Seaweed on the Rocks Read online

  “She’s not allowed visitors,” the nurse told me.

  “I’m Marnie’s uncle,” I lied. “Her only living relative.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. She’s just had surgery and is on life support.”

  The nurse was adamant, and the door to the detox wards was locked. I was pondering my next move when the Good Samaritan Mission’s founder and CEO waddled in. This is Joe McNaught—three hundred pounds of assertive Christianity wearing a black robe large enough to house a troop of Boy Scouts. Your average crack addict could easily squeeze through the white ecclesiastical collar that encircled his neck.

  Joe McNaught had figured significantly in my past. Once upon a time the preacher and I had been in the boxing racket together, but all he had to show for it was scar tissue, ears like broccoli, and the faint spasmodic tremors associated with early-onset Parkinson’s. But that was before he found Jesus. Now he had his own TV show, a waterfront house in the Uplands area of Victoria and a ski lodge at Whistler. McNaught grinned at the nurse and said, “Open the door, Leslie, and show us the way to Sergeant Seaweed’s niece.”

  Marnie was lying in a dimly lit hospital ward with tubes coming out of her body. She looked dead. Even her hair seemed lifeless, and deep wrinkles were etched into the blotchy skin of her face. Tattoos covered her bare arms like vines. After glancing at her charts, the nurse left the ward.

  I followed her into the corridor and asked, “How bad is she?”

  The nurse shook her head, folded her arms, gazed at the acoustic ceiling tiles, shuffled her feet and said regretfully, “I’m sorry.”

  I waited.

  “There’s a lot of bad heroin on the street. Your niece isn’t the only dire case we’ve treated lately,” she explained in a low voice. “Doctor Auckland worked on her when they first brought her in, and afterwards she rallied a bit. You could see her eyes moving behind her closed eyelids. She even mumbled a few words.”

  “About what?”

  “It was mostly meaningless babble. Don’t hold me to this because I wouldn’t swear to it, but for a bit she seemed to be talking about Truth.”

  “Wait a minute—are you telling me there’s brain activity?”

  “Marginal brain activity. It doesn’t look promising.” Evading my eyes, the nurse went on, “Have you read Kübler-Ross’ books about death and dying?”

  I shook my head, no.

  “Maybe you should. To me they were a revelation. Dying patients who haven’t been inside a church in fifty years suddenly get religious. Maybe Marnie has a guilty conscience about something and is trying to get it off her chest.”

  I returned to Marnie’s ward and found McNaught down on his knees. I think he was praying because his lips were moving, although he wasn’t making any sounds. When he got through praying, it was interesting to watch this three-hundred-pound man get to his feet. Without that hospital bed to cling to, he probably couldn’t have done it. After he got his breath back, he made the sign of the cross over Marnie and went away.

  I checked the cabinet beside Marnie’s bed and found her black leather jacket, a pair of black Doc Martens boots and a half-dozen of Dr. Lawrence Trew’s white ballpoint pens. I was sitting there thinking about the kind of danger that naive young Native women fresh off reserves can drift into—prostitution, for example—and the vicious pimps who do their heads in, when Dr. Auckland came by. He glanced at the blood-pressure monitor that was pulsing spasmodically. Then he lifted Marnie’s wrist and checked her pulse the old-fashioned way, with his fingers. Maybe it’s a conditioned reflex.

  Dr. Auckland said, “They say that you’re related to the patient.”

  “Actually she’s an orphan. Her dad was a fisherman. Her mom used to knit Cowichan sweaters. But Marnie and I were born on the same rez, so we’re undoubtedly distant cousins. I’m a cop, by the way. Silas Seaweed.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” the doctor returned absently, looking at me with the alert, slightly wary expression that grows on physicians like patina grows on old silver.

  Joe McNaught, waiting for me in the corridor, offered to share the bottle of orange juice he’d been drinking from. I declined, but followed him into his office. It’s about the size of a badminton court, with a hardwood floor, Persian rugs and oak shelves filled with dark leather-bound books. McNaught has also spent a lot of money on bureaus, tables and other expensive trappings, including two oil paintings. One is of Mother Teresa wearing white castoffs. The other is of McNaught himself dressed like the Archbishop of Canterbury in red ermine-trimmed robes and a gold cap. The place was as dimly lit as Marnie’s ward and had the peaceful atmosphere of a funeral chapel. I looked around the room for a crucifix but didn’t see one.

