Seaweed Under Water (19 page)

Bernie made a grunting noise deep in his throat. “We need to get our hands on that tape.”

“That'd be nice. Doyle, Pinky's chief bartender, was on duty in the Back Room on the night in question. He told me the tape had been destroyed.”

“Smart move, if true. Tapes are cheap though. If there's one, there'll be others. We just have to find one.”

“I saw Henry Ferman leaving the Rainbow Motel a while back. He does a lot of business setting up CCTV equipment in gas stations, stuff like that.”

“You think
he
made the movie?”

I shook my head. “I suspect Karl Berger.”

Bernie was having trouble staying awake. He got up, grabbed our coffee mugs and went across the room to refill them. He brought them back and asked, “Who's Karl Berger?”

“He manages the Rainbow Motel.”

“I must be losing it. Yeah. Karl Berger, I remember now. But you mean
ex
manager. The motel's being torn down.” Bernie regarded me with a dissatisfied air and asked, “What makes you suspect Berger?”

“The last time I went around to the Rainbow Motel, Berger was messing around up a stepladder. It occurred to me even then, that he'd been removing hidden cameras.”

“Motive, method and opportunity, Berger's got 'em all,” Bernie said. “How about this: Berger is in the motel when Janey shows up. She's already put two and two together, so she knows or at least suspects that Berger made the movie. There's a showdown, Berger murders her to shut her mouth.”

I told Bernie that my money was on Boss Rollins.

“Yeah, sure, but wasn't it a bodybuilder type who brained Owens? That describes Berger perfectly. Look, it fits: both Jane and Berger stay at the Rainbow Motel, so it's not a stretch for them to be sleeping together. Then things explode at Pinky's. Berger first attacks the ex-boyfriend, then he and Jane Colby go to the Rainbow, get into a lover's quarrel and he kills her.”

Lou came over with breakfast and asked, “What we going to do about the Middle East? Things get any worse between Israel and Lebanon, there'll be an atomic war.”

“I've got something deeper worrying me,” Bernie said. “It's this puzzle: How come Tarzan was always clean shaven and could speak English?”

Lou, his hat tilted rakishly down to his nose, said, “Who?”

“Tarzan, the guy Johnny Weissmuller played in Saturday afternoon matinees when we were kids. He should have had a beard, communicated by grunts.”

A workman seated across the café—probably a welder, wearing grimy coveralls pierced by dozens of tiny burn holes—shouted, “Hey, Lou! Where's my breakfast?”

Lou scuttled back to his grill.

Bernie said to me, “Well, whadda you think? Do you think Berger killed her?”

“He might have, but if he did, his motive's not very strong. For one thing, his reputation isn't worth protecting. What would he care if people found out he makes blue movies?”

“Yeah, I see your point. But together with the lover's quarrel angle, it's stronger. I'll bring him in for questioning anyway. Arrest him on suspicion, see where things go.”

“Where it'll go, Bernie, is straight to the media. It's your first murder case since being promoted. If you're wrong about Berger, the media will be all over you. I can see the headlines now: “Victoria's New Detective Boss Implicated In Farce.”

Bernie's eyes glittered. He took a cell phone from his pocket and said, “I'm still gonna do it.”

“Before you make that call, there's something else you should hear about first.”

He put the cell phone down reluctantly. “Okay, shoot.”

“Janey left Pinky's in a Blackbird cab driven by a man named Alf Gzowski. Somebody better talk to Gzowski as soon as
possible.”

“And you'd like that
somebody
to be
you
right? You'd like me to give you the go-ahead, do some more private digging, right?”

“Sure, why not. I'm not busy, and Inspector Manners has his hands full.”

Bernie said without hesitation, “So? What you waiting for?”

Good question. What
was
I waiting for—for the oyster to give up its pearl, the Sphinx its secrets?”

Bernie said, “You're a damned good detective, Silas. Your talent's wasted, fooling around with neighbourhood policing schemes, so how about it? Move back to headquarters and work with me again. It'll be like old times.”

“You, me and Nice Manners. One big happy crime-busting gang. It's tempting, in a way.”

“There's an immediate opening on the squad that's yours if you want it. This may be your last chance for a while, don't blow it. I'll give you a couple more days to think it over. In the meantime, go ahead. Interview this cabbie. Just keep me posted.”

