Seaweed on the Street

by Stanley Evans

  “Is it?”

  “You know it is. First of all, your office is at the back of the house. The quickest way from your office to the front door doesn’t even go through the lounge.”

  I had Service’s undivided attention now. He said, “I never told you that I ran through the lounge first. What I said was — ”

  “Yes, yes,” I interrupted. “But if you had gone through the lounge first, and if Harry had been dead, it would have stopped you. Any ordinary person encountering a dead or dying man would stop whatever they were doing and try to render assistance as a first priority. After all, young Harry was supposed to have been a friend of yours. But that doesn’t matter. What’s important is, there’s no way you could identify the driver of any vehicle leaving Ribblesdale. The only thing you could see would be the back of the driver’s head, if that.”

  Service was expressionless.

  I said, “Did you tell Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy that I was going to Seattle?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “I might have let it drop.”

  We were doing 100. Service was still completely engrossed in my tale when I slammed on the brakes at the road bend near Clover Point. The Chevrolet’s faulty passenger seat jerked forward, Service became airborne and his head slammed against the windshield. With my left hand I spun the steering wheel around, trying to negotiate the corner. With my right I reached for Service’s gun, but the lawyer’s arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. I lost control of the car. The careering vehicle mounted the sidewalk and smashed through steel railings on two wheels. My foot was still jammed on the brake, and I was still fighting for Service’s gun when it discharged with a roar. Then the Chevrolet went spinning and rolling down a grassy bank toward the beach. Held by my seat belt I felt the world revolving while, next to me, Service was being alternately hurled to the roof and thrown down across the seats. We spun a few more times until the Chevrolet came to rest on its side.

  A couple of joggers rushed forward and dragged open the driver’s side door. They did not see the misshapen bundle lying across the back seats. I was hanging in the seat-belt straps but my rescuers quickly undid the buckle and hauled me out. Gasoline fumes seared my nostrils.

  We moved away from the wreck. Somebody was saying, “Anybody else in there?” when there was a loud explosion. A giant black-and-yellow fireball rose into the air. Intense heat drove us back. Soon the fireball had gone but a black cloud lingered over the wreck, and oily flames licked through smashed windows.

  Somebody said, “You’re hurt.”

  I brushed my cheek. “It’s nothing. I bit my lip, that’s all.”

  I pulled my head back and closed my eyes and felt cold rain washing down my face. Feeling slightly dizzy I pushed my through the crowd that had gathered and walked up the slope to Dallas Road. My ears rang from the explosion, but I could hear seagulls screaming as they hung in the air above the beach. Waves crashed against the seawall below Ross Bay cemetery, where soon Charles Service’s remains would undoubtedly lie.

  Before I reached the road, police and ambulance sirens were wailing. But I wasn’t ready to speak to my colleagues. There were things I had to take care of first. After that, I’d call Bernie Tapp.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Jiggs Murphy was doing his rounds. He went to the Purple Pony, where he spoke to a few women and allowed them to buy his drinks. Later he drove downtown in his Buick.

  I was waiting for him under the marquee outside the Monterey Inn, killing time with Chantal and three teenaged hookers who were sheltering from the rain. The hookers were telling me about strippers — how much they’d enjoy being paid to roll around in the nude on bearskin rugs under hot spotlights instead of hustling their sore little asses on Victoria’s chilly streets.

  Chantal — who at 25 was the senior woman — said she’d heard that strippers made $1,000 a week. Another girl agreed, saying, “Sure they do, if they put out as well.”

  Their discussion ended when a dirty Buick nosed up to the Monterey’s curb. All four women vanished.

  I was pretty sure that Jiggs and Cal had tried to kill me, but I needed to be certain. After all, I’d been pretty sure that George W. Bush would never be elected to a second term.

  Jiggs Murphy parked in a three-minute zone, locked the Buick and, grinning after the fleeing girls, stepped onto the sidewalk. He was buttoning a tweed sports coat over his fat drinker’s gut when I said, “Hold it, Jiggs.”

