Seaweed in the Soup Read online

  Lightning said, “I’ve got to talk to somebody, I’ve just got to. There’s more to this than . . . I’m talking about maiming and killing people. More lives are at stake if I don’t get some help.”

  “Okay,” I said wearily. “Spell it out for me, what’s the problem?”

  “It’s not that easy. I can’t talk on the phone, we’ve got to meet face to face,” Bradley was saying when the phone went dead. I thought I’d lost him until moments later, when he said urgently, “My life is in your hands, pal. You’ve got to come over here. Please come over here.”

  “Where are you?”

  Instead of replying, he groaned.

  “If I don’t know where you are, how am I supposed to find you?”

  “I’ll find you,” Bradley said, hanging up.

  Call display told me that Bradley was in town. I phoned Telus. After the usual runaround, I was put through to a competent supervisor who told me that the number in question corresponded to a public phone located at the Ross Bay Cemetery end of Dallas Road. I called headquarters and left a message for Bernie Tapp, who was at a meeting.

  The bedraggled woman was still on the street when I closed my window blinds and left my office. She stumbled towards me, high and disoriented, dirty and bare legged, her face contorted with misery. She was about 40 years old and wouldn’t live to see 45. I gave her a dollar and tried to put her, and Bradley, out of my mind as I strolled towards the Inner Harbour.

  Deep-fry odours lured me down to a waterfront pier at the foot of Broughton Street, where young entrepreneurs had converted a couple of steel shipping containers into a fish and chip shop. I paid eight bucks for a sackful of halibut and fries. Munching steadily, contented as a cow in clover, I ambled south along wooden docks crowded with summer tourists. To my right, beyond a small boat marina, the harbour lay smooth and green. Highrise apartment buildings and hotels loomed upright, casting shadows in the breathless air. Leaving the boardwalk, I passed through a small green park and an area of busy restaurants and shops on my way back to Pandora Street, got back to the office, and had a nap.

  About six o’clock, I took out the office bottle, had a little drink, and allowed myself to worry about Lightning Bradley. I was still agonizing when Bernie Tapp showed up.

  He said without preamble, “Forensics found something interesting in Raymond Cho’s BMW.”

  “Such as?”

  “Traces of cocaine, and a complete set of Lightning Bradley’s fingerprints. It doesn’t end there, either. Forensics also found cocaine traces in Lightning’s Crown Royal.”

  Instead of telling Bernie that I already knew all that, I said, “Lightning phoned me this afternoon. I called you right after but you were at a meeting.”

  “What time did you call me?”

  “Two, three hours ago. Lightning told me he was in a jam. He wants to meet me, and talk. He asked me to keep it confidential. I told him I would.”

  “Good boy. In murder cases, strategy trumps privacy every time,” Bernie said. “When do you meet?”

  “He’s gonna call me, let me know.”

  I went on to tell Bernie about the conversation I’d had with Tudor Collins.

  “Fine, I think we should follow that up,” Bernie said, a grin splitting his face. “Let’s go for a little drive.”

  Talking strategy all the way, Bernie drove us across town to the Titus Silverman Memorial Recycling Depot.

  Little had changed since Titus Silverman had been murdered, one year previously. Now owned by Tubby Gonzales, Titus’ former chief lieutenant, the recycling depot operated out of a flat-roofed utilitarian building located in an industrial area adjacent to one of Victoria’s minor navigable waterways. Scruffy binners were trading bottles and cans for cash at tables on the sidewalk in front of the depot. Abandoned shopping carts lay everywhere. We parked next to a tarpaulin-draped car in a churned field littered with shards of glass and scraps of jagged metal. Clumps of grass and a few scraggly bushes shook in a light summer breeze. A small muddy incline sloped down to the Gorge waterway’s mucky green waters.

  We tried to enter the depot through a back door marked NO VISITERS—TRASPASSARS KILLED, but it was locked. I kicked the door a couple of times. Nothing happened, so I kept kicking until the judas hole opened. A voice told me to fuck off. I showed my badge. When I tried the door handle again, it wasn’t locked. We went in.

