copyright by James Finn Garner. All rights reserved.

And so it begins. With the coupons, tickling the brain in its pleasure centers. Slick colorful scrip, weighing nearly nothing, the kind of thing that gets thrown out with every Sunday paper. Except by those who can’t help themselves.

We’ve seen it all, down in this district. We dread the beginning of December the way emergency rooms dread full moons. Almost makes a guy wish the holidays would never come around. Seen too many things, y’ know? It’s supposed to be a time of fun and parties, but it leads to abuses, and then they have to call us in. We’ve got plenty of nicknames. Sugar Pop cops. Cereal killers. We’re not well liked, but that doesn’t matter.

Sometimes we get called in to settle domestic disputes. A couple is having some knock-down drag-out about something or other. We just try to separate them and calm them down, but sometimes they’d just rather fight, so you let ‘em. Other times, they’ll try to pull you in and take sides:

“What kind of moron would stir in pretzels, hanh?”

“She’s trying to kill me, with these Brazil nuts. Look at the size of them! Might as well throw in a couple coconuts!”

“You pick out all the Cheerios again, I’m gonna pick out your eye!”

Only a dope would let himself get pulled into the middle. If I didn’t have a pension, I’d walk away and let all these lunatics have at it. They deserve each other. But murders in the kitchen don’t make for a festive Christmas, no matter what my mother used to say.

Last year, we were responding to a call on the west side, a 929, a Cheetos call. Routine stuff, but when we got there, it wasn’t justa husband and wife going at it. The entire neighborhood was going crazy. It was a block party, and the people were all three sheets to the wind already, when someone shows up with Cheetos in their Chex Mix. You can picture what happens next. By the time my partner and I get there, there’s screaming and fistfights and one guy gets thrown through a picture window and is unconscious and bleeding in the snow out front. We had to call for back up and ended up hauling eight people to the cooler, where they got a crowded overnight stay. Without any Chex Mix.

In the middle of the month, we were called up to Burlington Farms. Way out of the city limits. That we were called there in the first place was strange. It’s way out of our area, but we got the call so we took it. It was dark and cold that night. The damp in the air had crystallized, and dry snow was blowing around the road like sand. It was dark out there on the roads. When you’re rich, apparently streetlights are an imposition. But we managed to find the house we were looking for. It was all lit up and cars were out front. It was a party, and we were going to invite ourselves in.

My partner switched off the engine and we cruised down the driveway as quietly as we could. We could already hear the noises in the party when we got out of the car. The front door was unlocked and we went in.

Parties in ritzy houses are different than the ones you and I might go in. For starters, they’re always brightly lit. Maybe the people are intent on showing off their goods, and themselves, but there’s no dark corners. That, plus the size of the place, makes you feel like you’re walking into the friendliest hotel lobby in the world.

We stood in the entryway but didn’t announce our presence. There wasn’t any immediate commotion that we could see, so we took a chance to observe. It was quite a party. No one noticed us for many minutes, until a dolled-up matron caught our eye and motioned us through a doorway. We did as she asked, and she followed.

Once in the hallway, she looked me in the eye and said, “Come with me to the basement.”

“Wait a minute, lady, what’s the….?”

She whispered harshly, “We can’t talk here.”

Against our better judgment, my partner and I did as she asked. She led us down an empty hallway, opened the door and led us down a narrow wooden staircase to the basement. It was an old house, and basements hadn’t been turned into rumpus rooms yet. Though it had a poured concrete basement and a high ceiling, a Burlington Farms basement still smelled a little like every other basement in town.

“I’m the person who called you over,” she said.

“You the lady of the house?”

“Yes. My name is Pomeroy. Mildred Pomeroy. I wasn’t sure that this matter was something for the police, or what, so that’s why I called the cereal killers.”

“Lady, if you want to get in good with us…” my partner said.

I interrupted, “My partner gets a little testy for that name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and you could tell she was. Always the hostess, she was concerned about not offending anybody, even bums like us. “But I still hope you’ll do something.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s my husband. He’s involved in the cereal business, too, though you might not know his name. He…ah…this is very hard to explain…”

“Take your time.”

