Seaweed on the Street (2 page)

Barton lost his temper and flushed clear up to his hairline. “I
could
have,” he hissed, shoving his face up close to mine. “But you know,
pal
, some of us White people see a picture of a Chinaman or a fucking Indian and we can't tell one from another. You all look the same to us.”

Barton had about 50 pounds on me. He bunched fists the size of cantaloupes, and I was wondering whether I'd have to break a knuckle on him or kick his ass up into his chest cavity when he came to his senses. He took a deep breath, gave a conciliatory smile and said, “All right, Seaweed, I'll level with you. It was Mr. Hunt's idea. The old man's still got plenty of clout in this town. I guess the housekeeper told him what was going on. He wanted to have a look at Jimmy Scow for himself. See the guy who murdered young Harry Cunliffe. I okayed it. I didn't see no harm in it, but maybe I shouldn't have done it.”

“Okay, George, you did what you did,” I said, smiling to pretend there were no hard feelings. “Let's go.”

We went inside the house. Silver chandeliers hung from high, cross-ribbed ceilings. Old portraits in ornate gilt frames frowned down from panelled walls. Heavy traditional furniture of gleaming dark wood stood on the parquetry floors. A large bowl of freshly cut dahlias sat on a polished oak table.

Calvert Hunt was propped up in a wheelchair at the foot of a staircase, snoring. Iris Naylor, his housekeeper, was sitting in a high-backed chair beside him. There was no sign of Jimmy Scow.

Miss Naylor rose slowly from her chair. Once, she must have been very pretty. But her good looks had been wasted by a habit of constant frowning. Deep lines creased her face from nose to mouth, and her upper lip was stretched tightly across her teeth. Long auburn hair showed wisps of grey, and she wore it swept tightly back from her face and piled up in an elaborate braided crown. Miss Naylor looked confused. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but she didn't say anything.

My encounter with Barton still rankled, but suddenly I felt better. It was as if I'd wandered onto the set of a dramatic farce or an Agatha Christie movie.

“This way,” Barton said to me, opening a door off the hall.

“Just a minute,” somebody wheezed. “This is
my
house. I'm the one who decides what's what.”

Calvert Hunt had woken up in his wheelchair. The old billionaire's face was long and narrow under a sparse crop of white hair. His pro- truding ears were too large for his head. His big red-veined nose flowed down from his forehead in a long line without the least trace of a ridge. His long scrawny neck disappeared into the folds of silk paisley pyjamas. A red blanket covered the lower half of his body. He blinked his narrow brown watery eyes at me, then at Sergeant Barton, and said harshly, “What's this Indian doing here?”

Barton looked uncomfortable. He said, “Well, sir, it's on account of Jimmy Scow, of course. We generally call on Sergeant Seaweed when there's problems with Natives. We thought you wanted … ”

Hunt slammed the arm of his chair and yelled, “I already told you what I want. I want Scow jailed. Why don't you just get on with it?” He listened impatiently to Barton's apologetic mumblings, shut him up with a wave of his hand, then shouted at me, “Are
you
going to jail him?”

“I'm going to talk to him.”

“Talk! Talk be damned. Scow's a killer, a menace on the loose. Jail's the place for him, so what the hell are you waiting for?”

Hunt's face was red, his eyes now dry and angry and unfocussed. I laughed at him and said, “We threw out thumbscrews years ago. We've even stopped jailing people without just cause.”

“How much cause do you need?” Hunt bellowed. “Scow was just caught trespassing red-handed.”

“Was he? It's time I heard Scow's side of the story,” I said, turning to Barton. “All right, where is Scow?”

“This way,” Barton said. As Barton led me into a reception room, Hunt screeched in the background, “Hear me, Seaweed! That's the last time you'll turn your Indian back on me, you sonofabitch. Don't ever set foot in this house again.”

I shut the door on Hunt's bellowing and growled, “Does he ever talk sense?”

“Not often,” Barton replied. “He's a right old tyrant.”

Jimmy Scow was sitting handcuffed in a chair, being watched over by two uniformed constables. Scow was about 30. Short and skinny, with large black angry eyes. He looked at me with an expression of active disgust. He was wearing a black headband, a red-checkered wool shirt and jeans.

I put my hands in my pockets and looked at him.