  Inside, surrounded by mountains of cardboard boxes, five men and a woman were playing Texas Hold’em at a felt-covered octagonal table. Bernie and I went past the gamblers without creating a ripple of interest. Bernie shoved open an unpainted wooden door, and we went into a small, square, windowless room with unpainted gyproc walls, a concrete floor with a square of brown furry carpet on it, and the kind of furniture appropriate to a recycling facility. This was surprising. The office could have been furnished like Louis the Fifteenth’s drawing room, because, according to Victoria’s drug squad, the Gonzales outfit was buying two keys of cocaine a month from Vancouver, cutting it to make six, selling it down the line to their street dealers and pocketing about eighty thousand dollars every month.

  Today’s was my second visit to this office in less than a year; nothing much had changed in the meantime.

  Sitting behind a desk poring over a dog-eared jerk-off magazine was a Mexican. The thin hair on the top of his head was worn in a farcical combover. His name was Tubby Gonzalez. He had bad breath and the consummate liar’s frank unwavering gaze. It focussed on me as I entered and took his measure. Gonzalez was somewhere between forty and fifty years old, on the short side and a little overweight. His shoulders were probably no wider than an ordinary door. On the desk in front of him, overflowing with butts, was a hubcap that he was using as an ashtray.

  History continued to repeat itself when I said, “Remember me?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “This is Chief Detective Inspector Tapp.”

  Gonzales smiled, but his eyes were dead cruel and cold. They were the eyes of a vicious hoodlum. A flicker appeared in their murky depths, and then they coiled into darkness again.

  Bernie did the talking. He said, “When’s the last time you took a trip down Collins Lane?”

  After a nicely judged pause for suspense, Gonzales said, “Is that supposed to be a riddle? The only trip I’ve taken lately is down Memory Lane.”

  Nobody laughed. Gonzales’ excessively insolent manner remained intact, but sweat had appeared on his otherwise unruffled brow. He wasn’t as calm as he pretended to be.

  “Things are going smoothly since we dug Titus Silverman’s body out of Goldstream Park, are they?” Bernie asked him. “Recycled cans to China, empty bottles to the glassworks, cocaine to Government Street.”

  “Another riddle? Coke to Government Street? I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about. Even if I did know, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to tell the fuzz.”

  Grinning, Bernie sat down at a chair in front of the desk. I folded my arms and tried to look tough.

  Bernie made a big production of smoothing his healthy head of hair with the flat of his hand, and then said, “I think you should start wearing a hat, Tubby.”

  “My name’s Tomas, not Tubby.”

  Bernie said, “Weather like this, Tubby, with lots of damaging UV rays pouring out of the sky, it’s bad for the naked scalp. You think that dinky comb-over is going to protect your skin from malignant melanoma?”

  Gonzales gave him a brooding look from beneath his heavy dark eyebrows. “Are you trying to frighten me, Inspector?”

  “Chief Inspector, and no, Tubby, I’m trying to be helpful,” Bernie retorted. “If you had been wearing a hat when you and one of your sidekicks masqueraded as customs inspectors on Collins Lane last week, and if you’d been using breath mints when you attacked one of my officers, we might not be here now. You could have saved yourself this interrogation and a shitload of aggravation.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve got better things to . . .
”

  “Cut the crap.” Bernie leaned forward. “Those Collins Lane mansions have CCTVs up to their ying yangs. We’ve got time-dated pictures of you and your buddy, talking to people. The pictures are grainy black-and-whites, but it’s you all right. Tubby Gonzales. To back things up, what we’ll do is, we’ll put you in a lineup with a few more other ugly Latinos, and let our witnesses point you out. Witnesses who will testify that you told them you were with Canadian customs and immigration. That’s a serious offence in itself, but there’s worse to come.”

  Gonzales tried to read Bernie’s expression, but he was keeping it blank. Bernie was lying. Collins’ CCTV camera didn’t work, but the lies were effective. Gonzales opened his mouth, swallowed some air, but wisely decided to keep mum.

  Bernie said, “Where were you late Saturday night, early Sunday morning?”

  Gonzales’ expression seemed frozen, but shifting currents moved in his eyes. He said, “Me and my girlfriend went to the pictures, the seven o’clock show. Eighteen bloody dollars for two tickets. Then we get to endure fifteen minutes of goddamn Toyota commercials before the show starts. After the picture ended, me and her had coffee and dessert at a cafe downtown. Then we went home to bed.”

