Seaweed on the Street Read online

“It won’t get you anywhere, acting the hard-ass,” I said. “That your medicine bag?”

  Instead of answering, Scow hooked the backpack over his shoulder and marched toward the door. Halfway, he changed his mind. He looked out of a window. Whatever he saw, it failed to please him.

  I sat down on a leather club chair and suggested, “Since you’re here, why don’t you tell me about it?”

  He turned glittering black eyes on me and said, “Remember me?” His voice was slow and surly, but a shade less hostile.

  “Yeah, Jimmy. I remember you.”

  He said, “Yah, hey, brother.” After thinking about it, he sat down on a chair.

  I said, “You want anything? Coffee? I guess they could rustle some up.”

  “No, I wouldn’t take nothing from them bastards,” Jimmy said. “This arrest crap. All it was, I’ve been doing T’sumqalaks ritual.”

  “On Foul Bay Road?”

  “It don’t matter where I was doing it. I was minding my own business. Them cops picked me up because my face don’t fit. They found an eagle feather in my medicine bag and made a federal case out of it.” Scow shook his head and added angrily, “That eagle feather has been in my family longer’n White men have been on Vancouver Island.”

  “There’s a witness outside ready to testify you’ve been trespassing here,” I said, not unkindly. “Trespassing on Calvert Hunt’s property? Jimmy, you ought to know better.”

  “The judge handed me five years. I ironed out three parts of it in William Head jail and the rest on probation,” Scow retorted. “It was railroad city but I’ve done my sentence. Now I go where I like.”

  “Fine, I hear you, you’re pissed. But I still want to know. Where have you been doing T’sumqalaks ritual?”

  “North Saanich way, mostly,” Scow said, with less belligerence.

  I thought about that. Native origin myths explain witchcraft quite explicitly, and witchcraft stories had been coming out of North Saanich recently. The latest one involved a wolf with a human face loping along a beach near Canoe Cove.

  I crossed my legs. Jimmy stared at the fancy silk rug lying on the parquet. I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay, Jimmy. Keep talking.”

  Scow shrugged his narrow shoulders. I waited. Scow was good at waiting too. At last he said something in Cowichan, a language I don’t speak. Whatever he said, I knew it wasn’t a benediction.

  But at last he said in English: “I inherited T’sumqalaks ritual and Wolf Song from my dad. The old man had power, but he never used it. Me, I’ve known I’ve had strong power since I was a kid. People have been hearing about my power and sending for me.”

  “Coast Salish people?”

  “Salish and Nimpkish. Haidas. Whoever comes to me, I listen.”

  “These people that you’ve been working with. What do they want? Wealth power? Gambling power?”

  Scow raised his shoulders and showed me the palms of both hands, but he didn’t answer my question.

  I thought some more: T’sumqalaks Woman gave birth to four children who were wolves. One night, T’sumqalaks Woman was down on the beach digging clams when she heard a noise coming from her house. She tied a torch to her clam-digging stick and looked secretly through a chink in her wall and saw that her young wolves had taken off their skins and were human beings.

  “I think you’ve been eating mushrooms, Jimmy,” I said softly. “Tell me the truth: are you trying to witch somebody or burn somebody?”

  “Somebody’s sick,” Scow said evasively. “If he’s sick, something made him that way. I’m finding out what it is.”

  I listened without taking my eyes off his face and said, “This man that we’re talking about now. Is it you? Are you sick?”

  My question touched a nerve. “Evil has been done. I’ve made it my job to see that things are put right,” Scow said defiantly. “If I don’t, how can I live with myself?”

  Jimmy’s face was a study in innocence, but he was working hard to put one over on me.

  I said, “Let’s quit kidding each other. This is all about revenge.”

  Scow’s cool steady eyes were on mine. He didn’t say anything.

  “I’m turning you loose with a caution,” I said. “If I need to later, how can I get hold of you?”

  “You can leave a message with Joe McNaught,” he said reluctantly. “I won’t guarantee to get back to you in any hurry.”

  “Forget about revenge. It’s a game you can’t win.” I felt myself scowling and switched on an artificial smile, saying, “I’m not going to ask what you’ve got in your medicine bag. Whatever it is, I hope you use it wisely. Thanks for telling me all this.”

