Seaweed on the Street (16 page)

Three and a half hours after leaving Victoria I was crossing the Canada–U.S. border at Blaine and heading south down Interstate 5. In the ever-changing pattern of southbound traffic, certain companion vehicles began to distinguish themselves as I passed them and they repassed me en route. One was a U-Haul truck driven by a bearded young man. Another was a Mazda Miata convertible driven by an older woman with grey hair and a long silk scarf fluttering from her neck. The third was a dust-covered black Buick with tinted windows. I lost the Buick and the U-Haul when I pulled into Mount Vernon for a rest stop. Mazda lady pulled into the McDonald's parking lot right behind me and headed inside in a hurry.

I lost the Mazda after that but overtook the Buick going through Everett. I caught my last glance of the U-Haul five minutes before I exited I-5 at the Edmonds off-ramp.

≈ ≈ ≈

The Astoria's desk clerk needed a shave. He was a skinny old Mexican wearing a maroon-coloured beret, a soiled Che Guevara T-shirt and Dayglo suspenders. I couldn't see below the counter but imagined blue jeans sagging at the crotch and greasy carpet slippers. I asked for Ray Smith. The clerk said, “Room 21.” As I headed for the stairs, the clerk remembered something and called me back. “Your name Seaweed?”

I nodded.

“Ray's out of town for a couple of days. He left something for you.” The clerk reached into a pigeon hole, then handed me a piece of notepaper folded into a square.

The note said, “mr. seaweed, i changed my mind on that marcia deal and point matlock. good luck, ray.”

The desk clerk had picked up the sports section and was studying the day's racing form. I rapped a knuckle on the counter to get his attention. His attention span expanded when I laid a five-dollar bill on the counter and smoothed it with my fingers.

I said, “Half a sawbuck ain't much, but if you put it on Sunny Lady at Santa 'nita tomorrow, something wonderful might happen.”

“Sunny Lady?” the clerk said, contemplating the banknote as if it contained the answer to the meaning of life. “Never heard of her.”

“When's the last time you saw Ray?”

The clerk scratched his chin bristles with nicotine-stained fingers. He said, “There's 56 full-time residents live in this building. Coming and going day and night. How do I know when I seen Ray last? Sometimes he stops by the desk, shoots the breeze for a minute. I think the last time I seen him was two days ago, when he left your letter.”

One or two or three resident old-timers were sitting in the lobby, watching soaps on a black-and-white tv. Empathizing with the romantic problems of wealthy society matrons and youthful surgeons. Nobody was interested in me or my problems.

I went upstairs and along a dark, windowless corridor that reminded me of a jail. The only light came from a single naked light bulb; it was a strain to read room numbers. I found 21 and hammered on the door. Nobody answered so I beat another tattoo. That annoyed Ray Smith's neighbour, a woman in a silk wrapper and hair curlers.

She opened her door the length of a security chain, said, “Noisy asshole! Get back to the reservation,” and backed into her lair.

A soft chuckle sounded behind me and a deep voice said, “Hey, pal. You got a light?”

It was a big guy in a dark business suit. My brain was just registering the nylon stocking covering his face and the heavy elongated leather tear-drop dangling from his wrist when my arms were grabbed by a second man who materialized out of nowhere. The first man's arm went back and the blackjack came swinging at my head in a big arc hard enough to kill a mule. I lunged forward. The blackjack glanced off my shoulders and maybe it clipped the guy holding me, because his grip relaxed. I lunged forward and upward and drove my head into the first man's chest. His head snapped forward. My momentum was too much for him. I kicked his shins and he fell backward with a choking cry, but the other mugger had picked up the blackjack. This time the swing was accurate. It was a numbing blow to my head, just behind my right ear. I fell on top of the first mugger's body. Lights came on in the corridor, lights were flashing inside my head, a woman was screaming. Then the roof fell onto my head and I passed out.

When I came to I was lying on a bed. I felt nauseated and dizzy — it was as if I were enclosed in a slowly rotating cylinder. The woman in silk wrapper and curlers was sitting on the bed beside me, holding an ice pack to my head. The desk clerk was checking my billfold.

