Seaweed Under Water Read online

  “The trouble was Doyle didn’t move fast enough to suit her. So Janey ups and throws a beer jug at the TV set. It’s a miracle the screen didn’t break; the jug just bounced off of it. Now the Indian’s got the girl on her knees, he’s reaming her, still no sound track. Just Janey, screaming and carrying on. Everybody else in here is pissing themselves, laughing.”

  Candace looked at me expectantly. I didn’t say anything, because I was running the blue movie through my mind, and guessing whom its participants might be.

  “But the best was yet to come,” Candace said. “That girl was Janey’s daughter and the man was her uncle, Harley. Does that blow your mind, or what?”

  I gave Candy $100 and returned to Doyle’s bar. He was polishing the bar with a cloth, and whistling. I said, “Tell me about the blue movie that set Janey off.”

  Doyle appeared to give my question some thought. “You’ll have to remind me, sorr. Which movie would that be, now?”

  Careful to look him right in the eye, I grabbed his wrist, squeezed it hard and warned, “Don’t mess with me, Doyle.”

  Doyle’s air of amusement vanished; suddenly he looked worn and tired. His glance fell. When I let go of his wrist he massaged it absently and said, “There’s people bring movies into the Back Room now and then. That’s how some of these eejits get their kicks. You can rent ’em anywhere. That movie you’re thinking about? I don’t know where it came from or who brought it. Could have been one of the members, I don’t know one more thing about it, and that’s a fact.”

  “You’re a liar, Doyle. I want that movie, so let’s be having it.”

  “I’m sorry to say you can’t have it, sorr, because here’s a funny thing. When Pinky found out about it, he pulled the tape out of the cassette and set it afire, so he did.”

  Doyle smiled a little, but he was lying through his teeth.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  When I left Pinky’s, stars were out and the moon was casting its cold light over the sleeping city. There was a bad taste in my mouth and my ears were ringing. I wished I were with Felicity Exeter. I needed to be with somebody sweet and honest for a change. But our relationship was at the complicated stage where neither of us fully understood the other. I remembered Tess Rollins’ words: Felicity was white, we were of different cultures. She was rich, polished, sophisticated. Were our cultural differences too wide? When I was with her, it never seemed so, but . . .

  The Blackbird Cab Company operates out of an office in the basement of the Blanshard Hotel. I began to stroll that way. I was going down Store Street (an area inhabited after dark by drifters and winos), when a familiar voice said, “What’s up, Silas?”

  The voice belonged to Constable Bradley Sunderland. Sunderland had been pounding a beat the best part of 30 years, and he was the VPD’s unofficial Santa Claus. Every Christmas he toured rest homes, handing out candy bars and playing tin-eared accordion music to captive pensioners. One year, in recognition of such meritorious services, Victoria City Council awarded him a silver plaque. Apart from that plaque, and citations for assault, drunkenness, dereliction of duty and persistent tardiness, Sunderland would have nothing but a boiler-plated pension to show for his years on the force.

  Sunderland was standing in the dark, on the top step of an unlit office building, smoking a cigarette. He said, “Come up here for a minute, unless you’d rather get wet.”

  I joined him. “Is it supposed to rain?”

  “You just wait and see,” Sunderland replied, chuckling, as a street-cleaning vehicle appeared on the street, spouting water and scooping up trash. Water splashed the sidewalks, dousing the bums sleeping in doorways.

  Still chuckling, he said, “I get the driver to adjust his nozzles when he comes along here. Roust these idlers out of it, and wash the smell of them and their piss away.”

  Men and women rolled out of their dripping sleeping bags, cursing. Sunderland was enjoying himself, but I was tired. Fed up and half drunk—the whole episode just struck me the wrong way.

  I said good night, was going back down the steps, when Bradley said, “What do you think about Bulloch retiring, eh?”

  “About time he went,” I snapped. “The era of bent witnesses and rubber hoses is over and done with, thank Christ.”

  “What do you mean, over and done with? Bulloch got results, didn’t he?” Sunderland asked angrily. “Me and Bulloch joined the same year. We’re both on the sunny side of 60.”

