CHAPTER ONE

My name is Silas Seaweed. Once I was on Victoria’s detective squad. Now that I’m a neighbourhood cop, my office is less than luxurious. There’s a tiny cast-iron fireplace with a brass surround and a battered copper coal scuttle that I use as a wastebasket. The fireplace doesn’t always work properly, but that’s appropriate because I’m a typical cop: I don’t always work properly, either. I have an oak desk and a leather swiveller. A hat stand and two metal filing cabinets and a small floor safe. A couple of chairs for visitors. Except for missing-kid bulletins and a picture of Queen Victoria wearing widow’s weeds, my walls are unadorned.

The building I operate out of — a three-storey cube of sooty red brick — was erected when the Hudson’s Bay Company still controlled most of western Canada. Originally, my room was a harness shop. Sometimes, when it’s damp out, I smell old leather and saddle soap.

I’m Coast Salish and I moved in here five years ago. Back then, store-front law-enforcement units manned by Aboriginal policemen were being hailed as bold experiments in social engineering. Nowadays, people complain that I’m running a hangout for the dregs of society. And why not? After all, crooks, drunks, hookers and cops derive from the same socio-economic group. Cops and killers have similar levels of intelligence and ability, and the average murderer can be as charming as all get-out.

Victoria’s evening rush hour was winding down. On the street outside my office, two blonde hookers were standing at the curb in four-inch heels and minis. Sally was wearing a tight yellow sweater. Chantal had on a white shirt. Both women carried shoulder bags large enough to hold a loaf of bread. Why did they need them? A mystery for me to ponder. A middle-aged john cruised by in a newish VW Jetta and the girls gave him the business, jiggling their hips and strutting like pigeons with their chests out. But the john was a hard sell, and he sped off to look at the birds on Bay Street.

Vultures were circling too, cruising the downtown area in shiny black cars. A Viper came around the corner and stopped in a restricted zone opposite my office. Jiggs Murphy got out of the driver’s seat, leaned on the car’s roof and smirked at the hookers. Murphy crooked his finger. Obediently, Chantal and Sally tripped across the street and had a short conversation with a man sitting in the Viper’s passenger seat. The man’s name was Alex Cal. After a minute the women reached into their shoulder bags. I saw Cal’s big hand appear, then withdraw, full of money. Murphy got behind the steering wheel and the Viper cruised away, but its passage left vibrations in the air that lingered.

Five minutes later, the street was full of johns. Chantal and Sally had got lucky and were turning tricks so they could pay off The Man. There’s all kinds of luck.

My phone rang. Somebody with a voice I half-recognized said, “Listen, Seaweed, we’ve just arrested one of yours. Jimmy Scow. You interested?”

“Sure. What’s the problem?”

“Possible contravention of the Endangered Species Act. Suspicious behaviour near the Oak Bay Recreation Centre. Trespass.”

The speaker’s name came to me. He was a uniform-branch sergeant named George Barton. I said, “Is Scow in the lock-up?”

Barton chuckled and said, “No. He’s not in the lock-up. Scow’s in Calvert Hunt’s house on Foul Bay Road. But don’t worry. We won’t let him run away.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“Yeah, we didn’t think you’d refuse,” Barton said, still chuckling when his phone clicked off.

Jimmy Scow, I thought. Well, well.

I was surprised by the depth of my feelings. Jimmy Scow was part of some heavy psychic baggage that I’d been carting around for years. It would, I thought, be nice to get rid of it.

I went across to the lot behind Swans pub, where my car was parked, but I don’t remember much about my drive to Calvert Hunt’s place. The last time I had been inside that billionaire’s mansion, a murdered man had been in there with me.

Back then, I had been a detective with Victoria’s Serious Crimes Unit. A 911 call had sent us racing out to Calvert Hunt’s place on Foul Bay Road. When we went inside we found Hunt’s lawyer, a man named Charles Service, kneeling beside a man with a bullet in his head. Minutes earlier, Service had been working in his office. He heard gunshots, looked out of his window and saw an Aboriginal man driving away in a florist’s delivery van. When Service went to investigate, he found the dead man. Valuable paintings and a silver tea service had been stolen.

There had been a rash of lootings in that part of Victoria. Our initial assumption was that the dead man had been a burglar, shot, perhaps accidentally, by a fellow crook. Things became complicated when we learned that the dead man was Harry Cunliffe Jr. The dead man’s father, Dr. Harry Cunliffe, happened to be Calvert Hunt’s oldest friend.