  His mouth dropped open in surprise and he grabbed for an inside pocket, but I was too quick. I smashed Jiggs’s nose with my right fist, then buried my left in his belly. Jiggs, sucking air through his bloody nose, folded at the waist like a carpenter’s ruler. My knee came up and hit Jiggs in the face. I grabbed the tail of his sports coat and ripped it up until Jiggs’s head was covered. His arms were trapped. My knee came up again. Jiggs quit struggling. When I stepped back he collapsed.

  A young couple came out of the Monterey Inn arm in arm. They stopped to watch me as I rolled Jiggs onto his back and frisked him. I pocketed Jiggs’s automatic, turned my head and barked, “I’m a police officer. If you’re smart you’ll clear off before the paddy wagon gets here.”

  The woman tugged her partner’s arm and they scuttled off into the wet night. I found Jiggs’s car keys, bundled the comatose pimp into the Buick’s trunk and drove off in it. The whole incident had lasted less than two minutes.

  When Jiggs Murphy woke up in a lonely section of Beacon Hill Park, he was handcuVed inside the Buick’s trunk. I shone a flashlight in his eyes and said, “Somebody put a bullet in me a few weeks ago. Was it you?”

  I waited 10 seconds. When Jiggs still hadn’t acknowledged my question I reached down, grabbed his broken nose between my finger and thumb and gave it a sharp twist. Jiggs screamed.

  I said, “Am I getting through to you now, pal?”

  He mumbled something. I leaned forward and said, “You got something to say?”

  “It was Alex, not me,” Jiggs moaned. “It was his money you stole.”

  “Now tell me, exactly and sincerely. Where can I find Alex Cal?”

  The reply was slow in coming. When I reached for his nose again, Jiggs muttered an address. I slammed the trunk shut on him.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Alex Cal lived at one of Victoria’s ritziest addresses — a penthouse suite in the Viceroy Hotel on Victoria’s Inner Harbour. It was late when I entered the hotel, looked around the deserted lobby and crossed to the elevators. My windbreaker was soaked, the knees of my Levis were stained with blood. The desk clerk, busy with his accounts behind the reception desk, didn’t even look up. The elevator door opened and I got in.

  I wanted Alex Cal dead. Every time I saw a young crackhead or 14-year-old meth freak, I thought of him and my hatred grew.

  The hotel had seven floors, but, as I discovered, the elevator would not ascend to the penthouse without a special key. Lacking the key, I had to get out at the sixth floor. Cement stairs stretched up and down the emergency escape route. At the penthouse level I encountered a locked steel door.

  Downstairs again, the Viceroy’s public rooms and restaurants had closed for the night. I concealed myself in a corner and watched. The night clerk was still bent over his accounts. A minute passed. Then five minutes, ten. I began to wonder whether Jiggs was going to survive in the Buick’s stuffy trunk. Maybe he would run out of air, suVocate. I didn’t care very much.

  A man wearing a black hat and overcoat came into the hotel. He had a white silk scarf around his neck, but for some odd reason had oversized basketball shoes on his feet instead of polished black shoes. A woman in a fur coat and carrying an electric fan was hanging onto his arm. They were both very drunk. The clerk looked up, grinned and reached for their room key. The couple thanked him with the grave courtesy of people who know they are drunk but are trying to conceal it. They staggered across the lobby, got into the elevator and were whisked away. The clerk left his post and went through a door behind the desk.

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p; I snatched a penthouse key from its pigeonhole and got into the elevator. I tried the key in the elevator’s penthouse actuator. It fitted. This time I rode all the way up.

  At the penthouse floor, an unlocked glass door led onto a roof garden. Outside, a low ornamental iron railing and trees growing in pots partially screened one penthouse suite from its neighbour. I climbed the railing and looked through windows into Alex Cal’s dimly lit apartment. The faux embers of a gas fire glowed red. A black cat came out of Cal’s apartment and walked straight toward me. The cat mewed, rubbed itself against my ankles, then darted out of sight. The suite’s sliding glass patio door was ajar. I took a deep breath and went inside.

