The Candy Mafia

by Lavie Tidhar

  But, weirdly, I didn’t see any other guests.

  Sitting alone on a lawn chair on the grass, surrounded by the buffet tables, was Waffles McKenzie. True to his name, he was eating a waffle. I stared in fascination and revulsion at the monstrosity on his plate. It was a waffle the size of a saucer, spongy and warm. On it were roasted, caramelized almonds, half-melted chocolate chips, three scoops of vanilla ice cream, two scoops of thick cream, and crisscrossing rivers of chocolate sauce that decorated it like a wobbly spider’s web. On top of each scoop sat a sweet red cherry. Waffles wielded a spoon sticky with sauce. Ice cream and crumbs stuck to the corners of his mouth as the spoon moved rhythmically, empty on the way down, full on the way up. Down and up, into his mouth, which moved without stopping. His eyes had a fixed, glazed expression.

  “Happy birthday, Waffles,” I said.

  He nibbled on an almond, then put down the spoon with a sigh. His plate was empty.

  “It’s Mr. McKenzie to you, snoops.”

  I stared at him. You’d think after eating all of those sweets he’d be fat, but he wasn’t. He was ordinary looking, with a slightly too-big head that sat awkwardly on his narrow frame. It was as if everything he ate had just gone straight to his head and made it bigger and bigger, like a balloon, while the rest of him stayed the same. He wore a suit despite the heat, as though someone had dressed him, and his black hair was slicked back with gel.

  “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “Waffles don’t share,” he said. He reached for the nearest table, pulled forward a piece of cream cake, and began to nibble on it delicately.

  “But it’s your birthday!”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” he said.

  I looked around me again.

  For a moment I felt sad for him.

  “Where are your parents?” I said.

  He waved his hand vaguely. “Gone. Vacation. Skiing.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Waffles don’t like skiing?”

  For a moment his composure cracked, and I thought I saw the real him peek through from behind his eyes. “They didn’t ask me,” he said, so softly I wasn’t sure I heard it.

  “So it’s just you?”

  “Me and Mr. Foxglove,” he said. He saw my look and explained. “The butler.”

  “Ah.”

  There was a short silence and he just looked uncomfortable, like he really wanted to change the subject.

  “If you were a cake,” he said abruptly, “what sort of cake would you be?”

  “The sort of cake that gives bad guys indigestion,” I said, and he laughed.

  “What do you want, Waffles?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He put down his spoon and folded his arms in his lap. His eyes turned on me, pale and unblinking. All his attention was on me at that moment.

  “You were at my boy Bobbie’s place yesterday, Nelle, asking questions.”

  “I meant to,” I said. “I didn’t get very far, because someone raided his shop.”

  He looked pained but let it pass. “They will be dealt with.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hear Sweetcakes Ratchet is on the up and up, Waffles.”

  “You think I can’t deal with Mary Ratchet?” he said. “I’ve known her since she used to cry when I took her toys in the sandbox in kindergarten. Don’t you worry about Sweetcakes, Nelle.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “But I think you are. I think you bit off more than you can chew, Waffles. Are you just going to let her bully you?”

  “No one muscles Waffles,” he said, and laughed. “Anyway, snoops, this is nothing to do with you. Now”—he picked up his spoon again and looked speculatively at the cakes still on the tables—“why don’t you tell me why you were at Bobbie’s, poking your nose in my business?”

  “I’m looking for a teddy bear,” I said.

  “You’re what?” he said, looking genuinely surprised.

  “You know anything about that?”

  “What would I want with a teddy bear? I’m a big boy.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “A teddy bear? You kidding me, snoops?”

  He just looked bewildered, like he really had no idea what I was talking about. I figured maybe he really didn’t.

  “What’s the deal with you and Eddie de Menthe?” I said, changing tack. “I hear you’re rivals.”

  “Eddie?” He stared at me suspiciously. “Sure, but, like, friendly rivals, you know? I have no beef with de Menthe.”

  “How does that work?” I said.

  “I dunno. We hang out sometimes. Ain’t no crime against that, is there, snoops?”

  “The name’s Nelle,” I said. “Or it’s Ms. Faulkner to you.”

  “Whatever you say, snoops.”

  I sighed.

  “So you deny knowing anything about the teddy bear?”

  “Get out, snoops, I don’t need to steal no stinkin’ teddy. I could have a room full of teddy bears of my own if I wanted. Ask anybody.”

  But still, he looked as trustworthy as an ice-cream seller in winter.

  “You done, snoops?”

  I didn’t know what else I could get out of him at that moment. He could be lying or he could be telling the truth. I heard soft footsteps behind me. Turned and saw his goons shuffling behind me.

  “Can we have some cake, boss?” Gordon said. His friend nudged him in the ribs nervously. Waffles’s hand came crashing down on the folding table before him, sending plate and spoon and crumbs flying in all directions.

  “Nobody gets cake!” he screamed. His face was red, his eyes bulging. “Get out. Get out! All of you!” He pointed a thin finger at me. “And you! Stay out of my business! Do you understand me? I won’t have people interfering in my business! I won’t have people going around asking questions! And I positively, definitely, absolutely won’t have people coming over here and asking for cake!”

