The Impossible Fortress

by Jason Rekulak

  White strobes flashed ten times a second, casting my movements in freakish slow motion. I stopped just long enough to grab a Playboy—I wasn’t leaving without the magazine—and then limped to the back of the store, sidestepping broken typewriters and overturned file drawers. The siren blared nonstop; I knew the sound was reverberating up and down Market Street. Passing the showroom, I saw my tactic had worked. Mary’s 64 was spared. Zelinsky’s store was destroyed, but the Showroom and all its computers were intact.

  I bounded up the stairs and darted through the maze of boxes. Out on the roof, the siren was a few decibels softer, but there were new sirens on top of the old siren—the peel of approaching patrol cars. The Wetbridge police station was just four blocks away; they would be arriving in seconds, not minutes.

  I ran across the roof. The guys had already moved the bridge into position. Tyler was on the roof of General Tso’s, and Clark was hurrying across the chasm. Rene and Alf were waiting on the bike shop for their turns to cross. Rene heaved his canvas bags across the alley—first one, then the other. The bags hit the roof of General Tso’s and spilled their contents, lighters and hard packs scattering everywhere. Schwarzenegger answered the noise with a frenzy of yapping.

  “Hurry up!” Tyler shouted.

  Rene took two steps onto the bridge. The wooden board sagged beneath his weight, then snapped. He dropped straight down, vanishing into darkness, like a stone disappearing into a well. A moment later, amid all the sirens, I heard a sharp cry and the faint clatter of broken two-by-fours.

  2400 REM *** CAPTURED BY GUARDS ***

  2410 FOR I=L1 TO L1+24

  2420 POKE I,0:NEXT I

  2430 POKE L1+24,47

  2440 POKE L1+5,71:POKE L1+6,240

  2450 POKE L1+4,22:POKE L1+1,36

  2460 POKE L1,85

  2470 FOR T=1 TO 250:NEXT T

  2480 FOR T=15 TO 0 STEP-1

  2490 POKE L1+24,INT(T):NEXT T:RETURN

  AFTER I’D BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED and fingerprinted, Tack brought me to a pay phone and handed me a quarter. “One call,” he said.

  My wrists were cuffed, and I nearly dropped the quarter while fumbling it through the coin slot. I dialed the supermarket, and my mother’s boss, Mr. Nanette, answered the phone: “Food World.”

  He sounded irritable—Mr. Nanette always sounded irritable—so I lost my nerve and hung up.

  “What happened?” Tack asked.

  “I don’t need a call.”

  He sighed and fished another quarter from his pocket. “There has to be somebody. A grandfather? Maybe an uncle?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll tell you everything that happened. I don’t need anyone to help me.”

  I’d been trying to explain the situation ever since they’d helped me down from the rooftop. But every time I tried to plead innocence, Tack told me to wait. “We’ll get your statement in a minute,” he said. “There’s a proper procedure for everything.”

  I hoped that if I told my side of the story, I’d have a good chance of getting home before my mother finished her shift. I hadn’t stolen or destroyed anything. Neither had Alf or Clark. Our only crime was buying a dirty magazine—and with Vanna White on the cover, who could blame us? Everything else could be blamed on Tyler and Rene. They were the real bad guys, and they were only captured because I was brave enough to trigger the panic alarm. Rene was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The rest of us were escorted to the police station in separate vehicles and placed in separate cells. My mind went around and around, rehearsing the story as I waited for Tack to return.

  But when the door finally opened, it was these two other guys, regular-looking guys. They didn’t look like big scary cops at all. One wore a Giants jersey and the other guy had a Members Only jacket. They smelled of cigarette smoke and looked like they’d just stumbled out of the bar at T.G.I. Friday’s. The Giants guy was in the middle of telling a story and he didn’t even look at me: “. . . my car’s still at the hospital, so Pudding offers to drive me back. We get there and it’s late, past midnight.”

  “This is Lincoln Hospital?”

