by G M Eppers
“I know. I can manage. I just want to make sure he’s taken care of.” She was petting the cat again to apologize for disturbing his injured tail. “You’ll have plenty of people there who do what I do. I’m expendable. And I’m sure the vet can find someone to take him…or her.”
Ever heard the term ‘famous last words’?
“Give me the kit,” I said. Odds seemed high that there wasn’t any cheese here, and I didn’t know how to test it anyway, but Sylvia also didn’t need the bag weighing her down trying to find a vet. It would be hard enough carrying the cat. At least he or she wasn’t struggling, but that actually made me worry more. It could easily have been more injured than just a trampled tail to be that calm. And maybe with any luck, she’d find someone along the way who would realize she is from out of town (and country) and take it off her hands. I took the kit and slung it over my shoulder. It was only there for a moment before Billings took it off me and put it over his own shoulder. “Come on, Mom. We need to move.” We watched a brief moment as Sylvia hugged the cat close and wobbled off, steering one-handed.
We saw the grocery as soon as we rounded the corner. Badger and Sir Haughty were at the outskirts waiting for us. “Where’s Sylvia?” Sir Haughty asked.
“She’s running an errand for me. She’ll be back later.” I didn’t go into detail. They’d have to be satisfied with that answer or make up one of their own.
There were blockades set up giving the front of the store a huge buffer zone, crowds standing around, some of them carrying signs. Most of these signs were in French, though, so I had no idea if they were grammatically correct or even politically correct, but I didn’t see any with letters dripping off the side. There were three police cars and dozens of officers milling around, alternately talking to each other and into shoulder mounted walkie talkies. The WHEY group was moving up and down the sidewalk chanting “cheese please,” and a few of those had some signs in English with the usual sentiments printed on them. My favorite from this group was a young woman with long straight hair striped in pink and green carrying a sign that said ‘If I’m free to do this to my hair, why am I not free to eat cheese?’. The back sides of the signs had a logo on them, wedges of Swiss cheese with the holes spelling out WHEY, and the URL of a website. Those things were new, I was guessing through the courtesy of the Krochedy Brothers.
I needed to get a status report, so I looked for whoever might be in charge. The Inspector General in Paris wears epaulets showing what looks like a wheat branch with three diamonds underneath. There were higher ranks and lower ranks, but Inspector General was what I found. I tapped him on the epaulet and introduced myself. Badger hung close to me, as if we were as connected as Agnes and Avis. I had him ask the Inspector to fill us in.
I looked toward the store. The front was a long series of full size windows, some of them partially blocked by displays. Across the top, in big white letters, were the words ‘NOUS AVONS FROMAGE PROPRE’, which I knew meant that they had clean cheese. Other than that, the line of sight was very good. A grungy man who looked very tired, but also very crazy, was holding a pistol. He had a rifle strapped across his back, and a bandolier across his front. Some people were standing, some sitting on the cashier counters, but there had to be more sitting down on the floor that were blocked by displays. The man looked to be in his early 40s, with peppered black hair that had last been groomed around the Iron Age. His clothing was equally disturbing and ill-fitting as if he had lost weight since he put them on.
After exchanging some French with the Inspector, Badger told me, “Ferruz hasn’t slept. That will work to our advantage. He’s exhausted, and most of the force out here is rested. They just changed shifts less than hour ago.”
“He’s still asking for Uber Cheddar?”
“Yes,” the answer came back. “He specified 400 kilograms of Cheddar that he says should be here.”
“Has he shot anyone?”
Badger translated my question. The Inspector shook his head and said a few words. “No,” said Badger, “but he’s been waving that gun around like he was chasing away bees.”
“I see. Do we have eyes and ears?” We kind of had eyes. It was closer to one eye, as if we were all wearing an eye patch. But it would be more helpful if we could hear what Ferruz was saying in there.
The Inspector spoke some more French, then made a fist with one hand and placed it next to his ear. “They’ve been talking to him via telephone,” explained Badger.
