Gurgitators got seriously sweaty when they gorged on meat. Something about the combo of protein and adrenalin.
“I think it’s just the ordinary sweats,” said Frank. “You haven’t eaten enough protein to—”
“How’s the prep going?” our dad asked from the doorway, interrupting Frank.
“Good,” I answered.
“Great,” Frank said, right on top of me.
We’re the only two ATAC agents who actually live with one of the big bosses of the agency. The big boss, in fact. Our dad started ATAC. He’s a retired cop. When he was on the force, he saw all the ways it would be useful to have teens undercover. Teens can fly under the radar. No one is expecting them to be working for the government. No one is expecting them to be thinking about anything but video games and popping their zits.
It’s cool that Dad started ATAC. But what isn’t cool is that he likes to keep a close eye on our missions. He’s just trying to keep us safe. What he forgets is that we’ve had the same prep as every other agent. We’re just as good at our job as every other kid out there.
Dad leaned against the doorjamb, trying to look all casual. “Competitive eating’s a strange world, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “The lengths some of the eaters will go to to stretch their stomachs. Eating cabbage and drinking gallons of water. All that water can—”
“Can poison you,” Frank finished for him.
“Overdosing on water can mess up your electrolyte balance. Then you can end up getting a stroke or a heart attack. We learned that during our boarding-school hazing mission,” I added.
I was trying to make two points to Dad. One, Frank and I aren’t dumb—we know the dangers of the situations we get involved in. And two, we are experienced agents with a bunch of missions under our belts.
“Message received,” Dad said, holding up both hands. “I know I don’t have to worry about you guys. And I don’t as ATAC agents. You both have excellent training.”
Dad isn’t dumb either.
He sighed. “I just can’t help worrying about you as my sons.”
Now what was I supposed to say? I never know what to say when Mom or Dad wants to get all heartfelt. I looked at Frank.
“We know, Dad,” he said. “It’s—”
“What’s all this?”
Aunt Trudy had appeared behind Dad in the doorway. She was staring at the kitchen table as if it had burst into flames.
I followed her gaze to the remaining hot dogs and buns. “Just a snack, Aunt T,” I told her.
“A snack?” she repeated. “We had a perfectly lovely dinner less than five hours ago. There was steak, and green beans, and baked potato, and rhubarb pie.”
Suddenly it felt like a football game was going on in my gut. All that chow from dinner was going after a team made up of the dogs and buns. I pressed both hands over my belly, trying to calm things down in there.
Aunt Trudy clucked her tongue at me. “Look at Joe,” she said to Frank and Dad. “He’s trying to prove he’s starving to death by clutching at his stomach like he’s Oliver Twist. Well, it won’t work.”
She walked over to the fridge, pulled out a bowl of chili, and stuck it in the microwave. Then she took out relish, pickles, mustard, ketchup, sauerkraut, and grated cheese. She winked. “But if you’re going to do it, do it right.”
Two minutes later she had chili cheese dogs—fully, and I mean fully, loaded—for everyone. Everyone now included Mom, who had joined the group in the kitchen. “So what’s the occasion for this late-night extravaganza?” she asked.
“I won tickets to the Super Bowl!” I exclaimed.
’Cause I am that good. I saw my chance to hand Mom and Aunt Trudy the perfect explanation for Frank’s and my trip to Miami, and I took it. And the alibi would hold up even if they happened to see us in the crowd on TV.
“How?” Dad asked.
Just his little way of saying that if we wanted to be on our own, we were on our own.
No problem.
“Radio contest,” I answered without hesitation.
“Yeah, he knew the name of Paris Hilton’s little dog,” said Frank. “He knows everything about Paris Hilton. He loves her.”
I’ve told him he doesn’t understand humor so many times. Why does he even attempt it?
“The Super Bowl. Wow. That sounds exciting,” Mom said.
