The Impossible Fortress(52)
I rolled off the reading glasses and twisted onto my belly. If I could have found the breath to speak, I would have begged Tyler not to hit me again.
He stepped over me and walked toward the showroom.
Alf and Clark grabbed my arms and helped me up. “Let’s get out of here,” Alf whispered. “The guy’s psycho. We can’t stop him.”
I shook my head. There was still one way to end this.
“Go to the roof,” I said. “Run as fast as you can.”
“What about you?” Clark asked.
“Go home. Get out of here.”
Then I limped to the front of the store and aimed my flashlight at the Ademco keypad. Most of the buttons were too cryptic to understand, especially in the dark, but there was a single red button labeled PANIC that left no doubt to its function. The alarm was instantaneous—loud and piercing, like an ambulance siren at close range. I clapped my hands over my ears, slipped on a roll of Life Savers, and fell face-first on the floor.
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?”