Day Into Night (18 page)

12

I ARRIVE AT Cindy’s late that night to find the kids in the kitchen, fighting over who gets to make popcorn. They mob me, cling to my legs like anchors so I can’t move. I set my pack by the door, give a round of hugs, then look around the corner into the living room — there’s an unpleasantly familiar odour in the house tonight. Cindy and Shawn are sitting on the couch in the living room, watching a movie. Two years ago, this would have been a normal scene. Since then, they’ve divorced, fought a nasty custody battle which Shawn, quite rightfully, lost.

He gives me the old “hang loose” salute. “Hey buddy, how’s it goin’?”

Shawn Marshall is not one of my favourite people. Tall and thin, with receding brown hair and a cocky attitude, he found Cindy when she was fresh out of college. He’d never finished high school, was working as a dj at a nightclub and not doing that very well. They say you can’t pick who you fall in love with, which is a pity because the marriage lasted only long enough to produce the three kids. It ended one night when Shawn’s pregnant girlfriend came to the door, looking for Shawn. She found Cindy instead.

“I’m doing fine, Shawn. What about you? The bar close early tonight?”

“Yeah, right.” He grins — a nervous grin; he knows how I feel. I shoot Cindy a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look. She’s lonely, wants a whole family again; it would be too easy for her to slip into the old role. Shawn wants something a little more immediate. At least they’re sitting at opposite ends of the couch. “I heard what happened down south,” Shawn says. “Crappy, man.”

Cindy must see that I’m ready to unload on Shawn because she gives me a look. Be patient — he’ll be gone soon. “Shawn had the kids this afternoon,” she says. “He took them out for supper and rented movies. You want to watch with us?”

This must be Cindy’s way of paying him back for acting like a father for a few hours. I sit on the ottoman — the movie, Under Seige 2, isn’t very good. Steven Seagal looks bored as he thrashes a couple of villains. Jackie Chan would kick his ass. Regardless, it wouldn’t be my first choice for a children’s movie. I stay long enough to establish my presence then make myself a sandwich and go down to my room by the furnace. I hear the movie end, followed soon after by the slap and click of a closing door. Cindy comes down, sits on the edge of my bed. I tell her about Fort Termination. She’s a good listener.

“Can you stay for a few days?” she asks.

“No, I’ve got to get back. I had to fight for two days off.”

The next morning Cindy makes me a big breakfast — bacon, eggs, toast, hashbrowns, coffee. I play with the kids for a half-hour, build a Lego castle, then fire up Old Faithful and head south through the city on a zigzag course toward Old Strathcona. I’ve been thinking about how the fires were started and want to find a cigar shop; the Yellow Pages list three in this neighbourhood.

I cross the High Level Bridge, pass girls in Spandex biking up the hill: a different kind of traffic hazard. Old Strathcona is close to the university — an area filled with student housing, little shops and cafes. You can buy just about anything around here — steel guitars, handicrafts, term papers — but at nine in the morning almost nothing is open, including the tobacconists I need to see. I spend an hour in a Java Hut, read the paper. There’s plenty about the Lorax but nothing new.

Ten o’clock finally arrives. I’ve had too much coffee and walk light-headed and jittery to the smoke shop. The store is small and narrow and mostly empty. Cigars are displayed in wooden trays inside a glass case, neatly arranged like miniature brown artillery shells. The smell is pungent but vaguely pleasant, like the memory of a father sitting in his living room, puffing on his Sunday cigar. An older fellow in a T-shirt stands behind a cluttered counter, flipping through a magazine. He’s got plenty of hair under his chin but none on his head; the classic inverted hairline.

He watches me inspect his cigar display. “Can I help you?”

“What’s the longest cigar you carry?”

“The longest cigar ...” He strums his fingers on the counter and peers over the top of his bifocals — the scholarly tobacconist. “We’ve got a couple of brands that come in an eight inch,” he says. “They’re pretty long.”

