D. Schmidt - They Ate the Waitress?

Finished reading, Nick popped a memory tab into the slot in his TV and sat down to watch a movie. Finally, it was time for his meeting with Reid.

The offices of Scunner Consulting were built like an Art Deco prison. The bulletproof windows were barred. The eight-foot cement wall surrounding the property looked like it could keep out a burglar or a horde of Mongols. Nick stopped at the gate and introduced himself to the intercom. Questions were asked, lists were consulted, urine samples were taken. Finally, he was allowed inside.

As he sat in the waiting room, he read some pamphlets about Scunner Consulting’s various charitable efforts:

Save the Sasquatch

Stop alien abduction

Evict the homeless

Stop abducting aliens

Help the widows of Sasquatch victims

Nothing about cannibalistic restaurants. Odd. He made a mental note to check the newsfeeds for records of their past protests.

A woman in a yellow sundress took a seat on the other side of the room. She checked her watch, frowned, and impatiently tapped her foot. She pulled a rubber stick from her pocket and chewed on the end. It was a Flavifier, a kind of everlasting lollipop. The commercial claimed they helped users to relax, quit smoking, or quit overeating.

“Pacifiers for adults,” Nick thought, smiling to himself. “How pathetic. – Damn, did I leave my cigarettes in the car?”

Judy the receptionist checked her clipboard and cleared her throat. “Dr. Ridwick, Mr. Mason will see you now.”

Nick didn’t move.

“Dr. Ridwick? Dr. Glen Ridwick?”

With a start, he remembered he was using an alias. “Oh, sorry. I’m ready now.”

“This way, sir.” Judy glanced down at her clipboard. “If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of name is Ridwick? I’m a big genealogy buff, you see.”

“Um… Dutch?”

She smiled, bouncing excitedly. “Oh, I have family in the Netherlands! What part of the country is your family from?”

“Pennsylvania.”

Nick brushed past Judy and walked into Reid’s office. The office was filled with overstuffed leather chairs and a long, granite-topped table. The walls were covered in paintings done in a new style called “non-goal-oriented, monochromatic drip art.” Some people thought the artist had simply taken a can of black paint and splattered it onto a white canvas. Of course, those people didn’t have enough money to buy avant-garde art, so what did they know?

Reid sat behind a gigantic, oak pedestal desk. The panel in the front of the desk seemed much thicker than normal, probably bulletproof. “Good afternoon, Dr. Ridwick. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve heard about your efforts to put a stop to Hand to Mouth,” he said, taking a seat. “I’d like to help you, if I can. They need to be stopped. As a doctor, I’ve devoted my life to helping the terminally ill, but they treat them like farm animals. And not in a good way.”

“Hand to Mouth,” Reid grumbled, folding his arms. “That place disgusts me. What they do is just sickening.”

“Yes, it’s horrible. And expensive!” Nick made certain the office door was closed and that no one was listening. “Did you hear about the restaurant catching fire the other night? Was that…?”

“Was that what? Us? No, of course not. Although, I can’t say I’m sorry it happened. Todd Sweeney certainly deserves it, and worse. Much worse.”

Reid gave Nick a tall stack of pamphlets and some information on the next anti-anthropophagous restaurants meeting. Apparently “anthropophagous” meant “people-eating.” There was also a meeting about “coprophagous” restaurants. Nick was afraid to ask what that meant. Finally, Reid had a press conference to attend, so he had Judy walk Nick to the door.

Nick drove home from the office, speeding, his thoughts choked with anger. His investigation of Scunner Consulting and Reid Mason had gotten him virtually nothing. “And I wasted a perfectly good, anagrammatic pseudonym. Those things are hard to come up with! Well, I don’t want to try breaking into that place. The security’s tighter than Sophie’s jeans.”

His thoughts were interrupted by his buzzing transmitter. A representative from an arbitrator’s office informed him that Luke Bender had been found guilty of robbing Nick’s temporary apartment. Also, several expensive parrots had been stolen from Fur Sure a few months earlier, but they had been found in Luke’s home, hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Thus, he was on his way to a work camp, and would be locked away for quite some time.

“That,” Nick thought, “gives me an excellent idea. If I can’t go through the security at Scunner Consulting, maybe I can go around it…” He made a quick u-turn and headed for the pet store.

A sign in the front window advertised their current sale: “Thirty Percent off All Emotionally Disturbed Toy Poodles – Puppy Antidepressants Free.” He stepped inside and was immediately approached by a salesclerk, a wispy man with frosted blond hair. His nametag said “Brice.” He was carrying a sleepy-looking, black cat and stroking it behind the ears.

Brice assaulted him with a smile. “Welcome to Fur Sure. Can I interest you in a kitty today?”

“No, I’m just looking for the pet food.”

“Everybody can use another kitty!” he persisted. “This is Cloudy. She’s a two-year-old Persian we rescued from an abandoned apartment. I could tell you a lot of stories about this cat. You might say she’s a cat ‘o nine tales !”

Nick didn’t laugh. “I have a large lizard at home,” he said, “and I need to buy some food for him. Do you have any crickets?”

“Certainly. We have pet food of every category .”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asked innocently. He led Nick down the main aisle to a row of aquariums. “Here are our little buggies.” Bending down, Brice dropped the cat to the floor and watched it scurry away. “How many crickets did you wish to purr-chase ?”

“At least a gross,” Nick said, tapping on the aquarium glass.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Brice replied, “but we only have about a hundred in stock at the moment. Shall I order you some more from our catalog ?”

“Stop that! Just ring them up for me.”

“Would you like an aquarium, as well? I’m sure you wouldn’t want the crickets to escape. That would be a cataclysmic catastrophe !”

Nick grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him forward. “I swear to god, if you make one more cat-related pun, I will beat you to death with my bare hands and feed your corpse to the gerbils.”

“S-s-sorry, sir,” he whimpered, pulling away. “I’ll ring this right up for you, sir.” Brice carried the aquarium of crickets to the counter and punched some figures into the cash register. “I noticed you have a pair of handcuffs on your belt,” he said nervously. “Are you a security patroller?”

“No,” Nick grunted. “I’m a manhunter.”

“How exciting. I wish someone would do something about the crime in this neighborhood! We’ve been having trouble with…”

“With what?”

“Nothing.”

“Having trouble with what?” he demanded, annoyed.

“…A cat burglar.”

Nick punched Brice in the mouth and watched him crumple to the floor. He tossed a few coins on the counter and, the aquarium under his arm, calmly walked out the door.

That evening, Nick returned to Scunner Consulting, parking his car across the street from the front gate. He changed into a pair of coveralls and a matching baseball cap, covering his face with a gas mask. The coveralls were new, but the gasmask was an old gift from an ex-girlfriend. She had given him the mask so they could play her favorite bedroom game, “the radioactive schoolgirl and the naughty hazmat team member.”