by J. M. Porup
He flopped back into his chair and closed his eyes. “I am so tired of these goddamn food terrists I could puke,” he said. “Is it really so hard not to get caught?”
“And getting harder,” I said with enthusiasm.
He opened one eye. “That’s the spirit. Pretend you’re still on the bandwagon.”
I puzzled over this. “What band? What wagon? I don’t even play an instrument.”
The judge chuckled and slapped his knee. “You and me are survivors, Frolick.” He stood up. “Can I offer you some refreshment?”
“Vanilla air, you got it,” I said. “Asparagus if you don’t.”
“You ought to do standup, you know that?” He opened a wall safe and took down a plate. I gazed in horror at what lay there.
“Hangnail!” I exclaimed. “Where in the name of the Prophet did you get that?”
The judge held up a knife. “I’ll cut, you pick.” He winked. “Sound fair?”
A small chocolate doughnut gazed up at me like the Eye of Lucifer. I struggled to my feet. “Are you offering me an addictive caloric substance?” I lowered my voice. “Here? At Food Court? In judge’s chambers?”
“There’s no need to whisper,” he said, and took a massive bite of the doughnut. “And you can drop the act. No one can hear us. I locked the door.”
I pointed at the open bathroom door and mouthed the words “Toilet tap.”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry?”
“The NSA has tapped every toilet in the country. Picks up anything within earshot.”
The judge stared at me for a moment, then roared with laughter. “And I thought I was paranoid.” He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m the one who orders toilet taps installed, my friend. Not the other way around!”
“You don’t believe me?” I asked. I went into the bathroom, rolled up my shirt sleeves and plunged a hand into the toilet bowl.
“Whatcha looking for, my day-old turd?” Hangnail called out from the other room. He cackled and stuffed another bite of doughnut into his mouth.
My arm disappeared into the cold water. My elbow hit bottom. There. It was moving backward, trying to avoid me. But not fast enough. I grabbed its head and pulled.
Inch by inch it emerged from the toilet bowl. Unlike the prototypes I’d seen at the NSA, shimmering and colorful, this one was encrusted in poo. Three feet long and more it came, writhing in my grip until it let go of the plumbing and I stumbled backward against the bathroom wall. From the judge’s chambers came a crash.
Panting, I held the squirming thing in both hands and advanced into the room. A broken plate and a quarter doughnut lay at the judge’s feet.
“My God,” he said. “What is it?”
“Like I was telling you,” I said. “A toilet tap. Now do you believe me?”
At the head of the snake, a small video camera twitched back and forth, looking at the two of us. A bulge like a microphone protruded from its nose.
“Shit! It’s seen me!” The judge wiped chocolate from his lips. “Smash it! Do something!”
He ripped the toilet tap from my hands and swung the snake in the air. The head cracked against the edge of his desk. The mechanical creature contorted in lifelike agony. A second whack, and a third brought a crunching noise of shattered circuitry. The thing went limp in Hangnail’s hands.
“This is all your fault,” he growled at me, shaking the dead snake in my face.
“My fault?” I said. “Look at the poo caked to its sides. It’s been watching you for months.”
“It has?” The judge shuddered and cast the snake on the floor.
“Taking videos of your bowel movements,” I said. “It can even read your thoughts.”
“My thoughts! But how?”
“By analyzing your ass lips when you’re on the potty. It’s designed to detect food terrists.”
Hangnail clutched his chest. “Then they know everything!”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why they call it Total Poo Awareness. Total Power.”
“But now what do we do?”
My eyes widened. “That’s what I came here to ask you.”
He fumbled in his desk drawer. “Only one thing we can do. Emigrate.”
He pulled out a passport. All passports had been confiscated years ago. I wondered how he had managed to hold on to his.
“We can’t do that!” I wailed. “Then we’d become illegal emigrants!”
“They’re coming for us, Frolick,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here now.” He looked around wildly and pushed a chair against the door.
“Wait,” I said. “What if there’s another way?”
“Like what?”
