Seaweed Under Water Page 6

  Bernie raised the coffee cup to his mouth and eyed me quizzically over the rim.

  It was a generous offer, so I mulled it over. In some ways, the prospect of joining Bernie’s squad was not entirely unattractive, but, in my previous experience with the Serious Crimes Unit, I had disappointed friends and delighted enemies. Besides, I have a sort of blind stubbornness sometimes. I said, “I work better as a free agent.”

  “In this life, nobody’s a free agent. One way or another, we’re all slaves.”

  “I’d be free if I quit the force altogether.”

  Bernie’s expression didn’t change. “That’d just free you up for slavery of a different kind. Let’s say you did quit, waved goodbye to a good pension and to lifetime security. What would you do instead?”

  “Private inquiries? I was talking to Henry Ferman yesterday. I guess it put ideas in my head.”

  “Forget it. There’s never been any money in that racket, there’s less every day. The Internet’s revolutionized the PI business. Any savvy guy with a laptop can solve most of his cases without leaving a desk.”

  I said feebly, “Money’s not everything.”

  “Not till you run out of it.”

  It was time to change the subject. “I met this girl, Terry,” I said. “She’s half Native, Jane Colby’s daughter. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about things. If Jane turns up dead, Terry will be an orphan. If nothing is done, Terry will probably spend the rest of her life in an institution.”

  “Why?”

  I told him.

  “Judging by what you say, an institution is probably the best place for her. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “I think maybe there is.”

  “In that case, you’re an idiot,” Bernie said with sudden harshness. “This Jane Colby woman, is she Native?”

  “No. She’s the widow of a Native guy from Mowaht Bay.”

  With a sudden movement, Bernie sat back in his chair and his mouth tightened. He said, “This woman. Did she marry one of those Mowaht Bay Rollins?”

  “Yes. She was married to Neville Rollins, before he disappeared.”

  “Before she murdered him, you mean.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  A sudden muggy downpour drenched the pavement. Raindrops pocked the Inner Harbour’s murky green waters as I hurried along Wharf Street to Jack Owens’ office.

  Jack Owens, chartered accountant, also worked Saturdays. He laid my card down on his desk and waved me to a seat. He was a slim, middle-aged man with blue half circles under his eyes. His voice was polite and toneless. He had a tailor-made blue pinstripe suit and a Hathaway shirt and silver tie, but the white bandage encircling his head detracted from his professional appearance.

  “So you want to talk about Jane Colby, eh?” he asked, looking at my card, instead of me.

  “How would you describe your relationship?”

  “I’d describe my relationship with Jane Colby as an illness,” he replied in a level voice. “Fortunately, I seem to have got over it. I’ll be quite happy never to set eyes on her again.”

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “I don’t see why I should. My business with Jane Colby is personal, nothing to do with the police.”

  “How’s your head?”

  Owens had been looking out his window. He turned toward me, eyes narrowing, and said, “It’s all right, considering.”

  “I suppose it must be, considering. You were struck on the head with a bottle, were you not?”

  “Precisely. I was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

  “That time was two weeks ago, to be exact, inside Pinky’s bar. Jane Colby was in the room with you. Your estrangement pre-dates that occasion, I believe.”

  “You seem to know quite a lot about me. Or think you do.”

  “Perhaps I do, sir. If I get my facts wrong, feel free to correct me.”

  Owens stared into space, shrugged, leaned forward and picked up my card again. After looking at it for the second time, he let it fall onto his desktop and said, “So you’re a sergeant?”

  “A lowly sergeant of police.”

  “I’d been in love with Jane Colby for years. She was on her own and I was married when we first met. I took my marriage vows seriously, so I didn’t do anything about it. At first, that is. Jane was lovely, a talented pianist, fun to be around. I kept running into her at parties. One night I told her that she was very nice and that I spent a lot of time thinking about her. She told me she wasn’t interested in married men. A week later, I asked my wife for a divorce. My wife was as shocked as I was. Our marriage had been no worse than most, but I was besotted with Janey. It’s as I said—she was like an illness.