While this conversation was going on, I’d been watching Ferruz. The Inspector was right about the gun waving. It was almost like he forgot he was holding it. He was arguing with one of the hostages, a sweaty, heavy-set man in a brown suit, and gesturing wildly as the hostages ducked right and left to avoid the gun barrel. I wanted to hear what he was saying. “Badger, how are you at lip reading?”
“Nada. Besides, the way they are moving around, it would be almost impossible to get a good read.”
By this time, I was tired of holding on to the handlebars of my bike, and the rest of my team seemed to be on the same page. I told Badger to ask him if there was some place to store the bikes. There was a bike rack, but we had no locks, and I didn’t want any of them to get stolen. “Oui, oui,” said the Inspector, who waggled a ‘follow me’ finger and walked toward a law enforcement van parked in the street. We must have looked quite the sight as we all walked with the bikes to the van.
The Inspector opened the rear doors of the van. “Uhntil we need it for ze bad guy, eh?” With his help we got all five bikes, and the likely unneeded testing kit, loaded into the police wagon and he locked the doors. I had Badger express our thanks and we headed back to the parking lot, ready to focus on the hostage situation.
“We need to get a microphone in there.” I said. “He’s probably saying things to the hostages that he won’t say to us.” I looked over at the press area. Lots of microphones over there, but they were all the handheld type. You could lick an ice cream cone from farther away. We needed something that would pick up sound from a distance. I went over anyway, with Badger right behind me. “Hey!” I called loudly as I approached. “Does anyone have a boom?”
“Helena!” Badger hissed from behind me. I stopped and turned toward him. “Ixnay on the oombay.”
“Huh?”
When he got closer to me, he lowered his voice. “’Boom’ is one of those universal English words that everyone recognizes no matter what language they speak. Like ‘President,’ or ‘Hollywood,’ or ‘not guilty.’ Except not in this context, if you get my drift.”
“Ah,” I said, comprehending. Someone may have assumed I was talking about a bomb or an explosion of some sort. I noticed a few people had stepped back a few paces, but they wandered back in. “Can you translate about the microphone?”
He nodded, and approached the Press. In a moment or two he came back toward me. “They don’t have one, but they think they can assemble one. It’ll take several minutes.”
“Good enough. Thanks, Badger.” I went back to the Inspector. He provided the phone number to the phone inside the store and I used my own phone to call. Mr. Ferruz picked up on the third ring. Badger and I huddled with the phone so we could both hear, while Billings, Roxy and Sir Haughty stood ready. I pushed the speaker button. “Hello, Mr. Ferruz. My name is Helena Montana from CURDS. I’m here to help you.”
Badger translated my words and a string of French came back over the line. “Are you the woman who can get me the cheese?” Badger translated.
This was a tricky question. I didn’t want to say no. You should never tell a madman no about anything if you can help it. But the truth was I had no cheese to give him. “Tell him, I can see what I can do, but holding people hostage does not help his cause,” I said carefully, and paused to allow the translation.
“Get me the cheese or people will die.” Badger showed no emotion as he spoke. To anyone who didn’t know him, he could have been reading the cast list from a Playbill. But I could tell th
at he, and by extension Mr. Ferruz, was very serious.
Sir Haughty tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Ask him if he would like some camembert.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. Trust me.”
So I did. The answer came back. “It must be cheddar. The cheddar is mine.”
I raised one eyebrow at Sir Haughty, who kept his voice low. “Camembert is the most popular cheese in France. It would be easy to get, possibly even as Uber, at least here in Paris. His insistence for cheddar, which is nearly impossible to get here, troubles me.”
“In what way?”
“It virtually confirms he is an addict, for one thing. An addict will often fixate on the type of cheese that got them addicted. And if he is addicted to cheddar, it likely didn’t happen here.” He let those last five words hang in the air for a moment.
