The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (12 page)

“Distilled water,” he ordered. “Quick.”

Juicy grabbed a bottle of lab H
₂
O and squirted it over the chunk Erpent held up. The poo rinsed away and the object took shape. I was stunned when I saw what it was.

“Maybe not so vegan after all,” Juicy said.

“How did that get in there?” Green asked.

It was a nose. A human nose. Or piece of one, anyway. A prominent mole protruded from the tip. A mole in the shape of a bratwurst. The back end of the nose was ragged, like it had been bitten off. The skin was burned from exposure to stomach acid.

I knew only one man with a mole in the shape of a bratwurst on the tip of his nose, and that was the Prophet himself. The famous “Nose Mole,” as the press had dubbed it, that led our Fearless Leader in search of the tastiest air in North America. What this meant, obviously, was that there was a second man somewhere in D.C. with an identical mole, who had just killed a pizza dealer across the street from the Thin House. Once we find Fatso, I thought, we’re coming for you. Whoever you are.

I tapped my teeth. “I wonder who it could belong to?”

“There’s always,” Green said with a glint in his eye, “the Prophet.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in years!” I roared. “The Prophet. Eating pizza! Killing a food dealer! Getting his nose bitten off!” I wiped tears from my eyes. “Thanks, partner. I needed that.”

Erpent slapped me on the back. “That’s the spirit.”

“The spirit of what?” I asked. “It’s called deduction. We’re detectives. That’s what we do.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” The SS man turned to the coroner. “I need a sterile container, and either milk or sugar solution. Stat.”

The coroner shook his head. “Why would I have milk here? It’s illegal. Much less sugar solution. I’m a coroner. Not a GP.”

Erpent scanned the room. His eyes fell on the tray of instruments. “Give me a clean scalpel, then.”

“Sure.”

Erpent took the scalpel, unhooked Juicy’s IV bag and slashed the feed. He turned it upside down and cut a hole in the bag.

“You mothereating mouth,” Juicy swore. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Erpent asked. “And watch the language, please?” He dropped the acid-burned nose into the bag of sugar water. He turned away from us and took out his cell phone.

Juicy turned to us, flabbergasted.

“Don’t look at me,” I said.

“You know,” Green said, “whoever it was must be talking kind of funny right about now.” He pinched his nostrils together. “When you spoke on the phone to the Prophet, did he sound strange to you? Nasal, maybe?”

I frowned, trying to remember. “A little bit,” I said. “Like he had a cold or something. Why?”

Green exchanged glances with Juicy. “Or like he had his nose bandaged?”

I laughed. “What a bizarre thing to say. Why would the Prophet have his nose bandaged?”

Juicy nodded and crossed his arms. “Probably just a cold then.”

“Well, it could be the flu,” I said. “I can never remember the difference. Whatever causes that kind of congestion.”

Green spat. “Disgusting. Don’t you think? I’d resign my tape measure right now if I thought it would do any good.”

“Harry!” I exclaimed. “What’s gotten into you? The Prophet catches cold and you go crazy. Down, boy. Save it for the food terrists.”

Meanwhile, Erpent had finally gotten a hold of whoever it was he was trying to reach. We fell silent. Even from across the room we could make out the hushed murmurings into his handset.

“It’s me,” he said. “I found it. Yes. Get someone down here, now. What? Does it matter? It was in his stomach. He must have swallowed it. Have a surgeon standing by. I don’t care. Someone you trust.” Erpent looked over his shoulder. We were all staring at him. He raised his voice. “And get the forensics techs onto analyzing this fragment right away. It will no doubt lead us to the perpetrator of this heinous, heinous crime.”

Erpent hung up the phone and rejoined us around the carved-up corpse.

“You know what this means?” Green said.

“It means we’ve got twenty-one hours left to find Fatso and save the Coalition of the Fasting,” Erpent said. “The Fate of the Food-Free World is in our hands, gentlemen. Let’s move.”

“It means,” Green said, not moving, “that there’s someone out there with a missing nose. And when we find him, we’ll have our killer.”

The muscles in Erpent’s jaw twitched. “This is no longer a criminal investigation, Agent Green,” he said. “It’s a matter of national security. Or do you happen to have a background in counterespionage?”

