Up in Smoke (12 page)

“Who'd want that? Certainly not the tobacco companies.”

“We're not talking smoking. Or chewing.”

“Oh?” Hamish said.

“Appetite suppression.” Matt looked around to be sure they were still alone. “You know what our rezes are like.” He mimed a big belly. “Most of us are way too fat. Diabetes is killing us. This could have been a breakthrough. Take a pill a day and you get a nice slim body without any work.”

“What went wrong?” Hamish asked.

“I don't know. I tried to talk to her research assistant, but he went underground after they found Tammy's body.”

“Do you have any idea why she was killed?”

“My parents think it was personal. Motivated by hatred. You know, because of the . . . the brutality of the rape. There's a lot of domestic violence on the reserve and . . . and hell, you almost come to expect it. As a rez magistrate, my mother has to deal with it almost every day.” Matt's face flashed with shame and guilt, then quickly became neutral. “Except Tammy didn't have a boyfriend. She lived quietly with Mum and Dad. Her work was her life.”

“You think her murder was related to her research?”

Matt nodded.

Something had gone terribly wrong in Tammy's experimental tobacco fields, and there'd been a major cover-up, no doubt about that. Why else would anonymous heavies be allowed to strip everything from her laboratory in a single afternoon?

Matt was living in two worlds — that was clear by the way he'd switched dialects so readily. Tammy had led two lives too: Dr. Holt at the university, plain Tammy on the rez. What about Donna? What double life had she been living? And had that secret life destroyed her liver? Had she got hold of Tammy's problematic wonder drug? And had she, or someone close to her, been supplying it to the students at that Christian high school? Unlikely. It didn't make sense that Donna and the others got sick more than a year after the door was slammed on Tammy's project.

Hamish massaged the back of his neck and took a couple more yogic breaths. In through the nose, out through the nose. If they were going to solve this liver thing and stop further deaths, they had to discover exactly how Tammy's failed research with tobacco mosaic virus intersected with her sister Donna, the other first responders, and the kids at Erie Christian Collegiate.

It seemed everything focussed on cheap tobacco from Grand Basin Reserve.

CHAPTER
17

Hamish took Matt's business card and headed back to the Saab. He circled the car twice to be sure no one had taken a key to the new paint job, then got in and punched Zol's home number into his phone.

He counted the rings.

Zol picked up on the sixth.

“Zol. Glad I got you. We've got to go shopping.”

“Okay?” Zol sounded suspicious. “For anything special?”

“Rollies and Hat-Tricks. And whatever other tobacco products they sell on the reserve.”

“And you need me to carry your shopping bag?”

“Give me a break. You grew up next to Grand Basin and went to high school with Native kids. You know the protocol. I've never been on a reserve.”

“It's just a rez, Hamish. There's no protocol.”

“You mean, you're allowed to drive in unannounced, any time you like? Without an invitation?”

“Yep.”

“What about a permit?”

“For God's sake, Hamish, there are no border guards. It's not a foreign country.”

“All the same, I'm not driving in alone. Not in the dark. I've heard stories.”

“Never mind the stories. They're normal people, same as us. But it's almost nine, kind of late for a shopping trip, don't you think? Why do you want to go now?”

“We've got to keep moving on this. Matt Holt says the smoke shops on Grand Basin stay open until eleven or midnight.”

“Matt Holt?”

“Tammy Holt's brother. And Donna's — the female paramedic they medevac'd to Toronto General's transplant unit. Matt says Tammy was working with tobacco mosaic virus. Right before . . . you know . . .”

He told Zol about Tammy's secret diet-drug project that went haywire. And he shared his theory that the experimental drug, or the engineered virus, must be somehow tied to the liver cases. And the blisters. Winnipeg had said the lip and finger lesions he sent them contained what appeared to be a plant virus hybrid. It was no stretch at all to implicate Tammy's strain of tobacco mosaic virus as having a role in the lesions. They could prove it if they knew exactly what to look for. For that, they'd need specific details about Tammy's research and a comprehensive analysis of rez tobacco.

Zol scratched at his five-o'clock stubble and said nothing. For an awful moment, Hamish pictured his late father pawing at his cheeks and making that same sandpapery sound before flying into one of his rages.

Finally, Zol stopped scratching and said, “Exactly what are you looking for tonight?”

