Headhunter

by Michael Slade

  Single file, the three of them left the pier, Winalagilis stumbling and all three shivering. They made their way past the CPR Ferry dock, past the rows of container trucks down to where there was a tongue of rubble and rock and boom logs that stuck out into the sea. Alongside the mini-peninsula there was a small wooden dock. Moored to the dock with its prow pointing out at Stanley Park beyond the oil barges dotting the harbor was a sailboat swaying and rocking on purple-green water. From this dock they could just make out the Brockton Point totem poles half hidden within the Park's trees.

  Winalagilis first, the three of them climbed onboard the boat.

  Still soaking wet, they hunkered down in the stern where they were gone from the eyes of the city. Katherine Spann removed a cap from the balloon and emptied it into the spoon.

  "I take two," Winalagilis said.

  She opened another one. It was still raining, so the rain provided the water. The Indian had a lighter in his pocket which he took out. While Scarlett shielded the flame, the woman cooked up the mixture. The junk dissolved and she sucked it into the needle.

  "Use my headband," Winalagilis said, so she tied it around his arm. Then she tapped his skin continuously trying to raise a vein. The task was almost impossible. They were cowering down near the bone.

  "Okay," Spann said. "This is the deal. In return for this jab you tell me all you know about Hardy. Agreed?"

  The Indian shivered and nodded. "Hit me, Blondie! Hit me!" he hissed with excitement in his breath.

  Spann slid the needle in. Dark red blood spurted back into the outfit. "Let it go!" Winalagilis ordered. But Spann didn't press the plunger.

  The Indian blinked. "What the fuck you doin'?"

  The woman looked him in the eye. "Just so we're straight," she said. "You come clean on Hardy, and every one forgets this. You lie or fuck up, and we put out on the street that you were the rat. That should have you killed even before you're out of jail. Agreed?"

  "Christ yes," Winalagilis choked.

  Spann let the headband go and squirted in the mix.

  As the morphine blast hit him in waves, Joe Winalagilis relaxed. A long exhalation escaped from his lips, contentment lighting his face. He closed his eyes and kept them closed for several exhilarating minutes. When he finally opened them once again they were covered with glass.

  "Okay," Spann said. "Where's John Lincoln Hardy?"

  "Huh?"

  "Hardy? Your pusher? Where is he?"

  "I don't know," Winalagilis said, his head going into a nod as he smiled from far, far away.

  Scarlett looked at Spann and his eyes said, You blew it. What puzzled the woman was the feeling she got that this was what he secretly wanted.

  "Where do you meet him to score the stuff?" Spann's voice was screwed up tighter.

  "Huh? Oh . . . him." A pause. "He comes to me."

  "Where?" the woman demanded.

  "Wherever he finds me . . . Blondie."

  "Look Joe, I'm warning you. I won't be played for a fool. You've got to have some meeting place where you score junk from him. Where is it?"

  "You don't understand."

  "I understand that a deal is a deal."

  "You're making a mistake."

  "Cough up, my man, if you know what's good for you."

  "Your mistake is, Blondie, thinkin' he's pushin' to me."

  Spann glanced at Scarlett as the fact sunk in.

  "Truth is, it's me pushin' to him," the Kwakiutl said.

  3:10 p.m.

  The Japanese steam bath was Scarlett's idea.

  By the time the two RCMP constables had returned Joe Winalagilis to the abandoned patrol car and transported him the two blocks to the Vancouver City Jail, all three of them were freezing cold and shivering out of control. The guard at the booking desk on the third floor took one look at them with a gambler's eye then turned to his partner and said: "Five bucks says at least two of these three come down with pneumonia." His partner checked them over and refused to take the bet.

  A few minutes later while riding down in the elevator that would take them to the alley out back of 312 Main, Scarlett nudged Spann and said: "How 'bout a steam?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look, by the time we get you to your place and me to mine, we could both be freezer material. Just a block from

  here there's an old Japanese steam bath with separate and private rooms. If you're not hung up on modesty, we can get warm and send our clothes out for a dry. If you are hung up, then drop me off and you go down with the ship."