I groaned and waved a weak arm. Weak, but strong enough to impress the desk clerk. He dropped my billfold onto the bedside table and said, “We ain't took nothing, mister. We was just checking to see who you was is all.” He licked his lips and added, “I didn't know you was no cop; you should of said.”

I tried to get up from the bed. Silk-wrapper woman put a hand on my chest. “It's okay, mister,” she said. “Whatever you want, it'll keep. Take it easy.”

I had a bad headache, but the vertigo was diminishing. When I closed my eyes it returned. I opened them again and focussed on a window sill. After a while my internal gyro kicked in and I sat up.

The desk clerk backed away from me. “This hotel ain't responsible for no damages, mister,” he whined. “We got a sign on the desk that says so. It's established policy.” He went out.

The woman said, “Pay him no mind. Manuel's a little prick, scared he'll lose his job is all.”

She was about 60, a sallow, gaunt-faced woman as cute and shapely as a brick chimney. She had muddy eyes and a rasping voice and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but right then she looked and sounded like an angel to me. The room's furniture included a black-and-white tv. It was muted, tuned to the same soap opera I had seen downstairs. I realized that only a few minutes had elapsed since I had first set foot in the hotel.

I said, “Thanks ma'am. When you opened your door and screamed you probably saved my life.”

She said, “I didn't do nothing. Your Crazy Horse act was more than them goons could handle. The one guy had to carry his partner downstairs.”

I checked my billfold. Nothing was missing. I took out $100 in $20 bills and pushed them under a pillow.

I said, “Those muggers. Was one of them a red-haired guy, looks kind of Irish?”

She went across to a window and looked out, moving slowly as if her feet hurt her. “I think so,” she said. “Hard to tell in the dark.”

“Tell me about Ray Smith.”

“Can't tell you nothing. I only been here a few days, just blew in from San Berdoo. Ray seems an okay guy to me. Pretty quiet.”

I tried to cross the room and made it to the door at the first go. When I opened it, the woman said, “Say, mister. What's your name?”

“Silas Seaweed.”

“I'm Mavis. Drop in, anytime.” A sound like a buzz saw came out of her mouth but maybe she was just laughing. “I'm sorry what I said to you earlier. You know. Calling you Injun.”

“That's what I am.”

That buzz saw sound followed me into the corridor. The desk clerk was out there waiting. He lowered his eyes and backed up to the opposite wall. A bunch of keys dangled from his belt. I said, “Use your pass key, friend, and open Ray Smith's door for me.”

He shook his head and started another hostelry-etiquette lecture. Fed up, I grabbed him by the throat and shook him. When I let him go he opened the door to Room 21 and stepped aside. He didn't follow me in. I don't blame him. Ray's was another sad little cubicle. The only difference between this one and Mavis's was the odour of liniment instead of cheap cologne. Ray Smith's clarinet case stood in a corner. It looked lonely.

I went downstairs. The clerk vanished into some lair behind the desk. The tv watchers were still glued to their set, except for one gaunt, thick-shouldered old guy reading a newspaper by the window.

As I crossed to the door the old guy looked up from his newspaper and grinned at me. “Seen your buddies leavin' just now,” he said with a chuckle. “You gave the one of 'em a shitkicking, hey?”

I stopped in my tracks. “You saw them leave?”

“Yeah. The one guy was nursing his
cojones
with both hands.” The old man fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth.

“Did you happen to notice their car?”

“Sure,” he said, the unlit cigarette moving up and down in his mouth as he spoke. “It was parked down the block.”

“Let me guess. How about a dusty Buick with tinted windows?”

The old guy nodded.

I had been outsmarted. A team using two cars and cellphones had trailed me all the way to Seattle. The other car had probably been a Mazda Miata.

I self-medicated with 440 mg of Walgreen's Aspirin and walked the downtown streets for half an hour until my aches settled down and my head cleared.

The Astoria Hotel was near the waters of Puget Sound. I could smell ocean when I walked back to my Chev. I threaded my way up Seattle's steep streets to Interstate 5, flipped my sun visor down and headed south, thinking about black Buicks, Mazda convertibles and a woman driver who might easily be a gorgeous blonde wearing a grey wig and a silk neck scarf to disguise her tender years.

