by G M Eppers
“He ...,” Ferruz was faltering. He paced slower, the grip on his pistol getting loose and careless. “He offered me a job. He said we could be rich together. I was supposed to pick up the cheddar from this grocery and take it to him in England. We would sell it together and make much money.” As Badger translated, he began to sound sad himself. He was seeing the likely scenario here: that Butler had wanted to get clingy Ferruz out of his hair and had sent him on a wild goose chase. Sir Haughty and Billings were the same, both lowering their heads in empathy. It was rough watching a man’s dreams get shattered.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ferruz. I believe the manager is telling the truth. The cheese is his. Mr. Butler sent you on what we in America call a wild goose chase.” I paused to see if Badger could translate the idiom satisfactorily. From the look on Ferruz’s face, he succeeded. I continued, subconsciously trying to get him to drop the weapon. “You’ve shot a woman and terrorized dozens of people for nothing.”
He seemed to be coming into lucidity like it was an old friend. “No cheese?” He looked at the pistol in his hand and I thought he was going to toss it aside and come out. But he didn’t. “What will happen to me?” Badger and I turned to the Inspector. We weren’t as up on French law as he would be. I couldn’t understand what the Inspector said either, but Badger passed the information on to Ferruz. It wasn’t up to me what happened to Ferruz afterward. What I was concerned about was Ferruz’s reaction. It turned out Ferruz was the type of addict who came down despondent. I added to that by blowing his illusions of a friendship to dust. And the Inspector was forced to cement the whole deal by taking away his hope for the future. Ferruz was instantly consumed by guilt over his actions, and felt he had no options left. “I cannot do this,” he said, his voice getting raspy. He said a few more words in French. “I’m sorry,” Badger translated, unable to stop what was coming. More French that sounded like he was choking on his Adam’s apple. Then he pointed the gun at the underside of his chin and fired.
The crowd let out a collective “Ew,” or at least the French equivalent of ‘ew.’ A woman swiftly put her hands over her son’s eyes and pulled him away. A man with his daughter perched on his shoulders turned away, helped her dismount into his arms, and walked quickly toward the street. Most of the spectators dispersed, some discussing the incident in French as they left. The French police moved in immediately, helping the hostages out of the building and making sure no one stepped on any Ferruz on the way out. Reporters swarmed in to meet the exiting hostages in the buffer zone. Cameras went on, microphones were tilted, and the media circus began.
The protesters did not disperse. They dropped their signs and began to surge forward, some shouting in French but some in English with enough jumbled together that neither was intelligible. I did however hear the word ‘fromage’ several times, and got the gist that they wanted to loot the store. They’d heard the manager talk of his special cheddar and were not going to wait for the sale. They wanted it now, afraid that it would be taken as evidence. Seriously, the public has no respect for legal necessities. Badger, Billings, Sir Haughty and I joined the French forces to hold the protesters behind the buffer zone. “Butte!” I called out. “Tell your people to stand down!” I couldn’t find him in the crowd. I yelled it two or three times, but got no response. I was busy blocking two women with their hands clasped together like they were playing London Bridge as they tried to sidestep toward the store. In no time, I could see we were losing, even though some of the officers had brought out their billy clubs. The pressure of dozens of human beings against me was making me start to lose my footing. I was in fear of being trampled. I swore and pulled out my stun gun. “Phasers on stun!” I yelled as I zapped one of the two women. Because they were holding hands, they both went down in a jerky mass.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Billings and Sir Haughty also pull out their stun guns. A moment later, Badger followed suit as well and people began falling to the sidewalk en masse. Because they were jammed so close to each other, we sometimes got two or three with one shot. Some of them fled, but by the time things quieted down, thirty or forty people were writhing on the sidewalk and edge of the parking lot. I spotted Butte among them, and by his location guessed that he’d been stunned by Billings. The French police began cuffing everyone, and I saw the Inspector on his radio, no doubt calling for more wagons. I walked over to where Billings stood looming over Butte, who was drooling and twitching. “Good work, Billings.”
