Hungry Ghosts

by Peggy Blair

Pike looked out the window at the falling snow, avoiding Jones’s eyes, not sure how much information to share. “The bylaw officer on the reserve is an old friend of mine. He’s seen bruises on the boy. He thought Pauley was being picked on at school. Pauley’s uncle, Bill Wabigoon, is the chief now. He says that Pauley hits himself sometimes, but I know what Bill was like when he was a kid. He was a bully. I don’t know how much he’s changed. Pauley’s staying at Bill’s place. It worries me.”

  “Shouldn’t you do something? Tell Children’s Aid?”

  “Tell them what? They’d probably come in, take one look at the living conditions, and scoop him up, and then we’d have a riot at the blockade for sure. He’s the chief’s nephew.”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. You can’t ignore child abuse when you see it.”

  He shook his head again. “That’s the problem. You never see it. People hide it. Look at all the things that happened at the residential schools around here. It’s complicated, me being here. I know things about the people that someone from outside wouldn’t know.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? Having an insider’s view?”

  “Makes it harder to be objective.”

  Jones nodded and drank from her coffee. “You said the chief was a bully. Was he violent?”

  “You ever hear of the Indian Posse?”

  “The street gang? Sure. Gang members were all over the reserves in Saskatchewan when I was stationed there with the RCMP.”

  Pike looked out the window again, remembering. A car skidded in the snow. It almost hit another. Horns blared. The drivers gave each other the finger. Tensions were running high, with the bad weather and the blockade.

  “Richard Wolfe started it up in Winnipeg. Members used to wear red bandanas. Richard wanted Indians to respect themselves. He used to say, when you see red, you see a proud Indian. Billy Wabigoon was Posse too. My best friend, Sheldon, and me, we were strikers.”

  “What does that mean, being a striker?” asked Jones.

  “We were prospects. Billy did just about everything he could think of to get us to join.”

  Until Sheldon Waubasking beat the shit out of him, thought Pike, and almost killed him. “Then O’Malley found us pulling a B & E, and that was the end of that.”

  “O’Malley caught you breaking into a house?”

  “Well, actually,” Pike said, “it was an apartment.”

  37

  Charlie Pike had been wriggling out of the window when someone grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him the rest of the way out. Fuck, thought Charlie. He had a small plastic radio in his hands. It dropped. He heard it crack on the sidewalk.

  The sky fell as he was rolled face down on the ground; his arms were yanked behind his back, he heard the metal click of handcuffs. Then he was pulled up into a sitting position and propped against the wall of the building. A cop with a neck like a bull and a shiny bald head was holding him by his shirt collar. The bull-man had a patch on his shoulder that said, “One, With the Strength of Many.” No shit, Charlie thought. His biceps were as thick as Charlie’s thighs.

  “How old are you?” the cop asked.

  “Twelve,” Charlie lied. He was small for his age; maybe the bull-man would let him go. Twelve was too young to be charged under the Young Offenders Act.

  “What’s your date of birth?”

  Charlie hesitated while he tried to figure it out. Math wasn’t his strongest subject. He calculated wrong.

  “So now you’re fourteen? Make up your mind, son. Where are you from?”

  “White Harbour.” It was close enough, and he didn’t want the cop calling the school.

  “Where’s that?

  “I dunno. A couple of hours from Kenora.”

  “What are you doing in Winnipeg? Besides stealing other people’s property?”

  Charlie shrugged.

  “Don’t be a smartass, son. You’re in a deep pile of shit at the moment.”

  He said “shite” not shit, Charlie noticed. He had a thick accent. But he didn’t seem angry. More amused. “I came here with my buddy,” he answered.

  “The one who melted away like the last bit of snow when he saw us walking towards you? Good friend, that one. How long have you been in Winnipeg?”

  Charlie looked around. The cop was right. Sheldon had fled. “I dunno. A couple of months.”

  Another policeman, just as beefy but a foot shorter, walked towards them dragging Sheldon beside him. Sheldon’s hands were cuffed in front of him. The other cop sat Sheldon on the ground beside Charlie. “He’s got an Indian Posse tattoo, Sarge,” he said.