  Etta James’ voice came softly from hidden speakers as I moved around. I saw a big kitchen with a breakfast area, a formal dining room, a bathroom with a Jacuzzi smelling of bath oils. I had to smile. Cal and I enjoyed the same kind of music. I hoped he wouldn’t be enjoying it much longer. Thick carpets cushioned my footsteps. I was startled when the cat reappeared. It began to cry, so I picked it up and stroked its silky back. The cat shuddered and dug its claws into my sleeve. I kept stroking until the cat stopped mewing. My heart was racing when I put it down and watched it stalk away.

  I was reaching for the bedroom’s doorknob when it suddenly moved. I threw myself aside and heard the soft pop of a silenced pistol as I dropped behind a high-backed sofa. Then all the lights in the room came on and Alex Cal was revealed. I could see him, but he didn’t immediately see me. His massive figure was completely naked. The gun in his hand would have been entirely concealed in his big fist if not for its extended silencer.

  The pimp said softly, “Come on out, whoever you are, or I’ll come find you.”

  Grinning, Cal advanced into the centre of the room and turned slowly, pointing his gun straight ahead. I picked up a heavy brass table lamp. When Cal’s back was turned I hurled the lamp at his head, but it missed and smashed against a window. Cal dropped to his knees, facing the window, and fired a shot blindly as I came out of cover, running. I dived onto his back and tried to seize the gun, but the pimp’s body was oily and wet from his recent bath and my grip slipped. His gun went skittering across the floor. The pimp was as strong as he looked. He rolled forward, broke free and dived for the pistol. I kicked the gun away, but Cal grabbed my leg and heaved me off balance. I made a wild grab and caught him around the waist. We crashed to the floor together. A blow exploded against my left ear, lights danced inside my skull. I let go the pimp’s waist and reached higher, trying to pin his arms, but Cal was too strong and too slippery. He delivered another blow, this time to my upper arm, and pulled free again. He made another lunge for the gun, but I kicked him hard in the chest and followed through with a punch to Cal’s head. A jolt of paralyzing pain radiated up my arm when my blow landed. Cal shook his head. He seemed a bit dazed and backed away from me without the gun.

  I faced him from a distance of six feet. My right hand was useless, possibly broken, but the pimp was hurt too.

  Cal said, “All right, motherfucker. Your time has come. You are going to be put away.”

  “You called me a motherfucker once too often and hurt my feelings, you bastard.”

  The pimp grinned. “Man’s feelings get hurt by words, just imagine what’s in store when I start torturing your body. Me and my friend, the Irish man … ”

  I strode forward, set my feet on the carpet and swung at Cal’s stomach, but the pimp swayed aside and his counterpunch hit my upper arm. Then the two of us were locked together.

  The pimp’s skin was covered with perspiration as well now; I could not get a proper grip. My arms were being pinned and, at the same time, both of us were aware that either of us would bite the other’s neck or ear unless pressure were constantly applied with the side of the head. The pimp gave a sudden heave. I went limp. My sudden lack of resistance sent us crashing, me uppermost. This time the pimp’s head smashed down on the floor and at the same moment my knee smashed into his groin. Cal was out cold.

  I stood up, trembling, nursing my mangled right hand. It was already blue and swollen. Etta James still sang in the background, Victoria’s night sounds drifted in through the broken window.

  There was no alarm, no angry telephone ring, no interfering neighbour arriving to complain about the noise. The cat had watched it all from a window ledge. It mewed once. When I dragged Cal out of there it was sitting on its haunches, unconcernedly grooming itself.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The deep-sea trawler was named Treasure Island. That drizzly dark night its rusting blemishes were invisible. I imagined it slicing through the North Atlantic, dragging mile-long nets across the Grand Banks, fishing for cod and halibut and redfish. But the Treasure Island was old, the glory days of the Banks were over. This trip to Guatemala was the old trawler’s last chance to prove itself before ship breakers cut it up.

