, then withdraw, full of money. Murphy got behind the steering wheel and the Viper cruised away, but its passage left vibrations in the air that lingered.

  Five minutes later, the street was full of johns. Chantal and Sally had got lucky and were turning tricks so they could pay off The Man. There’s all kinds of luck.

  My phone rang. Somebody with a voice I half-recognized said, “Listen, Seaweed, we’ve just arrested one of yours. Jimmy Scow. You interested?”

  “Sure. What’s the problem?”

  “Possible contravention of the Endangered Species Act. Suspicious behaviour near the Oak Bay Recreation Centre. Trespass.”

  The speaker’s name came to me. He was a uniform-branch sergeant named George Barton. I said, “Is Scow in the l
ock-up?”

  Barton chuckled and said, “No. He’s not in the lock-up. Scow’s in Calvert Hunt’s house on Foul Bay Road. But don’t worry. We won’t let him run away.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t think you’d refuse,” Barton said, still chuckling when his phone clicked off.

  Jimmy Scow, I thought. Well, well.

  I was surprised by the depth of my feelings. Jimmy Scow was part of some heavy psychic baggage that I’d been carting around for years. It would, I thought, be nice to get rid of it.

  I went across to the lot behind Swans pub, where my car was parked, but I don’t remember much about my drive to Calvert Hunt’s place. The last time I had been inside that billionaire’s mansion, a murdered man had been in there with me.

  Back then, I had been a detective with Victoria’s Serious Crimes Unit. A 911 call had sent us racing out to Calvert Hunt’s place on Foul Bay Road. When we went inside we found Hunt’s lawyer, a man named Charles Service, kneeling beside a man with a bullet in his head. Minutes earlier, Service had been working in his office. He heard gunshots, looked out of his window and saw an Aboriginal man driving away in a florist’s delivery van. When Service went to investigate, he found the dead man. Valuable paintings and a silver tea service had been stolen.

  There had been a rash of lootings in that part of Victoria. Our initial assumption was that the dead man had been a burglar, shot, perhaps accidentally, by a fellow crook. Things became complicated when we learned that the dead man was Harry Cunliffe Jr. The dead man’s father, Dr. Harry Cunliffe, happened to be Calvert Hunt’s oldest friend.

  There was only one Aboriginal delivery man working for Victoria’s florists in those days. His name was Jimmy Scow. Scow was arrested promptly and denied all knowledge of the crime. He refused to cop a plea or to name accomplices. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. Nevertheless, Victoria’s Crown prosecutor charged Scow with involuntary manslaughter and he was convicted — largely upon the uncorroborated statement of a prison informant. Scow got five years, after which he dropped out of sight. The loot was never recovered.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It was getting dark when I drove up to Calvert Hunt’s mansion. Instead of having a number it had a name: Ribblesdale.

  Ribblesdale was a grandiose two-storey showplace, nearly 100 years old, which epitomized a long-vanished way of life. Its ivy-draped half-timbered façade was right out of Masterpiece Theatre: Welsh slate roof, long galleries of mullioned windows, a porte cochère arching across the driveway. I was crossing a broad flagstone terrace to the front door when it opened and George Barton came out to meet me.

  Barton was big. A 50-year-old cop with small brown eyes, a round flabby face and thin dark hair trimmed close to his head. He looked 10 years older than his age, and his expression was of amused benevolence. When circumstances dictated, Barton could be hard-hearted, ruthless and inflexible.

  “Good to see you, Seaweed,” he said, with bogus heartiness. “Calvert Hunt’s housekeeper called us. Told us there was an intruder on the grounds. Native man, she said, and gave us a good description. It turned out to be Jimmy Scow.” Barton’s smile widened. “Christ, what an idiot. Talk about returning to the scene of a crime. We picked him up near the rec centre and brought him here for the ident.”

  “Has the housekeeper identified Scow positively as the intruder?”

  Barton gave me a look that suggested my question would only occur to a nitwit.

  I said mildly, “Why did you bring Scow to this house for the ident instead of taking him to the station?”

  Barton’s amused expression faded. He made an impatient gesture and snarled, “Because the housekeeper refused to leave this house, that’s why. She was the only person on the premises except for Calvert Hunt. He’s an old man. She has instructions never to leave him unattended.”

  I said sarcastically, “The poor housekeeper. She’s locked up here like a prisoner too. You never thought to show her Jimmy Scow’s photograph, I suppose? It never crossed your mind to get somebody else to babysit the old man while she went away for a few minutes?”

  Barton lost his temper and flushed clear up to his hairline. “I could have,” he hissed, shoving his face up close to mine. “But you know, pal, some of us White people see a picture of a Chinaman or a fucking Indian and we can’t tell one from another. You all look the same to us.”