≈ ≈ ≈

Point Matlock Lighthouse was a white tower painted red above the keeper's railing. It stood at the edge of cliffs above a drift-log–strewn beach, where flocks of small birds ran along the tide line pecking at delicacies left by receding waves.

I turned my back on the lighthouse. From what I remembered of Ray Smith's description, Marcia Hunt's former house should have been within a few feet of where I was standing now. But there was nothing. Not even old foundations or scattered bricks. Nothing except nodding wild flowers and coarse grasses. Smudges of smoke on the far horizon drew my eyes to a couple of freighters. No trace of the old military fort remained.

Half a mile away was the village of old Point Matlock — a weathered Texaco station, some wood-frame houses, a café that had survived since the military occupation. I drove to the Texaco station and pulled up at the pumps. A kid fixing tires in the service bay glanced up and shouted, “Be right there!” in a cheery voice. It cost me $30 to top up my tank. I sauntered into the service bay and said, “I owe you 30 bucks.”

“Be right with you, mister.”

“I also need information. I'm trying to get a lead on a woman who lived here once.”

“How long ago?” Compressed air hissed as the kid inflated the tire from a hose.

“More than 20 years.”

“Hey, man. You're talking, like, Stone Age.” He checked the tire pressure with a gauge, nodded, and then was ready to give me his full attention. He pointed across the road to the Matlock Café and said, “Grab a cup of coffee and ask Mrs. Teller. She's been here longer'n God.”

≈ ≈ ≈

The Matlock Café might have been designed by the man who did Mom's Café. It had the same furniture — a counter, booths, a Wurlitzer. The customers looked interchangeable. Only the waitress was different. She was an elderly woman, skinny as a rail, wearing rhinestone-covered eyeglasses. She had snow-white dentures a size larger than needed. Every time she spoke, or grinned, her teeth went roaming until she sucked in her cheeks to reposition them.

I sat at the counter. Without being asked, she slapped a mug of coffee in front of me and said, “Stranger, we got world-famous pies here: apple, cherry, raisin and banana cream. Which one you gonna have?”

I said, “Make it apple.” Anticipating her next question, I added, “Better make that à la mode.”

“That's what I like,” she said, sucking in her cheeks. “Man who knows what he wants.”

The pie was good, but I didn't see why it was world famous. The waitress sat on a stool and watched me eat. Smoke curled up from a cigarette in an ashtray on the counter next to her elbow. She picked up the cigarette, tapped the ash off and stuck it into the exact centre of her mouth.

I said, “Weren't there some old military houses near the lighthouse at one time?”

“Yep. Houses and barracks. Them that hadn't fallen down was torn down. This whole area is a state park now. 'Cept for my café.” The cigar-ette jigged up and down as she spoke.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You a family tracer?”

The question startled me. I said, “I'm making inquiries about a family that lived here once.”

“That's what I figured. Most strangers what come visiting Point Matlock is historians. You'd be one of them generalists.”

She meant a genealogist and probably thought I was tracing my family tree.

I said, “I'm looking for a woman called Marcia Hunt who lived close to the lighthouse.”

“I don't remember no Marcia Hunt.”

“She might have used the name Harkness.”

She refilled my coffee mug, stubbed out her butt, lit another and folded her arms. Her brow furrowed with concentration. “Marcia Hunt, eh? She wasn't living here lately or I'd remember.”

“Marcia was a Canadian. Played piano in a band sometimes. I'm told that she gave birth to a baby girl while she lived here.”

Hearing the word “baby” made the woman's eyes light up. “There
was
a woman with a baby squatting in one of them old military houses. Near the lighthouse it was, but I don't know if she was Canadian. She could have been anything. But that house, if it
was
her house, it burned down long ago.” She shook her head, remembering. “Landsakes. There were lots of girls squatting and carrying on in them days. Maybe some of 'em played in bands and maybe some of 'em played at something else. The ones that I remember all wore long dresses and played guitars. Carried their babies slung on their backs in sheets like I seen your squaws do in John Wayne movies.” She sighed heavily and added, “Well, I can't help you, Jack.”

Old-timers drinking coffee at the scattered tables had been listening to our conversation. Without encouragement they contributed their reminiscences. Nobody remembered Marcia.