Seaweed in the Soup (16 page)

“I can hardly wait. In the meantime, Seaweed, be careful you don't shoot yourself playing with guns. That's a job I want to do myself.” Scudd's jaw tightened. “Do you want me to put that scotch you just drank on a tab, or will you pay for it downstairs?”

I took money from my pocket. Dropped it on Twinner's desk. Went out. Cliffy, outside on the balcony, holding a bloody rag to his nose, gave me a mean slit-eyed glance before he rejoined his boss. Five minutes later, I was downstairs, watching the action, when I saw Tubby Gonzales again. The Mexican was arm-in-arm with a girl girl half his age. She looked drunk. Gonzales appeared to be enjoying himself. I kept my eyes on them for a couple of minutes before he and the girl went out together. If I'd been smart, I'd have left the club then and there. Instead, I went into the
Landlord's Snug,
where I had another Chivas. The smell of Havana cigar smoke hampered my appreciation of the scotch, so I paid the bill and visited the men's room. It was unoccupied, except for a stooped old attendant who was mopping the marble floor tiles with intense concentration. I wondered if the old boy had been called to mop Twinner's office yet.

To my left were four toilet cubicles. To my right was a long black granite counter with six white porcelain washbowls. Gold-plated plumbing fixtures. Stacked cotton napkins instead of paper towels. The space dividing the toilet cubicles from the washbowls was about four feet wide. In an ell were four urinals. The old guy finished his work on the floor and went out. I was alone, lathering my hands with the club's scented liquid soap at one of the washbowls when the door opened. Looking up to the mirror, I saw Eddie Cliffs and two of the club's wide-shouldered bouncers come in.

Cliffs had a large plaster across his nose. He leaned against the door to prevent anyone else from entering the washroom. “Hello, smart guy,” he said, in nasal tones that made him sound like a cartoon character. “It's showtime.”

There wasn't enough room between the cubicles and the counters for the two goons to stand side by side. The bouncer who looked like a coal miner was putting on a pair of black leather gloves. All three men were facing me in single file, which skewed the odds in my favour. As long as the goons didn't crowd me backwards into the ell, where the floor space was wider, I was in pretty good shape for a showdown.

The coal miner's fighting technique wasn't highly developed. Like Cliff, he was another rusher. Rushing at your opponent is efficient if your opponent is a powder puff. I'm not. The coal miner wasn't very observant. Otherwise he might have wondered what was weighting my jacket pocket down on one side. When he charged, I was ready. Instead of backing up, I took the Glock from my pocket and slashed the air with the gun in a 90-degree roundhouse swing. As the blow connected with the coal miner's face, I stepped aside. The coal miner's head stopped moving for a moment, but the rest of him kept going. Spewing teeth, he slid feet-first to the end of the room, where he crashed against a radiator and lay inert.

One down. Two to go
. I was starting to enjoy myself, and I didn't hesitate. Holding the Glock by the barrel, I swung it at the second bouncer's head. He put his arm up to block the Glock's descending arc. There was a loud snap as his forearm broke. He screamed. My second blow missed his head, but it smashed his collarbone and sent him flying backwards against Cliffs. Cliffs had been trying to get out of the washroom, but when the second goon fell against him, his escape route was blocked. By then, solidarity had reached its limits in that former union hall. I stepped on the second goon's chest, grabbed Cliffs' shoulder, and turned him around to face me. He was trying to explain something about my huge misunderstanding of the situation when I head butted him.

Three men down. Down and out
.

Butting Cliffy's head left me feeling slightly dizzy. My ears were ringing. I felt better after splashing my face with water and cleaning spots of blood off my jacket at a washbowl. After dragging Cliffy and the goon out of the way, I went out of the washroom.

By then, the club's former ambience had undergone a subtle and almost imperceptible change. Nanaimo's was still crowded, but instead of the former rave scene, there was an eerie calm. People had stopped dancing and had gathered in small groups of five or six people. I thought initially that a lingering adrenaline rush was leading me to misread the situation. But there was more to it than that. Something unusual and dangerous was going to happen. The collective unconscious had picked up on it.

