The Good Humor Man Read online

  We head inside. Rows of old metal desks are still covered with obsolete computer equipment and thick sheathes of printouts. It’s ridiculously simple to follow the trail of the men below us; all we need do is walk the five-foot-wide path in the dust created by the pallet jack. The black marketeers have made our job easier in another way, too — they’ve lit the corridor with kerosene lanterns.

  We walk around a bend, and the hallway takes on a gradual downward slope. Three minutes later, we reach a pair of fifteen-foot-high sliding steel doors. The walls are rock now, no longer corrugated metal.

  After we pass through the doors into the caves, the floor’s slope becomes steeper. The space between the floor and ceiling gradually increases as we descend.

  “You feel how cool it’s gotten?”

  The sudden sound of Mitch’s voice makes me jump. It has gotten cooler. The temperature must be at least fifteen degrees lower than it was outside. I begin noticing a slight vibration in the floor, a vibration which becomes an audible humming. We must be getting closer to the refrigeration units.

  Ahead of us, barely discernable in the lantern light, are stacks of pallets, piled four or five high. The top cases are at least thirty feet off the floor. The floor levels off, and the passageway widens into a tremendous open space. I look up, wondering whether there are limestone formations hanging high above my head, in the darkness.

  The cardboard cases stacked onto the pallets are marked “NON-FAT DRY MILK; DONATED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR FOOD ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS; NOT FOR RESALE.” Worthless on the black market. We walk past what seems like acres of it. The humming grows louder. Finally, we come to a sweating steel wall. The trail of disturbed dust leads to tremendous insulated doors. One of them is partially open; a blast of winter’s air escapes. The humming is very loud now. Still, Mitch signals for me to be quiet. He motions for me to follow him through the partially open door. Inside, we immediately duck behind a stack of pallets.

  I can see two men. One is using the forklift to lower pallets to the floor. Mitch signals for me to sneak behind the other man, who’s operating a pallet jack. I sense the weight of the shotgun in my hands. This isn’t anything like this morning. I could get my head blown off.

  Mitch pokes the muzzle of his shotgun into the back of the Mexican manning the forklift before I can take a single stride. All I have to do is step out of the shadows with my gun, and my target, the man with the pallet jack, immediately puts up his hands.

  “What — what is this?” he blurts. “Who are you guys? Cops?”

  I see Mitch smile. “Worse than cops. We’re Good Humor Men.”

  “Shit” I hear the Mexican mutter.

  “Look, we don’t have a problem here,” my man says very fast. “Take a look around you. You see what’s there?”

  I do. Cheese as far as the eye can see. An Arab oil sheik’s ransom.

  “My partners and I, we aren’t greedy,” he says. “Look at all this shit. This could last us for years and years, right? We’ll cut you in for a slice. Make you millionaires a dozen times over —”

  A gob of Mitch’s spit lands near my man’s shoes. “We’re Good Humor Men,” Mitch says. “We don’t do deals.”

  I think about the half-dozen Nestlé bars I have hidden away inside my vest pockets, souvenirs of this morning’s raid, intended for my ailing father.

  Now my man looks genuinely frightened. “So… so what are you gonna do, then?”

  Mitch’s eyes twinkle. “Heh. Nothin’ much. Just make the world’s biggest grilled cheese sandwich.”

  I drag the cart loaded with drums of gasoline down to the refrigerated room. Mitch has handcuffed the two perps. The fair-skinned one looks like he may’ve soiled his pants.

  I stare at the three barrels of gasoline. “Mitch. Is this legal? Isn’t the cheese the property of the federal government?”

  My friend and partner looks up at the hundreds of pallets. “This isn’t federal property, Lou. If the feds abandon a facility for more than fifteen years, said facility reverts to the ownership of whatever state it happens to be in. So all this cheese is the property of the State of California. And under the California State Criminal Code, we’ve been given the authority to use whatever instrumentalities that are necessary and proper for the confiscation and destruction of contraband foods which menace the public health.”

  “But ‘necessary and proper’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we set this entire facility on fire. Couldn’t we just cut off the power to the refrigeration units, or disable the condensers?”