  “Yes, so does this one. What’s your name?” the big bald cop asked Sheldon.

  Charlie relaxed a bit. He and Sheldon had agreed that if they got busted again, they’d make up fake names. He was still thinking about what name to invent when the other cop shook Sheldon by the shoulder. “You heard him. What’s your name?”

  “Charlie Pike,” Sheldon said.

  Charlie twisted around to glare at his friend. “I told you to make up a name. Not give him my name, asshole.”

  The bald cop laughed; a deep sound that rumbled from his stomach all the way up to his massive chest. “So this is organized crime? Pretty disorganized, I’d say. Now, give me your real names. And if you lie to me again, I’ll have to charge you with obstruction.”

  They gave their names, although reluctantly.

  “Go call these in, Albert, and let’s see just what kind of delinquents we have here.”

  The other cop walked up the street to a patrol car. He came back a few minutes later, smiling smugly. “Supposed to be in kiddy court next week to enter pleas. Six counts of break and enter, possession of stolen property under.”

  “No convictions?”

  “Not yet. Won’t take long.”

  “You boys are lucky. Even if you’re convicted, in a couple of years those records will disappear, if you keep your noses clean.” The bull-man sat on the ground beside the two boys. “So, you’re supposed to be Posse, are you?”

  Sheldon wasn’t saying anything, leaving it to Charlie to navigate their way out of trouble.

  “Well, I don’t think you’re Posse at all. I think you just pretend to be.” Charlie shook his head in wonder. Maybe the bull-man was some kind of shaman. “I think you put those tattoos on yourselves. Or someone else did it for you. For one thing, the IP is upside down. It says dI.”

  It was Billy Wabigoon’s idea. “Here,” he had whispered to them. “You do this and they’ll leave you alone. You got to be careful in here. Those big boys, they get their hands on you, they’re going to hurt you. They’ll fuck you in the ass. You understand? You let me put these on you, they’ll think you’re Posse.”

  Charlie looked at the tattoos. It stung to have the ink rubbed in, but it worked like a talisman. They had been left alone. Maybe the other Indian Posse members couldn’t read so well upside-down either.

  “Who’s supposed to be looking after you? They don’t let you out of custody in that court unless there’s an adult who can keep an eye on you.”

  Neither boy spoke.

  “Do you want to go back to jail?”

  Sheldon caught Charlie’s eye. No, neither of them wanted that.

  “Sheldon’s sister,” Charlie said.

  O’Malley pulled out his notebook. “And so why isn’t she keeping tabs on you?”

  “Sophie? I dunno. She goes out a lot.”

  “Sophie Waubasking?” The big cop sighed. He pulled himself to his feet, walked over to the other cop. Charlie could hear them talking, even though the bald cop kept his voice low.

  “The sister’s gone missing. She’s a hooker, an addict. A sad case. I’ve dealt with her before. These boys are homeless.”

  “What do you want to do with them, Sarge?”

  �
�If we charge them, they’ll go right back into custody. There’s something about this pair I like. Maybe their cheekiness. I don’t usually see it with Indian kids.”

  “Jesus, Sarge,” the other cop said. “Can’t you just give money to the SPCA like anyone else? You still like stray cats, don’t you?”

  O’Malley roared with laughter. “I never did like stray cats,” the big man said. “But stray kids, now that’s a different story.”

  38

  “My God, Charlie, I had no idea you and O’Malley went back that far,” said Celia Jones. “Did he charge you?”

  Charlie Pike shook his head. “We were lucky. The apartment we broke into was his. He thought we should have a second chance because we were kids. But so were most of the Posse members. Richard Wolfe was only fourteen when he and his brother Daniel and two others created the Posse. He wasn’t what you think of when you think ‘gang leader.’ He had a kind of charisma, but he was quiet, talked a lot about family. They chose the name Posse because they thought that’s what it meant. But then they got into debt collection, drugs, robberies. Things got violent.” Pike looked at his knuckles. “The Cripps and the Posse started fighting for control of the drug trade. Going to jail didn’t stop them. That’s where the Posse was most active.”

