The Walls of the Universe

by Paul Melko

  “What can I do about this?”

  “Do? You fight these bastards for trying to muscle you!”

  “Sure,” John said. “But how?”

  Angela wrote down a number. “This is Able’s number. Call him. He’ll know what to do.”

  Kyle took the number from Angela. “I’ll do it,” Kyle said. He picked up his phone, and Angela took the suit document. She started quizzing John.

  “Did you have a contract?”

  “We shook on it.”

  “Anything written?”

  “No.”

  “Did Paquelli contribute to the business?”

  John shrugged. “He provided a place for the machine.”

  “In exchange for a cut?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about working on the game? Did he help? Did he give you ideas?”

  “I don’t think he ever even played it,” John said. He tried to remember a time when Ray was in the same room as the pinball machine, and couldn’t except for the time he showed up at the lab to watch the first time.

  “Where did you get the idea, anyway?” Angela asked.

  John felt himself flush. “Well…”

  “Don’t answer that!” Angela said. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But that’s the good news.”

  “There’s bad?”

  “Do you have any money? Do you have the cash on hand to fund a long legal battle?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Ray probably is guessing that, and thinks you’ll be an easy mark.”

  “Couldn’t Kyle…?”

  Angela shook her head. “We’re just students. We can’t argue in court. Well, we could, but it’s six kinds of felonies.” She turned toward Kyle. “Have you heard of Paquelli’s lawyer?”

  “What’s the name? Panderstack?”

  “Per Panderzelder.”

  “Nope. Could be from Columbus.”

  “We just rented a warehouse,” John said. “All our cash is tied up in parts.”

  “Do you have orders?” Angela asked.

  “We do. A couple more bars want machines. And we had an inquiry from a firm in Las Vegas.”

  “No booked orders?”

  “No, I guess not.” John realized they’d been doing everything haphazardly.

  Kyle slammed the phone down. “Good news!” he said.

  “But there’s bad news too,” John said. “I’m beginning to get the pattern.”

  “Yeah, but good news first,” Kyle said. “We got a hearing with the Department of Gambling Control. Swenson said that Treasury has no authority to order them off, but he does.”

  “When’s the hearing?”

  “January fifth.”

  “So we can keep them in the bars until then?”

  “Well, bad-news time. Swenson wasn’t convinced they were nongambling devices. He needs to see them. If he thinks they are, he’ll ask you to pull the plug until the hearing.”

  “When is he coming to look?”

  “He wouldn’t say, but within the next three days.”

  “That would mean the end of our cash flow, if the games were shut down,” John said.

  “They need a real lawyer, Kyle,” Angela said.

  “I know!” Kyle seemed exasperated. “I feel responsible for you guys. Freshmen, building a business in one quarter.”

  “With quarters,” John said.

  “For quarters,” Angela added.

  “I’ll call around for you,” Kyle said. “We’ll need a lawyer who’ll take the case pro bono. But I know some people.”

  “Me too,” Angela said. “You guys have appeal. College students, entrepreneurs, inventors. There might be public interest.” She snapped her fingers. “We could paint Ray as the bad guy here. Too bad the school paper won’t publish another issue until next year, but this won’t show up on a docket for a month or more.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Kyle said. “You guys need some marketing help. You need some exposure.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Of course not, you’re an engineer,” Angela said. “Yours is a great story.”

  “Thanks for your help, guys,” John said. “This is all too much.”

  “You said it,” Kyle said. “We’ll get you through this.”

  On the way back to his apartment, John’s mind roiled. For a moment he was ready to chuck it all. What did this have to do with understanding the device? Nothing at all. Yet he couldn’t abandon his friends. Nor could he bring them closer to himself. All this running around, all this legal maneuvering, seemed like so much bullshit. It meant nothing in his universe.

  The next day-a week before Christmas-John spent in the factory. He’d left the device at the apartment, unwilling to have the temptation nearby. Their cash box was empty, save a couple rolls of quarters he had to deposit. He’d swing by the machines later, but with school out he doubted there’d be more than a few dollars’ worth of coins. Having all their machines near campus seemed like having all their eggs in one basket. Sure, it was easy to service the machines and collect coins. But they had saturated the market. And they were at the whim of the local climate: When school was out, they wouldn’t get any traffic at all. Furthermore, they were under the thumb of the Toledo municipality, as seen by the hearing they had with the Department of Gambling Control.

  The nibbles from the casino in Las Vegas hadn’t come to anything yet. A company called Typhoon Gold wanted to take a closer look, however; they supplied casinos with games. If Pinball Wizard could get a larger order there, there’d be no complications with local laws. They could ship the machines anywhere.

  Working on a machine in gloves and winter coat proved too cumbersome. He moved all the equipment into one of the smaller offices, which had a woodstove in it. The chimney pipe fed through the window. Using cardboard as tender and broken pallets as fuel, both of which the factory had in oversupply, he stoked the woodstove enough so that he could work without a shirt.

  The door banged open after noon, and John jumped up from his wiring, startled. He peered around the doorway to see Steve-the high school champion of the first tournament-standing there stamping off a dusting of snow from his feet.

