Seaweed on the Street (27 page)

She moved her body impatiently. “Oh, don't stop now, please! Not just when I was going to learn something. I told you. Not knowing is terrible. Nothing could be worse than what I've imagined, believe me.”

“You might be wrong. Before he changed it, your father's name was Frank Turko. He was born in Oakland, California. As a young man he was involved with a motorcycle club. Something happened, there was a fight. A man died and the courts ruled your father responsible.”

My crude description dropped into a vast silence. Alison stared at the grass below the bench and opened her mouth, but no words came.

Finally she raised her head, and eyes met mine. “Please go on. I don't care how awful it is, really. It can't be as bad as things I'll imagine.”

How to explain a senseless tragedy? Hardly a tragedy, a melodrama. I plunged ahead and said, “Years before you were born, your father was arrested in California and charged with causing wrongful death. He was released on bail. Instead of waiting for the trial he went to Canada, changed his name and started a new life. He met your mother and they got married.”

“I know that part's wrong,” she said, her voice coarsened by deep emotion. “My mother and father were unmarried, nobody ever made any secret of it.”

I shook my head. “Your parents
were
married.”

She looked at me in a confused way. “But if they were married, why would Joan tell me otherwise?”

“Joan's probably only heard part of the story. What I told you is true. Your parents were married before your birth, but your mother's parents tried to have the marriage annulled.”

“So that's it. That's why Daddy hated them,” she said in a smaller voice. Eyes narrowed, she continued, “But if Father wasn't a sailor, maybe he didn't kill that man in California, either?”

“I'm sorry, Alison. Be that as it may, your dad spent those missing years in jail … ”

She leaned toward me. “What happened to him?”

I took a deep breath and said calmly, “Your parents left Canada for good, many years ago. Your mother went first, to a seaside place near Seattle, where you were born. Because of that trouble in California, your father was a wanted fugitive in this country. But he followed.”

Her face relaxed and she murmured, “Daddy must have loved her very much to leave Canada, where he was safe.”

“It cost him his freedom.”

Her shoulders dropped. I couldn't see her eyes anymore, but I had to tell her everything now, get it all out, the good and the bad. Without looking up she said, “I've got this memory. Sometimes I think it's a dream but it probably isn't. It was when Mummy died. We drove over this big bridge, then Aunt Joan came back here to live with me.”

“One of the San Francisco Bay bridges probably, near Oakland.”

“Right. Then about six years ago, Daddy showed up.”

“Is that the first time you'd met him?”

“Yes. The seafaring story, it never really made sense. But I accepted it.” She nodded, thinking aloud. “To spare my feelings, Daddy and Joan concocted this story and stuck to it. They didn't want me to know that my father was a criminal.”

She stared at the pool. “My grandfather, the other people in Victoria. Do they know all of this?”

“They know very little of it. Yet.”

Pent-up emotion flared into anger. “They don't know that their meddling caused my father's ruin?”

“It's complicated. There's two sides to this story. There always is.”

“I don't care, the hell with them!” Her voice had risen. A cleaning woman wielding a broom on the opposite side of the pool turned to stare.

Alison got up from the bench and had taken an angry stride before I caught her. “Wait,” I said roughly. “Don't you think this idiocy has lasted long enough? Don't you think somebody in that stubborn clan of yours should act sensibly for once?”

Tears filled her eyes and she sobbed. I didn't try to stop her.

≈ ≈ ≈

Joan Alfred met Alison and me at the door. Joan was looking thoughtful and withdrawn. There were dark half-crescents beneath her eyes, a glass of whisky in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the other. She pecked Alison's cheek and said, “Come in, Mr. Seaweed. I'm sorry about yesterday.”

She manoeuvred uncertainly to a chair and sat down in it. “I've been up all night,” she said.

Alison went into the kitchen. Joan's eyes closed, but when she heard Alison returning she jerked awake. Alison had fresh lemonade with her. She poured three glasses and said, “It's a new day. Let's celebrate.”

I said, “Where's Frank?”

Joan was still nursing half a glass of whisky. “The hell with Frank,” she said. “I told him to clear off until he got his head straight.”

