Salvage (8 page)

“OK,” she said. “I'll tell her that Darlene called and I'm going over to stay with her for a while.”

“That sounds good,” said Scarnum. “Drive carefully. I'll see you soon.”

Then Scarnum called Charlie. “How's everything, Chief?” he asked.

“Good,” said Charlie. “Where'd you get to?”

“I brought the boat in to Dr. Greely,” he said.

“That's what I figured,” said Charlie. “Greely called, once this morning, once about twenty minutes ago. He told me the boat was there but said there was no sign of you.”

“He wasn't home so I just tied it up there,” said Scarnum.

“Greely said it looked like beautiful work,” said Charlie.

“Well, what's he know?” said Scarnum, and they both laughed.

“That French Mountie came by today,” said Charlie. “Told her I didn't know where you were, which was true.”

“She say anything?”

“No. Just wanted to talk to you.”

“Uh, Charlie, something I want to say.”

“Go ahead.”

“I might not be around for a few days,” he said. “If anybody comes looking for me, just tell them you don't know where I am.”

“That'll be easy,” said Charlie.

“But if you see a couple of dark-looking guys, look like they might be Mexicans, call 9-1-1 and tell them you're afraid you're gonna get robbed.”

“I don't like the sound of that, Phillip,” said Charlie. “This something to do with Jimmy?”

“No,” said Scarnum. “Not really. Maybe. I don't know. They're just some fellows I come across that I don't like the look of.”

“All right,” said Charlie.

Then Scarnum walked to the Spryfield branch of the Halifax library, carrying his wet clothes in a plastic bag, and sat down at a computer. For an hour and a half he read articles about Mexican drug cartels.

Gangs based in northern Mexico, he learned, had taken over the cocaine transshipment business from the Columbians. The biggest gangs were doing billions of dollars' worth of business a year, and they kept private armies and were so powerful that the Mexican government was powerless to interfere with them. One of the cartels — Los Zetas — was made up of former elite Mexican Army commandos.

In the past decade, the cartels had killed dozens of judges, lawyers, and journalists, hundreds of police, and thousands of soldiers of rival gangs. They owned trucking lines, airlines, even submarines.

After his research, Scarnum took a cab from the library to the Armview, a little restaurant at the head of the Northwest Arm.

He read the paper and drank a coffee and waited for Angela.

Angela looked pale and tired. She was wearing low-rise jeans, a small pink T-shirt that said
SPOILED
on it, and an oversized pair of sunglasses. Scarnum could see her smooth belly between the T-shirt and her jeans.

She sat down in the booth opposite him.

“You hungry?” he asked.

She shook her head and looked at him, chewing gum. “What did you do to your forehead?” she asked.

“I'll tell you in the car,” he said.

He paid for his coffee and they went and got in her car. In the parking lot, Scarnum noticed that her pink thong was sticking out the back of her jeans. It looked like it was supposed to do that. She gave him the keys to her car.

On the way back to Highway 103 — the road to Chester — he started to tell her what he knew.

“I think Jimmy was mixed up with some badass Mexicans,” he said. “I think they think I have some cocaine belongs to them, which I don't.

“They come to see me today, met me on the dock when I was dropping off a boat here in Halifax. They offered to cut me up. One of them hit me in the head with a gaff. I got out of there and called you.”

“Holy fucking Jesus,” said Angela. “How'd you get away?”

So he told her the whole story, from the moment the Mexicans arrived on the dock to his cab ride to the restaurant.

“How'd the Mexicans know where to find you?” she asked.

“I can't figure that out,” he said. “I didn't tell nobody where I was going. I suppose somebody mighta seen me sailing out of Chester this morning, but they'd have to have known that it was Greely's boat. I suppose a lot of people in Chester would know it was, and they'd know that I hadn't delivered it yet. That would mean those bad Mexicans have some friends in town who are watching me.”

They drove in silence for a minute.

“You think they might come after me?” asked Angela.

“I would if I were them and I'd lost a whole pile of cocaine,” said Scarnum. “That's why I want to get you out of town.”

“That why you're driving back there now?” she said.

