“Holy fucking Jesus,” said Angela. “How’d you get away?”
So he told her the whole story, from the moment the Mexicans arrived on the dock to his cab ride to the restaurant.
“How’d the Mexicans know where to find you?” she asked.
“I can’t figure that out,” he said. “I didn’t tell nobody where I was going. I suppose somebody mighta seen me sailing out of Chester this morning, but they’d have to have known that it was Greely’s boat. I suppose a lot of people in Chester would know it was, and they’d know that I hadn’t delivered it yet. That would mean those bad Mexicans have some friends in town who are watching me.”
They drove in silence for a minute.
“You think they might come after me?” asked Angela.
“I would if I were them and I’d lost a whole pile of cocaine,” said Scarnum. “That’s why I want to get you out of town.”
“That why you’re driving back there now?” she said.
“Well,” he said, “I want you to drop me off in Chester and then go someplace where I can come get you in a few days.”
“What if I don’t want to get out of town for a few days?” she said.
Scarnum shrugged and kept his eyes on the road. “I guess you can sit around home and wait for the Mexicans to come visit,” he said. “Who knows? You might get along better with them than I did.”
“Don’t know if I want to find out,” she said.
“How well do you get on with Jimmy’s people?” Scarnum asked.
“Jesus, Phillip,” she said. “How well does anybody get on with them?”
The Zincks lived in Lower Southwest Port d’Agneau, on a dirt road in a little cove halfway down a windswept spit of land about two hours southwest of Chester. There were a half-dozen houses — all belonging to fishermen in the extended Zinck family — surrounded by wrecked cars, four-wheelers, and snowmobiles. They were wild people, half literate, with money from fishing but no respect for any authority beyond the family.
“His mother might like to spend some time with you now that Jimmy’s dead and you’re carrying his baby,” said Scarnum.
“Somebody’s baby, anyways,” said Angela.
“And I think you’d be safe there,” said Scarnum. “I would think even these Mexican badasses might know to stay away from the Zincks.”
“All right,” said Angela. “I’ll drive down there and stay, at least until the funeral.”
“When’s that gonna be?” asked Scarnum.
“Soon as the Mounties release the body,” said Angela. “What are you gonna do now?”
“I’m going to go back to town and try to find out why these guys killed Jimmy,” said Scarnum. “Seems to me that whoever killed him might wish me ill. I’d like to know who told those Mexicans that I got their cocaine. I’d like to convince that person to tell the Mexicans that I don’t.”
He looked down at her tummy. “And it seems to me that whoever killed Jimmy owes you some money for the kid.”
“How you gonna do all that?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you when I figure it out,” he said. “So, tell me,” he asked her, “who do you think Jimmy was moving drugs for?”
“I don’t know,” said Angela. “You know what he was like. He was always out drinking with sketchballs. Could be anyone.”
“Amos told me that five times Jimmy paid him to call in sick,” said Scarnum. “First time was right after Christmas. If he brought in one hundred kilos at a time, that’s five hundred kilos in five months — a thousand kilos, I suppose, if they cut it by half. That’s a lot of coke. I don’t think Jimmy’s buddies from the Anchor would be able to move that kind of volume.”
Angela didn’t say anything.
“Angela,” Scarnum said, “did Jimmy spend time with Falkenham? Did he ever meet with him? Any reason to think that he might have been the coke buyer?”
Angela looked out the window and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know how much to tell you,” she said.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
“All right,” she said, and she turned to face him, pulling her legs up on the seat and leaning her back against the passenger-side door. “Don’t blame me if you don’t like it.”
Scarnum took one of her smokes and lit it. “I won’t,” he said, and he looked at her to show that he meant it.
“Well,” she said. “You know how I told you either you or Jimmy could be the father of my baby?”
“Yuh,” said Scarnum.
“Well, so could Falkenham,” she said. “We all partied together. Me and him and Jimmy and Karen.”