I considered it. If he couldn’t be exposed to Uber Cheddar here, then he must have traveled recently. The question was where. “And why does he think it’s here, at this tiny grocery?” A valuable rare cheese could perhaps be expected at a high end specialty supermarket, but not at this tiny establishment. Sir Haughty answered with a slight twist of his head and a shrug, and the question hung in the air with his previous statement.
Billings nudged my shoulder. “He’s back,” he said, nodding his head toward the street. I saw that Butte had rejoined the WHEY group. He now held a sign that said ‘Cheese = Freedom,’ and had begun chanting with the rest of them. I fingered my stun gun.
“Ignore him,” I told Billings. “He has the right to be here and the right to protest. It would be hypocritical to try to stop him.” I could tell Billings really wanted to run over there, take his sign, and beat him unconscious with it, but he wisely, though reluctantly, restrained himself.
Miss Chiff had told us that Ferruz had been arrested for dealing in Uber Camembert, but if he had been addicted to camembert he would have accepted our offer. So he wasn’t addicted until he got the cheddar, wherever that was. In addition, if he was the type of dealer who didn’t use, and you couldn’t deal very long if you did use, why did he eat the cheddar? Simple, he had not known it was Uber. He’d been fooled, like millions of others. So the questions became who had fooled him? And how? And why? Whether or not we found Uber here in this grocery, there was a mystery here that was already starting to gnaw at my stomach.
The Inspector, Badger and Mr. Ferruz were waiting for me to continue our conversation. “Mr. Ferruz,” I said, “I’m sure you know that getting cheddar in Paris is difficult. I’ll need some time to locate and arrange transportation—“ Ferruz interrupted Badger as he was translating my words. I saw Badger’s brow furrow.
“Badger?” I prompted.
Badger met my eyes, his face still showing confusion. “It’s already here.”
Chapter Three
Mr. Ferruz’s answer was very confusing, especially to the Inspector whose forces had been on site for almost twenty-four hours and had not discerned this information. This time Badger translated for the Inspector. “All this time, he’s been demanding it be delivered to him. Why would he do that if he already has it? And why hold hostages?” I think the questions actually came from Badger himself.
“Maybe he’ll tell us,” I said. “Mr. Ferruz, if the cheese is here, does that mean we don’t have a problem and these people can go home?”
Inside, I could see Mr. Ferruz on the phone. It was an old style corded phone mounted on a wall near the door. He spoke with his back to us, watching his hostages carefully. “It’s here, but this…” Badger hesitated, apparently trying to find a diplomatic translation, “swine manager won’t give it to me. He says it’s his. But Rennie promised it to me.”
“Rennie who?” I asked, getting a bad feeling in my stomach. I suddenly knew that this was more than a simple hostage situation. It was like we’d come into the movie The Godfather to see Woltz find the severed horse head in his bed and we had no idea why it was there.
“Rennet Butler,” Badger confirmed, still speaking for Ferruz. “I met him in England. He gave me some cheddar, but only a little. He said I could have more if I helped him. I want more. I must have more. It was the best cheese I’ve ever had.”
“What did you do for Mr. Butler?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Badger.
I’d heard the name Rennet Butler before. We all had. We looked at each other silently. Rennet Butler was a known Uber dealer. We’d been chasing him on and off since CURDS first formed. And by on and off I mean we chased him, put him away, then had to chase him again. Sometimes he escaped. Sometimes he was released on a stupid technicality. Since we weren’t in charge of things once he was in custody, it wasn’t our fault. It was just our problem. Last I heard he’d been locked away in a maximum security cell in Georgia. Not the European Georgia, either, but back in the good old U.S. of A. And he didn’t just deal in cheddar. He dealt in anything and everything that was profitable, even the occasional hard core street drugs, though the Uber cheeses were more lucrative than anything else on the market. Something about the recipe just made it more intense than any other drug, or maybe it was just the novelty of getting high on an otherwise ordinary food staple. Pushers would disguise a sample, get people addicted, then charge beaucoup bucks for more.