“He works in the chemical division. He’s actually the head of the chemical division…”

From up the stairs a voice shouted, “Mildred? Are you down there?”

Mrs. Pomeroy jumped a foot when she heard the voice. “Oh no, it’s my husband!” she said, as she looked in vain for some escape route down here. My partner and I didn’t know enough to care. This guy’s a chemist? So what could be the big deal?

The footsteps came down the rickety stairs and around the corner. Mrs. Pomeroy whimpered like a school girl. When Pomeroy emerged around the corner, I was even more surprised. He was a little bird of a man, with glasses and a scrawny neck, the very picture of a Poindexter. “Oh,” he said when he saw us. “Good evening, gentlemen. I’m Eubanks Pomeroy.”

I introduced myself and my partner and explained that we’d been called out to his mansion to investigate a disturbance.

“A disturbance?” he said, surprised. “Why, as you can see, there’s been no disturbance here. It’s just a Christmas gathering. A private affair.”

“Yes, gentlemen, there must have been some mistake,” said Mrs. Pomeroy. “I was just telling these men that they must have gotten a wrong signal or something. I brought them to the basement so as not to create a scene upstairs.”

“Wait a minute,” said my partner, “you can’t lead us out on a wild goose chase and then tell us nothing’s doing.”

“Obviously, there’s ‘nothing doing’,” said Mr. Pomeroy. “It’s just a party. People having fun. I’m sure there are other places in the city that are more in need of your…intervention this evening.”

We bickered back and forth, but it all came to nothing. We were led upstairs and shown the door. Mrs. Pomeroy struck me as one of those attention-starved creeps with too much time on their hands, the kind who need a little excitement and pull fire alarms for fun. We drove back to the city grousing about this waste of time, and how rich people are just as crazy as the rest of us.

I didn’t think much about the Pomeroys after that, just one in a string of weird incidents over the bleak midwinter. And things definitely got weirder. For the most part, Chex mix incidents are domestic disputes, where the junk aggravates people’s already-frayed tempers and everyone’s ugly side comes out. Garden variety stuff.

But pretty soon we started hearing about Chex mix incidents that broke that pattern. One bank robbery went down in midtown, both of the guys shot at the scene. The cops called us later to tell us the two gunsels had their pockets stuffed to bursting with Chex mix.

Then there was a break-in at the fanciest jewelers in town, Fishman’s. They got away with about a half mil in precious stones, but in the safe, they replaced the rocks with Chex mix.

We “cereal killers” had been the joke around the district for years, one notch below parking enforcement. But now we were getting some notice, and it wasn’t making us comfortable. The big brass called us in for meeting after meeting. Detectives on different cases were picking our brains for what we knew, which wasn’t much. They all started to think we were holding out on them, or that we were dumb as rocks, neither of which made us anyone’s lunch buddies.

Then the boys in the grand theft division asked us to listen in on an interrogation. They had one of the perps from a big armored car robbery in the tank, and he was telling them some strange tales.

“His name is Eddie Widanski,” said the lieutenant, as we walked down the hall. “He’s strictly a small time grifter, which is why we were confused that he was involved in this heist. Seems way out of his league.”

When we got to the tank, we saw through the glass a little wiry guy with a bad complexion. This was Eddie, and he was telling the cop in there about the heist. How he didn’t remember anything about it, only that he knows he did it, but can’t remember the planning or his partners or anything. Just the notion, the urge to show up at a certain time and hour and do the job.

“I got no idea what happened,” he said. “I don’t even need the money. I just got a job selling pet insurance over the phone.” He was genuinely scared, like he was in a bad dream that wouldn’t stop.

“This is all very interesting,” I told the sergeant, “but what does it have to do with us?”

“Just one thing. Eddie and his accomplice—who was shot at the scene and is now in the sick house—both of them had their pockets full of your junk.”

“What’dya mean, our junk?”

“Don’t play dumb. The cereal, pal. The Chex mix.”

My partner and I went out to lunch and sat in silence. We knew Chex mix did things to people, things they couldn’t bring themselves to stop. There were even Chex mix addicts living down on Skid Row, thinking every day was Christmas. But this was something new, and pretty soon we were going to have to get some answers or get kicked off the squad for being a pair of mooks.

