Seaweed on Ice Page 8

McNaught smiled at me. “Since Brother Nimrod’s discovered the Lord, he’s given up shoplifting. Now he’s my strong right arm in the soup kitchen.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but has he given up wearing ladies’ underwear?”

  Nimrod’s face reddened for a few seconds, then reverted to its usual mournful expression. Outside, fire and police sirens wailed. Nimrod had downed his second glass of juice and was staring morosely at the wall. McNaught said pointedly, “Nimrod, we’ve got dirty dishes piled up in the kitchen.”

  “Fuck the dishes,” said Nimrod, not moving. “Where’s it get you, busting your ass all the time? Where did it get Isaac?”

  I said, “I never saw Isaac bust his ass. All I ever saw him do was lean on a broom at Moran’s gym, or roam the streets with a sack, checking garbage cans.”

  “That Isaac,” sighed McNaught, clasping his hands and resting them across his belly. “He loved garbage. Never seen anything like it. Do you think he learned that habit during the war, in the camps?”

  “Isaac never had much to say,” I said. “Until recently I didn’t even know he was Jewish or had been in a concentration camp.”

  “Isaac was railroaded out of a fortune,” said Nimrod as if his keenest interest had been aroused. “Set up by a thieving Englishman. You never heard that story?”

  “I never heard more than 10 words at a time out of Isaac,” I said.

  Nimrod leaned forward. “Let me tell you.”

  “What about the dishes?” McNaught said. “The lunch dishes need washing.”

  Nimrod held his empty glass out and said again, “Fuck the dishes.”

  McNaught winked at me. “I’m trying to wean my brother from swearing in the House of the Lord, but it’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime.”

  “That’s right, Pastor Joe. I got a dirty mouth,” said Nimrod, unabashed.

  “You were going to tell us about Isaac?” I prompted.

  Nimrod said, “Before the war, Isaac was a bookkeeper in Berlin. After Hitler took over, things got bad for Jews. But what could Isaac do? Somehow or other, I don’t know how these things worked, him and his family got jammed, didn’t have no rights, wasn’t allowed to travel. Couldn’t get travel papers to leave the country.”

  McNaught’s telephone rang. He leaned forward and yanked the plug from its wall socket. His chair creaked as he resettled his enormous frame.

  Nimrod continued, “Jews had to wear this Hebrew sign on their sleeves so everybody would know what they was. On the streets they was insulted and spat on. Their Jewish friends was disappearing, one at a time. Every time Isaac’s doorbell rang he’d wonder if it was the SS.

  “Then Isaac heard about this guy at the British Embassy. This Englishman who could arrange for Jews to get visas outta Germany. If the price was right. The Englishman didn’t want money. He was only interested in art. As it happened, Isaac had a big collection of Old Master drawings. I don’t know what them things are, but they was supposed to be real valuable. Anyway, Isaac makes a deal with this English guy. Art for visas. The Englishman insists on getting his hands on the Old Master drawings first. Isaac don’t have no choice; he hands his drawings over and hopes for the best. That same night, Isaac’s door is busted down, and him and his family is arrested. The English guy has gypped him.”

  “That’s quite a yarn,” McNaught said.

  “How come you know so much about Isaac?” I asked.

  Nimrod laced his bony fingers into a steeple and lifted it to the tip of his chin. “Years ago we worked in logging camps together. I was a catskinner in them days. Isaac was a bullcook. I was separated from my old lady. Isaac had no family so neither of us had any place to go when we got time off. Me and Isaac used to stay in camp, maybe go fishing together. Open a few beers and shoot the breeze. After a few drinks Isaac loosened up, talked about Germany and the old days. I heard his story plenty of times, and I never got tired of listening to it, neither.”

  Nimrod’s moist black eyes and red-veined nose stuck out like the coal eyes and carrot nose of a snowman. He settled back into his story. “After his arrest, Isaac was jerked around till he ended up in Bergen-Belsen. Some of the things Isaac went through made me sick just hearing about ’em, but he hung in there. See, Isaac had a dream, that’s what saved him. He knew the war would end sometime. Hitler and his gang would get beat. When that happened, Isaac was gonna take himself and his wife and his kids to Canada. They’d have a little farm on the prairies maybe. Somewhere quiet where they’d never go hungry and wouldn’t have to worry about no SS knocking at their door. That dream kept Isaac going. But when the war ended, Isaac was the only one of his family still left alive.”

