Up in Smoke

by Ross Pennie

  It had taken all day to set up this meeting with Dennis Badger. The tobacco don kept himself guarded by layers of administrative armour. No one at Badger’s Watershed Holdings appeared concerned that the region’s medical officer of health needed to speak with Mr. Badger on a matter of the utmost importance. Clearly, the Native cigarette enterprise didn’t know what to do with a call from a government official; it seemed they’d never heard of the Federal Tobacco Act of 1997, which said inspectors may enter any place in which they believe a tobacco product is manufactured.

  Zol had finally given up on Watershed Holdings and phoned the office of the chief of Grand Basin Reserve. The secretary, speaking in flat-toned monosyllables, agreed to ask Chief Falcon to return Zol’s call “sometime later today.” Surprisingly, the Chief called back in under an hour and agreed to do his best to contact Mr. Badger and see whether he might be available.

  Several more phone calls and a couple of emails made it clear that the Badger was reluctant to cooperate, but then something changed his mind and he agreed to a meeting. Zol asked for a venue outside the rez, but the Badger was insistent: the chief’s office on the reserve. Clearly, even the medical officer of health who had attended Simcoe Composite High School with the Badger would not be permitted entry to the holy of holies at Watershed Holdings.

  And now, as Zol turned off the highway onto Side Road 4, he was greeted by the colony of ragtag smoke shops that crowded the entrances of so many reserves. Looking like they’d dropped from the sky onto an undeveloped section of bush were Aunt Minnie’s Tiny Smoke Shop, Grand Basin Smokes, Log Cabin Qwik Mart, Smoke Depot, Smokes R Us, and two scruffy shops whose signs he couldn’t make out. He smiled inwardly at the thought of the fastidious Dr. Wakefield perusing the shelves of Smoke Depot last night and being shocked at the blatant volume of contraband smokes on offer.

  Ten minutes later, he reached the centre of the village and drove past the Counselling Services, the Ancestral Voices Healing Centre, and the Healing Hands Dialysis Centre. Two blocks along, he spotted the brand new Dennis Badger Arena. With the blue-and-gold helicopter parked on its roof, the flood-lit structure was impossible to miss. He turned right at the sign for the Grand Basin Band Council and steered toward the new, two-storey box whose brickwork and trim matched the arena looming beside it.

  Inside, he stopped at a waist-high counter running the length of an open office. Behind it were two desks, a photocopier, several filing cabinets, and a couple of computers with the usual peripherals.

  A Native woman, seated at one of the desks, ignored him until he cleared his throat to catch her attention. The look she gave him suggested there must be dog shit clinging to his shoes. “Yes?”

  He sniffed and checked his brogues. Clean soles and shiny uppers. Ermalinda made sure of that. “Dr. Szabo. From the health unit. Chief Falcon is expecting me.”

  She nodded toward the small waiting area to his right. “If you want, you can have a seat.”

  He sat there for twenty minutes, wishing he’d stopped at the Detour after all. Twice, he took out a loonie but pocketed it immediately. Never let them see you sweat.

  He looked at his watch and for the thousandth time felt grateful for Ermalinda. When he’d called home to say he had an unscheduled meeting and wouldn’t be back until well after supper, she’d replied with her characteristic, “You do whatever you have to do, Dr. Zol. Me and Max, we take care of things here. You drive safe.” The stars had been perfectly aligned that day, now nine years ago, when she’d walked into their lives. To call her a nanny didn’t begin to describe the vital role she played in their household.

  “Okay, Doctor,” the woman called from behind the counter. Without leaving her seat, she indicated a dimly lit hallway to his left. “First door. On the right.”

  The brass doorplate said Chief Robert Falcon. Zol felt his heart rate accelerate about twenty beats. His stomach felt as if he’d stuffed it with a potful of cold porridge.

