Henri Castonguay had just put a pot of seafood stock on to boil when Scarnum stuck his head through the back door of the kitchen of Henri’s Bistro, a restaurant in an old wooden house overlooking Marriot’s Cove, not far from Chester.
“Salut, mon gars,” he said. “Qu’est que tu cuisines? Ça pue!”
Castonguay, immaculate in kitchen whites, holding a wooden spoon, turned away from the stove and squinted. His face lit up when he saw it was Scarnum.
“Hey!” he said. “Mon ami. Come in. I’m making un bouillon de poisson, not that an uncultured Canadian like you would appreciate it.” He went to the door of the dining room and called for his wife.
“Henri, mon vieux,” said Scarnum. “J’ai un petit problème et j’ai besoin de ton aide.” He pulled out the flask.
“But that doesn’t look like a problem,” said Henri. “That looks like a flask. If your problem is that your flask is too full, I’m sure I can help you.”
Mary Murphy came into the kitchen. Her freckled face lit up with pleasure and she clapped her hands. She kissed Scarnum on both cheeks.
Scarnum laughed and hugged her. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, you,” he said.
“We never see you anymore, Phillip,” she said. “How are you?”
“Not bad, b’y, but I’ve got a mystery for you. Here’s the thing,” he said, unscrewing the top of the flask. “Don’t ask me why, but I want to know who owns this flask. I might be able to figure it out if I knew what was in it.”
He passed the flask to Castonguay, who pressed the lid against his grey moustache and inhaled deeply.
“Scotch,” he said. He took a tiny sip and frowned. “Good Scotch,” he said. “Mary has a better palate than I do.” He passed it to her.
“Mmm,” she said. “Islay Scotch, I think.”
Mary led them into the dining room and took some brandy snifters down from the rack above the little bar. She poured a finger of Scotch from the flask into a glass, mixed a little spring water, and they all tasted it again.
Then she took down a bottle of Laphroaig and a bottle of Lagavulin. She poured a finger from each, added a little water, and lined them up on the bar — each glass in front of its bottle. They tasted them in turn.
“It is Laphroaig,” she said. She sipped it again and pushed two of the glasses toward Scarnum. “Taste these two. This one is from our bottle of Laphroaig. This one is from your flask.”
“They taste exactly the same to me,” said Scarnum.
“The one from the flask is older,” she said. “We carry the ten-year-old Laphroaig, but they sell older stuff, fifteen-year-old, thirty-year-old. I think this might be the thirty-year-old stuff.”
She sipped it again. “Taste how smooth it is, but how it hasn’t lost that wild flavour of peat and iodine.”
She looked up at the two men, who were watching her silently. “This is good fucking whisky,” she said, and they all laughed.
“So, who drinks thirty-year-old Laphroaig?” asked Scarnum.
“Someone with good taste and a lot of money,” said Castonguay. “It’s what? Two hundred and fifty dollars a bottle?”
Mary nodded. She pursed her lips and looked up at Scarnum. “I can only remember one person ever asking for it here,” she said. “I remember because I thought he was a big-feeling arsehole to ask, since he could see we didn’t have it behind the bar. You can’t even buy it at the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission.”
“Who was that?” said Scarnum.
She looked at him for a long moment, and he knew it was coming.
“Bobby Falkenham,” she said, and she took another drink of whisky.
So did Scarnum.
Scarnum drove north, along the winding, two-lane paved road that led to New Ross, through the woods. After half an hour, he turned right onto a dirt road and drove past a sign that said WELCOME TO THE PENNAL FIRST NATION.
A bit farther down the road was a much bigger sign: CIGARETTES, FIREWORKS, GAS, COFFEE. Scarnum pulled up in front of the Mi’kmaq Treaty Gas Bar — a set of pumps in front of a little plywood shed on a concrete pad — and went in and bought a carton of duty-free cigarettes from two middle-aged Mi’kmaq women who sat behind the counter listening to country music on the radio and smoking.
A sad-looking old white couple sat in the back, feeding quarters into video lottery machines.
