Seaweed on the Street Read online

  A hand came through my car’s open window and tapped my shoulder. The hand belonged to Sarah Williams. It was a very nice and beautifully manicured left hand, with a diamond ring adorning its fourth finger. She said, “You’re amazingly good-looking, aren’t you?”

  I grinned at her and got out of the car.

  She said, “I’m still waiting for you to explain the effigy thing.”

  To give myself time to collect my thoughts I said, “Let’s go back to the pool.”

  She shook her head.

  I said, “In the religious life of the Coast Salish, the most important element is the concept of personal spirits.”

  Sarah smiled.

  I said, “Am I boring you already?”

  “Not at all. I took a course on Indian mythology at McGill and found it quite fascinating.”

  “There are two kinds of personal spirits. Skaletut and shzudab. Skaletut is the spirit of the layman. It brings luck in gambling and in the acquisition of wealth. A few other things. In the days when Coast Salish were still warring with other tribes, skaletut spirit helped us to win battles. In general, skaletut spirits are harmless, or at least not dangerous.” I looked directly into her eyes. She didn’t blink: she was listening attentively. I went on, “It’s impossible to obtain any kind of spirit without doing something to earn it.

  “Shzudab spirits are shaman spirits. Shzudab spirit is powerful, and it is exceedingly difficult to acquire. The only people who can explain or describe spirit properly are those people who actually possess it.”

  “I suppose you have shzudab spirit, do you? You being big and powerful and all.”

  I ignored this sarcasm and went on, “All spirits have songs, with unique words and tunes.”

  “What about that effigy?”

  “I’m getting to that,” I said. Thinking hard, wondering how much to tell her. “Salish spirits travel around the earth. It takes them a year to complete a circuit. On these journeys, spirits gamble or trade among each other, their owners’ fortunes rise and fall accordingly, depending how much luck these spirits have with their endeavours. Spirits return to their owners at Winter Dance. At this time, everybody with spirit gets sick. When he begins to get sick, he has to sing his song, perform his dance, some other things. Spirit sickness can last for several days during which a man fasts and goes without sleep. At this time a man needs a lot of friends to help him.”

  “A man?”

  “Women have spirits, but female shzudab spirit is rare.”

  Sarah reached out and touched my arm.

  I said, “A shaman’s power comes from shzudab spirit and it can be lethal. It is never used for killing game, only men. In olden times, when a warrior grew too powerful, people became afraid of him and would have a shaman secretly kill him with his power. Sometimes the shaman sent spirit snakes or spirit lizards into people’s bodies. Shamans with powerful shzudab killed people by hanging rush effigies on their house poles.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. She let go of my arm. “Somebody is trying to kill Calvert Hunt?”

  “No. Calvert Hunt is perfectly safe. So are you.”

  “How about Calvert’s employees? How about Charles Service?”

  “They’ll be all right.”

  Sarah was satisfied, I think. Turning away, her face darkened. She said coldly, “You don’t fool me, Silas. I’ve met men like you before. You’re one of those dark dangerous bastards. You have no more sympathy for people like us than a fox has for a rabbit.”

  She was right. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn for Marcia’s family. They struck me as being completely worthless human beings, and that went double for Charles Service. The only person I had any real sympathy for in this whole deal was Jimmy Scow, a convicted killer.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I spent the rest of that day reviewing the file on Jimmy Scow and transacting routine business. Darkness had fallen by the time I cleared my desk and left the office. It was the height of Victoria’s tourist season. Double-decker sightseeing buses and horse-drawn carriages passed back and forth beneath the city’s ornamental street lamps. Sailboats and canoes drifted about the harbour.

  The nocturnal hunting cycle had begun. It was the time of the owl and the coyote — and the greedy pimp. Halfway down Waddington Alley a woman screamed. I froze, staring into the darkness, and saw two people scuffling near a big metal garbage bin. A sharp curse rang out and the couple fell down together. I moved forward and came across Chantal, the prostitute, lying in the dirt. Jiggs Murphy was kneeling over her, slapping her with his meaty hand.