“I won't sleep until I've got a good idea of what rez tobacco actually is. What it looks like. How it's packaged and labelled.” The closest he'd ever been to a Native smoke shop was two summers ago when he was driving along the highway near Grand Basin Reserve. He'd been on the way to Lake Erie for a picnic and spotted a cluster of three roadside smoke shacks flying Mohawk flags. He'd wondered briefly what went on in those places, then forgot about them. Until this week.

Zol was muffling the receiver with his palm. And talking to someone. Colleen? Oh no, they must be in bed. With their clothes off? He could feel himself blushing.

“Tell you what,” Zol said, after several moments. “I've got to stay home with Max, but Colleen knows the reserve. Sometimes her work takes her there.”

“You're kidding.”

“You know, misplaced cars? And other, shall we say, lost property?”

“Oh.”

“In fact, she was there this morning. Doing a little professional sightseeing. For our side.”

“All I want to see is a smoke shop.”

“She says meet her in Caledonia. The town, not the university.”

“That much I guessed. But where, exactly?”

“The Canadian Tire parking lot. On the main drag. A few blocks south of the Grand River. Think you can you find it?”

“Sure.” He hit
SEARCH
on the dashboard
GPS
. “When?”

“Half an hour.”

“They take Visa?”

Zol scratched his chin again and chuckled loudly into the phone. “Everything but Monopoly money, good buddy. Have at it.”

CHAPTER
18

Colleen spotted Hamish standing under a lamppost, polishing the front grill of his beloved Saab with a handkerchief. He looked innocently boyish. His perfect, not overly short, blond flat-top shone like a beacon of wholesomeness in the sharp glare of the Mercury lamplight. She honked lightly and turned into the parking lot. The Canadian Tire store was dark, the shoppers now home and parked in front of their
TV
s, their
DIY
resolutions postponed for another day.

Hamish gave his car an anxious backward glance as he climbed into the passenger seat beside her. He was right to worry. This region lamented the highest rate of car thefts in the country. Somehow, vehicles got sucked into Grand Basin Reserve and were never seen again, or they were found as burned-out hulks, the good parts long gone. She'd done surveillance on a couple of the chop shops on the rez; funny how the cops studiously ignored them.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I was expecting your Mercedes.”

She glanced at the anti-theft club at Hamish's feet. “Zol thought his minivan would be less conspicuous.”

Hamish forced a half smile that faded quickly. “Not too many Mercs pull up at smoke shacks, eh?”

“Well, not with their rightful owners behind the wheel,” she said and killed the radio. She steered onto Argyle Street and headed south. “I think it's extraordinary that you've never set foot on an Indian Reserve. Especially with Grand Basin practically on your doorstep.”

He was clearly uncomfortable, and more than the integrity of his vehicle was worrying him. “Wasn't sure how to go about it. Or whether it was even kosher to visit it uninvited.”

She felt unsettled too. But that had nothing to do with their shopping trip. “You may be disappointed at how ordinary it is,” she told him. “Except for the smoke shops, of course.”

“They won't mind us browsing?”

“Why should they? I understand you're armed with your Visa card.”

“And the cops?”

“Don't worry, you won't see any of those. The provincial police only venture onto the rez under the most extreme circumstances. And the Native officers on the Grand Basin force know that their presence anywhere near the smoke shops is bad for business.”

The Canadian Tire was now a minute behind them. As always at this spot, she was apprehensive. But ready for it.

Right on cue, her right foot lifted away from the accelerator. All by itself. As it did every time she drove along this stretch of the road out of Caledonia. It was a reflex she couldn't control. Her body simply refused to let her whiz past this wretched intersection at high speed. She was compelled to slow down and let the sad story play in her mind like a tragic movie.

“Look,” Hamish said, pointing to the flames leaping out of the oil drum that was always there beside the flags. “Are bonfires allowed so close to the highway?”

“Depends on who you talk to.”

He braced his right elbow against the door. “Why are you slowing down like this? I don't like the look of those guys.”

“They won't hurt us. Not physically, anyway.”

Hamish stiffened. “Those are Mohawk flags.” He pressed his arms against his torso, as if trying to make himself invisible. “I know where we are. All that brouhaha with the Natives. What was the name of this place? Something Creek Estates?”

“Dover. Dover Creek.” Now the locals called it No Man's Land, or Sovereign Indian Territory. Again, it depended on who you talked to, and on which side of the Great Divide they were born.