“Could you show them to me?”

He joins me at the glass cabinet and we peer together into the tobacco aquarium. To a rookie like me, cigars all look pretty much the same. I was hoping for a brand or two which might be distinctive enough to be traceable to a purchaser.

“What I really need is the longest-burning cigar.”

He looks at me through his glasses, head tilted slightly back, eyes magnified to comic proportions. “Longest burning,” he mutters. “Well, that would be a function of length and diameter, or what we call ring size. It also depends on how tightly it was rolled.”

I nod in respectful ignorance. “So which one of these would fit that bill?”

“Well ...” He tugs on his beard. “Hard to say really. They’re not rated like that.”

“Could you hazard a guess?”

“You could just buy a few,” he says. “Try them out.”

“I could. But I don’t smoke.”

He strokes his beard and frowns, no doubt wondering what a non-smoker is doing in a cigar shop. A heathen in the vicarage. He looks nervously toward the counter where a group of university students are impatient to ruin their health, waiting to pay for their cigars.

“I’m an arson investigator,” I add quickly. “I think a cigar was used as a fuse.”

The old man adjusts his bifocals, suddenly intrigued. “An arson investigator? Really?”

“Any advice you could give me could prove invaluable.”

“Well —” He turns back to the display case. “Let me think.”

“I’m looking for a cigar that would take quite some time to burn down.”

“Fascinating,” he says. “Pity you don’t smoke.”

“Yes, but I was hoping —”

“Cigars that is. Because then you’d know that they’re damp.” He looks at me like an opponent in a chess game, waiting to see if I can overcome his latest strategy. It takes me a second to see the significance.

“Damp?”

“Yes, quite damp. In fact, they’re stored in a humidor to keep them suitably moist.”

“But they do burn or people couldn’t smoke them.”

He allows himself a faint smile. “Yes, of course.”

“So why wouldn’t they work as a fuse?”

“Try smoking one, young man.”

“No thanks.”

“They’re rather fussy. They tend to go out unless you draw on them.”

My theory is rapidly going up in damp smoke.

“Now, if it was me,” he says, placing a hand on his chest, “I’d take a pin and poke holes through the outside leaf, then dry it on a windowsill or in an oven. That should dehydrate it sufficiently and allow it to draw in enough air as it burns.”

I’m impressed. “Have you given this advice to anyone else?”

He looks taken aback. “Oh no, not at all.”

“So, if it was you, what sort of cigar would you pick?”

He peers into his cabinet, deep in thought. Suddenly, he brightens. “I’ve got just the thing,” he says, going to his counter. Ignoring the students, he rummages below the cash register, mumbling to himself. When he stands, he has a long narrow brown wooden box in his hand, a father-of-the-bride look on his face. “This,” he says dramatically, “is an Emperador cigar. They don’t come any longer, unless you get them custom made. Fourteen inches. It would make Lewinsky blush.”

The university students are impressed, peer curiously over my shoulder as he hands me the box; mahogany by the looks of it. Beside the brand, pressed into the wood, is a smeared announcement, boasting that it’s the largest marketed cigar in the world. A Guinness World Record, it’s the H-bomb of cigars — let’s hope we never have to use it. The back of the box says Mexico. A tiny warning label on the end advises, courtesy of Health and Welfare Canada, that danger to health increases with amount smoked and to avoid inhaling. It seems a little like telling an alcoholic to avoid swallowing.

“You sell many of these?”

“Not many,” he says regretfully. “Mostly around Christmas. They’re special order.”

“What about this one? Who ordered it?”

“Some guy, a lawyer I think. His wife was going to have a baby, so he ordered a dozen of them. When his wife lost the baby, I felt sorry for him, gave him a refund.”

Probably the first time anyone felt sorry for a lawyer.

“Do you keep a record of who orders these?”

He shakes his head. “I just order them.”

“So there’s no way of knowing who bought them.”

“Not unless they paid with a credit card.”