There was only one Aboriginal delivery man working for Victoria’s florists in those days. His name was Jimmy Scow. Scow was arrested promptly and denied all knowledge of the crime. He refused to cop a plea or to name accomplices. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. Nevertheless, Victoria’s Crown prosecutor charged Scow with involuntary manslaughter and he was convicted — largely upon the uncorroborated statement of a prison informant. Scow got five years, after which he dropped out of sight. The loot was never recovered.

≈ ≈ ≈

It was getting dark when I drove up to Calvert Hunt’s mansion. Instead of having a number it had a name: Ribblesdale.

Ribblesdale was a grandiose two-storey showplace, nearly 100 years old, which epitomized a long-vanished way of life. Its ivy-draped half-timbered façade was right out of Masterpiece Theatre: Welsh slate roof, long galleries of mullioned windows, a porte cochère arching across the driveway. I was crossing a broad flagstone terrace to the front door when it opened and George Barton came out to meet me.

Barton was big. A 50-year-old cop with small brown eyes, a round flabby face and thin dark hair trimmed close to his head. He looked 10 years older than his age, and his expression was of amused benevolence. When circumstances dictated, Barton could be hard-hearted, ruthless and inflexible.

“Good to see you, Seaweed,” he said, with bogus heartiness. “Calvert Hunt’s housekeeper called us. Told us there was an intruder on the grounds. Native man, she said, and gave us a good description. It turned out to be Jimmy Scow.” Barton’s smile widened. “Christ, what an idiot. Talk about returning to the scene of a crime. We picked him up near the rec centre and brought him here for the ident.”

“Has the housekeeper identified Scow positively as the intruder?”

Barton gave me a look that suggested my question would only occur to a nitwit.

I said mildly, “Why did you bring Scow to this house for the ident instead of taking him to the station?”

Barton’s amused expression faded. He made an impatient gesture and snarled, “Because the housekeeper refused to leave this house, that’s why. She was the only person on the premises except for Calvert Hunt. He’s an old man. She has instructions never to leave him unattended.”

I said sarcastically, “The poor housekeeper. She’s locked up here like a prisoner too. You never thought to show her Jimmy Scow’s photograph, I suppose? It never crossed your mind to get somebody else to babysit the old man while she went away for a few minutes?”

Barton lost his temper and flushed clear up to his hairline. “I could have,” he hissed, shoving his face up close to mine. “But you know, pal, some of us White people see a picture of a Chinaman or a fucking Indian and we can’t tell one from another. You all look the same to us.”

Barton had about 50 pounds on me. He bunched fists the size of cantaloupes, and I was wondering whether I’d have to break a knuckle on him or kick his ass up into his chest cavity when he came to his senses. He took a deep breath, gave a conciliatory smile and said, “All right, Seaweed, I’ll level with you. It was Mr. Hunt’s idea. The old man’s still got plenty of clout in this town. I guess the housekeeper told him what was going on. He wanted to have a look at Jimmy Scow for himself. See the guy who murdered young Harry Cunliffe. I okayed it. I didn’t see no harm in it, but maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Okay, George, you did what you did,” I said, smiling to pretend there were no hard feelings. “Let’s go.”

We went inside the house. Silver chandeliers hung from high, cross-ribbed ceilings. Old portraits in ornate gilt frames frowned down from panelled walls. Heavy traditional furniture of gleaming dark wood stood on the parquetry floors. A large bowl of freshly cut dahlias sat on a polished oak table.

Calvert Hunt was propped up in a wheelchair at the foot of a staircase, snoring. Iris Naylor, his housekeeper, was sitting in a high-backed chair beside him. There was no sign of Jimmy Scow.

Miss Naylor rose slowly from her chair. Once, she must have been very pretty. But her good looks had been wasted by a habit of constant frowning. Deep lines creased her face from nose to mouth, and her upper lip was stretched tightly across her teeth. Long auburn hair showed wisps of grey, and she wore it swept tightly back from her face and piled up in an elaborate braided crown. Miss Naylor looked confused. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but she didn’t say anything.

My encounter with Barton still rankled, but suddenly I felt better. It was as if I’d wandered onto the set of a dramatic farce or an Agatha Christie movie.

“This way,” Barton said to me, opening a door off the hall.

“Just a minute,” somebody wheezed. “This is my house. I’m the one who decides what’s what.”

Calvert Hunt had woken up in his wheelchair. The old billionaire’s face was long and narrow under a sparse crop of white hair. His pro- truding ears were too large for his head. His big red-veined nose flowed down from his forehead in a long line without the least trace of a ridge. His long scrawny neck disappeared into the folds of silk paisley pyjamas. A red blanket covered the lower half of his body. He blinked his narrow brown watery eyes at me, then at Sergeant Barton, and said harshly, “What’s this Indian doing here?”

