Seaweed on the Street

SEAWEED ON THE STREET

Stanley Evans

for Aria, Aila, Zoe, Sophie and Claire

THE WARRIOR RESERVE does not exist. All of the characters, incidents and dialogue in this novel are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, or to real events, is coincidental. Depictions of Native mythology and religion are based on ethnological research and do not necessarily reflect the present-day observances and practices of the Coast Salish people.

PROLOGUE

For spirit quest, Jimmy Scow purified himself by 10 days of fasting and bathing and sexual abstinence. Jimmy Scow then spent one more day picking
Amanita muscaria
— mushrooms common on the northwest coast of British Columbia. Scow's belly was empty when he put the mushrooms into his medicine bag and walked Canoe Cove way.

The moon was hanging halfway up the sky.

Scow lit a driftwood fire on the beach to warm himself. Under the moon, Scow was cold because he was naked. In spite of the cold, Scow covered a large rock with saliva and dived with it into deep seawater. After several dives the powerful spirit Tulmex scornfully informed Jimmy Scow that he deserved no great spirit because his father's father's father had been a slave.

Scow was ashamed. He had not known that his ancestors included slaves. Among the Coast Salish, slaves and their descendants were not merely low-class; they were non-persons, like sasquatches and worms.

Scow had eaten a handful of mushrooms when Moneypower Badger and Healthpower Mouse came to him. Scow slept on the beach with Badger under one arm and Mouse under the other arm. When Scow awakened he was alone again. Badger and Mouse had returned to the Underworld. Scow built up his fire with driftwood, ate another handful of mushrooms and went down the beach to the sea.

Moonlight shone on the waves.

Jimmy Scow squatted on the sand with his feet in the water.

After a while, a raft of wood grounded on the sand.

Jimmy Scow got onto the raft and drifted out to sea. A mile offshore, Jimmy Scow splashed water on his head and, finding a heavy rock on the raft, he covered it with saliva and dived into the sea with it. At the bottom of the sea he chanced upon Wolf's house. Wolf taught Scow how to sing his song. Wolf taught Scow how to make traps for catching salmon and deer. Wolf then offered Scow a stick with a man's head carved at one end. Scow declined the stick. Daughter of Wolf then took the stick and waved it. Twenty humans — half men and half women — dropped dead at her feet.

Wolf told Scow that he would become a great warrior as long as he did not stain his hands with blood. He had to roast the first four enemies that he met over a fire.

Jimmy Scow now accepted the stick and came out of the water.

After this visit to the Underworld, Scow slept for two days and two nights. In a dream, the first enemy that he met was his mother's brother. Scow roasted his mother's brother over a fire. When Scow woke up he got dressed and, with Wolfstick in his medicine bag, he went to the city of Victoria.

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Silas Seaweed. Once I was on Victoria's detective squad. Now that I'm a neighbourhood cop, my office is less than luxurious. There's a tiny cast-iron fireplace with a brass surround and a battered copper coal scuttle that I use as a wastebasket. The fireplace doesn't always work properly, but that's appropriate because I'm a typical cop: I don't always work properly, either. I have an oak desk and a leather swiveller. A hat stand and two metal filing cabinets and a small floor safe. A couple of chairs for visitors. Except for missing-kid bulletins and a picture of Queen Victoria wearing widow's weeds, my walls are unadorned.

The building I operate out of — a three-storey cube of sooty red brick — was erected when the Hudson's Bay Company still controlled most of western Canada. Originally, my room was a harness shop. Sometimes, when it's damp out, I smell old leather and saddle soap.

I'm Coast Salish and I moved in here five years ago. Back then, store-front law-enforcement units manned by Aboriginal policemen were being hailed as bold experiments in social engineering. Nowadays, people complain that I'm running a hangout for the dregs of society. And why not? After all, crooks, drunks, hookers and cops derive from the same socio-economic group. Cops and killers have similar levels of intelligence and ability, and the average murderer can be as charming as all get-out.

Victoria's evening rush hour was winding down. On the street outside my office, two blonde hookers were standing at the curb in four-inch heels and minis. Sally was wearing a tight yellow sweater. Chantal had on a white shirt. Both women carried shoulder bags large enough to hold a loaf of bread. Why did they need them? A mystery for me to ponder. A middle-aged john cruised by in a newish VW Jetta and the girls gave him the business, jiggling their hips and strutting like pigeons with their chests out. But the john was a hard sell, and he sped off to look at the birds on Bay Street.