I told him all that had happened in the last forty-eight hours, since Green and I arrived to investigate the dead pizza dealer. When I came to Full Stummick’s plan to poison the Food Mafia, the judge whistled.
“So you want to make yourself the new Fatso?” He clapped me on the back. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “The plan is to get rid of supply. Then we’ll finally be free to eat air. And you won’t have to go for treatment for your doughnut addiction. The whole country will be like one giant Fat Camp.”
Hangnail looked at me funny. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Don’t you?”
He slumped back into his chair. “Killing the current mafia leadership won’t make any difference,” he said. “Other criminals will take their place. They always do.”
“Not this time, Mister Cynic,” I said, hands on my hips. “You sound just like that French spy, you know that?”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“His crazy theory—try not to laugh—is that if we knock off the mafia, and no one can get food, instead of celebrating, the people will rise up and overthrow the government. Stupid, I know.”
A look of wonderment passed over Hangnail’s face. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “It’s brilliant. Without the mafia, there’ll be major disruptions in supply. For weeks. Maybe months. Then all this bullshit goes away. And I can end this stupid diet I’m on.”
“That’s the spirit!” I exclaimed. “Kick that doughnut habit once and for all, and suck down God’s own air, like the rest of us.” I anointed his scalp with a vial of water from the sacred drinking fountain in the men’s locker room at Fat Camp. I carry one with me at all times to baptize errant sheep who return to the fold. “So what do you think I should do?”
He wiped the water from his forehead and took me by the arm. “We’ve got to get you out of here before they come. You’re this country’s last and only hope, you understand?”
I had never seen my friend like this before. “I’ll do my best.”
“With a single stroke, you can save our country from this madness.”
“End the curse of food,” I said brightly. “We agree. That’s why I need your advice.”
“Sure,” he said. He dialed the combination to the safe. “What do you need?”
“We’re talking about the extrajudicial assassination of Airitarian citizens right here in the US of Air. Who am I to set myself up as judge, jury and executioner?”
He turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. “So…what do you want from me?”
“A verdict.”
At that moment a pounding shook the door. “Meyer-Weiner!” a voice shouted. It sounded familiar. “Judge Oscar Meyer-Weiner!”
“Your bailiff?” I whispered.
Hangnail’s face went grey. “They’re here. Quick!” He pushed me around the desk.
I resisted. “But we’re talking about mass murder.”
His face took on the grim aspect he wore when sentencing food smugglers to the suffocation chamber. “Special Agent Frolick,” he said, using his solemn voice of justice, “I hereby sentence all members of the French Food Mafia to death. That good enough for you?”
I stroked my chin. “But what
about their wives and girlfriends? Some of them are totally innocent. When I poison the soup, they’ll die too.”
He held up an index finger. “Guilt by association, my friend. It’s in the Constitution.”
“It is?”
“Sure.”
“Judge Meyer-Weiner!” the voice outside shouted. “I know you’re in there! You and Frolick.”
I recognized the voice. It was Erpent. “The SS!”
“Hurry!” the judge hissed. “Your mission is too important.” He opened the safe door, and held out his hands to boost me up.
“I’ll count to three!” Erpent shouted. “And then my TWAT team will break down the door. One!”
“But their women,” I insisted. “I need your verdict.”
“Two!”
“Guilty,” he said. “Sentence is death by poisoned soup. May they rest in peace. Now are we good?”
Something brushed softly against the door. Like a cat wanting to come inside. Probably a battering ram. Standard TWAT team uses twenty guys, swinging in shifts.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” I shouted. “You didn’t finish counting to three!”
“I’m lousy at math!” Erpent shouted back.
“Come on, Frolick,” Hangnail said. “Let’s go!”
I stood on his hands and looked in the safe. I would barely fit. “There isn’t room for both of us to hide!”
“The back panel’s an escape hatch,” he whispered. “It takes you down a garbage chute to the rear exit. I’ll be right behind you.”
I pushed my way through the back panel and tumbled headfirst down a narrow shaft. I cradled my head in my arms and prepared for impact.