“Thanks, Mom. Felt good.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not professional.”
“But it did feel good.”
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Just don’t say it.”
I went back to the Inspector. “Inspector, I’m so sorry.”
“It was his choice,” Badger translated from the Inspector, who still seemed despondent about it, nevertheless. “It would seem he did not want to go back to prison.”
“What did he say, right before he shot himself?” I asked.
Badger answered, “He said, ‘tell my wife …”
“Yes?”
“’Tell my wife I hate her damn guts. He didn’t want to go back to prison, and he didn’t want to go back to his wife.” He paused, a little reluctant to voice his own speculation. “I think he wanted to be with Butler. I wonder…”
Badger didn’t finish this thought, but I knew where he was going. It was quite possible that Ferruz’s relationship with Butler, at least on his side of it, was more than just a business partnership. He was obviously a very troubled man. Nevertheless, I was starting to feel pretty bad about the whole thing. I didn’t feel like I’d handled it right, though I couldn’t really see anything I could have done differently, at least knowing what I knew at the time. My convincing him he’d been lied to had made him come down off his Uber high in an emotional crash, when all I wanted was for him to see that he was hurting people. I still think I correctly sensed the inherent non-violence of the man, and I wanted to get him to separate his Uber-induced fantasy from what he was really doing. And at first, it looked like it was working that way. But for some reason he couldn’t face the consequences. How was I supposed to know that it was really a love triangle between Ferruz, Uber and Butler?
We weren’t finished yet with this crime scene. “Inspector, my team is going to need to search the store. We need to verify that there’s no Uber here before we can leave.” I felt it was just a formality at this point. But inspection is what we were really here for. And we really couldn’t leave Paris without an inspection report.
“Come with me,” he said, and we went to approach the manager. My team followed.
“Search?” he asked in heavily accented English. “I told you it is just cheddar from Australia.” I saw on his name tag that his name was Antoine Salmond.
“I’m afraid we can’t accept your word on that, Monsieur Salmond. If you don’t allow us full access, we can have the store shut down until you do.”
“But zere ees a did man in my durway. Perhaps, tomorrow, after zey are finished cleaning up?”
“Now, sir.”
There was a short spatter of French. I turned to Badger. “He wants to know if we have a warrant.”
“Yes, we do!” I heard Roxy shout as she came running awkwardly in her mile high shoes. She was waving a piece of paper and breathing hard, but with a triumphant smile on her face. Then she saw the front of the store and assessed what she had missed very quickly. “Oh, dear.” I took the warrant from her hand and the action didn’t even seem to register with her. “Ferruz?”
“Ferruz,” I confirmed.
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
I showed the warrant to Monsieur Salmond. “Is there another entrance we can use?” He still seemed reluctant, but was compelled by the warrant to lead us around to a back entrance. We split up. The Inspector went back to supervise his men and we started moving up and down all the aisles, avoiding the spattering of Ferruz at the front of
the store where the metallic scent of blood was growing stronger. A group of crime scene investigators were already processing the area. Finally we met up again in the refrigerated section, where a long cold bin held a couple hundred packages of cheese. There were camembert, Edam, Swiss, mozzarella, parmesan, pepper jack, provolone, and dozens of others, but no cheddar. We pawed through the hermetically sealed packages, but all were properly labeled and stamped. I felt bad for inconveniencing the manager this way, but it was standard procedure. “Excuse me, we’ll have to see the employee areas as well. We need to see the imported cheddar you mentioned,” I requested.
“So sorry, but eet ees a moose back zere.” The manager’s English was rough, but passable. I’m pretty sure he meant mess, but accents can be tricky. He could have also been telling me about a rodent problem. When I paused, the manager, with difficulty, corrected his pronunciation. “It ees a mays.” Much better.
“We’re not here to judge your housekeeping, sir.”