There it was, in the darkness beyond the barricade, that desolate expanse of weeds and dirt and heartache at the edge of town. By now, it should have been a pretty bedroom community of single-family homes surrounded by proudly tended gardens. The Canadian parallels with the Apartheid legacies that still troubled her African homeland were nauseating. It seemed humanity's tribalism was a fact of life in every part of the globe. Conflict between Them and Us was hardwired into us all.

Two men, red bandanas hiding their chins, were standing between the flaming oil drum and a solitary pick-up truck. They were warming their hands. They'd parked their battered vehicle sideways across the potholed side road leading to the site. Did they realize how strange they looked defending a short dirt drive to absolutely nowhere?

“Do they man that barricade
24
-
7
?” Hamish asked.

“Don't know why they bother. No one's going to take back the land from them now. The place is tainted with too much bad blood.”

Six years ago, a developer had bought the acreage from a White farmer, apparently in good faith on both sides. Shortly after the developer erected his first couple of houses, a modern-day Mohawk war party seized the site at gunpoint and claimed the land as Indian territory. They cited a three-hundred-year-old treaty, which the federal government claimed was bogus and not worthy of a millisecond of discussion. With the feds officially ignoring the situation, and the provincial government too timid to send in its crackerjack Ontario Provincial Police, the Natives retained control of the land. No Native was arrested, though many taunted the police by openly committing assaults, weapons offences, property damage, and dangerous driving. Tempers flared, animosity smouldered into hatred, and heated clashes erupted between the Mohawks and Caledonia's townspeople. Finally, the provincial government bought out the developer, but made no attempt to extricate the Indians from the land. And though the Mohawks had made a big show of claiming the few acres as their “sovereign territory,” they'd done nothing with it in six years. They just kept guarding their sad and useless trophy. Day and night.

What bothered Colleen about the Dover Creek situation, and the chop shops on the rez, was the failure of the rule of law. Two levels of government stood idly by while a gang from Grand Basin Reserve behaved as they pleased and lived above the law. As a Native, you could try to seize your neighbour's farm in a trumped-up land claim, steal his car for parts, and sell cheap cigarettes to his kids. Not the image that Canada liked to project of itself on the world stage.

She felt a shudder pass through her shoulders as the oil drum faded from view and her foot pressed itself back onto the accelerator. The car regained highway speed, and a few minutes later she turned right onto Side Road
4
, where a faded tin sign said
GRAND BASIN INDIAN RESERVE
.

“And there they are,” she said, after they'd driven two hundred metres along the side road and into the rez. “The pride and joy of modern Native culture.”

“And so many?” Hamish pointed through the windscreen and counted the smoke shops under his breath. “Five, six, seven. Practically on top of each other.”

“Conveniently located for the smokers of Hamilton, Hagersville, Jarvis, and Caledonia.”

Smoke shops crowded the rez's northern and western entrances as well, providing ready access for the good people of Brantford, Waterford, Simcoe, Woodstock, and the four adjacent counties of farm country. Most sovereign nations posted border guards at their frontiers and checked your passport. Canada's First Nations posted tobacco sellers and eagerly swiped your credit card.

“Funny little buildings, eh?” Hamish said. He pointed at a beaten-up camping trailer that barely qualified as a shack, and a tiny but respectable shop made from a corrugated steel shipping container, the kind carried on cargo ships around the world. In Africa, she'd seen those abandoned containers strewn all over the place, housing everything from health centres to drinking dens. This one was painted bright pink and called itself Aunt Minnie's Tiny Smoke Shop.

“Don't need a fancy place to sell smokes,” she told him. “A few shelves, some overhead lighting, and a credit card machine.”

She drove twenty metres beyond Aunt Minnie's and pulled up at Smoke Depot, a shop that had caught her eye on other trips to the rez. Constructed of two mobile homes side by side, it had white siding and fuchsia trim, and usually a seasonal decoration at the front door. Tonight it was a jack-o'-lantern carved from a large orange pumpkin. Real, not plastic. And as always, three flags were flapping on the same pole: the Stars and Stripes, the Maple Leaf, and the Iroquois Confederacy. Though she'd never been inside, the place looked about average size for a smoke shop, orderly, and most importantly at this hour, well lit.

“We stopping here?” Hamish asked, looking more anxious than ever.

“As good a place as any. I imagine they'll have a full selection of what you're looking for.”

“I guess,” he said, glancing around suspiciously. He still looked worried about the cops.

“Cold feet?”