“Well,” he said, “I want you to drop me off in Chester and then go someplace where I can come get you in a few days.”

“What if I don't want to get out of town for a few days?” she said.

Scarnum shrugged and kept his eyes on the road. “I guess you can sit around home and wait for the Mexicans to come visit,” he said. “Who knows? You might get along better with them than I did.”

“Don't know if I want to find out,” she said.

“How well do you get on with Jimmy's people?” Scarnum asked.

“Jesus, Phillip,” she said. “How well does anybody get on with them?”

The Zincks lived in Lower Southwest Port d'Agneau, on a dirt road in a little cove halfway down a windswept spit of land about two hours southwest of Chester. There were a half-dozen houses — all belonging to fishermen in the extended Zinck family — surrounded by wrecked cars, four-wheelers, and snowmobiles. They were wild people, half literate, with money from fishing but no respect for any authority beyond the family.

“His mother might like to spend some time with you now that Jimmy's dead and you're carrying his baby,” said Scarnum.

“Somebody's baby, anyways,” said Angela.

“And I think you'd be safe there,” said Scarnum. “I would think even these Mexican badasses might know to stay away from the Zincks.”

“All right,” said Angela. “I'll drive down there and stay, at least until the funeral.”

“When's that gonna be?” asked Scarnum.

“Soon as the Mounties release the body,” said Angela. “What are you gonna do now?”

“I'm going to go back to town and try to find out why these guys killed Jimmy,” said Scarnum. “Seems to me that whoever killed him might wish me ill. I'd like to know who told those Mexicans that I got their cocaine. I'd like to convince that person to tell the Mexicans that I don't.”

He looked down at her tummy. “And it seems to me that whoever killed Jimmy owes you some money for the kid.”

“How you gonna do all that?” she asked.

“I'll tell you when I figure it out,” he said. “So, tell me,” he asked her, “who do you think Jimmy was moving drugs for?”

“I don't know,” said Angela. “You know what he was like. He was always out drinking with sketchballs. Could be anyone.”

“Amos told me that five times Jimmy paid him to call in sick,” said Scarnum. “First time was right after Christmas. If he brought in one hundred kilos at a time, that's five hundred kilos in five months — a thousand kilos, I suppose, if they cut it by half. That's a lot of coke. I don't think Jimmy's buddies from the Anchor would be able to move that kind of volume.”

Angela didn't say anything.

“Angela,” Scarnum said, “did Jimmy spend time with Falkenham? Did he ever meet with him? Any reason to think that he might have been the coke buyer?”

Angela looked out the window and lit a cigarette. “I don't know how much to tell you,” she said.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

“All right,” she said, and she turned to face him, pulling her legs up on the seat and leaning her back against the passenger-side door. “Don't blame me if you don't like it.”

Scarnum took one of her smokes and lit it. “I won't,” he said, and he looked at her to show that he meant it.

“Well,” she said. “You know how I told you either you or Jimmy could be the father of my baby?”

“Yuh,” said Scarnum.

“Well, so could Falkenham,” she said. “We all partied together. Me and him and Jimmy and Karen.”

Scarnum's features didn't change. “And you fucked Bobby?” he said. “You wouldn't be the first one.”

“You don't get it,” she said. “I fucked Bobby. And Jimmy fucked Karen. And Karen and I, uh, made out. We all did it together.”

Scarnum kept his eyes on the road, then looked at her to show he wasn't bothered. “How'd it start?” he asked.

“You ever see me in my little black dress?” said Angela. “It's silk, cut down to here.” She lifted her breasts and pulled down her T-shirt with her thumbs so that Scarnum could almost see her nipples.

“I think I'd remember that,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I wore it to the SeaWater Christmas party. Bobby noticed it, and so did Karen — maybe her more than him — and when the party ended, we went for a drink up to  Twin Oaks.” After Karen took up with Falkenham, he bought an old mansion on the Peninsula ­— where the richest of the summer people live. Like all the grand houses of Chester, it had its own name: Twin Oaks. “We went to Karen's studio, an old fish shed on their wharf that she's fixed up. It's got a wood stove, huge picture window looking over the bay, her paintings all over the place. And there's a big bed in there.