  “And Bill Wabigoon, how was he involved?”

  “He was one of the founding four.”

  Jones raised her eyebrows.

  “That’s what has me worried,” said Pike. “There are Warriors coming here from all over the country to support the blockade. A lot of them are Bill’s friends. I’m sure some are Posse members. Adam Neville says we can’t rule out one of them as the killer. He may be right.”

  “I wish I could help, Charlie. I’m way out of my element with this stuff.”

  Pike shook his head. “I know. I’m just feeling kind of stuck. I still don’t know who our victim was. I can’t figure out how she ended up in the territory. There aren’t any reports of a white woman missing around here, so she must have come from somewhere else, maybe down south. But if she had a car, where is it? There was only one set of tire tracks at the side of the road.”

  Jones thought for a minute. “Maybe she was hitchhiking and the killer picked her up.”

  “I don’t think so. Adam said she had an expensive manicure. People with money don’t hitchhike. Unless her car broke down in the storm and got towed. But then, whoever towed her would have taken her to wherever she was staying.” Pike picked up his mug, turned it in his fingers while he thought. “Maybe the killer pretended his vehicle broke down. He could have flagged her over and drove her to the reserve so he could kill her. Could be somebody who knew about the funding issues with the APF, how hard it is right now to get a police investigation done on a First Nation reserve. Tell me something, Celia. If you saw a man hitchhiking around here, would you stop?”

  She hesitated. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It would depend.”

  “Depend on what?”

  “Charlie, most women are nervous about male hitchhikers. Red, white, black, green—I don’t think it makes a difference. An older white man or a kid with a backpack, maybe. A biker with tattoos, probably not. I know it’s wrong, but to some extent we all believe in stereotypes, right? Police use them all the time. But you know, just after a bad storm, I’d like to think I would stop. You’d feel sorry for the guy. You wouldn’t automatically think ‘axe murderer.’ ”

  Pike nodded slowly. It hadn’t occurred to him that white people were afraid of anything. He had been trying to see this from the perspective of an Aboriginal victim, but this victim wasn’t First Nation. That made a difference. Pauley Oshig was right. She was the wrong colour.

  “There’s something else. I was looking at the photographs of the Highway Strangler exhibits on the way up here. There’s something funny about the stocking that was tied around one of the victim’s necks. It had a kind of a square seam at the heel, like this.” He reached for his pen and drew a sketch for her on a paper napkin. “I don’t pay much attention to women’s nylons. Are these common?”

  Jones looked at it carefully. “No. Definitely not. But I’ve seen stockings with seams like that before somewhere.” She tried to remember. “I think it was in a photograph in one of my mom’s photo albums. I’ll look for it tomorrow morning and ask her. Are you heading back to your motel?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty late. You can call me there in the morning if you come up with something. Your mom can remember that kind of detail?”

  “It’s mostly the present she’s losing, Charlie. Not the past.”

  39

  SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 2007

  When Inspector Ramirez entered the Major Crimes Unit the next morning, Natasha Delgado was grinning. “I found Mama Loa, that yerbera whose address was on Antifona Conejo’s ID card,” she said. “The block captain was right. Everyone in Cayo Hueyso knows her. Her last name is Adivino, but she’s not in any of our records. I think maybe she made it up. She lives on the Isla del Polvo.”

  “Adivino?” The word meant fortune-teller. “I thought she was supposed to be an herbalist.”

  Delgado shrugged her shoulders. “The people I talked to say she’s a psychic, that she can tell the future.”

  “Where’s Detective Espinoza?” asked Ramirez, glancing around the office. Espinoza’s desk was empty.

  “Out looking for women’s nylons. I told him, if he finds some, to get me a pair.”

  Ramirez smiled. “You want to come along and help me interview Señora Adivino? We still need to find out why LaNeva had Antifona Conejo’s identification in her purse. Maybe she knows.”

  The Isla del Polvo—the Isle of Dust—was in the Marianao district. It was a kind of makeshift refugee camp. There were similar shanty­towns all over Havana, housing the thousands of migrants who streamed in from the countryside in search of jobs that didn’t exist.

