Up in Smoke

by Ross Pennie

“Max? Something wrong?”

  “I can’t sleep.” Max took one step into the bedroom and stopped, his hands at his sides. Standing there in his Star Pirates pyjamas, he looked vulnerable. And worried. Not frightened or angry, but anxious. His face showed the same concerned expression as the other evening when Zol had stupidly blown him off.

  Zol tapped the duvet beside him. “Come sit with me. Tell me a story. That might make you sleepy.”

  Max marched into the room and crawled onto the bed. He didn’t burrow down and he didn’t want to snuggle. He sat cross-legged on top of the duvet at the foot of the bed, his hands on his knees, his face set for business. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried again. Not a word. He bit his lower lip and gazed at his toes.

  What was he being shy about? He was never shy. Art Greenwood, Max’s great-grandfather, a polished gentleman himself, said the boy was the most serenely confident youngster he’d ever encountered. Of course Art was biased, but a good judge of character all the same.

  Was this about the facts of life? Was Zol going to have the birds-and-bees talk with his ten-year-old son at ten-thirty on a Thursday night, ten days before Halloween? Why not? The parenting magazines said you were supposed to talk to your kids about love and sex when they gave you the entrée. It wasn’t like the old days when Zol had learned most of it at the hockey arena from the grossly misinformed older boys. But surely Max was already a man of the world when it came to sexual plumbing. They’d covered it in health class last year, and he’d come home with a number of matter-of-fact questions that Zol had done his best to answer. On the other hand, romantic love was a complicated topic. Max would have plenty of questions about that for decades to come. Hell, Zol certainly did.

  “Maybe I should start, then,” Zol said. He closed his book and tossed it onto the bedside table. “When your mother and I decided it was time —”

  “Really, Dad? You mean it?” said Max. His eyes were as wide as hockey pucks. “Francine can come for a sleepover when she comes for her conference in Toronto?”

  “What? Max? How? I mean . . .” He had no idea how to start this conversation.

  “Can she, Dad?” Max had his hands together. He was praying, for God’s sake. Where had he learned that? “Please, please, please?”

  Zol wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and took a deep breath. He patted the bedclothes beside him and said, “Come and sit here. I need you right next to me.”

  Max leapt over the covers and snuggled close. “She says she can come for two days and one night. Isn’t that great?”

  “How . . . ? How do you know about her conference?”

  “She told me.”

  “Francine phoned you? Told you she was coming to Toronto?”

  “She lives in Cambodia, Dad. And her name isn’t Francine anymore, it’s Soksang. It means peace. And she doesn’t have a phone. Her religion doesn’t believe in them. Isn’t that cool?” He jumped off the bed and raced out of the room. “Be right back.”

  In a flash, he returned with a heavy book under his arm. He pounced into Zol’s lap and in the process nearly bashed him in the balls with the National Geographic atlas. “Hey, careful with those, bud. A guy only gets one set, you know. They have to last a lifetime.”

  Oblivious to anything but the atlas that Art Greenwood had given him last Christmas, Max turned to a page he’d flagged with a bookmark. A detailed map of Indochina: Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. He pointed to a smudge roughly in the middle of Cambodia. Chocolatey fingers had been here before. “That’s where she lives. Siem Reap. It’s near a big lake.”

  “How do you know that?” Zol didn’t even know where she lived. All he knew was that her last phone call had come from Cambodia and that she’d changed religions.

  “She doesn’t believe in normal clothes or hair that you have to brush and comb. She loves being bald.”

  “I thought you said she doesn’t have a phone.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “How do you talk to her, then?”

  “We write.”

  He had to process this. His ten-year-old son, who to his knowledge had never spoken to his mother since she stormed out of the house when he was an infant, was now communicating with her across the world? Email and the Internet made almost anything possible. But this was a total shock. How long had it been going on? And why didn’t he know about it?

  “Francine . . . um, your mother . . . has access to a computer?”

  “She doesn’t believe in them.”