  Rage set my pulses hammering. “Back off,” I said and grabbed Murphy’s shoulder. The pimp turned an angry face. From a crouch he drew back his arm and threw a fast punch. I sidestepped, grabbed his wrist, pulled him close and hit him in the stomach. He went sprawling. I circled until I felt the bin against my back and watched as Murphy, on all fours, sucked air. He reached inside his coat, and metal glinted. I kicked his arm with the hard toe of my shoe. He squealed, and a pistol fell to the ground with a clatter. He made a grab for it but I seized a handful of Murphy’s hair and shook him like a rat. When I let go he fell backward and his head hit the ground with a thud.

  Chantal had picked herself up and was leaning against the bin, massaging her neck. Angry tears spilled from her eyes but she made no sound until I took her in my arms and hugged her close. Her voice breaking, she said, “You didn’t kill him?”

  “I didn’t try to. He just fell. Guys like Murphy are harder to kill than a virus.”

  She began to sob.

  I said, “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  She shook her head and pulled away, looking up into my face. “It ain’t that easy,” she whispered hoarsely. “You don’t just walk away from pimps, Silas. Not when they’re Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy.”

  “There’s an easier way than this, Chantal. Why don’t you lay charges against those bloodsuckers? You know I’ll protect you.”

  Her eyes met mine in an instant of shared knowledge. She knew and I knew that even if I drowned Murphy in a sewer, other parasites would crawl out of the slime and take his place immediately.

  “You’re such a bloody romantic, Silas, but I hope you know what the hell you’re doing,” Chantal said and walked off, a little unsteadily, her high heels clacking on the dark pavement.

  I felt my rage returning as I knelt beside Murphy to frisk him.

  He was carrying two thick envelopes full of money, collected that night from Alex Cal’s stable of hookers and addicts. A leather billfold made Murphy’s hip pocket bulge. I stuffed the envelopes inside my shirt and flipped the billfold open. It contained half a dozen credit cards and a driver’s licence with photo ID identifying the pimp as Jason Murphy. Inside was another stack of money in 20s and 50s. I pocketed all of the cash and tossed the billfold into the Dumpster. Then I poked around in the dark until I found Murphy’s pistol. It was a .30 Ruger Blackhawk. I jammed it inside my belt. I thought about running Murphy in, but I knew he’d be back on the street inside of four hours and I wanted more. I’d deal with this business in my own way.

  Somebody came around the corner of Waddington Alley. It was a rummy. He faced the brick wall and began to fumble with his zipper. Murphy was groaning and nursing his head now, so I went out of the alley.

  I walked to the place where I had parked my Chev and forced myself to breathe deeply, calm down, stop thinking about that filth in Waddington Alley. I unlocked my car and stood there, my arms resting on the roof. My racing thoughts turned to the beautiful woman I had seen with Jiggs and Alex Cal in the Bengal Room the night before — another filly being broken in for the pimps’ stable of hookers.

  Murphy staggered out of the alley, stooped forward, holding both arms across his gut. He steered a wobbly line up the street. My anger started coming back as I got into my car.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning I got out the money that I had lifted from Jiggs Murphy and put it on my desk. After admiring it for
a while I took two manila envelopes from a drawer and stuffed $500 into each. I still had about $3,000 left over that I didn’t know what to do with. For the time being, I locked it in my office safe. I wrote Chantal’s name on one envelope and Sally’s on the other, then went next door to Lou’s Café.

  When Lou brought me coffee, I ordered bacon and eggs and gave him the two envelopes. I said casually, “Give these to the girls next time they come in. Don’t tell them who the envelopes came from. Okay?”

  Lou seemed preoccupied. He nodded absently and slipped the envelopes under his counter.

  I used my cellphone to call a man I know in the parole branch and asked him about Jimmy Scow. I had to prod his memory: “Scow’s the guy got five years for the Cuncliffe killing.”

  “Yeah, right. Calvert Hunt’s house. What’s it called again?”

  “Ribblesdale.”

  “Right. I knew it was something goofy. Hang on a minute.”

  After a while he came back and said, “Scow’s probation ended months ago. He behaved himself and is now free to sleep on the streets or do whatever else he wants to do.”

  I thanked him and hung up.

