"What's your name?"
"J-j-joe Winalagilis."
"Where's your outfit, Joe?"
"In a pouch in my other b-b-boot."
"Take the cuff off one arm, Rick, and chain his other wrist to you."
Scarlett did not look happy but he did as she suggested. The woman pulled off the second boot as the Indian sat on the ground. She turned it over and an outfit with a burnt spoon fell into her hand.
"Come on," Spann said. "Let's find some place to try and strike a deal."
Single file, the three of them left the pier, Winalagilis stumbling and all three shivering. They made their way past the CPR Ferry dock, past the rows of container trucks down to where there was a tongue of rubble and rock and boom logs that stuck out into the sea. Alongside the mini-peninsula there was a small wooden dock. Moored to the dock with its prow pointing out at Stanley Park beyond the oil barges dotting the harbor was a sailboat swaying and rocking on purple-green water. From this dock they could just make out the Brockton Point totem poles half hidden within the Park's trees.
Winalagilis first, the three of them climbed onboard the boat.
Still soaking wet, they hunkered down in the stern where they were gone from the eyes of the city. Katherine Spann removed a cap from the balloon and emptied it into the spoon.
"I take two," Winalagilis said.
She opened another one. It was still raining, so the rain provided the water. The Indian had a lighter in his pocket which he took out. While Scarlett shielded the flame, the woman cooked up the mixture. The junk dissolved and she sucked it into the needle.
"Use my headband," Winalagilis said, so she tied it around his arm. Then she tapped his skin continuously trying to raise a vein. The task was almost impossible. They were cowering down near the bone.
"Okay," Spann said. "This is the deal. In return for this jab you tell me all you know about Hardy. Agreed?"
The Indian shivered and nodded. "Hit me, Blondie! Hit me!" he hissed with excitement in his breath.
Spann slid the needle in. Dark red blood spurted back into the outfit. "Let it go!" Winalagilis ordered. But Spann didn't press the plunger.
The Indian blinked. "What the fuck you doin'?"
The woman looked him in the eye. "Just so we're straight," she said. "You come clean on Hardy, and every one forgets this. You lie or fuck up, and we put out on the street that you were the rat. That should have you killed even before you're out of jail. Agreed?"
"Christ yes," Winalagilis choked.
Spann let the headband go and squirted in the mix.
As the morphine blast hit him in waves, Joe Winalagilis relaxed. A long exhalation escaped from his lips, contentment lighting his face. He closed his eyes and kept them closed for several exhilarating minutes. When he finally opened them once again they were covered with glass.
"Okay," Spann said. "Where's John Lincoln Hardy?"
"Huh?"
"Hardy? Your pusher? Where is he?"
"I don't know," Winalagilis said, his head going into a nod as he smiled from far, far away.
Scarlett looked at Spann and his eyes said, You blew it. What puzzled the woman was the feeling she got that this was what he secretly wanted.
"Where do you meet him to score the stuff?" Spann's voice was screwed up tighter.
"Huh? Oh… him." A pause. "He comes to me."
"Where?" the woman demanded.
"Wherever he finds me… Blondie."
"Look Joe, I'm warning you. I won't be played for a fool. You've got to have some meeting place where you score junk from him. Where is it?"
"You don't understand."
"I understand that a deal is a deal."
"You're making a mistake."
"Cough up, my man, if you know what's good for you."
"Your mistake is, Blondie, thinkin' he's pushin' to me."
Spann glanced at Scarlett as the fact sunk in.
"Truth is, it's me pushin' to him," the Kwakiutl said.
3:10 p.m.
The Japanese steam bath was Scarlett's idea.
By the time the two RCMP constables had returned Joe Winalagilis to the abandoned patrol car and transported him the two blocks to the Vancouver City Jail, all three of them were freezing cold and shivering out of control. The guard at the booking desk on the third floor took one look at them with a gambler's eye then turned to his partner and said: "Five bucks says at least two of these three come down with pneumonia." His partner checked them over and refused to take the bet.
A few minutes later while riding down in the elevator that would take them to the alley out back of 312 Main, Scarlett nudged Spann and said: "How 'bout a steam?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look, by the time we get you to your place and me to mine, we could both be freezer material. Just a block from
here there's an old Japanese steam bath with separate and private rooms. If you're not hung up on modesty, we can get warm and send our clothes out for a dry. If you are hung up, then drop me off and you go down with the ship."
Katherine Spann shivered once more and said: "Let's go."
Fifteen minutes later Rick Scarlett was sitting alone in a small, very old, pipe-lined room. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he slouched listening to the hiss of water vapor as he waited with anticipation for Spann to come in-through the door.
On checking in they had paid a young Japanese to take their soggy uniforms to a local one-hour laundry, and then Spann had disappeared into the bathroom. Scarlett now occupied himself by imagining Katherine taking off her clothes.
His mind had her down to her panties when the door swung open. Scarlett nonchalantly counted the number of tiles on the floor.
He did not look up as the woman took two steps into the steam room and then stopped in order to adjust her lungs to the vapor. She had tied a towel around her waist in a Polynesian style. She stood near the door breathing in shallow breaths, her chest slowly rising and falling as she stretched her spine and her muscles. When she finally climbed onto the wooden bench and sat back against the wall, Scarlett looked up for no more than three seconds and muttered, "Not bad, eh?"
"Not bad," she said as he looked back down at the floor.
The next time Scarlett turned back, Spann had closed her eyes and was reveling in the warmth. Slowly he looked her over from head to toe. Then he stopped at her breasts.
That's the nicest pair of headlights I've ever seen, he thought.
Spann didn't open her eyes. She was lost somewhere in a world of warmth and relaxation. The man turned his attention to the towel around her waist. The steam and the sweat from her pores were making it stick to and outline her body. He stifled an almost irresistible urge to reach out and rip off the towel, and instead he bent forward to lean his arms on his thighs to hide his growing erection.
Yessiree, Rick Scarlett thought. Do I want a piece of that.
Now all he had to do was bide his time.
Soon the moment would come.
The Birthday Present
4:45 p.m.
It was a quarter to five by the time that Scarlett and Spann returned to Headquarters. The place was alive with activity as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared for next day's roundup. There were computer printouts everywhere, sweep sheets being distributed, each with a mug-shot photo attached for each suspect and a key word to open the software circuits printed at the side. Bulletin boards around the parade room were pinned with lists of assignments. As Scarlett went to check on the role that the two of them would be playing, Spann found the nearest free telephone and dialed Corporal Tipple at Commercial Crime. This time she made contact.