  Nimrod lifted his head. His voice rising, he said, “Listen. You think a guy who lived through that agony, he’d talk about it when he was sober?”

  “What’s a bullcook?” McNaught asked, obviously trying to change the subject.

  “A bullcook’s a guy what cleans out bunkhouses and such. A camp cook’s a guy what cooks meals,” Nimrod answered. Then he bowed his head again.

  I lifted a hand to Nimrod’s shoulder. “I tried to get a conversation going with old Isaac once or twice,” I said. “It was like pulling teeth. He was really withdrawn, private.”

  Nimrod looked up and I added, “You’re probably the only person who knew he’d been a bullcook, had a family. Did he ever tell you the name of this traitor? The Englishman who betrayed him?”

  Nimrod shook his head. “Nah. Maybe. If he did, I’ve forgot. I was drinking heavy them days, and I’m not so good with names.”

  I turned to McNaught, who was gazing at the ceiling with a faraway smile. “Joe. How come you did the service?” I asked. “Isaac was no Christian.”

  McNaught sat up straighter. “Isaac lost his religion along the way. He came to me years ago. He wasn’t worried about salvation, and he liked my style. Told me that when his time came he wanted to have me do a little service, nothing fancy. That’s what he got. I’d have been glad to do more. He left all his money to this mission.”

  “Yeah,” Nimrod retorted sarcastically. “All Isaac’s money. Fifty bucks and a pair of old socks.”

  He got to his feet, gripping the back of his chair for support. A skinny little man in a hand-me-down suit he’d probably borrowed for the occasion. He was overdue for a shave, and moisture gleamed in the corners of his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I better get back to the kitchen, right? If it snows again the mission’s gonna be full of sinners at suppertime.”

  When Nimrod was gone, McNaught selected his fifth sandwich. “Nimrod was wrong about one thing,” he said, his mouth full. “Isaac didn’t die broke. His estate is worth 50 thousand. Maybe a bit more.”

  I was incredulous. “How much did you say?”

  “You heard.”

  “And Isaac left it all to the Good Shepherd Mission?”

  “Every cent. I plan to set up a memorial in Isaac’s name.”

  “Where the hell did Isaac get that kind of dough?”

  McNaught just looked at me and shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. I could see that even if he did know, he had no intention of telling me.

  As I stood up to go, I glanced out the room’s huge plate-glass window. “Those clouds over the Sooke Hills are full of snow,” I said.

  “What do you expect, December in Victoria?” McNaught got to his feet. The floorboards complained as he lumbered across the room and stood next to me at the window.

  “When I was a kid, it never snowed in Victoria,” I said.

  McNaught smiled. “That’s one nice thing about growing older. You remember what you want to remember. I did my growing up in Vancouver, and it snowed every winter, especially on Grouse Mountain, so we could ski.” His grin widened. “Come to think of it, we only had two kinds of weather. Snow every winter, sun every summer, so we could stretch out on Kitsilano Beach and work on our tans. When I was a kid the weather was always perfect.”

  I looked into McNaught’s black eyes and c
aught a glimpse of some old passion. The ancient ghost of a ring hustler still animated the street preacher. The cocky pride that had kept him butting heads with contenders was still intact. McNaught’s agenda wasn’t all tied up in religion.

  I walked to the door, but then something occurred to me. “A white-haired woman came in late for Isaac’s service,” I said. “She left before the rest of us. Did you recognize her?”

  “Never seen her before,” said McNaught. “Just some little old lady in a fur coat.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Victoria’s downtown library is across the street from the city’s main courthouse. I walked straight over there after leaving the Good Shepherd. Light snow was dusting the windswept courtyard, where a guitarist wearing fingerless gloves was playing Christmas tunes. Shivering in a thin coat, he stamped his feet in time to the music. People were dropping money into his guitar case, but, alone in icy dreams, he seemed to neither notice nor care. Maybe he warmed up inside the library occasionally; it felt tropical in there.

