Up in Smoke

by Ross Pennie

  Max let go and swept the room with a tentative gaze. “And . . . and Daddy?”

  “Careful, bozo. Don’t push it.”

  Max’s face clouded with sudden disappointment. He shrugged and the smile left his eyes. “Never mind.”

  This late in the day, flexibility didn’t come easily. “Sorry, son. What is it?”

  Max hung his head.

  “Come on, you can tell me.”

  Max turned and stamped toward the sunroom. “I said, never mind.”

  Zol’s stomach tightened. Something was on Max’s mind and he’d blown it. Like his dad used to do. Would Max bring it up tomorrow, or had the moment been lost forever?

  Fifteen minutes later, Max was hugged and kissed and settled. He seemed happy enough despite whatever had been on his mind. He’d really taken to Colleen, no question about it.

  Zol handed her a glass of Amarula and watched the light dance in rainbows through the crystal’s pattern and onto her cheeks. From the other tumbler, a perfect match to hers, he warmed his throat with a generous swallow of Glenfarclas. He’d found the second Waterford glass on eBay to partner with the one left intact after Francine had smashed the others in a fit of pique. He’d hated the symbolism of the solitary crystal piece. Luxury and elegance were pointless unless they were shared.

  “Is he okay?” Zol asked her.

  “He’s fine.”

  “There’s something on his mind.”

  “He is a thinker, Zol.”

  “It’s just that . . . well, he’s been a bit moody lately. Almost secretive.” And now spending time in his room with the door closed. He never used to do that.

  “He needs his space. They all do.”

  “I’m scared of the teen years. You know, after the undeclared war we witnessed this morning.”

  “Which, by the way, is worse than you think.”

  Shit. Was that possible? “What do you mean?”

  Colleen dug into her handbag and pulled out a plastic shopping bag. “Get me a newspaper, will you? Got something to show you. And it’s going to be messy.”

  Zol retrieved today’s Hamilton Spectator from the recycling box and spread it on the coffee table.

  “Perfect,” Colleen said. “I’ve been desperate to show you this all afternoon.”

  She dumped the contents of her shopping bag onto the newspaper, covering the table with squashed cigarette packs, fag ends, beer caps, and gum wrappers. The sunroom filled with the harsh smell of Native tobacco. Ringo Starr filled his head with an annoying chorus of “Yellow Submarine.” He’d never liked that track.

  When Ringo had finished, he asked her, “Where’d you get that stuff?”

  “The smoking den at the rear of the school.”

  “Erie Collegiate provides a smoking den? But Vorst told Natasha —”

  “It’s unofficial. And not on school property.” She described her discovery of the hangout behind the school, screened from view by a thicket of evergreens.

  She put down her drink and held up a small plastic box. Her eyes twinkled below her puzzled frown. Colleen was at her most radiant — well, almost — when facing a mystery. “Do you know what this is? I thought maybe it was for holding a deck of playing cards.”

  Zol took it, looked at it quickly, then laughed. “It’s for Rollies.”

  Her silvery earrings twisted and sparkled as she cocked her head. “And they would be . . . ?”

  “Cigarettes manufactured on the rez and sold in bulk. In Ziploc bags, two hundred at a time. People who smoke Rollies don’t go in for silver cigarette cases, so they carry a day’s worth of fags in a plastic box the size of a cigarette pack.” He took the box and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Like this. See?” The weight of the plastic against his chest felt like a violation. He yanked the disgusting thing out and tossed it on the table. He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Smokers buy a dozen or so bags of Rollies at a time, store them in the fridge, and take them out as they need them.”

  “The refrigerator?”

  “So they don’t go stale.” As if anyone could tell the difference between a fresh Rollie and a stale one.

  “Is it legal?”

  “To sell Rollies? Not the way the Natives do it. For starters, the Ziploc packaging breaks all the rules. And only fellow Natives are supposed to get them tax free. Status Indians are not required to pay taxes on tobacco, except for a token excise tax. Don’t forget, they invented the stuff.”

  “But most of the kids at Erie Collegiate are not Native.”

  “Of course not. It’s the biggest contraband game in the country. Billions-worth every year.”

  Colleen’s pupils widened. “Anyone can purchase Native smokes tax free?”

  “The government estimates that forty percent of the cigarettes smoked in Ontario come from Native reserves. Unburdened by government regulations, inspection, or taxes.” A memo to the health units from the Ministry had reported a rate even higher among teen smokers.

  “How much do they cost?”

  “Rollies? Bought on the reserve? Ten dollars for two hundred cigarettes. Some shops throw in an additional twenty per bag.”

  He watched her doing the math in her head. Her amazement was obvious. “That’s about a dollar for twenty-five cigarettes.”

  “Less than a cup of coffee, and ten times cheaper than premium, name brand smokes in an off-reserve store. They’re made in clandestine factories that make no pretence of legitimacy.”

  “Extraordinary. How do you know all this?”