  “When my divorce came through, Jane reneged on a promise to marry me. She consented to live with me, however. We bought a waterfront condominium apartment on the Songhees development. She moved in, everything seemed set, we were going to be together for the long haul—”

  Owens suddenly stopped talking. His nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. He had been wearing glasses. Now he took them off and held an earpiece between his teeth while he reached into a drawer and brought out a silver cigarette case and a crystal ashtray, which he put on the desk. When he laid his glasses down, I noticed that the plastic earpiece was indented with tooth marks. Owens opened the silver box, took out a cigarette and lit it with a silver Ronson lighter.

  By the time he’d finished doing all that, his composure had returned. He put his glasses back on, blinked his eyes and said, “Sorry, I don’t smoke much any more, nasty habit. Anyway, as I was saying. I thought Janey and I were set. I was mistaken. We got along nicely for a few weeks. Janey drank too much. She woke up most mornings with terrific hangovers, and she had a wicked temper. Our relationship wasn’t one of equals. Except in matters involving money, she was the dominant partner. Given a different age and a different chromosome, Janey would have been another Alexander the Great, Napoleon.”

  “But not another Warren Buffett, I take it?”

  “No. Maybe another Anna Nicole Smith. Jane went through money like it was water.”

  Owens stubbed his cigarette out and immediately lit a second. After thinking for a moment he went on, “Our condo deal went sour. We’d paid too much for it, as it happens, and that didn’t help matters between Janey and me. Janey’s drinking got worse, her morning hangovers became more or less chronic. Even so, I still found her irresistible. What put the kibosh on everything, though, was that I advised her to invest in a company I was involved with—Manson Electronics. Fred Manson, the president, was a long-time client and friend. He had a great track record. Cut a long story short, Janey lost money on that deal too. Money she didn’t have at the time. You may have heard about it. Manson Electronics went bankrupt in short order. We both lost—I’d poured my own money into it. After a screaming match, Janey moved out of my house and went straight to her lawyer. Sued me to recover her losses.”

  Owens touched the bandage around his skull. “Janey’s total losses were about $100,000. Not a large sum.”

  “Barely enough to finance the Afghan war for two or three minutes.”

  “I planned to reimburse her. Trouble was, I was caught short. Divorce had set me back a packet and, as I said, I’d lost money on Manson. I asked Janey to be patient, but she was like a . . . ” words temporarily failed him. “She was a . . . termagant, is that the word for an ill-tempered woman? She went completely crazy, nuts. I spoke to Janey’s lawyer, explained my position. He was very decent, suggested I make one last try with Janey. Try to patch things up personally. I couldn’t reach her. She wouldn’t return my phone calls. This is a small town, though. I knew I was bound to run into her eventually, and I did. About two weeks ago, at Pinky’s. She was drunk, but seemed in a good mood. She even smiled at me. The next thing I knew, I was in hospital with a fractured skull.”

  “You were in a fight?”

  “I’m an accountant, for chrissa
ke, not a longshoreman. A fight broke out and this bruiser came at me out of the blue, brained me with a bottle.”

  “And you’ve no idea who he was?”

  “No idea. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an attack on me personally. I was just an unlucky bystander. However, I have to assume he was a friend of Janey’s. Lying in hospital with a non-stop migraine is no fun, but it had one benefit. When I came out, I was cured of Janey Colby.”

  “How long were you in hospital?”

  “About a week. I had a minor skull fracture. The doc wouldn’t let me go till my headaches eased up.”

  “When’s the last time you visited the Rainbow Motel?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” he retorted, giving way to sudden anger.

  “Just answer my question.”

  “Persistent, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a cop. We are as persistent as a dose of the clap.”

  “And as welcome,” Jack Owens snarled.

  I had been sitting with my legs crossed. I put both feet on the floor, put both hands on my knees, leaned forward and said, “What did you just say?”

