Oath of Office

by Michael Palmer

  Then, again, as quickly as it began, the rush of corn ceased.

  The two of them coughed and gagged. Probably mercifully, George had again drifted into unconsciousness. Somehow, Lou and Cap had managed to hold on to him. Now, they hoisted him upright between them.

  The corn was above their knees.

  “Had enough?” Chester yelled down. “I’ll give you one last chance to tell me the truth and make me believe you. Who else did you tell about my corn?”

  “Nobody knows about it,” Lou replied with no force behind the words.

  Chester waved down to them. “This is it,” he said.

  “It’s the truth,” Lou managed. “You’ve got to believe me.”

  He could see Chester reaching again for the lever. But there was no noise, no waterfall of corn and dust. No suffocating air.

  Instead, there was what sounded like the crackling of gunfire.

  Lots of gunfire.

  Lou closed his eyes, flinching with each crack, in anticipation of being shot. The gunfire continued in rapid spurts, but to Lou’s growing surprise, no bullets struck the inside of the grain car.

  “What’s happening?” Cap shouted to Lou.

  “I don’t know. Someone’s shooting. I thought they were shooting at us—some sort of a revenge game.”

  More gunfire erupted, followed by explosions that shook the train.

  Then there were helicopters swooping overhead. One of them hovered above the portal. Men, caught in the spotlights from the silos, seemed to be fast-roping down toward them.

  More gunfire. More explosions.

  Through the din, Lou heard Chester cry out. The silhouette above Lou clutched his shoulder and pitched forward, still holding the lever on the chute. Again, the corn kernels and dust poured down, but this time, William Chester became part of the deadly cataract, twisting in the air as he fell. He landed heavily on his back, not five feet away from where Lou and the others were struggling to stay upright and breathe.

  Corn pelted Chester’s body and face. He struggled to sit up, but his efforts only drove him deeper into the feather bed of kernels.

  The man’s mouth contorted in a silent scream.

  Within seconds, corn had completely buried him. Briefly, Chester worked his head free and craned his nose and mouth toward the portal, but the level continued to rise.

  With the corn already at Lou’s chest, there was no way he could even move.

  “Help me!” he thought he heard over the rush of seeds. “Help me!”

  Corn had covered Chester’s nose and eyes. His mouth seemed to suck in one final breath. A moment later, he vanished.

  The flow of corn was nearing Lou’s shoulders. The pressure against his body was enormous, and he reflexively began reviewing the physiology of crush injuries. Muscle death, swelling, loss of function, renal shutdown, and all sorts of cardiac and pulmonary problems.

  How would dying that way compare to suffocating in corn?

  The horrible din was diminishing as well. Lou no longer heard what he thought was gunfire. Maybe the noise had been something mechanical? He looked over at Cap. The rising corn was at the level of the man’s upper chest. George, wedged between them, mumbled incoherently. He was buried to his throat. Lou tried to reach over for Cap’s hand, but was immobilized within a cocoon of kernels. Still, through the intense dust, they could see each other well enough to exchange looks of helplessness.

  “Got any ideas?” Lou asked, surprised at how calm he was feeling next to the man who had been such a perfect friend.

  “Yeah,” Cap said, “the Serenity Prayer.”

  “This is going to be tough on Emily.”

  “She’s a strong girl, Lou. She’ll be all right.”

  Lou lifted his chin. No use. The corn was already nearing his mouth. His ears and nose were filled with dust. Kernels continued to sting them like angry hornets.

  “I wish you had my two inches,” Cap said, noting Lou’s struggles to keep his head up.

  Lou, spitting corn seed out of his mouth, glanced glassy-eyed over at his friend.

  He could read Cap’s lips: … The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Lou said the last words out loud, clenched his jaws, closed his eyes tightly, and inhaled one deep, final time.

  Corn slid up and over his mouth. There was no way he could hold his breath any longer.

  I love you, Em. I love you.

  Her beautiful face was there with him, smiling.

  All became silent.

  Then, with another rush of sound and a sense of movement, the darkness turned to a dim light.

  * * *

  “I’M LOOKING for Dr. Lou Welcome. Is Dr. Lou Welcome here?”

  Disoriented and confused, Lou opened his eyes. He was on his back alongside the track. Spotlights were shining down on him from the Chester Enterprises silos. He had an oxygen mask on. Everyplace around him was corn—piles and piles of golden kernels. Frankencorn. Sitting beside him, brushing dirt and corn from his face, was Cap.

  “Hey, there, boss,” Cap said. “Welcome to the land of the living. There’s a guy calling out your name. I think he wants to talk with you.”

  Lou pulled the oxygen off. He had to clear his throat and spit out a gob of thick mud in order to speak. “George?”

  “Medics took him away,” Cap said. “One of them gave me a thumbs-up, so I think he’s not in any big trouble.”

  “Medics?”

  Lou’s head cleared rapidly. He rolled over onto his side, gagging and coughing. Then, with Cap’s help, he sat up and looked around. In every direction were crumpled-up parachutes. There were dead bodies, too—a row of them, being dragged away from the train and lined up by soldiers in black greasepaint. Lou recognized Chester’s man, Dolph, as two soldiers set his body down next to the others. He was bloodied, and it appeared he had been shot many times. The landscape was complete and total carnage.

