Up in Smoke

by Ross Pennie

  “I spoke to them at an assembly,” the chief said. “You know, the dos and don’ts of fire safety. And . . . and I explained how to draw up — and practise — a home fire-escape plan.”

  “Did you demonstrate your equipment?” Hamish asked.

  The chief chuckled. “That’s the only thing that holds their attention.”

  “What did you show them?” Natasha asked.

  “Our boots, suits, helmets. That sort of thing. They won’t let us bring our axes into schools.”

  “Did you demonstrate the fire extinguishers?” Hamish asked.

  “There’d be a riot if we didn’t shoot off an extinguisher,” the chief confided.

  Hamish swept his hand over his flat-top. “Interesting. Did anybody get sprayed?”

  “No, no,” said the chief, looking embarrassed by Hamish’s suggestion. “We’re careful about that. We spray at a bucket full of logs. Makes a lot of noise, mind you. And all that white CO2 gas looks impressive.” He looked for reassurance from his wife, but her attention was elsewhere. “For about a couple of minutes anyway, and then it disappears.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Chief?” said the smart aleck among the uniforms at the back. “Couple of twin girls in the front row got their high heels sprayed. Remember how they shrieked?”

  The chief turned as red as a traffic light. “But — but only for a second,” he stammered. “Didn’t hurt them or nothing. And they were laughing about it by the time the assembly was over.”

  Was this the link they were looking for? The next question was crucial: “Were any of your paramedics there?” Natasha asked.

  The answer came back quickly. “No. Only firefighters. We don’t take paramedics away from the station.”

  Hamish looked colossally disappointed, arms tightly at his sides, eyes aimed at the linoleum. Was he even breathing? Then suddenly, his arms came up. “Did you give the kids anything? Or take anything from them?”

  “Just a little booklet,” said the chief. “On fire prevention. Comes from Toronto. The Ontario Fire Marshall’s office. Given to kids throughout the province.”

  “Nothing else?” Hamish pressed. “You’re sure?” He was waving in that camp way that overtook him when he got excited about a diagnosis. He’d finally warmed up. Oscar Wilde had broken free of the Tin Man.

  The chief looked puzzled, uncertain, but shook his head all the same.

  “Think carefully,” Hamish pressed again. “As I’m sure you understand, Chief, this is very important.”

  Dyment raised his arms, palms up, and looked out at the audience. “What do you say, guys? Did we give them anything else?”

  “Nah,” was the consensus from the uniforms at the back.

  “Sure we did,” said a lone, male voice. It came from the side, from a well-built Adonis in a firefighter’s jumpsuit. He was perched on the counter in front of the microwave. He looked about twenty-two. He’d rolled up his shirt to reveal his impressive biceps. He had a cute, freckled face, like Ron Howard as Richie on Happy Days reruns. “Remember?” he said. “The cheerleaders?”

  A smirk slid across the face of the short guy at the back. “Couldn’t forget them.”

  “They wanted our special gum,” said the Richie lookalike. “Their supplier wasn’t sure when his next shipment was coming in. The kids’ stock had run out and they’d heard we used it too.”

  What a funny choice of words, Natasha thought. Normally you chewed gum, you didn’t use it. And why did it require a supplier?

  “Good man,” Hamish said. “What sort of gum?”

  Richie dug into his pocket and pulled out a small packet. He tossed it to Hamish, but he fumbled it, and it dropped to the floor. Natasha picked it up.

  The label said PRODUCT OF CHINA and called Snooze-Free Gum: KEEP YOU FROM DOZING WHILE IT FRESHEN YOUR BREATH. Though she’d bought lots of gum in her time, she’d never seen anything like this. The wrapper was the sort of beige that would never attract attention on a store shelf, and the printing was in a plain typewriter font. She turned the packet over. The active ingredients were listed as caffeine, taurine, and ginkgo biloba. A warning caught her eye: THIS PRODUCT CONTAIN NATURALLY BOOSTED GINKGO AMENTOFLAVONE. NOT MEANT FOR PROLONGED USAGES. ASK DOCTOR BEFORE USING FOR MORE THAN THREE DAYS IN ROWS.