Woompf.
I landed in a dumpster full of foam padding. I rolled out of the way, expecting the judge’s substantial bulk to be right behind me. He didn’t come. A faint shouting echoed down the garbage chute.
“I can’t fit!” Hangnail called out. “Frolick, I’m too fat!” The sound of metal screeching and bending. “They’re here! Follow the plan! It’s a good plan! It’s the only way! It’s the—no!”
Noises of struggle. Silence. Another voice took its place.
“Run, little Frolick,” Erpent said. “I’m coming for you.”
I ran.
TWENTY-ONE
All around me faces from Wanted posters laughed and chattered, their corpulent bodies clad in tuxedos, their women in colorful silk. These were men I had sworn to arrest on sight. I tugged at my neoprene mask. We stood in line outside a Georgetown high school gym, shivering in the chill autumn air. I wouldn’t be arresting them tonight. But if my mission was successful, they would soon be getting their full measure of justice.
“Don Baloney!” cried a voice at my elbow. A short man, twice as wide as he was tall, with a greasy blond ponytail. I recognized him as Hippie LePew, head of the Berkeley branch of the Syndicate. What do you say to a California gangster famous for his human sausage and breast milk pizza?
“Hippie,” I said, in my best South Side twang. I took his hand. “How’s it hanging out there in Cali?”
“You know me,” he said. “King of the Crunchy Granola.” He lowered his voice, kept my hand tight in his. “I just want you to know, you have my full support.”
I nodded my head, mystified by this. “As…you do mine?”
Hippie looked at me sideways for a moment. Had I given myself away? Then he clapped me on the shoulder and laughed. “Don Baloney, always a joker. Right? Am I right?”
The gangster turned to greet another colleague. I fingered the vial of poison in my pocket. Enough to kill every last member of the Food Mafia present here today. O Mine Prophet, I swore silently. How was I ever going to pull this off?
“Don Baloney! Yoo-hoo!” A woman in tight green silk waved a mink wrap in my face. She jiggled her waddle at me. “You remember Boise, don’t you?” She giggled. “The spud plucking?”
Rapid calculation: Baloney wasn’t married. No known girlfriend. Maybe he was having an affair. But she would be able to spot me as a fake. Cut her loose.
“Do I know you?” I asked coolly. “Have we met?”
Her jaw gaped wide. “And after all I’ve done for you,” she whispered.
Oops?
The gym doors clanged open. Two guards with Uzis—the kind that use real bullets, totally illegal, by the way—took their places to either side. A shadow loomed behind them. It stepped forward, and the light fell across a man’s face.
Fatso himself.
The line advanced until his gruesome form filled my world. Blubbery cheeks spread wide, cavernous mouth agape, shark teeth ready to engulf me. An open palm slashed at my abdomen. Would he disembowel me if he found out? He’d been known to strangle informers with their own intestines. Fingers squeezed my bicep through the fat suit. A warm hand grasped my own.
“Caponey Baloney!” the Godfather of Food cried. “How eez my-ee fayvoreet don frum Chicago?”
He waited. I was supposed to say something. Of course I was supposed to say something. But my voice! Would he recognize my voice wasn’t the same as the real Baloney? M-f-word s-word g-d-word! Why hadn’t Stummick thought of that? They could at least have recorded the dead man’s voice before killing him. That way I could have practiced. Fatso’s grin slipped.
“Yoo say nuh-seeng, my fren,” he said, lowering his voice so the guards could not hear. “Pare-haps bee-cuz yoo air fatt-air zan mee, yoo seenk yoo air a bigg-air man zan mee.”
Still my tongue refused to obey, and Fatso’s grin turned terrible. “I haf haird many seengs frum my agents een Chicago, fren Baloney. How yoo deeslike how zee organisation eez run. How yoo seenk yoo can doo bett-air zan mee.”
What had I stumbled into? Come on. Just f-ing word say something. And attitude. You’re a gangster. Attitude.
