Seaweed Under Water Read online

  “I thought he’d already left.”

  “Technically. He’s still on the payroll a few more weeks.”

  “I’m not entirely surprised. You did tell me that a very reliable sex-obsessed woman called Daphne had reported me.”

  “She’s not the only one. I don’t suppose Harley Rollins likes your manners either.”

  “Did he file an official complaint?”

  “No, but I should think he’s considering it.”

  “Boss Rollins attempted to have me murdered, he’s not entirely unbiased.”

  “In your opinion, that is.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Actually, I do believe you. Except I’m your friend, Bulloch isn’t. He’s hated you since the days you were a detective constable under his direct command. He hates you because you deliberately get up his nose. Bulloch was Victoria’s chief detective. You interfered in the Calvert Hunt murder inquiry, solved the case yourself and made Bulloch look bad. You did the same thing with the Ellen Lemieux case. You’re a neighbourhood cop, one step up from a Boy Scout. Let me remind you: nowadays, your job is to help little old ladies across the road.”

  I felt a growing irritation and opened my mouth to tell Bernie that I’d never sought credit for solving either of those cases. He went on, “Forget Internal Affairs. Bulloch would have bled you white, but he’s on the way out. I’ll close the operation down. It was his last desperate attempt to ruin you.”

  “Old cops and old cons are the same,” I mused. “They keep going back to the spot where their skids were greased.”

  “Some old cops, maybe. Police detection works best when there’s cooperation. The force works because it has an established hierarchy, established leadership, set rules and regulations. Bureaucracy is a necessary component of our business.”

  He was right. I said, “Let’s meet for breakfast, tomorrow? Eight o’clock, Lou’s Café?”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there. Maybe you’ll see sense, take me up on my offer. You’d look good in an inspector’s uniform.”

  “Gotta go,” I said, getting up from my seat. “I’ve another appointment at four o‘clock.

  But when I got back to the reserve, Chief Alphonse was absent. Maureen, the band secretary, told me he’d be away for a day or two; our scheduled conversation would have to wait.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  That night, I had trouble sleeping. About three o’clock, I got out of bed. Crazy ideas flapped around in my head like deranged birds. I tried to wash them away with a slug of rye. I drank it quickly, poured myself another and sat down in an armchair, trying to evolve theories that would explain recent events without recourse to the supernatural.

  Chief Alphonse believed that, in his quest for power, Harley Rollins had stayed underwater for a long time. But had he? In the minds of Coast Salish and other First Nations peoples, the natural and supernatural worlds are inseparable. Each is intrinsically joined to the other. Religious knowledge, and practical knowledge, both are necessary for survival. Many Coast Salish Vision Quests involve swimming and diving in deep cold water where—in states of breathless trance—Questers encounter the supernatural overseers that afterwards govern their lives. People prepare to receive spirit power after rigorous cleansing rituals involving fasts and bathing. Only individuals socially and physically cleansed are thought ready to engage in Vision Quests, and to receive the knowledge and strength necessary for survival.

  In the Coast Salish religious pantheon, there is an entity known as Hayls, the Transformer. Hayls came down from the north with his friends Mink and Raven. Hayls taught the first people how to live and speak, how to make houses and fishnets. Hayls is powerful, although our chief supernatural entity is the Sun. Sun, ruler of men and birds—everything that creeps, walks and flies, including creatures from the Unknown World, such as earth dwarfs and water dwarfs.

  My whisky glass was empty. I poured another three fingers.

  If Billy Cheachlacht did see Harley Rollins dive into the Gorge that night, and did not see him surface for a long time, then one might assume that he’d been under water for that whole time. Not necessarily. Perhaps Harley had swum under water for a while, before surfacing in a spot where Billy Cheachlacht couldn’t see him. On the other hand, if Harley had actually been under water for all of that time, was there a rational explanation? Perhaps an under water tunnel or air pockets? Influenced no doubt by the rye I was drinking, many unlikely scenarios presented themselves to scrutiny, some more absurd than others.

  My thoughts turned to Detective Chief Inspector Bulloch.