“So, we did some lines and it was killer coke. The same stuff we did the other night on your boat. Then we got crazy. We started dancing and fooling around. Next thing you know, me and Karen were making out. That got the boys awful horny. Then I felt Jimmy behind me, and I kept making out with Karen while he started fucking me, and Bobby was fucking Karen, while Karen and I kept making out. Then we just, uh, switched. It was fucking crazy.”

She turned to look at him. “This bother you?”

He shook his head. “Not too much,” he said. “Karen and Bobby been together seven years. I guess I'm over it.”

He looked at her. “So, how was it? Did you have fun?”

“I always wanted to fuck that guy,” she said. “I don't know why. There's something about him. Maybe the money. Maybe whatever it is that drove him to get the money. It was pretty good. Really good. Yuh. And Karen's some hot, but you'd know that. She and Jimmy seemed to enjoy themselves just as much as me and Bobby.”

“Did Bobby and Jimmy ever talk business, talk about coke?” asked Scarnum.

“No,” she said. “It wasn't like that. It was just, you know, party­ing and fucking. Doing coke, not talking about it.”

“How many times did you do it?”

“Maybe half a dozen.”

“You always did it in the same place?”

“Yeah. Always in her studio.”

“You ever fuck Bobby when Jimmy wasn't around?”

She thought for a minute. “Yeah, and I never told him. That wasn't part of the deal. That was cheating.” She shrugged. “For all I know, he was fucking Karen on the side.”

Scarnum put on the signal light and started to turn down a little access road.

“Where we going?” said Angela.

“There's a little clearing up this road, by the river,” he said. “I plan to take you up there and, uh, show you something.”

She looked down at the crotch of his jeans. “Oh my God,” she said. “What a pervert. You got turned on hearing about our orgies.”

Then she reached down and squeezed him through his jeans. “Is this what you want to show me?”

They had sex by the side of the road, with Angela straddling him in the back seat, her jeans around one ankle, Scarnum's jeans around his knees.

It was frantic, urgent, and it didn't last long.

Afterward, she stayed on top of him, their gooey loins pressed together, and they smoked.

She leaned back against the seat behind her and looked down at Scarnum. “I don't think you are over Karen,” she said.

He raised his eyebrow at her. “Yeah?” he said. “Why's that?”

“Why haven't you had a girlfriend since then?”

He laughed. “Maybe I'm not boyfriend material,” he said.

“You were then,” she said. “You were with Karen.”

“Well, I don't know,” he said. “I wasn't a very good boyfriend. I was drinking a lot, running around on her. When I met Karen, we were students in Halifax. She was going to go to law school. A few years later, I had her living on my old fucking boat in the Back Harbour. Not really the lifestyle she was accustomed to. I wasn't making no money. Looked like I was going to lose the boat, and then Bobby hired me to fix up his big ketch.” He laughed. “I thought our problems were over.”

“You never told me what happened,” she said.

He laughed again. “But you heard, didn't you?” he said.

She nodded. “You went to town to get a part for the boat,” she said.

“Yuh. I left Karen on the ketch, working on the upholstery, while I went to Halifax to get the fuel pump rebuilt,” he said. “Only I realized after twenty minutes on the highway that I didn't have it with me.”

“So you drove back,” she said, studying his face.

“That's right,” he said. “And when I got back to Charlie's, I noticed that Falkenham's truck was parked by the dock and that big old ketch was rocking, and there wasn't a ripple on the water.”

Angela studied his face.

“So I stood there on the dock, listening, and I could hear the two of them grunting and moaning.”

He laughed and looked out the window. “The hatch was open, so I jumped through it and landed right in the salon, right where he was banging her. Fucking shock of their lives. Still had his cock in her.”

“So, what'd you do?” said Angela.

“Nothing,” he said. “Waved my arms. Shouted. Called her a whore. Told her to get her shit off my boat. Told Bobby to get his boat off Charlie's dock and stay the fuck away from me or I'd cut him open like a flounder. Then I stomped out of there. Last time I talked to either one of them.”