  Over breakfast I composed a personals ad. When I was satisfied with the wording, I phoned it in to Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper, which has good distribution on Vancouver Island.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Joe McNaught runs the Good Shepherd Mission in Victoria’s Chinatown. His declared mandate is to succour the hungry and bring muscular Christianity to the street people of Victoria. Noble ideals, but I have misgivings about McNaught and he knows it. When I went around to the mission, McNaught didn’t want to be found. The place was jammed with people wanting free breakfasts, so it was easy to hide from me. I gave up looking and spoke to a kitchen volunteer instead. He was a short, skinny, middle-aged Kwakiutl man. His jacket fitted him like a Doberman’s kennel fits a chihuahua. Six inches of bare ankle showed between the bottom of his jeans and the top of his Nikes. His laces were undone. He had a face like Boris Karloff with jet lag.

  “Jimmy Scow?” he said thoughtfully, not looking at me. “Yeah, we know him. When he was in prison he followed the Jesus Road. When he came out he prayed with us for a while. Till something happened.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He lifted a cigarette from an inside pocket but didn’t light it. “There’s things we don’t do in the Lord’s house,” he said, and shuffled outside. The volunteer lit his cigarette, filled his lungs with smoke and let it dribble out through his nostrils as he leaned against a wall in the sunshine. I noticed that his nails were bitten down to the quick. His small black eyes were like black knobs sunk in his face. He said, “You’re a cop, you got your ways of looking at things. I tell you this though. Jimmy Scow got a very raw deal.”

  “It wasn’t my case. But the way I remember it, Scow got legal aid.”

  “Sure he did,” the volunteer returned savagely. “Scow’s brief was just out of law school. A pipsqueak pretending to be a big noise. Jailing Jimmy Scow was like giving a raccoon five years for being furry. He’d been a White guy, he’d never done day one in jail. Not day one. Jail turned Jimmy sour. Now he’s worshipping Dokibatl and doing Wolf ritual.”

  I looked at my watch. It was getting on toward noon. I said, “If you happen to run into Jimmy, will you tell him that Silas Seaweed says to lay off what he’s been doing at Foul Bay Road. It’s dangerous.”

  “I’ll tell him, brother. But all Jimmy wants to talk about now is Wolf God, so I doubt he’ll listen.”

  A boy went by in an unmuffled '29 Chevy kit car; the noise hurt my ears. I thanked the volunteer for his help and went on my way.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I was thinking about Wolf ritual when I chanced upon Chantal. She was patrolling her corner, doing an exaggerated loose-hipped walk and pouting her lips toward passing cars. When she saw me coming she forgot about business and ran my way, tripping along in the knock-kneed, short-stepped style of women wearing high heels. Beaming, she threw her arms around my waist and said, “Guess what? Sally just left town!” Chantal cocked her head to one side, to gauge my reaction.

  “So she left. Is that good?”

  “For Sally, yes. One minute she’s here, the next minute she’s outta here. We had coffee together at Lou’s. After coffee she went home, packed her bags, kissed me goodbye and took off.”

  Chantal was wearing a high-necked blouse. I put my finger inside her collar and gently eased it open. There was an angry red bruise where Jiggs Murphy had manhandled her the night before.

  I said, “Did Sally say where she was going?”

  “I didn’t ask. If somebody wants to find her, it’s better I don’t know.”

  “Wherever Sally ends up, I hope it’s not back on the street. You should quit too, instead of wearing yourself out for bloodsucking pimps.”

  Chantal gave me another long look. “I can’t figure you out. You act hard-ass, but you’re a big softie at heart,” she said, adding, “A girl pounding the pavement, no way she can make it on her own. No way, José.”

  She stood there, grinning at me. That’s why she was a great hooker: she was capable, resourceful, happy in spite of everything. Why wasn’t she selling real estate, managing a dress shop? “Get off the street, Chantal,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze. “You’re smart, you could be a winner at anything you wanted.”

  “You kidding? I quit school in Grade 8, been hawking my ass since I was 15. Besides, I like hooking, the hours suit me. Can you see me behind a counter, or sweating in a laundry?” She shook her head. “Sally was different. She was scared every time she got into a car with a john. Somebody beat her up six months ago.”

  “I know. That bastard she was working for.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Chantal. “Cal beat her up all the time, but that was just business. She got clobbered by a bad date too.” Chantal’s expression clouded for a moment before she brightened. “Anyway, she’s gone, who knows where? Maybe she went back to the Kootenays to be with her mom. Sally had this picket-fence dream. I hope it comes true.”

