Body Blows

by Marc Strange

  “The police are trying to find out.”

  “Poor Joseph,” she says. “Always tidying up, aren’t you?”

  “Grasping at straws is what I’m doing, Madge.”

  “Well, you have a look around while I check for messages. Start in there, it has the most exciting stuff.”

  The largest room is devoted to yachting. Model boats everywhere — racing sloops, Grand Banks schooners, square-rigged China clippers. The walls are covered with oil paintings, photographs, newspaper clippings, ship’s wheels, bells, tillers, winches, and flags. Every item is accompanied by an identifying brass marker or a framed card lettered in faultless calligraphy giving dates and places and names of the vessels involved.

  There are photographs of Leo surrounded by sailing crews, hoisting tankards and loving cups, helming one of his racers, wind in his hair, salt spray in his face. The man in the pictures and the Leo I’m familiar with are quite different. It’s the same guy, but this version looks heroic, maybe even a bit reckless; face scoured by sun and wind, eyes bright, hands on the tiller strong and confident. The Leo I’ve known for the past eight years is a paler version of the buccaneer in these pictures.

  “You never knew him then, did you, Joseph?” Madge has joined me in the gallery.

  “No.”

  “Before your time.” She straightens a frame that didn’t need adjustment. “I crewed for him a few times, in this little boat, his first one, Lemony.”

  I can see her image in the picture she just touched, younger, quite pretty, standing behind Leo in the stern of a small sloop. They both look happy.

  “That was taken so long ago,” she says. “Once he started getting serious about racing he needed a real crew.” She wipes an imaginary speck from Leo’s image. “I just enjoyed the outings. Messing about in boats, as they say.”

  The next photograph looks familiar.

  “I’ve seen this one before,” I say.

  “Tyrannous,” she says.

  “He has a model in his penthouse.”

  “Yes. She was his pride. A real racer.”

  “Did he sell her?”

  “Tyrannous went down, Joseph, off Cape Flattery.

  Collided with a trawler in the fog. The fishermen picked them up. All but one.”

  Another dead body.

  “He was very upset.” She turns away from the picture, shakes her head. “The man’s family was taken care of. He’s like that. Very generous, very loyal.”

  “Very unlucky.”

  “After that he stopped racing. Bought a cabin cruiser.

  Mimosa. Said he wanted some comfort.” She points to a colour photograph on the other side of the room. “Over here. Twenty-three metre Burger, sleeps six.”

  “Handsome vessel.” It seems like an appropriate thing to say, although I’m no judge of watercraft. The identifying card reads, MIMOSA, COBBLE HILL MARINA.

  “He hasn’t been aboard for a long time. I’m not sure why he’s hung onto her. Sentiment, I suppose.”

  “The crewman who drowned,” I start, “do you remember his name?”

  “Newton,” she says. “Yarnell Newton.” She turns brisk abruptly, too much memory lane, perhaps. “You have to sign the visitor’s book,” she says.

  “Be my pleasure.” I follow her into an alcove that has the unfortunate aspect of a shrine. A portrait of Leo, younger, standing in front of a building, one of his, presumably. “Do you get many visitors?” I ask.

  “Well, of course the Yacht Club really covets his models, and the photographs, the trophies, there’s even a movie he had commissioned of the 1987 Swiftsure race. It’s quite a collection.”

  She opens a leather-bound visitor’s book and hands me a fountain pen. “I’m very happy you showed up, Joseph. It’s a comfort to me, knowing you’re helping him.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Madge,” I say. “I’m always grateful for my Christmas socks.” A name has just popped out at me. Norman Weed is in the book. “Norman Weed? He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Yes. He’s mentioned your name,” she says. “Nice man. He’s been here a few times. Not recently, but usually once or twice a year.”

  Well, now.

  I page backward through the book and notice Norman’s name scribbled more than once.

  “You said Leo had a daughter,” I say. “Has she ever been here?”

  “Haven’t seen her in many years,” says Madge. “Not since her mother was killed. Rose is her name. She had to be institutionalized after it happened. Very sad.”