Scarnum’s features didn’t change. “And you fucked Bobby?” he said. “You wouldn’t be the first one.”
“You don’t get it,” she said. “I fucked Bobby. And Jimmy fucked Karen. And Karen and I, uh, made out. We all did it together.”
Scarnum kept his eyes on the road, then looked at her to show he wasn’t bothered. “How’d it start?” he asked.
“You ever see me in my little black dress?” said Angela. “It’s silk, cut down to here.” She lifted her breasts and pulled down her T-shirt with her thumbs so that Scarnum could almost see her nipples.
“I think I’d remember that,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I wore it to the SeaWater Christmas party. Bobby noticed it, and so did Karen — maybe her more than him — and when the party ended, we went for a drink up to Twin Oaks.” After Karen took up with Falkenham, he bought an old mansion on the Peninsula — where the richest of the summer people live. Like all the grand houses of Chester, it had its own name: Twin Oaks. “We went to Karen’s studio, an old fish shed on their wharf that she’s fixed up. It’s got a wood stove, huge picture window looking over the bay, her paintings all over the place. And there’s a big bed in there.
“So, we did some lines and it was killer coke. The same stuff we did the other night on your boat. Then we got crazy. We started dancing and fooling around. Next thing you know, me and Karen were making out. That got the boys awful horny. Then I felt Jimmy behind me, and I kept making out with Karen while he started fucking me, and Bobby was fucking Karen, while Karen and I kept making out. Then we just, uh, switched. It was fucking crazy.”
She turned to look at him. “This bother you?”
He shook his head. “Not too much,” he said. “Karen and Bobby been together seven years. I guess I’m over it.”
He looked at her. “So, how was it? Did you have fun?”
“I always wanted to fuck that guy,” she said. “I don’t know why. There’s something about him. Maybe the money. Maybe whatever it is that drove him to get the money. It was pretty good. Really good. Yuh. And Karen’s some hot, but you’d know that. She and Jimmy seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as me and Bobby.”
“Did Bobby and Jimmy ever talk business, talk about coke?” asked Scarnum.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t like that. It was just, you know, partying and fucking. Doing coke, not talking about it.”
“How many times did you do it?”
“Maybe half a dozen.”
“You always did it in the same place?”
“Yeah. Always in her studio.”
“You ever fuck Bobby when Jimmy wasn’t around?”
She thought for a minute. “Yeah, and I never told him. That wasn’t part of the deal. That was cheating.” She shrugged. “For all I know, he was fucking Karen on the side.”
Scarnum put on the signal light and started to turn down a little access road.
“Where we going?” said Angela.
“There’s a little clearing up this road, by the river,” he said. “I plan to take you up there and, uh, show you something.”
She looked down at the crotch of his jeans. “Oh my God,” she said. “What a pervert. You got turned on hearing about our orgies.”
Then she reached down and squeezed him through his jeans. “Is this what you want to show me?”
They had sex by the side of the ro
ad, with Angela straddling him in the back seat, her jeans around one ankle, Scarnum’s jeans around his knees.
It was frantic, urgent, and it didn’t last long.
Afterward, she stayed on top of him, their gooey loins pressed together, and they smoked.
She leaned back against the seat behind her and looked down at Scarnum. “I don’t think you are over Karen,” she said.
He raised his eyebrow at her. “Yeah?” he said. “Why’s that?”
“Why haven’t you had a girlfriend since then?”
He laughed. “Maybe I’m not boyfriend material,” he said.
“You were then,” she said. “You were with Karen.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t a very good boyfriend. I was drinking a lot, running around on her. When I met Karen, we were students in Halifax. She was going to go to law school. A few years later, I had her living on my old fucking boat in the Back Harbour. Not really the lifestyle she was accustomed to. I wasn’t making no money. Looked like I was going to lose the boat, and then Bobby hired me to fix up his big ketch.” He laughed. “I thought our problems were over.”