  “Dad harps about it all the time. He may have given up tobacco farming, but he’s still plenty pissed that the industry is forced to struggle on an uneven playing field where only the brand-name companies have to follow the rules. As Dad says, the tobacco pirates do whatever they like.”

  “Where do these pirates have their factories? In China, like practically everything else?”

  “No, no. Right here. Grand Basin Reserve. The tobacco is locally grown and purchased under the table from willing farmers glad to have a ready market.” He put his finger beside his nose. “Cash only. Undeclared farm income. No worries about income taxes, quotas, or a tobacco-grower’s licence.”

  He pointed to the two empty Hat-Trick packs she’d dumped from the bag. “D’you know what a hat-trick is?”

  “For goodness sake, Zol. I know my hockey terms. I earned my Canadian citizenship, remember?”

  “Sorry,” he said, his face reddening. “The Hat-Tricks are made on the reserve too. Supposedly higher quality than Rollies. Still local tobacco, but maybe better leaves and fewer floor sweepings. Not quite as harsh on the throat, but little government inspection or quality control of the factories that produce them.”

  “The packaging makes them look like normal cigarettes. Are they more expensive?”

  “Hat-Tricks are two or three times the price of Rollies, but a terrific bargain all the same.”

  “And tax free?”

  “Almost, but not quite. The Native producers of the nicely packaged cigarettes have an arrangement with the federal government. They collect the small excise tax the law says everyone, Native and non-Native, has to pay.” He picked up a Hat-Trick pack and showed it to her. “See, that’s the excise stamp they put on every pack. It keeps the feds happy and lets everyone delude themselves into thinking they’ve bought fully taxed cigarettes at a bargain-basement price.”

  “Only they haven’t?”

  “Not even close. Anyone without a Certificate of Indian Status has to pay all the other federal and provincial taxes — amounting to about fifty dollars a carton — whether they purchase cigarettes on or off a reserve.”

  Zol sipped his Glenfarclas. It slipped down his throat like warm honey. “Native smoke-shop operators figure they’re doing business on sovereign territory, where they refuse to collect taxes on behalf of a f
oreign government. They leave it up to the non-Native buyers to own up and pay the various taxes owing when they leave the rez.”

  “Could honest smokers do that, pay the taxes due, if they wanted to?”

  “That’s the rub. The taxes are complicated and multi-layered. And different in every province. There are federal excise duties, federal tobacco taxes, provincial tobacco taxes, federal goods and services taxes, provincial sales taxes. Even if you wanted to be a model citizen, where would you go to pay the taxes on that carton of smokes you purchased on the rez?”

  He pictured a guy with five bags of Rollies in one hand and a wad of ten-dollar bills in the other, standing in line with people renewing their drivers’ licences.

  “And of course,” he continued, “the police don’t set up checkpoints at the exits to the reserve and confiscate smokes from non-Natives as they drive out.”

  There were many reasons for such inaction on the part of the police. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for starters. You couldn’t go searching people and their cars without a good reason. And a warrant.

  “Can you imagine the hue and cry,” he said, “if the police set up road blocks outside every Native reserve in the country?”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me. Every reserve in the country?”

  “Sure, smokes get shipped by the millions from cigarette factories in large reserves like Grand Basin to tiny reserves located in every nook and cranny of the country.”

  “Rollies and Hat-Tricks are sold coast to coast?”

  “Yep. In any of the six hundred First Nations reserves across the country. Quite the network, eh? Sort of like Walmart. Cheap Smokes R Us.”

  Colleen gathered her evidence and swept it back into her bag. “My God, this stuff stinks.”

  He dipped his nose into his glass and breathed deeply, erasing the stench of tobacco and stale mint. He closed his eyes and Joni Mitchell sang softly in his ears, “A Case of You.” Sometimes, Joni was the best part of two fingers of Glenfarclas. He savoured a deep drink.

  “But it gets worse,” he told her. “A good portion of the tobacco trade originating from reserves isn’t controlled by Natives.”

  “Do I want to hear this?”

  “No one knows what really goes on, but my dad and the other tobacco farmers are convinced that the factories making most of the Rollies on Grand Basin are operated by Asian gangs.”

  Colleen swirled the ice in her Amarula and stared into the glass for a long time. Finally, she took a sip. “I suppose that makes sense. The Asians put up the start-up money, pay the local Natives a royalty, and reap most of the profits.”

  “Yep. Most of the local guys in the Rollies trade are factory owners in name only. They could never finance such a large operation or have access to the expanded off-reserve market.”

  “Off reserve?”

  “Korean and Middle Eastern convenience stores that sell rez cigarettes under the counter. And pushers hanging around schoolyards and welfare offices. Even when middlemen take their cuts, Native smokes are way cheaper than the brand names.”

  “And what about the Hat-Tricks? Controlled by Asians as well?”

  Zol shook his head and told her how the best of the packaged cigarettes were made by Watershed Holdings, an outfit owned entirely by a Native guy named Dennis Badger. “He’s a smart fellow. Well, cunning’s more like it. And now insanely rich.”