  “No?” It seemed Francine didn’t believe in a lot of things. “So how do you communicate?”

  Again, Max jumped off the bed and ran to his room. Zol heard doors banging and things clunking on the floor. This time, Max padded back with a shoebox. He was holding it reverently in front of him with both hands, like a communion chalice.

  He climbed back onto the bed, assumed the Buddha position, and held the box in his lap. His left hand, though spastic from birth, had been given the job of guarding the lid. His right index finger wiggled high in the air as he enquired, “Are your hands clean, Dad? These are very special.” He had Hamish down to a tee.

  “Um . . . yes, I think so.”

  “Lemme see.”

  He showed Max his hands, front and back.

  Max shook his head. “Sorry. Not good enough. Soap and warm water, please. And dry them properly.” Like father, like son. That hand cleanliness thing had actually stuck. Who knew?

  Zol set his jaw to maintain an earnest face he hoped matched Max’s and washed his hands in the ensuite bathroom. He made a modest show of drying them thoroughly, taking care not to overdo it. There was no way he was going to trivialize this delicate moment by mocking his son.

  Max nodded his approval of the hand washing and invited Zol to sit beside him. He opened the box, no more than a crack, and stole a peek inside as if to be certain the precious contents were still in prime condition. And then he removed the lid, cradled the box in his lap, and beamed with pride.

  Zol sniffed the air. He half-expected to see a furry pet jump onto the bed and scurry under the duvet. A gerbil or a white rat. But there was no smell of wood chips. No urine or feces. Had Max been collecting beetles or butterflies on the sly all summer? No, Francine hated bugs of any kind; he wouldn’t be collecting them for her. And there was none of that earthy smell insects carried with them. Just the faintest smell of lavender.

  “May I have a look?” Zol asked.

  “Yes, but don’t touch yet. You have to hold them in a special way. I’ll show you first.”

  Zol directed the reading lamp into the shoebox for a better view. The box was almost half full of picture postcards, all about equal size, but varying in style, subject, and quality. It took Zol a moment to realize what they were. Max had stacked them into four groups, image side up, and now he reached in with his favoured right hand and gingerly lifted one by the edge. He clamped his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated.

  “Hold it like that, Dad, okay?” he said, handing the card to Zol without touching the glossy surface.

  “I got it,” Zol said, and followed Max’s instructions. In his hand was an elaborate stone temple surrounded by lush jungle. The place looked like somewhere famous he should recognize. He didn’t have to look far for the answer. It was written in bold blue letters in the bottom right corner: Angkor Wat Temple.

  “May I read it?”

  “Yep. Turn it over. That one’s got a wicked stamp. And my name and everything. It’s from . . . you’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Hamish placed the three shopping bags of contraband into the back of the minivan. Before he’d stepped out of the smoke shop, he’d got Colleen to check there were no cop cars hanging around. Now he stood back. No good. Anyone could see the bags from the outside of the vehicle and guess what they contained. What if Colleen
got dinged for speeding, or they ran into one of those clampdowns on drunk driving where the cops stop every car and gawk inside? The OPP would find all those smokes, for sure.

  He spotted a greasy blanket and a pair of booster cables in the pile of crap Zol always kept in his vehicle. This thing hadn’t seen a carwash in a year. And the rear licence plate was missing. Granted, this was only a minivan, but Zol should be more respectful of his vehicle.

  Hamish placed the blanket over the bags and secured it with the cables. He stood back again and looked at his handiwork. It would do.

  “What are you doing, Hamish?” Colleen called from the driver’s seat. “Sampling the merchandise? I thought you were hungry.”

  He closed the cargo door and climbed in beside her. “I am starved. How did you know?”

  She started the engine and made a three-point turn. “Remember, I observe people for a living too.”

  “Come on, how did you know? Lucky guess?”

  “Does your stomach always growl as loudly as it has for the past half-hour?”

  “Touché. I haven’t eaten all day. What I wouldn’t give for a pizza. Bacon, mushroom, and green pepper.”

  “I know just the spot.”