“Yeah. It comes with airline tickets and hotel and everything. The contest was for teens, so there will be chaperones,” I told her, trying to get as many Mom-type objections out of the way up front. “I might have to be in some contest during halftime.” I definitely wasn’t mentioning competitive eating in front of Mom. If she saw that part on TV, we’d deal with it when we got home. “But the big thing is, it’s the Super Bowl. You know how hard it is to get tickets to the Super Bowl?”
“I assume you’re taking Frank,” Aunt Trudy said.
“Unless you want to be my date, Aunt T.” Just say it. I’m smooth.
Aunt Trudy laughed. “I guess this is an occasion that’s worthy of my special chili cheese dogs.” She held hers out in a toast. “To Joe and Frank going to the Super Bowl!”
We all clicked dogs. As I brought mine to my mouth, the smell of the sauerkraut sent the Stomach Bowl into overtime. There was no way I could get even one bite of this monster dog down into my gut with all that going on.
In a few days you’re going to be undercover as a competitive eater, I told myself. Suck it up. Or maybe it should be, shove it down.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as an ATAC agent. But I ate it. Every bite.
Then the nightmare happened.
Aunt Trudy handed me another chili cheese dog—fully loaded. Because “Joe can never stop at one.”
“This place is … I don’t actually possess the words to describe this place,” I told Frank as we walked into the lobby of the Coconut Oasis Hotel.
“Don’t tell Ms. Whitman that,” Frank said.
Ms. Whitman is my English teacher. Frank just keeps on trying with the sense of humor thing, doesn’t he?
There were so many windows in the lobby it might as well have been made of glass. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the pool. I let Frank deal with checking us in as part of the Football Franks group while I stared.
For starters, it wasn’t really just a pool. It was a group of pools linked by rivers. The rivers clearly had currents, ’cause people were floating down them in inner tubes. No paddling required. There was one spot where you could stop your tube next to a little island bar and get yourself a soda before you went on your way. I needed to get me some of that action.
“Come on,” said Frank. “I’ve got our key cards.” He led the way over to the elevators—also glass.
“Did you see that pool? If the elevators weren’t see-through, I’d change into my swimsuit on the way up. We don’t have anything scheduled with the other eaters until dinner, right?” I asked.
The closest set of elevator doors opened with a soft ping. Frank and I got on. He hit the button for the seventeenth floor. “I want to go over our cover story one more time,” he said. “And I want to review the info we have on the other contestants.”
“We know all that stuff,” I protested. “You and I are cousins. We’re still using our regular names. We entered a hot dog eating contest for charity. It wasn’t an official qualifying competition, but Mr. Poplin, the CEO of Football Franks, agreed to let us in the final because we raised so much money—at least according to the ATAC team leader posing as the head of a foundation.”
ATAC had even gotten up support material on us and the contest on the net. They always came through with awesome backup.
The elevator stopped to pick up other passengers, so I had to zip it. Basic, very basic, ATAC training—never talk about a mission in earshot of anyone except another ATAC member.
The next stop turned out to be the seventeenth floor. There was a woman in the hall walking a cat on a leopard-patterned leash, so I had to conti
nue to keep it zipped. But as soon as we stepped into the room and shut the door behind us, I started in again. There was no way I was missing out on that pool.
“We’re undercover,” I reminded Frank. “That means we’re supposed to act normal. Normal kids staying at this place would be out in that pool. That’s probably where all the other contestants are right this second. So let’s go.”
He didn’t answer.
I turned to look at him. Frank’s face was the color of a frog’s belly. “What’s wr—”
Then I saw them. The pictures all over the room. Taped to the walls, the closet, the mirror, the TV, the glass doors leading to the balcony.
Pictures of David Cole lying in his coffin. Each picture had a question scrawled beneath it in blood red marker:
Would you rather lose—or die?
5
Lose—or Die?
My eyes darted from one photo to the next. David in his coffin. David in his coffin. David in his coffin. The room started to feel like it was spinning around me.
“Seems like ATAC called it right when they decided one of the competitors in the eating competition was the most likely murderer,” Joe said.
