Seaweed in the Soup (17 page)

I said, “Ever noticed Clark Gable's hair in
Gone with the Wind
?”

Alfredo reluctantly diverted his attention away from Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill, who were singing Bizet's
Pearl Fishers
duet.

Alfredo said, “Mama mia! It's Silas Seaweed.”

“Mama mia?”

“I'm Italian, people expect it. How long have you been standing there?”

“Since yesterday. I hate to intrude on your fantasy, but I just asked you if you'd ever noticed Clark Gable's hair in
Gone with the Wind
?”

Bizet's music and those marvellous voices were making Alfredo's eyes liquid. “I've noticed Clark Gable's hair in
Gone with the Wind
,” he declared. “I've noticed William Powell's hair in
The Thin Man
.”

“William Powell's hair in
The Thin Man
looks too much like Fred Astaire's hair in
Royal Wedding
. I don't want to look like a debonair hoofer, I want to look like Clark Gable.”

“Everybody does. But I'm a barber, not a magician.”

I waited.

“One Clark Gable coming up,” he said, dabbing his streaming eyes with a blue handkerchief, “although your hair is a bit darker than Gable's was.”

It was a fifteen-minute job that took an hour. We heard Amelita Galli-Curci's version of the “Bell Song” from
Lakme
, and Enrico Caruso's
La Boheme
arias. My haircut might have taken all day if another customer hadn't come in. Alfredo's prices were prominently displayed. He charged 16 dollars for a standard haircut; seniors got a four-dollar discount. He wanted five dollars for trimming beards, and 20 dollars for a hot-towel shave. I've never had a barbershop shave in my life. Alfredo swung my chair 180 degrees till my back was to a wall mirror, and held a hand mirror in front of my face. I said hello to the shorthaired stranger seated behind me, and gave Alfredo a twenty. He hesitated over the change—I left the shop before he could charge me the seniors' rate.

Walking up the Fairfield slope towards the Blanshard Street courthouse, I noticed another massive new condo rising up to shoulder the sky near the Strathcona Hotel. Minutes later I was in courtroom number seven, watching Mickey Haggerty go down.

A greasy vicious rat, Haggerty had beaten a fellow drug addict to death with a length of two-by-four. The two men had been in a tussle about who deserved the last suck from the crack pipe they had been sharing. Murder was Haggerty's crowning achievement in a criminal life that had escalated from street trafficking, petty theft, burglary, robbery and aggravated bodily harm.

When I had arrested him for the murder, six months earlier, Haggerty was still standing over his victim with the two-by-four in his hands. Back then, Mickey Haggerty had weighed about ninety pounds. He was six feet tall and he had been wearing a dirty T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. He had terminal-stage AIDS, Hep C., syphilis and gonorrhea. Now he was wearing a borrowed brown suit and a white shirt. Prison grub, regular medications and abstinence had put a bit of meat on his bones. Haggerty even had a certain swagger. He had pled down from Murder One to Murder Two. His sentence was a mere formality. Haggerty was in either case a dead man walking. He would be sleeping in potters field within five years or less. When Judge George asked Haggerty if he had anything to say before the sentence was passed, Haggerty asked the judge to give him a cigarette. The judge declined, whereupon Haggerty told the judge to go and piss up a rope. The judge appeared to be having difficulty controlling his emotions when he handed Haggerty 25. And that was that. As they were leading Haggerty down the steps, he noticed me standing in the gallery and gave me a wink.

I went out into the lobby and walked the crowded corridors to the land registry office. This time there was a lineup. I had to wait fifteen minutes before being served. As before, I showed the clerk my badge to save myself the customary search fee. I asked to look at the documents relating to the Nanaimo's nightclub property. The property was owned by someone called Penelope Grace Mainwaring. Well, well, I thought. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Downtown Victoria's urban odours of hot oil and burnt rubber diminished as I drove north. Subdivisions and new streets flanked the Trans-Canada Highway until the Helmcken Road Hospital fell behind and I took the View Royal exit. After a couple of miles of country blacktop, I entered a green valley lying between the foothills. Another half a mile brought me to the long unpaved road that leads to Felicity Exeter's farm. I turned left, rattled across a cattle stop, followed twin wheel ruts across smoothly undulating pasture land dotted with grazing sheep till I parked the MG beneath trees near a barn.