“'Course not. It's just that . . . well . . . I've always been such a rule follower.”

She couldn't help cracking a smile. “You won't get caught, Hamish. And you shan't go to jail, even if you do.”

He rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

She opened her door and climbed out of the minivan. Hamish hesitated and looked pointedly at the anti-theft club still on the floor.

She waved her hand dismissively. “The car is safe here. These are good, savvy business people. They don't steal from their customers. And look at the flags. This establishment promotes harmony.”

She led him inside and said hello to the two young Natives watching
TV
behind the counter. The boy — he didn't look older than sixteen but he could have been twenty — flicked her an indifferent glance and went back to his show. A smile seemed to come naturally to the large round face of the girl standing beside him. She waved and said, “Lemme know if yous need any help.”

Hamish scuttled to the far end of the trailer, out of earshot of the teens. In the process, he had to dodge the heavily loaded displays of potato chips, corn chips, candy bars, pork jerky, and Mexican salsa that crowded the front third of the store.

“This is incredible,” he whispered, gawking at shelf after shelf piled with brightly coloured cigarette cartons. He swept the room with his gaze and relaxed a little, apparently relieved there were no other customers in the shop.

They browsed together for a couple of minutes. Most of the cigarettes came from the same manufacturer, similar in style to the empty Hat-Trick packs she'd found behind Erie Christian Collegiate. They came as twenty-five cigarettes to the pack, two hundred to the carton, as Lights, Kings, Golds, and Menthols.

Hamish glanced at the kids to make sure they weren't watching him from their counter, then picked up a clear, resealable plastic bag stuffed with neat rows of individual cigarettes. “These are Rollies, eh? And look at the price. Only ten dollars. For two hundred? This many cigarettes should cost at least seventy or eighty bucks.”

She spotted a discount table piled with more bags of Rollies. At first glance, they looked like all the others. “Look, these are seven bucks for two hundred.”

“Only seven?”

“The little notice says they're seconds. Rejects, I suppose.” She loved the irony of some cigarettes failing the grade, being somehow worse than others. She lifted one of the bags, and together they examined it closely. “I'd say these don't look quite as neatly rolled as those in the ten-dollar bags.” Some of the cigarettes were bent, others a bit crushed. But still readily smokeable.

Hamish raised his eyebrows, then turned to another table and picked up a carton that was a different shape from the most of the others. It was long and narrow. “These look different. Got a different name. Trackers. Reminds them of the old days, I guess. Pre-contact.”

“American-style,” she told him. “See — narrower packs of twenty instead of twenty-five. Still two-hundred smokes to the carton. And have a read of what it says.”

He nodded and found the message printed on the side of each pack. “
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: QUITTING SMOKING NOW GREATLY REDUCES SERIOUS RISKS TO YOUR HEALTH
.”

After studying the warning, he turned the carton over several times and scanned every surface. His frown deepened. “There's no French on here anywhere. And we don't have a Surgeon General. That's an American designation. These are totally illegal.”

“That is the point, Hamish.” She spread her arms and did a half turn. “Everything about this place is illegal. Even the snacks, which they sell without collecting sales tax. What you are holding are either American cigarettes smuggled in from the U.S., or a product made right here on Grand Basin and made to simulate American smokes. Probably the latter. A lot easier and more profitable — no border guards or middlemen.”

Hamish cocked his head toward the teens, who were now munching from giant bags of chips and clearly absorbed in their
TV
show. “Those kids are too young to be working here.”

“Ya think?”

“And in Ontario, cigarettes aren't allowed to be displayed for sale on open shelves. Or sold to minors. Or sold without a Health Canada warning in both official languages. Or sold free of all kinds of federal and provincial duties and taxes.”

“You've been doing your homework.”

He looked pleased with himself, then handed her the Trackers and examined a professionally shrink-wrapped eight-pack carton of Hat-Tricks. “This one has a bilingual warning from Health Canada. And a thing like a postage stamp that says Duty Paid Canada Droit Acquitté. Are they legit?”

“Zol says they're semi-legit. The result of a deal between the manufacturer — that's Dennis Badger who lives and operates here on the rez — and the federal government.” She explained how Zol had told her that Badger's company, Watershed Holdings, was allowed to sell his excise-duty-paid Hat-Trick brand to Natives on reserves anywhere in the country without charging them extra taxes. And to export them overseas. And to sell them to non-Natives who were willing to pay the additional taxes.