  “The pictures, eh? What show was on?”

  “Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a drama, on at the Odeon. I wanted to see Leonardo Di Caprio in Body of Lies, but she told me that if I let her have her own way, I’d have a different promise to look forward to after I took her home, so I gave in,” Gonzales said, beating a little rat-a-tat-tat on the desk with his stubby fingers. “I seem to recall putting the ticket stubs in my pockets, I’ve probably still got ’em.”

  “I think you’ve probably got ticket stubs, but they won’t be yours, because you weren’t at the pictures, were you?”

  Gonzales smiled.

  Bernie said. “Have you read today’s paper?”

  Gonzales thought for a moment before he shook his head.

  “There’s a story on the front page that you might find interesting. Sunday night, the man you were looking for on Collins Lane was brutally attacked and murdered. You had means, motive and opportunity so just remember this, Tubby. We’ll be back. Don’t leave town without telling us first.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I drove over the Johnson Street Bridge to a mixed industrial-residential area in Vic West. Boatyards, corner grocery stores and dreary crackerjack houses stood intermingled with marine-electronics shops, propeller shops and the like. Roads inclined up from the harbour like ladders. The day had dawned hot and humid, but it was a little cooler down near the water.

  The Ballard Diner turned out to be a greasy spoon squeezed between a Shell station and a boatyard. The vehicles parked on the loose gravel in front made it look like a car wrecker’s yard. I parked my MG between a rusty Ford Tudor and a mint condition ’55 Chevy Bel Air. I noticed that the diner’s front door opened outwards and that it was loose in its frame. The lock was a good one. A spring-mounted bell jingled when I entered.

  The diner was jammed with blue-collar longshore types. Johnny Cash poured his heart out from a jukebox. Country music for men who went down to the docks and worked on ships. I sat down at the counter next to an elderly unshaven dockrat missing half his front teeth and wearing a Canucks cap and khaki dungarees. The diner’s windows overlooked a harbour bustling with workboats and yachts. I had plenty of time to admire the view, because the counterman/cook had his hands full.

  The Coho car ferry was leaving for Port Angeles. A passenger-catamaran was inbound from Seattle. Tied up at the Ogden Point terminal was a massive multi-decked cruise ship as tall as the Empress Hotel. Maybe the diner’s cook hated the view though, because his mouth was tight and he had misery written all over him. Stiff and gangly, he wore a collarless white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a blue apron. He moved arthritically in orthopedic shoes, and I surmised that extracting information from him would be an uphill job. I ordered bacon and eggs, hash browns and whole-wheat toast, and sipped a cup of very good strong coffee while he prepared my breakfast. His unhurried economy of motion, perfected over many years, was a treat to watch. I wondered whether he’d learned his trade in the navy. He looked old enough to be a Korean War vet.

  I was wearing civilian clothes. When the opportunity arose, and without making a fuss about it, I showed him my badge and said, “When you have a minute, I need to talk to you.”

  “I ain’t got a minute.”

  “Mister, you need a waitress.”

  The old-timer sitting next to me chuckled.

  The cook put my breakfast down in front of me before saying, “My waitress hasn’t come in yet. She didn’t come to work yesterday neither.”

  “That’d be Maria?”

  The cook gave me a thoughtful look, but didn’t reply.

  “Give me her phone number,” I said. “I’ll call her for you, tell her how much you miss her.”

  The cook straightened up and looked me in the eye. After a great show of deliberation, he said shrewdly, “I don’t give out my employees’ phone numbers or personal information.”

  “How about giving me some HP sauce to pour on these excellent hash browns?”

  “No HP? That’s a tragedy,” the cook said. “I’m working here on my own since five this morning and it’s been a long day already. Maybe I’m losing it.”

  “I’d still like some HP sauce.”

  It came eventually, but by then I’d finished my breakfast. The diner remained crowded, otherwise I might have taken the cook into a back room and resorted to threats. Even though I knew that threats probably wouldn’t work, because he seemed savvy enough to know that I couldn’t force him to cooperate. I couldn’t even search his premises without papers and, if I tried it, the police board would put me out to pasture. As long as he minded his own business, the cook/counterman was safe.