  “Yeah, right off 27. And the place is empty. My Mustang is the only car in this big giant lot. And when Pudding pulls alongside it, I see something on the hood. Little glass jar. Like a baby food jar, you know?”

  “On your car?”

  “Exactly. A baby food jar on the hood of the car. So I get out of Pudding’s car and I go to move the jar, and what do you think’s inside it?”

  Members Only guy looks amused. “I’m going to guess not baby food?”

  “You’re goddamn right it’s not baby food.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Dog turds. Little tiny dog turds. Like a jar of black olives.”

  “On the hood of your car?”

  “On the hood of my fucking Mustang.”

  “Jesus. What are the odds?”

  “Odds have nothing to do with this! Someone put it there on purpose. Someone collected dog turds, put them in a baby food jar, transported the jar all the way out to the hospital, and then placed it on the hood of my Mustang.”

  “Kincaid?”

  “He’s on my short list. Him and that sneaky fucker Art Wong. Tomorrow I’m going to bring the jar to Forensics, see if McConnell can lift a print.”

  The guy telling the story turned to face me. He was carrying a Dixie cup full of water and handed it to me. I drank it immediately.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Is it Billy or Will?” he asked me.

  “Huh?”

  “Your friends call you Billy, but Zelinsky calls you Will. Who are you?”

  “Billy,” I said.

  “All right, Billy. My name’s Detective Gagliano but you can call me Dante. We’re pretty casual here. This is my buddy Hooper.”

  Hooper gave me a two-finger salute. Then he closed the door, sank into a chair, and pulled the brim of his ball cap over his face, like he was ready to take a snooze.

  “You got banged up pretty bad,” Dante said, gesturing to the cut on my forehead. “Does that hurt?”

  “Not really.”

  “How about some more water?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’re sure? You drank that first cup pretty fast.”

  I was still very thirsty. “All right,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He made a big fuss of scooping up the cup and leaving the room to return to the water cooler. While he was gone, Hooper closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. I realized that I knew him from the store, I knew both of these guys from the store. They were among the regular group of cops who visited daily to receive free newspapers or razz Zelinsky about the Yankees.

  Dante returned with a second cup, and I immediately drank it.

  “More?” he asked.

  “He’s fine!” Hooper said. He shot me a helpless, exasperated look. Then he said, “I’d like to get home before dawn, if that’s okay with you guys.”

  “Sorry,” Dante said. “All right, let’s start.”

  He sat in the third chair and immediately sprang up again. “Shit, I nearly forgot. I think this is yours.” He reached in his back pocket for a rolled-up Playboy magazine. “You left it in the car.”

  “Is that Vanna?” Hooper asked, sitting up and snatching the magazine. “Howard Stern’s been talking up these pictures for weeks. He says they’re incredible.”

  “So let’s see them already,” Dante said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Hooper placed the magazine in the center of the table where all of us could see it. He hesitated for just a moment, toying with us. Then he opened to the pictorial, and there she was, America’s Sweetheart, standing before an open refrigerator in black lingerie. She was facing the camera and smiling coyly, like all three of us had entered the apartment and caught her unaware. Hooper turned the pages and the lingerie fell away; Vanna rolled across her bed, whispered into a telephone, and tickled a kitten. And even though I was sitting in a police station a
t three in the morning, the pictures still left me breathless. In spite of all the trouble they’d caused me, you could almost argue they were worth it.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” Dante said, “but this is what I call a miracle. You put that face on that body? With those legs? And that ass? There’s just no other word to describe it. Miraculous.”

  “I could look at these photos all night,” Hooper agreed, then turned to me. “Unfortunately . . .”

  “Right,” Dante sighed. “Duty calls.” He raised the magazine to his lips, kissing some private part of Vanna’s anatomy, then placed the magazine to the side of the table. “Let’s keep her around for good luck. You can take her when you go.”

  “All right,” I said, and already I felt considerably better. These guys were obviously not like the hard-assed detectives I’d seen in movies like Dirty Harry or Cobra. Instead they were more like the cool, laidback detectives I’d seen on TV. They were like Magnum, P.I.