  “Hello?”

  “Steve, what are you doing here?”

  “Grace said I should come over and help.”

  “Don’t you have school?”

  “No, water main break,” he said with a smile. “I’m here to help. I can solder, I can game test, I can-”

  “Can you sweep?”

  “What?”

  “We have customers coming in three days after Christmas, and this room is a mess.”

  Steve’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah, I guess.”

  John smiled at him. “Then you can help me with the soldering.”

  “All right!”

  By evening, they managed to get the room cleaned out, swept, and half-painted with a utilitarian light gray. John realized that Steve had ridden his bike through the slush to get to the factory, so he threw the bike in the trunk of the Trans Am.

  “What are those two guys doing?” Steve said.

  John saw the black car then, parked in the alley that led to the factory. Two blond men wearing dark glasses sat in the car. John wouldn’t have noticed them if Steve hadn’t said anything, but now that he saw the car, it seemed out of place for the location.

  “Watching,” John said.

  “Why?”

  John had no idea. Maybe they were private detectives hired by Ray Paquelli. Maybe they were innocent bystanders, just waiting. Maybe they were employees of the Department of Gambling Control. No, not in that car.

  Suddenly bold, John pulled right next to the car. He stared at the two, but they kept their heads facing straight ahead, as if they didn’t see John and Steve staring.

  “Maybe they’re like one of those fake security systems,” Steve said. “You don’t spend the money on the system; you just buy the sign. They couldn’t buy real secu
rity teams, so they bought some manikins.”

  “But they aren’t manikins,” John said.

  Finally he pulled away.

  Kyle called the next morning.

  “Good news,” he said. “Able Swenson saw no need to close the machines down.”

  “So we’re good until the fifth of January?”

  “I think so,” Kyle said. “But he did say something interesting.”

  “What?”

  “He said you had some odd enemies,” Kyle said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I dunno, but I assumed he meant he butted some heads with the Department of Treasury. But he wouldn’t say for sure.”

  “Maybe Paquelli pulled some strings,” John said.

  “Maybe,” Kyle said.

  Immediately after, John dialed up Henry and Grace, giving them the summary.

  “So both legal items are deferred until next year,” Grace said. She sounded relieved. “Now we can focus on Typhoon Gold.” They’d hinted at an order of one hundred machines.

  “Steve and I painted the ‘showroom,’ ” John said with a chuckle. “We’re building three demo models, including another stand-alone one.”

  “You and that stand-alone model,” Henry said.

  “I’m a purist!”

  “Yeah, but everyone likes the head-to-head ones,” Grace said.

  “Just because we built that one first,” John grumbled.

  “Three demo units,” Henry said. “That should be fine.”

  “I’ll be back the week after Christmas,” Grace said. “In time for the Typhoon meeting. I told my parents I wanted to start studying early.”

  “Did you even sign up yet for classes next quarter?” John asked.

  “I think so. Did you?”

  “Uh-huh.” Though John wondered how they would juggle time between Wizards and class.

  John drove to the factory afterwards. Unlocking the door, he immediately noticed the drift of snow under the far window. Someone had broken the window. There were tracks in the dirt. Someone had broken into the factory.

  John rushed to the showroom. He couldn’t tell if anyone had been there. Steve’s sweeping had left the floor dirtless. The machines were all as John had left them, as far as he could tell.

  He returned to the main door and looked up and down the alley. The car with the two men wasn’t there. Could it have been them? He shook his head. It was just kids. Especially in this neighborhood. He found an old piece of plywood and nailed it to the open window frame.

  He kept expecting Steve to walk into the factory, but he was alone with the machines and the tools all day. He found himself drifting off into a daydream of Casey, and he shook his head. What was she up to? John wondered. Not that it mattered. She and he were finished.

  He sighed and put the wrench down.

  He put everything down, locked the factory, and drove to the nearest gas station. From their pay phone he called Casey’s parents’ house in Findlay. Surprisingly, she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh. Casey.”

  “John,” she said. She didn’t sound angry or even interested. Perhaps resigned.

  “You free tonight? You wanna see our factory?”

  There was a pause. “Yeah, I’m free.”

  CHAPTER 28

  John Prime had been in police stations before. There’d been the time he’d been arrested for vagrancy. Just the once, but that was amazing given the number of times he’d slept in the open, unable to obtain local currency and too scared to move to the next universe without trying to make a go of it. Then there’d been the time he’d been pulled over in the rental because he’d thought the speed limit signs were in miles per hour instead of kilometers an hour. There’d been a lot of almosts too: the time he’d skipped out just as the treasury agents bashed down the door of his hotel room and the times Casey’s father had called the cops.

  This time was different. There was no easy way out. Worse, he’d done it, with no mitigating circumstances. He’d killed a man, and they had him. His only hope was to trust Casey.

  “Look at me, Rayburn,” Detective Duderstadt yelled.

  Prime continued to stare at the floor.

  “You think this is all going away if you ignore it? Is that it?” Duderstadt turned to the one other cop in the room, a uniformed officer, standing by the door with his arms crossed. “He thinks I’m not here. Thinks I don’t exist.”