  Instead of sitting in his specially reinforced steel chair, McNaught rested his backside on the edge of his huge rosewood desk, a lemon danish in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. He stared balefully out the window at Chinatown’s passing parade as he sipped a little coffee. I was remembering the man that he used to be, when he said, “I’m sorry about your niece.”

  “She’s not my niece—I was fibbing earlier—though I’ve known Marnie her whole life. When she was little, she wanted to be a ballet dancer.”

  “She lived on the Warrior Reserve?”

  “Until two years ago. Then she left suddenly without saying goodbye.”

  McNaught’s mouth opened, but whatever he had intended to say did not come out. After fidgeting for a minute, he pushed himself away from the desk and wobbled across to the window. “It’s my fault,” he mumbled. “I killed her.”

  “She’s not quite dead. Not yet.”

  He produced a tissue and blew his nose with a noise like a surfacing whale. “Poor little kid. She’s been hanging around the mission all winter, off and on. Her and a great fucking big mongrel dog. We don’t allow dogs. We can’t have dogs bringing fleas into the place.”

  “That would be intolerable,” I replied with just a touch of scorn in my voice.

  “My board makes the rules. All I do is enforce ’em,” McNaught blubbered. “You let one mutt in, it’s the end. We’d be knee-deep in dogshit in no time. I built this mission for people, not animals.”

  “Yeah, it’s a no-brainer,” I jeered. “Suffer little children, fuck mutts.”

  “I used to see her sheltering in doorways. I’d say, Marnie, for Christ’s sake, drop your dog off at the pound and come into detox. Find Jesus and dry out. She never listened.”

  “It’s a shame.”

  “And now she’s dying. She’s going to a better place.”

  “She’s going to the morgue. This place is better,” I retorted, pointing my finger at the world outside the window. “In a couple of weeks, what’s left of Marnie will be bottled in formaldehyde.”

  “How about the Unknown World that you Aboriginals are always yakking about?”

  I thought about Hayls, the Transformer, and said, “The Unknown World is probably more dangerous than this one.”

  Beyond McNaught’s window, across the street in a Chinese herbalist’s shop, a man wearing a black skullcap and red silk robes with dragon embroideries was arranging bottles on his shelves. I left Mcnaught to do whatever he does when people are not watching him, and returned to the emergency clinic. After I waited in line for a while, my number came up. Another tired nurse sitting in a glass sentry box asked me to describe my symptoms. I told her I felt fine, that I just needed checking for Hep C and HIV.

  “Tests are expensive,” she grumbled. “What makes you think you need them?”

  I told her.

  Her face expressing disgust, she said, “You’ve had persistent mouth-to-mouth contact with an open-sore meth addict?”

  “She was dying. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “In that case, you’re a reckless idiot,” she snapped.

  Tony Roos had told me the same thing.

  The nurse checked my medical card, made me sign a few papers, gave me an information sheet, advised me to read it and
ordered me to wait some more. I sat down in a moulded plastic chair beside an elderly asthmatic and read the brochure.

  ABOUT HIV TESTS

  When HIV enters the body, your immune system springs to action, producing antibodies to fight the infection. Unfortunately, the antibodies cannot destroy HIV, but their presence in bodily fluids is used to confirm HIV infection.

  STANDARD TESTING

  HIV testing most often begins with an ELISA (or EIA, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test performed on the blood. If this test shows a reaction, it is repeated on the same blood sample. If the duplicate test is reactive, the results are confirmed using a second more specific (and more expensive) test, most commonly the Western blot. A person is considered infected following a repeatedly reactive result from the ELISA confirmed by the Western blot test. Results can take up to two weeks.

  RAPID TESTING

  A rapid HIV test is a test that usually produces results in 20 to 40 minutes. There are currently four rapid HIV tests licensed for use:

  1) OraQuick Rapid HIV-1 and Advance HIV 1/2 Antibody Tests, manufactured by OraSure Technologies, Inc.