“Counterespionage?” Green exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Erpent said. “Crusteau here was an
agent provocateur.
Part of a French plot to sabotage the Coalition press conference tomorrow.”

“Sabotage?” I asked. “How?”

“If they can embarrass the Prophet, they can derail the expansion of the Global War on Fat. And what could be more embarrassing than a dead pizza dealer across the street from the Thin House?”

“Wait a minute,” Green said. “Are you saying Crusteau was on a suicide mission? I find that hard to believe.”

Erpent sighed. “Do not underestimate the enemies of this great country,” he said. “These crazed food terrists will do anything to bring back the Tyranny of Food, and enslave us once more to their addictive caloric substances.”

Juicy laughed, a long throaty chuckle that turned into a hacking cough. He bent double, trying to breathe, and pressed the oxygen tubes tight to his face. When he was able to speak again, he said, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Erpent’s eyes narrowed. “When I want your opinion, Medical Examiner, I will give it to you.” He glanced at me and Green. “That goes for both of you as well.”

A fair reprimand, I thought. It is for us to obey the will of the Prophet, not to question why.

Erpent looked at his watch. “But right now we have got to go.” He pointed at the bed pan. “So yes. Bag it for us. Make it snappy.”

“What’s wrong with the lab right here?” I asked. “The coroner has world class facilities.” When I was on the D.C. force, Juicy often helped us with investigations.

The coroner scooped up the poo and shoveled it into a biohazard bag. “He’s taking you to the NSA.”

“The National Sewer Agency?” Green said.

Erpent swore a terrible oath. “By the Prophet’s pointless pancreas!” he snarled. “That’s Top Secret, Doctor. You’re asking for punishment.”

“No more than I deserve.” Juicy squeezed my arm. “Besides, what I know is very little. The NSA has some new lab. The Skinny Service uses them for domestic operations.”

“But I thought the NSA was forbidden to spy on the homeland’s toilets,” Green objected.

The doctor chuckled, pointed at me and my partner. “You two are a real pair, you know that?”

The doors to the morgue banged open and two SS agents burst in, pushing a stretcher.

“Over here!” Erpent called out. He lay the bag of sugar water with the nose in it in the center of the taut white sheet. “Now move!”

The black trench-coated figures limped to the door and were gone, all without saying a word.

Erpent grabbed the biohazard bag of poo that Juicy held out. It flopped against his leg. He saluted, shouted “Go the Power of Air!” and marched off.

“Wait,” I said. “Dr. Juicy, you still haven’t told us what the murder weapon was.”

“Didn’t I?” He raised his eyebrows. “I should be able to recognize it by now. This is the third time I’ve seen wounds like this in as many months. And all of them dead pizza dealers.”

“Is there any proof?” Green asked. “Actual evidence we can use? To find the suspect, I mean.”

Juicy glanced at Erpent’s retreating back. He lowered his voice. “It’s all in the papers I gave you. The last five pages. If you value your lives, read them.”

“Come on!” Erpent shouted. “We’ve got souls to save!”

We looked up. He had stopped marching and stood, legs apart, staring back at us.

I weighed the report in my hand. There had to be at least a ream of paper there. “Last five pages, huh?”

Green bent down and pretended to tie his shoe. “For the love of the Prophet, Doctor, just tell us what the weapon was!”

The coroner’s smile tightened a notch. He whispered so softly I could barely catch it. “Why, a pizza slicer, of course. A razor-sharp pizza wheel.”

Eight

All this talk of poo and now you’ve got to go? Put the gag back in, Corporal. You can quit squirming in your chair, Mister Broadcaster Mouthpiece of the Ludicrously Overweight French People. No one goes potty until I’m done talking. That applies to all you out there in the studio audience too, you hear?

It’s a disgusting habit, by the way. Defecating several times a day. And one that you eliminate when you go on the air-only diet. No, I’m not going to let them take the handcuffs off you. If your ass crack gets sticky that’s not my problem. Let it be a reminder to all of you to start eating air.

It’s all right, let him holler. I understand his anger. I feel sorry for him. Are you translating this? The strong emotion you’re feeling now is rage caused by calories. Until you learn to eat nothing but air, you will never experience the peace and tranquility that the pure oxygen diet brings.