Barton unlocked Scow's handcuffs and said unpleasantly, “On your feet, sonny. Sergeant Seaweed wants to talk to you.”

When Scow stood up and moved his feet, small chunks of dried mud flaked off his carved leather cowboy boots. His cast-pewter belt buckle was a wolf's head about the size of a baby's fist.

“These guys had absolutely no legal right to arrest me or to hold me against my will whatsoever,” Scow said to me, enunciating each word with icy precision. “They confiscated my personal private property. They physically assaulted me without just cause.”

Barton threw a small backpack onto a side table and growled, “Calm down, sonny. This time we're giving you a break. But if you know what's good for you you'll stay well away from Ribblesdale. Meantime, you're in Sergeant Seaweed's custody.”

The Indian pointed a finger at me, something no polite Native would do to another, and said angrily, “Get me outta this. Any more messing and I'm consulting my lawyer.”

I looked at Barton and tilted my head toward the exit. Barton's mouth tightened and his fists bunched again, but after a beat he straightened his shoulders and left the room without speaking. The constables stayed with me until I shooed them off as well.

Jimmy Scow reached into his backpack, took out a small spirit stick and quickly replaced it after checking it for damage.

“It won't get you anywhere, acting the hard-ass,” I said. “That your medicine bag?”

Instead of answering, Scow hooked the backpack over his shoulder and marched toward the door. Halfway, he changed his mind. He looked out of a window. Whatever he saw, it failed to please him.

I sat down on a leather club chair and suggested, “Since you're here, why don't you tell me about it?”

He turned glittering black eyes on me and said, “Remember me?” His voice was slow and surly, but a shade less hostile.

“Yeah, Jimmy. I remember you.”

He said, “Yah, hey, brother.” After thinking about it, he sat down on a chair.

I said, “You want anything? Coffee? I guess they could rustle some up.”

“No, I wouldn't take nothing from them bastards,” Jimmy said. “This arrest crap. All it was, I've been doing T'sumqalaks ritual.”

“On Foul Bay Road?”

“It don't matter where I was doing it. I was minding my own business. Them cops picked me up because my face don't fit. They found an eagle feather in my medicine bag and made a federal case out of it.” Scow shook his head and added angrily, “That eagle feather has been in my family longer'n White men have been on Vancouver Island.”

“There's a witness outside ready to testify you've been trespassing here,” I said, not unkindly. “Trespassing on Calvert Hunt's property? Jimmy, you ought to know better.”

“The judge handed me five years. I ironed out three parts of it in William Head jail and the rest on probation,” Scow retorted. “It was railroad city but I've done my sentence. Now I go where I like.”

“Fine, I hear you, you're pissed. But I still want to know. Where have you been doing T'sumqalaks ritual?”

“North Saanich way, mostly,” Scow said, with less belligerence.

I thought about that. Native origin myths explain witchcraft quite explicitly, and witchcraft stories had been coming out of North Saanich recently. The latest one involved a wolf with a human face loping along a beach near Canoe Cove.

I crossed my legs. Jimmy stared at the fancy silk rug lying on the parquet. I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay, Jimmy. Keep talking.”

Scow shrugged his narrow shoulders. I waited. Scow was good at waiting too. At last he said something in Cowichan, a language I don't speak. Whatever he said, I knew it wasn't a benediction.

But at last he said in English: “I inherited T'sumqalaks ritual and Wolf Song from my dad. The old man had power, but he never used it. Me, I've known I've had strong power since I was a kid. People have been hearing about my power and sending for me.”

“Coast Salish people?”

“Salish and Nimpkish. Haidas. Whoever comes to me, I listen.”

“These people that you've been working with. What do they want? Wealth power? Gambling power?”

Scow raised his shoulders and showed me the palms of both hands, but he didn't answer my question.

I thought some more: T'sumqalaks Woman gave birth to four children who were wolves. One night, T'sumqalaks Woman was down on the beach digging clams when she heard a noise coming from her house. She tied a torch to her clam-digging stick and looked secretly through a chink in her wall and saw that her young wolves had taken off their skins and were human beings.

“I think you've been eating mushrooms, Jimmy,” I said softly. “Tell me the truth: are you trying to witch somebody or burn somebody?”