I nodded.

Bernie picked up his cell phone again and punched the keypad. Waiting for headquarters to respond he said to me, “If you need any help, from forensics or anybody else, better go through my office. And for chrissake, Silas, be careful.”

He spoke to headquarters for a while; I didn't pay attention, particularly, to what was said. Bernie was about to leave the café when he suddenly remembered something. “By the way, there was a guy showed up at the hospital at Duncan with a broken jaw—Joseph Bickle, from Mowaht Bay.”

“A Native man?”

“I don't know. He lives in a bunkhouse, not on the reserve.”

Bernie turned away again and walks through the door. I watched through the window as he trudged across the street toward Swans pub, turned the corner onto Store Street and was lost to sight.

≈  ≈  ≈

After breakfast, I left Lou's, went next door to my office and unlocked the door. When I opened the curtains, dozens of dead houseflies were prostrated on the windowsill. Half a dozen survivors crawled torpidly.

The office's housefly phenomenon has exercised my curiosity for years. For weeks at a time, sometimes, there isn't a single bluebottle about the place, dead
or
alive. Then there'll be a Normandy Landing, with flies buzzing on my window panes, flies landing on my head, patrolling the coat rack, flitting in and out of the fireplace, parading along the frame surrounding Queen Victoria's photograph. I think they breed in dark spaces inside the walls.

I went out to the corridor, collected a vacuum cleaner from the building superintendent's closet and sucked every fly from sight. I was putting the vacuum back when the office phone jangled.

It was Alf Gzowski. He said, “I hear you want to talk to me.”

“Correct, thanks for calling, sir. I want to ask you about a fare you picked up outside Pinky's recently.”

“Oh yes? Sorry, I can't talk to you right now, because I'm outside the Empress Hotel, waiting to take somebody to the Schwartz Bay ferry terminal. I'll be free in about an hour.”

“Can you come to my office on Pandora Street afterwards?”

“I'm at work, you know. I don't have unlimited spare time. How long will this take?”

“A bit of luck, not long.”

“Fine, I'll come to your office, see you in an hour,” he replied, then immediately changed his mind. “No, second thoughts, better make it an hour and a half.”

I replaced the receiver, leaned back in my chair. After thinking for a minute, I picked the receiver up again, phoned headquarters and asked for Bjorn Matthiessen, in Vice.

When Bjorn came on I said, “What do you know about a guy called Karl Berger?”

“Never heard of him. What's he done?”

“I don't know, maybe nothing. He drives a Viper, probably spends more than he earns.”

“Sounds exactly like me, except I don't drive a Viper.”

“Is there much of a Blue Movie industry on Vancouver Island?”

“Nothing big. That's to say, nothing commercial. The competition's fierce. There's millions of underemployed bimbos and jocks out there. They call themselves actors, watch
Entertainment Tonight
and fantasize about getting into the movies. I mean, to them it's obvious that most of Hollywood's so-called stars have no talent. What they've got are boob jobs, hair extensions, personal trainers and contracts. Unfortunately, only one wannabe in a million actually makes it to Hollywood. The rest join amateur dramatic societies, or end up freelancing in front of a minicam, having sex with dogs, cats, goats and each other for peanuts in somebody's barn.”

“Did you say
cats
?”

“Silas, you don't know the half of it,” Bjorn said, ringing off with a laugh.

I looked at my wristwatch. It was nine in the morning. I got up and looked out the window. The street was jammed with traffic. Denise Halvorsen and Bob Fyles came into sight—weaving in and out between cars and pedestrians on hi-tech police-issue trail bikes. I locked up and traipsed across to Swans parking lot to pick up my loaner.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Driving across town to the Rainbow Motel, I remembered noticing the Songhees condos—and in particular, the condo project that had failed badly, soaking up Jack Owens' and Jane Colby's money. Those condos started at close to a million and went up from there. Penthouses overlooking the Inner Harbour fetched millions. Something had gone seriously amiss with Janey's condo transaction, but in spite of that, her lawyer was now telling Owens he could relax, the pressure was off? How? Why? Jack Owens wasn't saying, and, as far as I knew, the Colby family's only substantial asset was the Fairfield house, which remained unsold and was owned by Janey's father.