  Katherine Spann shivered once more and said: "Let's go."

  Fifteen minutes later Rick Scarlett was sitting alone in a small, very old, pipe-lined room. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he slouched listening to the hiss of water vapor as he waited with anticipation for Spann to come in-through the door.

  On checking in they had paid a young Japanese to take their soggy uniforms to a local one-hour laundry, and then Spann had disappeared into the bathroom. Scarlett now occupied himself by imagining Katherine taking off her clothes.

  His mind had her down to her panties when the door swung open. Scarlett nonchalantly counted the number of tiles on the floor.

  He did not look up as the woman took two steps into the steam room and then stopped in order to adjust her lungs to the vapor. She had tied a towel around her waist in a Polynesian style. She stood near the door breathing in shallow breaths, her chest slowly rising and falling as she stretched her spine and her muscles. When she finally climbed onto the wooden bench and sat back against the wall, Scarlett looked up for no more than three seconds and muttered, "Not bad, eh?"

  "Not bad," she said as he looked back down at the floor.

  The next time Scarlett turned back, Spann had closed her eyes and was reveling in the warmth. Slowly he looked her over from head to toe. Then he stopped at her breasts.

  That's the nicest pair of headlights I've ever seen, he thought.

  Spann didn't open her eyes. She was lost somewhere in a world of warmth and relaxation. The man turned his attention to the towel around her waist. The steam and the sweat from her pores were making it stick to and outline her body. He stifled an almost irresistible urge to reach out and rip off the towel, and instead he bent forward to lean his arms on his thighs to hide his growing erection.

  Yessiree, Rick Scarlett thought. Do I want a piece of that.

  Now all he had to do was bide his time.

  Soon the moment would come.

  The Birthday Present

  4:45 p.m.

  It was a quarter to five by the time that Scarlett and Spann returned to Headquarters. The place was alive with activity as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared for next day's roundup. There were computer printouts everywhere, sweep sheets being distributed, each with a mug-shot photo attached for each suspect and a key word to open the software circuits printed at the side. Bulletin boards around the parade room were pinned with lists of assignments. As Scarlett went to check on the role that the two of them would be playing, Spann found the nearest free telephone and dialed Corporal Tipple at Commercial Crime. This time she made contact.

  "You're a hard man to get hold of, sir. My name's Katherine Spann."

  "Good," Tipple said. "I've been waiting for your call. You working the Hardy angle?"

  "Yes."

  "And you want to see the transcripts?"

  "Very much so."

  "Okay. How about tomorrow morning before you go out on the sweep? I've been reassigned to your squad and right now I'm in the process of putting the Damballah ones together. I'll have 'em for tomorrow."

  "Damballah?" Spann asked, knowing the word had a voodoo connection.

  "Damballah Enterprises. That's Rackstraw's holding company. You'll see what I mean tomorrow."

  "When and where shall we meet?"

  "Roll call's set for seven a.m. So how 'bout six-fifteen? In the parade room?"

  "We'll be there."

  "Right. Bring your reading
glasses. These guys are very busy dudes."

  11:56 p.m.

  "Is it lonely up at the top, Robert?" Avacomovitch asked.

  "Oh hello, Joseph," DeClercq said, turning from the window. "I was just turning tomorrow over in my mind."

  "Okay if I interrupt?"

  "Of course. I'd like the company."

  It was closing on midnight and the room was filled with shadows cast off by the desk lamp. The surface of the desk was piled high with computer sheets and projections, police files and copious notes in DeClercq's even hand. On the edge of the desk closest to Avacomovitch a space had been reserved for a picture in a silver frame. It had not been there the last time that the scientist was in here. The Russian picked it up and looked at the woman in the photo.

  "She has very intelligent eyes," he said, "set in a beautiful face."

  "Yes, doesn't she," the Superintendent replied. "I'm a lucky man."