  “I need to see that,” Hamish barked, as if it were her fault he’d dropped it. He grabbed it and studied every surface. By the time he’d read the warning, his eyes looked like dinner plates. He turned to Joanna Dyment and pointed to her cellphone. “That a smart phone?”

  She nodded, obviously taken aback by the abruptness of his tone, especially in front of her husband’s subordinates.

  “You got it connected to the Internet?” he said. “I mean, right here, immediate access?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Joanna said, handing him her phone. “Be my guest.”

  Hamish tapped the screen, waited a few seconds, then began tapping again, oblivious to the absolute hush that had come over the room. Every eye was focussed on the pink device in the eccentric doctor’s hands.

  A minute went by, then a second, maybe even a third. No one moved. One person stifled a cough, but no one spoke, not even the smart aleck at the back.

  Finally, Hamish looked up and realized he had a captivated audience. He held up the phone with a Wilde flourish and beamed at the crowd.

  He punched the screen. “Gotcha!”

  CHAPTER 41

  Hamish handed the cellphone back to Joanna Dyment and addressed the crowd. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to break new ground together. Field epidemiology by show of hands. And let me tell you, this is going to get a tad personal.”

  Natasha didn’t like the sound of that. And what had he found on the Internet that had made him shout gotcha? He must have discovered that some ingredient in that gum could be the cofactor they were looking for — the agent that turned Tammy Holt’s 5-FNN into a liver toxin. Why wasn’t he letting her in on it? Why was he making her stand here uselessly like Vanna White?

  She wanted to pull him aside, tell him there were rules and conventions they had to follow as agents of the Ministry of Health. These days, personal privacy was paramount, the ministry’s holiest of sacred cows. But the guy was on a roll, a train that couldn’t be stopped without a huge scene.

  “So — are you with me?” Hamish continued, searching the faces, almost daring them to oppose him.

  Chief Dyment shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out, as if unsure what to do with them. He threw a shrug at Natasha, then told Hamish, “Don’t exactly know what you have in mind, Doc, but I think you should go for it.”

  Hamish turned to Natasha. “Get out your notebook. These people are going to give us some answers we won’t want to miss.”

  Hamish held up the packet of Snooze-Free gum. “Hands up, who among you chews this stuff?”

  People started looking at each other as if knowing they should raise their hands but not wanting to be the first.

  Hamish aimed his now wild-eyed gaze at the Richie Cunningham lookalike who’d tossed the gum to him just minutes ago. He waved the packet in the air. “You chew this stuff, right?”

  Richie nodded.

  “Then put up your hand,” Hamish said and looked around the room for other takers.

  Slowly, the hands went up: three of the four uniformed guys at the back, a man standing by the refrigerator in a paramedic’s uniform, four men in civvies who must be off duty today, two of the wives/sisters/girlfriends, one of whom was the woman with the Juicy Couture necklace.

  “Good,” Hamish said. “Now leave your hands up until Ms. Sharma has taken your names.”

  Natasha realized she had three choices. She could refuse to cooperate, she could flounce through the room like a ditzy secretary with a steno pad, or she could act like this was a perfectly normal, high-priority epide
miological investigation.

  She put on her professional face, walked confidently through the crowd on her three-hundred-dollar Stuart Weitzmans, and took down the names under the heading Snooze-Free Herbal Gum Positive.

  Hamish looked at Richie again. “What about Donna Holt and the other first responders with acute liver failure?” He waved the packet. “Did they chew this stuff?”

  It was clear that Richie didn’t like being singled out. “Don’t know for sure,” he said. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe doesn’t cut it.” Hamish scanned the room. “Can anyone else be more definitive?”

  Several of the wives huddled together, obviously conferring, their faces earnest and intense. A spokesperson emerged. “That gum has been a big hit around here,” she said. “It’s safe to say they all chewed it. You know, to help them cope with the night shifts?”

  “I guess it works, then,” Hamish said.