“You never told me what happened,” she said.
He laughed again. “But you heard, didn’t you?” he said.
She nodded. “You went to town to get a part for the boat,” she said.
“Yuh. I left Karen on the ketch, working on the upholstery, while I went to Halifax to get the fuel pump rebuilt,” he said. “Only I realized after twenty minutes on the highway that I didn’t have it with me.”
“So you drove back,” she said, studying his face.
“That’s right,” he said. “And when I got back to Charlie’s, I noticed that Falkenham’s truck was parked by the dock and that big old ketch was rocking, and there wasn’t a ripple on the water.”
Angela studied his face.
“So I stood there on the dock, listening, and I could hear the two of them grunting and moaning.”
He laughed and looked out the window. “The hatch was open, so I jumped through it and landed right in the salon, right where he was banging her. Fucking shock of their lives. Still had his cock in her.”
“So, what’d you do?” said Angela.
“Nothing,” he said. “Waved my arms. Shouted. Called her a whore. Told her to get her shit off my boat. Told Bobby to get his boat off Charlie’s dock and stay the fuck away from me or I’d cut him open like a flounder. Then I stomped out of there. Last time I talked to either one of them.”
“Jesus,” she said. “I suppose you went on a tear, did you?”
“I had a few drinks, yeah,” he said.
“How long’d it last?” she said.
He helped himself to another one of her cigarettes. “Well, I don’t know. I think about seven years, so far.”
They laughed together then and Angela lit their cigarettes. “I have to stop smoking until I have the baby,” she said.
“You’ll feel better about yourself if you do,” said Scarnum, and he put his hand on her flat tummy, where he thought the baby must be.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess so. I couldn’t feel much worse. I can’t believe I got coked up the night I found out about Jimmy.”
She started to tear up. “Oh my God,” she said. “I just keep thinking about the baby, whether it will be like one of those crack babies.”
Scarnum tried to take her into his arms, but she pushed him away, and suddenly the tears were gone.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she said and she studied his face as he answered.
“No,” he said. “I think you were under a terrible strain and you broke down. I think it was wrong, but I can’t blame you, and I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that one binge like that won’t fuck up your baby.”
“Jesus,” she said. “When I was dancing in Montreal, I did some wild shit, things I never told nobody about, things that would curl your hair, but I never did anything as bad as I did that night. What kind of a mother am I going to be?”
Scarnum pulled her into his arms, and she let him hold her this time. She cried softly, snuffling in his ear.
“You’re going to be a grand mother, Angela,” he said, and he kissed her behind her ear and stroked her hair. “I know you’ve got a good heart. You’re going to love that kid, and that’s the most important thing. I’m not worried about what kind of a mother you’ll be. Jesus. I seen you with your sister’s kids, those little brats. I woulda wrung that young fellow’s neck, the way he was carrying on, but you were patient and sweet. You’re gonna be fine. It’s not gonna be easy. I don’t think it’s the easiest thing, raising a kid with no daddy, but I know you can do it, ’cause you have to, and you’re gonna wanna do it because you’ll never love anybody as much as you love the kid you’re carrying around inside you right now.”
He pushed her away and held her at arm’s length and looked her in the eyes, serious. She blinked at him and rubbed her tears away with the heel of her hand.
“And it’ll be years before he knows that his mother used to be a coke whore.”
She laughed and slapped him, and they wrestled in the back seat until Scarnum was hard again, and they made love again, much more slowly.
Scarnum got Angela to drop him off on the side of Highway 3 behind the Back Harbour, where a shallow, rocky brook runs under the road.
He walked down to the woods and crept along the edge of the brook, following it to the ocean in the dusk. He slipped a few times on the wet rocks and got his feet wet.
Eventually, he came to the stone bridge at the head of the bay. Scarnum crawled under the bridge, and waded through the water, and found a little ledge in the shadows near the opening. He was pretty sure nobody could see him in the darkness.
