by Scott Young
He looked anxious. “The policee who was here asked questions that seemed to lead in that direction. All new to me. But it worries me. For sure.”
“How about survival gear?”
He answered as I expected. It was in every plane. A guy could lose his license if it wasn’t. The standard pack was a two-layer tent, primus stove, axe, snow knife for making an igloo, one Arctic-grade sleeping bag per passenger and pilot, watertight match container, candles, dried food, extra parkas if passengers didn’t have their own, a rifle. If you’re not hurt when you go down, you can hang out safely as long as you stay put. The cold wasn’t as bad as the wind but basically you had to stop loss of body heat. A tent or an aircraft cabin would be shelter enough. Even a candle will heat up an enclosed space.
At least I knew a little more. And the contact might somehow help later. I finished my tea and told him I was going to Fort Norman and I’d phone him if I learned anything important. He regretted that I didn’t have time to sit and talk. I was regretful, too. I was getting to be so damn efficient, no longer operating on what some people call northern time. Meaning time doesn’t mean anything. Have to watch that.
“Next time,” he said as I was leaving, “stay longer. I’ll always drive you back uptown. You don’t have to have a taxi waiting like a white man.” I accepted the rebuke.
It was past four, the sun getting low. “Inspector Huff is back,” the receptionist called as I headed upstairs to Ted’s big office on the second floor. He crushed a few small bones in my hand to indicate that he was glad to see me. We went back a long way, all the way to basic training in Regina. We were friends but not like the “Matteesie!” and “Thomasee!” of a short time earlier; the same rank, but in my head I deferred to him because while I had always been as close to a lone wolf as an officer in the Mounties can be, he was officer commanding five dozen good, or mostly good, people. I still thought of myself as plain Matteesie and thought of him as The Inspector. He knew none of this. I didn’t envy him but I think sometimes he envied me.
Now, while his secretary brought coffee, Ted enthused about his trip to Banks Island. The corporal’s wife had been so pleased at his surprise visit that after the christening he’d taken her out in the Twin Otter to see some of the musk-ox herds he’d seen on the way in only a few minutes from Sachs Harbour. “Never saw so many! Every place you look—musk-ox! It’s old stuff to you and me but when we’d fly over a herd and they’d get scared and get in a circle facing out to protect the young in the middle, it was something new for that young lady. Glad I went.”
Then he waited for me to open the bidding.
I didn’t really have to specify what I was there for. He knew that Buster had called me originally about the missing plane. My involvement at the time of the murder, he knew as well. I got right to it.
“I don’t want you to think I’m meddling,” I said.
He laughed. “Once a cop . . .”
I filled him in on who I’d talked to, and then: “I’d really like to talk to William Cavendish.” I was hoping he’d know more about William’s whereabouts than I did, and I was right. To a point.
“So would I. Last night after we got word about the murder we tried all the bars, eating places, people he knew. Everybody said they hadn’t seen him. Of course, some of them must have been lying. He had to be here somewhere. In hindsight, we should have put a man at the airport. He flew out on Nahanni this morning with a ticket for Fort Norman.” Ted looked at me with a grin. “I guess this is all on Northern Affairs business, eh?”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
He didn’t ask any more questions, but I did. A suspicion suddenly began rattling around in my head looking for a way out. It had been born as abruptly as Ted saying where William had been heading that morning by Nahanni Air—the same place where a plane carrying his friends might have gone down without sending out any emergency signals.
“Do you think there’s a connection between what happened to Morton Cavendish and those guys that took off in that Cessna that’s down?”
“Same old Matteesie,” he said. A compliment, I’m almost sure.
“Well?”
“Maybe not directly,” he said. “But William was thick with the two guys Johns flew out of here. In fact, if they were making a run for it with their bankroll as Edmonton tells us, I was surprised that William wasn’t with them. Hours after they flew out we got word that would have had us pick four of them up. But of course they actually left two guys behind, at least so far. So we held off.”
“Left behind William and who else, Jules Bonner?”
He winced. “Jesus. How’d you know about that poisonous little bastard?”
I told him about Bonner being sent by William to look after Gloria the night Morton was stricken, and being in the airport making phone calls the day I left. I knew they might have been nothing, might have been to a girl friend or somebody not connected at all to the rest. But somebody had had to line up a hit man, even if only on spec, and later let him know what flight to do it on. I wondered if the phone company could help. Didn’t think so, with a pay phone, but worth a try.
There was something else I wanted to think about further. I’m not usually secretive, even about theories, when I’m dealing with someone who might need only a shred of fact or fancy to fit into other facts or fancies and get nearer to an answer, but for now I’d gone about as far as I wanted to go.
“You got any theories about the murder?” I asked.
Ted shook his head. “Morton had enemies, of course, people who think he sold out on land claims here and there, or others who think he’s been too inflexible. But as far as we know they’re only people who go to meetings and argue. Not dangerous. As far as I can gather there was nothing he’d done to anybody that would get a professional hit man sent in from somewhere.” He paused. “Well, and there’s this. Women liked him. That’s one thing we’re following up, looking for jealous husbands or whatever. There’d been stories about this conference or that, people with a lot in common being together for several days, doing a little drinking at nights. Things do happen, like people getting so friendly they go to bed together.”