  Hooper reached into his pocket for a small microcassette recorder. “Chief makes us do everything by the book,” he explained. “Hope you don’t mind.” He pressed Record on the device and placed it in the center of the table. “You want to call your mom again before we start?”

  I shook my head. “That’s okay.”

  “Anyone else you want to call? We recommend you have a grown-up for this conversation.”

  “No, I’m cool. I just want to tell you guys what happened.”

  Dante asked me to state my name and my address and my date of birth. “Very good,” he said. “You’re doing great, Billy. Now, we’ve already talked to Alfred and Clark, so we have a pretty good idea of what happened. But we want to hear your version. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. We’d rather have too many details than too few, all right?”

  I’d rehearsed my story so many times, it came out easily. I explained that we had only come for the Vanna White pictures, that we planned to act like ghosts, but Tyler and Rene had ruined everything. Dante listened attentively, but Hooper had the brim of his cap down over his eyes; I suspected he was sleeping. I finished my story by describing the escape from Zelinsky’s and the unexpected crack of the two-by-four. Then I asked if Rene was okay.

  “ICU,” Dante said. “Broken back.”

  “Is that serious?”

  I don’t know why I said that. I knew a broken back was serious.

  “Pretty serious, yeah.”

  Hooper sat up and adjusted his cap. “Listen, we’re just about finished. I just need to square away a few details.”

  “In case the chief asks,” Dante added.

  “Sure,” I said. “I understand.”

  “First question,” Hooper said. “How did you get the alarm code?”

  “I saw Mary use it.”

  “Mary Zelinsky?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “How long have you been friends?”

  “Maybe three weeks?”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “In the store.”

  “Why were you in the store?”

  “I was buying something.”

  Hooper reached into his back pocket and removed a small memo pad. I recognized it from the store; it was one of those tiny spiral-bound notebooks that fit in the palm of your hand. Zelinsky sold them near the cash register for twenty-five cents a pop. “I’m going to read what your friend Alf told me,” Hooper said. “Tell me if this is right: ‘Tyler said one of us had to be nice to Mary to get the code. Flirt with her, take her to the movies, make out with her. Tyler wanted Clark to do it, but Clark said no. He thought it was too mean. But Billy said he would do it. He said he would be nice to her. He said he would screw it out of her, if he had to.’ ”

  “I didn’t mean that,” I said.

  “But you said it?” Hooper asked.

  “We were all saying crazy stuff.”

  “Did you flirt with her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go to the movies?”

  “Well, yeah . . . but that was her idea.”

  “Did you kiss her?”

  “Once,” I admitted.

  “To get the code,” Hooper continued.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then why?”

  I just stared at my knees. I didn’t know how to answer.

  “Do you like this girl? You want to be her boyfriend?”

  I thought of Mary shoving me away. The revulsion on her face when she said I like you as a friend. My humiliation was still fresh like an open wound. I’d never tell anyone about that night; it was a secret shame I’d carry all the way to the grave.

  “No,” I said, like the idea was ridiculous.

  “Then why’d you kiss her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, we get it,” Dante interrupted. “You were messing with the fat girl, am I right?” I didn’t deny it, so he kept going. “When I was in high school, there was this one girl—Big Alice, we called her. Enormous girl! Built like a buffalo. We used to put Milk-Bone dog biscuits in her locker. Not to be mean! We weren’t trying to hurt her feelings. We were doing it for everyone else, you understand? To be funny.”

  His story didn’t seem funny to me—it seemed cruel—but I nodded anyway. Dante and Hooper had been so kind, it seemed rude to disagree.

  “We’ve got to get this answer on the record,” Hooper explained. “I know these questions are embarrassing, but you’ve got to answer honestly. Do you have a crush on this girl?”

  “No.”

  “Are you attracted to her? Have you ever been attracted to her? Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “No.”

  “Be honest, Billy.”

  “No.”

  “Then why’d you kiss her?”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth. I’d never tell anyone the truth. It was too embarrassing.