  Mitch grips my shoulder hard enough to make me wince. “Lou. When I’m in charge of a mission, ‘necessary and proper’ is whatever I say it is. And I say that it is necessary and proper for us to set this goddamn warehouse on fire. Teach every cheese-eating fucker within five miles a lesson they won’t never forget.”

  My God. He’s never spoken to me this way before. There’s no friendship in his eyes.

  “Hey, you old peckerwood!” Mitch’s grin returns. “What are we arguing for, huh? Just spread the damn gasoline around so we can get the fuck outta here. We’ll go have us a beer after we get back home, just the two of us.”

  Mitch is my best friend. I don’t think I could’ve made it through the first five years after Emily died without his companionship. Without the Good Humor Men. I open up the spigots on the gasoline drums and pull the cart along the corridors of cheese, spilling gasoline in pungent trails.

  Mitch ignites his dragon. The blue and orange flames that race along the floor look like living things, luminescent serpents that whip each other with long, deadly tails. The cardboard cases catch quickly and easily.

  What I did this morning, when the dragon was in my own hands — were my actions of a different kind than Mitch’s, or merely of a different degree? I’d thrown the confiscated cookies and cartons of ice cream into the disposal tubs Alex, Jr. held across his shoulders. Then the sheet cake. It was almost a shame to destroy it. Someone had taken a great deal of time arranging the faux icing into those little roselike swirls. And the words “Merry Christmas,” spelled out in red and green cursive lettering, surrounded by fat red Santa faces… it almost made even my Jewish heart melt.

  “Are we going to burn the stuff in here?” Alex asked.

  “No. Follow me out into the gym. We’ll do it where everyone can see.” It was important that we give our audience their show, their spectacle. Over a hundred pairs of eyes focused on us as we exited the offices. I gestured for Alex, Jr. to set the tubs down, then walked over to the first one, the dragon nestled in the crook of my arm. I stuck the nozzle within the rim of the first pot. Then I pulled the trigger and kept it pulled, just like Mitch had taught me.

  The blast was sudden and startling. The skin on my hands and face tightened in the reflected heat. The sheet cake was consumed almost instantly. I smelled the familiar stench of carbonized grease. Tens of thousands of calories burned in less than a second. Hundreds of dollars of contraband going up in wispy smoke, all due to a tiny squeeze of my forefinger, the personal expenditure of a fraction of one stored calorie.

  In the weeds by the back of the gym, I didn’t find much to destroy. About a half-dozen bags of chips; a few cartons of unmelting “ice cream”; some scattered chocolate bars. Sunlight glinted off the wrappers of one of the candy bars. I picked it up. Gold letters spelling “Nestle Chocolate” were embossed on the wrapper. The small print read: “Product of Switzerland; imported to Great Britain under authority of Confections Importers, Inc.” Of course, every cheap counterfeit made the same claim. But the quality of the embossing made me suspect these might be the genuine article.

  I stared at the hand holding the chocolate bar. My hand, dotted with liver spots, flesh loosening into papery folds, the hand of a sixty-eight-year-old man who maybe had no business doing all this anymore. A bully’s hand?

  I checked behind me to make certain I was absolutely alone. Then I stuffed four of the chocolate bars into the pockets hidden in
side my Good Humor Man vest. Not for me. For my father. Nearly a hundred years old, warehoused in a giant nursing home, with hardly a memory left… and the only thing he pleads for anymore from me is sweets.

  So who’s worse? Mitch, the overzealous soldier? Or me… the hypocrite, the physician who saw the dangers in this program years ago, but never spoke up because he was present at the creation, because he’s as implicated as any man alive?

  My eyes sting now as we hurry back toward the surface. The stench of acres of processed cheese, cardboard, plastic liners, and wood combusting smells much like I imagine the odor of burning human flesh would. It must be all the fat within the cheese.

  Outside, the late afternoon sun is harsh. I look east, toward the scrub land that covers the underground warehouse. Already, plumes of white smoke escape from buried vents. The van arrives.

  “How’d things go underground?” the leader of the San Clemente squads asks Mitch.

  My best friend grins. “Smooth as a baby’s keister.”

  “What’re you planning on doing with those two characters?” Brad asks, gesturing at the two handcuffed men we’ve brought up with us.