  They built homes out of corrugated steel and bits of wood. Some looked like they were constructed by mud wasps. Thirty thousand people lived in roughly five square kilometres. But here, as in Cayo Hueso, everyone seemed to know Mama Loa. Ramirez and Delgado were directed to her shanty.

  They found her sitting on a mildewed rocking chair in front of a lopsided shack on the edge of the shantytown.

  Ramirez couldn’t tell the old woman’s age; she could have been sixty or eighty. She had long brown hair streaked with grey that wound down below her shoulders in coils. She wore a white bandana and a long red skirt. Somehow, she had managed to keep them clean.

  A Taino tobacco idol with shell eyes sat on a wooden crate beside her chair, next to a metal can that held plastic flowers. Beside it rested a guano, a large green leaf blessed by a Catholic priest. Ramirez noticed the crucifix that hung around Mama Loa’s neck. Whatever religion she believed in, thought Ramirez, she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Señora Adivino?”

  “Some call me that, yes.” The old woman opened her eyes slowly. They were clear, the irises and pupils as dark as her ebony skin. Her rocking chair slowly creaked back and forth. “But most call me Mama Loa.”

  She spoke with a Creole accent, her s’s soft and prolonged. She was probably from Haiti, thought Ramirez. One of the waves of immigrants who came to Cuba in the thirties and forties.

  “Señora, we’re here about Antifona Conejo,” said Ramirez. “She listed your address in Cayo Hueso on her official papers.”

  “I know that’s why you’re here. That police lady with you, I know why she’s here too.” The old woman nodded her head towards Detective Delgado. “Because you think Antifona’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that, Señora,” said Delgado. “We only know that, at the moment, we can’t find her.”

  “Oh, she’s not dead yet.” The old woman sat in her chair, rocking silently, her eyes pressed shut. Finally, she nodded, resigned. “But she’s going to be. Nothing you can do
about it, neither. Nothing nobody can do.”

  “Why do you say that?” said Delgado. “Did someone threaten her?”

  The old woman shook her head. “I see the future. Just like his grandmother.” She nodded towards Ramirez. “I knew you was coming today before you got here.”

  “You knew my grandmother?” said Ramirez.

  The old woman smiled. “She’s been dead for what, thirty years? She told me you’d come to see me someday when someone in my family goes missing. She say you be a big, tall policeman with a pretty lady. She give me this to give you. I’ve been keeping it all this time.”

  She reached down, taking her time to find a smooth, round rock in the dirt. She handed it to him. “It’s from when she made santo.”

  “Making santo” was the process of converting to Santería. The initiate was bathed in water and shaved. Sacrificial blood was poured over sacred objects and stones. The stones were said to hold the santos, the gods, summoned during the ceremony.

  Delgado rolled her eyes. The ground was dotted with almost identical stones.

  Ramirez nodded slowly. Perhaps Mama Loa was crazy. But his grandmother had believed in the supernatural, a belief this old woman apparently shared. Whatever gift Mama Loa might have, though, it didn’t seem to include seeing the ghost of Antifona Conejo. The dead woman stood off to the side, watching an airplane leave a clean white line in the blue sky. She looked completely bereft.

  “My grandmother died when I was ten,” Ramirez explained to Delgado. He rolled the stone in his fingers. It was cool to the touch. “Are you sure you have the right person?”

  The old woman smiled, her teeth flashing white. “Oh, I got the right boy all right. I see you running around the squares, playing pirate with your little brother. You got something red tied around your head. My memory, she’s pretty good for ninety-one.”

  Ramirez did remember playing with his younger brother in Old Havana. They had scrambled through the alleys around the Plaza de Armas, near the Castillo de la Real Fuerza. He wore a bright red handkerchief as a bandana, pretending to be Jacques de Sore, setting fire to the city, while his brother limped around on a pretend wooden leg as Peg Leg Leclerc. They would have murdered forty priests and thrown them in the ocean the way that Sores did—his grandmother said there were Jesuit crosses buried deep in the ocean floor—but none of the other boys felt like diving that day.