“It’s got a lot of ragged edges,” I agreed, rather redundantly.
But women? I knew the reputation. Handsome widower, well known, popular issues, I’d seen him surrounded by some pretty good looking women around the Chateau Laurier at Ottawa conferences I’ve been at. I suppose some people would think that he was a womanizer. Either that, or a lot of the women he ran into were manizers, if that’s a word, and it probably should be.
I didn’t mention Gloria yet. If anybody was going to question her seriously, I wanted it to be me.
Ted shrugged and picked up what he’d been saying. “But that’s just guessing. Until we come up with a motive, what we seem to have is a murder, period, plus a coincidence that some drug dealers his son had been thick with have gone off without taking the son along, maybe even doing him out of his split. Maybe William was being double-crossed, maybe Jules Bonner was, too, but how is that going to get his father killed?”
At that point, looking thoughtful, he picked up a pencil and made a note. I couldn’t read it.
We sat for another minute or two. I was thinking again about Bonner and his phone calls from the airport. The only other key I could think of was William Cavendish.
“I take it you’re fairly sure that the guys who flew out had their bankroll with them?” I asked.
“I don’t know what else they’d do. We know a deal was made. We knew the money came in and the drugs went out.”
That line surprised me. Drugs going out? Before I could ask, Ted gave the answer.
“Unfortunately we didn’t know how it was being done until it was done. The tip actually came from Texas, if you can believe it. We’ve got some of our people in the US now, as you probably know, working with the US Drug Enforceme
nt Agency. It seems a guy flying an oil company long-range executive jet was loading a shipment of assorted illegal substances, as they call them now, mostly hash, a little cocaine, for a flight he regularly made up here, and he got busted along with one of his suppliers. One of the ground crew apparently got religion and blew the whistle. This had been going on for at least three trips, flying a lot of stuff north, setting down on a remote landing strip to drop the stuff where it would be picked up by the gang working this end.”
Easy to see it all happening. Our border is like a sieve. There’s no way every aircraft of executive size or smaller can be kept track of every inch of its flight plan. I thought right away of the old Canol road. When the Americans got worried in 1942 that the Japanese would shut off the coast as a supply route to US forces in Alaska, they’d built this highway and pipeline starting across the river from Norman Wells and leading through the mountains to Whitehorse in the Yukon. The Canol project was abandoned when the war ended and is pretty near impassable now, except for hikers in summer and all-terrain vehicles in winter. But it had lots of small air strips that could be cleaned up enough to land for a few minutes, transfer the contraband to a light plane or ATV and take off again for the legal destination. Maybe even one like Inuvik, with a customs office.
“Once in the North and safe,” Ted went on, “anybody could take it south in planes, trucks, boats, whatever the hell you’ve got. They’d turn it over for cash in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, then come back here with money for the next shipment.” He grinned. “Nobody sniffs or searches baggage when a guy is going from Norman Wells to Edmonton.”
The idea of the North supplying the south with drugs struck me as pretty ingenious. And also a little funny. “Who ran the show?”
“Seems to have been Albert Christian. He’s the really smart one of the four, one of those guys people instinctively like, or can be influenced by. Call it charisma, if he’d been a politician. Makes friends and influences people. Seemed to have money. Talked about looking for a place to set up a flyin hunt and fish camp or some other tourist-oriented business. But if so, was still looking.”
“Where’s he from?”
“He said Winnipeg. We’re checking that now, because Winnipeg was one of the drug destinations from up here.”
“What about the pilot?”
“We just don’t know. A cut above the other guys in education, manners, if that means anything. Early thirties. I know about the trouble he was in back east. But he’s been clean as far as we’re concerned.”
“And the other guy that flew out with him, Benny Batten?”
“Used to be a football player. A centre, mostly. Had a shot with Green Bay about twenty years ago, just out of college, but mainly played for Canadian clubs, including about two games with Edmonton ten years ago before they cut him and he came here to work in construction. He did take work—usually as a big equipment driver, bulldozers and so on. Same as William. We had Batten once for punching out an American geologist who called him a no-talent palooka. I think he’d be mainly just muscle. Bonner did casual white collar work—clerking at the Bay and elsewhere. We think Bonner did some of the thinking and handled some contacts along the line, maybe he and William together. Actual dealing up here would be nothing. Too risky for their main operation. Not enough drug users in the Territories to support much of a drug operation. The known dribbles in Inuvik, Yellowknife, Norman Wells were mostly connected to whites. Our drug people used to figure any drugs we came across were being brought in mostly by users. Now it’s obvious the big money was in getting major stuff flown in here the way I’ve said, and then shipping south.”
It all sounded reasonable. If true, it explained why the downed aircraft hadn’t put out markers and radio signals. It might even explain why Christian and Batten had taken a powder so suddenly: that they’d suspected strongly, or been tipped, that the police were closing in. If that was true and any of them were left alive, they’d know that a rescue would send them right back into the arms of the RCMP.