  He knocked and heard some sort of muffled response. He knocked again, waited for a moment, then walked in. No posse. Just two men standing in the middle of the generously sized office drinking from Tim Hortons cups. Beside a large desk stood a Native man in his forties — thick dark hair, cut short, classic smooth round cheeks high in his face, a few thin whiskers struggling to sprout on his chin. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Standing in front of a small sofa was Dennis Badger, looking much better dressed than he had in high school. He was as tall as Zol and a good forty pounds heavier. His white dress shirt looked fresh and crisp beneath a charcoal waistcoat in what looked like fine Italian wool. His dress pants were cut from the same material, and he was wearing a handsome deerskin jacket. The perfectly tailored garment had a touch of fringe along the shoulders and hand-laced trim outlining the collar. A narrow band of beading accented each cuff, and three deer antler buttons finished off the front. It was exquisite, obviously Native, and anything but folksy.

  “Well, well,” said the Badger, his steel-blue eyes surveying Zol from head to toe. “Zollie Szabo.” He swept the pinstripe fabric of his made-to-measure trousers with the back of his hand. “We clean up well, eh?”

  Zol shook the Badger’s outstretched hand, then turned to the chief and said pointedly, “Dr. Zol Szabo, from the health department.” No one had called him Zollie since high school. Well, sometimes his parents. “We spoke on the phone.”

  The chief nodded and mumbled something Zol didn’t catch.

  The Badger took a seat on the sofa and invited Zol and the chief to each grab a chair. “Now, what’s all this about? You didn’t come all this way just to admire my jacket.” He lifted his eyebrows, paused, then cracked a slight smile. “Dr. Szabo?”

  Where to begin? Though he’d rehearsed in the car on the way over, he felt flustered. He told himself to take a page from Hamish’s book and lay out the facts one by one. But he’d leave out the professorial finger and the Oscar Wilde flourishes.

  He proceeded step by step. The string of liver failures. The agonizing wait for organ donors. The deaths. The undeniable link to rez tobacco and the need to stop its sales and shipments until they figured out what was wrong and how to fix it.

  When he’d finished, the Badger looked almost amused. And certainly sceptical. The big man put his hands together — was that the shine of lacquer on his nails? — and summarized what he’d heard. “So . . . you put two and two together, and because you got no proof, you get five. And then . . .” His eyes looked like he was ready to shoot fire out of them. “. . . and then you expect me to bring my multimillion-dollar operation to a standstill?”

  Zol swallowed hard. “The proof will come, Mr. Badger. Though it might take some time to show exactly what extremely toxic substance has contaminated your tobacco.”

  “This is another stunt, isn’t it?” said the Badger, his face rigid. “Another attempt to shut us down. We kept the feds happy by letting them license our factory, and then complying with all their foolish labelling regulations.” He looked at the chief as if summoning official validation. “And we pay their excise tax on our cigarettes, like everyone else.” He slapped his thigh. “But you guys still aren’t satisfied.”

  “No, that’s not it. Not at all.”

  “Come on — I know you got sent here by a government looking for more money. Which one was it this time? The feds? The provincials? Or all the fuckers together?”

  “No, Dennis, please. I came here because we’ve both got to do the right thing. Before any more young people die of whatever it is that’s destroying their livers.”

  “I don’t buy it. You were sent here to put the damned Indians in their place. Stick them in their teepees with no visible means of support and criticize them when they get drunk out of boredom and low self-esteem.”

  The chief, who’d barely moved a muscle until now, stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pointed out the window. “See th
at arena? Built with tobacco profits. Dennis Badger gives back to our reserves ten times what the government steals from us with their excise tax.”

  The Badger smiled at the chief, managing to look defiant and proud and insincere, all at the same time. “And don’t forget about my three hundred employees here on Grand Basin. That’s three hundred families off the welfare rolls.” He reached into his jacket and tossed a pack of cigarettes onto the coffee table in front of him. “Here,” he told Zol, “have a look at this. And, goddammit, tell me what you see.”

  Zol picked it up. It was an unopened pack of Hat-Tricks. Canada Duty Paid was written on the cellophane wrapper. “Well, it’s a pack of twenty-five cigarettes. King-Size. Filter-tip. There’s a Health Canada Warning about impotence —”

  “In both English and French. Go on.”

  Zol turned the pack over in his hands, summarizing out loud the notices printed on every surface. “There’s a bilingual list of the toxic emissions, a notice that they’re made by Native enterprises on Native territories, a declaration that says ‘FOR SALE ON NATIVE TERRITORIES,’ and a DUTY-PAID stamp. Did I miss anything?”

