by Lavie Tidhar
Bobbie looked up at the moonlit factory on the hill. His eyes were bright and round.
“Why would he do that?” he said.
I said, “It’s the only place they wouldn’t dare to look.”
17
I followed Bobbie as we rode our bikes across the road and back into town. We cycled in silence.
The night rose all around us as we cycled. Night has its own special silence. Ahead of us the couriers had pedalled fast with their cargo of illicit candy.
Then I saw light on the horizon, as though it were dawn.
But sunrise wasn’t due for hours.
The sky changed colour as licks of yellow and red streaked the air, and I began to smell smoke.
I stole a glance at Bobbie. His face was pale and his eyes were fixed dead ahead. He pedalled faster and I tried to keep pace.
As we cycled towards his street, the smoke rose higher in the sky and I could see the flames.
“Dad!”
Bobbie’s voice came out as a strangled cry. His skinny legs went up and down, up and down on the pedals, until I thought the bike itself might catch fire. I couldn’t match him. He rode the bike like his life depended on it, and he left me behind.
When I turned the corner I saw the store was in flames.
“Dad! Dad!”
The shop window of Mr Singh’s store had been smashed, and flames billowed out, sending heavy smoke into the street. It rose into the air and the flames competed with each other in which could reach higher.
I heard a fire engine siren in the distance, anxious and wailing, coming closer.
“Dad!”
Bobbie braked the bike and began to run, the bike falling behind him. The door to the shop opened and Mr Singh staggered out. His turban was missing and his hair fell down his face and shoulders in a dark shower.
“Dad!”
I ran after Bobbie as he tried to lead his father away. The heat was intense and I felt my eyebrows and hair scorch. I took one of Mr Singh’s arms and Bobbie took the other and together we pulled him away from the burning building.
The siren grew louder and louder and a fire truck appeared. Fire fighters streamed out and hands were pulling us away to safety. Someone pushed a bottle of water into my hands and then I was drinking and the world was cool and dark again.
“Is there anyone still inside?” a fire fighter said.
Mr Singh stared at his shop. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, there’s no one, I just…” He shook his head again helplessly. “I got out, but then, I thought I could save … I went back, I thought I could…” His voice died. He stared at his burning shop.
The fire fighters set up their pump and began to shoot jets of water at the building, which roared back at them as the fire tried to escape.
There was nothing I could say. I sat with Bobbie and his dad, watching their shop go up in flames. I thought of all the little treasures on the shelves and how someone had once made them and now they were gone. And I thought of the little room at the back, and all the chocolate bars in their wrappers, all melting away to nothing.
“What happened?” Bobbie whispered.
Mr Singh shook his head. It seemed all he was able to do.
“Was it an accident?”
But we both knew it wasn’t, even before Mr Singh shook his head again wordlessly.
“Sweetcakes,” Bobbie said quietly, out of his father’s hearing, and there was hatred in his voice.
“You don’t know that!” I said.
But Bobbie had spotted something I didn’t. He kneeled down and picked up a familiar red-and-pink polka dot bandana.
It was the exact same one I saw Sweetcakes wearing during the stink bomb attack.
“She wanted the business,” Bobbie said. “She wants to take over the candy racket, take over Waffles’s turf, and Eddie’s. This was a message. And all the candy!” He sounded desperate. “Waffles is going to kill me.”
“Sweetcakes is just a kid!” I said. “She’s a kid like us. She wouldn’t set the place on fire. This is something else, something different. I don’t care if you found some bandana. It doesn’t prove anything. Maybe that she was here, but that’s all, Bobbie! She probably dropped it the last time she was here. I mean, this wasn’t a stink bomb. People could have been hurt!”
“You think people weren’t hurt? Look at it! It’s gone! It’s all gone!”
“Bobbie…”
“What, Nelle? What?”
I didn’t know what to say. The fire fighters had managed to control the blaze. The fire was fighting back but it was losing, shrinking. It had nowhere to escape and it was starved of oxygen now. I saw lights flashing and heard a siren approach, and a car I recognized well by now pulled in beside us.
Doors opened and slammed shut, and Tidbeck and Webber sauntered over and stood beside us, watching the dying flames.
“Nasty,” Tidbeck said.
Webber munched on a health bar. Chunks of oats fell from his mouth as he chewed. “Hope you’re insured,” he mumbled.
I saw Bobbie shoot his dad a glance. Mr Singh nodded and I saw Bobbie’s shoulders relax.
The fire was dying. The smell in the air was awful, like wet burned hair and cat poop and sick. Webber ambled over to the captain of the fire fighters and stood talking to him in a low voice. Tidbeck remained by us, her eyes on the ruined shop.
“Such a shame,” she said.
There was no compassion in her voice, and I shivered. She turned, as though she could read my mind, and smiled.
“Nelle, Nelle, Nelle,” she said. “You seem to turn up everywhere, don’t you?”
I dug my nails into the palm of my hand and didn’t answer, and her smile widened.
“Just everywhere,” she said thoughtfully.