  “But I didn’t ask for cake,” I said.

  “Get out!”

  Ronny and Gordon were backing away, slowly. I decided to follow their lead.

  Waffles McKenzie was screaming and screaming, in the throes of an epic tantrum.

  Then the silent butler, Mr. Foxglove, appeared and whisked us away, and just like that, Waffles’s birthday party was over.

  Chapter

  9

  “That was some party.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think there’ll be leftover cake?”

  “Bound to be. He can’t eat it all. Can he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They looked glum as they escorted me down the hill. Behind us the gates shut noiselessly. I almost felt sorry for Waffles.

  “Sweetcakes Ratchet,” I said.

  Gordon looked guarded. “What about her?” he said.

  “She’s pulling some muscle on you guys,” I said.

  “Yeah, well,” Ronny said. “Don’t you worry about the Sweetie Pies.”

  “Think they can take us on?” Gordon said. “We’re not some kids in kindergarten.”

  “Yeah,” Ronny said. “You think we got to where we are by being soft?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m sure you’re real tough guys.”

  They glared at me. They looked about as hard as fudge.

  “What about de Menthe?” I said cautiously.

  “Eddie?”

  “Him?”

  “What about him?”

  “Just making conversation,” I said. A streetcar went past us. We were almost at the bottom of the hill and the avenue ahead was shaded with trees.

  “He’s all right.”

  “He’s not a bad guy, Eddie.”

  “We have a treaty, don’t we?” Gordon said.

  “He don’t poach into our territory, and we don’t go into his.”

  “Plenty of candy for everyone.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Listen, snoops,” Gordon said. He and Ronny faced up to me. “Boss don’t want you going around ask
ing questions. You understand?”

  “Peace and quiet all round, get it?”

  I looked at them. They stood there like they’d been ordered to go to the principal’s office. Defiant yet worried. But doing what they were told.

  “Sure,” I said. I thought of the boy up on the hill, alone at his own birthday party. “Sure.”

  I had no intention of stopping the investigation, of course. But there was no reason to tell them that just then. Whether any of this was connected to the case I couldn’t, as yet, say for sure. But a good detective asks questions first, then tries to figure out how the pieces fit together.

  Then I thought about how there were two of them, and how they weren’t exactly on the right side of the law, and it made me wonder, if only for a moment.

  “Did you break into my office?” I said.

  “What would we do that for?” Gordon said, wounded.

  “Of course we didn’t,” Ronny said.

  I stared at them hard. Could I believe them? Cody did say that the people who broke in were grown-ups. And even though he didn’t really see them…I found it hard to believe they were Ronny and Gordon. For one thing, they were just a little too short.

  “So we’re cool?” Gordon said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Good,” Ronny said.

  “Well, see you around, Nelle,” Gordon said.

  “Or not,” Ronny said. “If you catch our drift.”

  I watched them walk back the long way up the hill.

  My mind was full of unanswered questions. I had come no closer to solving the case, and I was starting to get worried. A simple missing teddy seemed to lead me directly into a brewing gang war over the illegal candy trade. Things were escalating too quickly.

  I didn’t even know if these events were related, but put everything together and it seemed odd. And who had trashed my office? Grown-ups, Cody told me, but he must have been wrong—grown-ups didn’t go around breaking into kids’ sheds and destroying what was inside—did they?

  It was only a short walk from where I was up to Farnsworth Drive and, half on a whim, I turned on to it. It had been too long since I’d last been there.

  Farnsworth’s Chocolate Factory.

  I stared at the name. It rose in wrought iron above the gates. It was so familiar that it had become just a part of the background, like the tall silent chimneys, or the walls that kept out intruders.

  It was quiet here on the hill by the abandoned factory, quiet and still.

  And I remembered the day the chocolate factory shut down. We all did.

  The police officers, grim-faced, approaching the factory. The workers milling about in their blue overalls, some defiant but most, it seemed, resigned.

  The machines were stopped.

  The cocoa beans were left to rot.

  The workers were made to leave.

  And the chains were placed over the gates, and locked.

  It was the day the smell of chocolate left the city. Like a soul departing.

  They said Farnsworth never left the factory that day, that he lived there still, all alone…

  A new police department was set up, the Bureau for Prohibition, and soon after the candy gangs were everywhere.

  And no one ever saw Farnsworth again.

  I began to walk around the walls. They had been topped sometime in the past with barbed wire. It sat there still, sharp and rusting. There were warning signs posted everywhere: “Do Not Enter—Danger of Death!”

  “Private Property—Intruders Will Be Prosecuted”

  “Property of the Farnsworth Candy Company Inc.—No Unauthorized Access”

  There was even a sign that said, “Beware the Dog!”

  While the factory could no longer make chocolate it still belonged to Farnsworth, and before he’d disappeared he’d made sure no one could enter his private kingdom. Perhaps he hoped to come back one day and resume production. Until then, no one was allowed in.

  The walls were high and solid, with no easy foothold. Even if you could climb over and not cut yourself, you’d only be in the big courtyard in front of the factory itself.