  To Lou’s left was the grain car. Its hatch was open, and the contents of the bin had been emptied out onto the ground.

  “Chester?”

  “The medics took him, too. I’m no expert on dead, but he sure looked it to me.

  A soldier approached, his face also blackened. “Lieutenant Brad Taylor, United States Army, Second Ranger Battalion. Are either of you Dr. Lou Welcome?”

  “I am,” Lou responded weakly.

  “Do you need your oxygen mask, sir?”

  “If I have trouble breathing, I’ll put it back on.”

  “Very well. I’m glad you’re okay, sir. I have been instructed to tell you that President and Mrs. Mallory send their regards.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Millie Neuland unlocked the front door of her restaurant and motioned for Lou to come inside. She had on what he had come to believe was her standard uniform—a light blue gingham dress and frilly half apron. Her broad smile upon seeing him rivaled the brightness of the midmorning sun.

  “Dr. Lou!” she said, wrapping him in her arms. “What a pleasant surprise. I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right? Your face looks a little bruised.”

  “I’m fine, Millie. Fine.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Behind Millie, across the vast restaurant, Lou could see half a dozen cooks and an equal number of waitstaff, all getting ready for what was sure to be another busy day.

  Everybody eats at Millie’s, he was thinking.

  “Business as usual,” he said.

  “Business as usual,” Millie echoed. “Come in, come in.”

  Millie seized Lou tightly by the arm and guided him into the expansive foyer.

  “So, what brings you out here so early?” she said. “You know you don’t have to beat the crowd to get served first.”

  Lou grinned. “If the truth be known,” he said, “I came here to talk to you. Is there a private place we can sit down?”

  “Why, of course, dear. My office is on the second floor.” She gestured to a staircase off the right side of the foy
er and undid a velvet rope so they could ascend.

  Shuttered office doors lined one side of a long carpeted corridor that was interspersed with foldout tables, on which there were several fax machines, a printer, and reams of copy paper. There was also a water bubbler and mailbox cubby system, in addition to numerous employee notices on bulletin boards—OSHA-type stuff. Taped to the wall was a poster announcing an upcoming softball game against a rival restaurant.

  “Lots of excitement in the news today,” Lou said as Millie unlocked a door at the end of the hall.

  “I should say. Soldiers dropping out of the sky in the middle of nowhere to subdue a drug king—that certainly is exciting. Can I get you some tea? Coffee? Eggs? We’re going to begin our breakfast experiment in another month.”

  “Thanks but no thanks,” Lou said.

  Millie’s office, a modest, windowless space with a ceiling that was peaked like the roof above it, was surprisingly uninviting. There were no framed pictures about. No motivational posters adorning the walls. Not a single cookbook, either. There was just a simple desk, two chairs, several filing cabinets, and a lot of papers.

  All business.

  Lou closed the door behind him as he entered.

  “This used to be a supply closet,” Millie said, gesturing him to the classic hard-backed maple kitchen chair on the guest side of her desk and taking what looked like a high-end orthopedic desk chair on the other.

  “So why’d you make it your office?” he asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t want to be tempted to spend too much time in here. You can’t understand your customer if you’re not with your customer. Know what I mean?”

  “I don’t think there’s a restaurateur who knows their customers like you do,” Lou said.

  “Everybody eats at Millie’s,” she replied cheerfully, picking up a menu off her fairly cluttered desk to show Lou the saying printed below her rainbow.

  “That commando raid in West Virginia,” Lou said. “Actually that’s what I came out here to talk with you about.”

  “Now, what a strange thing for you to do,” she said, her blue eyes narrowing slightly and surrendering some of their sparkle.

  “Not so strange,” he said. “I’m not sure what your news source was, but the raid had nothing to do with drugs.”

  “Now, how would you know that?”

  “Because I was there,” Lou said.

  Millie tried for a quizzical look, but her eyes had grown hard. “And if the raid had nothing to do with drugs,” she asked, “exactly what did it have to do with?”

  “Corn. It had to do with corn.”

  “Oh?” Millie crinkled her nose and smiled at him benignly. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”

  “Renee,” Lou said.

  “Who?”

  “My ex-wife, Renee. She’s the one who really figured it out for me.”

  “Figured what out, dear? You’re not really making any sense.”

  “You see, once I realized that William Chester’s corn was the cause of all these people periodically losing their judgment and doing crazy, sometimes dangerous things, I was looking for a common thread—something that would tie John and Carolyn Meacham, Roberta Jennings, Joey Alderson, and the staff at DeLand Hospital together. I kept thinking it had to be airborne, or how else could those people have become affected as they did.”

  Millie Neufeld was granite now. “I’m afraid I still don’t get you, Doctor. Perhaps you’d better come back another time.”

  “But then it hit me. On the helicopter ride back from West Virginia, we actually flew somewhere near your place. By then I already knew. Just as you said, everybody eats at Millie’s.”

  Millie, her smallish hands gripping the edge of her desk, glared across at him. “Why don’t you stand up, Lou?”