Then all hell broke loose. The patio erupted into a ball of fire. The club's strobe lights, and every other light in the club, winked out. Flat-screen TVs and speakers went dead. Flames, rapidly expanding from the patio, blocked the club's chief emergency exit. Mass hysteria set in; pandemonium ensued. Screaming helplessly, people were trampled underfoot as everyone rushed for the front door. I was carried along in the crush. After an interval, a few emergency lights clicked on to augment the red-yellow glare spreading throughout the building. In moments, the wall adjacent to the patio was completely ablaze. The hundred-year-old wooden structure burned fiercely. As it became heated, ancient varnish and paint first bubbled, and then sloughed down the walls to the floor in thick viscous waves, like volcanic lava. When the flames reached the ceiling, they spread outwards. By then, fierce crossdrafts were broadcasting airborne fragments. Burning drapery and plastics spread flames to the remaining walls. The noise was tremendous. People were shouting “Out! Get Out!”

Hemmed in by the crowd, I was carried helplessly along towards the front door. An opening designed to accommodate two or three people at a time was being jammed by a panicked herd. I managed to fight my way out of the crowd and make my way back to the washroom. Flames followed me inside till I slammed the door shut. Light streamed into the washroom through a broken window. Cliffy had gone, as had the guy with the broken arm. The coal miner was still tits-up on the floor against the radiator. I dragged him upright and managed to shove him partway through the window before someone outside gave me a hand to drag him the rest of the way.

Instead of climbing out the window, I went back into the club. By then, it was almost entirely engulfed in flames. Superheated air began to scald my exposed skin. The roar of conflagration rendered every other sound inaudible. Then, fifteen feet from where I was standing, I saw a black figure trying to drag itself across the club's burning floorboards. Insanely, I took a step towards it. Something hot and heavy fell from the ceiling and bounced off my head and shoulder; my hair was burning. I backtracked to the washroom. A fireman had poked his fog-nozzle through the window. Bathed in a cool moist mist, I climbed outside. The fireman turned his fog-nozzle on me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Morning sunlight brought me awake at about eleven o'clock. I got out of bed. My head-butting forehead throbbed with pain. I switched the radio on. CFAX's big news was the Nanaimo's arson disaster. Three people were dead, 20 survivors were in hospital.

Still half asleep and groggy, my eyeballs immersed in what felt like a greasy vaseline scum, I called Bernie Tapp and told him about last night.

“You were inside the club when the fire started?”

“Yes. Moments earlier I'd been talking with Twinner Scudd.”

Bernie grunted.

I said, “In addition, I found out where Maria Alfred lives.

“You found out, hey?” Bernie said sarcastically. “I suppose you were walking along the street, noticed a bit of paper lying in the gutter. Picked it up and guess what? It had Maria's name, address and phone number written on it.”

“That's about right, actually. I am one lucky dude.”

“The fire marshal says the Nanaimo's fire was a definite arson. Who do you fancy for it?”

“Ordinarily, I might suspect somebody like Tubby Gonzales, except Twinner Scudd told me that he and Tubby are buddy buddy right now.”

Bernie had a sudden coughing fit. When it subsided, he said throatily, “Maybe we should bug Twinner's house.”

“Twinner doesn't live in a house. He lives on a hundred-foot yacht. It's called the
Polar Girl
and when he's in Victoria he keeps it in that marina just south of the Johnson Street Bridge.”

Bernie had another coughing attack. He grunted something unintelligible.

I said, “What?”

Bernie said, “Somebody dialled 911. Reported that a brazen long-haired First Nations thief robbed the Ballard Diner last night.”

“No kidding? Do you want me to check Maria Alfred's house, do it yourself, or send Serious Crimes?”

“Go ahead, do it yourself but keep me posted. Serious Crimes is working overtime as it is, and I'm up to my armpits.” He added. “Did you get hurt last night?”

“A few little bruises and burns. Nothing much.”

“Well, you take care of yourself. Like I said, I'm up to my armpits, I can't afford to lose any more men.”

I hung up and called the same number by hitting the redial button. This time, I spoke to the drug squad, and asked Sergeant Bondat to tell me the latest drug-war rumours.