  2) Reveal G2 HIV-Antibody Tests, manufactured by Med-Mira, Inc.

  3) Multispot, manufactured by Bio-Rad Laboratories

  4) Uni-Gold Recombigen, manufactured by Trinity BiotechThe availability of these tests differs from one place to another. These rapid HIV blood tests are considered to be just as accurate as the ELISA. As is true for all screening tests (including the ELISA and EIA), a positive test result must be confirmed with an additional specific test before a diagnosis of infection can be given . . .

  By the time I finished rereading the information sheet for the third time, the emergency clinic was full of twitchy, whacked-out addicts who’d blown their welfare cheques on drugs, and I was beginning to feel like a man who’d fallen from a fire escape and landed among trash bags. I phoned Acting Chief Detective Inspector Bernie Tapp to alert him about Hector Latour. I didn’t tell him about the HIV test. Time enough for that later. I was feeding coins into a coffee dispenser when I became aware that my name was being paged.

  The triage nurse was trying to calm a weepy, snotty-nosed kid—probably a rent boy—and the nurse who had given me the brochure had apparently forgotten what I looked like. I re-identified myself. She led me into a white booth with a white bench to sit on and a white curtain instead of a door, told me to take my jacket off and roll up a shirt sleeve. While taking a blood sample, she warned me to refrain from sexual activity, sharing needles, and otherwise exchanging body fluids with anyone until the results of my tests came in.

  “How long will that take?”

  “It depends. Up to four weeks.”

  “According to your brochure, you can get results with the rapid HIV test in less than an hour . . . ”

  “Perhaps,” she interrupted impatiently, “but we use the standard testing model. I’m sorry if this is inconveniencing your life, but if you made sensible choices, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. You’ll have to wait. In the interim don’t exchange bodily fluids with anyone.”

  “How about if I use condoms?”

  “Condoms help, sure. Only condoms have been known to leak. Are you selfish enough to risk your partner’s life?”

  “Why not?” I replied flippantly. “I’m a typical male.”

  “This is no joking matter!” she snapped. “Don’t share needles or pipes. Don’t share eating or drinking utensils. Don’t kiss anybody, either! Have I made myself clear?”

  Jesus Christ, I thought. Four weeks! Twenty-eight days at least before I can have sex, share Felicity’s wineglass . . .

  CHAPTER TWO

  My steps slow and heavy, I left the mission, turned up my collar against the rain, plodded up Fisgard Street and along to Fan Tan Alley, wending through the crowds past curio shops, artisans’ workshops, head shops and a room like a barbershop where a man sticks slivers of burning bamboo in your ears if you want to quit smoking. At the end of the alley I turned right and descended Pandora Street.

  An elderly man with eagle feathers poked into his long, dark braids was sheltering from the rain in a doorway. He was wearing a green rubber raincoat and knee-high moccasins and holding a large, flat parcel beneath one arm. People called him the Chief, but he wasn’t a chief. He was a suicidal, alcoholic artist with a BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, and his name was Harvey Cheeke. If you threw more than five dollars into his cap, he would reach into his cardboard portfolio and give you a little painting or a drawing. I have acquired half a dozen Cheekes over the years for a total investment of less than fifty dollars. I keep them hidden because I don’t want monochromatic stick figures and four-legged inkblots hanging in my house, but luckily I saved them instead of just throwing them away. Nowadays signed, genuine Harvey Cheekes are as valuable as signed, genuine Norval Morrisseaus. But on this night, before I reached him, he had detached himself from the doorway and walked off into the rain on sluggish, rheumaticky legs.

  As a neighbourhood cop, I’m supposed to keep an eye on Victoria’s runaways, slackers, junkies, pushers and the likes of Harvey Cheeke. And I usually assist the detective squad in serious crimes—occasionally murders—that involve Native Indians. My one-man office is located on the ground floor of a no-longer-young, three-storey brick building. My door is the first on the right along a corridor that ends at the door to my private washroom, though a lot of people seem to end up with keys to it. I get the lock changed every now and then. I let myself into my office, draped my jacket over the hat tree and left it to drip on the linoleum.