I watched her eyes. She had the eyes of a toad. They were eyes that fixed on you and never blinked, and tracked your every move as though you were a fly she wanted to eat.
Her hand landed on my shoulder, lightly. The fire hissed as it finally went out and the shop was left a wet ruined stump of a building. Tidbeck turned to Mr Singh and Bobbie. “Take care now,” she said.
She didn’t say anything else. She and Webber disappeared into their car and drove off. The captain of the fire fighters came over to talk to Mr Singh, and Bobbie gave me a sad little smile and didn’t say anything; there was nothing really to say.
When I came up to the house my mom burst out of the door, gave a strange little cry and held me tight.
“Where have you been, Nelle?” she kept saying. “Where have you been?”
“I went to see Bobbie,” I said. “I’m sorry I snuck out.”
She sniffed me through her tears. “You smell of smoke!” she said.
“There was a fire.”
“I know there was a fire! Nelle, what did you get yourself into?”
“I was riding my bike with Bobbie, that’s all!” I said. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t all of the truth. “When we came back his place was on fire.”
“What happened? Do they know what happened?”
“It was a fire,” I said inanely.
“Oh, Nelle,” my mom said. She released me and stood there looking at me with heavy eyes. “I think someone broke into the house again when you were gone. I heard a noise and when I got up to see what it was, I found out you were missing.”
“Someone broke in?” I had a sudden bad feeling.
“Well, I don’t know for sure. If they did then they didn’t take anything. Nelle, what’s going on? Are you involved in something dangerous?”
“We were just playing…” I said, but unconvincingly. My mom took me by the hand and into the house and shut the door on the world. All the anger seemed to drain out of her and she just looked tired, and happy that I was there. I could see she had questions, that there were all kinds of things that she wanted to say, but then she saw the look in my eyes and just stroked my face instead.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll make you a w
arm milk.”
While she was busy in the kitchen I went to my room. I knew what I would find – or rather, what I wouldn’t – even before I went in.
I looked everywhere, but finally I had to admit defeat.
The teddy bear was gone.
18
In the morning, Waffles McKenzie came to see me. I’d gone to the shop for milk and when I came back I saw his big silver car was parked on the street outside, and his man, with the same sad mournful eyes and a butler’s uniform, stood beside it, waiting patiently.
“Mr Foxglove?” I said.
His eyes brightened up momentarily, and he nodded and took off his peaked black hat. “Miss Faulkner,” he said gravely. “It is good to see you again.”
“And you,” I said. If it was hot for him inside the uniform he didn’t show it. I wondered again how he’d come to be a butler but it didn’t feel appropriate to ask.
“The young master is awaiting you in your office,” he said.
“Then I better go and see what he wants,” I said.
He put his hat back on and nodded. “Goodbye, Miss Faulkner.”
“Goodbye, Mr Foxglove.”
I went into the garden to find Waffles. He was standing there looking at my house chewing his lower lip, like someone who’d turned on the TV only to find a cartoon they didn’t very much like. Then he saw me and his face brightened, and he said, “Ah, Nelle. I was just looking for you.”
“Have you been waiting a while?”
He waved his hand airily, but I could see that his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
“Come in,” I said, taking pity on him.
He followed me into my office and then stood there chewing on his lip some more and looking around him with the same mournful expression.
I took a seat behind my desk and gave him his time. I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere.
“This your office, then?” he said finally. As a conversation starter it was a no-go but I let him have it. He looked at my bookshelf but I don’t think he even saw it.
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s kinda small, ain’t it?”
“It has a desk and it has chairs, and do you want to sit down, Mr McKenzie?”
“You can call me Waffles,” he said absent-mindedly, and sat down. I looked at him across the desk, thinking this was the second time this week one of the major bootleggers in this town had sat there, and that the last one had gone missing shortly after.
“How can I help you, Waffles?”
He took out a packet of chocolate buttons and popped it open and chewed morosely on a handful. He saw me looking and offered me the pack. “You want some?”
I waved the offer away. He looked quiet, and a little sad, and I thought of the last time I saw him, alone on his birthday: not even his parents came.
“That fire last night,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You were there.”
“Yes.”
“People could have been hurt, Nelle!” he said. “People were hurt.”
“I know.”
“All my cargo is gone,” he said. He munched on a few more buttons. They left sticky trails of melted chocolate in his palm. “Now I’ll owe the Consortium even more, and those detectives from Prohibition.”
“Tell me about it, Waffles,” I said, but gently. I could see that he wanted to talk. I had to keep myself from pushing him too hard.
“What’s to say, snoops?”
“Tell me how it all came about.”
“Take longer than a month full of sundaes,” he said. But then he shrugged.
“It all started about six months after Thornton was elected, and Prohibition came into effect,” he said. “To start with, it was just casual smuggling. You know, people go out of the city, to visit relatives, or on holiday or for a day out, and when they come back they bring candy with them. Kids go along with their mom and dad on trips, and come back having spent all their pocket money. Then some of them realize they can’t eat all the candy by themselves, and they start selling it to their friends at school.”
“Sure,” I said. “That makes sense.”
