The Homeless Millionaire

Harry shook me awake before seven. He'd already washed and made breakfast and generally seemed to have superhuman powers that morning. I wondered whether he'd helped himself to a snort of something stimulating. He definitely wasn't as hungover as I was. I wouldn't have minded a bit of speed, but he didn't offer me any, and I didn't ask.

When I went into the kitchen to get myself a coffee, there was a plate of scrambled eggs with bacon waiting for me. While I was eating, Harry told me that he wanted me to accompany him to the mainland. I'd learn how to handle the boat under his watchful eye, get gas for the stove and the water heater, and do whatever personal shopping I needed to do. Then I'd return home in the boat, all by myself.

This all sounded good except he wanted to leave at half past seven at the latest. He still had to drive down to Vancouver and wash and change at his parents', or rather his mother's place. The mass that would kick off the funeral was to start at noon.

I ate as fast as I could and gulped down a coffee and hurriedly smoked a cigarette. Then I got dressed and followed Harry out to the boat. It was a chilly day, with gusts of moist wind chasing grey-bellied clouds across the sky. Occasionally there would be a break in the clouds and part of the landscape would turn golden. The effect was startling, and it would make a beautiful painting if it was done right.

I knew that many painters had tried to do it: golden rays piercing the cloud, and lighting up a patch of ground. It was a pretty common theme in religious paintings, where the rays were supposed to represent the presence of God. Most of the time it was done so badly it was awful to look at. The guys that painted those pictures were very lucky that there was no God, or that he was blind even if he did exist. They were lucky because had God seen how they'd shown his presence in those paintings, he'd have gotten busy on them with thunderbolts and other heavy-duty stuff.

Before we set off Harry made me watch closely how he untied the mooring rope, then tied it again and told me to undo it. I did it right first time, scoring big points with Harry. He showed me how to prime the engine with the little manual carburetor pump. He gave me a short lecture about pulling on the starter's lanyard ('Don't jerk it. Pull it.'). I started up the little Evinrude outboard on my very first try, to his satisfaction.

Harry handled the boat out into open waters, then got up from the bench at the back and beckoned me to take his place, saying:

"Now it's time you learned how to drive this thing. It's like a bicycle."

"What?"

"Bicycle. When you want to turn you lean the bike in that direction, right? And you make it lean over by pushing the handle on that side away from you. That's how you make a bike lean into a turn."

"I never analyzed it like that," I said. "But yeah, it makes sense. The bike's trying to fall over."

"Correct. It's the same with this boat. You want to turn right, you swing the screw on the motor to the right. Meaning you pull the steering stick to the left. Got it? Do it now."

I did, and the boat swerved obediently to the right. I made it turn left, then right, then left again. It felt fucking great to steer the boat, to be in control. Half my hangover was gone in an instant.

"I get it," I said to Harry. "The screw pushes the stern sideways. That's how you turn."

"Good," said Harry. "So now, to get some practice, you can take us to Lion's Bay. Just keep going on that course. Something crosses our path, remember: the guy that finds it more difficult to manoeuvre has the right of way. This little boat is pretty manoeuvrable, which means you basically yield way to all other boats. Get it?"

"Sure," I said. "This is fun."

The run to Lion's Bay took a little over fifteen minutes. We passed Brunswick Beach along the way, and I thought I could recognize the spot where I had boarded Harry's boat for the first time. Then the marina in Lion's Bay hove into view, and Harry took over the steering. He showed me when to cut the engine so that the boat would glide into its spot by the pier.

"If you misjudge things, use the paddle. Don't restart the engine. And never, ever try to stop the boat by lifting the screw free of the water with the engine running. You want to stop in a hurry, you execute a very sharp turn and cut the engine."

"Okay."

"You'll do fine. Just watch what you're doing, and you'll be fine. Now let's see you tie the bowline to that stanchion."

That didn't go too well, and I caught Harry glancing at his watch a couple of times before I finally got it right. The moment I did, he clapped my shoulder and pointed out the shop where I could get the gas bottles filled, and he was off. He walked a couple of steps down the pier and turned around and said:

"I'll be back in a couple of days at the latest. Actually, I'll do my best to return tomorrow. Take care!"

"Take care," I said, and instantly felt silly. It seemed a stupid thing to say to someone going to a parent's funeral.

There was a street ending in a small parking lot right next to the marina, and I saw Harry's Volkswagen Variant pull out of the lot and accelerate away before I'd even managed to take the second empty tank out of the boat.