  She threw the minivan into Drive and turned left. Right would have taken them back to the highway.

  He didn’t like the look of this. There were no street lights, the moon was barely a sliver, and she was heading deeper into the rez. “Hey. Where’re we going? Let’s get out of here. Forget the pizza.”

  “This is the safest place in the world for your contraband. You can be certain no one on the rez will look at it twice. Especially not the members of the Grand Basin Police.”

  His stomach betrayed him by growling again.

  Colleen threw him an understanding smile. She looked like Cameron Diaz in a ponytail, and had a way of making you feel that everything would be fine no matter what. Zol was a lucky guy. Max too. But what was Zol waiting for? He should have proposed to her by now. Maybe he had, and they were keeping it quiet.

  “Iroquois Pizza is only a few minutes up the road,” she told him. “In the heart of the village.”

  “It better be worth it.”

  “No worries there. I’ve had their pizza during a couple of all-night stake-outs.”

  “Do I want to know the gory details?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

  Ten minutes later, they left the dark, semi-wooded countryside and entered the village of Grand Basin, a crossroads of low-wattage street lamps lighting an assortment of two-storey buildings arranged in strip malls. There’d been no attempt to coordinate the architecture or the paint jobs, and nothing looked particularly new or prosperous.

  They passed a mobile home with a sign out front that said GRAND BASIN WELFARE AND INNOVATIONS OFFICE. Colleen turned right into the strip mall beyond it. She parked directly in front of Iroquois Pizza, the only place along this stretch with the lights on. It was a small takeout joint, flanked by the Ancestral Voices Healing Centre on one side and Grand Basin Counselling Services on the other. A large sign in front of the counselling place listed a sad but impressive array of services available: men’s addiction program, women’s addiction program, domestic violence advocacy, sexual assault counselling, emergency shelter.

  They got out of the vehicle and Hamish looked around. Across the street, beyond a parking lot that looked like it should have been repaved a decade ago, stood a long, boxy building that had been probably thrown up by a government agency. It housed the Taking Care of Our Own Social Services Centre, the Grand Basin Housing Centre, the First Nations Nursing Clinic, and the Free Legal Clinic. Down the road about a hundred metres, a well-lit sign marked the entrance to Healing Hands Dialysis Centre and Nursing Home. It seemed the small population living here required a lot of support. The reasons behind that would fill an encyclopedia.

  They ordered a large bacon pizza to go and waited at one of two tables across from the counter. A grizzled guy with one milky eye turned blindly outward was sitting — and swaying — at the other table, muttering to himself. His good eye oscillated between the half-empty bottle of Coke and the pack of Hat-Tricks in front of him. He didn’t touch either, just kept fidgeting with the disposable lighter in his fist. The two cooks behind the counter paid the man no attention. Did he ever order a pizza, or did he simply come in here to get out of the cold when they tossed him out of the shelter?

  Hamish was so famished that the smell of roasted garlic and freshly baked pizza dough was driving him crazy. Colleen raised her eyebrows each time his stomach growled, but they didn’t talk. They were outsiders here, and both knew that at times like this you held your tongue and waited patiently for your pizza.

  Finally, it was ready. As he paid the bill, he noticed that the amount owing was $10.99, exactly what the sign on the counter said it would be. Anywhere else, there would have been an additional dollar and a half in unadvertised taxes courtesy of two levels of government.

  They each ate a slice at the table, then Colleen suggested they bring the rest to the car. It seemed Zol wouldn’t mind if they added to the patina of food already adorning the minivan’s upholstery.

  Outside, two heavyset guys in their twenties were leaning against a Silverado, waiting for them. Hamish stiffened. He held the pizza box in front of his chest. He knew it looked lame and was useless as a shield or a weapon. Still, he found himself holding it like a lifebuoy. He glanced at Colleen. He would take his cue from her. She’d know whether these guys were thugs, undercover cops, or a couple of nice fellows asking for . . . for what?

  Directions?