“Vicious rumor, Don Fatso,” I said. “Lies designed to drive us apart.” I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed his pinky ring. The guards hovered close by, fingers on the triggers of their Uzis. “It’s true that I’s a bigger man than you,” I said, and patted my stomach. “But you’s got more brains than me.”
Fatso seemed to relax a little. “Zat eez troo.”
“Besides,” I said. “You know how much time it takes to get this fat? When I got time to want your job, huh? I’s happy with Chicago.”
“Hey! We’re hungry back here!” yelled a voice behind me.
“Yeah, come on, what’s the holdup?” a woman screeched.
“Quiet back zair,” Fatso roared, “or I weel roast yoo ho-ell like peegs, and feed yoo to zee uzz-airs.”
The line went silent.
I forced a chuckle. “That’s what I love about you, Don Fatso.”
“Wat eez zat, pleez?”
“Your sense of humor.”
Fatso stared at me for a moment. Then he laughed. “Yoo all rite, Baloney. Tell me zumsing.”
“Anything, Don Fatso.”
He turned in profile. “Doo I look fat een zees?”
“No, no,” I said, thinking fast. “You look great in that, boss. Skinny. As the Prophet. Skinnier.” I did my best to boom a belly laugh.
“Zat eez not zo, my fren,” Fatso said with a smile, “boot eet eez nice uv yoo to say so.” He poked me in the gut. “Tomorrow wee begin our die-ets. But not tonite, non?”
I nodded. “Not tonight.”
“Go find yor seet,” Fatso said. “Tonite yoo seet wees me, at zee table uv honor.”
I bowed at the neck, unable to bow lower down. “It is I who am honored.”
With that I waddled past Fatso, between the two guards, and into the high school gymnasium. The place had been decked out like a ballroom from Versailles: gilt furniture, golden candelabra, wall tapestries, rich carpets. Here and there the gleaming parquet floor of the school’s basketball court peeked through the gaps. On the stage an empty throne overlooked the hall. A table for eight stood to one side.
“Don Baloney.” A skeletal-looking head waiter consulted a clipboard. “Will you foll
ow me please, monsieur?”
“Show me where the food is, man,” I boomed, to the delight of those already inside. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Precisely so, monsieur.” He eyed my girth. “This way, s’il vous plaît.”
He led me toward the stage. I studied the tables as we passed. The plates were larger than normal—platters, really. And in the shape of a trapezoid. I stifled a groan. Unbelievable. Such spite.
Stairs led up to the stage. The head waiter gestured for me to climb.
“Up there?” I said. The last thing I wanted was for the entire mafia to stare at me. The fewer people who saw me, the better.
“Of course, monsieur,” he said. “You sit at the table of honor. Did Don Fatso not inform you?”
“Oh, that table of honor.” I laughed.
I climbed the stairs and took my seat. The other seven chairs stood empty. A vacant throne twenty feet tall and six feet wide sat next to the table. The head waiter loosened my napkin and tucked it into my shirt collar. As he did so, he whispered in my ear, “I have to say I am surprised to see you here after what happened last year.”
“What happened last year?” I whispered.
“Hey Baloney! Good to see you!” shouted someone from down on the main floor. An unknown gangster waved up at me. I waved back.
The waiter straightened up. “May I wish you a spectacular bon appetít, monsieur,” he said. “Tonight’s dégustacion will require all of your substantial, err, talents.”
I wondered at the waiter’s words. What had happened last year? Was I screwed already? The ATFF dossier on Baloney was as thin as the man was fat. What crucial piece of his bio was I lacking? I settled back in my chair and sighed. Too late now.
The others straggled in. There was Hippie LePew, and the woman from Boise, whoever she was. Spaghetti Marinara made a grand entrance. He was the Italian head of the New York mob. Then came Chew Chow, the former Chinese triad who ruled the Bay Area from a hilltop in Chinatown. The last one in before they shut the doors was Gassy the Geek. I’d heard a lot about Gassy. From Texas. Skinniest man in the room, and owner of a bum trumpet like no one else. They said he lived on chicken blood. Bit their heads off live and poured the blood down his throat.