  When I went out, the elderly customer followed me. He had a lined grey face and washed-out watery eyes. His back was stooped. He walked with a cane and a forward-leaning lurch. He had a greasy neck, unlovely nose hairs, and a cheerful grin.

  I was unlocking the MG when he came up and said, “I heard you talking to Buster. You’re a cop, I seen you show Buster your badge. Am I right, or am I right?”

  I leaned back against the car door and put my hands in my pockets. I didn’t say anything.

  “I hear cops pay for information sometimes.”

  I smiled, wondering whether I’d hear something useful.

  “I got a room nearby,” he went on, speaking with many hand gestures. “I’m in and out of the diner all the time. Buster is always close-mouthed, but he’s worse since Maria ran out on him.”

  “Good help is hard to find.”

  The old guy found my comment amusing. When he finished chortling, he said, “Yeah, that waitress was a pretty little thing. Indian kid, popular as all get out.”

  “If you’ve got something other than idle gossip to tell me, say it.”

  “Sure I’ve got something, that’s why I’m talking to you. I’ve got something that maybe you can use.”

  His grin widened. He had my undivided attention. He gazed at me expectantly as I brought out my wallet and peeled off a twenty.

  He made a grab for it, but I held it out of his reach.

  He said, “I’d tell you for nothing if I had the dough, but I have a hard time making it on my lousy pension.”

  “For twenty bucks I want more than chitchat.”

  “I know what you want.”

  “Do you have Maria’s address or phone number?”

  “No, I don’t. I got something better than that.”

  The old-timer’s name was Colin Topham. He lived in a decrepit boarding house near Spinnaker’s pub. I drove him over there. His room was up two flights of worn uncarpeted stairs. The whole house was fetid with the curdled odours of fried food and of clothing that had ripened on smelly bodies. Using a key dangling from a string looped around his neck, Topham unlocked a door and l
et me into a small room cluttered with a black-and-white TV, a sagging vinyl sofa, an unpainted pine table and two mismatched wooden chairs. Yesterday’s dishes soaked in a sink full of greasy water. The room’s single narrow window was jammed shut. It was hot enough to roast clams in there. Topham didn’t seem to mind the lack of air, but I did. He looked aggrieved when, after a struggle, I managed to get the window open.

  When that house had been built, the window had afforded sweeping views of tree-covered hills, sawmills, Esquimalt Harbour, shipyards and docks busy with steamships loading timber for Europe. Now the window looked out on a sea of houses and commercial buildings.

  Topham brought out a photo album and placed it on the table. When he had found what he wanted, he put his finger on the page and closed the album to prevent my seeing what was in it.

  Topham said, “So what about it, mister? How much money are we talking about?”

  Poverty, not greed, made his face suddenly ratlike and sly.

  “Twenty,” I said, giving him a mean-eyed stare.

  Topham opened the album. It was a disappointment. Instead of photographs, the album contained dozens of amateurish pencil drawings.

  “That’s Maria,” Topham said proudly. “See the way the light comes from over her left shoulder and makes kind of a halo around her face? I sent it to a magazine, it’s what you call a life study.”

  Topham had the best of the bargain. Raymond Cho’s digital camera had provided all the photographs of Maria that we could use. Topham’s cookie-cutter sketch showed a square-faced girl. To me it was completely useless. But I felt sorry for the old guy, so I gave him the twenty, shoved the drawing in my pocket, wished Topham good luck and went back down the stairs.

  Along the street from Topham’s house was a corner store. I went in to pick up the day’s newspaper and idly checked the shelves: groceries, soaps, shampoos, Aspirin, soft drinks, potato chips and Cheezies.

  Baking soda, metallic scouring pads and butane lighters. A crackhead’s holy trinity, but not much needed nowadays when dealers sell ready-made crack. Mix a little soda with a hit of coke, add drops of water, fire it up with the butane lighter, let it cool enough to crystallize and you’ve got yourself a pipeful. If you stick a chunk of scouring pad in the stem of your pipe, it will collect some of the vapours. Fire up the scouring pad later for a weak hit when the jitters set in.