April Fool Read online

  He is frozen in mid-step. The teller of bad jokes is out on a walking tour of Bamfield? Fishing for salmon at two in the morning? He listens for footsteps in the hall, hears nothing. A quick look about reveals no poke in view anyway, obviously he took his moneybelt.

  But now he sees a strap of, possibly, that very moneybelt peeking out from under a headless pillow. The Owl does some instant calculations–a developer, Coolidge occasionally chances on some tax-free cash, takes a fishing vacation in Canada to fritter it away, stashes his earnings under his pillow for his late-night ramble because he isn’t going to risk being mugged.

  He advances, gently clouts the moneybelt from under the pillow. It’s thick with notes–a quick riffle hints at close to fifty Ks, an unexpected bonanza. Figuring this is dirty money and its loss may not be reported, Faloon yields to temptation and takes half. He replaces the belt and floats out, down the hall, down the stairs, out the back door into the rain.

  And just in time. Coming up the walk is Coolidge, huddled into a slicker. Faloon crouches behind a garbage bin. When he peeks around it, the guy is just standing there, swaying a little, like he’s drunk. Then he makes his way to the front door.

  Faloon waits thirty seconds, then slips away with the night’s profits, thirty-one big ones in a zip-lock bag. The whole operation has taken half an hour, and at 2 a.m. he is on the winding path down from the Breakers Inn. The village is dark except for street lamps and the Marine Sciences Centre across the inlet. It’s raining hard, but that’s not a particularly rare phenomenon on these great Pacific shores.

  There’s a fine view from here in the day, you can see the way the bay opens up to Barkley Sound, and the Deer Islands, and the green humps of hills rolling down into the endless sea, and even now there’s enough ambient light so the Owl can make out the merging misty shapes, the promontories that anchor the beaches, the white-flecked breakers.

  Partway down, he detours fifty yards into the bush and stashes his profits in a hole beneath the root of a cedar tree that he’d hollowed out for this contingency. After covering the opening with rocks and dirt and leaves, he returns to the path.

  The way you get from the Breakers to the Nitinat Lodge is by a forested trail, then you branch to the left where the Brady Beach sign shows under a street lamp. And quickly you come upon a cozy log building with four small rooms and a couple of cabins that leak. This property is about the first thing the Owl ever paid for. Going straight has turned out to be a disaster.

  He makes for the back door of his darkened building, then pauses, wondering if Eve Winters, the jazz aficionada, enjoyed herself at the Bam Pub tonight. Maybe he should stroll down to Cotters’ Cottage and ask her about that. Just a thought.

  2

  The Owl rises at nine, weary but okay, and decides to stroll down to the Clayoquot Café for a cappuccino, this being a Saturday routine. The rain has settled to a soft mist, and fog shrouds the slopes of hemlock and cedar, strands of it drifting among the warehouses and docks across the way in East Bam, settling on the saltchuck, where fishing boats work their way out of the inlet.

  No one’s around the landing pier, so he tosses the plastic gloves into the water, weighted with the duplicate key and some rocks. From there it’s a two-minute walk to the canopied deck of the Clayoquot. A tree-huggers’ coffee bar, with rustic willow-wand chairs, tables outside with umbrellas.

  Usually he meets a few friends here, hippies, Greenpeaceniks, a community that for some reason has latched onto the Owl, finding him droll. One such person, who helps with whale-watching tours, is Bill Links, a stringy ponytailed guy, and he asks if Faloon has heard about the robbery. “Someone at the Breakers had forty grand lifted from his moneybelt last night.”

  The Owl tries not to show emotion, but is chagrined that his night’s work has so quickly become the day’s news. He raises the coffee mug to his lips, feels the hot liquid slide down his throat, wipes the foam from his lips. Maybe he should have realized a guy who sleeps with his moneybelt checks it every morning. Forty grand? The developer wildly exaggerated his loss.

  The law is already here from Alberni–Bill Links points to the RCMP boat moored at the coast guard dock. The Owl expresses eager interest in the matter, and Links says he was talking to Mrs. Galloway, who rang the bulls after a firestorm of complaints from her peeved guests–they seemed to think management was to blame, someone had to have a key.

  They speculate for a while it was an inside job, maybe the new waiter, maybe the girl who cleans for them. Bill Links doesn’t know the Owl is a retired outlaw, but soon the whole town will know, because Sergeant Jasper Flynn knows.