I blinked a couple of times to clear my vision. Then I took down one of the pictures, touching only the edges. I didn’t want to mess up the prints—if there were any. I read the words on the bottom aloud. “Do you want to lose—or die?”
I looked over at Joe. “Yeah. That definitely sounds like a warning from somebody who is willing to kill to win the contest.”
“Make that kill again,” Joe corrected.
“Good point,” I agreed. “We figured the winner could walk away with almost four hundred thousand bucks in college money. I’d call that a motive.”
“Well, now I’m really looking forward to dinner,” said Joe.
“What?” I asked. How’d we get from talking about motive to talking about food?
“We’re eating with all the contestants,” he reminded me. “That means if we’re right, we’ll be eating with David Cole’s murderer.”
Joe and I were the first ones at the table in the hotel dining room reserved for the Football Franks Hot Dog Eating Contest competitors. We wanted as much time as possible to gather intel about our suspects.
I thought I spotted the first one approaching. A teen guy with hair so short it could barely be called hair was coming our way. “That’s Jordan Watnabe, the winner of the contest in Springfield, right?” I whispered to Joe. We’d spent the last few hours reviewing all the facts we’d been able to find about the other eaters.
“His hair’s even shorter than in the pic we saw, but yeah,” Joe answered.
“This the Football Franks table?” Jordan asked. He rolled his eyes. “Dumb question, right?” He jerked his chin toward the big Football Franks sign in the middle of the table.
“This is the place,” Joe told him. “We’re Joe and Frank.”
“I’m Jordan,” he said.
“What do you think of the hotel?” I asked. I wanted to know if he’d gotten the special “welcome” Joe and I had. I figured the hotel question might get him to that topic.
“It’s awesome,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Did you guys know they have DVDs at the front desk you can check out? They have all the Super Bowls for the last ten years. I’ve been OD’ing on them,” Jordan continued. “I still can’t believe that day after tomorrow I am actually going to be at the Bowl, live and in person.”
“Are you a Cowboys fan or a Patriots?” Joe asked.
“Are you kidding me? I’m from Chicago. The Bears are my boys. But if I have to choose between those other two, I guess I’d go with the Cowboys. Terrell is—”
A guy in a tie-dyed Buddha T-shirt stepped up to our table. “Frank Hardy, Joe Hardy, Jordan Watnabe.” He pointed to each of us as he said our names.
Joe pointed back at him. “Kyle Skloot.” Kyle was another one of the contestants we’d researched.
Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Ding! Ding! Ding! You are correct!” he said in a game show announcer voice. “Tell him what he’s won.” He grabbed the chair next to Jordan.
“So you’ve been studying up on the competition too, huh?” Kyle asked Joe. “Just so you know—I’m the one to worry about.”
“You guys studied about each other?” Jordan’s eyes widened. “Wow, hard-core.”
“You want to win, you gotta know the weakness of your opponent,” Kyle told him.
“Is that one of Buddha’s sayings?” I asked, staring pointedly at Kyle’s T-shirt.
Kyle ran his hand down the shirt. “I got this at a conference I went to on Zen meditation. It’s just one of the techniques I’ve been using to train. I’ve studied The art of War, too. And I’ve been following the exercise routine of one of Oprah’s trainers.” He glanced over at Joe again. “You keep on trying to find my weakness. You won’t be able to, because it isn’t there. For the past six months, when I haven’t been in school or sleeping, I’ve been training for Sunday’s competition.”
“That is one intense dude,” Jordan muttered.
I agreed. It made me wonder—was he intense enough to murder?
“Angie Bates! Douglas Carney!” Kyle called out, pulling me away from my thoughts. He did his pointing thing at two teenagers heading toward our table. The guy had red hair and almost more freckles than bare skin. The girl was tall with brown eyes and short brown hair. Not nearly Jordan short, but short. Short and puffy. With glasses.
“She won the contest in Texas. She chews gum almost constantly to build up her jaw muscles. Maybe because she’s a girl, her muscles need that. He won the contest in Georgia. He’s a one-food trainer,” Kyle rattled off.