  He did as she asked.

  “Will you take your shirt off, dear?”

  “Wire?”

  “I just want to make sure our conversation stays private, if you know what I mean.”

  Lou took off his shirt, and Millie gasped at the extent of his cuts and scrapes. He pulled up his pant legs, too, then put his shirt back on.

  “I don’t have a wire,” he said.

  “And you don’t have any proof, either, my friend. Merely allegations.”

  “The FBI could seize your invoices. I bet they’ll find you have a very limited number of food suppliers. I bet they’ll also find that each of your suppliers can be traced to a food processing plant owned by Chester Enterprises and its subsidiaries. Like I said, it’s all about corn—specifically, Chester corn.”

  “Interesting concept. The trouble is, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to keep any invoices around.”

  “What percentage of the food you serve is processed from that stuff?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Yes, you could. How about Millie’s Cola? Who makes that?”

  “You mean the fructose in it? I think you already know the answer to that question.”

  “And your beef?”

  “All of it corn fed,” Millie said.

  “Chicken the same?”

  “Chicken. Turkey. Taco shells. Cola. All my pasta. Customers almost never complain, either. My cereal. My frying oil. My biscuits and grits. Cookies. Chocolate. Potato chips. Yogurt. Mayonnaise. Margarine. Ketchup. Salad dressings. Syrup. Even our wheat bread has some corn baked in it. Forget amazing grace, we’re talking amazing grain! You asked what percentage? The answer is almost everything on my menu.”

  “Millie, why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Feed your customers Chester’s corn.”

  A wistful look overcame her. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to survive in the restaurant business these days?” she asked. “The economy was tanking and it was taking my customers down with it. Food prices were going up high and fast, but the bigger chains could keep their prices low because of volume. I didn’t have that luxury. The only way I could have stayed profitable was to raise my prices and lose my customers. Then Mr. Chester came along.”

  “Mr. Chester is the one those commandos were after. He’s dead.”

  Millie stiffened momentarily, then quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What kind of deal did he offer you?”

  “He needed a place to test his products for allergenicity and other health effects, and he needed it fast. All I had to do was buy my food from his processors. I tasted everything first, of course. It was good, high-quality stuff. No problem there. Plus, he funded my retirement by just a little bit.”

  “What’s a little, Millie? What was selling out like this worth to you?”

  “Enough to let an old lady leave it all someday.”

  “And Stone?”

  “He was paid to keep an eye on things. He did whatever William asked him to. If there was trouble with any of the deliverers, he would take care of that. Little things that I guess added up to a lot. You sure William’s dead?”

  “Sure as sugar,” Lou said. He shook his head in dismay. “Did you know what Chester was doing? Why he needed to get that corn of his into the marketplace so rapidly?”

  “A retirement fund buys a lot of silence. I didn’t really ask.”

  “So you had no way of knowing that his experimental corn could dangerously diminish the decision-making capacity of your consumers?”

  Millie shrugged. “I just knew that they were loyal and regular customers. But Chief Stone did ask me to keep a close lookout for anything unusual in any of them—allergic reactions, skin problems, and such. And as I said, there were none.”

  “What you were looking for was only the tip of the iceberg—the things you can see.”

  “If you say so. Why hasn’t everyone who ate here over the last eighteen months suffered these lapses?”

  “Maybe they have, to a greater or lesser degree. We may never know if the problems were related to how much people ate here or just an allergic, idiosyncratic reaction, but I
am positive that your food is the cause. And regardless, Millie, what you did was illegal, wrong. You knowingly fed your customers food products that were not FDA approved or even tested.”

  “You have no proof of that. I’m just a businesswoman running a business. I bought my food from the supplier that gave me the best deal. Proof, Doctor. You have no proof that I did anything wrong.”

  Lou sighed aloud. “Why don’t you come with me, Millie.”

  She followed Lou out into the corridor.

  “Do any of these offices have windows overlooking the loading zone out back by the kitchen?”

  Millie nodded. “All of them, except of course for mine.”

  Lou opened the door to the next office he came to, letting Millie enter first. He watched her walk over to the large picture window, then saw her shoulders sag when she looked outside. Lou came over to stand beside her. The loading zone was a beehive of activity. Outside were police cars and several official vehicles from the FDA, DEA, and EPA. They were taking food out of the kitchen and loading it into FBI vans.

  “The agents closed this place until they can get statements from your employees. They’re downstairs doing that now. They have a court order, but I told them they could wait to give it to you.”

  “Why, aren’t you the foxy little fellow, Lou Welcome. Too bad I’m not a big fan of chicanery.”

  “The FBI doesn’t need invoices when your food can be tested for the DNA of mutated termites.”

  “Is that what Chester used to make his food? Bugs?”

  Millie’s insouciance made Lou boil. “There’s a lot at stake here, Millie. Lives have been lost and destroyed because you closed your eyes to what was going on. You’re going to be found guilty—either by the law or the IRS.”

  “Well, you should know something yourself, Doctor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I may not be getting everything William was going to pay me, but there are plenty of top-of-the-line defense attorneys who love to eat at Millie’s.”