Bondat took a deep angry breath and then went on to tell me something that I already knew. He said, “Tomas Gonzales and Twinner Scudd are battling for market share against dealers from Vancouver. Now we're hearing that the Big Circle Boys are moving in. The Red Scorpions have been sending their people across too, setting up dial-a-dope operations and recruiting local small-time punks. We've been rounding up these idiots like cattle. Most have priors for drug and weapons possession. They're wannabees with jailhouse attitudes and big showoff RS tattoos. The kind of cheap punks who'll slash complete strangers just to show their friends how tough they are. They're so dumb they don't even know that they're cannon fodder for the big players. They are expendables, dupes, fools. Mugs programmed to take all the risks and deflect heat away from the bosses. Their biggest moment comes after they're dead, when they get the big funeral, the black granite tombstone, and Mommy telling the TV cameras how wonderful her loser son was to his family and other loved ones. Loved ones? Shit.”

Bondat sounded bitter. He went on, “When the Red Scorpions fade to black, another bunch will try its arm. It never ends.”

I put the phone down, looked in the mirror and examined the burnt remnants of my ponytail. I'd been wearing my hair down to my shoulders. It took me several minutes in front of a mirror with a pair of scissors to make a half-decent job of trimming it above my collar.

Mr. Siskin seemed to be doing okay. When I went outside, he gave me a song and I gave him a ball of suet. Feeling better, I drove downtown to my office and checked my voice mail. Nothing. After giving PC her breakfast, I went next door to have my own breakfast at Lou's Cafe.

Lou is full of surprises. He is a small angry man with a bandit moustache, and I think he's bald, but I've never seen him without a hat on. That day he was wearing a red Turkish fez with a golden tassel. I was wearing 30-dollar wranglers, a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and blue Nike running shoes. My head was concealed beneath an NYPD baseball cap.

I knew that Lou had fought alongside Tito during the Second World War, but what he hadn't told me until that morning is that as a university student in Budapest, Lou had majored in mathematics. Bottom line: Lou had just finished reading Benoit Mandelbrot's book on Chaos Theory. The way Lou described it, civilization as we know it is on the verge of collapse. Mandelbrot's proofs involve global warming, hedge funds, money markets and black swans. It was completely over my head.

After Lou's lecture and another cup of coffee, I dropped some bills on the table and took a leisurely stroll along Victoria's tree-lined sidewalks for five or six blocks before cutting across the gardens in front of the Empress Hotel.

My forehead was feeling better when I sat on a bench overlooking the Inner Harbour. Bikers and in-line skaters whizzed past. A slight breeze spanked the waves. Two boys out on the water were teaching themselves how to sail a plywood dinghy. Tourists and locals were out in droves. The causeway was busy with pedestrians admiring the yachts moored at the Empress marina. Lovers passed by arm-in-arm. Ferryboats and yachts came and went. A pair of ravens warbled and tumbled beguilingly. Apart from a kilted bagpiper standing underneath a tam-o'-shanter, playing mournful dirges, things were quite pleasant.

The boys were demonstrating their skill at falling off the dinghy into the water when Victoria's Royal BC Museum opened at ten o'clock. I showed my police badge and homed in on a section devoted to Vancouver Island's coal-mining industry. The information that I wanted was contained inside a free brochure. An architect called Peter Gregory Mainwaring had designed the Ginger Goodwin Memorial Hall.

An elderly stranger confronted me as I was passing through the First Nations' exhibit on my way out. “Are you a docent?” she asked me rather abruptly.

I shook my head.

“You look very familiar,” she said accusingly. “Are you certain that I haven't seen you in here before?”

“You've probably mistaken me for someone else,” I replied in a less than accommodating voice, because my interest had been piqued by a glass showcase that contained a heavy chunk of granite sculpted to look like a ferret. Its two pairs of feet were shaped like wedges, and set disproportionately close to the ferret's head. It was a Tsimshian slavekiller club.

I left the museum, crossed Belleville Street, walked down Government Street to Langley Street, and went inside Alfredo's barbershop. Alfredo's is a two-chair operation, although one of the chairs has been surplus for ten years. Unisex beauty shops have been brutal to old-fashioned haircutters. Alfredo Bertinelli is a sorrowful-looking man with a black moustache, a formal manner and an Italian accent. He was sitting in the surplus chair listening to grand opera.