  Badger grabbed the pack from Zol’s hand and pointed to an outside edge. “Read this. Go on, read it.”

  “The Original Tobacco Traders.”

  “That’s us. For two thousand years. Get it?”

  This wasn’t the time to quibble, not the time to point out that although these Native-made cigarettes seemed to follow the letter of most of the federal tobacco laws, they were only semi-legit. Without saying it in so many words, these smokes purported to be for sale only to Natives on their reserves. But anyone, Native or non-Native, even minors, could buy them and avoid the hefty sales and tobacco taxes the law said was payable by non-Natives. And of course, the tobacco in them was purchased under the table from the local growers at bargain prices, and no government inspector ever ventured inside the factories that produced them.

  “Dennis, the tobacco laws and taxes are not my concern. If it weren’t for this liver thing, you could sell cigarettes to anyone who wanted them at any price, and I wouldn’t care.”

  The Badger looked surprised. No government official would’ve ever told him they didn’t care about lost taxes. His features hardened. “You’re playing with me, Szabo. It has come to my attention that some visitors attempted to make a late-night inspection at one of my fellow enterprises. Know anything about that?”

  Zol felt sick. Colleen and Hamish had been seen. The sweat trickled down the back of his neck as it dawned on him. They’d been spooked by the cube vans and AK-47s at a Rollies factory, not at Dennis’s Hat-Trick operation. The Badger’s ties to the Asian gangs were more intimate than Zol had imagined. Though Dennis Badger played the role of the ultra-successful businessman running a legitimate international operation he called Watershed Holdings, maybe he was also a criminal kingpin, as deep into the Rollies as the Asians. Hell, was he their boss?

  “You can’t hide from me, Szabo. You White guys show every one of your emotions on your faces. Including guilt. It was you or your cronies sneaking around last night. You can’t deny it.”

  No wonder the Badger had been able to parlay a noxious weed into an empire. The guy had savvy to burn.

  The sweat was now pouring into the back of Zol’s shirt. “I’m . . . I’m greatly concerned about the liver epidemic. We have to stop it. You and I.”

  The Badger frowned and waved his hand. “There’s nothing wrong with my tobacco. Find some other scapegoat for your liver plague.”

  “I’m not looking for a scapegoat, Dennis. I’m here about the lives of real people. Firefighters, for God’s sake. And high school kids.”

  Dennis stood and gazed out the window toward his namesake arena. He stroked his chin. After a while, he turned, appeared to contemplate the Hat-Trick pack on the coffee table, then said, “You said firefighters and school kids?”

  Zol nodded.

  “No one else out of the thousands of people who smoke my cigarettes?”

  “So far.”

  “Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, Doctor Szabo. You’ve got more homework to do.” He stared through the window again, as if scrutinizing every rivet in his helicopter parked on the roof next door. “Tell you what. You show me proof it’s my tobacco that’s the problem. Give me real McCoy proof without any government bullshit. And then . . .” He hesitated, as if surprising himself with his own words. “And then . . .” He coughed into his fist. “Maybe we’ll talk.”

  Dennis drained the last of his coffee and set the cup on the table, then straightened the creases in his trousers and looked around the room as if signalling that the meeting was over.

  Zol stood up.

  “No, no. Don’t go, Zol. Please, not yet. Despite what you think, I’ve enjoyed our little reunion. And now it’s time to seal it with a traditional indulgence.”

  Zol sat down, too surprised by the Badger’s change in tone to say a word.

  Dennis took his seat and told the chief, “Bob, bring out the special pipe.” The chief gave Dennis an icy look that suggested he must be out of his mind.

  Dennis ignored the silent admonition and turned an unctuous smile on Zol. “A special pipe for a special occasion. It’s okay, Chief. Zol’s an old friend.”

  The chief shrugged and looked anything but happy. But he stood up, unlocked a drawer in his desk, and with both hands pulled out a wooden box. He presented it to Dennis with care bordering on reverence.