  The two widows burst into tears. The woman with the pavé necklace looked stricken, as though she saw her future flashing ahead of her, and it was going to be short and bleak.

  “Anyone who doesn’t chew it?” Hamish asked.

  Lots of hands went up. Most of the women, in fact. And the smart aleck firefighter standing at the back with his three mates.

  “With husbands who work shift, our problem is getting enough sleep,” said the woman in the City of Palms tee-shirt, “not staying awake.”

  “No way I’d touch that herbal stuff,” Smart Aleck said. “It’s from China. You never know what shit they put in it.”

  “Back to the rez tobacco,” Hamish said, while Natasha was still scribbling names in her notebook. “Rollies, Hat-Trick brand, in fact, any kind of Native tobacco. We know the liver victims all smoked it. What about the rest of you? Hands up — who smokes rez tobacco?”

  “You mean regularly or from time to time?” asked Smart Aleck.

  “Let’s say at least one pack in the past month,” Hamish said.

  Hands went up all over the place. Natasha wasn’t surprised to see that Mrs. Juicy Couture and Mrs. City of Palms had their hands in the air. Having got a closer look at the two women, she’d already guessed that the partially hidden blisters on their fingers and lips would be positive for matchstick particles by electron microscopy.

  Richie Cunningham was a non-smoker. So were the three gum-chewing firefighters in uniform at the back, the four first responders in civvies, and the gum-chewing paramedic standing next to the fridge. Mr. Smart Aleck now had a name, Roger Marshall, which she wrote below the heading Rez Tobacco Positive Gum Negative. Smart guy to be suspicious of the Chinese gum, especially in such a dodgy wrapper.

  When she’d got all the names down under the appropriate headings, Natasha walked to the front of the room and drew Hamish aside.

  “There’s one first responder unaccounted for,” she told him. “All the others are either here, sick, or — you know,” she dropped her voice, “never coming back. We need to find out whether the missing guy is one of those who smokes rez tobacco and chews the gum.”

  Hamish looked at Mrs. Juicy Couture, then dipped his eyes and whispered, “Like that woman with the flashy necklace.”

  Hamish looked up, cleared his throat, and addressed the group again. “We need to know who supplies you the gum. Not to get them in trouble, but we need more information about it.”

  Every eye turned to Richie Cunningham, perched on the counter.

  “Is it you?” Hamish asked.

  “No,” Richie said. “My cousin. But it’s not like it’s a secret or nothing.”

  “Your cousin’s name?” Hamish said.

  “Ian Bell,” Richie said.

  Natasha flipped through her notebook. Ian Bell. The name sounded familiar. There he was. Admitted to Simcoe General four days ago. A Norfolk County paramedic with jaundice and moderate liver damage. Expected to recover.

  “Where does he get it?” Hamish asked.

  “A guy,” Richie said.

  “This is no time to be coy, son” said the chief. “Tell the doctor what he needs to know.”

  Richie looked uncomfortable, as if he wished he’d never let the Snooze-Free out of his pocket. “Orders it off the Internet. Directly from China. One of those sites where you have to know somebody who knows somebody before they do business with you.”

  “And exactly who is this guy?” Hamish said.

  “A teacher.”

  “A teacher?” The chief made it sound like the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

  “Gets them the gum so they can stay up late,” Richie said. “You know, write their essays, study for midterms.”

  “Does this teacher have a name?” Hamish asked.

  Richie picked at his well-bitten fingernails and mumbled something under his breath.

  “Sorry?” Hamish said. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

  “Mr. Vorst.”

  “Walter Vorst?” Natasha asked, the puzzle pieces fitting together in her mind.

  Richie nodded and went back to his fingernails.

  The room erupted into the disorganized hubbub that had been so obvious an hour ago behind the locked door.

  Chief Dyment approached Hamish and Natasha, his wife by his side. Their faces were grey. “Gotta tell you something,” he said.

  “Yes, Chief,” Natasha said, putting on a brave face for them. She could guess what was coming.

  “I smoke that damn tobacco from the rez. Harsh as blazes on your throat, but I just can’t give it up.” He stared at his boots.