  There was something in his voice that arrested Avacomovitch's attention. For more than half a minute he took a long close look at the man. DeClercq did not look well. There were now heavy bags under his eyes and lines of tension radiating out to the edge of his face. Though he tried hard to mask it there was also a nervous tic to his mouth. It appeared as though he had been robbed of sleep and left utterly exhausted. He looked as if the weight of the investigation upon his shoulders might buckle his legs at any moment. But strangely, more than anything else, it was a sense of irony that the Russian picked up from this man.

  His heart went out to DeClercq.

  Carefully, Avacomovitch replaced the photograph on the edge of the desk. He turned it so that the woman could watch DeClercq when he sat in his chair. He thought: In the currency of friendship there is only a single test. Will your friend be at your side if you should ever need hint?

  "May I be blunt?"

  "By all means do."

  "You're too hard on yourself."

  "Funny. That's the same thing Genevieve said this morning."

  "I think you're taking too much on your shoulders. I want this guy as much as you, you know?"

  "I believe you do."

  "So share the burden. Spread the load around. The Head-hunter is taunting you because you're the figurehead among his adversaries. It builds him up by having a rival equal to himself. It could be anyone, sitting in your chair.

  "The trouble is, I think, you take it personally. Don't you see that lets him get to you? And that's just what he wants. If this were chess, he's making you play the defensive game."

  "Perhaps."

  "Robert, please understand. When the Headhunter throws barbs at you, he spikes me too. I'm a policeman also, albeit the civilian kind. This Force means a lot to me, just as it does to you. You mean a lot to me, you're one of my few friends. Remember all those years ago when I was totally adrift? I burned every bridge by defecting and there I was alone. Isolated. Well, you helped me though, helped me assimilate. Robert, I owe you a debt. Hell, I owe myself a debt. And I want to pay it off. So let me work this with you. And I mean really work it. I want half the load."

  For several minutes the Superintendent said nothing. It was obvious he was moved. Finally he walked over and put his hand on the other man's shoulder and pointed at the cork-board. The operations visual now covered every bit of wall-space with many overlaps.

  "Okay, Joseph. You're on. What do you suggest we do?"

  Avacomovitch smiled.

  "First, two things," he said, "to help us tighten the net. One: let's request every distributor of Polaroid film in this city and the outskirts get the name from identification of customers making a purchase. If anyone balks, they take a description and call the Headhunter Squad."

  "Good idea. And the second."

  "I give you a birthday present, and you tell me what you think."

  DeClercq's brow rose. He looked at his watch and saw it was after twelve. What a memory, he thought.

  "Come on," Avacomovitch said. "I've got it down in the lab."

  The Superintendent followed him down the stairs to the makeshift laboratory. Except for a light on the Russian's desk, the room was now in darkness. The light was shining on a large bifocal microscope and a note-covered pad beside it.

  "Take a look," the scientist said. "Happy birthday."

  When DeClercq looked down the barrel of the instrument and adjusted it into focus, what was magnified before his eyes was a dull black sliver. Behind him Avacomovitch said, "When I examined the bones of Liese Greiner kicked up by that little girl, I found that lodged in a hairline fracture in her front pubic bone. It could have been debris from the area and of no forensic value. But it's not. It's foreign to the scene and has some sort of significance, though what I have no idea. It took me quite a while to get it identified."

  "What is it?" DeClercq asked.

  "A splinter of ebony."

  Damballah

  Thursday, November 4th, 7:45 a.m.

  "I don't think he looks well," Monica Macdonald said.

  "Who, DeClercq?"

  "Yeah."

  "I guess the pressure's getting to him," Katherine Spann replied.

  Rick Scarlett said: "What do you think he meant when he said to keep an eye peeled today for anything made of ebony. And why does he insist on knowing personally?"

  "Beats me. Maybe it's got something to do with his fear of tunnel vision. Keep us all in the dark so we don't overlook a thing."

  "Personally," Tipple said, "I thought he went a little overboard on the concept of duty."