I said, “Just so we're clear. Let's not have any more bullshit about sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.”

Joan laughed and said, “Whatever. I'm not completely ready to face a new day, and I'm sure as hell not celebrating anything with lemonade.”

Outside, the two dogs and the family cat were lying companionably in the shade.

Joan said, “It's hard, hanging out the family's dirty laundry. Frank crashed and burned, but when I was little he was my hero. That's the way I like to remember him.”

That was okay with me.

Joan drank what was left of the whisky in her glass, lit a cigarette and said apologetically, “When you came here yesterday, I took you for an ex-con. Maybe somebody from San Quentin who knew that Frank was my brother. Frank was a big wheel in his day. There's a notion that some old drug money is sloshing around out there somewhere. This isn't the first time strangers have come banging on our door.”

Joan turned to Alison and said, “I'm sorry, Allie. We didn't want you to know about Frank's past. We just couldn't … ” Her words trailed off. Alison flew from her seat. The two women hugged each other and burst into tears.

I left the room and stood on the veranda. A slow anticlimactic hour passed before Joan invited me to rejoin them. I told them a few things about Victoria. I discovered that Frank had left Joan Alfred completely in the dark about his activities in British Columbia. She knew virtually nothing about Marcia's family.

Joan fetched a photo album from her room. Over sandwiches we browsed through many old pictures and I tried to fill more of Alison's historical blanks. Among the pictures was one of Marcia, as a baby, in a carriage being pushed by a young girl. The caption read: “Marcia, on an outing with Effie.”

This was a different Effie — Effie Yokwats's mom.

They agreed to lend me some of their precious photographs. I borrowed several, including one of Alison at a student art exhibition. It showed Alison posed with a bearded young man in front of a painting. When I asked Alison about it, she explained that this was a casual stranger who had stopped to admire the work. Alison had been talking to him when a classmate strolled by and snapped the picture.

≈ ≈ ≈

It was late when I left Reno in my old Chev. I enjoyed driving Nevada's long lonely roads, watching the colours change from pale sages and golds and pinks to the deep-scented purple of the desert night. The air was fresh and clear. Away from civilization's electric luminescence, stars came out and filled the sky. At midnight I paused at a rest stop for 10 minutes and watched the moon rise above Mount Shasta. I remembered a half-forgotten dinner party from long ago where one guest, a witch-like woman with long, white hair wearing a black velvet gown, spoke of mysterious happenings on Shasta at the time of the full moon. Maybe. Shasta's mysteries I would leave for others to elucidate. All I knew for sure was that Alison was Marcia Hunt's daughter. I was also quite sure that I had seen Marcia's grave. Whoever Fred Eade had found, it wasn't Marcia. I was certain that Dr. Robert Danwell had been Marcia Hunt's physician. I was still sure when I drove through Eugene and Portland.

Certitude accompanied me to Barb's house in Seattle. It was midnight. She heard my knock on the door and answered at last. Half asleep, she slipped the lock and watched me from behind the chain lock. Interior candles outlined her naked shoulder and thigh, transforming her long hair into a silvery halo and her face into a dark mystery. “Silas,” she said in her soft voice. “Silas Seaweed.”

The door closed while Barbara slipped open the chain, and then I was through with a rush and we fell into that universe where nothing is impossible.

Almost nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Back in Victoria I called by my office, where I was glared at by my answering machine's angry red eye. I switched it on and checked junk snail-mail while the cassette tape rewound. Bernie Tapp had called several times. There were two cryptic messages from the cagey mystery man who spoke out of the side of his mouth. Iris Naylor wanted to talk to me. Most of my calls came from Sammy Lofthouse.

Lofthouse was a small, cocky, cigar-smoking lawyer with a permanently blue chin who looked as if he slept in his suits. The kind of man who left his cellphone on in theatres, shouted at waitresses and dropped damp cigar butts into coffee cups. Before I could decide who to call first, the phone rang.

Bernie Tapp said, “Listen, pally. We need to talk, pronto. Some guy told Chief Bulloch you were nosing about in Reno. He is very ticked.”

“There's no law against me playing cards in Reno.”