I doubt the arsonist used a credit card but it’s worth mentioning to the task force — they’d have the authority to obtain the sales records. “Who else sells these?”

“Any good smoke shop. Or you can order them over the Internet.”

Wonderful. I thank the tobacconist, buy the cigar; $18.95 plus tax.

The students clean out the rest of his Emperador inventory.

Carl is on the duty desk when I arrive in Curtain River later that afternoon. He’s busy answering radios, making notes, ordering supplies. There’s been a fire and he doesn’t have time to talk. I sit outside the duty room for a few minutes, try to chat with the receptionist — a large lady with a passion for one-way conversation — but even she’s too busy. The only other person in the building is Gary Hanlon, who’s bent over his desk, a frown on his face.

I wait for a lull in the radio talk, stick my head into the duty room.

“How’s it going, Carl?”

He gives me one of those I-told-you-so looks. I take a seat opposite his desk.

“I’ve been meaning to get rid of that chair,” he grumbles.

“How big is your fire?”

He’s rubbing his eyes. “Forty acres, close to a campground.”

“Man-caused?”

He sighs, slumps in his chair, swivels absently back and forth, making me wait. He’s got that glazed, stressed-out look which usually takes days to acquire. “Yes, it was man-caused. Would have been nice to have a fire investigator around, but since we didn’t we sent out one of our field people.” He gives me a disapproving look to make sure I know how this inconvenienced him. “No cake pan on this one though. Some damn random camper. What about you? How’d your little fire go?”

“Cake pan, same guy.”

He nods,thinking about this. “You any closer to catching him?”

“Maybe. We found a bootprint.”

“A bootprint?”

“Yeah, the guy stepped in a muddy area, left a fairly decent impression.”

“So, I guess that’s progress.”

“Only if we can find the boot.”

“What about the Fort?” he asks. “You find out anything about Hess?”

I think back to the mechanic in his purple-flowered beanie. “Not much. It seems he was a pretty average guy. A little better than average actually. Which leaves me nowhere.”

Carl runs a hand through his hair. “Well, what did you think you’d find, Porter?”

“I don’t know — something.”

“You talked to Arthur?”

I nod.

“How’d that go?”

“Pretty good. He managed to control himself for nearly five minutes.”

Carl’s got a wistful half-smile, picturing it. “He went ballistic?”

“Intercontinental. I left in a hurry.”

“How’s Maddie doing?”

“Better than Arthur.”

For a minute or two we both stare at the floor, grieve for the past. The radio demands attention and Carl sighs, deep and weary. There’s a fire status change. An equipment order. A firefighter who needs to go home for urgent family business which, it turns out after some back-and-forth questioning, is actually a court case. Carl is not impressed; the firefighter knew about this and shouldn’t have gone out. When Carl’s done he looks over at me. “You’re back to work?”

“Until the next crisis.”

“Good, you’re going on man-up. The sector boss went to the fire so you’re it.”

Carl returns to his radios, directs operations. I’ve got a half-hour to spare and return to Old Faithful, operate on my backpack, give it a quick checkup. It’s in need of major replacement surgery; I ransacked it at the last fire, so I run downtown, buy replacements. I also pick up a small bottle of pop, which will come in handy later when I conduct a little experiment, play with my big cigar. When I get back to the ranger station, the helicopter is late so I make a call from a phone in the empty coffee room.

It’s answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Hello.” I switch personalities. “This is Brent Hancock. Is this Angela Murtow?”

“No, this is Kim, her assistant.” The voice is curt, but polite.

“Oh ... Is Angela around?”

“No, she’s gone to a rally. Can I take a message?”

“Well ... umm ... maybe you can help me. I just moved to Curtain River and I’ve heard lots of good things about your group, the Mountain Guardians. Like you guys, I’m appalled by the horrendous clearcut destruction of the pristine west country and I’d like to attend your next meeting.”