Suddenly my partner said, out of the blue, “Pomeroy.” And we headed off to Burlington Farms.

In the daylight the Pomeroy house looked a little less mysterious, but certainly impressive. We parked and knocked on the front door. A butler with a glassy expression answered.

“We’re here to see Mrs. Pomeroy. Is she in?”

Within five minutes, the butler led us back to a casual room that looked out over their back forty. About 50 yards away, a guy was digging a deep hole under a tree in the frozen ground. There were other servants around, all of whom had that glassy expression and ignored us low-rent intruders. Mrs. Pomeroy sat at a low table drinking coffee. She invited us to sit down.

“When you had us out here before, we were interrupted in our conversation when your husband showed up. We’d like to continue.”

“There’s really no need,” she said. “You see, my husband has been called away on an overseas assignment and won’t be back for six months. Possibly longer. Would you like some coffee?”

“No thanks,” I said. “We need to know, what exactly did you call us out here for on that night?”

“You’re going to think it terribly silly.”

“Try us,” I said, as I watched another servant outside with a big drooping bundle over his shoulder walk out to the freshly dug hole.

“I told you my husband was a chemist with the cereal company. Well, I had gotten word from one of his associates that…”

“Yes.”

“This is where it sounds silly. That he had been experimenting with the cereal to effect psychotropic changes in people.”

“Come again?”

“He was experimenting with the formula for the cereal to induce unexpected behavior on the people who ate it. He wanted to see if he could get people to act in ways contrary to their nature. To get peaceful men to start fights, quiet men to sing songs and dance on tables. It was something that had intrigued him every since he was in college.”

“Go on,” I said.

“That’s about all I know. I’m not a chemist, nor am I a lawyer, so I don’t even know if what he was doing was illegal. It seemed like just a lark at the time, a way for the men in the lab to try some new ideas.”

“So you say there were some chemicals in the Chex mix that might get people to lose control of themselves?”

“Yes,” she said, as she watched the servant out the window dump his load into the hole and start to bury it. “At least, that’s how I understood it. Care for a cookie?”

“Could it even lead to brainwashing?”

“I have no idea. And you can’t ask my husband, as he is overseas, as I said. You seem very concerned.”

“There’s been a lot of funny things going on in the city,” I said, “so we’re going to have to follow this lead. Who is your husband’s boss?”

“Oh, I hope you won’t jeopardize his career with a bunch of accusations that, as I said before, I can’t prove, since I’m not any type of chemist.”

“Mrs. Pomeroy,” I said, trying not to get angry, “you might not know it, living up here in Shangri-La, but a lot of people’s lives get messed up because of Chex mix. They try it once or twice, then can’t stop. Marriages wrecked, kids neglected, jobs lost, all because they can’t stop snacking. I bet some of your neighbors out here are struggling with it. Now we’re seeing even more suspicious things in town. If we find out that someone intentionally dopes up the stuff, just for a lark, as you put it….”

“Now, now, please calm yourself. I can put you in touch with my husband’s lab assistant, Apollo. He knows a thing or two about it. He’s just upstairs showering now.”

“Showering?” my partner burst out without thinking.

“This is all really starting to stink, Mrs. Pomeroy.”

“Oh nonsense. There’s nothing that civilized people can’t work out among themselves. Would you care to have a little snack while we wait?”

“If it’s Chex mix, no thanks!”

“No, no, it’s a delicious new product they’ve concocted over there.” She picked up a can with a weird nipple on top and a cracker. She took the can and pointed at the cracker. With a little pressure from her finger, the can spat out a stream of what looked like orange cake frosting.
“What the hell is that?”

“They call it aerosol cheese. It will simply be a smash. Please try it.”

“Cheese that squirts from a can? I gotta admit, I’ve never seen that before. Okay, Mrs. Pomeroy, I will try just a bit of that, and then you’re going to tell us everything you know.”

“Yes,” she smiled, “yes I am.”

My partner and I ate the crackers. “Say, that ain’t bad. Not at all. Can I have another?”

“I predict you’ll find it impossible to stop,” Mrs. Pomeroy said, wielding a saltine.