  Dennis set the box on the small table in front of him and pulled a leather tobacco pouch from his jacket. Zol felt himself smiling inside; Dad used to have a similar pouch, in the old days when he smoked cigarettes during the day and a pipe in the evenings. By the delicate aroma escaping from the Badger’s pouch, it was clear he didn’t smoke his own product.

  When Dennis went to place the tobacco on the table, he hesitated. It seemed the disposable coffee cup, now a piece of trash with ugly teeth marks on the chewed-up rim, was offensive to the upcoming ritual. Zol grabbed the cup, crushed it in his fist, and stashed it in his pocket.

  Dennis smiled as though he appreciated Zol’s gesture and the intuition behind it, and opened the lid of the finely crafted box. He reached inside with both hands. Whatever was nestling there made the Badger’s pupils widen as he touched it.

  He lifted his hands and concealed what lay on his palm by cupping one fist over the other. “Of course, you’ve held this little fellow before. I remember when you found him.”

  Zol felt like he’d been kicked in the solar plexus. No, it couldn’t be. Even the Badger wouldn’t be that bold.

  Dennis Badger opened his hands and beamed a huge, beatific smile. “See? It took him a long time, but he’s made the trip back home. I believe the biologists call that nest-site fidelity.”

  CHAPTER 24

  It was almost eight when Zol threw the minivan into park and hit the button to close the garage door behind him. Ermalinda greeted him at the door with a smile and helped him out of his blazer. Her face went from round and sunny to flat and serious as she sensed his mood. He used to feel guilty that she treated him with such gracious deference, making him feel like the village squire coming home to his butler. But she was so sincere, so genuine in her love — yes, it felt like love — for Max and him, that he’d stopped feeling guilty long ago. After all, the love — at the least the deep respect and appreciation — was returned in spades. By both Max and him.

  “Your supper, it in the fridge, Dr. Zol. That chicken curry you made, I cook basmati to go with it. Ready for the microwave. Sorry . . . Max, he finish the naan. Just one piece left anyway.”

  “Thanks, Ermalinda. Sounds great.” He glanced out the window. It was dark, and had been all the way back from the rez. “Let me drive you to the bus.”

  “You tired.” She looked at her watch. “It still early. And the bus, it come in ten minutes. I’ll
be fine.” She pulled off her apron. “Mr. Art, he call. Asking if you coming for brunch.” Her dark eyes danced in their sockets. “He say be sure bring Miss Colleen.”

  “Is it this Sunday?”

  “Yes. Day after tomorrow. Twelve-thirty.” She’d added administrative assistant to her duties and knew his schedule by heart.

  “I’ll call him.”

  Brunch once a month at Camelot Lodge with Francine’s irrepressible grandfather had become a tradition. But this tobacco-versus-liver case threatened to consume every second of the weekend. At the table would be Art Greenwood, his girlfriend Betty, and their friend Phyllis, who peppered her conversation with Latin swear words. He hated to miss them. The silvery threesome, full of charm and pithy anecdotes free of political correctness, provided a lift from the everyday struggle. And Max sure loved the attention from the thirty spritely old folks in the residence, especially when he went to their rooms, helped them with their computers, and got paid in chocolates and jelly beans. The converted mansion now had Wi-Fi in every room, but needed a ten-year-old consultant to keep things running smoothly.

  As Ermalinda headed off to her bus, he resolved to do his best to squeeze an hour and a half out of Sunday afternoon for brunch at the lodge.

  “Hi guys,” he said to Max and Travis, busy in the den at what Ermalinda had said was a school project. Only a computer assignment would have them working so enthusiastically at schoolwork on a Friday night.

  It was good to see Travis looking so well after his bout in the hospital. It had been touch and go for him — septic shock, intensive care, a protracted coma, the whole ball of wax in a business that had seen them all entangled in the plot of a revengeful madman operating at Camelot Lodge. Art, Betty, and Phyllis had borne the brunt of it along with Travis. Phyllis still had to steady herself with a cane occasionally, but not even a fractured femur could stop her driving her ’72 Lincoln. Public health was supposed to be a sane, logical specialty with family-friendly working hours. Why did the worst of the cases land flat on his doorstep?