Salmond hesitated, weighing the dead man in his doorway against the prospect of having the store closed down. Either way, he was bound to lose business from this, in addition to the two or three days he’d already lost, but the sooner he could take customers the better, and he strongly wanted to get the highly valuable cheddar on the market. He led us through a door marked ‘Seuls les employés’ into a dismally depressing area with stacks of unopened shipping boxes, a wall display full of cubby holes filled with unidentified paper cubbies, a large work table, and a smaller break table with four chairs around it. One door led to a side alley where there was a garbage dumpster, which I’d seen on the way to the roof, and another led to a small restroom. We walked around, our trained eyes scanning every inch. I saw nothing that looked like a new shipment of cheddar cheese. Mr. Salmond stood silently, perhaps hoping we would give up on the search.
“Helena,” someone said.
I recognized Sir Haughty’s voice, but didn’t see him. “Where are you, Sir Haughty?”
“Here!” I finally saw his hand waving at us from around a corner. There was a walled off alcove in the far corner. From this angle, it was easy to miss as the wall appeared to meet the corner until you were right on top of it. I noticed the manager sink sadly into one of the break chairs. Roxy, Badger, Billings and I all went around the corner, Roxy’s high heels clicking on the poured cement floor, and found the small room. It contained a huge stack of golden yellow bars. It wasn’t gold, though. It was bricks of cheese. Hundreds of bricks, covered in yellow wax and sealed in plastic. Almost none of them were labeled or stamped. An overturned plastic crate was serving as a table. There were a few bricks on the makeshift table, along with a blue inkpad and a forged CURDS/FDA stamp. There was also a box filled with self-stick labels with the words ‘fromage propre’ and an international inspection logo on them.
On one hand, I was hugely disappointed. I always am when we find a stash like this. The manager seemed like such an up-front businessman. Finding out he was a smuggler and a counterfeiter was just depressing. It also meant I had convinced Ferruz that he was wrong about the situation, when he’d been exactly right. There was just a mass of bad feelings involved here that was going to take me some time to sort out. But at least the manager didn’t try to run away. He held out his hands, and Billings pulled out his handcuffs, snapping them on Salmond’s wrists.
“We’ll need to confiscate all of this cheese,” I said. “And the cheese in the refrigerator bin as well. It’s all suspect. After it’s been tested, we can return whatever passes inspection, perhaps to your next of kin?” It was far too much cheese to test with the field kit. Each individual package would have to be opened and sampled. If any of us knew how, we could test one, but considering the set up, it was hardly necessary. There was ample cause to simply confiscate the lot.
Salmond muttered something in French, his voice a low grumble like approaching thunder. Badger translated, “Never mind. Keep it. Choke on it.” The corner of his mouth went up to indicate it was the manager’s words, not his. It occurred to me then that I had truly failed Mr. Ferruz. It turned out that not only had he been right about the manager, but Butler had, in fact, NOT lied to him at all. And if Butler was willing to provide Ferruz with 400 kilos of Uber Cheddar, the theory of the oddest love triangle ever just became more solid. It was still only speculation, but it was speculation with enough basis to include in my report.
I got out my cell phone and called the local Chembassy to arrange transport of the cheese to our plane. “Billings, Roxy, you stay here and guard this cheese until the chembassadors get here. Sir Haughty and Badger, you guard the cold bin.”
“What will you guard?” asked Billings.
“My temper,” I said immediately. There were no further objections, so I escorted Salmond out of the store via the alley and walked around front to surrender him to the Inspector. The stunned protesters had been hauled away, as had Ferruz’s body. Yellow tape now barred the front doorway, indicating a crime scene. A few reporters still milled around, wrapping up cords and stowing gear. I thought about the boom mic on the roof. You know how in stories all the little pieces fit together and all the equipment gets used? Like in a James Bond movie, if Q tells Bond about a secret ejector seat, you know someone is going to go flying. And if he gives Bond a shark repellent, you know he’s going to end up in an ocean, even if his mission is at the top of Mount Everest. Real life isn’t like that. Sometimes you prepare for something that never happens. Once, my team spent an entire day rigging for a climb up a sheer cliff face. During the night there was a rock slide and it was almost like a staircase had appeared. We walked right up the cliff without using any of the rigging. C’est la vie. I was going to arrange for someone to retrieve the mic, but when I looked up at it, a French officer was pulling it up. He waved at me, and I shyly waved back.
