“You’ll get every possible break, you have my word.”
“What do you want from me then?”
“Start by explaining exactly what happened on the night that you and Maria met Ronnie Chew.”
“Me and Maria just ran into him by chance, we’d never seen him before,” Ruth said, her voice still a little angry. “We were in Twinner Scudd’s club in Esquimalt. Nanaimo’s. Ronnie was sitting there all by himself, looking lonely. He came over and introduced himself. We hit it off right away. We was having fun when all hell broke loose, guys were fighting, glasses was flying. Maria and me were sharing Ronnie’s table by then, having a few drinks. It seemed like he had dough. He didn’t argue when it came to paying our tab. When the trouble started, the three of us got the hell out of there and we ended up in Ronnie’s house.”
“And?”
“Don’t rush me, Silas,” she declared impatiently, “I’m trying to remember . . . ”
I waited, wondering if I’d get the truth or a string of rationalizations.
She said, “It was a beautiful house, we figured Ronnie owned it, but it turned out he was just a gardener.”
“Yes, he was. Just a gardener.”
“I don’t get it. Ronnie was loaded; I know he was. He had all these expensive toys: The fancy Beemer, a ton of cocaine, jewellery. He gave me and Maria jewellery, told us we could help ourselves if we’d fool around with him a little, let him take pictures of us naked. That’s what we did. Fooled around in his bedroom. He likes fat girls, I guess. Ronnie was doing coke as well. After a while, he ran out of steam and conked on us. Me and Maria decided it was time to go. We couldn’t start Ronnie’s car, and so we tried to call a cab, but we couldn’t find no phone and ended up walking along Collins Lane. Then this old fart stops us on the road. He asks us what we think we’re doing. We tell him it’s none of his fucking business, which it wasn’t. Then we heard a goddamn police siren and two cops showed up. Me and Maria panicked. I don’t know why, we should have stopped where we was, because we hadn’t done nothing wrong, right? But we panicked and we ran into the woods and tried to hide. Then me and Maria got separated. You know the rest.”
“When we get back to Victoria, police will meet the boat. They’ll take you into custody for a short while, and there’ll be questions. But you needn’t worry. They won’t hold you long, you’ll be back on the street in no time. It’s imperative you tell the police exactly what you’ve told me. No creative additions or subtractions.”
“Okay, I’ve heard that lecture before.”
“You said earlier that you knew what I look like without a poultice on my face.”
“That’s because this isn’t the first time we’ve met.”
“So you do remember me?”
“Sure I do.”
“You and Maria were walking on Pandora Street. I noticed you particularly because you were both wearing funny T-shirts.”
“Me and Maria was watching ravens. You came over and told us you were a cop.”
“Correct. A couple of days later you were on Echo Bay with Ronnie Chew. And there’s something else. Hidden in the trees above Ronnie’s house there’s a sandstone boulder with something peculiar about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. A boulder? You mean a big chunk of rock?”
“The boulder has a skeleton man petroglyph on it, and a wolf.”
“Who cares? If you’ve seen one petroglyph you’ve seen ’em all. In my opinion.”
≈ ≈ ≈
A promise made is a debt unpaid, but things didn’t work out as I had expected they would. It was after midnight when the Polar Girl rounded Victoria’s Laurel Point and manoeuvred into its usual berth near the Johnson Street Bridge. I was expecting to see Bernie Tapp. Instead, Nice Manners and half of Victoria’s Serious Crimes squad were waiting on the dock to greet us. With Twinner Scudd at my side, I posted myself at the head of the yacht’s slanting gangway. Manners came aboard all piss and vinegar. The poultice on my face amused him. He gave me the brush-off when I tried to explain matters. Manners wasn’t interested in what I might have to say. Obsessed with his personal vendetta, Manners slapped me with a writ that commanded me to stay within Victoria’s city limits for the next ten days, and ordered me off the yacht.
I stood on the dock while the entire Quanterelle contingent was arrested, handcuffed and brought ashore. Twinner Scudd gave me a glance hot enough to make my cheeks burn when he and the others were whisked off to VPD headquarters in an armoured van.