  “Her name Alexander, too?”

  “She had foster parents,” she says. “I forget what they called themselves, and she was married, for a while anyway. I don’t remember her married name. Something western.”

  “Western?”

  “Like a cowboy. Buffalo Bill. Something like that. I think she met the man at a horse sale.”

  chapter nineteen

  Mimosa isn’t the biggest yacht in the marina, not by a long stretch, but she doesn’t look out of place. She has nice lines, a flying bridge, a striped canopy over the stern deck. What do I know? A yacht’s a yacht. Out of my league, financially, socially, practically. Ferry rides are my preferred mode of water travel and even they make me uncomfortable. Driving off a ferry is my favourite part of the trip.

  I call out “Anyone aboard?” I don’t know why there would be. My investigation, if you can call it that, has run out of notions. What have I learned so far? There’s another dead Newton in the mix. That’s no doubt significant. And Leo has a daughter who married “Buffalo Bill.” That, too, is new. Not particularly helpful, but new. If Leo’s had seven lives, he seems able to leave them behind without a backward glance — wives, ranches, boats, buildings, children. “Searching for something he could love,” Madge said.

  Aren’t we all?

  A familiar figure is bulling down the wharf in my direction. Lenny Alexander has his head down and totes a two-four of Kokanee and a bag of groceries.

  “Mr. Alexander. Good afternoon.”

  “Grundy. What the hell you doing here?”

  “Working for your father.”

  “He still in jail? I bet that’s pissing him off.”

  “He’s asked me to look into some things. One of them was his boat.” Not precisely true, but close enough.

  “Tell him to relax. I needed a place to crash, figure out a few things. I’m outta the house. She can keep the damn house.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware you had … difficulties at home.”

  “Why should you care?” He climbs aboard with his groceries. Looks around at the floating creature comforts. “See that dinghy over there? Guy just told me it’s worth twenty-two million bucks. Believe that? The old man should be embarrassed. This tub only sleeps six. Ten if there’s a crew. Don’t think there’s been one for five years. Just some dork who shows up once a month to check the bilge or whatever.”

  “More boat that I’ll ever own,” I say.

  “You and me both, pal,” he says. He looks me up and down with a fraction less than his usual hostility. “How’s he doing?” he asks. “Ahh! He’ll be all right. Water off a duck’s back with that old bastard. Wears a Teflon suit. You know what he’d tell me about my marriage? Cut her loose. That’s what. Do what he did to my mother — Here’s a few bucks, go get a job.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says tiredly, “I’ll survive. She’ll keep the house, good riddance, overpriced cracker box, one of these days that hill’s gonna turn to mud and the whole piece of shit’ll slide down onto Capilano Drive.”

  He hefts the case of beer and the groceries. “You want a beer?” he asks.

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  “Come aboard.”

  I make the mistake of grabbing the rail with my left hand and feel a sharp twinge in my forearm. Woke it up.

  Damn thing’s been quiet most of the day.

  Lenny leads the way below to a snug but well-ap
pointed salon with a little less headroom than I’m at ease with. The seats are leather, the woodwork is mahogany, the fittings are polished brass. I’ve seen worse retreats.

  He cracks a couple of Kokanees and slides one across the galley table in my direction. “Goddamn lawyers have me tied up so tight I can’t piss without written permission,” he says. “My old man’s richer than God, my lard-ass brother’s richer than God’s uncle, and I’m on a freakin’ budget.”

  We sip our beers for a minute listening to gulls and water and the slap of rigging on masts.

  “You married, Grundy?”

  “No.”

  “Smart move.” He has a long pull at his bottle.

  “Don’t get married.” Belches delicately. “My older girl has a ring through her nose, who knows where else, failing in school, never home, I don’t even want to think about what she’s doing. The boy’s a zombie. Spends all his time playing Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto and shit where he rips people’s skulls off.”

  “Kids grow out of things.”

  “Think so? He’s sixteen. At his age I spent my time trying to get laid.” He empties his bottle, sees that I’m still working on mine, opens another one for himself. “I don’t even think he knows how to jerk off unless there’s a control knob on a Playstation I don’t know about.” He pulls out his wallet and extracts a small colour photograph, holds it up for my inspection. “Her I miss,” he says. “Melissa.”