“You know where I can find Donald Christmas’s place?” Scarnum asked the Mi’kmaq women, smiling.
“I dunno,” said the older of the two women. “I’m not sure he’s in town. What do you want him for?”
“I’m an old friend,” said Scarnum. “Phillip Scarnum. Just wanna see how he’s doing.”
“I dunno,” she said. “Wait a minute. I’ll call his cousin, see if he’s in town.”
She picked up a telephone, dialed, and spoke in Mi’kmaq. She looked Scarnum up and down as she talked.
“What you say your name was again?” she said.
“Phillip Scarnum,” he said.
She repeated the name into the phone, listened, and then asked him, “Why you want to see him?”
Scarnum thought for a minute. “Angela sent me,” he said.
The woman hung up. “His cousin is going to come and get you.”
Scarnum thanked her and went out to sit in his truck, smoking and looking at the trailers and tumbledown houses of the reserve.
After fifteen minutes, a teenager drove up on a four-wheeler, his long black hair blowing in the wind behind him.
He skidded to a stop in the gravel next to the truck. “Scarnum?” he asked.
“You should wear a helmet,” said Scarnum. “Them things is dangerous.”
The kid laughed. “Follow me,” he said.
Scarnum followed in his wake of dust down a series of potholed dirt roads. Donald Christmas’s house — a 1970s split-level — sat at the top of a meadow hundreds of yards back from the road. There was a huge garage built onto the side of the house. The flag of the Mi’kmaq Warriors — a red flag with the profile of a brave in the middle — flew from a pole in front.
The kid got off the four-wheeler and unlocked the padlock on the steel gate at the bottom of the long lane, waited until Scarnum drove through, then locked it behind him.
Donald was waiting for him, sitting on the front stoop. He wore work boots, jeans, and a Tupac sweatshirt.
“You should tell your cousin to wear a helmet,” said Scarnum, when he pulled up to a stop in front of the garage. “Them four-wheelers is deadly.”
Donald laughed and walked over and they shook hands. “How’s Angela?” he asked.
“Oh, ’bout as well as you’d expect,” said Scarnum. “She’s carrying Jimmy’s baby.”
Donald nodded. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “When’s she due?”
“Around Christmas.”
“Must be tough on her,” he said.
“Yuh,” said Scarnum.
Donald led him around the house and up onto a big back deck overlooking a steep gully. Someone had cut all the trees down a few years before, almost to the edge of a stream at the bottom of the hill, and the alders were growing in among the stumps.
A clothesline ran down the hill to one big pine that had been left standing in the chopping. A .30-30 rifle with a scope and big box of ammunition lay on a table at the edge of the deck.
They sat down in plastic chairs overlooking the gully.
Donald called out and a Mi’kmaq girl came out onto the deck. She was slim and beautiful, about eighteen. She wore black leggings and a yellow halter top. When she opened the sliding glass doors, Scarnum could hear Snoop Dogg from inside the house. Donald spoke to her in Mi’kmaq.
She came back in a minute and put two beers on the plastic table. Neither she nor Scarnum looked at each other.
“So, what can I do for you?” said Donald.
Scarnum took the pillbox of cocaine out of his pocket and put it on the table.
Donald lifted it up, took the lid off, licked his
finger, and put a bit of the cocaine under his upper lip and swirled it around his mouth. He put the pillbox back down on the table and looked at Scarnum hard.
“I don’t know you too good,” he said. “We used to have a bit of fun at the Anchor in the old days, partying with Angela, but come down to it, I don’t really know you.”
He held out his brown hand in front of Scarnum and pointed to the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, where there were three black, tattooed dots.
“Dorchester,” he said. He pointed to each dot in turn. “One year. Two years. Three years.”
Scarnum looked at him and nodded.
“I’m not going back there,” Donald said.
“I hear that,” said Scarnum.
“You mind if I pat you down for a wire?” asked Donald.
Scarnum stood and held out his arms. Donald stood behind him and ran his hands over him. “All right,” he said, and then they sat down.