I gave a start when I saw my face in the rear-view mirror. I was unshaven and my hair was standing on end. Thanks to last night's escapade, my eyes were red and there was an angry bruise along the line of my jaw. I got out of the car and leaned against it. Miniature potted cedars flanked the curving drive that wound up to Felicity's house. To the right there was a tennis court and a swimming pool. Music played above the sound of happy voices. The house's front door stood wide open.

Felicity came outside the house, shaded her eyes against the sun and peered towards me. Wearing a clingy, sheer low-neck black sweater, a short black velvet skirt, and high-heeled, pointy-toed boots over bare legs, she was worth looking at. I was burning to make love to her. When I came out of the trees and walked towards her, she stepped backwards a little. Her usual welcoming smile was absent.

Her face inanimate, she said without any particular warmth, “You've had a haircut.”

“Yes, I have. Do you like it?”

“Not particularly, no. And I'm sorry, Silas, but I've got Wilderness Preservation Committee people here, and I'm sure you wouldn't find them very amusing.” She switched an artificial smile on. “There's a woman in the kitchen will give you a drink if you ask her. Otherwise, darling, if you don't mind helping yourself, you know where the bottles are kept, don't you?”

She was turning away when I said, “Hold it a minute.”

Felicity turned back. Hands on her hips she said, “Yes, master?”

“What's up? We haven't seen each other in ages and all you do is tell me to help myself to a drink?”

“Face it, sweetie. Drinks are more important to you than I am, sometimes.”

We didn't kiss. She returned to the house. Wondering about the impression I had made on her, I went past the unpopulated swimming pool into Felicity's kitchen. I was pouring two inches of Bacardi rum into a cut-glass tumbler when my cellphone buzzed. It was Bernie Tapp. He said, “What are you doing right now?”

“Chasing sheep in a farmyard with the rich and famous. In a few minutes I'll be going to . . . ”

“No, you won't, pal. You're going out to Wilkie Road prison. I'll be there waiting for you, so get cracking,” Bernie said, hanging up before I could object.

A man swaggered into the kitchen carrying an empty glass. He was wearing a hacking jacket, a Hathaway shirt and cavalry twill trousers. He had the rugged good looks and assertive self-confidence that one associates with Second World War tank commanders and Arabian deserts.

He assumed that I was hired help. “Felicity's meetings are fun, but talking is thirsty work, so how about pouring me a drop of that Scotch?”

It was rum, but I didn't tell him that. After tasting the drink, and remarking on its funny taste, he went out without thanking me, but at least he didn't offer to give me a tip.

Felicity's voice reached me as I was crossing the field to my car. “Idiot,” she said fondly. “Where do you think you're going now?”

“Bernie just called me, I can't stay.”

“See me later?”

I grinned at her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wilkie Road prison looks like a Scottish castle. It is place where unpleasant things can happen to people in secret. An arched stone passageway as dismal as a catacomb led Bernie and me through cavernous halls lit by tiny barred windows. Additional crypt-like passageways branched off into darkness. Barred stairways descended to grim cellars. The prison, reeking of ammonia and mould, rang with hollow, distant-sounding voices. Bernie and I know our way around in there, but it's easy for first-time visitors to get lost. Somebody coughed. Peering up in the gloom, I saw a spiral staircase ascending to a sort of pulpit, behind which a turnkey's pale blurred features gazed down at us from a height.

Bernie's eyes had lost all their warmth. “We're here to interrogate Maria Alfred,” he said.

Without a word, the turnkey pushed a buzzer. A male guard appeared promptly and conducted us to a cell. “We call her Tightlips,” the guard declared officiously, unlocking the cell's heavy iron door. “Talking with her is a waste of time, you won't get nowhere with her.”