  The ship had no lookout. No doubt the crew was ashore, celebrating its coming departure. A diesel generator thudded away in the engine room, a thin plume of steam issued from a pipe behind the ship’s funnel. There was a small hatch on the Treasure Island’s foredeck. I swung the hatch cover back and went below. Down there it smelled of tar and twine and salt and fish oil. Brand new fishnets lay on the floor, still bundled the way they had come from a net-maker. There were bits of old canvas, baskets, empty buckets and brushes down there too — and plenty of room to hide a couple of gagged and trussed-up pimps.

  I heaved Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy aboard the Treasure Island one at a time, wheeling them across the floats on a two-wheeled dolly that I found in the ship’s fo’c’sle. I dumped the pair of them down the hatch without too much care. Nobody saw me close the hatch on them except for a few bedraggled seagulls hunched on pilings. How long would the pimps remain imprisoned before somebody found them? Maybe they wouldn’t be found at all. For a little while Chantal would be able to keep all her earnings. There’d be a sharp jump in the price of street drugs — until other hustlers moved in to fill the vacuum.

  I spent the rest of the night dozing in Jiggs’s Buick, monitoring the police band and looking out to sea, until the Treasure Island slipped its moorings and struck out for warm southern seas.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Denise Halvorsen was puzzled, but she waited until Lou refilled our coffee cups before saying, “I still don’t understand it all. Tell me again why Charles Service set up those phonies?”

  I said, “Service knew that the Hunts would never allow Frank Harkness to inherit their wealth. But Service figured that if, after Calvert Hunt died, he produced a poor, sick, brain-dead woman and ‘proved’ that she was Marcia, then he would apply to be declared her legal guardian. It was all set up. He was the Hunts’ trusted lawyer and I doubt there’d be any serious objections from anyone. Service could continue to loot from Calvert Hunt’s enormous wealth. Service’s plan was well thought-out. The evidence that he provided to the phonies was real. The things in that fishing box were items that Service had taken from Marcia’s old nursery. The master stroke was that rose, tattooed on the phony’s shoulder. Nobody would recognize this imposter, but they wouldn’t deny her claim.”

  “Maybe. But what if the real granddaughter showed?”

  “There was only a slight chance of that happening. The legitimate Marcia had turned her back on Victoria, and besides, neither Joan Alfred or Alison knew anything about the Hunt family or its money. Joan had no wish to investigate her brother’s past. There was too much ugliness. No, Service’s scheme was perfect, a mixture of good planning and good luck. And think of the payoff for him. By his own admission he’d been looting Hunt for years. With phony heiresses parked at Foul Bay Road, the looting would have continued.”

  “All right. How about dna testing? Service couldn’t fake that.”

  “Good question. dna wasn’t a factor when Service set the scam up originally. It must have given him a few sleepless nights.”

  Halvorsen said, “So it was greed that drove Service?”
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  “No. Cocaine was driving Charles Service,” I said. “He was a complicated man. He probably loved Iris Naylor. That didn’t prevent him from jilting her to romance Sarah Williams. And when Service stole those paintings, he couldn’t bear to destroy them.”

  “But he killed the son of his friend!”

  “Harry Cuncliffe’s chance discovery of Alison in Reno was going to destroy Service utterly. He panicked. Harry paid the price.”

  Outside Lou’s café, Chantal patrolled in the rain, twirling a big umbrella. I said, “But the story ended well for Calvert Hunt. When he met Alison and Joan he was overjoyed. Marcia’s death was one thing. Discovering that he has a granddaughter has given the old man a new reason to live. It’s also given him a chance to give Alison the love he ought to have given Marcia.”

  “So, a story with a happy ending.”

  “Happy for some people. Not for Iris Naylor. She really loved Service. It’s going to be a long time before she recovers from the shock of knowing she loved a murderer.”

  “Sarah Williams. What about her?”

  I took a sip of coffee. I said slowly, “I’m not sure what kind of relationship Service had with Sarah. His death doesn’t seem to have disturbed her too much.”

  “And that young Native man, Jimmy Scow. He served years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “Jimmy’s been vindicated and he will be fine now. He hired Sammy Lofthouse to sue the city for wrongful arrest. I understand they’re arranging an out-of-court settlement.”

  “Well, you did a great job.”