He sat and watched the bay, the road, and Isenor’s boatyard for the rest of the evening, smoking a cigarette every now and then behind his cupped hands.
He watched Charlie do a rat-hunting stroll around 11:00 p.m., creeping around the yard with his pellet gun. Soon after, the house lights went off. Scarnum sat and watched for another three hours, until he was very hungry and tired, and then crept out from under the bridge and made his way, slowly, along the slippery rocks at the water’s edge to the boatyard. He crawled up onto the dock, got onto the Orion, threw off the lines, started the engine, and gunned the boat out down the bay.
As he steamed out, he waved at Charlie’s house.
Tuesday, April 27
KAREN WATCHED THE SAILBOAT tacking across Chester Basin through the morning mist from her studio window as she stood and drank coffee and dabbed at a canvas. Fibreglass sailboats look much alike, though, so until she could make out the name on the bow she didn’t realize it was the boat on which she used to live. By that point, the Orion was one short tack away from her wharf, so she didn’t have long to think before Scarnum dropped the sails and jumped onto the floating dock with his stern line, pulling the Orion in behind an antique wooden runabout.
She stepped out of the unpainted fish shed onto the wharf and watched him.
He looked up over his shoulder quickly as he tied up, and smiled. “Hey, stranger,” he said. “Long time no see.”
“Phillip,” she said, leaning on a wharf piling with her coffee cup in her hands.
He stood on the floating dock at the base of her wharf and spread his arms wide, with a big smile. “In the flesh, as you can see, young lady,” he said. “Got any more coffee?”
She looked down at him, her red hair blowing in the morning breeze. “I thought you never wanted to see me again,” she said.
“I never said that, did I?” he said, smiling. “I can’t imagine that I would have. That doesn’t sound like something I’d say. And if I did say it, I’m sure I didn’t mean it. And if I did say it and mean it once, who’s to say a fellow can’t change his disposition?”
He put his hand on the wooden ladder that led up to the top of the dock. “So, you going to offer me a cup of coffee or do you want
me to sail off without so much as a how do you do?”
“Come on up,” she said. “I’ll pour you a cup.”
He let out a low whistle of admiration when he stepped into the studio and saw all the canvasses hanging on the wall next to the picture window overlooking the bay.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “You’ve got a little better at the painting, my dear.”
He took the coffee from her and stood back to look. The paintings were mostly seascapes, many with nothing in them but water: blue water glistening in the dawn light, grey water tossed by the wind, water flat and calm, with a touch of sunset glimmering. There was a series of paintings of green and red navigation buoys. And there was a series of carefully rendered realistic pictures of neglected boats — sailboats, fishing boats, dories — falling apart on beaches and in boatyards.
“These are amazing,” he said. “You ought to be proud of yourself.”
As he looked at the paintings, she looked at him. “I am proud,” she said. “And happy, and grateful to spend my days this way. But I don’t think you came here to see my art.”
She was wearing tight, faded blue jeans and a heavy grey fisherman’s knit sweater. Scarnum noticed that the paint-dappled hands she wrapped around her oversized mug looked older and rawer than they had the last time he saw her up close, but she otherwise looked much the same. A bit wrinkled around the eyes, maybe.
He took a minute to look at the studio, with its unpainted wooden walls, a wood stove, the unmade king-sized bed. There was a hatch in the floor, which the fishermen would have used as a toilet and dump for fish guts in the old days. In one corner, there was a counter with a sink, a fridge, and a stove.
There were empty wine bottles on the kitchen counter. And a half-empty bottle of Laphroaig thirty-year-old Islay malt.
He reached into the pocket of his yellow slicker and pulled out the silver flask and set it on the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing with Bobby’s flask?” she asked.
“Oh, it is his, is it?” said Scarnum. “I kind of thought so. I found it in a canoe, an Old Town Kevlar. Do you have one of those?”
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