  “You got a dream, Chantal?”

  “Sure, Silas. I keep dreaming you’ll come cruising by sometime in your Chevy, give me the high sign. We’ll have a few drinks at Laurel Point. Hold hands and watch the moon come up over the Inner Harbour. Then you’ll take me upstairs and I’ll give you my in-house special. I’ll even buy the drinks.”

  She grinned at me. I grinned back.

  Chantal said, “You’d be getting 500 bucks’ worth, Silas.”

  I pretended to be mystified.

  “You don’t fool me,” she said. “Lou gave Sally and me money this morning, and I know who it came from.”

  She walked off, smiling, holding her head up, a gutsy broad.

  I let myself into my office and switched on the answering machine. There was a message from my sister. Canadian Blood Services wanted more of my blood. A message from somebody named Eunice asking me to call, but leaving no number. I didn’t know anybody named Eunice. Then there was a brief insulting monologue from somebody who spoke street and called me a chicken-fat motherfucker.

  I phoned Mallory, Victoria’s police chief, and asked him about travel expenses for a possible trip to Seattle. Mallory was unusually cooperative. He agreed to the expenses and only raised his voice a little bit when he nixed my request for an unmarked car. Mallory told me that the police budget didn’t run to cars for lowly neighbourhood cops. I was supposed to walk, get to know people, and if I pushed my luck he’d shut down my whole operation.

  Next I telephoned my sister. Sis gave me her number one lecture: how stupid I was not to settle down with a good woman. Why couldn’t I be smart like her and her industrious husband, Dick?

  Dick was a fisherman who moonlighted as a house painter when he wasn’t trolling for salmon off the west coast. Every year Dick and Linda spent two weeks at Qualicum Beach in their state-of-the-art camper, relaxing in the shade with gin and tonics. And later
in the year, another two weeks in Las Vegas playing the dollar slots and watching Wayne Newton and Celine Dion. In a steadily rising voice Sis told me that she and Dick had a quarter of a million dollars in their savings plan already and weren’t even 40 years old yet.

  I could just imagine her at the other end of the line, chest heaving, eyes flashing, as she said, “And what do you have to say about that?”

  “Nothing,” I said in my humble-pie voice.

  “That’s what I figured,” she said. “No wonder I get mad at you!” She slammed the phone down.

  Maybe she was right. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I settle down with one woman? Why couldn’t I enjoy lining up outside the Bellagio in the Nevada desert with Sis and Dick, waiting to see Wayne Newton? Maybe I should see a shrink or something, investigate the reasons why I had absolutely no desire to sit in a trailer park for two weeks in the shade of my very own awning, shooting the breeze with ramblers from Oklahoma. If I had a million bucks in savings plans, what the hell would I do with it — buy a camper? Shit. Maybe when I was old.

  I went home.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Home is a two-room cabin on the beach. I built it with my own hands. Chief Alphonse selected its location. There is a monument nearby commemorating the spot where our ancestors greeted Manuel Quimper — the first European to set foot on local shores.

  Quimper arrived in a great white ship, stayed for a couple of days, then sailed away, leaving the Coast Salish people in undisturbed possession for another century or so. Quimper is supposed to have buried a bottle on the beach somewhere. It allegedly contains documents claiming the whole country for the Spanish Crown. Sir James Douglas arrived next. He claimed everything for the British Crown. Now that we’ve found out what Canadian real estate is worth, we Natives are claiming it all back.

  Everything that a Coast Salish chief does has symbolic overtones, so the location of my house has a deeply significant meaning, if only I could figure it out. I was the first Indian in these parts to work for the White justice system. Maybe the chief chose this site as a compliment, maybe not. In any case, I like it here. There’s no hot water unless I light my wood stove. My outhouse is a classic one-holer half-hidden beneath a big cedar tree. But the house is wired for electricity. One wall is covered with bookshelves, racks for my blues records, and an outmoded stereo system. From my sleeping room I can see the Warrior longhouse. It sits in a grove of fir trees, with a moss-covered roof and black-and-white killer-whale paintings covering its walls. From my front room I can see the Olympic Mountains, 30 miles away.