Corrupted Memory

by Ray Daniel

  He said. “Look, you can’t stay here without an escort. Come sit in the security office with me until we find … what did you say his name was?”

  “Bob Baker.”

  “Like the gameshow guy?”

  “That was Bob Barker.”

  “Let’s go back to my office and find Mr. Baker. He needs to learn that he can’t leave visitors alone.”

  Jarhead walked down the aisle between the cubes and gestured for me to follow. If we got back to his office, which probably locked from the outside, he’d find out that there was no Bob Baker. Then I’d be locked in and arrested.

  I cast about for a plan as I followed him. I didn’t know how far we had to walk to get to his office, but I didn’t want to step inside. We walked past gray fabric cubes, knots of engineers, and a poster with a finger poised over pursed lips exhorting people to be careful with secrets.

  Jarhead asked, “How do you know Bob, Mr.”—he read my visitor badge—“Mr. Hazleton?”

  “Yeah.”

  The guard peered closely at the indecipherable blob of a picture.

  “Isn’t Carmen a woman’s name?”

  “That’s what I kept telling my parents, but they said I was named after my uncle Carmen.”

  Jarhead gave his head a small shake. “And how do you know Bob?”

  “He’s a customer.”

  “What company do you work for?”

  “Zariplex.” There was no such company. The easily-checked lies continued to flow from my adrenaline-charged mouth.

  We approached an office with solid walls and a locked door, built across the hallway from a window. Wetlands glimmered outside the window. We were in the back of the building. The security guard waved his badge in front of the door. The lock popped with a loud click as it came free. He rattled the door open and put his arm around my shoulder to usher me inside.

  The time for cleverness was over. When his fingers touched my shoulder, I spun away from them and ran.

  “Goddammit!” the guy yelled. “Somebody grab him!”

  Startled engineers flashed past me as I ran. Given the choice between tackling a fleeing fugitive or freezing, most people will freeze. I took advantage of the freezing and then threw some more confusion into the mix.

  “Run!” I yelled. “He’s got a gun. He’s says he’s going to shoot people!”

  The employees of GDS could either believe that I was a fugitive, or that someone had launched a killing spree. They chose to believe what the TV news had taught them was most likely: the killing spree. They turned and ran alongside me.

  There were five of us running down the hallway. A woman in the group stopped to pull the fire alarm. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that? Confused people stepped from their cubes.

  “He’s got a gun! Run!” someone shouted. Crowds of engineers jostled out of the aisles. My small group of runners was snowballing into a mob. I heard the news of the gun spreading to the edges of the mob as it grew. Then the crowd piled up as people pushed their way through a small set of double doors. In the distance I heard the guard yelling, “There is no gun! Somebody grab that guy!”

  I blended into the crowd, allowing myself to be jostled and pushed through the glass doors and out into a courtyard behind GDS. People streamed out of all the doors as the alarm cleared the building. They moved toward the edges of the parking lot. It was as if I had kicked over an anthill.

  Once out of the building, my group slowed and blended into the mass of people streaming away from the doorways. I followed the crowd around the building and into the gigantic parking lot.

  My plan, if you could call it that, was breaking down. People were gathering at the far end of the parking lot and the parking lot was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. Guards stood at the entrances to the compound, blocking the car and sidewalk exits. To get out of GDS, I’d have to walk alone across the lot with all the guards watching.

  I separated myself from the crowd and walked with purpose toward the visitor’s parking lot through the hot sun. The mob noises died away and I was alone, walking in a zig-zag pattern through parked cars toward a black Buick Regal, the car closest to the gate in the visitor’s lot. I needed to move fast before a description of me got from the guard inside to the uniformed guards at the gate.

  As I neared the car, a guard approached me. He was fit and wore a blue rent-a-cop shirt. The shirt had short sleeves that showed off his biceps. He wore black pants and black running shoes. Soccer? Baseball? Wrestling? The kid was an athlete. I wasn’t. If he tackled me, I’d stay down.