  I drove him back downtown and dropped him off at the foot of Johnson Street.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Fairmont Empress, Victoria’s most famous landmark, is an old and typically grand Canadian Pacific hotel, all vine-covered brick and pointed roofs. Located beside the city’s Inner Harbour, the Empress is the first thing you notice if you arrive by sea. The Empress’s Bengal Room Lounge looks like the inside of a rajah’s palace. There’s a big tiger skin hanging above the fireplace along with pictures of India from the days of the British Raj. At one end of the room a section of polished floor is set aside for dancing. When I arrived there that night, wearing my best khaki slacks and an Italian shirt, three old guys in black tuxedos were playing Cole Porter tunes with weary professional assurance. I lowered myself into a cane chair and ordered a Foster’s, then focussed on the room’s main attraction — its silver-and-glass curry table. A fat chef in a tall white hat was presiding over beef and chicken curries, chutneys, garnishes, coconut and pappadums.

  Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy appeared in the doorway — Murphy a subservient half-step behind his boss. Cal was wearing a white linen suit and white kidskin shoes. He looked fit, and he had a lopsided sneer that told us all how good he thought he was. In that setting Cal was as out of place as a frog in a teacup. But he was big and muscular and he moved with the grace of a cat.

  Murphy was another big man. He had curly red hair and an Irish-looking face with small blue eyes and a pug nose. Where the skin of his face was not freckled it was pink and raw from sunburn.

  After pausing to look around and get noticed, the two pimps sauntered in and sat at a table near the musicians. Alex Cal leaned back in his chair, his body almost horizontal, one leg stretched out, the other bent. People wanting to reach the dance floor had to detour around him. Murphy leaned over their table, the weight on his forearms, grinning as he told his boss something. Cal’s eyes swept the room as his driver spoke. When Cal’s gaze met mine it slowed for a moment before passing on.

  The waiter delivered my Foster’s along with silver cutlery wrapped in a linen napkin. I sipped half of my drink, then joined the buffet lineup. American tourists were marvelling about the room, the view, how English everything was in Victoria.

  I loaded my plate with beef curry, medium hot. Some white rice. Dressed it all with mango chutney, coconut, chick peas, chopped white onion, capers, a couple of peppers, sliced banana and raisins. At the bread table I helped myself to a warm and crispy pappadum, big as a plate.

  The food was delicious, the pappadum slightly salty, the way I like it. I’d just finished my first helping and was thinking about having another when the loveliest woman in the world came into the room and took my mind off curry.

  She was tall, at least six feet in her high heels, wearing black silk and pearls. About 19. When she stood in the doorway the conversational hum dropped as everybody in the room turned to look at her. Long blonde hair framed an oval face with peaches-and-cream skin, wide-set blue eyes and a pouting mouth with the tiniest suggestion of an overbite. When she saw the pimps she smiled, parting her red lips further, and crossed to their table. Cal remained sprawled, smiling up at her as she leaned forward to plant a kiss on his mouth. Jiggs Murphy fussed around, arranging her a chair, but she didn’t even notice him. She was only interested in Alex Cal. They put their head
s together and after a minute she took Cal’s hand, dragged him upright, and they joined half a dozen other couples on the dance floor. Murphy stood up and walked out of the room, looking pre-occupied as he passed my table.

  The pimps were not the only people I had been watching. Charles Service was sitting at the bar. Service had wavy white hair, worn a bit long for a conservative lawyer. A heavy tan made him look younger than his 65 years. He had on a dark-blue suit, a creamy white shirt and was wearing a St. Michael’s school tie.

  Service was a lawyer with a special practice — his only client was Calvert Hunt. He glanced at me a couple of times, then came over to my table. We shook hands.

  I expected him to refer to the encounter at Calvert Hunt’s house. Instead he just smiled and said, “Nice to see you, Silas. It’s been a while.”

  “Nearly five years,” I said and invited him to sit with me.

  “I’d enjoy that, but I can’t. Another time perhaps. I’m expecting somebody.”

  “I was out at Ribblesdale tonight,” I said.