Manners ordered Harry Biedel to stay behind and guard the yacht.
Looking down at me from the Polar Girl’s pilothouse, Biedel said, “How was Desolation Sound?”
“All right, but things have gone to hell since. I was expecting Bernie Tapp to meet me, not Manners.”
“Bernie’s in Vancouver with Superintendent Mallory. They’re attending a tea, crumpets and gang-related crime conference at the Park Plaza Hotel. It was a last-minute panic deal, I gather.”
Biedel wished me goodnight and told me to go home. It was good advice, and I ought to have followed it, but I didn’t.
It was a cold night in Victoria. The air smelled like rain, clouds dragged themselves like a veil across the stars. I pulled my collar up and tramped off the dock. A draggle of piss-bums were passing a bottle around in a grassy wasteland beside the E & N Railroad terminus. I needed a drink too, and I might have joined them, except they were probably drinking salt-poisoned Chinese cooking brandy or Scope mouthwash. Swans Pub, a hundred yards away, drew me like a magnet. The streets were empty of pedestrians, although vehicle traffic was heavy along Store Street and down Pandora Street.
I was standing across from Swans, waiting for the light to change, when I heard footsteps behind. I turned and from the corner of an eye saw a masked man turn the gun in his hands and swing it down by the barrel. Shock and surprise slowed my reflexes. My head broke the gun’s fall. I dropped away into an abyss of scattered blinding light.
≈ ≈ ≈
Several heavy blows to the head in quick succession were more than even my thick head could tolerate. I was kept in an induced coma for over a week. I have no memories of the immediate aftermath except for a jumble of vague impressions that may owe more to imagination than memory. I know that Little Sam the medicine man came into my hospital room with Chief Alphonse to burn sweetgrass and throw bones in the air. Felicity Exeter made a single visit, although I remember nothing about it. I’ve been told since that in a delirious state I came clean about my brief sexual dalliance with P.G. Mainwaring. I had a guilty conscience, I’m a jackass to boot, and the truth was out. Felicity went away and she didn’t come back.
My first lucid memory involved Old Mary Cooke. She was sitting at my bedside talking about cedar.
In olden days, cedar bark was highly prized. In late April or early May, when the tree sap was rising, young Coast Salish women would find a good cedar tree, stretch as high as they could reach, cut through the bark to the sapwood with a sharp knife, and then pull the bark down. Cedar bark comes off in long strips that can be rolled up in bundles and carried home. The bark is split, pounded between stones, and immersed in hot water. After days of tedious work the cedar fibres separate and can be woven into cloaks, hats and other garments.
Old Mary Cooke told me that a long, long time ago, the daughter of a chief was looking for cedars in the forested slopes above Echo Bay when she came across a house built of wooden planks. Nearby, four wolf cubs were hiding among the exposed roots of a big old cedar tree where a wolf had made her den.
Now, it is well known amongst the Coast Salish that if a whaler skins a young wolf cub alive and rubs it against his canoe, good hunting will follow. The young woman seized the four cubs and put them into her basket, intending to take them home to her brother.
She started towards home and immediately heard a strange sound, as if a great crowd was singing and drumming. When she stopped walking, the noise ceased. Looking around, she saw an
old woman, beckoning her from the doorway of the plank house. As the young woman approached the plank house, she looked ahead and noticed that the floor inside the house was littered with the skeletons of small birds. From within the plank house she heard the sound of many voices. She stepped inside and fell down and went into a dream. While dreaming, the young woman saw a series of Bird Dancers who appeared from behind a screen to dance while the old woman sang. The young woman learned all of the old woman’s songs. When the young woman woke from her dream, she saw that the old woman had turned into a mother wolf. The mother wolf released her cubs from the basket, fled with them from the plank house, and gave a ritual howl. The plank house turned into a boulder. The young woman was forever entombed in stone.
≈ ≈ ≈
I was in the Jubilee Hospital, where an overtaxed doctor was soaking poultice off my face with an evil-smelling chemical solution.
“What is this stuff?” the doctor asked, her nose wrinkling at the smell.