  Though rankled by the burden of hassles to come, he’ll brazen it out–there’s nothing to hang on him but the coincidence of having dined at the Breakers. But Jasper Flynn, figuring nothing will stick, might want to act out that roadkill scenario. At best, Faloon would be ridden out of town, at worst ridden over, with permanent tire marks on his ass.

  As he’s settling his mind to that dire prospect, he observes a commotion racing up the boardwalk in the form of Meredith Broadfeather, a militant of the Huu-ay-aht Nation, her hair flying, her arms waving, and she is yelling, and matters turn monumentally serious as Faloon finally makes her words out: “There’s been a murder at Brady Beach!”

  Faloon’s heart stalls, then starts pounding, as Meredith pulls up puffing, catching her breath. Now she is supposed to yell, “April Fool!” but she doesn’t, she shouts a name: Eve Winters, a doctor from Vancouver. “I saw her,” she says, trembling–she is in almost as bad a state as Faloon, except that he’s hiding it. Raped and murdered, Meredith says in a shocked voice.

  A strange feeling comes over him, partly anguish, partly a premonition of doom, but also something heavy and confusing. He listens with no show of emotion to the tale told by Meredith Broadfeather.

  She saw Jasper Flynn and two other cops heading by foot down the Brady Beach Road, and out of curiosity went with them to Cotters’ Cottage. She looked through the bedroom window before they could stop her–Eve Winters’s naked body was on a bed, and it looked like something white was stuffed in her mouth, it might have been her panties. The cops suspect the same guy who ripped off those Americans. Sergeant Jasper Flynn has summoned Forensics from Alberni, by float plane, and more cops are arriving by road.

  The Owl does his magic disappearing act, takes the wooden staircase up to the back street, to his lodge, trying not to seem in a hurry. He’s not sure what he’ll do, he’s in a fog of anxiety.

  His four rental units are on the main floor, and Faloon keeps the upper storey to himself, his bedroom and a kind of den and his own bath. He stares at his reflection in the mirror above the sink, and for a moment isn’t sure what he’s looking at–this can’t be him, the former seventh-best jewel thief in the world, it’s someone else. He thinks about posing as French, but he hasn’t got good papers. He decides on Gertrude. He’ll be a Dutch tourist.

  He shaves off his moustache and goes over his face once again, then hauls out the trunk with his favourite old getups. He weeds through the women’s outfits–dresses, skirts, blouses, flared jeans, hairpieces, bras with felt padding, and he is having trouble deciding despite the urgency. He was arrested in a dress once, after a heist in Barcelona, so he can only pray these local bulls are not as sharp-eyed. He opts for the outdoors look, the jeans with the padding around the hips and bottom, a denim shirt, an orange scarf for flair.

  He paints his lips, combs out the brunette wig with the bangs and sticks it on, then fills a backpack with food from the fridge. Frazzled, he almost forgets the passport, Gertrude Heeredam from The Hague. Other items are stuck in the pages, a driver’s licence, a health card, quality material crafted by Nellie Chin at her backdoor shop in Vancouver’s Chinatown.

  He transfers money from his wallet to the pack, half a yard and change. He finds Dr. Winters’s card she gave him last night, rips it, flushes it. He pulls on a pair of boots that he hardly ever wears, then peers out the window
, sees no one, and heads out, taking the staircase down, not even thinking about trying to collect the stashed loot.

  He is thinking more clearly now, but is horrified by pictures that come to him of Dr. Eve Winters being raped, shoved off, she was a class person, beautiful, with breeding and a good turn of phrase. He remembers how she had a sense of eternity on the West Coast Trail. He remembers how she didn’t sneer down at him, how she preferred him to the condo developer, Coolidge.

  And what was he doing out at two in the morning? On a hot prowl of his own? Faloon remembers how he was rubbernecking at Dr. Winters, trying to come on.

  The Owl is in danger of being poked in the eye twice by the fickle finger of fate. He was already done once for a serious beef he didn’t commit, and he isn’t about to test the accuracy of the justice system this time. He’s not going to stick around on a gamble that the heat has another target, that they’re on to Coolidge already, or some wrong character she picked up at the pub, a drifter. Which might have happened if she didn’t follow Faloon’s advice to strike up with Claudette.