  No, they looked like locals, and when the shorter guy spoke it was clear he was from the reserve. “Hey,” he said, looking up at the tiny moon and the cloudless sky. “Nice night, eh?”

  “Certainly is,” said Colleen. “What do you think, will we get some frost before Halloween?”

  Both men looked her up and down, then glanced at each other as a glint of recognition — and appreciation — lit their deep-set eyes. Wouldn’t they love to have their way with Cameron Diaz. Hamish’s pulse shot up twenty-five points as he spread his feet and held his ground.

  The shorter guy turned to him. “Did yous spend all your money in there?”

  “Um . . . no. Just picked up a pizza. Bacon and mushroom.” He waved the pizza box to indicate what he was talking about. Then felt foolish again.

  Colleen gave him a look, as if he’d said the wrong thing. But it was too late. He couldn’t take it back. Now these thugs knew he still had cash in his pocket. But would they actually rob him on the brightly lit sidewalk in front of a wide-open pizza place?

  “Thought yous might be interested in a deal, that’s all,” said the shorter guy. He had thick spiky hair cut by an amateur into a modern version of a Mohawk. And an eagle tattoo on the side of his neck.

  Colleen stepped in close beside Hamish. “Don’t think so,” she said.

  “It’s just that we got this TV. Belongs to a buddy a’ ours, eh? He don’t want it no more and it’s practically brand new.”

  “Yeah,” said the other man. “It’s a forty-inch. Flat screen. HD ’n’ everything.”

  “Yours for two-fifty.” The shorter guy jerked his thumb toward the Silverado. “Got it right here. Only take a sec to load it from the truck to your minivan.”

  “No thanks,” Hamish said, the pizza box growing increasingly hot in his hands. The cloying smell of bacon was now nauseating. “I don’t have that much cash.”

  “That’s okay,” said the first guy. He took a step forward and nodded toward the pizza place. “They got a ATM in there. Always lotsa cash inside it. How ’bout an even two hundred?”

  Hamish exchanged glances with Colleen. She gave him a look that said he should walk to the car now and get in. “Thanks, anyway,” he said, relieved to hear the door locks clunk open in res
ponse to her key fob.

  They hopped in, and she locked the doors. She made another of her three-point turns, but instead of turning east toward the city on Side Road 4, she turned west.

  His heart rate jumped another ten points. “Where are we going now?”

  “Eat your pizza. You’ll feel better. And ready for one final adventure before I drop you back at Canadian Tire.”

  Ten minutes later, they were well out in the countryside, but still on the rez. He hadn’t seen a smoke shop since they’d left the village. He placed the pizza box at his feet. He couldn’t face the last two slices. He’d had his fill of greasy bacon.

  He wiped his hands on a paper serviette and tossed it into the box. “Okay, so I’ve had my supper. Now will you tell me where we’re going?”

  “Up here on the left. But I’ll turn right and we can have a look at the operation from there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I found this place this morning when I was doing my reconnaissance. It must be a Rollies factory. I saw four Asian men pull out in an S-Class sedan. Dark suits.”

  “How do you know it’s not one of Badger’s operations?”

  “His place is two roads over. Same sort of shiny new buildings with no windows. But much bigger. At least half a dozen eighteen-wheeler lorries parked in the lot. And a helicopter pad to the side.”

  “Dennis Badger has a private helicopter?”

  “And a business jet parked at Hamilton Airport. He keeps one of those narrow, extraordinarily fast speedboats on Lake Erie.”

  “A cigarette boat?”

  She shrugged. “I guess that’s fitting.”

  “I used to love watching them race off Toronto Island when I was a kid. They make a heck of a lot of noise.”

  “Seems he’s not afraid to advertise his money, or his business. He’s posted a large Watershed Holdings sign on the front gate of his Hat-Trick factory, next to the Restricted Entry warning. The Rollies people are more subtle.”

  As he was coming to understand it, the Rollies guys made no pretence of being anything but outlaws. There’d be no sign in front of their operations. But probably as much security, maybe more.