Kim is excited; the path to an environmentalist’s heart is paved with adjectives. The more, the better. She tells me the next meeting — a special gathering to discuss recent events — is at the Chowder Creek community hall this Wednesday night at eight o’clock. I tell her I’ll be there and she says she’s looking forward to meeting me, asks why I moved to Curtain River. I tell her I want to open a health food store, sell organics and hemp T-shirts, maybe some handicrafts and local art. By the time we disconnect, we’re practically soulmates.

Now all I have to do is convince Carl to let me come in Wednesday night.

The helicopter arrives, flown by a pilot I know. We chat during the flight. From the air, the staging camp doesn’t look like much — a cluster of tent frames close to a helipad where we’ll remain to wait for a fire call. But after recent events, it’ll be a holiday. We land and I haul out my pack and bedroll. Men in bright yellow coveralls and red hardhats stand among the trees; fluorescent natives watching the pilgrims alight.

“Well if it isn’t Mr. Porter Cassel.”

The crew leader is a tall, wide native with an ugly scar on his cheek and a smile that lends him the air of a pirate. I’ve worked with him before; his crew is top-notch.

I shake his beefy hand. “How come you’re not on the fire, Alphonse?”

Alphonse lives for flame and he makes a disgusted sound, like a bear finding an empty picnic basket. “Damn dispatch,” he grumbles. To a firefighter, Dispatch is a mysterious god, capable of moving men and equipment anywhere at a whim. “They sent the south crew even though we’re closer. Said we needed to stay put because of the hazard.”

I’m kind of glad they didn’t send him. “Who was your sector boss?”

“Frank Whiteknife,” he says, shaking his head. “He got to go too.”

“Everybody but you.”

“Yeah, that’s a humbug.”

I slap him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, your time is coming.”

Before you arrive on man-up, everything is a rush. Pack your bags. Get a briefing. Catch the helicopter. When you arrive at camp, time begins to slow, like an Eatmore commercial. Man-up is sitting at a strategic location in the forest, waiting for a fire. So long as radios are manned and equipment is ready, there’s no hurry to do much of anything. I check the gear, Alphonse following, watching to see if I find anything amiss. I want to give him a hard time about something but the pulaskis are sharp, the pumps and saws clean and ready; everything is squared away. I concede, tell him they’ve done a good job. His smile grows wider, like he’s found a galleon loaded with gold.

“Now what, boss?” he asks. “Pump practice?”

“Too late in the day. We could get a call.”

Alphonse looks disappointed — he’s a man of action.

“Let’s try the creek,” I suggest. “Go fishing.”

He brightens, wanders off to collect his fishing gear. I dump my pack and bedroll in a vacant tent frame, take out my world record cigar, peel the plastic wrap off the box. It’s one hell of a stogie and I hold it to my lips, like something out of a corny gangster movie.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” Alphonse, at the door of the tent frame.

I lower the cigar, feel a bit sheepish. “I don’t. This is for an experiment.”

“An experiment?” He laughs. “Like Bill Clinton?”

“Not that type of experiment. I want to see how fast it burns.”

“Oh.” He looks puzzled. “Want me to smoke it for you?”

“No, I need to know the smoulder rate. Besides, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He sits on a bed frame across from me. “What sorta experiment?”

“One that involves explosives.”

Alphonse rubs his hands. “Count me in, boss.”

I read the fine print on the green band of the cigar, a guarantee by the manufacturer, slip the band off and put it in my pocket. I’ll check with them later. I rummage in my pack, find a compass, use the ruler on the side to measure the length of the cigar. Thirteenand-a-half inches. I use a pocket knife — still haven’t found my hunting knife — to trim off the end of the cigar so it dries faster, leaving thirteen inches; measure the diameter, write all this down in my handy-dandy notebook. Alphonse leans forward to see what I’m writing. From a first aid kit, I take out a safety pin and begin to poke holes along the shaft of the cigar, through the tobacco-leaf wrapping.