  Barton had about 50 pounds on me. He bunched fists the size of cantaloupes, and I was wondering whether I’d have to break a knuckle on him or kick his ass up into his chest cavity when he came to his senses. He took a deep breath, gave a conciliatory smile and said, “All right, Seaweed, I’ll level with you. It was Mr. Hunt’s idea. The old man’s still got plenty of clout in this town. I guess the housekeeper told him what was going on. He wanted to have a look at Jimmy Scow for himself. See the guy who murdered young Harry Cunliffe. I okayed it. I didn’t see no harm in it, but maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Okay, George, you did what you did,” I said, smiling to pretend there were no hard feelings. “Let’s go.”

  We went inside the house. Silver chandeliers hung from high, cross-ribbed ceilings. Old portraits in ornate gilt frames frowned down from panelled walls. Heavy traditional furniture of gleaming dark wood stood on the parquetry floors. A large bowl of freshly cut dahlias sat on a polished oak table.

  Calvert Hunt was propped up in a wheelchair at the foot of a staircase, snoring. Iris Naylor, his housekeeper, was sitting in a high-backed chair beside him. There was no sign of Jimmy Scow.

  Miss Naylor rose slowly from her chair. Once, she must have been very pretty. But her good looks had been wasted by a habit of constant frowning. Deep lines creased her face from nose to mouth, and her upper lip was stretched tightly across her teeth. Long auburn hair showed wisps of grey, and she wore it swept tightly back from her face and piled up in an elaborate braided crown. Miss Naylor looked confused. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but she didn’t say anything.

  My encounter with Barton still rankled, but suddenly I felt better. It was as if I’d wandered onto the set of a dramatic farce or an Agatha Christie movie.

  “This way,” Barton said to me, opening a door off the hall.

  “Just a minute,” somebody wheezed. “This is my house. I’m the one who decides what’s what.”

  Calvert Hunt had woken up in his wheelchair. The old billionaire’s face was long and narrow under a sparse crop of white hair. His pro- truding ears were too large for his head. His big red-veined nose flowed down from his forehead in a long line without the least trace of a ridge. His long scrawny neck disappeared into the folds of silk paisley pyjamas. A red blanket covered the lower half of his body. He blinked his narrow brown watery eyes at me, then at Sergeant Barton, and said harshly, “What’s this Indian doing here?”

  Barton looked uncomfortable. He said, “Well, sir, it’s on account of Jimmy Scow, of course. We generally call on Sergeant Seaweed when there’s problems with Natives. We thought you wanted … ”

  Hunt slammed the arm of his chair and yelled, “I already told you what I want. I want Scow jailed. Why don’t you just get on with it?” He listened impatiently to Barton’s apologetic mumblings, shut him up with a wave of his hand, then shouted at me, “Are you going to jail him?”

  “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “Talk! Talk be damned. Scow’s a killer, a menace on the loose. Jail’s the place for him, so what the hell are you waiting for?”

  Hunt’s face was red, his eyes now dry and angry and unfocussed. I laughed at him and said, “We threw out thumbscrews years ago. We’ve even stopped jailing people without just cause.”

  “How much cause do you need?” Hunt bellowed. “Scow was just caught trespassing red-handed.”

  “Was he? It’s time I heard Scow’s side of the story,” I said, turning to Barton. “All right, where is Scow?”

  “This way,” Barton said. As Barton led
me into a reception room, Hunt screeched in the background, “Hear me, Seaweed! That’s the last time you’ll turn your Indian back on me, you sonofabitch. Don’t ever set foot in this house again.”

  I shut the door on Hunt’s bellowing and growled, “Does he ever talk sense?”

  “Not often,” Barton replied. “He’s a right old tyrant.”

  Jimmy Scow was sitting handcuffed in a chair, being watched over by two uniformed constables. Scow was about 30. Short and skinny, with large black angry eyes. He looked at me with an expression of active disgust. He was wearing a black headband, a red-checkered wool shirt and jeans.

  I put my hands in my pockets and looked at him.

  Barton unlocked Scow’s handcuffs and said unpleasantly, “On your feet, sonny. Sergeant Seaweed wants to talk to you.”

  When Scow stood up and moved his feet, small chunks of dried mud flaked off his carved leather cowboy boots. His cast-pewter belt buckle was a wolf’s head about the size of a baby’s fist.

  “These guys had absolutely no legal right to arrest me or to hold me against my will whatsoever,” Scow said to me, enunciating each word with icy precision. “They confiscated my personal private property. They physically assaulted me without just cause.”

  Barton threw a small backpack onto a side table and growled, “Calm down, sonny. This time we’re giving you a break. But if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay well away from Ribblesdale. Meantime, you’re in Sergeant Seaweed’s custody.”

  The Indian pointed a finger at me, something no polite Native would do to another, and said angrily, “Get me outta this. Any more messing and I’m consulting my lawyer.”

  I looked at Barton and tilted my head toward the exit. Barton’s mouth tightened and his fists bunched again, but after a beat he straightened his shoulders and left the room without speaking. The constables stayed with me until I shooed them off as well.

  Jimmy Scow reached into his backpack, took out a small spirit stick and quickly replaced it after checking it for damage.