  Mitch bounces the handcuffs’ keys in his palm. “Figure I’ll chain ‘em up to that post over there. We’ll radio the cops to come get them. In the meantime —”

  He unholsters his dragon, points it at the open box of the delivery truck, and holds the trigger down for five seconds.

  “Mitch, what —?” A wind blows sudden, terrible heat into my face. “The truck —” It might not even belong to these two men. It might belong to some total innocent, miles from here, who’d never dream of selling contraband. This is vandalism, pure and simple. I touch my friend’s shoulder gingerly, like he’s a bomb I need to defuse. “Was that really necessary?”

  He whirls on me, his eyes hot as the tip of his flamethrower. “Jesus Christ, Lou. Will you calm down already?” His face softens some, but it retains a veneer of angry incomprehension. “Get a grip on yourself, Doc. Let the fire do your thinking, okay? Works for me.”

  The truck explodes.

  They drop me off four blocks from the post office. Cheese distributions are going on in five locations, so we’ve split up, hoping to mop it all up before sundown. I take a peek around the corner to see what I’m up against. There are about two dozen of them, gathered around several pallets of cheese in the parking lot of a ramshackle McDonald’s building.

  A woman is doing the organizing, a formidably stout matron dressed in a flowing orange skirt and blouse. She talks loudly in Spanish and paces between the pallets, kicking a teenaged boy when he doesn’t follow her instructions fast enough. She’s not just giving the cheese away; she’s organized a bartering system. Some bring offerings of clothing, others bring pots or toys or electric fans. She pays for these offerings with cheese, then redistributes the bartered items among members of the crowd.

  I take two deep breaths, then step around the corner.

  “Hola! My name is Dr. Louis Shmalzberg.” They stare at me, then stare at my shotgun. “I’m a Good Humor Man, legally deputized in the State of California to confiscate and dispose of contraband foodstuffs. Such as that cheese.”

  I hear several of them mutter, “Queso,” then glance down at the USDA-branded blocks in their hands.

  “That’s right. Queso. That cheese is illegal. It’s no good for you. Bad for your health. There is other cheese, other queso, the kind that you can buy at the store, which is good for you. This cheese that you have here, it’s old, it’s very bad. That’s why it’s illegal.” I gesture toward a pile of discarded cardboard cases. “I must ask you to place your bad cheese on that pile of trash.”

  They look at me with silent hostility so electric that I’m actually relieved Mitch made me take this gun. None of them move toward the pile. The matron in the bright orange outfit seems to be in charge here, so I walk toward her, taking care to point the barrel of the shotgun at the ground.

  “Señora. Please. Be the first to put away this bad, illegal food.”

  We lock eyes. The fierceness, the stubbornness in her face reminds me of my mother’s mother, who escaped from Communist Romania as a girl and forever afterward had an uneasy relationship with authority. “Throw the quesos on the pile of trash there.”

  She curses me beneath her breath. But she does as I tell her. After all, I’m holding the gun. She doesn’t respect me. She respects the gun. I’m merely its bearer. I’m Cortez, stealing Aztec gold. A conqueror. An invader.

  Now that she’s acceded to my authority, the others should follow suit without much fuss. “Come on now,” I say, wishing I could remember some of my high school Spanish. “Rápido.”

  The older ones drop their illicit treasure onto the pile, their mouths compressed into thin, bitter lines. The younger ones, wanting to retain some scrap of self-regard, stay farther back and toss the blocks so that they land near my feet.

  I begin to breathe more easily. I’m going to get out of this all right. It’s just another roundup. Just another day’s work for this part-time Good Humor Man.

  There’s just one cheese-holder left. Standing beneath the tilted Golden Arches, a small man, can’t be taller than five-two, but with broad shoulders, a laborer’s shoulders. Probably over sixty, like me. He clutches his five-pound block of cheese tightly, like it’s his most beloved child.

  “Sir, please place your cheese on the pile.”

  He doesn’t move. His thick fingers tighten around the cheese.

  I curse under my breath. I take a step closer to him, gesturing with the muzzle of the gun. Damn him — it had been going so smoothly. I feel the sweat begin to trickle down my sides again.