  “Sir, you need to get to a rally point.”

  I kept walking. “A what?”

  “A rally point, sir. When there’s an evacuation, we need everyone to get to a rally point.”

  I kept walking and pointed at my badge. “I’m a visitor.”

  The guard fell into step next to me. “Yes, sir, especially as a visitor. Your escort needs to account for you.”

  I walked past the Buick toward the exit. Twenty feet to go.

  “He and I got separated in the crowd.”

  “You need to go find him, sir.”

  Walking.

  “How am I supposed to do that? Look at this mess!”

  I waved my arm toward the crowd and the guard ignored me, keeping close to me as we walked. I stopped at the gate. Cars whooshed past on Route 20 in a continuous stream in both directions, trapping me against this side of the road.

  “Sir, you need to go back to a rally point. When people start to go back into the building, go sit in the lobby. Let your escort account for—”

  The guy’s handheld radio crackled to life. He held it to his ear. I heard the word “Hazleton” come from the speaker. He looked at me, glanced down at my badge, and grabbed me with his free hand. Bad move. He should have dropped the radio and used two hands.

  I shook my arm free and ran straight into the traffic on Route 20. I timed my run so that I was headed straight for the side of a car. As the car passed, the one behind it hit his brakes and blared his horn. That got me past the first lane.

  I wasn’t as lucky on the second lane. Time slowed as I glanced at the driver. I expected to see someone with wide eyes, braking wildly. Instead I saw a teenage girl texting on her cell phone. I was gonna die. I dove across her path.

  Her bumper slammed into the sole of my sneaker, tearing at my ankle and flinging the shoe down the street. Its impact knocked me down to the edge of the road outside Russell’s Garden Center. I climbed to my feet and saw the guy in the uniform putting up his hand to stop traffic across the highway. I turned and ran into Russell’s. My ankle protested at the first step. Grinding pain shot through my leg. Hot parking lot gravel dug into my now-shoeless foot, then I bolted through a wooden building full of hoses, fertilizer bags, and plants. The loamy smell of organic fertilizer filled my nostrils. I saw a clawed tool on a shelf and grabbed it.

  I dodged past dawdling shoppers, ignoring the screaming pain in my ankle, thankful that it functioned at all. The ankle pain overrode the pain from gravel cutting into my foot. I stopped to pull off my other shoe, gasping as I stood on the bad ankle. Then I ran for my life. Green carts littered the walkways and forced me to sidestep left and right. Behind me, I heard the guard yell, “Grab him!” The crowd was full of suburbanite husbands buying bougainvillea with their wives. Some moms found their kids and picked them up. Nobody was going to grab me.

  I got to my Zipcar and unlocked it just as the guard caught up to me. He reached for me and I clawed at his hand with the tool, my eyes wild as pain gelled into anger.

  “Get the fuck away from me!” I yelled at him.

  He took another step, but I was between two parked cars, and he could only get at me head on. I lunged and swiped with the claws of my tool. “Get away!” He shrank back and I jumped into the car. He sprang forward again and grabbed my colla
r. I reached out and pulled the car door closed. It jammed against his forearm.

  “Shit!” he yelled and pulled his arm out. I pulled the door shut and locked it. He was walking in a small circle behind the car, cradling his arm in his hand as I backed toward him. He jumped aside and looked at me with hurt surprise as I put the car in gear, spun the wheels on the gravel, and escaped the parking lot.

  Sixty-Five

  By the time had I parked my Zipcar and hobbled home, my ankle pain had become a dull throb. There was more mail in my mailbox. I grabbed it, hobbled up the stairs, and limped through my front door. Once inside, I tossed the mail on the counter and climbed onto a kitchen stool to inspect the damage. I pulled off the sock and put the ankle on the counter in front of Click and Clack’s terrarium. It was purple.

  “What do you guys think? Do I need x-rays?”

  The hermit crabs clung to the sides of their log and ignored me.