  Near the bottom of the stairs, he almost runs into Hattie Mills coming out of her gallery in a hurry, but she doesn’t give him much of a look and dashes past. The disguise works with others too, on the boardwalk, where there’s a buzz, people standing outside their shops, conversing.

  Fortunately, the water taxi has just tied up at one of the lodges, but when he heads that way he suddenly staggers to a stop. Getting off is someone he knows too well, Claudette St. John, with two friends, all talking loudly about the murder. As she glances at him, he turns his face, but no damage is done, she ignores him.

  He gets into the outboard, hiding under his rain cape, as the women race off. Now he’s feeling hope, once he gets across the water he’s on the road out, though he has more sense than to try for his beat-up Impala, parked behind the motel. He’ll flag a ride, a middle-aged lady hitchhiker who’s just done the West Coast Trail stands a chance of getting to Nanaimo today, maybe in time for the last Vancouver ferry.

  It’s sprinkling again as the boat furrows slowly to the government dock. He wonders if he should call Beauchamp from a pay phone to tell him of his unhappy predicament, but remembers he retired from the courts to be a gentleman farmer.

  He tries to piece together the likely chain of events: this morning, the developer awakes to find his moneybelt half as heavy as it should be, and wonders if it’s an April Fool’s joke in bad taste. On conferring with his colleagues, he learns they also suffered losses. The RCMP race over here, question the Galloways and their staff, and the names come up of the two extra guests for dinner. For some inexplicable reason, the feet look for Dr. Winters first instead of honing in on the prime suspect.

  The boat collides softly with the bumpers on the dock, and Faloon puffs up the hill past the Bamfield Trails Motel and the smattering of shops, and gains the road to Pachena Bay, a click and a half away–that’s where he intends to start hitching, as if he’s just come off the trail.

  His feet are soon sore–he is not used to these boots, they are stiff with lack of use. There’s not much traffic, none going his way except for one barrelling logging truck, working overtime on a Saturday. Then he hears the siren, and it’s an RCMP four-wheel running hot, tearing up the mud and gravel. Cold-looking faces stare at him from the windows, but the vehicle speeds on.

  He is limping as he takes in a spectacular view of Pachena Bay, a flat beach a half-mile long at the foot of a long Pacific funnel. Pachena is also the northern terminus of the West Coast Trail, or what is called Shipwreck Trail for the many wooden vessels lost on the rocks out there, but the Owl’s only interest right now is the old logging road that will get him to the safety of a city. He detours through the shore shrubbery to the beach, where he gets a long view up the road as it bends east into the mountains. There, to his dismay, he sees a roadblock. A cruiser straddles the highway, a couple of uniforms checking out a campervan for possible escaping perpetrators.

  Faloon retreats to the refuge of a makeshift shelter some hippies must have built from driftwood. Here he stares out at the deserted beach, at the churning clouds breaking apart above the ocean, and then he sets out, slogging through the understory of third-growth timber and clumps of bracken and salal. When he finally ventures near the road again, his feet are killing him. But a warming sun has broken through, and he is maybe half a mile beyond the roadblock.

  He begins to thumb, and as luck would have it, the first vehicle stops–it’s a Crown Zellerbach crew cab, a bearded, burly sixty-something driving, a foreman probably, a bull of the woods.

  Faloon climbs in and says in a husky voice, just breathing the words, “Thanks you. I speaks not good English.” He throws his pack behind the seat, beside a chainsaw and tools and a six-pack of Canadian.

  The driver pulls back onto the road. “You just come off the trail? Where you from?”

  “Der Nederland. Gertrude.”

  Folks around here call him Grizzly, he says, and Faloon can see why. He carries on about how he’s a yard supervisor, and he’s going to Lake Cowichan. Faloon says, “Thanks you.” He means it, Cowichan is a fair-sized town with a bus station.

  Faloon is hoping his poor English will discourage conversation, but Grizzly needs to talk, explaining–slowly, so Gertrude can follow–how he doesn’t normally pick up hitchhikers because of company policy, but a lady by herself could be in danger here. “You talk to police at roadblock?” He is speaking Tarzan English so Gertrude can understand.

  “Yah, very bad happening.”

  He nods. “They say the killer did many other crimes. His name is Faloon, small man but strong like a cougar. He is crazy.” He wiggles an index finger at his head. “Psycho sex fiend.”

