The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (24 page)

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 follow 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.

Ice cubes crashed at my elbow. My water glass filled. I jumped in my chair.

A young waiter stood at my side. “My apologies,
monsieur.
I will be your personal waiter this evening.”

Attitude, Frolick. You’re a gangster, d-word it.

“I ask for water?” I snarled.

The man stammered,
“Non, monsieur.”

I bunched up my fists. “Then what you doing, huh?”

The waiter inclined his head. “Please do not kill me,
monsieur.”

“Quit your blubbering,” I said, as irritably as I could manage. My heart went out to him. I had hurt his feelings.

The man left the pitcher of water on the table and scurried down the stairs. I followed him with my eyes, and let an idle hand drape across my pocket. The vial of poison was still there.
Remember your errand, you idiot.
You could poison the pitcher of water, but that wasn’t ideal. Only kill half a dozen people that way. Might even miss Fatso. No. Got to get into the kitchen somehow, and do it soon. Hang on. Wasn’t soup usually a first course? Make that real soon.

The waiter walked along the side wall and pushed backward through a swinging door. The crash of plates and an oath in French escaped the gap before it swung shut again.

That was where I had to go. The food lab. But how was I going to get in there without getting caught? I was the fattest man in the room, even fatter than Fatso himself, and I was sitting in full view of everyone. Why couldn’t Stummick and the makeup artist have chosen a less conspicuous alter ego?

The hall was packed. And still I was the only one on stage. Fatso entered, and the guards chained and padlocked the doors. The don of dons led a procession toward the throne, including Marinara, Chow and Gassy. They mounted the stairs and took their seats, except for Gassy, who approached a waist-high microphone. Fatso reclined on the jewel-encrusted throne. Rumor on the street was that the chair was made of solid platinum.

Fatso put his hand over his heart. The others did the same. Gassy dropped his pants and farted the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He had some trouble with the high notes. When he was finished, he received a standing ovation.

“Today eez a day uv Sanksgeeveeng,” Fatso said in a loud voice. The hall went quiet. “Zerefore let oos geef sanks.”

Waiters brought each of us a magnum of French bubbly sour grape juice and a tall, narrow glass delivery device. A chorus of popping corks echoed in the hall. The magnum crunched into an ice bucket at my side. I was supposed to drink all of that?

“Let oos geef sanks,” the Godfather of Food said again, and lifted his glass in a toast, “for zee Prophet.”

Snickers from below. And not the candy bar kind, either. (Trust me on this one. I know the difference.)

“Do not mock,” Fatso said sternly. “Weezout zee Prophet, wat bizz-nees wood wee haf?” He let the question linger. Heads nodded. “Be-cuz wee air bizz-nees-men. Men like oos bilt zees cun-tree. Wee air wat make zees cun-tree great.”