  “You’re right, guys. I should just put some ice on it and see how it goes.”

  I was wrapping a gel pack in a towel when my Droid played the Bruins Theme song. Bobby Miller.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Bobby was upset.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you bullshit me, you asshole!” He was really mad. “You got into GDS, broke into their computers, created a panic, attacked one of their guards, and pulled a fire alarm.”

  “I did not pull a fire alarm. And besides, who says it was me?”

  “The guard who remembered your name from your driver’s license, Aloysius.”

  Burned by security theater.

  Bobby continued, “Now you’re sitting in your house like nothing happened.”

  “How do you know I’m in my house?”

  “Because I’m in the fucking FBI and you have a cell phone, that’s how.”

  Hmmm. Maybe it was time to part ways with the Droid.

  I lay the gel pack across my ankle. Its throbbing made me testy. “So why aren’t you arresting me? You want me to drive to your office and save you the gas?”

  “I’m not in my office. I’m calling from home. I want to hear what happened.”

  There was no point in keeping Lucy’s kidnapping a secret if I was going to prison. “What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. That guy Talevi kidnapped Lucy and sent me her toe in an envelope. He wants to trade Lucy for the plans to the Paladin.”

  “So you were going to turn over US government secrets? We got thousands of kids out there who will get killed if Talevi gets this stuff.”

  “I wasn’t going to give him anything. I was going to get the Word document, randomize the numbers, and give that to Talevi. I’d get Lucy and he’d get nothing.”

  “That is a fucking stupid plan.”

  “You got something better?”

  My ankle was starting to feel better. I put the phone on speaker and found the big bottle of Advil I kept over the sink. I ran some water and took four pills. At this rate I’d need to buy another bottle soon. Maybe I should buy stock in Advil.

  Bobby said from the speakerphone, “Tucker, you still there?”

  I called out, “Yeah, I’m here. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Wait a second. I got another call.” Bobby beeped off the phone.

  Silence. I poked through my mail. Something caught my eye: an envelope in the pile addressed to my mother in blue cursive script. I’d seen this bill before. It was the only one with real handwriting. The person had written up another one, trying to get paid. I opened it and my heart did a little skip. It was from my mother’s storage place.

  Bobby’s voice hissed through the speaker. “Tucker, are you there? Boston PD is coming to arrest you. They can’t have you; I need you. Get out of there!”

  Sixty-Six

  Nothing’s better than a rooftop patio. You can sit under a humid July night sky, drink a Dogfish IPA, and soak in the skyline. Today the patio was going to be part of my home-field advantage.

  I pulled on socks and sneakers, shoved my mother’s storage bill into my pocket, and climbed the stairs, ignoring protests from my ankle. Reaching the top, I burst out onto the roof. It was a cool September night. I heard someone knocking on my apartment door. “Mr. Tucker! This is Lieutenant Lee of the Boston Police.” I’d left the door open as a distraction. It would buy me some time.

  I padded across the wooden patio and climbed over the wall. I jumped down to the rooftop with a gravelly crunch. I winced with pain and fear of noise. It would only take a minute for them to search my condo. I didn’t have much time. I’d need to use the fire escape.

  I ran to the top of the fire escape and peeked over the roof, dipping back when I saw a cop in the parking area watching the ladders. That wouldn’t work.

  Sneaking away from the police was going to be a lot like breaking into a computer. The obvious approaches are always blocked by intricate passwords, firewalls, and virus-detection software. The key is to understand your opponent’s assumptions and use those assumptions to your advantage. The assumption here was clear. The police had covered the front door. They had covered the fire escape. They were in the apartment. They assumed the building was now secure, because they thought that I couldn’t get to another building.

  The houses on my block run together, creating a single structure with a common roof. A firewall separates the buildings. Switching buildings was simply a matter of climbing over the two-foot firewall between them. I ran to the first firewall and clambered over it. Then the next, and the next. When I got to the last building, I climbed onto their rooftop patio and entered their hallway. Piece of cake. The cops had my building secure, but not this one.