  Owens paled. In a lighter tone he said, “Sorry. I can’t remember when I was last in the motel. Not lately.”

  “Try and be more exact.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t. I seem to recall the Rainbow had a popular lounge, back in the good old days.”

  I thought about asking Owens’ present opinion of Janey’s loose morals, now that he was out of the relationship, but I enquired instead, “How would you describe affairs between you and Janey at this moment?”

  Owens hesitated. Instead of replying, he picked my card up for the third time. He looked at it for a full minute before saying, “Actually, our business affairs have taken a turn for the better. I had a letter from Janey’s lawyer yesterday. Apparently, Janey’s coming into a little money, so they’ve stopped pressuring me.”

  “Coming into a little money? Could you be referring to the sale of her father’s house?”

  “No. And there’s no guarantee Mr. Colby would give her anything. She’s supposed to be coming into something big, actually.”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than his face fell. He rose to his feet, crossed to the door and opened it, and said tersely, “That’s it. I’m a busy man, sergeant. This interview is over.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  I was wasting my time. That was that. Jack Owens had clammed up.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It had stopped raining by the time I left Owens’ office. Steam rose from sidewalk; evaporating rainwater puddled along Wharf Street. I began to ask myself why I was so obsessed with this Colby affair. As Bernie Tapp had observed, it was really none of my business. Nevertheless, there was that raven to consider—the one I’d seen yesterday. Raven the Messenger?

  Raven doesn’t always show up in person. Sometimes he sends an emissary to deliver a garbled communication, the full meaning of which, oftener than not, becoming evident only after the passage of time. It had felt from the beginning that Terry Colby was just that kind of messenger. Then there’s Raven the Trickster, that keeps us in stitches sometimes, but that is another story. I was so preoccupied with speculations about Raven and his many personas that my recollection of that walk from Owens’ office to the Rainbow Motel is an almost complete blur. I vaguely recall collecting an evidence bag and a pair of latex gloves from my car. I must have walked past the Empress Hotel and the wax museum, and played dodgem with the usual Belleville Street tourist hordes, and yet, when I got to where I was going, I had a momentary feeling of dissociation, of being temporarily lost. Karl Berger’s black Viper, parked at the sidewalk nearby, reoriented me.

  Instead of the Rainbow Motel, I saw a new plywood fence, eight feet high, facing the street. The fence had an unlocked plywood door with Danger Zone. Do not enter stenciled across it. Upon opening the door, I discovered that the Rainbow Motel property was now a construction site encircled by chain-link fencing and the aforesaid fence. A yellow Cat dozer, operated by a man wearing a yellow hard hat, was levelling the property and uprooting trees. More building-razing machinery roared at the water’s edge, where the vanished boathouse formed part of a growing pile of rubble. The motel was as yet unscathed. This time, there was a Do Not Enter sign on its front door. I went inside.

  Karl Berger was up on a stepladder in the lounge, replacing an acoustic ceiling tile. Stretching too far, Karl lost balance and the ceiling tile upended, liberating a cloud of dust which enveloped Karl’s hair and face like a grey velvet mask. Spluttering and blinking his eyes, Karl let go of the tile which fell to the floor and broke. Cursing, Karl descended the ladder and brushed himself off, too immersed in his predicament to notice my presence for a minute. When he did, he said less than graciously, “What do you want?”

  I purchased a bottle of water from a vending machine in the lobby, put it into Karl’s hand and said, “It’s dirty work, Karl, but I guess somebody’s got to do it.”

  Karl deliberated before taking a swig and said, again less than graciously, “Thanks. What do you want?”

  “Nothing much,” I lied. “I just happened to be passing, saw all the activity and decided to have a look.”

  “This is a hard-hat area,” Karl said. “Dangerous to the public. You’re not allowed in without permission.”

  Oozing phony charm, I said, “I suppose there’ll be another high-rise building going up here, right?”