“Somebody's sick,” Scow said evasively. “If he's sick, something made him that way. I'm finding out what it is.”

I listened without taking my eyes off his face and said, “This man that we're talking about now. Is it you? Are
you
sick?”

My question touched a nerve. “Evil has been done. I've made it my job to see that things are put right,” Scow said defiantly. “If I don't, how can I live with myself?”

Jimmy's face was a study in innocence, but he was working hard to put one over on me.

I said, “Let's quit kidding each other. This is all about revenge.”

Scow's cool steady eyes were on mine. He didn't say anything.

“I'm turning you loose with a caution,” I said. “If I need to later, how can I get hold of you?”

“You can leave a message with Joe McNaught,” he said reluctantly. “I won't guarantee to get back to you in any hurry.”

“Forget about revenge. It's a game you can't win.” I felt myself scowling and switched on an artificial smile, saying, “I'm not going to ask what you've got in your medicine bag. Whatever it is, I hope you use it wisely. Thanks for telling me all this.”

I drove him back downtown and dropped him off at the foot of Johnson Street.

≈ ≈ ≈

The Fairmont Empress, Victoria's most famous landmark, is an old and typically grand Canadian Pacific hotel, all vine-covered brick and pointed roofs. Located beside the city's Inner Harbour, the Empress is the first thing you notice if you arrive by sea. The Empress's Bengal Room Lounge looks like the inside of a rajah's palace. There's a big tiger skin hanging above the fireplace along with pictures of India from the days of the British Raj. At one end of the room a section of polished floor is set aside for dancing. When I arrived there that night, wearing my best khaki slacks and an Italian shirt, three old guys in black tuxedos were playing Cole Porter tunes with weary professional assurance. I lowered myself into a cane chair and ordered a Foster's, then focussed on the room's main attraction — its silver-and-glass curry table. A fat chef in a tall white hat was presiding over beef and chicken curries, chutneys, garnishes, coconut and pappadums.

Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy appeared in the doorway — Murphy a subservient half-step behind his boss. Cal was wearing a white linen suit and white kidskin shoes. He looked fit, and he had a lopsided sneer that told us all how good he thought he was. In that setting Cal was as out of place as a frog in a teacup. But he was big and muscular and he moved with the grace of a cat.

Murphy was another big man. He had curly red hair and an Irish-looking face with small blue eyes and a pug nose. Where the skin of his face was not freckled it was pink and raw from sunburn.

After pausing to look around and get noticed, the two pimps sauntered in and sat at a table near the musicians. Alex Cal leaned back in his chair, his body almost horizontal, one leg stretched out, the other bent. People wanting to reach the dance floor had to detour around him. Murphy leaned over their table, the weight on his forearms, grinning as he told his boss something. Cal's eyes swept the room as his driver spoke. When Cal's gaze met mine it slowed for a moment before passing on.

The waiter delivered my Foster's along with silver cutlery wrapped in a linen napkin. I sipped half of my drink, then joined the buffet lineup. American tourists were marvelling about the room, the view, how
English
everything was in Victoria.

I loaded my plate with beef curry, medium hot. Some white rice. Dressed it all with mango chutney, coconut, chick peas, chopped white onion, capers, a couple of peppers, sliced banana and raisins. At the bread table I helped myself to a warm and crispy pappadum, big as a plate.

The food was delicious, the pappadum slightly salty, the way I like it. I'd just finished my first helping and was thinking about having another when the loveliest woman in the world came into the room and took my mind off curry.

She was tall, at least six feet in her high heels, wearing black silk and pearls. About 19. When she stood in the doorway the conversational hum dropped as everybody in the room turned to look at her. Long blonde hair framed an oval face with peaches-and-cream skin, wide-set blue eyes and a pouting mouth with the tiniest suggestion of an overbite. When she saw the pimps she smiled, parting her red lips further, and crossed to their table. Cal remained sprawled, smiling up at her as she leaned forward to plant a kiss on his mouth. Jiggs Murphy fussed around, arranging her a chair, but she didn't even notice him. She was only interested in Alex Cal. They put their heads together and after a minute she took Cal's hand, dragged him upright, and they joined half a dozen other couples on the dance floor. Murphy stood up and walked out of the room, looking pre-occupied as he passed my table.