Barton looked uncomfortable. He said, “Well, sir, it’s on account of Jimmy Scow, of course. We generally call on Sergeant Seaweed when there’s problems with Natives. We thought you wanted … ”

Hunt slammed the arm of his chair and yelled, “I already told you what I want. I want Scow jailed. Why don’t you just get on with it?” He listened impatiently to Barton’s apologetic mumblings, shut him up with a wave of his hand, then shouted at me, “Are you going to jail him?”

“I’m going to talk to him.”

“Talk! Talk be damned. Scow’s a killer, a menace on the loose. Jail’s the place for him, so what the hell are you waiting for?”

Hunt’s face was red, his eyes now dry and angry and unfocussed. I laughed at him and said, “We threw out thumbscrews years ago. We’ve even stopped jailing people without just cause.”

“How much cause do you need?” Hunt bellowed. “Scow was just caught trespassing red-handed.”

“Was he? It’s time I heard Scow’s side of the story,” I said, turning to Barton. “All right, where is Scow?”

“This way,” Barton said. As Barton led me into a reception room, Hunt screeched in the background, “Hear me, Seaweed! That’s the last time you’ll turn your Indian back on me, you sonofabitch. Don’t ever set foot in this house again.”

I shut the door on Hunt’s bellowing and growled, “Does he ever talk sense?”

“Not often,” Barton replied. “He’s a right old tyrant.”

Jimmy Scow was sitting handcuffed in a chair, being watched over by two uniformed constables. Scow was about 30. Short and skinny, with large black angry eyes. He looked at me with an expression of active disgust. He was wearing a black headband, a red-checkered wool shirt and jeans.

I put my hands in my pockets and looked at him.

Barton unlocked Scow’s handcuffs and said unpleasantly, “On your feet, sonny. Sergeant Seaweed wants to talk to you.”

When Scow stood up and moved his feet, small chunks of dried mud flaked off his carved leather cowboy boots. His cast-pewter belt buckle was a wolf’s head about the size of a baby’s fist.

“These guys had absolutely no legal right to arrest me or to hold me against my will whatsoever,” Scow said to me, enunciating each word with icy precision. “They confiscated my personal private property. They physically assaulted me without just cause.”

Barton threw a small backpack onto a side table and growled, “Calm down, sonny. This time we’re giving you a break. But if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay well away from Ribblesdale. Meantime, you’re in Sergeant Seaweed’s custody.”

The Indian pointed a finger at me, something no polite Native would do to another, and said angrily, “Get me outta this. Any more messing and I’m consulting my lawyer.”

I looked at Barton and tilted my head toward the exit. Barton’s mouth tightened and his fists bunched again, but after a beat he straightened his shoulders and left the room without speaking. The constables stayed with me until I shooed them off as well.

Jimmy Scow reached into his backpack, took out a small spirit stick and quickly replaced it after checking it for damage.

“It won’t get you anywhere, acting the hard-ass,” I said. “That your medicine bag?”

Instead of answering, Scow hooked the backpack over his shoulder and marched toward the door. Halfway, he changed his mind. He looked out of a window. Whatever he saw, it failed to please him.

I sat down on a leather club chair and suggested, “Since you’re here, why don’t you tell me about it?”

He turned glittering black eyes on me and said, “Remember me?” His voice was slow and surly, but a shade less hostile.

“Yeah, Jimmy. I remember you.”

He said, “Yah, hey, brother.” After thinking about it, he sat down on a chair.

I said, “You want anything? Coffee? I guess they could rustle some up.”

“No, I wouldn’t take nothing from them bastards,” Jimmy said. “This arrest crap. All it was, I’ve been doing T’sumqalaks ritual.”

“On Foul Bay Road?”

“It don’t matter where I was doing it. I was minding my own business. Them cops picked me up because my face don’t fit. They found an eagle feather in my medicine bag and made a federal case out of it.” Scow shook his head and added angrily, “That eagle feather has been in my family longer’n White men have been on Vancouver Island.”

“There’s a witness outside ready to testify you’ve been trespassing here,” I said, not unkindly. “Trespassing on Calvert Hunt’s property? Jimmy, you ought to know better.”

“The judge handed me five years. I ironed out three parts of it in William Head jail and the rest on probation,” Scow retorted. “It was railroad city but I’ve done my sentence. Now I go where I like.”

“Fine, I hear you, you’re pissed. But I still want to know. Where have you been doing T’sumqalaks ritual?”

“North Saanich way, mostly,” Scow said, with less belligerence.