  I told a reference librarian what I was looking for, and she helped me select several books on pre-war Germany. I found out that Britain’s ambassador to Germany in 1938 and ’39 was a diplomat named Motlow. I assumed that the man who’d betrayed Isaac Schwartz must have been a lesser official. Soon more books surrounded me, including a German equivalent of Who’s Who. I skimmed through it and many other tomes before hitting pay dirt, almost two hours later, in a memoir written by an Angela Knoeffler.

  Mrs. Knoeffler was an Australian woman married to a German engineer. Both were Jews who had spent several pre-war years in Berlin before being interned by the Hitler regime. According to Mrs. Knoeffler, many British politicians and senior diplomats had been naive and inept, incapable of understanding Hitler’s dark complexities. Neville Chamberlain and Ambassador Motlow were typical of the Englishmen Hitler had dealings with, leading him to believe that Britain would do little, if anything, to impede Germany’s territorial aggressions. In one intriguing chapter, Mrs. Knoeffler reminisced about an amusing diplomatic dinner party hosted in 1938 by Sir Hugh and Lady Baineston, wealthy art collectors, at their big house in Berlin-Dahlem.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It was getting dark when I left the library. The snow had stopped, but a cold rain was falling.

  In the window of a newspaper and magazine shop, two-inch headlines framed the front-page photograph of a defiant teenaged murderer: kelly ellard gets life. I hurried past, musing about the girl who had tortured and then drowned a schoolmate. Attending Isaac’s memorial service had dampened my spirits. I wondered what kind of Victoria Kelly would discover when, youth and beauty faded, the prison doors opened for her many years hence.

  Turning down Courtney Street, I saw a Budget rental truck double-parked outside Gottlieb’s Trading Post. Two men were transferring heavy cardboard boxes from Gottlieb’s to the truck. Dressed entirely in black, they were dead ringers for the two I’d scared off the Gorge archaeological dig. They were driving away as I entered the Trading Post.

  I knew the place well, and things looked about the same as usual: high-quality carved and painted Indian masks on the walls, along with Hudson’s Bay point blankets, beaded shirts and Native paintings and prints. Displayed inside glass cabinets were handmade gold and silver bracelets, rings and brooches, as well as old and, in some cases, extremely valuable baskets, steeple hats and miniature argillite totem poles. Whalebone carvings and scrimshaw work lay on shelves fitted into upended dugout canoes.

  Mary Kranmer, a Haida woman who’d worked as Gottlieb’s chief buyer for at least 20 years, was behind a polished mahogany counter, making entries in a ledger. Otherwise the store was deserted. When she saw me, Mary closed the ledger and slid it away in a drawer. “Ya hey, Silas,” she said, smiling. “What’s up?”

  “Hi ya, Mary, just passing by,” I said. “Somebody told me Gottlieb sold the business. I find that hard to believe.”

  “I find it hard to believe myself,” Mary agreed.

  “End of an era. I hope the new owner won’t change things much.”

  Mary’s smile faded, and her brow furrowed. “A guy from Vancouver owns it now. >Mo Dillon. He’s changed things already. Most of the old employees have been sacked. I’m finished at the end of the month. Dillon’s bringing in some hotshot sales guy to run the place.”

  Mo Dillon?

  I turned my mental clock back more than 20 years, and slowly the features of a bona fide teenaged badass materialized in my mind. Mo Dillon! Could this be the same guy?

  The Mo I’d known was kicking the tar out of his stepdad at age 14. Then he’d attacked a truancy officer with a baseball bat. For that one, a soft-headed judge sent Mo to juvie hall for six months. Afterwards, in compliance with the terms of his probation, he had presented himself for instruction to Mr. Barnickle, my Grade 9 homeroom teacher, showing up in greasy jeans and a black Harley T-shirt, with a joint dangling from his mouth.

  Mr. Barnickle was easygoing, but Mo was way over the top. Mo’s formal education ended that very day, with Mr. Barnickle laid out on the floor in a pool of his own blood and the school principal barricaded inside his office with a broken arm.

  That spectacular act of senseless violence cost Mo two years less a day in Wilkinson Road penitentiary. After that he’d dropped out of sight. Had I thought of Mo at all in the intervening years, I’d have assumed he was either dead or doing life in Kingston Prison.