  I forced a laugh, tapped Sunderland’s arm and said, “Forget it, I was only kidding. Besides, you don’t look a day over 80.”

  Stiff with rage, Sunderland stormed down the steps and walked out of sight. I rubbed my neck and resumed my walk, following my nose toward the Blanshard Hotel’s neon sign, revolving slowly in the black sky above.

  The Blackbird Cab Company’s duty dispatcher was a heavy woman of 65, wearing a yellow muumuu. I’d phoned; she was expecting me. Her office was the size of a handicapped-washroom and when I entered she had her feet under a tin desk and was speaking into a mouthpiece held in place by a metal band clipped around her dark hair. Smoke curled up from a cigarette, resting in an overflowing ashtray in front of her. She smiled at me. Still talking, she waved me to a flimsy folding metal chair. I sat down on it gingerly and looked at the paperback with which she had been whiling away the graveyard shift. It was a Flying Saucer Manual. Its lurid cover depicted a naked maiden with very large breasts being pursued across an unearthly plain by bug-eyed monsters.

  Her name was Mrs. Scargill. When she finished talking, she scribbled notes into a logbook, put a smouldering cigarette into the exact centre of her lips and took a deep drag. “You interested in space aliens?” she enquired, breathing smoke in my face.

  I couldn’t back up, there was no room, and my chair was already jammed against the wall. “Interested in space aliens? Who isn’t?” I replied. “How else can you explain television? Don’t tell me human beings invented TV. Alien invaders have been monitoring the earth for 50,000 years. It’s just hard to make people believe, that’s all.”

  She looked at me intently, trying to decide if I were serious, and guessed wrongly. “Believing isn’t hard for me, I’m a convert. I’ve done my homework. I was at a convention in California last year. That’s all they were talking about—invaders and alien sperm thefts. I went to a sperm-donor seminar. Had to pay extra, but it was worth it.”

  “I’m sure it was,” I said. “Now, what about the cab that picked up a woman outside Pinky’s?”

  Mrs. Scargill asked me to tell her the exact date and probable hour the cab had been dispatched. I did so. After flipping back through the pages of her logbook she said, “Alf Gzowski picked up a fare at Pinky’s about that time. I wasn’t on duty, myself, but it says here that Alf drove a woman to the Rainbow Motel.”

  Mrs. Scargill’s phone crackled. She shoved the logbook toward me and pointed to the relevant entry with nicotine-stained fingers. The information had been written in a kind of shorthand, but it was plain enough. Alf Gzowski had taken Jane Colby to the Rainbow Motel on what was probably the last night of her life.

  While speaking into her mouthpiece, Mrs. Scargill stubbed out one cigarette, took another from a pack of Player’s and lit it with a disposable lighter. She reached out across the desk, retrieved her logbook and made another entry. Over the next five minutes, she had a flurry of calls, during which I tried to process the new information she’d given me.

  When Mrs. Scargill’s calls abated, she said, “Pretty good log-keeping system, eh? We don’t get every single ride, you know, although we get most of ’em.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Cowboy drivers,” she said. “Some of ’em pick up a fare without reporting in. They make a bit extra on the side that way.”

  “Is Alf Gzowski on duty tonight?”

  Mrs. Scargill shook her head, “Won’t be in until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Alf’s on dayshift right now.”

  She was beginning to tell me about a special c
rystal she’d purchased in Las Vegas. It emitted an eerie glow when alien invaders were in proximity. I was actually quite interested to know what she’d do, should the crystal begin emitting. Her phone crackled again. “It’ll be busy for the next hour,” she said. “Clubs and discos are starting to close.”

  I blew Mrs. Scargill a kiss and went home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I woke up feeling as if an old sock was jammed down my throat. I drank a pint of water and spent five minutes with a tube of Colgate and a toothbrush before normalcy began to return. I put on a pair of much-washed, sun-bleached jeans, a polo shirt and dark blue tennis shoes, and went out to the loaner. Compared to the MG, it steered like a boat and was as responsive as a bad date.