  Natasha touched his arm.

  Grant Dyment lifted his head and looked at his wife like a man about to leave on a long, lonesome journey. “And for the past week, since we’ve been short-handed, I’ve been chewing that gum like it’s going out of style.”

  CHAPTER 42

  At one o’clock, it was time to get ready to meet the Badger. Zol planned to arrive at the Tim’s at Duff’s Corners a few minutes early. There was never any strength in arriving late and breathless for a meeting, especially if it was going to be a showdown.

  At noon, he’d had what he thought might be his final smoke from the black-eyed loon pipe. Then he’d removed the charred dottle from the chamber and let the stone cool down before wrapping the loon in a handkerchief and stowing her in his blazer pocket.

  The pipe had felt clunky there, and her sharp beak dug into his hip. It seemed the little bird, so recently liberated, wasn’t happy in the dark. He took her out, unwrapped the hankie, and looked into those enigmatic, onyx eyes.

  What were those eyes telling him? To bring the pipe with him or to leave her at home? If he was going to trade the precious creature for the Badger’s full cooperation in suspending sales of contaminated tobacco, was it essential that the pipe be at the meeting? Would the Badger believe that Zol had possession of the black-eyed pipe — until now, no more than a legend — only if he saw her with his own eyes?

  But what if the Badger’s goons strong-armed the loon away from him? It was one thing to give up the bird to a noble cause, but another to lose her in a foolish gamble that gave him nothing in return. And of course . . . if they did make a deal, would the Badger keep his word?

  He took off his blazer and glanced again at the front page of today’s Hamilton Spectator. The press was making a big deal of the latest revelations about the robbery at the Royal Ontario Museum. Now the whole world knew that the three men found under the rubble were Anishinaabeg from Misty Shores Reserve and had been executed before the explosion. Politicians of every stripe were wading in with nonsense statements about intertribal conflicts that showed how little they understood Native history and concerns. There would be a lot of noise for a while, a thorough clean-up of the ROM’s demolished Crystal, a load of hotheaded rhetoric from the chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and no changes in the shameful living conditions on the reserves.<
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  Or could things turn out differently? What if Dennis Badger agreed to trade his cooperation for the pipe and became inspired by the reunion of the two legendary loons? What form would such inspiration take? Would it be chaos and bloodshed as Natives across the country settled scores that had been festering for centuries? Or would the descendants of the continent’s original inhabitants acquire newfound confidence, stop acting like helpless victims, and break into the twenty-first century not aboard birchbark canoes and stolen vehicles, but private business jets?

  And then Zol pictured the bodies. Tammy Holt in the farmer’s field, the three at the museum, Olivia Colborne at the liquor store, and Jovan Ligorov at Saint Naum’s. They’d been killed on the Badger’s orders. Zol shouldn’t be trying to kid himself. The guy was ruthless.

  He got his camera from the computer room and flattened the Spec on the kitchen counter. He set the loon on the newspaper beside today’s date and the lead story about the ROM. He took three shots and previewed them to be sure they turned out as he wanted: two close-ups that showed the loon with the date and one from farther away that showed the ancient pipe sitting in what was obviously a modern kitchen.

  He slipped the bird into the Birks box, apologized for banishing her to the darkness again, and went to return her to the shelf behind Mary Poppins.

  Looking at Max’s long line of DVDs, it was obvious they were sitting on a case custom made for books that were much taller and wider than DVDs. What if the Badger, tantalized by Zol’s possession of his wildest dream, sent one of his guys to search the house? Even the dumbest goon would find the loon behind those DVDs in a matter of seconds.

  No, Mary Poppins wasn’t going to cut it. But where in this house could he find a proper hiding place? He’d always meant to have a wall safe installed, but had never got around to it. What about the basement? Plenty of clutter there to hide something in plain sight.

  He ran down the stairs and into the workshop. Hell. Ermalinda had tidied it. It looked like an operating room suite. Not a thing out of place. No good for hiding anything, not even a finishing nail.