I thought about that. Native origin myths explain witchcraft quite explicitly, and witchcraft stories had been coming out of North Saanich recently. The latest one involved a wolf with a human face loping along a beach near Canoe Cove.

I crossed my legs. Jimmy stared at the fancy silk rug lying on the parquet. I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay, Jimmy. Keep talking.”

Scow shrugged his narrow shoulders. I waited. Scow was good at waiting too. At last he said something in Cowichan, a language I don’t speak. Whatever he said, I knew it wasn’t a benediction.

But at last he said in English: “I inherited T’sumqalaks ritual and Wolf Song from my dad. The old man had power, but he never used it. Me, I’ve known I’ve had strong power since I was a kid. People have been hearing about my power and sending for me.”

“Coast Salish people?”

“Salish and Nimpkish. Haidas. Whoever comes to me, I listen.”

“These people that you’ve been working with. What do they want? Wealth power? Gambling power?”

Scow raised his shoulders and showed me the palms of both hands, but he didn’t answer my question.

I thought some more: T’sumqalaks Woman gave birth to four children who were wolves. One night, T’sumqalaks Woman was down on the beach digging clams when she heard a noise coming from her house. She tied a torch to her clam-digging stick and looked secretly through a chink in her wall and saw that her young wolves had taken off their skins and were human beings.

“I think you’ve been eating mushrooms, Jimmy,” I said softly. “Tell me the truth: are you trying to witch somebody or burn somebody?”

“Somebody’s sick,” Scow said evasively. “If he’s sick, something made him that way. I’m finding out what it is.”

I listened without taking my eyes off his face and said, “This man that we’re talking about now. Is it you? Are you sick?”

My question touched a nerve. “Evil has been done. I’ve made it my job to see that things are put right,” Scow said defiantly. “If I don’t, how can I live with myself?”

Jimmy’s face was a study in innocence, but he was working hard to put one over on me.

I said, “Let’s quit kidding each other. This is all about revenge.”

Scow’s cool steady eyes were on mine. He didn’t say anything.

“I’m turning you loose with a caution,” I said. “If I need to later, how can I get hold of you?”

“You can leave a message with Joe McNaught,” he said reluctantly. “I won’t guarantee to get back to you in any hurry.”

“Forget about revenge. It’s a game you can’t win.” I felt myself scowling and switched on an artificial smile, saying, “I’m not going to ask what you’ve got in your medicine bag. Whatever it is, I hope you use it wisely. Thanks for telling me all this.”

I drove him back downtown and dropped him off at the foot of Johnson Street.

≈ ≈ ≈

The Fairmont Empress, Victoria’s most famous landmark, is an old and typically grand Canadian Pacific hotel, all vine-covered brick and pointed roofs. Located beside the city’s Inner Harbour, the Empress is the first thing you notice if you arrive by sea. The Empress’s Bengal Room Lounge looks like the inside of a rajah’s palace. There’s a big tiger skin hanging above the fireplace along with pictures of India from the days of the British Raj. At one end of the room a section of polished floor is set aside for dancing. When I arrived there that night, wearing my best khaki slacks and an Italian shirt, three old guys in black tuxedos were playing Cole Porter tunes with weary professional assurance. I lowered myself into a cane chair and ordered a Foster’s, then focussed on the room’s main attraction — its silver-and-glass curry table. A fat chef in a tall white hat was presiding over beef and chicken curries, chutneys, garnishes, coconut and pappadums.

Alex Cal and Jiggs Murphy appeared in the doorway — Murphy a subservient half-step behind his boss. Cal was wearing a white linen suit and white kidskin shoes. He looked fit, and he had a lopsided sneer that told us all how good he thought he was. In that setting Cal was as out of place as a frog in a teacup. But he was big and muscular and he moved with the grace of a cat.

Murphy was another big man. He had curly red hair and an Irish-looking face with small blue eyes and a pug nose. Where the skin of his face was not freckled it was pink and raw from sunburn.

After pausing to look around and get noticed, the two pimps sauntered in and sat at a table near the musicians. Alex Cal leaned back in his chair, his body almost horizontal, one leg stretched out, the other bent. People wanting to reach the dance floor had to detour around him. Murphy leaned over their table, the weight on his forearms, grinning as he told his boss something. Cal’s eyes swept the room as his driver spoke. When Cal’s gaze met mine it slowed for a moment before passing on.

The waiter delivered my Foster’s along with silver cutlery wrapped in a linen napkin. I sipped half of my drink, then joined the buffet lineup. American tourists were marvelling about the room, the view, how English everything was in Victoria.