Donald cut up the coke and they each did a line.
“Fuck,” said Donald, and he raised his eyebrows and imitated Tommy Chong. “That’s some good sheeet, man,” he said.
They both laughed.
“Angela asked me to find out what happened to Jimmy,” said Scarnum. “She got this coke from him. I don’t think that’s no street coke.”
“No,” said Donald. “That is 100 percent pure Columbian motherfucking marching powder, that shit.”
“Where would Jimmy get cocaine like that?”
Donald got up and picked up the deer rifle and loaded it. “Talkative people don’t get old in the cocaine business,” he said.
He took a target — a cardboard silhouette of a man — clipped it to the clothesline, and pulled on the line so the target went down the gully.
“Do you know if Jimmy was dealing coke?” said Scarnum.
“No,” said Donald. “But I wouldn’t hear about that, necessarily.”
He brought the rifle to his eye and fired at the target way down at the bottom of the gully. It snapped with the impact.
Scarnum started at the sudden crack of the rifle.
“I think Jimmy might have been bringing in coke off the boat,” he said. “Got mixed up with some people who were tougher than he was and got himself killed.”
Donald fired again, then looked up from the rifle.
“If that’s true,” he said, “and I don’t know if it is, but if it is, you think you’re smart to go around asking questions about it?”
“Angela asked me to,” said Scarnum.
“Fuck,” said Donald and he fired again. This time he missed. “Cocksucker,” he said, then he took a deep breath, let it most of the way out, then fired again, one shot after another, until the rifle was empty. The target twitched on the line as all of the shots hit home.
He sat down and put his face in his hands.
“One thing I know,” said Scarnum, “is how to keep my mouth shut.”
“All right,” said Donald. “I’m gonna tell you something, but if I ever hear you tell anyone else, it’s not gonna go too good for you.”
“I know that,” said Scarnum.
“Jimmy came to somebody I know, about a month ago,” said Donald. “Had a brick of cocaine this big.” He stretched his hands in front of him, about two feet apart. “Ten kilos. Same shit as that.” He nodded at the pill bottle of coke on the table. “Wouldn’t say where he got it. ‘I found it floating in the fucking water. Musta fell offa boat.’ Wanted to sell it. Asked for $300,000. Said it was worth twice that on the street.”
“The fellow you know,” said Scarnum. “Did he buy it?”
Donald shook his head. “If he did, he didn’t pay no fucking $300,000.”
Scarnum sat for a minute, nodding his head. “You ever hear of any Mexicans around here?” he asked. “Mexicans dealing coke?”
Donald laughed and got up and pulled the target up the clothesline. “A fellow can be too curious,” he said. “Tell Angela I said hi. Tell her I said I was sorry to hear about Jimmy.”
“All right,” said Scarnum, and he got to his feet.
“Come to think of it,” said Donald, “don’t tell Angela nothing. Don’t tell nobody you come up here to see me. Don’t mention my name to nobody, ever.”
“All right,” said Scarnum.
“Anybody ever ask about me, say, ‘Donald? Is he that fucking Indian used to drink at the Anchor?’ ”
“All right,” said Scarnum, and they shook hands.
“And don’t be too curious,” said Donald. “It’s not good for a guy.”
Scarnum was nursing a Keith’s and tidying up the Orion when Constable Léger drove down the little lane and stopped at the dock.
Scarnum put on a mesh ball cap that said “d’Eon’s Lobster Plugs” on the brow, went up to the cockpit and sat down, stretched out his legs, and watched the Mountie open the door and walk over to the dock.
Léger walked to the edge of the dock and stood looking down at Scarnum.
Scarnum smiled and toasted her with his beer. Léger didn’t smile back. She dropped a photograph on Scarnum’s outstretched legs.
Scarnum kept smiling until he saw the picture.
It was a picture of a man in orange overalls, lying on his belly on a sandy beach. There were three bullet holes in the man’s back. There was black blood on the grey sand under him.
Léger dropped another photo on top of that one. This showed the same man — Jimmy Zinck — naked on a coroner’s bench, with three neat holes in the pale flesh of his back.