  I drove off the Warrior lands and headed east, toward the Johnson Street Bridge, the very heart of downtown Victoria. I ran into a traffic jam at Catherine Street. The bridge had been raised to let marine traffic traverse the narrows separating the Gorge Waterway from Victoria’s Inner Harbour. I was stuck in traffic for 10 minutes. Alongside, to my right, the E & N Railroad’s ancient red brick engine sheds were doing exactly what they had been doing for the last 100 years. Beyond, the dodgy high-rise condo development that had contributed to Jack Owens’ and Janey Colby’s grief raised its own proud head. Lou’s Cafe was busy, too, when I arrived there just after eight o’clock.

  Bernie Tapp was sitting at our usual table, staring out the window.

  Lou—wearing a tall white chef’s hat with a CAT logo on it—was doing a very creditable imitation of whirling dervishes near his hotplate. Sweat poured down his neck and inside the collar of his shirt. I ordered bacon, eggs, fried string-bean potatoes and whole-wheat toast, and filled my own coffee mug.

  I sat across from Bernie. He looked me over and said, “Had a sleepless night?”

  I said suspiciously, “Why?”

  “Because you look like something the dog dragged in.”

  “Sometimes, your creative use of the English language really amazes me. ‘Something that the dog dragged in?’ Where do you come up with these gems?”

  “Okay,” Bernie said, “How about: Something that’s been left out in the tropic sun then beaten with iron bars for eight hours?”

  “Funny, that describes how you look.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Bernie said. “But I look this way because I’ve been working all night. I haven’t just crawled out of bed.”

  “I didn’t know that DCIs worked long hours.”

  Bernie scowled.

  I said, “What’s up, Chief?”

  “Midnight smash and grab,” Bernie said. “And don’t call me Chief.”

  Overnight, Bernie informed me, thieves had looted a ship-chandler’s store after driving a stolen truck through its plate glass windows. “Third smash and grab this month,” Bernie went on. “In and out in 10 minutes. They got away with canoes, kayaks, fishing gear, brass hardware, floater coats and on and on. The owner told Inspector Manners that she’s lost stuff worth over a hundred grand.”

  “Does the inspector have any leads on who did it?”

  “He thinks it must be an organized professional gang.”

  “Professional? How much skill does it take to drive a truck through a window?”

  Bernie shrugged his shoulders. “A jewelry store was busted last week, probably by the same bunch. The insurance company is on the hook for over a million.”

  Bernie had been leaning across the table. His large hands, protruding from the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt, were as big as hams. The yellow light pouring through the café window gave him a jaundiced look.

  I stated, “I was at Pinky’s last night.”

  “Silas,” he said earnestly, “I hope you were wearing gumboots. Are you that hard up for a piece of ass?”

  “Piece of ass? There you go again. Another lovely word picture painted by Bernardino Tapioca, master of the single entendre.”

  Bernie’s stern visage softened. I said, “Speaking about lovely pictures, what do you know about Pinky’s Back Room Club?”

  “Everything I need to know, probably. Pinky set the racket up about a year ago. It’s just an old-fashioned key club. The vice squad checked it out, saw what went on in there and thought it should be closed down. The crown prosecutor didn’t see it that way. He told Vice there wasn’t much they could do about a private club restricted to paid-up adult members. Amongst other things, it’d be an infringement of their Charter rights. Club members can do more or less what they like in the Back Room when the door’s closed. As long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses, they’re safe.”

  “Jane Colby was a member,” I told him. “She was in the Back Room a few hours before we lost track of her. They were showing triple-X movies. One was homemade, perhaps by its distributor. It was presumably intended for offshore markets, but somebody goofed. The Back Room gang ended up seeing a movie they weren’t supposed to. It might have been a peeping-tom movie, a clandestine shoot. Its leading and probably unwitting actors were Terry Colby and her uncle, Harley Rollins.”

  Bernie made a grunting noise deep in his throat. “We need to get our hands on that tape.”