  Service wasn’t paying attention to me. He stared over my shoulder and replied with absent courtesy, “Were you indeed?”

  I followed Service’s glance. A dark-haired woman was watching us from the doorway.

  Service said hurriedly, “I’ve got to go, Silas. See you around.”

  He joined the woman in the doorway, took her arm and steered her outside. I paid my bill and went to the washroom. When I came out, I glanced back into the Bengal Room. Charles Service was sitting at Alex Cal’s table. Service was in earnest conversation with the pimp, but his eyes were all over the blonde. There was no sign of the dark-haired woman.

  I was surprised. What business could Charles Service possibly have with the pimp and cocaine king of Victoria?

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Later that night I was in my sweat lodge, on a high bank above Esquimalt Harbour. Spume coated the shore like the icing on a cake. In the surrounding woods, gently swaying trees were filling the air with creaks and groans and sighs.

  I was creating more steam by ladling water onto hot stones when Chief Alphonse walked out of the sea. The old chief was naked except for an eagle feather stuck into his long grey braids. He walked slowly up the beach, ducked inside the sweat lodge and sat on a wooden slab beside me.

  I watched the colour of his skin change from purple to red, and then it was my turn to cool off. I stepped outside onto hard-packed sand and hurried down the beach and into the waves. Fifty yards away a huge drift-log was rolling about in back eddies. More loose logs bobbed in the waves. Keeping my eyes peeled for bone-breakers almost took my mind off the north-coast water shrinking my testicles, squeezing my sphincter and giving me an ice-cream headache that started between my eyes and spread through my body like an army of ice worms. Chief Alphonse had stayed in the sea for 20 minutes; ordinary decency compelled me to stay in for at least 10.

  My sweat lodge isn’t elaborate. It’s a dirt igloo. Its skeleton is composed of arched willow wands, poked into the ground at each end and tied together where they intersect. I cover the willows with tarpaulin, shovel dirt on top, and that’s it. I heat my rocks in a firepit and when they’re hot enough I carry them inside on a shovel.

  After a short session in Esquimalt Harbour, that primitive sweat lodge seemed like heaven to me. I carried another big hot rock inside, ladled water over it and got comfortable again.

  Chief Alphonse isn’t a wordy man. We don’t have the kind of relationship that depends on words. We listened to the wind and kept quiet. Then we saw a raven hopping around near the water’s edge.

  Chief Alphonse said, “Te spokalwets.”

  The way he spoke told me that no reply was called for.

  Te spokalwets. In Coast Salish, the words mean corpse or ghost. The old chiefs are all crazy when it comes to ravens and every time they see one, or hear one, somebody’s expected to die.

  It’s a good thing there aren’t more ravens around Victoria.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The following day, a surprise awaited me at my office. The door was unlocked and a stranger in a VPD constable’s uniform was stooped over my desk, writing something in a spiral-bound notepad.

  “I’ll be right with you,” she said without looking up.

  After writing a few more words, she turned and raised her eyes. The name tag pinned above her breast pocket told me that her name was Halvorsen. I’d never seen her before. Her welcoming smile faded.

  As a neighbourhood cop, I try to look like a man of the people, and my people are punks, drunks and misfits. With my stubble-beard, shoulder-length black hair, plaid mackinaw jacket, caulk boots and Levis, I blend in nicely with the bums on my beat.

  Constable Halvorsen said, “What do you want?” As an afterthought she added, “Sir.”

  I said, “For a start, you can pass me my electric razor from that desk drawer.”

  She let out a little wordless grunt of realization. “Sorry,” she said as colour invaded her cheeks. “They didn’t tell me that you were big. I was expecting a … ”

  “A little drunk in moccasins?”

  “Yes. I mean no … that is … ” She tried to edit the sentence into politeness and then, giving up, stared outside as if the answer might be found beyond the windows. But by the time she remembered to hand me the razor, her composure had returned. She said, “I hope you don’t mind me coming in here. I absolutely had to take a pee. Somebody lent me the key.”

  “Every cop in Victoria’s got a key to this place. It’s like Grand Central Station in here at times.” I extended my hand and said, “Silas Seaweed.”