  The bright-eyed schoolgirl in the picture has a tiara in her dark hair. “She’s nine. Smart, pretty, plays the piano. She’s the only one I wanted to come home for.”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “Looks like I’m gonna be one of those weekend dads. Twice-a-month. Seen those poor bastards? Trying to do everything in one afternoon? Done it twice so far.”

  I’m out of platitudes. What he’s going through is beyond my empathic range.

  “Oh, what the hell,” he says, “I’ll find a place, downtown, no more driving across that damn bridge every night to the same old crap. Little joint in the west end, looking out over the water. I don’t give a shit, doesn’t have to be a penthouse. She’s the one with all the needs. ‘Oh, we need a house in West Van,’ well here’s a hot flash, Duchess, I can’t afford a house in West Van. You married the wrong Alexander.”

  “What about the Warburton site?”

  “That clusterfuck?! Jeezuss!” It’s either a laugh or a sneeze, but beer comes out of his nostrils and he has to grab a dishtowel to wipe his face. “Ha! My big score. Thought I’d bought myself a piece of something huge that time, supposed to be ten, twenty stories taller than the old man’s penthouse. I wanted to stand on my balcony and lob used fruit onto his patio.”

  “What happened?”

  He laughs with a kind of rueful admiration. “The old man snapped up most of my partners’ options,” he says, “winds up with a controlling interest, and I’m left holding nine percent of a hole in the ground. Prick knows how to play the game. No argument there. ” He looks at me. “You gonna drink that beer or what?”

  I drain the first bottle, aware that I’ve only had coffee, painkillers, and a slice of maiden cake so far today. He opens another one for me. “Bring it up on deck,” he says.

  “I’ll put on my Commodore hat and act like I belong here.”

  The shadows of masts and flagpoles are lengthening over the marina and the sky to the west is getting rosier by the minute. There will be a pretty sunset before long.

  Lenny faces the setting sun, his yachting cap pulled low, shading his eyes. He swigs his beer and motions me to grab a seat in the stern.

  “He’s just making me sweat,” he says. “trying to break me. He knows everything I have is tied up in that latrine.” He opens his mouth and bellows across the water, “Well, FUCK HIM!”

  The epithet echoes for a few seconds. There is no reply from the passing sloop easing into the marina.

  Lenny turns away from the railing and joins me in the stern. He lowers his voice.

  “Yeah, fuck him, thinks he’s tough, I’m tough. I bet he’s stretched pretty thin with all those dumbass renovations. Maybe he’ll be the one looking to sell before long.” He looks at the bottle in his hand, perhaps considering what to do with it — replace it with a full one or heave it at the twenty-two-million-dollar yacht across the water. “Oh, hell,” he says, “I suppose I’d better go in and see the old prick. Not sure he’d do the same for me, but I owe him that much. He tossed me a few crumbs.” He looks at me. “You driving?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Give me a minute, I’ll pack a toothbrush.”

  “Kinda stupid, hunh?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Living on a yacht and riding the ferry to Vancouver. Can’t drive the damn thing anyway. I’d probably hit an iceberg the way my luck’s been going.” He throws his spoon down in disgust. “Chowder gives me the heaves. Don’t know why I order it, it’s always the same crapola.”

  “BC Ferries signature dish.”

  “Yeah, people come from far and wide,” he says. He turns to the window and sees his face staring back at him. Beyond are varying degrees of blackness, retreating land, water, sky.

  “You ever meet Raquel?” I ask.

  “Couple times. I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “She spoke English.”

  “Oh, yeah? We never talked.” He shakes his head. “I figured she was another one of his bimbos.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “She was pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s rough,” he says. “He knew about it?”

  “They’d been trying for some time.”

  “Gotta hand it to the old fart. He’s a stud horse.”

  There’s a note of grudging respect in his voice. “Trust me, when the old man goes, there’ll be claimants popping up all over the map.”