  The Owl sits rigidly as Grizzly describes in this basic English what he would do to Faloon if he had his way, slime like him should be castrated before some slippery lawyer gets him off on a technicality. But after an hour of not receiving much response, Grizzly peters out, enabling the Owl to relax a little as he pretends to sleep.

  They follow rivers along the way, raging in the spring, they pass by tree farms and clear-cuts, the sun pulling mists from ditches and road pools. The Owl is starting to see hope rising too. He could slip over to Vancouver, hide himself in the bowels of the east side, maybe call a good mouth who doesn’t sell out clients. He will inquire if the horsemen found someone else’s prints or DNA, and if not he will seek greener pastures. Again comes an image of that fine-looking woman in death, but he quickly blots it out.

  Though his eyes are closed, he senses Grizzly reaching behind for something, hears the hiss of beer as a cap is unscrewed, a gurgle, a belch. Thankfully this old bull, with his dangerous views on castration, doesn’t have great powers of observation, and the Owl is gaining in optimism.

  So far, this has been a miracle escape, right out of a war movie, he crossed the enemy lines and he’s already planning for the future. He’ll try for a couple of quick scores in Vancouver and elsewhere, enough to get out of the country. Europe probably or some enlightened land where the cops suck up to tourists, maybe Greece or Turkey or Lebanon, where he emigrated from as a child.

  On the other side of the Nitinat bridge, Grizzly pulls off, asking the Owl to excuse him, he has to relieve himself. The sight of water gushing over rocks and waterfalls forces Faloon to recognize the same compelling urge, and he climbs from the passenger side and goes behind a tree.

  Tired, consumed by worry, he forgets he’s Gertrude Heeredam, and instead of squatting, he pulls out his oscar while standing, letting go a hot arcing stream. He is not quite finished when he glances up and sees Grizzly staring at him from behind a salmonberry bush across the road, his mouth agape, an expression that turns to rage as Faloon hurriedly tucks in.

  Fearing an episode of curbside justice, Faloon sprints to the idling crew cab, clambers behind the wheel, locks the driver’s door, shifts, spits rocks. But now Grizzly is right on him, at the side of the truck, and he feel
s a lurch as he vaults into the back.

  The Owl is convinced now that fate has it in for him this April Fool’s Day. What a chump, with his mental meltdown. He’s afraid his rider will try to kick in the rear window and strangle the cross-dressing psycho sex fiend, or maybe grab the chainsaw and decapitate him. But Grizzly doesn’t seem ready to do these things, just glaring at him from the rear-view, sitting on a sheet of plywood, nursing an elbow he banged.

  The road is winding and ribbed with ridges, so Faloon can’t pour the juice on, but he doesn’t dare slow. He can keep going until he runs out of gas, and then the yard super will castrate him. As the road dips by the river, he dares a risky play, slowing almost to a stop so Grizzly can maybe drop the tailgate and clamber out, deciding not to be brave, content to be left alone on the road and not take chances with a psycho killer. But Grizzly doesn’t move, and there’s even an evil smile on his face, as if he knows what Faloon is up to.

  Getting up speed again, he sees shimmering blue waters in the distance, log rafts assembled on it, and the road descends until it comes to a fork by the western lip of Cowichan Lake. When he rounds a curve, he is suddenly aware of flashing lights, officers lounging beside a blinking cruiser–another roadblock.

  This he greets with mixed emotions, almost welcoming the sight of an officer furiously waving him to stop–horsemen do not as a rule remove your body parts. As the Owl brakes, he turns fatalistic, this has not been his day, not at all. He switches off the engine and listens to Grizzly, outside, loudly ratting on him.

  When a constable approaches him to seek clarification of these accusations, he rolls down his window and produces Gertrude Heeredam’s driver’s licence.

  “You make an ugly woman, Faloon,” he says.

  3

  With envy, Arthur Beauchamp watches juncos mating in the raspberry patch. A bumblebee tests a daffodil. There is lust in his garden, spring’s vitality. Maybe his sap will start flowing again too, and the lazy lout below will rise from flaccid hibernation. The desire is there, but the equipment faulty. When was his last erection–a month ago? A halfhearted attempt at takeoff. But he knows he must accept and move on. We age, faculties rust. Some men lose their hair. In compensation, Arthur has kept his, a thick grey thatch.