  I picked up a couple of advertising flyers lying beneath my mail slot and dropped them onto my battered, wooden, seven-drawer desk. PC—my very own feral cat—was taking her ease on the blotter. Indignant at being disturbed from her slumbers, she leapt to the floor and bolted into the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet where, out of spite, she’s been shredding important documents.

  Queen Victoria, in her picture frame on the wall, gave me a stern look as I reached into my desk and brought out the office bottle. I poured two inches of Teacher’s into a Tim Hortons mug and, sitting down, gazed up at the plaster cornice mouldings on the high ceiling while I tried to think. One way or another I was going to do something about Marnie Paul. In my opinion she’d been murdered. I sent a silent toast to Marnie’s spirit—and to whichever Coast Salish spirit is in charge of sexually transmitted diseases—and poured myself another drink.

  PC had exited her nest and was standing on a scrap of carpet with her back arched, talons exposed, purring ecstatically, but when she saw me looking at her, her eyes glazed with hatred. She and I have this hot/cold relationship. At that moment our relationship was heavily biased towards the blue end of the spectrum because I had kidnapped her last batch of kittens and then delivered her to the spay shop. My conscience is clear, though. The kittens went to good homes and PC’s mothering days are over.

  After brooding about grizzly bears for a while, I phoned Chief Alphonse at the Warrior band’s business office. Nobody answered, and I left a message on the chief’s machine. Mr. Teacher’s was doing a great job on my sore throat, so I had another. After that, I put the bottle away, checked PC’s kitty litter, emptied half a can of cat food into her saucer, locked up the office and went out.

  Harvey Cheeke was back on station near Swans pub. Winds gusting up from the harbour were whipping his long hair around his scrawny, bristled face, and his moccasins were soaked. He was staring at the dark interior of an empty wine bottle when I spoke to him. I asked if he needed a flop for the night.

  “I’ve got a place I can burrow into if I want. Pull the lid over myself and I’m cosy as a . . . clam,” he told me.

  I gave him a few bucks. Harvey reached into his portfolio, brought out a big manila envelope and shoved it into my hands.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I live in a two-room waterfront cabin on the Warrior Reserve. Out back I have my own little secluded garden and a one-hole pri
vy hidden among a stand of cedars. When I got home that night, the cabin was as cold and dark as my mood. I switched a light on, placed Harvey’s unopened manila envelope on a windowsill and exchanged my boots for fleece-lined moccasins. After that, I put Big Mama Thornton on the turntable and let her 33-rpm blues wash over me while I lit my woodstove, opened the damper on the stove’s sheet-metal flue and let her rip.

  I lit a couple of candles, flipped the electric light off and stood at the window. Limber trees were shaking in the wind. Out on that portion of the stormy Salish Sea that is known as Juan de Fuca Strait, ships were inward and outward bound between Victoria and the Orient, but closer in I could see a black-hulled fishboat pushing its foaming white bow wave towards our jetty.

  One of Thrifty’s deep-frozen lasagnas had been thawing on top of my refrigerator since breakfast. When I poked it with a finger, it felt a bit squishy, so as soon as the kettle boiled, I made a pot of Red Rose, then melted a little butter in a skillet and dumped the lasagna in. By that time Big Mama Thornton had fallen through the hole in her record, and to deflect my thoughts from HIV, I put Bessie Smith on. She was singing about pigs’ feet and beer, and the lasagna was bubbling nicely on the stove when somebody hailed the house.

  “Yah hey!” I shouted back.

  Chief Alphonse came in. “Seen your lights on,” he said in his soft voice. Haggard and barefoot, he was wearing a bearskin cloak and a red-cedar headband with hemlock twigs poked into it. The chief is an old man now, but to me he has always been old. He seems immune to time and death.

  He turned his wrinkled, hawk-nosed face towards the stove. “You’re not going to eat that?” he said, sniffing the lasagna as I jiggled the skillet.

  “Certainly, Chief. Have you had supper?”

  “I haven’t eaten since last Tuesday.”

  “Help yourself to a cup of tea.”

  Ignoring my words, the chief brought a candle to the stove, peered closely at the lasagna, and said, “It’s green in places, Silas. There are enough bacteria in that pan to kill the whole tribe.”