I still had my phone in my hand, but almost dropped it when it suddenly rang. “Hello?” I said.
“It’s me, Sylvia.”
“Did you find a vet?” I asked.
“Well, yes, but …”
“But what? Sylvia, where are you?”
“I’m in the hospital.”
Chapter Four
“Oh my God, what happened?” I asked. My worry gene kicked in, but it was a good sign that it was Sylvia calling me and not a nurse or doctor on her behalf. Knowing I was going to have to go there, I hurried over to where the Inspector was loading Monsieur Salmond into the police van. The five bikes had been unloaded and were on kickstands nearby under watch of several French police.
“There was an accident. I need you to come to the hospital. Don’t tell the others, please. Just you. I’ll explain it all when you get here.”
“Excuse me, Inspector. Could you spare an officer to help me?” I explained the situation.
The Inspector nodded, expressing sympathy. “Oui, Mademoiselle. Anyzing for you. Champlain!” He called an officer over, “This is Officer Champlain. He will ‘elp you.” He spoke to the officer in French, then added. “I told him what you need. He will stay wiz you uhntil you and your friend are zafely on ze plane.”
“Thank you so much, Inspector. Please have the rest of my team go directly to the plane. Tell them Sylvia and I will meet them there soon.” I didn’t know if it would be soon, of course, but if I told them it would be indefinite, they would pester the Inspector until he told them where I’d gone and follow me instead. Billings would likely think I’d gone after Butte. I suspected, if it were just Billings, he’d try to follow me, but with the rest of the team involved he just might actually follow my instructions. Officer Champlain led me to his vehicle and soon we were on the way to the hospital.
Fifteen minutes after her call, I stood at the door to Sylvia’s hospital room. The officer pulled over a chair and sat just outside the door. His back was rigid and his eyes met mine with a nod.
I went in.
Sylvia was sitting up in bed, in a hospital gown. She was covered with a clean, white sheet and a light c
otton blanket. Her bright green right eye stared at me. Her left was covered by a bandage and part of her head was wrapped in gauze. Some of her skin that I could see was a vicious pink. “Oh my God, Sylvia, what happened?” I went and sat on one edge of the bed and took her hand.
She seemed pretty calm. “After I left you, I headed east in search of a vet. I showed a couple of people the cat’s tail and they pointed me further east. The next person I asked…I should have known!” She started to get upset. I patted her hand and told her to take a breath and waited for her to continue. “The next person I asked was Asian. He still pointed me further east, but I should have turned around and gone the other way. I should have –“
“Sylvia, stop with the ‘should have’s and tell me what happened. They were Asian, so you’d gone into Chinatown?”
She nodded. “I was going past what must have been a laundry, and the owner came out and saw the cat. He tried to take her, Helena. He tried to take her right out of my arms. But something told me not to let go. I screamed, alerting passersby who came to help. Two men pulled him off, but another man came running from the laundry with a bottle of something. I think it was bleach, or some kind of cleaning acid. The bottle was open and he sloshed it at my face! The cat yowled and jumped out of my arms. I fell off the bike, and then tripped over it, ending up flat on the ground. I could feel my face burning, but it didn’t hurt a lot, not yet. The other men grabbed the laundry guy who had thrown the liquid, and others helped me up, and took me in their car to the hospital.”
“So the cat ran away?”
“That’s what I thought. A doctor was examining me and wrapping my head when a woman came in with the cat. She had caught it when it was hunkered under a bush trying to clean its wounds. Some of the acid got on the cat and it was licking its paws and trying to get it off. I was told in pretty bad English that the cat is being taken care of here, even though it’s against policy. I’m not sure where.”