“Kyle has decided he’s our emcee for the evening,” Joe explained.
“Uh, hi,” said Douglas.
Angie blew an enormous bubble as she sat down next to me. The smell of fruit mixed with mint hit my nose. “Kyle, huh?” she asked.
“Kyle Skloot,” he answered. “Soon to be the winner of the Football Franks contest.”
“But wait …” Angie furrowed her brow in fake concentration. “Aren’t you the guy who wouldn’t even be here if the other guy hadn’t died?”
Joe shot me a look that was easy to understand—low blow. True. Not that Kyle didn’t kind of deserve it for bragging his head off.
“I would have beaten David Cole,” Kyle insisted.
Angie shrugged. “If you say so. It’s just that he won the Hungry Boy Eat-off at the new York State Fair last year. He won the pancake-eating contest they had when the one thousandth Pancake World opened—and that one had adults entered in it. He won the Pizza Pie—”
“We get it. He won some contests,” Kyle interrupted. “But the thing is, I was never in one of those contests.”
A super skinny blond boy rushed over and dropped into the last empty chair. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.
Kyle pointed at him. “Vern Ricci.” His voice wasn’t as loud as it had been for his other name announcements. It seemed like Angie had gotten to him a little.
“Yeah, I’m Vern,” the new guy said. He shoved his bangs out of his face. He had those emo bangs where the whole point of them seems for them to be in your face. Which seems kind of stupid to me. But, as Joe often points out, I don’t have a very good understanding of current fashion trends.
A waitress arrived at the table less than ten seconds after Vern. “Looks like the whole group’s here. Mr. Poplin from Football Franks asked me to tell you he’s very sorry, but he isn’t going to be able to join you for dinner. A conference call he was expecting hasn’t come in yet and it will run late. He is in suite 1041 if you need him, and the entire hotel staff is available to assist you. He also said tomorrow’s beach trip with him is on, and that you should all be sure to order whatever you like tonight. So what can I get you to start?” She looked over at Angie.
“I’d like six apples and thirty carrots—raw. And nine large salads,” Angie answered.
The waitress didn’t act surprised by the order. I figured she must have been prepped that this table would have some weird food requests.
“Clearly that’s only what you eat when you get close to training,” Kyle commented. “You don’t get that body living off fruit and vegetables. Or that skin.”
Angie was on the pudgy side, and her face was really broken out. But still. If Aunt Trudy was here, Kyle would be having himself a long time out right now.
Angie pulled down her glasses and stared at him for a long moment—then popped her gum in his direction and shoved her glasses back in place.
“And you?” the waitress asked Douglas.
“Twenty-two orders of buffalo chicken wings,” he said, his voice low, his eyes on the table. “With mayonnaise. Lots of mayonnaise.”
Kyle snorted. “Tell me you don’t really believe that mayonnaise lubricates your guts and makes it easier to get food down?”
Douglas shrugged. “It works for me.”
Vern asked for water with lemon when it was his turn. “How many lemons?” the waitress asked.
“Just the usual,” he told her. “A slice.”
“Same for me,” said Jordan. “I fast before competitions too. Got to free up the belly.”
“Everybody knows fasting shrinks your stomach. A shrunken stomach plus a lot of food equals losing,” Kyle said.
“It got both of us to the Super Bowl, didn’t it?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah, and since you know everybody’s stats, you probably know that Jordan got as many dogs into his belly at the Chicago regional as you did at the one in L.A.,” Joe added.
Kyle flushed. “I’m not eating in front of you people,” he announced, dropping the debate over the merits of fasting. “I spent months figuring out the perfect precompetition food regimen, and I don’t plan on sharing it. I’ll order from room service later,” he told the waitress.
“Good. I think having to watch you eat would make me lose my appetite,” Angie snapped. She seemed like a girl who had no problem standing up for herself.
Feeding Frenzy Page 3