  To get to the production floor, you’d still have to get through the main doors, and those were locked and bolted.

  I walked around for a long time, looking for an opening, but I found none. The wall stretched across the hill, and weeds now grew around it, and I saw ants had built a prominent nest against one corner.

  On the west side of the factory, the road from out of town led up the hill to the service gates. Here the trucks used to come every morning, laden with raw materials, cocoa beans and sugar and nuts, and return in the early evening packed carefully with freshly minted Farnsworth bars.

  My mouth watered just thinking about them.

  Caramel fudge with chocolate wafers so thin they melted in your mouth, tiny sugared hazelnuts that popped when you bit into them.

  You could get still get candy, I knew that as well as anyone. All I had to do was go down to see Bobbie, and he’d have as many chocolate bars as I could eat. A Soufflé Brothers’ Special-Super-Softy-Pop, or Madame Sosotris’ Three-Flava-Guava bar…but they’d be inferior.

  No one had ever made chocolate as good as Farnsworth’s.

  The road to the factory appeared, at first glance, to be abandoned. Weeds grew here too, and roots broke through the asphalt. And yet when I looked more closely I saw new tire marks on the road and places where the plants had been crushed by the passage of something heavy like a truck.

  When I went up to the side gates I saw the locks on the heavy chains had been replaced, and not long ago: they were well-oiled and without the fine layer of old dust that gathered everywhere about the factory.

  Could someone have been using this gate, and recently?

  But if so, why?

  As I rounded the perimeter of the factory, the sea came into view. The sun shone high in the sky and the blue of the water was startling.

  I looked out to the horizon and could see ships as tiny as sugar plums, and seagulls like specks of chocolate chips hovered amid the few meringue clouds. I took a deep breath of honey-scented air and, after a moment, continued to walk.

  I felt I had been walking around the factory for hours. I followed a dirt trail that had crept up into being around the walls, as though others like me had followed this same route, circling in the hope of gaining access to the mysteries of the chocolate factory.

  But I could see no way in. The building kept its secrets tightly and would allow no intruders into its heart.

  I reluctantly said goodbye to the chocolate factory, and went back down the hill deep in thought.

  When I got home I went up to my room and sat on the bed, trying to make sense of everything in the case so far. Eddie’s teddy had been stolen from the playground—that, at least, seemed clear. The question wasn’t so much who the thief was, as anyone present in the playground at various times could have taken it. It was more a question of who, then, they were working for. Could one of Eddie’s rivals—Waffles or Sweetcakes—be behind it?

  So far, so simple—but that didn’t explain the grown-ups who broke into my office. If they really were grown-ups, which I still found hard to believe. One way or the other, something didn’t fit—and I was no closer to finding the missing teddy. There was something bigger at stake, I just knew it, but what?

  All that was clear to me so far was that no one involved in the case wanted me to stick my nose in it.

  Who knew the chocolate trade was such serious business?

  It was then that I thought I heard the front door open, and I knew my mom must have come in. I opened my bedroom door.

  “Mom?”

  There was no answer, though I heard someone move down below.

  “Mom?”

  Footsteps, but moving softly, as though trying not to be heard.

  And I was suddenly scared.

  I tiptoed to the stairs. I looked ’round for something to use, a baseball bat or a frying pan, but
all I could find was a potted cactus plant. I held it up. It had thorns.

  It was the best I could do.

  I stepped on the stairs. The first step creaked and I froze. Down below someone moved and I shouted, “Who’s there!”

  There was no reply and, with a burst of panic, I ran down the stairs, my hand raised to throw the cactus. I heard an intake of breath and saw a dark, indistinct shape moving away through the open door, and then I stumbled over the carpet and the pot flew from my hand and hit the door as it closed, showering the floor with dark earth and broken shards. The door slammed shut behind the intruder, and I stared stupidly at the floor and at the cactus which lay there.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it stared back at me with a mournful expression.

  Chapter

  10

  “Nelle? Nelle, what happened?”

  “Mom!” I said.

  My mother stepped through the door and looked aghast at the mess.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said. I didn’t burst out crying, but I felt close. She helped me up and held me to her. I pressed my face against her, feeling her warmth and smelling her perfume and sweat. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too, bunnyhug,” she said, and I smiled.

  She used to call me that when I was a baby, but now she only used it when I needed a cuddle.

  “Did you see anyone run out of the house just now?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Did anyone…?” She held me at arm’s length and looked into my face. “Are you…?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Oh, Nelle!” She hugged me again, pressing me close to her. “We’d better call the police,” she said.

  “Wait.” Something had caught my eye. I pointed. “What’s that? Did you bring it home?”

  My mom looked puzzled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sweetheart.”

  Sitting by the door was a small, square box. It was the sort of box you used to carry hats in. It was tied with a black ribbon.

  I had a bad feeling about the box.

  “It’s not mine,” I said softly. My mom was reaching for the phone when I said, “Wait” again. I went to the box and prodded it gingerly. Nothing moved inside. It could still be full of snakes, I thought, or a poisonous spider, or a bear trap.