“You can see where this is going. Some kids have easy access to the candy. Their mom or dad work in another town or they have regular visits to grandma in Bay City – but maybe what they don’t have is ready cash. So eventually little gangs start forming. Candy clubs. Someone has to fork out the cash for the candy, so that someone else can buy it outside the city, bring it back and then sell it on, for a cut. Before too long the gangs start fighting with each other as the trade grows. The Raisin Gang, the Kandy Krew, the Chocaholics, they’re all fighting for control, each rising from their own school or neighbourhood, trying to take over the city.”
“Sure,” I said. “But how do you come into it?”
“I was just a small fish, snoops. But I had big dreams. See, when all this was going on, I was trying to take over, but I was running into problems. For one thing, as I’m sure you know, there was a new police department, the Bureau of Prohibition, and they started to block the candy coming into the city. Suddenly, all my couriers were stopped at the city line. Candy was getting confiscated, parents were being told they’d get fines if they were caught bringing anything in. Maybe worse. In short, snoops – I was having a problem.”
I leaned forward, interested. “So what did you do next?”
“That’s a good question.”
“So?”
“I didn’t do nothing, snoops. But one day I got a phone call. You know … be at this place at such and such a time on such and such a date. And my dad, well, he wasn’t around much at the time on account of his work and all, but my chauffeur took me to Bay City, where you know candy is everywhere—”
“Where it’s Christmas every day, and it rains cola, and chocolate grows on trees?”
“Exactly. And maybe, just maybe, I was a little bit nervous because I didn’t know who it was on the phone, only that she sounded a little scary, but just maybe I kind of had a guess…”
“That your luck was about to change?”
“Right. So I get to the place and the woman on the phone turns out to be Madame Sosotris, of Sosotris Sweets and Snacks, Inc.”
“You don’t say…”
“And with her are the Soufflé Brothers and Edmonton St Creme-Egge, and Borscht, and finally, Benny Bonbon, of Bonbon and Bonbon Bespoke.”
“The tailor-made confectioners?”
“The same.”
“The five families…” I said.
“Only now they’ve all joined forces,” he said. “And they call themselves—”
“The Consortium?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s grown-ups,” I said. “That’s not just bringing it in for other kids. That’s serious stuff, Waffles.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. “I know these people. My folks are rich too.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“So what happened?”
“They made me an offer,” he said quietly. He looked away from me.
I said, “It was an offer you couldn’t refuse?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you didn’t want to refuse it, did you, Waffles?”
“They offered me candy, Nelle. All the chocolate I could ever eat! All the sweets I could ever sell. All the ice cream in the world. And free waffles!”
“And all your supply problems gone, just like that.”
“Ah, but they weren’t, were they?” Waffles said, and the half-smile he gave me was half-sad. “Because I still had to get the candy into the city. And there was still the Bureau of Prohibition…”
“So about that,” I said.
“I came back to the city and soon enough, everything they said came to be. The trucks started coming, stopping right outside the city line. The Consortium wasn’t – isn’t – strictly speaking, breaking the law. They don’t bring the candy into the city themselves. That’s down to me – and I have enough kids working fo
r me to make the contents of a truck disappear in a couple of minutes.”
“I know,” I said. “I saw it for myself.”
“You’ve been busy, snoops.”
“It’s what I do,” I said.
“Do you want me to go on, or not?” he said testily.
“Please, no, do go on,” I said.
“Thank you. So, the trucks start coming, my … empire keeps expanding, and those two cops from Prohibition, Tidbeck and Webber? Turns out they can be quite … accommodating. They and the Consortium have a deal, I guess. So Tidbeck and Webber make sure everything’s going smoothly and get a cut of the proceeds. And, I mean, it’s not like there’s anyone to stop them. After all, No one really cares. It’s just kids. It’s only candy. And it’s a stupid law anyway.”
“It might be stupid,” I said. “But it’s still the law.”
“Whatever.”
“So the other gangs can’t compete with you, and they either get broken up or they’re made to … join in. Right?”
“That’s right, snoops.”
“But not everyone’s gone,” I said softly. “Are they, Waffles?”
“No,” he said. He looked uncomfortable.
“Not Eddie,” I said.
“No…”
“But why, Waffles? If the Consortium is working exclusively with you – then where does Eddie get his candy from?”
Waffles smiled wide, but without humour, and shrugged.
“Now that,” he said, “is a very good question.”
19
Before he left, Waffles invited me to a party at his house. His parents were back from skiing and were hosting a fund-raiser for the mayor. “Perhaps you’ll learn something,” he said cryptically.
It made me think about the mayor. I tried to put the facts of the case together in my head. Far as I could make out, the Consortium were behind it all. They had pushed for Prohibition. They profited from it, now that candy was illegal. They were behind the mayor.
Or were they? Tidbeck and Webber had made it clear they had some sort of arrangement with the Consortium, and I knew from Detective Levene that they reported directly to the mayor’s office. But did the mayor know about their arrangement? Or was he innocent, only interested in the health of the city’s kids? Could the mayor be a part of it too? Did the chocolate conspiracy go all the way up to the top?