  “That’d be nice. Doyle, Pinky’s chief bartender, was on duty in the Back Room on the night in question. He told me the tape had been destroyed.”

  “Smart move, if true. Tapes are cheap though. If there’s one, there’ll be others. We just have to find one.”

  “I saw Henry Ferman leaving the Rainbow Motel a while back. He does a lot of business setting up CCTV equipment in gas stations, stuff like that.”

  “You think he made the movie?”

  I shook my head. “I suspect Karl Berger.”

  Bernie was having trouble staying awake. He got up, grabbed our coffee mugs and went across the room to refill them. He brought them back and asked, “Who’s Karl Berger?”

  “He manages the Rainbow Motel.”

  “I must be losing it. Yeah. Karl Berger, I remember now. But you mean ex manager. The motel’s being torn down.” Bernie regarded me with a dissatisfied air and asked, “What makes you suspect Berger?”

  “The last time I went around to the Rainbow Motel, Berger was messing around up a stepladder. It occurred to me even then, that he’d been removing hidden cameras.”

  “Motive, method and opportunity, Berger’s got ’em all,” Bernie said. “How about this: Berger is in the motel when Janey shows up. She’s already put two and two together, so she knows or at least suspects that Berger made the movie. There’s a showdown, Berger murders her to shut her mouth.”

  I told Bernie that my money was on Boss Rollins.

  “Yeah, sure, but wasn’t it a bodybuilder type who brained Owens? That describes Berger perfectly. Look, it fits: both Jane and Berger stay at the Rainbow Motel, so it’s not a stretch for them to be sleeping together. Then things explode at Pinky’s. Berger first attacks the ex-boyfriend, then he and Jane Colby go to the Rainbow, get into a lover’s quarrel and he kills her.”

  Lou came over with breakfast and asked, “What we going to do about the Middle East? Things get any worse between Israel and Lebanon, there’ll be an atomic war.”

  “I’ve got something deeper worrying me,” Bernie said. “It’s this puzzle: How come Tarzan was always clean shaven and could speak English?”

  Lou, his hat tilted rakishly down to his nose, said, “Who?”

  “Tarzan, the guy Johnny Weissmuller played in Saturday afternoon matinees when we were kids. He should have had a beard, communicated by grunts.”

  A workman seated across the café—probably a welder, wearing grimy coveralls pierced by dozens of tiny burn holes—shouted, “Hey, Lou! Where’s my breakfast?”

  Lou scuttled back to his grill.

  Bernie said to me, “Well, whadda you think? Do you think Berger killed her?”

  “He might have, but if he did, his motive’s not very strong. For one thing, his reputation isn’t worth protecting. What would he care if people
found out he makes blue movies?”

  “Yeah, I see your point. But together with the lover’s quarrel angle, it’s stronger. I’ll bring him in for questioning anyway. Arrest him on suspicion, see where things go.”

  “Where it’ll go, Bernie, is straight to the media. It’s your first murder case since being promoted. If you’re wrong about Berger, the media will be all over you. I can see the headlines now: “Victoria’s New Detective Boss Implicated In Farce.”

  Bernie’s eyes glittered. He took a cell phone from his pocket and said, “I’m still gonna do it.”

  “Before you make that call, there’s something else you should hear about first.”

  He put the cell phone down reluctantly. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Janey left Pinky’s in a Blackbird cab driven by a man named Alf Gzowski. Somebody better talk to Gzowski as soon as

  possible.”

  “And you’d like that somebody to be you right? You’d like me to give you the go-ahead, do some more private digging, right?”

  “Sure, why not. I’m not busy, and Inspector Manners has his hands full.”

  Bernie said without hesitation, “So? What you waiting for?”

  Good question. What was I waiting for—for the oyster to give up its pearl, the Sphinx its secrets?”

  Bernie said, “You’re a damned good detective, Silas. Your talent’s wasted, fooling around with neighbourhood policing schemes, so how about it? Move back to headquarters and work with me again. It’ll be like old times.”

  “You, me and Nice Manners. One big happy crime-busting gang. It’s tempting, in a way.”