  “Right. They’re putting up a bunch of 10-storey condominiums, with fantastic views. They’ll sell fast,” Karl said, pouring what was left of the water over his face. Licking his lips and blinking his eyes, he heaved the empty bottle toward a wastebasket, but missed his aim.

  The muck in Karl’s eyes must have been painful, but he went on earnestly, “Real estate, you can’t beat it. You should buy into these condos. Use a small down payment to get in on the ground floor, hold on for a bit. Unload when prices go up and make yourself a nice fat profit.”

  “Speculating? Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Me? I can’t afford it; those units start at 500 grand. The penthouses will go for two million apiece, and up.”

  “You could afford a down payment if you unloaded your Viper,” I said. “It’s worth what, about 20 grand?”

  “Fuck off!” Karl said hotly. “That baby’s worth a hundred grand.”

  I stared up to where the missing tile had left a gap in the dark open ceiling.

  “Jesus,” Karl said. “This crap in my eyes, I’m going blind.”

  “Do you have a room here?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “You’ll hurt your eyes if you rub them like that. Go to your room and lie down. I’ll rinse them out.”

  “I don’t have a room here. I got my own place in town.”

  “Your office, a broom closet, whatever.”

  Karl looked at his feet. He was wearing dirty runners. “Okay,” he said.

  I bought a another bottle of water from the vending machine in the lobby and followed Karl along a corridor. He unlocked a small windowless storage room and we went in. He switched the light on, revealing a single-faucet sink. Paint cans, cleaning supplies, rolls of toilet paper and the like rested on wooden shelving. The room’s only chair was a battered recliner upholstered with stained tapestry fabric. When Karl sat down on it and stretched out, he ended up facing a wall-mounted TV.

  I said, “Put your arms to your side, Karl, and stretch out flat. Try to keep one eye open. I’ll hold that same eye open with my fingers while I pour water onto the eyeball. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Good. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  He made a good patient. I sluiced most of the crap out. Afterwards, I handed him a damp cloth.

  “Now what?” he said, ungraciously.

  “Just rest for a few minutes. Try to keep your hands away from your face. The cloth will help take the sting away.” I handed him the water bottle. “Here.
You might as well finish this.”

  He poured the remaining water over his eye, then handed the bottle back to me. “Maybe I should go see a doc. Have him take a proper look.”

  “You do that, Karl. The closest clinic’s on Menzies Street.”

  He grunted.

  “I’m outta here,” I said. “See you later.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be seeing you.” After brooding for a minute he said, “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “Tell me something,” I said, remembering the bodybuilder who had smashed a bottle over Owens’ head. “Ever go to Pinky’s?”

  “Where’s Pinky’s?”

  “Pinky’s is a bar, on View Street.”

  “Don’t know the place.”

  He’s lying, I told myself.

  I said, “You should try it. Drive that Viper over there some night. Have yourself a few beers, hustle some chicks and take ’em for a spin.”

  Karl shook his head. Before leaving the room, I had a final look around. What drew my attention was the DVDs stacked on a shelf. Movies with titles like Deeper Throat. Gertrude’s Night In. Tight Fit.

  I ruminated myself back to the lounge and climbed the stepladder to see what Karl had been trying to cover up with the ceiling tile. Somebody, presumably Karl, had used pliers to cut and remove bundles of coloured electrical wires. The device to which the wires had been connected had been removed. I got down from the ladder, dropped Karl’s used water bottle into my evidence bag and left the building.

  Seeing me emerge from the motel into sunlight, the dozer operator gave me a cheerful wave. I waved back. That mound of piled-up rubble had grown considerably. Tons of loose gravel had been scraped from the surface of the lot, exposing a broad shelf of dry blue clay. Clay which—to judge by the dozer’s labouring engine—was almost as hard as limestone.

  I was about to leave the property when a voice said, “Excuse me, sir.”

  A bushy-haired man with bright blue eyes and fat cheeks was addressing me.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “Are you with the construction gang?”

  “I’m a city cop. Silas Seaweed.”

  “Bernard Cole. Cole Adjusters.”