Bernie Tapp's unmarked Interceptor was parked on the street outside the Rainbow Motel construction site, together with a prowlie with its roof flashers going. Since my last visit, the site had been almost completely cleared and was now being levelled. Sixteen-wheelers were delivering fill to an area by the water's edge. A construction trailer had been set up where the motel's boat shack formerly stood. A surveyor wearing a fluorescent vest was running transits. The motel building was still largely intact, although some doors and windows had been removed. Bare-chested labourers were sitting on the steps outside the front entrance, joshing back and forth as they took a break from work. When I went past them to go inside, one of the workmen said, “Careful where you put your feet, pal. We've been tearing hardwood floors out.”

I found Bernie Tapp up on a stepladder in the motel lobby, examining a hole in the suspended ceiling. A rookie constable I'd never met was supporting the ladder with one hand. When I entered, the constable waved me off with his free hand and said sourly, “Beat it, Siwash. We're busy.”

The word
Siwash
denotes Native Indian and supports the vilifications applied universally to aboriginals living between Tierra del Fuego and the North Pole—ill educated, lazy, as trustworthy as jackals . . .

Bernie Tapp heard what was said and came down the ladder. He gave the constable an evil look but didn't say anything—maybe he wanted to see how I would handle the situation.

I am six feet four inches tall, 40 years old, with a muscular physique. To the best of my knowledge (it's a wise man that knows his own father) I am full-blooded Native, mostly Coast Salish. Maybe there's a bit of Blackfoot or Cree in me too, because I have a thin aquiline nose and my face is V shaped, rather than oval. Nobody's ever going to mistake me for a WASP, which is what the constable appeared to be. He gazed at me with angry blue eyes and made a small threatening movement. I stood my ground, which brought him up short. He was about to make things worse when I asked, “Find anything interesting up there, Chief Inspector?”

“I found what you thought we might find, Sergeant,” Bernie said, a disgusted smile twisting his lips. Eyeing the constable up and down he said, “You can leave now, Constable. I'll deal with you back at headquarters.”

The constable acted like he'd been kicked in the stomach. Flushing to the roots of his hair, he gave Bernie a sloppy salute and hurried off.

“I'll bust that racist swine,” Bernie muttered.

“I have a better idea. Put him through sensitivity training. Then send him out to the Warrior Reserve to help Chief Alphonse with the kids.”

Bernie nodded. “You handled it well, by the way,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his pipe.

“Seen anything of Karl Berger?” I asked.

Bernie shook his head. “Karl took a powder. The construction boss hasn't seen him around here lately. Berger's not at his home and his Viper's gone. I've applied for a warrant to search his house. Maybe we'll get lucky and find that videotape.”

I looked up to the ceiling and saw where another bundle of coloured electric wires had been snipped off.

Bernie lit his pipe with a kitchen match that he struck on his thumb. “How'd you make out with that cabbie—what's his name?”

“Gzowski. I'm seeing him in my office in an hour or so.”

Bernie concentrated on his pipe for a minute. “You were right about hidden cameras. They'd been planted all over the building. We found two-way mirrors in some of the suites as well.” He frowned and added, “Remember that chiropractor we busted last year—the one who had two-way mirrors in his examining rooms and in the women's washroom?”

I nodded.

Bernie sighed, shook his head, glanced at his wristwatch and said, “I was planning to see Henry Ferman next. Maybe I'll put that on hold. Talk to this cab driver first.”

“Sure.”

We went out of the building. While I'd been inside, a mobile catering van must have been and gone. Now the demo crew was drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups, eating doughnuts and clowning like frat boys, which, come of think of it, is what some of them probably were.

≈  ≈  ≈

I watched Alf Gzowski park his cab in the no-stopping zone across the street from my office. Acting Detective Chief Inspector Tapp had usurped the chair behind my desk and was using my desk phone. I'd just been next door to Lou's café to pick up a tray of coffee and doughnuts. I put the tray on the desk. Bernie put the phone down and chewed his lip for a minute. He looked at me and said, “The Saanich Police just nicked Karl Berger. He was in the Schwartz Bay ferry lineup, with a ticket for Tsawwassen.”