Vultures were circling too, cruising the downtown area in shiny black cars. A Viper came around the corner and stopped in a restricted zone opposite my office. Jiggs Murphy got out of the driver's seat, leaned on the car's roof and smirked at the hookers. Murphy crooked his finger. Obediently, Chantal and Sally tripped across the street and had a short conversation with a man sitting in the Viper's passenger seat. The man's name was Alex Cal. After a minute the women reached into their shoulder bags. I saw Cal's big hand appear, then withdraw, full of money. Murphy got behind the steering wheel and the Viper cruised away, but its passage left vibrations in the air that lingered.

Five minutes later, the street was full of johns. Chantal and Sally had got lucky and were turning tricks so they could pay off The Man. There's all kinds of luck.

My phone rang. Somebody with a voice I half-recognized said, “Listen, Seaweed, we've just arrested one of yours. Jimmy Scow. You interested?”

“Sure. What's the problem?”

“Possible contravention of the Endangered Species Act. Suspicious behaviour near the Oak Bay Recreation Centre. Trespass.”

The speaker's name came to me. He was a uniform-branch sergeant named George Barton. I said, “Is Scow in the lock-up?”

Barton chuckled and said, “No. He's not in the lock-up. Scow's in Calvert Hunt's house on Foul Bay Road. But don't worry. We won't let him run away.”

“I'll be right over.”

“Yeah, we didn't think you'd refuse,” Barton said, still chuckling when his phone clicked off.

Jimmy Scow,
I thought. Well, well.

I was surprised by the depth of my feelings. Jimmy Scow was part of some heavy psychic baggage that I'd been carting around for years. It would, I thought, be nice to get rid of it.

I went across to the lot behind Swans pub, where my car was parked, but I don't remember much about my drive to Calvert Hunt's place. The last time I had been inside that billionaire's mansion, a murdered man had been in there with me.

Back then, I had been a detective with Victoria's Serious Crimes Unit. A 911 call had sent us racing out to Calvert Hunt's place on Foul Bay Road. When we went inside we found Hunt's lawyer, a man named Charles Service, kneeling beside a man with a bullet in his head. Minutes earlier, Service had been working in his office. He heard gunshots, looked out of his window and saw an Aboriginal man driving away in a florist's delivery van. When Service went to investigate, he found the dead man. Valuable paintings and a silver tea service had been stolen.

There had been a rash of lootings in that part of Victoria. Our initial assumption was that the dead man had been a burglar, shot, perhaps accidentally, by a fellow crook. Things became complicated when we learned that the dead man was Harry Cunliffe Jr. The dead man's father, Dr. Harry Cunliffe, happened to be Calvert Hunt's oldest friend.

There was only one Aboriginal delivery man working for Victoria's florists in those days. His name was Jimmy Scow. Scow was arrested promptly and denied all knowledge of the crime. He refused to cop a plea or to name accomplices. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. Nevertheless, Victoria's Crown prosecutor charged Scow with involuntary manslaughter and he was convicted — largely upon the uncorroborated statement of a prison informant. Scow got five years, after which he dropped out of sight. The loot was never recovered.

≈ ≈ ≈

It was getting dark when I drove up to Calvert Hunt's mansion. Instead of having a number it had a name: Ribblesdale.

Ribblesdale was a grandiose two-storey showplace, nearly 100 years old, which epitomized a long-vanished way of life. Its ivy-draped half-timbered façade was right out of
Masterpiece Theatre
: Welsh slate roof, long galleries of mullioned windows, a
porte cochère
arching across the driveway. I was crossing a broad flagstone terrace to the front door when it opened and George Barton came out to meet me.

Barton was big. A 50-year-old cop with small brown eyes, a round flabby face and thin dark hair trimmed close to his head. He looked 10 years older than his age, and his expression was of amused benevolence. When circumstances dictated, Barton could be hard-hearted, ruthless and inflexible.

“Good to see you, Seaweed,” he said, with bogus heartiness. “Calvert Hunt's housekeeper called us. Told us there was an intruder on the grounds. Native man, she said, and gave us a good description. It turned out to be Jimmy Scow.” Barton's smile widened. “Christ, what an idiot. Talk about returning to the scene of a crime. We picked him up near the rec centre and brought him here for the ident.”

“Has the housekeeper identified Scow positively as the intruder?”

Barton gave me a look that suggested my question would only occur to a nitwit.

I said mildly, “Why did you bring Scow to this house for the ident instead of taking him to the station?”

Barton's amused expression faded. He made an impatient gesture and snarled, “Because the housekeeper refused to leave this house, that's why. She was the only person on the premises except for Calvert Hunt. He's an old man. She has instructions never to leave him unattended.”

I said sarcastically, “The poor housekeeper. She's locked up here like a prisoner too. You never thought to show her Jimmy Scow's photograph, I suppose? It never crossed your mind to get somebody else to babysit the old man while she went away for a few minutes?”