“It’s an old Indian remedy,” I replied listlessly. “Lily-of-the-valley leaves and cascara bark. A woman that I know keeps putting it on every night.”
“Cascara bark? The stuff ancient Egyptians used for unplugging their bowels?”
“The very same.”
“Holy God, this is one for the books! Feel that, Mr. Seaweed? Skin is peeling off your face in strips, although I must say that your wounds look clean enough underneath this crap. I don’t think there’ll be much scarring, if any, but you’ve been damned lucky. What happened to you?”
“I went up to Desolation Sound and fell into a cement mixer.”
“Very careless. Now, open your mouth.”
I opened it. She put a spatula on my tongue and looked at my gums.
“This must be rather painful,” she said a few moments later. “You’ll probably lose a couple of teeth, and maybe their roots. I’ll arrange for an oral surgeon to look at you when I’m finished.”
Candace wandered into the room. Looking sexy in a miniskirt, she said, “My, my, Silas. Don’t you look nice?”
“Goddammit, Hilda!” the doctor said angrily. “This is a sterile area.”
Candace bridled. “Nothing to worry about, Doctor. I’ve just had my monthly checkup.”
“I know you have, and I don’t want you spreading it around in my emergency room,” the doctor replied heatedly.
“I have something to tell Silas.”
“Listen, Hilda! Just clear off before I call security.”
“Hey, Candace,” I said, rousing my head from the pillows. “How did you know I was here?”
“Lightning told me . . . ” Candace’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh God! I wasn’t supposed to tell you that!”
Candace fled.
“Why do you call her Candace?” the doctor asked.
“That’s her name.”
“Your thought processes may be affected, post traumatic stress probably,” the doctor mused. “Her name is Hilda Mullins, she’s a hooker.”
“Candace is her boudoir name.”
“Really? And as for what Hilda might have for you, Mr. Seaweed, how about a dose of the clap?”
Days passed before I went home.
≈ ≈ ≈
I drank milk through a straw, slurped up some runny scrambled eggs and went outside to my private garden. Existence was bearable, I decided, lying like a log in my hammock. The pine siskin had flown away; my thoughts kept flying away. There was something important that I needed to remember but, lulled by the pleasant chatter of late-summer birds, I found it hard to concentrate. Words buzzed through my head like bees: mulligatawny, lightning, candy striper, tooth implants. I slept for an hour. A car came downhill past the longhouse and pulled to a stop outside my garden gate. The pine siskin returned and made himself comfortable on my stomach. Bernie Tapp, coming into the garden through the gate, scared the little bird into the escallonia bush.
It was the tenth time Bernie had checked in after bringing me home from hospital. He sat down on one of my garden chairs and brought a bottle from his pocket.
“How come you’re not resting up at Felicity Exeter’s?” he said gruffly.
“I haven’t seen her lately. I believe she’s in Seattle, attending a Spirit Bear conference.”
“You’re banged up in Victoria and she’s in Seattle, worrying about bears?”
“She’s a free spirit.”
“I know, it’s one of the things I like about her. It’s also one of the things that I dislike about her. Does Felicity know how sick you still are?”
Bernie’s innocent question made me feel worse. I said, “Wait a minute.”
My sense of balance had improved; getting out of the hammock and going to my outdoor privy was easier now. After relieving my bladder, I went back to the hammock.
“Your cheeks are a bit swollen on the left side of your face. Otherwise, apart from those staples, and the bald spots where your head was shaved, you look pretty good,” Bernie remarked. “Is it okay for you to have a drink?”
“I’m weaning myself off sobriety slowly. A wee dram would help the process.”
“Where are your drinking glasses?”
“You know where they are, Bernie. Help yourself.”
Bernie went into the cabin, returned with two moulded glass tumblers, and filled them with Chivas Regal.