  “I did it for the code,” I said. “I wanted to trick her into giving up the code.”

  “Bingo,” Hooper said.

  “But I didn’t want to trash the place. That was all Tyler and Rene.”

  They had already stopped listening. Hooper pressed Stop on the cassette recorder and removed it from the table. Dante opened the door, and Hooper followed him out.

  “Can I go soon?” I called after them. I guessed it was nearly dawn, and I wanted to get home before my mother ended her shift. I still thought that if I was quick enough, I could keep the whole story from her. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

  Hooper turned back at me, and his entire demeanor had changed. He was no longer slouching, no longer teetering on the edge of sleep. His eyes were alert; suddenly he was all business. “That’ll be up to the judge,” he said. “We’re talking burglary, B and E, vandalism, destruction of property. I’m going to guess three months, but honestly? I hope it’s more.”

  “More for me? You’re mad at me?”

  Dante advanced toward me, leaning over the table, squashing my paper cup flat with his palm. He was so close, I could smell the coffee on his breath; I could see the sweat in his mustache. “Any fuckwit can swing a crowbar at a typewriter. That’s why stores have insurance. But there’s no insurance for what you did to that family. They’re going to live with this stunt for the rest of their lives. Especially my niece. You know her mother died two years ago? From stomach cancer? Do you know what it’s like watching your mother die from stomach cancer, you stupid piece of shit?”

  My knees began to shake. “I want to call my mom.”

  “Mommy can’t help you now,” Dante said.

  Hooper held up his recorder. “You’re fucked.”

  They left the room and locked the door.

  2500 REM *** RESET SCORE TO ZERO ***

  2510 SCORE=0

  2520 LIVES=LIVES-1

  2530 IF LIVES=0 THEN 3400

  2540 PRINT "{CLR}{5 CSR DWN}"

  2550 PRINT "YOUR SCORE IS ZERO."

  2
560 PRINT "HIT ANY KEY TO TRY AGAIN."

  2570 GET A$

  2580 IF A$="" THEN 2570

  2590 RETURN

  I SPENT THE REST of the night waiting for Dante and Hooper to come back, but I never saw them again. I was alone in the room with Vanna White.

  Alone at last.

  I turned the magazine facedown. I wished Dante had left it in the back of the squad car. Now I was stuck with it, I couldn’t get rid of it. The tiny cell didn’t have any hiding places. I stood up, moved the magazine to the seat of my chair, and sat upon it.

  When I got tired of sitting, I paced around the cell. I knew I was in trouble, and I’d made the situation worse by lying. But how could I explain the truth? I still didn’t understand it myself; I didn’t know the words to explain it. I liked Mary and I hated her. She was the coolest person I’d ever met, and she was a total bitch for leading me on. I felt terrible for what I’d done and glad I’d found a way to hurt her back. These feelings were all knotted up like wet shoelaces, impossible to untangle.

  Eventually I grew so tired that I rested my head on the table and (to my surprise) fell asleep. I didn’t hear Tack when he opened the door; I didn’t know anyone was in the room with me until I felt Tack’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake.

  I opened my eyes and Zelinsky was inches away from me. His face was greasy with sweat and the vein in his forehead was throbbing like crazy. I had awakened into a nightmare. I leaned back, but the chair was bolted to the floor; it wouldn’t move.

  His voice was trembling. “I want my tape,” he said. “It’s not in the stereo. It’s not in the store. Your friends don’t have it, so you goddamn better know where it is.”

  I realized he meant the mixtape—All Your Favorite ’80s Love Songs. I’d forgotten it was still in my pocket. “I saved it for you,” I explained. “I saw Tyler going for the stereo, so I grabbed it.” I put the cassette on the table, and Zelinsky snatched it up, studying it carefully, making sure everything was intact. For a moment, he seemed soothed by the gentle curves of his wife’s graceful handwriting: You Know I Love You, Don’t You? * You Make My Dreams Come True.

  Then he turned to Tack.