  The other cop said, “Don’t I wish. You haven’t showered in seventy-two.”

  Duderstadt shrugged his shoulders at the cop, said to Prime, “He’s a comedian, Eckart is. He finds this funny. Me, I take murder very seriously. The people of Findlay take it very seriously. How do you take murder, Rayburn?”

  “Ask my lawyer,” Prime said. His throat, dry after the booking, the mug shot, and the hour in the hot room alone, broke his voice.

  Duderstadt laughed. “Apparently you do find this humorous too. Your lawyer isn’t here, at least not for the next twenty-three hours.”

  “Twenty-two hours and thirty minutes, hoss,” Eckart said.

  “Right. Law says we can hold you incommunicado for twenty-four hours until we let you see your lawyer.”

  Prime shrugged. The laws of arrest, interrogation, and trial varied slightly and constantly from universe to universe.

  “I have nothing to say,” Prime said.

  “I’d expect so, if you were guilty,” Duderstadt said. “I’d say very little if I were guilty, eh, Eckart? I’d not want to incriminate myself.”

  “If they don’t speak, it means they’re guilty,” Eckart said. “First rule they teach in detective school.”

  “Ah, yes,” Duderstadt said. “Silence equals guilt. We’re just going to assume you’re guilty when you don’t talk.”

  “I want my lawyer,” Prime said.

  “He’ll be here, he’ll be here in what?”

  “Twenty-two hours and twenty-eight minutes,” Eckart finished.

  “So, my throat is going to get a little dry if I do all the talking during that time. But I’m willing to start us off. I’m willing to explain why you’re here. You just jump in when I get it wrong.”

  “Lawyer.”

  “Here’s how we see it. Ever since this expulsion thing in high school. What? A year ago?”

  “About that,” Eckart said.

  “And how about that? High school student to president of some crazy toy company. And here you’re throwing it all away over some punk. I can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom why you’d do it.”

  “Because I wouldn’t,” Prime said, instantly regretting.

  “Ah, yes, but this all started before you were rich and famous. This all started when you were just a punk yourself. Two punks, with a grudge. The end is always bad for two punks and a grudge.”

  “Black eye, broken leg, punctured lung,” Eckart said, ticking off his fingers. “Gunshot to the leg.”

  Duderstadt turned back to Prime. “And that was all this week!” He took his coffee off the table, sipped it slowly. There’d been no offer of coffee to Prime. “Two punks and a grudge. Never works out. So, Carson comes to work during the summer with his dad. He sees his old nemesis. Tempers flare. Words are exchanged. He insults your wife. You accuse him of torturing animals.” Duderstadt paused. “How did you know that, by the way? How did you know that bit of information? Ted Carson, animal torturer. That’s perplexing, unless you were in league with him.”

  Prime’s face jerked up, but he held his tongue.

  “Ah, perhaps not. Perhaps you knew, and you feared for your wife’s life, because you knew what he could do. You knew you had to act to save your family, so when he came to your apartment, threatening you, you did what you had to do. You did the only thing possible. You killed him before he could kill you.”

  Prime met Duderstadt’s eyes but remained mute. The detective was too close to the truth, but Prime wouldn’t let him know how close.

  “It was probably justifiable. It’l
l make it easier on you if it was. The boy had it coming. No doubt about. I’ll stand up in court and let the judge know about his… activities. You might get no jail time at all. You might be back to that beautiful family of yours before Christmas.” Duderstadt looked him square in the face, the perfect confidant, the perfect friend to help a wayward soul through turmoil.

  “I think you want to tell me what happened, Rayburn. I think you do.”

  Prime opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “Come on; you’ll feel better when you do.”

  Prime nodded. “Go fuck your fag buddy, and get me my goddamn lawyer.”

  Eckart actually laughed. Duderstadt’s face turned purple, and he slammed the back of his fist against Prime’s cheek.

  Prime grinned and let the blood flood over his lips and onto his shirt.

  “You’ll have to explain that to my lawyer too,” Prime said. He grinned with what he hoped were ghoulishly bloody teeth.

  “You were already worked over when you got here,” Duderstadt said.

  “By your patrolmen,” Prime said. “What a lawsuit I have.”

  Duderstadt grunted and stood. “You’ll wish you confessed. You’ll wish you confessed before this is all over. Keeping all that inside you, Rayburn, it hurts. I’ve seen what a good confession will do for a man. I feel just like a priest sometimes.”

  Prime bit down on his first response. He wanted to tell Duderstadt to piss off and let him sleep. But the bastard was right; how much better he would feel if he just confessed.

  To get it all off his chest-

  “No confession today, Father Duderstadt. Why don’t you go and let me sleep.”

  The detective stared at him, then nodded to Eckart. They left, slamming the door behind them.

  Prime awoke with a start. Duderstadt had slammed the door. Prime glanced at the clock. He’d slept in the uncomfortable chair for three hours, an amazing feat considered how worked up he’d been after the questioning. But the fight with Carson, the trip in the back of the patrol car to Findlay, the hours of tension had drained him of energy.

  Prime relaxed his face, forced himself to yawn.