“What a shame,” he mutters. “A perfectly good cigar.”

I set the perforated cigar on the top of the tent frame wall near the door, where it’ll receive plenty of heat and airflow. “Okay Alphonse, let’s go fishing.”

At the creek, we test our radios, make sure we have contact in case of a fire call. Firefighters in coveralls and hardhats lounge on the shaded bank like construction workers in the Garden of Eden. I unfold my portable fishing rod, attach a small fly. Alphonse has nothing but a tangle of fishing line.

“Where’s your rod?”

“Rod?” He grins. “I’m an Indian. I don’t need no stinkin’ rod.”

His fishing kit is a dozen feet of line and several lures he’s obviously made here, out of materials at hand. He selects the cut-off bottom of a small fork — the tines bent into hooks, scraps of plastic flagging for colour — ties the line to a long willow branch. I laugh at him but he catches a trout while I get skunked.

“Take that, white man.”

“Yeah, yeah ...”

By ten o’clock the next morning, the cigar is as dry as it’s going to get, the outer wrapping beginning to crack and separate. And it’s brittle. The arsonist would have to transport a cigar this dry in a box or it would break. I organize the crew, explain that we’re going to do a little test, have them collect deadwood from the forest, make a pile in a bare area behind the camp. As a precaution, we set up a pump, string some fire hose; I don’t want this turning into another Forest Service legend. From my pack, I take out the rest of the materials I brought from Edmonton.

A cake pan, about eight-inches square and two-inches deep.

A small can of “F” black powder.

My polyethylene pop bottle.

To be prudent, I assemble the device in my tent. Alphonse stands guard but since he’s facing the wrong way, spying through a flap in the tent, I don’t think he’ll be all that effective. I cut off the bottom quarter of the pop bottle, pour in an inch and a half of gunpowder and stick in the cigar — which is far too long and topples over. Some sort of additional ballast is needed. I consider adding a base of sand but doubt this is what the arsonist used; we would have found traces mixed with the residue. Then it occurs to me that a cigar this long will produce a lot of ash and a hot ember on the gunpowder would result in a premature ignition. An ash skirt is needed, perhaps a cardboard disc with a hole in the centre; this would also stabilize the cigar. I cut a disc from the flap of a cardboard box, make a hole in the centre for the cigar, find the disc snaps tightly into a groove in the top of my pop bottle cup. The cigar is held firmly in place; the device tight, stable and fully self-contained. I may be onto something.

The next step must be done in the open.

I carry the ignition device to the brushpile, position the cake pan under the edge of the pile and set the device in the centre of the pan. From a jug of diesel meant for the generator, I pour in three fingers of the thick, greenish liquid. Unlike gasoline, which explodes within feet of a spark, diesel has a low flash point and won’t ignite unless in direct contact with a flame. Regardless, the firefighters hang back in the shade of the trees. Alphonse crouches behind me like swat team backup as I pour the diesel.

He takes a step back when I pull out a lighter. “Careful there, white man.”

The cigar is difficult to light, standing up like that. I pull it out, hold the lighter to the end, take a few test drags to get it going. Bad idea for a non-smoker; it tastes like a barn fire. I gasp and sputter. Now I know why Health and Welfare Canada advises against inhaling.

Alphonse laughs. “Good stuff, eh?”

My tongue feels like it was dipped in acid. “Here, you try.”

“With pleasure.” He puffs casually on the cigar, holding it as though he were an oil baron out inspecting his holdings, puts on an exaggerated English accent. The noble savage meets Monty Python. “I say there — old boy, smashing nice weather we’re having.”

“Give me that.”

The tip of the cigar is grey and hot, pungent smoke wafting around us. Carefully, I insert the other end through the hole in the cardboard disc, seat it firmly in the gunpowder, set the smoking device in the pan of diesel.

“Now what?” asks Alphonse.

I make a note of the time. “Now we wait, old boy.”