  I said to Mary, “Big black-haired guy? Has a long scar across his left cheek?”

  Mary nodded. “That’s the one. You know him?”

  “I used to,” I said.

  Mary sighed. “This is a very specialized business. Dillon doesn’t know the first thing about it. Brian Gottlieb developed excellent relationships with local carvers and artists over the years. Without great craftsmen keeping you supplied, you’re sunk. Dillon doesn’t get that. I’ve been ordered to stop giving people advances, for instance. You know how that works: some old carver will come in and tell us he’s thinking of doing a Thunderbird mask. If it’s somebody we know and trust we’ll advance a few bucks on spec. Sometimes it takes months, even years, but sooner or later a beautiful Thunderbird mask gets delivered. Dillon’s put the kibosh on all that. ‘No more advances,’ he says. What’s worse, we’re supposed to take all our new stuff on consignment.”

  She shook her head in frustration. “We’re losing our best artisans. There’s no way they’ll give us their stuff on consignment. This place was making good money the way it was. Why change things?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “So how is Mo treating you? Personally, I mean.”

  Mary put her head to one side. “All right, I guess. He can be kind of scary at times, but other times, when he puts himself out, he’s almost charming.”

  I found it hard to imagine a charming Mo, but all I said was, “So, Mary. What’ll you do next?”

  “I dunno, really. Maybe I’ll head up to the Queen Charlottes for a bit.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I motioned toward the door. “I noticed a couple of guys loading a Budget truck outside.”

  Mary nodded. “Big consignment for a U.S. buyer. Something Mo Dillon set up personally. I don’t even know what it was.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Back at my office, a mountain of paperwork awaited me. My head teeming with thoughts, I plugged in Mr. Coffee and prepared to spend tedious hours writing and filing reports. I was on the phone, being hectored by a man who wanted somebody to move a car illegally parked in a residents-only spot, when Bernie came in. I waved him to a seat, but he ignored me and went straight through to the washroom. I heard its door open and close. When I hung up my phone, Bernie was sitting in front of me, one leg crossed over the other, prodding a BlackBerry.

  I said, “Playing Frogger?”

  “Very funny,” he scowled, giving me a heavy-lidded look and shoving the BlackBerry into his pocket. “Frogger went out 30 years ago. You need to move with the times.”

  “I’m
just finishing up here. Feel like grabbing some food?”

  “Nah,” he replied listlessly.

  “Feel like ending it all? Sticking your head in a gas oven?”

  “Not right now. Thanks for asking.”

  Bernie’s thoughts were elsewhere, but he listened when I told him about Isaac’s memorial service, my conversation with Nimrod and my subsequent investigations in the library.

  A sudden gust of wind outside shook my window in its frame. A nor’easter was bringing in another cold front from the Arctic. The wind would be howling across Saanich potato fields, swirling around Mount Douglas, lifting roof tiles, roaring down Old Town’s frigid back alleys. “Weather like this, I feel sorry for street kids,” I said. “If they don’t get inside, they’ll freeze tonight.”

  “I feel sorry for them too,” Bernie said, roused from his brooding thoughts. “For some kids more than others, to be honest. Get right down to it, street life usually starts out as self indulgence.”

  “And before they know it they have very heavy problems. They’ve indulged themselves into a boneyard.”

  “Yeah, I know. Cynicism’s getting to be a habit with me. Maybe it’s my age.” Bernie sighed and added, “I drove past the Warrior Reserve earlier. Noticed lots of activity near your longhouse. Something going on?”

  “Winter Ceremonial.”

  “Native magic!” he said, wide awake at last. “You told me you’d explain it to me sometime.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. Should I shut off my bullshit detector before you start?”

  I leaned back in my chair.

  “You don’t actually believe in magic,” Bernie prodded.

  “I don’t?”

  “Don’t go all Masonic on me. Everybody’s intrigued by the occult,” Bernie said. “A physicist was talking about time and space on TV the other night. It was mostly over my head. Interesting, though. She got into some weird and wonderful stuff about string theory. How the universe contains several dimensions. Ten at last count. Maybe more. It’s been proved mathematically.”

  “If it was on TV it must be true. Our shamans have been describing extra dimensions to my people since about 8000 bc. Now you’re telling me it’s mathematics.”