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“I got something else I wanna talk about.”

“In a minute. You ask me to do a reading, have the courtesy to let me finish.”

“You’re pretty thin-skinned for an Indian. Anyone ever tell you that?”

Red Bear gathered up the shells and sifted them back into the leather pouch.

“What are you doing? You said you weren’t finished.”

Red Bear strung the bag from his belt with a leather thong. He got out of the Blazer and looked around. There were no other cars in sight. He opened the trunk of the BMW and pulled out a crisp new paper bag. He tossed it through the open door of the Blazer and climbed back in.

Clegg pulled out the three packs of bills. “Seventy-five grand. Not much, considering.”

“Considering what? Seventy-five was the deal.”

“The deal was I give you the information, you do the rip-off. Rip-off, not murder. Where the hell do you get off pulling something like that? The local force is all over it, in case you didn’t know. So help me, if it blows back to me I’m going to come looking for you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Wombat is working for us, now.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Wombat Guthrie is stone-cold dead. They don’t come any deader. And he’s short a couple of hands and one head. Is that your idea of concealing his identity? Because it didn’t work. This thing is all over the radios. The guy was alone. It was totally unnecessary. Why did you kill him?”

“Who said I killed him? You don’t know I killed him. The last time I saw Wombat, we made a deal. From now on, he would be working for us. So if he was murdered, there’s no way it’s coming back to me. How could it come back to you?”

“Are you telling me you didn’t kill this guy?”

“I don’t murder people, Alan. It’s not my way. The most likely thing is he’s been punished by his colleagues for failing the organization so dramatically. I don’t see how that’s a problem for you.”

“All right. Okay. That makes sense.” Clegg seemed to relax a little. “How’d your crew react to the takeover? They had to be pretty impressed.”

“Yes, I think so. Even Kevin, and he’s very skeptical about my magic.”

“He’s not going to be trouble, is he?”

“Kevin?” Red Bear looked out across the lake, the tiny white pennants of surf. “Kevin won’t be a problem.”

“Because I’ll tell you who could be a problem, and that’s your little Toofus-Doofus friend.”

“Toof is a harmless pothead. How could he be a problem?”

Clegg looked at his watch. “I gotta hit the road. I gotta be back at the detachment by six.”

“How would Toof be a problem?”

“I’m not saying he is a problem. I’m saying he might be. Informant of mine gave me a little morsel of info the other day. One Nelson Tyndall. Not the most reliable asshole in the world, but not the worst either—for a junkie. Old Nelson tells me Toof told him that his crew was going to be doing something big in a couple of days. That was before your little trip across the lake.”

“‘Something big’?” Red Bear said. “‘Something big’ is not a problem. ‘Something big’ could be anything.”

“How about something big with the Viking Riders?”

“The Viking Riders? Your informant told you this before?”

“No, he told me Toof told him before.”

“That is not possible. None of them knew we were going near the Riders until we were on the lake and heading for the French River.”

“Like I say, Nelson’s not the most reliable asshole in the world.”

Red Bear cursed. He took off his Wayfarers and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

The sun broke through the clouds above the western shore. Clegg lowered his visor and started the Blazer.

“Keep an eye on the guy,” Clegg said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

18

KEVIN STRETCHED, AND CLOSED his eyes. He had spent the entire morning in Red Bear’s cabin under the watchful eye of Red Bear himself, stepping on the dope and packing it into ever-smaller packages. It was torment to be so close to ecstasy and yet forbidden to taste. He thought long and hard about shoving some into his pocket, but Red Bear was never more than a few feet away, talking quietly into the telephone, making deals.

Now Kevin was lying on his bunk, trying to write a poem about Karen, his last girlfriend in Vancouver. So far, he hadn’t had any luck with the females of Algonquin Bay, so he thought about Karen quite often. Strictly speaking, Karen had been someone else’s girlfriend and, despite her one-night adventure with Kevin, she had chosen to stay that way. Kevin summoned her image in his mind. That mouth, those sweet blue eyes, that silky blond hair. Unfortunately, his thoughts had a tendency to turn lustful, and lust was not conducive to good verse. He had crossed out a dozen opening lines, each one worse than the last.

The door opened, and Leon stepped inside, a dark silhouette against the sunlight.

“Don’t you ever, like, go outdoors, man?”

“I’m working.”

“Working?”

“Yes, Leon. I’m working. Writing. Some people do actually consider it work, you know.”

“Oh, excuse me. What are you, like, William Asshole Shakespeare? Ernest Asshole Hemingway?”

“You’re letting the flies in, Leon. I just got rid of the last one, and you’re letting them in again.”

Leon shut the door behind him. “I hope you’re writing a screenplay. That’s where the money is.”

“Never,” Kevin said, and snapped his notebook shut. He felt under the bed for his shoes. “I wanted to ask you something, Leon. The day Terri left, you drove her to the train station, right?”

“What are you going on about that again for? I told you. I’d been back from Toronto, like, thirty seconds and Red Bear says, ‘Hey. This is Kevin’s sister. She needs a ride to the station.’ She was in a hurry.”

“Yeah, I know she was pissed off at me. But I called her place in Vancouver and her roommates haven’t heard from her.”

“I got no answer for that. She didn’t give me an itinerary, man. I only just met her. Far as I know, she was catching the train to Toronto. After that, I got no idea.”

“I’m getting kind of worried. Normally, she would’ve called me by now. I don’t know where she can be.”

“She’s probably with friends in Toronto. Why not? Anyways, we got other things to worry about. Red Bear’s got a little job for us.”

“Shit. What now?”

“What are you talking about, man? We got the easiest gig anybody ever dreamed up. He makes the big contacts, sets up the big scores. All we gotta do is mule the stuff around once in a while.”

That was true. Mostly, all Kevin had to do for his money was occasionally meet one of Red Bear’s mysterious contacts downtown and put him together with some product at an agreed-upon location. Easy as pie.

“Man, you must be the laziest bastard in the world,” Leon went on.

“I just told you, man, I’m working on my poetry. Anyway, what’s he want us to do?”

“Toof’s been shooting his mouth off to the wrong people. Got to have a little talk with Canada’s favourite pot-head.”

“Nobody listens to Toof. He’s a harmless goof.” God, Kevin thought, I’ve been thinking about rhyme too long.

Leon snatched at a fly. “I didn’t say we have to beat him to death. We just got to have a talk with him.”

Later, when they were in the car, Kevin said, “So what’s the deal? Why have we got to talk to him?”