  I thought Bulloch was a very tough nut. I wondered what he’d really had in mind when he’d turned his dogs onto me. Pure vindictiveness, just because I’d stepped on his toes? Bulloch was an unsavoury, constipated bureaucrat, but he had risen to DCI rank. I had to admit, he wasn’t a complete fool. Turning tracking dogs loose against his officers was an expensive proposition, however, not something to be lightly done. The object of his exercise, undoubtedly, was to get me chucked off the force. Would I be a fool and oblige him?

  I gargled with salt water, cleaned my teeth and lay down on my bed for an hour.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pinky’s Bar and Grill was a redneck dive on View Street. When I got there, about eleven o’clock that night, big chopped Harleys with long chromed forks, handlebars as high as your head and high-gloss paint jobs were parked outside. Inside, a band was playing deafening rock on a small stage. Overweight bikers with the usual tattoos and earrings were quaffing ale, eating half-raw steaks, or lurching around the dance floor with puffy-faced blondes wearing minis and spike heels.

  I was drinking house rye and ginger at the bar. Doyle, Pinky’s red-haired bartender, was wearing a Foster’s apron, black pants and a starched white shirt with rolled up sleeves. He had the red complexion, watery eyes and slightly fuzzy voice of a man who drank all day long. Doyle noticed my empty glass and gave me an interrogative look. I said okay and told him to have one himself. Doyle mixed another rye and ginger, placed it on a fresh bar mat and moved a dish of peanuts closer to my elbow. A mirror behind the bar reflected the bald spot on the back of Doyle’s head.

  I said, “I don’t see any bouncer here tonight.”

  Doyle—who learned his trade in Belfast—said, “Would you be referring to Warren Harris, sorr?”

  “Yes I would, unless Pinky has more than one bouncer on his payroll.”

  “I wouldn’t call Warren a bouncer, sorr,” said Doyle. “Warren’s just a waiter, so he is. Only time we need real muscle is when there’s expensive name bands playing. That’s when Pinky puts a cover charge on. He hires a couple of bikers to stand outside, so he does, to keep out the filth and check IDs. The kind of fellers we let inside, we wouldn’t generally be needing any muscle at all. At all, at all.”

  Doyle pulled himself a glass of draft, threw back his head and poured it down his throat. He brushed foam from his lips with the back of a hand and directed a grateful smile at me.

  “So tell me, who ejected Jack Owens a few nights ago?”

  “Ejected, sorr? Harris carried the poor helpless soul outside, is all. What it was, was this. Somebody brained your man Owens with a bottle.”

  “Where’s Harris tonight?”

  Doyle pointed his finger at a large, 30-year-old, heavyset man with a broad spread nose. “That’s him. Serving drinks to that foursome over there.”

  I finished my drink, set the glass down on the bar, wandered casually across the room and sat at a table near the band. When Warren Harris came over I said, “Bring me a double rye and ginger, and have one yourself.”

  Harris carried his tray across to the bar and spoke a few words to Doyle. Harris returned with my drink and said, “You were asking questions about me?”

  “Not about you personally. I asked Doyle if there was a bouncer on duty. My name’s Seaweed.”

  “Doyle says you’re a cop.”

  “That’s right. I am. I am an off-duty cop. Sit dow
n a minute.”

  A thin woman came out of the ladies room, looked around and ended up at a table adjacent to mine. She was 30 or so, garbed in a dark, long-sleeved dress made of some soft, silky material. When she rested her elbows on her table, the sleeves slid down from her wrists, exposing the scabs and needle tracks on her thin white arms.

  Harris did not appear to be the kind of man who’d take any crap. He was wearing wraparound shades, a purple polo shirt and red pants. With an air of cultivated amusement, he sat next to me and said, “You’re off duty tonight, are you?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “In that case, what I’m thinking is, maybe you want to score some crystal? Nail some pussy?”

  “Like the lady sitting at the next table, for instance.”

  Harris laughed. “If I tried, I might be able to arrange someone better for you.”

  Harris thought he had my number, which suited me. I said, “There was a punch-up in here a few nights back. A man called Jack Owens was involved in a disturbance. Correct?”