But unless there’d been a police leak, what could have scared them to the extent of feeling their only hope was to get the hell out of here somewhere and split up and try to lose themselves down south?
“So why do you figure that only half the gang went out with the money?” I asked. “Or three fifths of the gang if Johns is in on it.”
“You got me,” Ted said. “One possible theory is that they fought among themselves over something, maybe even over who could have been responsible for blowing the whistle on them. Another could be that at the last moment there was something left to be done around here.”
“Such as bumping off Morton Cavendish?”
“Could be. But I sure as hell can’t figure out where he’d be mixed up in the thing at all.”
“Would NorthwestTel have any way of checking if Bonner phoned long distance from the airport and if so, where to?”
Ted grinned, picked up the piece of paper he’d made the note on, and held it up so I could see. “Check NorthwesTel. Question Bonner Re airport calls.”
There was a silence. Like Kansas City in the song from Oklahoma, we’d gone about as far as we could go.
Then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “So where does your Northern Affairs business take you next, Matteesie?”
Chapter Four
“Well, well, the wandering minstrel!” Corporal Charlie Paterson said on the phone, and sang in a reedy tenor, ‘A wand’ring minstrel I, a thing of ra-a-a-ags and patches. . .’”
I wondered if he was always like this in the morning. The time was eight a.m., the day Thursday, about thirty-six hours after Morton Cavendish’s murder. I’d called to let him know I was back in Norman Wells and to ask if there’d been anything new overnight.
“Did Ottawa get you?”
“No, were they trying?”
“Trying, Jesus! The commissioner did everything except offer a reward and have dead or alive posters put up in the post office. The guy from Northern Affairs wasn’t so bad, but amongst all the umming and ahing I got the idea he wants to talk to you too. Where the hell’ve you been?”
“Maybe I better call Buster first.”
He pleaded, “Just tell me where you are, in case, ah, the superior officer you refer to gets me before you get him.”
“I’m at this Esso place, Mackenzie House.”
“Mackenzie House! Wait’ll the dirty muck-raking newspapers find out about yet another civil servant accepting favors! A guy with beaucoup opportunities to influence major environmental decisions! On the dole from the oil elite!”
“Holy God, Charlie,” I protested.
“Okay,” he said. “Better make your calls and call me back.”
It was a few minutes past ten in Ottawa. Buster came on the line.
“I understand you’ve been trying to get me, sir.”
He was calmer than Charlie Paterson. “Yeah, a few things happening. I hear you were in Inuvik yesterday but I missed you. What I wanted to say was, I told you originally to nose around about that missing aircraft. But now the Globe, the Star, the Sun, the Citizen, the Gazette, and every goddamn body else in the media business is making a big deal out of you being on the plane when Morton Cavendish got it. They’ve raked up every big case you been on. First, do you think there’s any connection between those drug guys taking off so fast, and Morton Cavendish being murdered?”
“Could be.”
“Were you working on that basis in Inuvik?”
“Partly.”
Drily, “Jeez, I’m not used to these long, comprehensive reports . . .” Then, “But if that’s the line you’re taking, keep right on. Hate to think that Johns guy is part of it, but . . . Anyway, I don’t want you to think that I’m pushed by the newspapers, because I’m not, and they know that you’ve been with Northern Affairs the last couple of years and are supposed to go to Leningrad, but th
e fact is a lot of people are fighting mad about this murder and we just can’t figure on pulling you out until there’s an arrest or at least some answers. I’ve been onto Northern Affairs, not to consult but just to tell them that you’re Inspector Kitologitak again as of now and until further notice.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Damn it, Matteesie!” he said. “Thanks! We can talk about Northern Affairs again when this is over.”
“And sir, I should say one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“It simplifies matters a great deal.”
Meaning, now I didn’t have to be doing one thing while he thought I was doing another. I wasn’t just playing good dog, roll over and be scratched. Ever since that shot was fired into Morton Cavendish’s head, I’d been a Mountie again. I owed him, and I knew that better than anybody.
I phoned Bert Ballantyne, my superior in Northern Affairs. This was a big switch in my head from Buster with his jutting jaw and straight talk. I could see in my head Bert Ballantyne as he answered his phone: slim, short haircut, black horn-rimmed glasses, necktie in a Windsor knot, suit by Holt Renfrew, every inch a guy ready to move upward in the civil service. I told him respectfully that I’d just been talking to the RCMP commissioner.
“Yes,” he said. “Well, the bad news is I don’t think we can hold the Leningrad thing open. I’m sorry about that, but I hope you understand.”
I told him I did and would see him when this was over. Then I made one more phone call. It was a mad impulse, or maybe intuition that right now there was one other phone call I should make.
“Lois,” I said. “It’s me.”
I had rather expected an immediate complaint, but what she did was ask where I was, and when I told her, she asked, “Are you all right?” and without waiting for an answer, rushed on, “Oh, Matty, when I heard about you being on that plane when Morton Cavendish was shot, and what you did trying to stop the murderer, maybe taking a chance you’d get shot, too, I felt just terrible . . .”
