Up in Smoke by Ross Pennie Page B

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.”
    â€œAnd 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.”
    â€œYou know him?”
    â€œHe was a year ahead of me in high school. That’s where he started calling himself the Badger.”
    â€œTough guy?”
    â€œNo more than the other kids from Grand Basin who got bussed to our school from the reserve.”
    â€œHow well did they get along with the Whites?” Colleen asked.
    â€œHard to say. They mostly kept to themselves. But they did make our hockey team the regional powerhouse.”
    â€œWhich was good for their currency on campus?”
    â€œNever thought about it that way at the time, but I guess you’re right.”
    â€œWas he a good student?”
    â€œHeck, Colleen. It was a long time ago.”
    â€œDon’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to put the story together.”
    â€œYou and Hamish. It’s always about the story.”
    â€œMost certainly. The answer is embedded in the narrative.” She held his gaze. “Well, what sort of a student was he?”
    â€œCan’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.
    â€œHe 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.”
    â€œThere’s an international market for low-quality cigarettes?”
    â€œMake 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.”
    â€œYou’re not serious.”
    â€œExclusive contract. Europeans love strong tobacco. Ever smoke a Gauloises?”
    She raised her eyebrows. “What would it take to shut it all down?”
    â€œA major catastrophe that neither the police nor the politicians could ignore.”
    â€œIs 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