  “You know him?”

  “He was a year ahead of me in high school. That’s where he started calling himself the Badger.”

  “Tough guy?”

  “No more than the other kids from Grand Basin who got bussed to our school from the reserve.”

  “How well did they get along with the Whites?” Colleen asked.

  “Hard to say. They mostly kept to themselves. But they did make our hockey team the regional powerhouse.”

  “Which was good for their currency on campus?”

  “Never thought about it that way at the time, but I guess you’re right.”

  “Was he a good student?”

  “Heck, Colleen. It was a long time ago.”

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to put the story together.”

  “You and Hamish. It’s always about the story.”

  “Most certainly. The answer is embedded in the narrative.” She held his gaze. “Well, what sort of a student was he?”

  “Can’t say I noticed. But like a lot of the Native kids, he left school early. Didn’t think it was worthwhile graduating. But that didn’t hurt him.” He shuddered at the image of Dennis Badger twenty years earlier, swanning around in a tee-shirt that showed four rifle-carrying Natives above a caption that warned, HOMELAND SECURITY: FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492. The slogan seemed clever until you realized that guys like the Badger were serious about the guns and the retribution.

  “He went back to night school, then to college. Got a diploma in business. And now he owns one of the largest tobacco companies on the continent. With huge markets overseas.”

  “There’s an international market for low-quality cigarettes?”

  “Make them cheap enough, no one cares about the quality of the smoke. Still the same nicotine hit. One of Dennis Badger’s biggest customers is the German Army.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Exclusive contract. Europeans love strong tobacco. Ever smoke a Gauloises?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What would it take to shut it all down?”

  “A major catastrophe that neither the police nor the politicians could ignore.”

  “Is that what we’re facing here?” she said, gesturing to her bagful of evidence.

  CHAPTER 12

  Zol threw the door open to his Simcoe office the next morning and set his Starbucks mug on the desk beside the keyboard. When given a choice, he avoided the American monolith, but the mug was a Christmas present from Max, well insulated, and brimming with a competitor’s Ethiopian blend. His second hit of the day. The Detour’s eager barista promised he’d roasted the beans at six-thirty this morning. Where else could you get coffee brewed with beans a mere two hours out of the roaster? At least there was one upside to this Simcoe secondment.

  He removed the lid from the travel mug and breathed the aroma. As soon as the java tickled his nostrils, Céline did her thing with “My Heart Will Go On.” He took several swallows, savoured each one, and tried to remember the tasting notes chalked on the blackboard at the Detour Café. Hazelnut? Cherry? Dark chocolate?

  His eyes caught the front page the Simcoe Reformer. Nancy, the keen-to-please secretary assigned to him, placed a copy of the community rag on his desk every morning as a way of introducing him to local issues. Two stories dominated today’s headlines. The mystery liver illness killing students at Erie Christian Collegiate had local doctors stumped and families begging for answers.

  In the second story, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations was blaming the loss of irreplaceable Iroquois artifacts on the deplorably lax security at the Royal Ontario Museum. It wasn’t just Zol’s loon pipe that had been stolen. Among other artifacts missing were a pair of ball-headed, black walnut clubs, a wooden walking stick featuring an intricately carved human face, and an iron-bladed tomahawk that doubled as a pipe.

  Was he doing the right thing by hiding the stolen loon’s mate in Colleen’s safety deposit box? She’d told him to put the bird out of his mind, but the damned thing might get more incriminating the longer he kept it to himself. Maybe there would never be a good time to present it to the authorities, and the loon would hang forever around his neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.

  He scoured the first story for signs of dissatisfaction with the health unit’s handling of the liver outbreak. So far, the honeymoon in Simcoe was holding. But he knew it wouldn’t last long. Any more deaths, another couple of days with
no answers, and the public would be ripping him apart. He opened the letters-to-the-editor section, usually a frank source of public opinion. Nothing about the liver outbreak, but there was one about the ROM bombing. The writer speculated that the RCMP should head straight for Grand Basin Reserve if they were serious about finding the artifacts and the murderers. Yeah, like that that was going to happen. Surprised that the Reformer had printed such an overtly anti-Native letter, he gulped his coffee and mentally shook his head.

  The phone rang on his desk, surprising him once again with its Big Ben chime, the ringtone set up by the previous MOH. He wouldn’t have chosen Big Ben, but found it wasn’t as jarring as a regular ring and a nice touch for someone who hated the phone as much as he did.

  “Yes, Nancy,” he said.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Szabo, but I think you’re going to want to take this.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Dr. Hitchin. He’s calling from Emergency at Simcoe General.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He’s very upset.”

  “More students from Erie Collegiate?”

  “Please, will you talk to him?”

  “Of course,” he said, feigning confidence while his gut did a backflip. “Put him on.”

  “Dr. Szabo?” said a male voice, sounding somewhere between twenty and fifty. “John Hitchin here.”

  “I understand you’ve got something for me.”

  “It’s spreading.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That liver thing.”

  Here it came. “Really? How many?”