The Impossible Fortress(34)

I found Alf and Clark walking in the center of the road, faces down, like they were counting all of the tiny cracks and divots in the asphalt. They both looked exhausted. I biked alongside them and braked.

“Where the hell have you been?” Alf asked.

“At the store,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I’m screwed is what’s up,” Alf said.

“He lost the money,” Clark said.

“What money?” I asked, and then it hit me: “The money money?”

“I didn’t lose it,” Alf said. “It just somehow fell out of my pocket.”

“So it’s the money’s fault?” Clark asked. “I told you this would happen! But you had to carry it around. Showing it off every chance you got. You had to be Mr. Big Stuff.”

“How much was there?” I asked.

“Four hundred and sixty-eight dollars,” Alf said.

“Jesus!” Clark exclaimed. “You’re so screwed.”

“I had it when I left school,” Alf told me. “It’s somewhere between here and my locker.”

“That’s a mile and a half,” Clark said. “We’ve checked the whole way. There’s no sign of it. The money’s gone.”

“Let’s check it again,” I said, but I suspected Clark was right. Our route to school was well traveled by cars, pedestrians, dog walkers, and kids on bikes. And it was a beautiful afternoon. Everyone was outdoors, enjoying the spring weather. No one living in Wetbridge could afford to overlook a fist-size bundle of cash.

We followed Baltic Avenue to its end, crossed over Route 25, then marched up Crystal Street.

“Maybe someone gave it to the police,” Alf said. “We could try to claim it.”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s tell the cops you made four hundred bucks selling porn to kids. I bet they’d love to help us.”

We searched every gutter and sidewalk. We got down on our knees and peered into sewer grates. We trudged across lawns, kicking at weeds and turning over rocks until it was too dark to see anymore. But it was no use. The money was good and truly gone.

Walking back to Baltic Avenue, Alf recited a list of the forty-six guys who had prepaid for exclusive photographs of Vanna White. He sorted the names into three different categories: (1) Guys Who Will Definitely Kick My Ass; (2) Guys Who Will Probably Kick My Ass; (3) Guys Who Lack the Physical Strength to Kick My Ass. Unfortunately, this last category had no names in it.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Clark assured him. “We’ll go in the store like we planned. You just won’t make any money.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“What about the guard dog?” I asked. “And Officer Tackleberry?”

“We fixed all that,” Clark said. “We’ll show you.”

We went into Alf’s backyard and entered his basement through the storm doors. Alf’s family had the nicest house on Baltic Avenue—two bathrooms, a living room, and a family room—but we spent most of our time hanging around his basement. It was one large room with a cold concrete floor, drafty cinder-block walls, and naked lightbulbs hanging from exposed beams. The basement was full of junk: a purple sofa with split cushions, a busted refrigerator, a wobbly table where we sometimes played Risk. A Maytag washing machine was gently humming in the corner, filling the basement with the scent of Tide.

In the center of the basement was a large sheet of plywood resting on wooden sawhorses. For years this was the site of Alf’s massive slot-car racetrack, where we spent many a rainy afternoon wrecking cheap Formula One replicas on sharp turns. But now all the tracks were put away, and the plywood displayed a large-scale model of downtown Wetbridge. Some of the buildings were cardboard, hacked out of shoe boxes and milk cartons. Others were constructed from Legos or Lincoln Logs. Remarkably, everything was built to scale. General Tso’s, the bike shop, the train station, Zelinsky’s—every store and sign had been re-created in miniature. There were tiny cars, tiny trees, and tiny traffic lights. There were even miniature taxi drivers bullshitting inside a miniature taxi stand.

I circled the model, astonished. “How long did this take?”

Clark shrugged. “Forty hours? Maybe fifty?”

“We’re not leaving anything to chance,” Alf said. “Check it out.”

He reached for an old power transformer and flipped a switch. Like magic, a miniature police officer glided down Market Street and turned up Lafayette, patrolling the neighborhood in a figure-eight loop. With his square jaw and crew cut, he was a dead ringer for Tackleberry.

“How’d you do it?” I asked.

“Slot-car tracks,” Clark explained. “They’re glued to the bottom of the plywood.”

“We’ve been watching his route,” Alf explained. “He walks the same figure-eight loop every half hour. Right past General Tso’s, so we need to time our approach just right.”

The policeman made a soft whirring noise as he rounded the curves, looping around the track. I knelt down, peering underneath the table to marvel at the engineering. A series of wires crisscrossed the bottom of the plywood, delivering electricity to lights in all of the buildings. It was the most impressive model I’d ever seen.

Clark pushed an HO-scale locomotive out of the train station. “The last train from New York arrives at midnight, so we’ll start at twelve thirty. We’ll have the whole town to ourselves.”