Maria's own clothing had been taken away, and now she was wearing an orange prison-issue jumpsuit. She looked well scrubbed, and her cappuccino-coloured complexion was unblemished. The whites of her dark doelike eyes were clear. She had a pretty but not beautiful face and an air of being drugged. Her wrists were manacled to a belt around her waist. Her ankles were tethered together by a short chain. Stooped and subdued after her hours in solitary, with long black hair concealing most of her face, she looked like someone expecting a whipping. Her cell was a plain concrete windowless cube containing a stool, a lidless toilet, and a stainless steel sink. No bed. No mattress.

Bernie Tapp faced the guard and said with deceptive calm, “Who ordered these restraints to be put on?”

“Nobody, I put them on myself,” the guard answered. “It's standard practice.”

“Take them off.”

“That's not my responsibility,” the guard replied imperiously. “Chains are usual when violent prisoners are to be moved. You'll have to . . . ”

“Who do you think you're talking to?” Bernie growled, as a look of fury appeared on his face. When the guard still hesitated, a grunting noise emerged from somewhere deep inside Bernie Tapp's heaving chest. The guard caved, undid the chains and let them drop to the floor. Raising her head, glancing timidly at Bernie and me for the first time, Maria absently massaged her wrists.

“All right,” Bernie snarled, still angry, “let's go.”

The four of us formed a little procession—the guard punching a number code into wall-mounted keypad security devices as we went along. The prisoner shuffled along behind him. Bernie and I came last. The interview room was another cell. Lit by three bare 100-watt light bulbs, it had a grey acoustic-tile ceiling and bare unpainted concrete-block walls. The cell contained a wooden table and three wooden chairs. A tape recorder was mounted on a shelf below a large mirror. The cell's ceiling-mounted CCTV camera looked like a sprinkler head.

Bernie asked the prisoner to sit down at the table. After some hesitation, she did so. Bernie and I sat opposite to her.

Bernie said, “Is your name Maria Alfred?”

She nodded without speaking, looking past Bernie instead of at him.

“You might remember us. I am Chief Inspector Tapp. The officer in here with us is Sergeant Seaweed. We're investigating a murder and we have a problem. We think you can help us to sort this problem out. We'd like some co-operation this time, Miss. You have Charter Rights, you don't have say anything. But what we want, Miss, is for you to answer some simple questions. For a start: Who are you, what's your name?”

As anticipated, a few hours in Wilkie Road had softened her up. “You already know my name.”

“That's right. But we are recording this interview and we need you to state your name out loud.”

“I want a lawyer,” she said, her distrust palpable.

“Of course you do,” Bernie answered cheerfully. “In the meantime, we just want to clear up a few little things: Your name, for starters. Little details about where you live, your age, your occupation.”

“So when do I get this lawyer?”

“You'll get a lawyer soon enough. In the meantime, let's address the business at hand. Look, Miss. You may not wish to talk to us, and we understand that, only we want to talk to you. We like to communicate properly, clearly and at a simple level of understanding so people know exactly where we're coming from. You probably think we're trying to trick you in some way. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me tell you something. We know a lot about you already. We know for instance that your name is Maria Alfred and that you are a waitress at the Ballard Diner. Your employer speaks very highly of you. He misses you very much. Your job is waiting for you when we get this mess sorted out. Okay?”

The suspect replied in Coast Salish.

Bernie looked at me.

I said, “Picture two kneeling men performing an act that, until Pierre Elliott Trudeau became prime minister, was contrary to the code of criminal justice.”

“You want me to go and get screwed, is that what you want?” Bernie said, grinning across the table at her. “Believe me, Maria, I get screwed on a daily basis. Not actually, of course, just metaphorically. You are trying to screw with me now, but it's a bad idea, believe me.”

She asked me what metaphorically meant.

“It's a way of describing things that are not literally true,” I replied in English.

“I'll fuck you,” she said to me in Coast Salish. “You're one of us, right? Tell me how I can get out of here, and I'll do whatever you want. I'll fuck you till blood comes out of your eyes.”

I pursed my lips at the graphic mental image that Maria's words had conjured up. “The way to get out of here is to be sensible and answer the chief inspector's questions,” I explained. “Tell the truth and don't try to be clever.”