“It’s time we talked business. Twinner Scudd has made a long statement,” Bernie said. “He’s still locked up, but we don’t know how much longer we can hold him because his lawyers want him out. According to Twinner’s counsel, he made a deal with you. A plea bargain.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s bullshit. Twinner spilled his guts. He told us that Larry Cooley set fire to Nanaimo’s. In retaliation, Twinner Scudd told Eddie Cliffs to shove Cooley around a little. But Cliffs is nuts and things spun out of control. Cooley ended up in Sumatch Creek the way you ended up in Desolation Sound, except Cooley drowned. That’s good in a way, because if Cooley had survived, we would have nailed him instead. He’s an arsonist, and people died in the flames. He would have been a burden on the state for the rest of his life. It all adds up. We’ve charged Eddie Cliffs with first-degree murder. The Crown is sure it’ll stick. Twinner Scudd thinks he’s in the clear and will walk. But he won’t walk. Twinner will get five years and he will serve at least three years behind bars before he gets parole . . . ”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t promise Twinner anything, but . . . ”
“Listen carefully, pal,” Bernie said slowly and deliberately. “You are not a cop. Not any more. Your deal-making days ended when you rolled over in Mallory’s office . . . ”
“Rolled over? I told Mallory the truth . . . ”
“Dumb, dumb, dumb and bloody dumber! Instead of sticking up for yourself when you had the chance, you played the big hero. You stuck your chin out and invited Mallory to take a sock at it. You left Mallory with no choice but to suspend you. Now it’s too late. You’ve lost your badge. It’s all over, pal. Twinner Scudd has thumbed his nose at the law long enough. Crown is rubbing its hands, because for them it’s payback time. Twinner Scudd will go down for five years.”
“Is this a joke?”
Bernie shook his head. “This is the joke: you are a walking dead man. When Twinner Scudd finally realizes that his plea bargain is an absolute non-starter, your days will be numbered. You will be dead, buried and forgotten by the time Twinner Scudd comes out of jail.” Bernie kept talking, but I’d stopped listening.
I tuned in again when Bernie said, “Your disciplinary hearing is on hold as regards the cocaine rap. Oh, and by the way, Lightning Bradley is still AWOL. He’s done a runner, and we still can’t find him.”
I was still absorbing these priceless nuggets of information when Bernie went on, “Ruth Claypole made a statement. It matches the statement that Maria Alfred made weeks ago. It seems that you were right about those girls all along. They met Ronnie/Raymond when they were out on the town having a litt
le fun. They didn’t kill Raymond Cho, we’ve had to turn ’em loose. We’ll be lucky if they don’t run to a lawyer and sue us. The problem is, if those girls didn’t kill Raymond Cho, who did? Who killed Maggie Bradley? Who killed Tubby Gonzales?”
“Who shoved a brick of coke up my chimney?”
Bernie shrugged. “That’s not all. We need to do something about P.G. Mainwaring. Nobody knows what. She doesn’t deny that Larry Cooley burned Nanaimo’s down, but she insists that he was acting independently. Nobody believes her, but that doesn’t bother her because her lawyers have told her we have no case. They’ve told her that she has nothing to fear from police as long as she keeps her trap shut and lets counsel do all the talking. Her lawyers are right. The VPD is left with egg on its face. What do you think we should do about this mess?”
“Ask a policeman.”
“You’re a policeman.”
Instinctively, I shook my head, which turned out to be a very bad idea. My whole world began to spin. Bernie saw my eyes lose focus; he grabbed me before I fell.
I was trying to remember something. Something important about storms and candy stripers and mulligatawny soup, when Bernie took me into my cabin, lowered my spinning head to the pillows, and tucked me into bed.
“You’re not mad at me, are you, pal?” Bernie asked, his eyes troubled.
“Jeez, Bernie,” I said, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Heavy black clouds blew in from the north, skewered themselves atop Victoria’s telephone poles and wet us with their weeping. The air turned cold. Winter’s ruins were upon us, white horses galloped across the waves and dashed themselves to foam on the beaches. Canada geese flew in and circled above Warrior Bay, where they joined dozens of high-flying mallards. Turning slowly, the birds drifted lower and lower before alighting en masse upon the water, where they disturbed drifting trumpeter swans. I could still hear the birds at night, a dark raft of voices.
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