  “He was going to acknowledge the child’s paternity.”

  “More than he did when I showed up.”

  He pushes away from the table and heads out on deck. I clean up for the next group and throw the uneaten chowder in the garbage. The arm feels hot. My painkillers are back at the hotel and I wish I had a couple with me.

  I find him standing on the upper deck looking back at the ferry’s wake. He swivels his head as I get close.

  “What’s up with the arm?” he says.

  I’ve slung it across my chest inside my buttoned jacket.

  Manny Bigalow wouldn’t approve of what it’s doing for the suit but it feels better that way. “A little stiff,” I say.

  He takes me at my word, looks out at the water.

  “Old man got an alibi?”

  “He was with me.”

  “So, what’s his problem?”

  “They’re trying hard to connect him. Because of the other one.”

  “Lorraine. The second Mrs. Alexander. Yeah, that one’s still out there.” He says. “Better it stays there.”

  “Who was the first?”

  “That would be Theodore’s dear old mum, Dorrie, who’s still alive, far as I know, remarried to some English twit with a seat in the House of Lords. Theo wants to get rich enough to buy a chair for himself.”

  “You know where your brother’s been this past week?”

  “Haven’t got a clue. Couldn’t give a shit. Theo’s a blowhard and a bully. Didn’t stop pushing me around until I was seven.” He laughs at the warm memory. “I broke his fucking nose. Fat prick. He was porker when he was ten.”

  “You grew up together?”

  “Hell, no. Theo was legit. I was, let’s say, semi-legit. My visits were few and far between. Suited me.”

  “You have the same name.”

  “Had to fight like a son of a bitch to keep it. My old lady, who he never got around to marrying, stuck the Alexander on when I started school. I grew up, got my driver’s licence, paid taxes, married, all as an Alexander, then one day he comes after me with his suits and says I’m not entitled. Ha! On
e battle he lost. I threatened to take the son of a bitch to court. Blood tests, affidavits, depositions, whatever. Had him by the nuts that time.”

  “You two have been butting heads for a while.”

  “Since I could walk.” He waves off any resentment. “I wasn’t supposed to happen. Messed up his first marriage.” He turns to lean back on the railing, spreads his arms as if accepting the inevitable. “Divorce runs in the family.”

  “Your brother, too?”

  “Theo, Christ, he’s got so much on the side he might as well have seven wives by now.” He shivers, as if suddenly aware that it’s chill and windy on deck. I’m feeling it now.

  We start back toward the warmth. “Cheaper his way in the long run. Set her up in a condo, lease her a company car, put her on the books as consultant or some such bullshit title, take her along to ‘conferences’ where the sun shines once in a while.” He stops, looks through the cafeteria window at bright lights and family outings. “Here’s the weird thing, Joe,” he says quietly. “I wasn’t the one who was fooling around. It was her. It was Jaqueline. It was Jackie.” He shakes his head. “She should be the one out on her ass, seeing the kid, kids plural, but I’m such a stunned asshole I say, ‘fine, don’t want me around? Fine, I’ll pack a suitcase.’

  What an idiot.” He looks at me. “You feeling okay?”

  “Few hours sleep will help.”

  “Figure the Douglas can comp me for a couple days?”

  “Of course.”

  He opens the cafeteria door. “Tell you one thing,” he says, “the old man gets charged with murder, some people are going to want their IOUs attended to.”

  Olive’s is almost deserted when I show up. One couple in a far corner, heads close together, perhaps planning their future, one man at the end of the bar idly stirring his drink, maybe pondering his past. Ms. May herself is nowhere to be seen, Jimmy Hinds’ bass is on the stand but in its case, Barney is checking cash and receipts. He immediately notes that I didn’t come in from my usual direction.

  “Late tonight, Champ,” Barney says.

  “Ferry from Victoria,” I say.

  “Beer?”

  “No, I’ve had my quota. Quiet, for a Saturday,” I say.

  “Joint was rockin’ till just a little while ago,” Barney says. “That street-corner drummer was here, you know the one, Baba Ram-Dis, plays plastic tubs and tin pots?”