  I try to make my voice as hard and cold as the gun I’ve been given. “Put the cheese on the pile. I won’t repeat myself again. Do it. Now.”

  It’s not that he doesn’t understand. He understands — even if Spanish is his only language, he knows exactly what I’m saying.

  He digs his fingers beneath the lip of the cardboard carton and tears the top off. The block of cheese, a quarter of a century old, glistens in its transparent plastic inner lining. What is he doing? Placing the package against his mouth — is he kissing it? No. He rips the plastic open with his teeth. I hear the crowd gasp like a single organism. He opens his mouth wide, wider —

  And takes a gigantic bite of cheese.

  Oh no. No. Everything’s falling apart. “Don’t do that! Consuming contraband substances is a direct violation of the California Health Code -”

  His only answer is to take a second, more voracious bite.

  “Sir-!”

  I’m losing it. The whole situation is slipping through my shaky fingers, like I’m a fucking amateur. What would Mitch do? He’d bash in this joker’s cheese-eating face. But I can’t do it.

  “Stop! Stop eating it! Spit out that contraband immediately!”

  The matron in the orange outfit starts laughing. A nasty sound, like the braying of a donkey. It frees the others to begin laughing. A couple of the younger ones take tentative steps toward the pile of cheese, testing me, smirks spreading on their brown faces.

  The galloping gourmet beneath the Golden Arches plays to his adoring audience. His movements become theatrical, the grand gestures of a circus ringmaster. He takes his biggest bite yet.

  And chokes on it.

  His eyes go wide, first with surprise, then with panic. His jaw drops open. He forgets about the cheese, dropping it as his hands reach for his own clogged throat.

  My long-ago training in emergency first aid warns me not to interfere with a choking victim if he is able to utter a sound. So I hang back, waiting. I can’t help feeling a small surge of satisfaction that this man’s antics have led to this.

  But he doesn’t make a sound. He’s suffocating.

  Shit.

  Old reflex kicks in. I haven’t had to perform a Heimlich maneuver in ages. Discarding the shotgun, I knot my fingers together near the pit of his stomach and yank,
hoping I’ll see a yellow wad shoot out his mouth. No go. No va. I plant my feet better, square my shoulders, and pull again. Still nothing.

  Damn that cheese! Pull! Nothing. Pull again! The cheese laughs at me… my heart is beating too fast. One. More. Time!

  Failed… it’s not coming out. I’m too weak. Too old.

  No. Can’t think that way. Been a doctor for, what now, forty-three years? No fucking hunk of cheese is going to beat me. Lay him down on the ground. His face looks like a radish. I tilt his head back. A simple change of angle might be enough to partially open his windpipe. I lower my ear to his mouth, praying that I’ll sense a gurgle of air.

  Nothing. I have to put my fingers in his mouth, see if I can grab hold of the mass. Good way to get a finger or two bitten off. His eyes are still open. I hope he understands.

  “I’m going to put my fingers in your mouth, try to get that blockage out. I’m a doctor. Don’t bite me, okay? Do you understand?”

  His eyes flicker, turn up in his head, then close. He’s out. Great. Now I’ll have his automatic reflexes to deal with. A cool desert wind blows grit into my eyes. I pull his jaw down, stick my fingers into his mouth. He’s missing most of his upper teeth on the left side; I try to stay to the left as I probe the upper reaches of his throat. There. I feel it. A claylike lump blocking the passageway. Nothing to grab hold of. Squishy. Slippery. There! I’ve got it! Gently, gently pull it out. Slowly —

  I feel my fingerhold tear away. I remove a piece of mucous-covered cheese the size of a squished marble. A piece the size of a plum remains in his throat.

  I have to cut a hole in his windpipe, a hole below the cheese. An emergency tracheotomy. I did one on a mannequin once. Almost fifty years ago.

  I grab for my bag, rip it open. My supplies spill out. A scalpel, a knife — didn’t I pack one?

  It’s all useless. Just purgatives. A few bandages and antiseptic lotions. Not even a pen knife.

  I stare into the faces surrounding me. “I need a knife. I’m a doctor. A médico, I need to make a hole in this man’s throat so he can breathe. Can any of you give me a knife?”