I heard Bernie's rapid intake of breath. “Cut the malarkey. You were work-ing on the Calvert Hunt deal. You know it, I know it. Bulloch knows it.”

“Is that the whole lecture?”

“No. There's more. I want you here in five minutes. I want to watch you squirm. We've arrested Fred Eade's girlfriend, Patty Nolan. She won't speak to anybody except you or that sleazebag Sammy Lofthouse.”

“Sammy is acting for Patty Nolan?”

“In a manner of speaking. She's retained his services. The only advice he's given her so far is to keep her trap shut.”

“That's not bad advice, but she didn't need a lawyer who charges Lofthouse's fees to tell her that.”

“The trouble she's in, she needs more than a lawyer. She needs a miracle.”

“What's she charged with?”

“Conspiracy to traffic in stolen automobiles, but that's just for openers. She's also a material witness to Fred Eade's killing.”

“Where is Patty being held?”

“Wilkinson Road jail. You willing to talk to her?”

“Sure.”

“Meet me at headquarters in an hour.”

“Make it two hours,” I said. “I need a workout.” Bernie slammed the phone down.

I yawned. My mouth was sour from too much coffee and too many hours cooped up in the Chevrolet. Still, things were moving along nicely.

≈ ≈ ≈

Moran's Gym occupies the top floor of a rundown brick heritage warehouse near the Gorge waterway. I did 15 minutes with a skipping rope, pumped iron for a while and was whaling away at Moran's heavy punching bag when Gervais LaFleur sauntered in wearing a blue pinstripe suit, an open-necked white shirt with a button-down collar, and custom-made shoes that looked as if they'd just been dipped in black nail varnish.

Gervais, who had a black belt in Brazilian ju-jitsu, was a 50-year-old account executive with one of Victoria's brokerage firms. He waved at the pugs drinking coffee at Moran's lunch counter before disappearing into the change rooms. When Gervais came out five minutes later wearing a Speedo swimsuit and Nike Airs with bobble-top stockings, I was waiting for him. He looked as happy to see me as I was to see him.

“Silas, old chum,” he said. “Where have you been hiding yourself?”

“I've been laid up and out of town.”

“This place isn't the same without you. Moran has been in mourning. Is it true that baddies have been throwing knives and things at you?”

“Not quite, but forget that. I want to ask you about Charles Service.”

Gervais frowned at his manicured fingernails.

I said, “Just between you and me, Gervais. How much money a month is Service sniffing up his nose?”

“I don't know. But whatever it is, Charlie can afford it, believe me.”

“Who manages his money?”

“Not me, worse luck.”

“Can you find out who does?”

“Can birds fly? It'll be the work of an instant, but first, Tony's impatiently waiting to rub aromatic oils on my body.”

“One more thing, Gervais. Do you know Sarah Williams?”

“Of course I do. Doesn't everybody?”

“Is Sarah rich?”

“
Was
rich, Silas.
Was
. She and Mummy Williams plowed their all into one of those dot-com fiascos and lost their little embroidered nighties because of it.”

“What, everything?”

“Every last
sou
.”

“Both of them?”

“Well, Mummy Williams still has a little annuity I suppose,” Gervais said thoughtfully. “She must have. Sarah has a ritzy condo. But if Charlie Service wasn't picking up all of Sarah's tabs, I don't know how the poor thing would manage.”

“Gervais,” I said enviously, “are you hiding a catcher's mitt inside that Speedo?”

Smiling complacently, Gervais threw his muscular bronzed body upon Tony's massage table.

Moran came across to me, chewing an unlit cigar, and said, “We've got a game on this coming Friday. Usual time. Some of the boys want to try Texas hold'em for a change — $20 ante, winner takes all.”

“You and the boys have been watching too much tv. Texas hold'em is a shitty game, 90 percent luck. Gimme seven-card stud, or Omaha.”

“Does that mean you won't come?”

“Well, no. I think I'm on a winning streak right now. Count me in.”

≈ ≈ ≈

I had a shower and returned to my office. The phone rang. It was Sam Lofthouse. He said, “Hey, Seaweed. Let's talk about Patty Nolan. Know who I'm talking about?”