Léger dropped one more photo. It showed Jimmy Zinck’s face, bloated and blue, his open eyes staring, his mouth distorted with pain or terror.
“Do you know what I call this series?” said Léger. “Death of an Idiot.”
Scarnum looked up at her, then sat up straight and flipped through the three pictures again.
“He wasn’t the smartest guy to ever walk the streets of Chester,” said Scarnum. “But he didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Léger reached out and Scarnum handed her back the photos.
“Why did you go see Doug Amos?” said Léger.
“I wanted to know why Jimmy was out fishing alone that night,” said Scarnum.
“Did Angela Rodenhiser ask you to talk to him?” said Léger.
“She came to see me and asked me what happened to Jimmy,” said Scarnum. “I thought I’d go have a chat with his partner.”
Léger stared at him. There were bags under her bloodshot eyes. Scarnum noticed that her eyes were very pretty.
“You told us you didn’t really know Jimmy,” she said.
“Well, I know Angela,” said Scarnum. “She used to work at the Anchor when I was drinking there a lot. She’s like a little sister to me”
“Did you like Jimmy Zinck?” asked Léger.
“Well no, I guess I didn’t,” said Scarnum. “He was all right, great fun if you’re having a few drinks. The girls all liked him. He was funny. Crazy. But he was a loudmouth and a show-off, and I don’t think he treated Angela too good. But if I went around killing everybody I don’t like, there’d be a lot of dead people walking around Chester. I didn’t kill him, Constable, and I think you know that. I just happened to find his boat, is all. I risked my arse to salvage it and now it looks like I might not get paid for it.”
“Was there anything on the boat?” said Léger.
“I already answered that question at the detachment,” said Scarnum.
Léger looked up at the bow. “I see you put your new anchor on,” she said. “What happened to the other one?”
Scarnum sat for a while before answering. “I fouled it last week,” he said.
Léger just looked at him.
“It got caught on the bottom and I couldn’t pull it up,” he said. “So I had to cut the line. It happens.”
“When did Angela come see you?” said Léger.
Scarnum got to his feet. “Look, thanks for showing me the pictures, Constable Léger,” he said. “I’d like
to chat with you more, but somebody made an awful mess of my boat and I’ve got to clean it up.”
“If you want, we can come back with a warrant and search your boat again,” said Léger.
Scarnum stopped on the ladder down to the cabin. “I know that, Constable,” he said. “I’ve tried to answer your questions. If I can help you, I will. I don’t like the idea of people with machine guns around here.”
“Why do you think somebody shot Jimmy Zinck?” said Léger.
Scarnum squinted and looked out at the bay. “Doug Amos told me he thought Jimmy wanted to fish alone so he could steal lobsters,” he said. “But I never heard of no one getting killed over lobsters. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think Jimmy was likely moving drugs.”
“Where’ d you get the coke we found on your boat?” asked Léger.
Scarnum looked at her. “Look, I want to help you but I’m not a fool,” he said. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t know nothing about that pillbox you found on my boat. Don’t know where it came from or what was in it. I don’t know nothing about it, but I can tell you for sure it didn’t have anything to do with Jimmy Zinck getting shot.”
Léger stared at Scarnum. “When did Angela come see you?” she asked.
“Saturday afternoon, after I got out of jail,” he said. “She was awful upset.”
Léger looked down the bay. “You know,” she said, “it looks to me like Jimmy Zinck thought he was smarter than some bad guys. He’s in a drawer in the Halifax morgue right now, and those bad guys are still out there.”
She gave Phillip her card. “If you know anything about this that you’re not telling me, those bad guys might come see you and I might be taking pictures of you.”
Scarnum took the card. “I know that, Constable,” he said. “If I hear anything, I’ll call you.”
Léger stood looking at him for a minute and then went to her cruiser and drove away.
After she left, Scarnum hopped in his truck and drove to the convenience store down the road. He called Angela from a pay phone.
“How you doing?” he asked.
Salvage Page 6