I loaded my plate with beef curry, medium hot. Some white rice. Dressed it all with mango chutney, coconut, chick peas, chopped white onion, capers, a couple of peppers, sliced banana and raisins. At the bread table I helped myself to a warm and crispy pappadum, big as a plate.

The food was delicious, the pappadum slightly salty, the way I like it. I’d just finished my first helping and was thinking about having another when the loveliest woman in the world came into the room and took my mind off curry.

She was tall, at least six feet in her high heels, wearing black silk and pearls. About 19. When she stood in the doorway the conversational hum dropped as everybody in the room turned to look at her. Long blonde hair framed an oval face with peaches-and-cream skin, wide-set blue eyes and a pouting mouth with the tiniest suggestion of an overbite. When she saw the pimps she smiled, parting her red lips further, and crossed to their table. Cal remained sprawled, smiling up at her as she leaned forward to plant a kiss on his mouth. Jiggs Murphy fussed around, arranging her a chair, but she didn’t even notice him. She was only interested in Alex Cal. They put their heads together and after a minute she took Cal’s hand, dragged him upright, and they joined half a dozen other couples on the dance floor. Murphy stood up and walked out of the room, looking pre-occupied as he passed my table.

The pimps were not the only people I had been watching. Charles Service was sitting at the bar. Service had wavy white hair, worn a bit long for a conservative lawyer. A heavy tan made him look younger than his 65 years. He had on a dark-blue suit, a creamy white shirt and was wearing a St. Michael’s school tie.

Service was a lawyer with a special practice — his only client was Calvert Hunt. He glanced at me a couple of times, then came over to my table. We shook hands.

I expected him to refer to the encounter at Calvert Hunt’s house. Instead he just smiled and said, “Nice to see you, Silas. It’s been a while.”

“Nearly five years,” I said and invited him to sit with me.

“I’d enjoy that, but I can’t. Another time perhaps. I’m expecting somebody.”

“I was out at Ribblesdale tonight,” I said.

Service wasn’t paying attention to me. He stared over my shoulder and replied with absent courtesy, “Were you indeed?”

I followed Service’s glance. A dark-haired woman was watching us from the doorway.

Service said hurriedly, “I’ve got to go, Silas. See you around.”

He joined the woman in the doorway, took her arm and steered her outside. I paid my bill and went to the washroom. When I came out, I glanced back into the Bengal Room. Charles Service was sitting at Alex Cal’s table. Service was in earnest conversation with the pimp, but his eyes were all over the blonde. There was no sign of the dark-haired woman.

I was surprised. What business could Charles Service possibly have with the pimp and cocaine king of Victoria?

≈ ≈ ≈

Later that night I was in my sweat lodge, on a high bank above Esquimalt Harbour. Spume coated the shore like the icing on a cake. In the surrounding woods, gently swaying trees were filling the air with creaks and groans and sighs.

I was creating more steam by ladling water onto hot stones when Chief Alphonse walked out of the sea. The old chief was naked except for an eagle feather stuck into his long grey braids. He walked slowly up the beach, ducked inside the sweat lodge and sat on a wooden slab beside me.

I watched the colour of his skin change from purple to red, and then it was my turn to cool off. I stepped outside onto hard-packed sand and hurried down the beach and into the waves. Fifty yards away a huge drift-log was rolling about in back eddies. More loose logs bobbed in the waves. Keeping my eyes peeled for bone-breakers almost took my mind off the north-coast water shrinking my testicles, squeezing my sphincter and giving me an ice-cream headache that started between my eyes and spread through my body like an army of ice worms. Chief Alphonse had stayed in the sea for 20 minutes; ordinary decency compelled me to stay in for at least 10.

My sweat lodge isn’t elaborate. It’s a dirt igloo. Its skeleton is composed of arched willow wands, poked into the ground at each end and tied together where they intersect. I cover the willows with tarpaulin, shovel dirt on top, and that’s it. I heat my rocks in a firepit and when they’re hot enough I carry them inside on a shovel.

After a short session in Esquimalt Harbour, that primitive sweat lodge seemed like heaven to me. I carried another big hot rock inside, ladled water over it and got comfortable again.

Chief Alphonse isn’t a wordy man. We don’t have the kind of relationship that depends on words. We listened to the wind and kept quiet. Then we saw a raven hopping around near the water’s edge.

Chief Alphonse said, “Te spokalwets.”

The way he spoke told me that no reply was called for.

Te spokalwets. In Coast Salish, the words mean corpse or ghost. The old chiefs are all crazy when it comes to ravens and every time they see one, or hear one, somebody’s expected to die.

It’s a good thing there aren’t more ravens around Victoria.