At first, once the source of the OOPS was traced to rennet, there was a severe down tick in the entire dairy industry, of course. Pizza and Mac ‘n Cheese and other cheese products vanished from the store shelves for months. Most dairy recovered quickly as people realized it wasn’t the dairy that was at fault, but the additive. The cheese market took longer, naturally. People didn’t trust it and wouldn’t buy it. It took about three years and everyone thought the cheese industry would simply die, but it found a financial footing in government subsidies and regulations, especially in France. Certified clean cheese was starting to mean something. Sure, letting the industry die would make our job much easier. If only outlaws had cheese, it was much easier to spot the outlaws. But who wants to live in a world without cheese? I mean, aside from me. None of us wanted to be responsible for killing an entire industry that, for the most part, hadn’t done anything wrong. The major cheese manufacturers had not created the Uber Rennet. It was some upstart cheese producer trying to gain a foothold with something special. Millions of jobs hinged on the industry surviving. But some days I felt like we were fighting a losing battle, and this was one of those days.
At least we now knew where Ferruz had gotten the cheddar. England. But when and how did Butler get to England when he was supposed to be locked up in Georgia? My brain really wanted to work on that problem, but I needed to focus on the grocery. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this occur, where your brain really wants to work on one thing, but your body HAS to work on another. I was starting to understand why people went mad. There was no telling when we’d be able to look into the Butler problem. “So Butler told you you’d find a large amount of Uber Cheddar at this grocery? This specific grocery?”
“Yes. When I first got here, I thought it hadn’t arrived, but the manager said there was a shipment, but it is for his store. He says it’s not Butler’s cheddar. I think he lies.” Badger translated.
“I don’t suppose I can talk to the manager,” I suggested.
“He will tell you the same. But if he doesn’t give it to me, these people will die because of him.”
He was staring at one particular hostage, the portly man in the brown suit. He had a pencil thin moustache. The man was sweating, and was naturally terrified, raising his arms in surrender. Ferruz raised his gun.
“Stop, please!” I yelled, desperate to prevent a catastrophe. “You haven’t killed anyone yet. Don’t make things worse.” I was starting to wonder how long he’d been off the Uber. He certainly wasn’t exactly incoherent now, just physically and mentally exhausted, frustrated, disappointed, angry…I think incoherent would be easier. He had hostaged his way through withdrawal, basically, but apparently not into sanity. Ube
r addiction was hard to predict. I’d seen lots of addicts. No two people reacted exactly the same. Some people came down off the high and got all mellow, others got violent, and others got despondent. And if the obstruction was far enough along, coming down off the Uber brought on major abdominal pain. Dad was kind of lucky there. The connection hadn’t been made. Doctors tended to let the patient eat what he wanted. But after they knew it was the cheese, they started cutting off the supply in an effort to stop the progression. It was usually too late anyway, but a day or so with no Uber and the patient was screaming. Ferruz was showing no sign of that kind of pain, so he hadn’t been on the stuff long. “Maybe the manager is telling the truth,” I suggested quietly. “Maybe he’s telling the truth and Butler lied to you.” It was a fairly strong possibility, in my opinion. This poor innocent store manager and the other hostages were caught up in a huge misunderstanding. But it appeared that it would be very hard to convince Ferruz of that. “We can work this out,” I suggested. “Could I get a show of faith from you to convince my superiors to cooperate? Release a hostage. Anyone you like…or dislike,” I quipped. “Tired of anyone yet?”
“No, I will not release a hostage.”
“But it will help you get your cheese,” I argued, which was a complete lie.
Then Ferruz rattled off some French and Badger was taken aback. “He says he’ll give us two!”
“That’s great!” I blurted. I shouldn’t have. I was too pleased, too grateful. He would expect too much in return. I couldn’t take it back, but I tried to downplay it. “Thank you, Mr. Ferruz.” We ended the call and Ferruz and the French police handled the exchange. One man and one woman came out and were escorted away from the building and into the waiting arms of several reporters.