Something inspired me to check on the boat's fuel tank too, and it was good that I did: it was at most quarter-full. It was a gallon tank and it was fastened to the stern from the inside, right next to the steersman's seat. I had a long look at the clamps holding it tight and decided I wasn't going to fuck around with them.

I took the empty propane tanks to the shop Harry had pointed out. It was also a boat repair shop, packed tight with all sorts of nautical equipment. There were a couple of very nice young guys working there. They exchanged my tanks for full ones, rustled up an empty oil can, and filled it with gasoline for the boat.

I paid and asked whether I could leave the fuel I'd purchased with them while I did some shopping. They looked each other and one of them said:

"You driving?"

"No, walking."

"Yeah. It's a fair walk, you gotta cross the highway. Just follow the road out of here, turn right at the first crossroads, and keep going. You'll pass under the highway and come to a T-junction: that's where you throw a left. You'll be able to see a kind of little mall with a post office and general store. They'll take care of you there."

I thanked them and set out on my trip to the store. On the way, I kept wondering why they'd used the phrase 'they'll take care of you there.' It suggested that I looked like someone who really needed to be taken care of. My paranoid partner came to life and we engaged in a vigorous dialogue that lasted the rest of the way to the store.

It was pretty expensive in there, I guessed that they punished people for being too lazy to haul their asses to Vancouver to get their shopping done. I paid nearly twenty bucks: the carton of Rothmans alone set me back six fifty. I also bought Cokes and some limes to go with the rum at home, and a whole bunch of newspapers and periodicals.

When I was paying my eye caught the Zippo lighters on display on the checkout counter and they were really inexpensive. I got a plain steel one, and then I had to buy lighter fuel and some flints and it wasn't quite so inexpensive any longer.

I'd never liked Zippo lighters much because whenever you lit your cigarette with one you got a good whiff of the burning lighter fuel with your first hit. But I was likely influenced by the lifestyle I led on that island, all this fucking around with firewood and the fireplace and taking ice-cold showers. Genuine pioneer shit. Inhaling some lighter fluid fumes fit the picture.

All that stuff I'd bought carried some weight, and I took it straight to the boat. Then I went to the marina shop and got the gas for the outboard and put it in its tank. I made two more trips carrying the propane tanks. All in all it was quite a bit of stuff, and I took an extra couple of minutes distributing the weight properly in the boat.

I was putting the personal shopping I'd done in the bows of the boat when I happened to look at its registration number, and actually read it. I'd glanced at it before but this was the first time I'd registered that registration number, so to speak.

It was BC 4313. Four three one, the three numbers that had taken on a special significance for me.

I was a reasonably well-educated and intelligent guy who didn't believe in witches and wizards and horoscopes and tarot card spreads. But when I became aware of that number, I felt like a savage that had just seen a ghost point its finger at him.

It took me two cigarettes to calm down. I sat on the pier with my legs dangling and smoked and it helped, because private rituals always helped when my inner savage was freaked out of his mind. My paranoid partner was doing a war dance complete with face paint and a special costume.

Eventually I got into the boat and cast off and got the outboard running without a problem. Steering the boat restored some of my confidence. When I docked at Harry's pier without knocking a hole in the hull and tied the mooring ropes to the rings in the pier and got the knots right, I became confident I could handle anything that came my way.

After I'd carried everything into the house and got a reasonably good fire going in the fireplace, I sat down to entertain myself with the reading matter I'd gotten in Lion's Bay.

Peter Schmidt was front-page news. My new confidence was shattered instantly. I threw the newspaper down and ran to the kitchen to get the rum. I came back and lit a cigarette and took a couple of good swigs straight from the bottle. Then I sat down again and picked up the newspaper and started to read.

They'd actually found him a week earlier, around a day after I'd killed him. Considering the fact that his corpse was right by a fairly busy highway, that was a long time. But maybe the view from the highway was blocked by the trailer. It had three sets of wheels, and they were big wheels.

A week-old killing wasn't front-page stuff unless there'd been new developments, and there were some. Peter Schmidt's fingerprints matched the prints found on a couple of victims of the highway killer that had been raping and killing young hitchhikers of both sexes. There was speculation that one of his intended victims fought back, and fought back very effectively.

In short, the newspaper got it right for a change. Yeah, it was a change all right. I had killed a killer. I was morally in the clear. I felt exonerated. I had yet another swig of rum and quickly progressed to feeling ecstatic.

I was no longer a killer: I was an avenging angel.