  I limped down the staircase. I would run out the front door, bang a right, and lose myself in the park behind the houses. It was perfect. I opened the door, stepped into the sun. Lieutenant Lee barred the steps.

  “Aloysius Tucker, you are under arrest.”

  Sixty-Seven

  “Aw, shit,” I said.

  Lee waited at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded across his chest. “Please don’t swear. Come down here.”

  I limped down the stairs. My ankle pulsed pain up my leg. “What are you arresting me for?”

  “Your sins are many,” said Lee. “Trespassing. Espionage. Murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “Assault.”

  “Assault?”

  “Jaywalking.”

  “Jaywalking? That’s bullshit. You can’t get charged with jaywalking in Boston.”

  “You can in Wayland. Please turn around, lean against the banister, and spread your legs.”

  Lee ran his hands over my body, searching for a weapon.

  Other officers had formed a loose circle watching the arrest. Lee turned to them and said, “Thank you, officers.” The crowd broke up.

  Lee said, “Please put your hands behind your back.”

  I said, “Seriously?”

  “It’s procedure.”

  I put my hands behind my back. As I felt the handcuff ratchet over my wrist, I heard Bobby Miller’s booming voice. “Lee! What the fuck are you doing?”

  Lee stopped working. One handcuff dangled off my wrist behind my back.

  “There is no need for profanity, Agent Miller. I’m arresting Tucker.”

  “What for?”

  “Trespassing—”

  “Trespassing? Are you shitting me?” Bobby stood next to me, facing Lee.

  Lee said, “Espionage.”

  “Espionage? What the fuck do you know about espionage? I doubt you can even spell it.”

  “Agent Miller, I’m confused. What is the problem?”

  “The problem is that I am investigating the espionage around here, and I never asked you to arrest Tucker for anything. You had one fucking job, Lee. You were supposed to figure out who killed T
ucker’s brother.”

  “I am doing that.”

  “You’re doing a shitty job. Since you’ve been on this case JT’s mother was murdered in Pittsfield, Dave Patterson was killed in Warren, Tucker’s mother was burned in Framingham. On top of it, last night someone kidnapped Tucker’s girlfriend, Lucy.”

  “The girl from the first night?” asked Lee.

  “Yes, her. You have a fucking statewide crime spree with a US government defense contractor involved. I’m taking over this case, and I don’t want you fucking it up by arresting the one guy who’s made any progress on solving it.”

  I said, “Thanks, Bobby.”

  Bobby said, “Shut up!”

  I shut up.

  Bobby continued, “Lee, I need Tucker free. We’ve got an Iranian trying to buy US secrets.”

  I said, “Talevi. He’s the one who took Lucy.”

  Lee said, “Talevi? The drug importer?”

  Bobby said, “Tucker, didn’t I tell you to shut up? Now shut the fuck up.”

  “But I—”

  “Shut up!”

  I had brought my hands from behind my back. The handcuff still dangled from my wrist. Bobby pointed at it. “Take that off him,” he ordered Lee.

  Lee said, “I don’t appreciate this treatment, Agent Miller. This is my jurisdiction.” But he did as he was told.

  Bobby said, “Don’t you fucking get it, Lee? I need Tucker. I need him to save the lives of some poor kids in the Army who are going to get the shit blown out of them if Iran figures out how to jam the Paladin missile. Get your head out of your ass and look at the big picture.”

  Lee looked toward the sky and sighed. He said, “Give me strength.”

  The uniformed Boston cops and their cruisers had disappeared, but now a new cop car drove down Follen. When the car reached us, I heard the car’s GPS lady say, “You have reached your destination.” The cruiser said Wayland Police on the side.

  A cop climbed out of the car carrying an envelope. As he approached us, Bobby dropped his key ring on the ground.

  The new cop said, “I’m looking for Aloysius Tucker.”