We left the morgue. I drove, and struggled to keep my attention on the road. My Twinkie was singing again. Green perused the papers Juicy had given us. Erpent gave me directions, all the while trying to turn around and see what my partner had found.

“Sit still,” Green said. “I’m trying to read.” He held the papers up against the SS man’s back, and skimmed the last five pages. Then he went back and read them again.

“Pull over. Now.” Erpent reached for the door handle and had shoes on the ground before I’d fully stopped.

I parked in a no-parking zone and killed the engine. Green looked up.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

The Lincoln Memorial gleamed in the early morning light.

“Visiting the NSA,” Erpent said. “What do you think?”

I pulled myself out of the Smart Car. Erpent was already halfway up the marble steps, the bag of poo bouncing against his leg. Green and I trailed after him.

“You know the other murders the coroner mentioned?” Green asked. He kept his voice low.

“The pizza dealers. Sure.”

“Remember what happened to Detective Ribbs?”

I nodded. “I knew his partner, Soss. Found their bones in a cannibal barbecue pit, didn’t they?”

“And Lieutenant Franks and his two patrolmen?”

“What about them?”

“How did Franks die?” Green insisted, his face tense.

“Him and the Beens brothers got put through a sausage grinder,” I said. “What are you getting at?”

“They were all investigating pizza murders.”

I tried to concentrate, but my Twinkie was humming again. “I still don’t see.”

“Don’t you?” He grabbed my arm so hard it hurt. “Every cop who gets close gets eaten by cannibals.” He pulled those last five pages from his trench coat pocket. “Look at this.” A photo showed a pizza dealer murdered on the steps of the Capitol. “Same MO. Identical wounds. Body covered in pizza vomit.”

“And the other murder?”

“Same. Right outside the Supreme Food Court Building.”

“Can’t we get a DNA match on the killer from his vomit?”

Green shook his head. “Same thing happened. Body got cleaned of all traces between the crime scene and the morgue.”

“What’s the holdup?” Erpent shouted from the top of the stairs. He raised the bag of poo above his head, turned and entered the shrine.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, partner mine?” He jerked a thumb up at the SS agent.

“That it’s time to eat some air?”

Green grabbed me by the back of my head. “Don’t be so naive, Frolick. The SS is going to try to kill us.”

I pulled away. “But we’re on the same side,” I said. “Why would they do that?”

“A cover-up.”

“Harry… You’re being paranoid. What do they have to cover up?”

Erpent appeared again above us. “You coming or not?” he called out. This time he waited.

“On our way!” my partner shouted. To me: “We are in some serious doo-doo. You trust me?”

“Sure I do,” I said. “With my life. You know that.”

On several occasions he had dragged me from gunfights with desperate food terrists who refused to go to Fat Camp. If it weren’t for him, I’d be dead by now. Our Laxafiers were no match for the actual bullets criminals used.

“Then follow my lead,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “What are you going to do?”

Green resumed his climb. “I have no idea.”

We joined Erpent at the top of the stairs and entered the memorial. He led us around to the back of the statue. We stared up at the smooth marble surface.

My partner coughed. “Now is really not the time to play tourist. You want to go to the NSA, let’s get a move on.”

Erpent unzipped his fly and took out his wee-wee. “We’re already there,” he said. He stroked himself, and inserted his erect member into a small hole in the stone. “Biometrics,” he explained. He pumped himself into Lincoln’s butt until a back door swung open, revealing a set of stairs that led down into the earth.

“Holy air,” I breathed. “Who knew?”

The SS man zipped up. “This facility is Top Top Super Double Dip Hot Fudge Sundae With A Cherry On Top Secret,” he said. “There are only a handful of security classifications higher. Before we proceed, you must swear on your service copies of
Food-Free At Last
never to divulge what you are about to see.”

I took out my copy of the Prophet’s book. Harry couldn’t find his, so we swore together on mine.

Erpent gestured down at the stairwell. “Gentlemen,” he said. “After you.”

I went first. The stairs were dimly lit and curved out of sight. Behind me, Green said, “Isn’t there a front door we can use?”

“We’re at war against the Terror of Food,” Erpent said. His tone of voice hardened. “Secrecy is of vital importance.”

“I thought it was the Tyranny of Food,” my partner said.

“Do not quibble with me, Agent Green. Both are true.”