It was an easy matter to trace the ugly Sam who had visited the Indian camp trying to procure women for the ‘shipmen.’ He was well known to the police as a ‘crimp’ who met sailors on leave with their pockets full of pay but limited time to spend it, and for a commission would find them liquor, entertainment, and whores.
I was told that Sam’s usual haunt in the mornings was the Albatross Tavern, just off Wharf Street, a short stroll from the courthouse. The night had been cold toward morning (as I knew from being out in half of it) and there was a mist from the harbour, which had rolled in onto the lower streets of the town. It made me shiver, recalling my standing, a naked fool, in the moonlit stream. I was tired. But nothing could efface another feeling, of lightness and animal pleasure in my own movements, which I could not remember since childhood, running in the meadows in Wiltshire with the skylarks twittering above in brilliant skies.
* * *
I have sinned. I don’t believe in God for an instant but I have sinned. I have done what Aubrey did – to my mother. Lukswaas is not my mother. Oh God, Chad you are going mad, No she is not your mother. But she is my mother, in that I have never felt so quietly at ease with any woman – with any one since my mother. Lukswaas and I understand each other. Without even a common language. Chinook is like having to squeeze yourself through a door. Meaning drops off as you speak it, you are left with bare bones and no flesh. But it is good enough for Lukswaas and me. Language is bare bones. We communicate not in words but in the flesh. As she has already done with Wiladzap! She appears to care for him, to want him free. But she has given herself to me. And what if he is free? Do we all roll together in one foul bed? Madness, Chad. This is like Hamlet, a soliloquy but in bad verse. ‘with anyone since my mother … We understand each other…’ ‘She has given herself to me. And what if he is free?’
* * *
I pushed open the swing door of the tavern. It smelled sour from spilled liquor and was already dense with smoke, although it contained only a few men, lounging in chairs near the bar, smoking cigars, their tall glasses of ale and small ‘chasers’ of whisky in front of them on a table. Conversation stopped. I marched over to them, pulled out a free chair, and sat down. ‘Which one of you is Sam?’
‘Me,’ one of them said laconically. He was indeed the ugliest of the group, with a scabrous complexion, nasty mouth like India-rubber gripping its cigar, and eyes like little brown beads. But he was also the best dressed, in a shiny frock coat with a yellow checked waistcoat and elaborate foulard. He puffed his cigar and waited.
‘I need to ask you some questions in private. Do you want to come to the courthouse, or dismiss your friends so that we can talk here?’
‘You can’t dismiss me,’ one man said. ‘I own this place.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘We can talk down at the other end. But leave us alone please.’ I got up.
Sam got up too. ‘Must be extremely important,’ he said.
‘It is.’
Sam followed me to another table near the door and sat down opposite me, still taking puffs on his cigar, but with one hand rather uncomfortably stroking the table, as if it was unnaturally empty without a glass on it.
‘What were you doing at the Indian camp out on Cormorant Point?’
‘Nothin’. Just rubberneckin’. Me and Bernie went out there, to take a look at the view.’ He leered, as if imagining hundreds of bare-breasted women, Lukswaas among them. I surprised myself by leaning across the table and grabbing his sleeve quite viciously.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know what you were doing. I have a deposition from the Indians and I can send you up for attempting to procure women for immoral purposes.’
‘They ain’t women, they’re squaws…’
I jerked his arm so that the cigar flew out of his hand and rolled onto the sawdust floor where it lay smoking. ‘They’re women,’ I said. ‘Not only that, but ladies.’
‘Awright, they’re ladies.’ Sam rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘So what do you want? No squ … no Injun woman’s word is goin’ to stand against a white man’s, a white American’s, in court. So what’s the fuss about? You tryin’ to change the world?’
‘The fuss is that a man, a fellow American in fact, was killed out there – as everybody knows. There’s evidence that he too was procuring.’ This was a risk of mine, and verged on slandering the dead. I might find it hard to justify in a court. But I was thinking of Wiladzap’s remark about the ‘berdash.’ ‘So maybe we’ll think you’re involved…’
‘But the Injun did it, didn’t he?’
‘What was going on out there? Why did you go there? If you tell me, I won’t hound you – this time – for crimping. Look, I’m not taking this down in writing.’
‘It was nothin’. Just the squaws – the women. I’ve got sailors – you wouldn’t believe it, Sergeant, bein’ a clean livin’ man yourself – who come rollin’ off them ships just wantin’ one thing. They tell me, ‘I wanna bit of smoked meat.’ You know what that is. Like in New Orleans they ask for dark meat, here they ask for smoked. But some of these men – from your Navy too – not that they’re any better than our merchantmen, they’re like animals if you ask me, they’ve got lotsa dols, they don’t want just some poxed up tart from the shanties. So when I heard of them Northern Injuns comin’ down, wantin’ to trade, I went and saw them and offered them some trade, that’s all.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They weren’t havin’ nothin’ to do with it. I dunno exactly why. Maybe it wasn’t that they were so fussy about the work. Some o’ them gave me the eye. Nice tall girls they were too. But they were afraid of gettin’ the clap, so they said. “Piah sick”. The men weren’t too keen on lettin’ any o’ that harem outa their sight, I guess. So after lookin’ at the view for a while, Bernie and I rolled on back home. So what’s goin’ on? I done nothin’.’