  “More or less. Jack Owens ended up on the floor, bleeding, but Jack didn’t cause the disturbance. Somebody else did.”

  “Who was that?”

  “One of our regulars, a skank called Jane Colby.”

  I wondered if it were possible that Harris didn’t know she was dead. I let that pass and said, “Tell me what happened that night.”

  Harris sighed; it was as if I’d placed a burden on his patience. He said, “Jack Owens and Jane Colby used to be a couple. I think they met each other right here in Pinky’s one night. Then they had a falling-out. That night you’re talking about; it was busy in here. Janey was drinking by herself, half in the bag. Owens was minding his own business at the bar, sitting with his back to the room. I guess neither of them knew the other one was here.” Harris shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Then, just about closing time, Janey flips out of her gourd, starts screaming her fool head off. Owens turns around and sees it’s her. Jack went over to see what’s the trouble. Janey went nuts, tried to scratch his eyes out. I dragged ’em apart. The next thing I knew, a war had broken out. A regular headbanger, with half-cut assholes punching each other out, bottles flying, the works. Owens went down.

  “Doyle called 911, cops and meat wagons showed up. I went looking for Janey, planning to chuck her out too, but she saved me the trouble. Pulled herself together and asked Doyle to call her a taxi. When the taxi came, I put her in it. She told the driver to take her home, and that was that.”

  “You said home. Do you remember the address she gave the driver?”

  “No-o, sorry.”

  “I don’t suppose you noticed which cab company it was, either.”

  Harris put his head to one side as he thought that question over. He said without conviction, “It might have been a Blackbird cab.”

  Across the room, a biker was trying to lift an ATM from its foundations. Harris asked, “Can I get you anything? The sky’s the limit, in here.”

  I shook my head. Harris went over to the ATM, put both arms around the biker’s stomach, squeezed, and manhandled him off the premises.

  The band had hiked its decibel level several notches higher than I found comfortable. I moved back to the bar for the benefit of my ears.

  Two minutes later, the woman in the black silky dress was sitting next to me. Her name, she said, was Candace. She brushed my leg with a smooth bare thigh and said, “There was a time, mister, when they wouldn’t let Siwashes into this place.”

  I had nowhere to go with that one so I let it ride. She was bad news, although her long beautiful legs reminded me of Felicity Exeter. I asked Candace what she was drinking.

  “Mint juleps,” she said.

  “You a southern girl?”

  “I’m a girl who likes the north, east, west and, if you’d like to try it, the south too. Just as long as you pay the freight,” she said, and ran her tongue over her lips.

  When she finished her drink, I asked her if she’d like another.

  “Sure,” she said. “Ain’t you the nice little gentleman.”

  Doyle poured another rye and ginger for me, and mixed a julep for my delightful companion. Doyle made his juleps with real mint. Candace picked the mint leaves out of her glass and chewed them before drinking. She leaned toward me and her black dress opened at the neck, revealing quite lovely breasts. She shifted her pelvis and said, “If you’ve finished admiring my titties, how about we finish these drinks and go to my place?”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay here.”

  “I’m not good enough for you?”

  I thought about those scabs and tracks, now hidden by her long sleeves. Smiling, I lifted my glass to my lips and drained it.

  “Fine, so I slam a little junk. Does that make me dog meat?” she snapped.

  Doyle said, “Will it be another couple for the road now, sorr?”

  I shook my head. I’d been drinking for quite a while and was feeling the weight of it. The band belonged in a garage, not a public bar. Candace squeezed my knee and said, “I heard you talking to Harris, earlier. If you want to know about Jane Colby, I’m the one you should be talking to.”

  Doyle had overheard. He made an impatient gesture and said sharply, “Off you go, Candy. Be a good girl and leave the gentleman alone.”

  Candace didn’t say anything, but, fast as snake, her hand snaked across the bar and her long red fingernails scratched the air an inch from Doyle’s face.

  Grinning, Doyle shoved my tab toward me across the bar.

  I was reaching for my wallet when Candace grabbed my elbow. “Come on, it’s still early,” she said, moving restlessly on her stool. “Let’s sit together at that table over there. We’ll have one more drink and I’ll tell you all about the Back Room. What do you say?”