  "Perhaps," Rusty Lewis said. "But don't you get the feeling that man really means it when he says we have a sacred trust to 'Maintain the Right.' "

  "I don't know," the Corporal said slowly. "This whole idea of a sweep is on pretty shaky ground. If we score with one of these guys, the lawyers will have a field day. Mark my words that Charter of Rights is going to make it as hard for us up here as the cops have it in the States."

  "Maybe the right he's talking about isn't legal right," Lewis replied. "Maybe it's moral right."

  "Anyway," Monica Macdonald said, "DeClercq moved me this morning. I say we get the job done."

  "I agree," Lewis said. "He moved me too."

  Macdonald opened the door and they both turned up their collars and walked out in the pouring rain. Tipple, Spann, and Scarlett were left standing in the front hall at Headhunter Headquarters.

  "May I see those taps again?" Katherine Spann asked. The

  Corporal passed the transcripts to her. As the woman leafed through the pages reading them one more time, Scarlett looked out at the rain and asked: "How do you suggest we go about finding Hardy?"

  "Don't know," Tipple replied. "I've never seen the guy. He just shows up on the tapes every now and then. Rackstraw's been my quarry, not Hardy."

  "Strange no one seems to know the telephone is tapped."

  "If you saw the setup, you'd understand why."

  Scarlett was silent for a minute. Beyond the door the skies were sodden and gray with the afterbirth of one storm while a new wave of thunderclouds shoved in from the sea. Still the rain came down.

  "What about the cousin?" he asked. "Where do we look for him?"

  "I think you should leave his studio alone so he doesn't wise to the tap."

  "Studio?"

  "Yeah, the man is involved in the music business. Runs it under a holding company called Damballah Enterprises Ltd."

  "Damballah is the snake god in-voodoo."

  "I know. Why don't you try to find him tonight down at the London Calling. That's a club on Pender."

  Tipple fished into his pocket and removed a small telephone-pole poster. There were rips in all four corners where staples had once secured it. It read:

  Save Yourself For Thursday Night, November 4th, 1982

  LIVE IN CONCERT FROM ENGLAND

  RAW-T

  With Special Guests VOODOO CHILE

  Save Your Soles!

  The London Calling Ballroom,

  742 West Pender Street.
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  "Why do you think he'll be there?" Rick Scarlett asked.

  "Voodoo Chile's his band," Tipple said in reply.

  Katherine Spann had folded the corner on one of the transcript pages. Once she had perused all the rest she turned back to that one. She held it out to Tipple.

  "This tap is long distance. Bill. Where's it coming from .'"

  "Let's see," Tipple said. He took the transcript from her and read:

  Incoming call. Long distance.

  Fox: Hey hey.

  Operator: I have a collect call from Mr. Wolf. Will you accept the charge?

  Fox: Yes I will.

  Wolf: It's cooking on the 6th .. . The pot boils over at midnight.

  Fox: I'm ready . . . The cous will be down there to see all you.

  Wolf: Ah . . . Right ... be seein' the man then.

  Fox: Okay, bye for now.

  Wolf: Au revoir.

  Finished reading, Tipple looked up and said: "That call's from New Orleans."

  The Sweep

  8:36 a.m.

  They hit the pornographer's first.

  Rick Scarlett entered the sex shop on Granville Street close to the Granville Bridge wearing a raincoat over his uniform and with his soaked head bare. The store was already open to catch the early morning crowd—or at least that was the front. Walking swiftly up to the counter the policeman skipped his eyes around the shop, taking in the shelves of skin mags and books all sealed in plastic wrappers, then he leaned forward over a display case of artificial vaginas and Suck-U-Lators and asked for something in rubber.

  The man behind the counter was in his late forties, a thick-set balding individual with a fat savage face and wet, sneering lips. His eyes held the look of someone preoccupied with thoughts of sex every waking hour. Scarlett was quite sure that he dreamt about it too. As the cop spoke, the man looked up from a book titled The Variations of Anal Intercourse and taking in the raincoat sized him up for a flasher. In that opinion the man was correct.

  With a flourish. Rick Scarlett flipped open the outer garment to reveal his uniform beneath.