‘You didn’t see McCrory out there?’
‘Nah! First I heared he’d been out there was when I heared he’d been cut to ribbons. That made Bernie and me glad we’d had nothin’ to do with ’em. We could of ended up the same way.’
‘You mean you think McCrory proposed to the Indians the same thing as you tried?’
‘I dunno. Was he a real doctor or a fake?’
‘Supposed to have been real.’
‘Then what was he doin’ hangin’ around easy girls?’
‘You tell me.’ I was trying not to reveal my ignorance of where Sam, who was now in a musing sort of humour, was tending.
‘Waal, I seen him a lot at the Windsor Rooms.’
‘You bring your, er, clients there?’ I had thought the Windsor Rooms might be at a level above Sam’s.
‘Sure. I got some classy customers. With lotsa dols. Officers – Lootenants, midshipmen. Not all of ’em just want smoked meat.’
‘What was McCrory doing there?’
‘Hey, why should I tell you all this?’
‘Because he’s dead, and you and he may have been in the same line of business. What if the Indian didn’t do it? What if somebody has it in for people like you? Anyway, where were you last Wednesday afternoon?’
‘I was with a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘A lady. I don’t need to say.’
‘So you can’t prove it? Maybe you were a partner of McCrory’s and you had a falling out.’ I was calculating on a certain stupidity in Sam. I was not wrong.
‘Awright! I’ll tell you all I seen. If it’s not the Injun who killed McCrory you’d better find who it is, I don’t want no one gettin’ the wrong idea … Awright. The way I seen McCrory he was a sort of a high-class crimp. Like me, only with the people in town – the Nobs. Not that I seen him with his customers. No more than I’d see me, if you know what I mean, with mine. I don’t follow my customers into bed with girls, I just make the arrangements. I won’t say nothin’ about financial arrangements, or you’ll use it against me. But you won’t often see me with my mark. Anyway it’s dangerous. The longest time a man like me can be thrown in jail for in this town is for “enticin’ sailors to desert”. They can allus accuse me of that. So, you’ll just see me with a girl or a liquorman, because I’m doin’ my investigation – and sometimes it’s a very pleasurable task, I must say,’ Sam leered – ‘of the services I provide. Likewise, I’d see McCrory at the Windsor Rooms now and then and I could tell he was like me. Not their customer. He was talkin’ to ’em, workin’ things out with ’em – arrangin’.
‘With any girls in particular?’
‘No. He musta talked to ’em all.’
‘Did he come in there alone?’
‘Yeah. Now and then he’d see someone he knew and tip ’em a nod or a wink, or pass the time o’ day. But no further than that. You know how it is.’
I did already know, from hearsay, that a place like the Windsor Rooms had its own code. Since well known men of the town might be found there, it was not acceptable for them ever to intimate even to each other, outside the place, that they had seen each other there. I had also heard that in such places only nicknames were used. Thus, in a town of 7,000 whites, the proprieties were observed. A professional man or business man could be walking down Government Street with his wife and encounter a pair of the Windsor Room ladies out shopping for clothes, and not a sign of recognition would be shown. Nor would a man whom he had met in the Rooms and nowhere else recognise him or greet him.
‘Is that all?’ said Sam, turning to look anxiously up the smoke-filled room to the table at the other end where his friends had been keeping up a steady level of boisterous conversation as if to make it known they were not listening.
‘I’ll let you go now. But if I find out you’ve kept anything from me about any transaction with the Indians, or McCrory keeping company with any particular person in your sight, I’ll be back.’
‘Awright, there was one fella I seen him with in the Windsor Rooms. I dunno who it was. Strong lookin’ dark fella, well dressed. Could have been English, didn’t look like an American. Too fussy-lookin’.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Kinda stiff lookin’. Embarrassed like.’
‘Describe him more. Tall? Short?’
‘I only seen ‘im sittin’ down at the other side o’ the room. He didn’t get up to dance, leastways not when I was there. I didn’t get too close to ‘im.’
‘Dark eyes? Light?’
‘I couldn’t see.’
‘And you didn’t know who he was?’
‘Nope. Never seen ‘im around town. But I don’t hang out in the best circles. You won’t find me at the Governor’s levees or whatever you call ’em.’
‘But this other man struck you as the kind of person who might be found at a levee?’
‘Yeah. Looked like an official of some sort.’
‘Why?’
‘Just an impression. I hardly seen the fella. But since you’re so worked up about me tellin’ everythin’, I thought I’d better not leave ‘im out.’
‘Anything else you’ve left out?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s enough for now then. But I may be back.’ I got up, called out a polite ‘Good morning’ in the direction of the bar, and left. The fog was thinning and wispy, with streaks of blue shining through.