  “You watch your bloody mouth, now, Candy,” Doyle said menacingly.

  “Fuck you and the goat you rode in on,” Candace retorted.

  The band packed up their instruments. There was a merciful pause in the noise, until Doyle hit a switch. Wall-mounted speakers the size of coffins piped Led Zeppelin into the room.

  I owed Doyle $56. I peeled three 20s from my wallet and dropped them on the bar. There were a couple of fifties in my wallet. When Candace saw them, her smile widened.

  I stood up and told Doyle to keep the change.

  “Don’t you be going and paying any notice of any malarkey she might tell you about the Back Room, sorr,” Doyle said in his thick brogue. “The Back Room is private, members only. You have to be a member, sorr, to get in the Back Room. Costs $100 a year. And you have to come recommended, sorr.”

  “And you can go play with yourself, Doyle,” Candace retorted. “I’m a member, see? A Back Room Club Member in good standing. I’ve got my own fucking key.”

  Candace stood up. Moving unsteadily on those spike heels, she tottered away from the bar and between the drunken bikers gyrating around the floor with their mommas. After a moment, I followed her.

  There was one more room in Pinky’s. Candace used her key to open a door hidden behind the bandstand, and I followed her into a small airless rectangular facsimile of the club we’d just left. It was unoccupied and dark, until Candace flicked a light switch, whereupon strings of tear-shaped Christmas tree lights, looped around the walls, bathed the room in a dim purple haze.

  “Janey Colby’s been picked up and laid down in here more times than the Queen of Clubs,” Candace said, gazing wickedly at the room’s collection of cheap mismatched chairs and tables—some of which lay upturned—and at a huge plasma screen television set angled against a corner, from whose blank opaque glass my own dim image was reflected. The room’s miniature bar was securely locked behind a sliding metal screen.

  Candace said, “Shut the door, Siwash. I need a smoke.”

  I closed the door. Candace opened her purse, took out a joint and lit it with a match. The smell of marijuana was soon blending with the Back Room Club’s residual odours of booze, hot swe
aty flesh, urine and yesterday’s deodorant.

  She righted one of the room’s upturned chairs and sat on it backwards, her legs wide, one arm draped across the chair’s backrest. She said, “Can I trust you to do the right thing by me, big boy?”

  “Can you suggest any reason why I’d want to?”

  “You’re interested in Janey Colby and I’m going to tell you a story, maybe it’ll be worth something,” she said. She took a few greedy drags and then offered the joint to me.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not exactly Mr. Conviviality, are you?”

  “I suppose you know I’m a cop.”

  “Sure I know. So what’s next? Are you going to bust me for possession?”

  “No.”

  “The last I heard, cops paid for information.”

  “Only if it’s worth something.”

  She took a clip from her bag and smoked the joint right down, before grinding it under the sole of her high heels. “The thing you don’t know about Janey Colby is, she was no angel. After that husband of hers died, she needed to earn a living, and the way she earned it, she fucked the whole coast. For years. Janey fucked her way from Vancouver to Puerto Vallarta and back. I don’t mean she was a street hooker; Jane was always high class. Whatever you call it, it sure beats pounding a typewriter, and it pays better too.

  “Janey’s on the game?”

  “She was, for years, till she polished her resumé and latched up with Jack Owens. What I’m saying is she was no angel. Back to that night in here, the night Janey went bananas. It was blue movie night; there were only a handful of us.”

  “You were watching blue movies?”

  “Explicit. Doyle was running the show and pouring drinks. Things were more or less normal, till Doyle slides in a fresh cassette. A cheap little homemade video it was, shot by some amateur with a minicam. It started off slow, no soundtrack—just a fat little aboriginal in a bedroom with a young girl. At first, they’re just talking to each other, their lips are moving anyway. She’s drinking coke from a can. He’s smoking a joint. Then the Indian guy jumps up, grabs the girl and flips her onto ass. Next thing is, she’s got both legs open, and he’s going down on her. It’s nothing special, right? But when Janey Colby looked up and saw what was showing on the screen, she just completely lost it, started screaming at Doyle to turn the TV off.