  “Denise Halvorsen. I’m new.”

  Denise was a good-looking woman of about 25 with short blonde hair. She wore no makeup, but while she was moving around I couldn’t help noticing her neat little waist and the shapely legs that showed above her highly polished boots.

  She said, “Your phone’s been ringing off the hook, but I didn’t think it right to answer it.”

  “I don’t know what’s right either, half the time. This office is a very dubious exercise in social engineering.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been told,” Halvorsen said.

  As she was going out I said, “Come back any time.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  In the café next door, Lou was frying eggs and bacon. Two com-missionaires in blue uniforms lurked in a corner, resting up before another onslaught on Victoria’s dangerous parking violators. Three pipefitters slumped in a booth, unshaven, red-eyed and drinking coffee. They had been partying all night and soon it would be time to clock in at the dockyard.

  Lou is a small angry man with a Mexican-bandit moustache. I think he’s bald, but I’ve never seen him without a hat. Lou saw me come in and banged his fist on the counter, saying, “What we gonna do about Iraq?”

  I helped myself to coffee. “Bush and Rummy are taking care of it. Everything’s under complete control.”

  “Buncha nonsense,” said Lou, flipping eggs on his grill. “What’ll it be?”

  “Bacon and eggs with everything.”

  Lou stroked his bushy moustache. “This Iraq deal. It reminds me of the time when I was in the mountains with Tito.”

  “General Tito made a big impression on you, then?”

  “He was a great man!” Lou said, puffing out his chest and staring at me with his nostrils flaring.

  “Tito was a street fighter who got lucky,” I teased.

  Lou turned back to the grill and spoke over his shoulder as he cracked eggs. “Tito was a tactical genius.”

  I said, “Rommel was a tactical genius. Tito was a brigand.”

  Lou grinned. “You can’t fool me, pal. You’re just tryin’a get me going. But listen. Tito was something. Guy about my height, looked like my brother. He’d a’ known what to do with them Iraqis.”

  I said, “Oh, yeah? What would he do?”

  “He’d ship some of you Salishes and a bunch of Quebec Mohawks out there,” said Lou, doub
ling over with mirth. “Let you bastards fight it out.”

  Lou turned and shouted, “Come and get it, you guys!”

  The yawning pipefitters collected their breakfasts.

  I tried to think about Jimmy Scow, until a young Native street kid — wearing a cheap dress intended to reveal as much tit and crotch as possible without getting arrested — weaved her way out of an alley and leaned against a wall across the street. Spaced out on crack cocaine or crystal meth, another little money-maker for somebody like Alex Cal, I figured she had a life expectancy of about two years. It was enough to put me off my food. No wonder I hate pimps and pushers.

  I went back to my office and checked my answering machine. Iris Naylor had telephoned several times without leaving any definite message. When I returned her call she said, “It’s about last night and that Scow business. Do you think you could possibly come over here again? Mr. Hunt is anxious to talk to you.”

  I was anxious to talk to Hunt as well.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Along Foul Bay Road, roomy old houses stood behind high granite walls and cedar hedges. Oak trees swayed their lofty crowns in a light summer breeze. Fallen leaves, picked up in my car’s wake, did a brief dance before resettling. I drove past Runnymede Avenue and turned in to a long driveway bordered by banks of flowering shrubs. An elderly Chinese gardener was steering a self-powered mower around ornamental cherry trees and willows and flower beds. The driveway curved up to Calvert Hunt’s mansion. Seen in broad daylight, Ribblesdale looked the same as it had five years previously — when Jimmy Scow went down for Harry Cunliffe’s murder.

  I parked my Chevy alongside a red Mercedes 280 coupe. Instead of going up to the front door I wandered around for a bit. Ribblesdale stood in at least six acres of prime Victoria real estate. There was a tennis court and a blue-tiled swimming pool where a woman was swimming laps, stroking powerfully and making expert turns. I was in the heart of Victoria, but from the grounds of the Hunt estate no other house was visible. Heavy blue smoke drifted up where garden waste smouldered in an incinerator. The estate’s original carriage house — a two-storey mini-ature of the main house — had been converted into a three-car garage.