“Oh. Okay,” I said, squealing from the curb and shooting up Jackson Boulevard with the gas pedal on the floor. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was giving me a double thumbs-up. I blasted the horn in farewell and bumped through a red light, my heart beating with freedom. As I crossed the Chicago River, I rolled down the window and flung the cop’s gun into an eternity of brown water.
Most people consider delusions a bad thing and pop pills until they disappear.
In my case, paranoia saved my butt.
From then on I’d trust it with my life.
13
An elbow applied carefully to glass is the second best way to enter anywhere.
The best way is a door, unless you’re scared of who might be behind it.
There were two doors into Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries and I wasn’t about to use either one.
I cruised past for the third time, seeing the neon sign hanging unlit and gray, the interior of the place dim in midmorning sunlight. Even though I hadn’t spotted anyone-no cops, no Uncle Buddy-it didn’t mean they weren’t nearby, watching the front door with its jingly bell or the delivery door on the alley. Even worse, they could be lurking inside, waiting for those doors to open.
I pulled to the curb and stared at the place.
It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since I’d discovered my home in shambles and family missing, yet it appeared as if the bakery had been out of business for a decade. I knew it would be closed and locked, but it was worse than that. The only way to say it is that the bakery looked dead.
It made me want to drive away and to keep on driving.
Except, like Willy said, I hadn’t seen any bodies.
I had to assume my family was alive, and I had to go in there.
Harry had begun to whine in a way that suggested a desperate need to pee, so I took a deep breath and climbed out. Just as I opened the back door, a haunting, jingling tune cut through the air, like a slow-moving ice cream truck calling kids with its siren song. Harry lifted his head at it, sniffing the sky, and then, forgetting his injuries, bolted from the car. He was so fast that I had time only to yell, “Harry!” as he hit the bricks, running hard, yowling at the top of his lungs. I ran after him, stopping at the crossroads of the alley, but he was gone. Dark clouds bumped into each other overhead, blotting out the sun, and I felt so alone that I couldn’t hold back tears. I wiped them away, looking up at the coming rain, and something caught my subconscious eye-a telephone pole with metal footholds. It climbed higher than the roof of Cofanetto’s Funeral Home, which sat hard against Lavasecco’s Dry Cleaning, which was next door to Rispoli amp; Sons Fancy Pastries. I climbed a Dumpster, grabbed a foothold, and when I was halfway up the telephone pole, stopped and scanned the alleyways, but no Harry. The idea that I had lost another member of my family was too much to accept, so I pushed it away, resolving to track him down later.
Truthfully, I was unsure there would be a later for him or me.
I pushed away that thought too, and stepped onto the roof of the funeral home.
From somewhere deep in the building I heard a pipe organ, low and sonorous.
I walked lightly over the pebbled roof, crouching as I moved to avoid being seen. I was four stories in the air, equal to or lower than the surrounding apartment buildings in a neighborhood where someone’s Italian grandmother was always looking out a window. Anyone on a roof would raise suspicion, but a teenager in a huge EMT shirt with a bloody bandage peeking out from beneath a cap was a 911 jackpot for a local snoop. I hurried across the roof of the dry cleaner, feeling a blast of heat filled with sour starch, and paused, looking over at the bakery’s glass skylight. It sat directly on top of the kitchen, which meant directly over the oven.
It was time.
I stepped onto the roof of the bakery.
Peering through glass, I saw only the square white tile floor below.
Just like in a caper movie, I quickly popped my right elbow off of the window. It splintered, shards tinkling to the floor below. I reached inside, unlocked the skylight window, and stuck my head inside, listening to the silence. There was no sound, no movement, only the hum of the big industrial refrigerator. Carefully, I held on to the window ledge, lowered myself down, and kicked my legs to get my body moving. The top of the refrigerator, my target, was about four feet away. When I was swinging like a trapeze artist, I gritted my teeth and let go, and was in midair when I realized that I wouldn’t make it. It was slow-motion desperation, like a baby bird pushed from a nest with no idea how to fly, my legs and arms flailing at empty space until I hit the hard tile floor.
I tried to scream but nothing came out.
The only sound was a wet-cement-bag noise when my body hit the ground.
I groaned and rolled onto my back, feeling like I’d just been hit by a school bus.
There was a limit to the physical punishment that one sixteen-year-old body could take, and I lay there with every muscle, fiber, and tendon in my body aflame, sure that I’d reached it. When I opened my eyes, I stared up at six letters stamped in heavy metal.
Vulcan.
I got to my feet painfully, holding my back like a retiree, while the oven loomed before me, its massive iron door and old-fashioned dials and gauges like something from a World War II submarine. It was really old-my grandpa’s father, Great-Grandpa Nunzio, installed it when he started the business in 1922, and it had been hard at work ever since baking cakes, pies, and cookies. Staring at it, I realized that I’d never noticed how massive it actually was-six feet tall, four feet wide, encased in white glazed brick, with the iron letters painted a fiery red. Unconsciously, like before a bout, I cracked all of my knuckles and reached for the door handle. As I pulled it down, the hinges complained loudly in the silent building, making me jump. It was dark inside, with all of its racks removed. I looked into it just as I’d been instructed and saw nothing but empty space, a deep metal cave.
My heart was beating against my chest.
I had no choice-I’d have to climb inside.
I took a breath, pulled myself up and in, and I fit.
It required crouching but I realized that if my lanky frame fit inside the oven, so could my dad’s. Tiny Grandpa Enzo would have had no problem, and even Uncle Buddy, if he figured out how to position his gut-but for what purpose? There was nothing to see, nothing hidden or out of the ordinary as far as ovens go. The burners were down there, ventilation up there, sides made of solid iron. There was a small lightbulb inside but it wasn’t lit. Quickly, quietly, I pulled it shut, the light popped on, and something clicked solidly into place. I pushed against the door, felt that it was locked, and my skin went cold with panic, flashing me back to being a small kid when I’d turned a delivery crate into a hideout. Once inside, claustrophobia had attacked my little mind and I was screaming by the time my mom pulled me out. Ever since, I’ve avoided tight, enclosed spaces. I shoved against the door again with no result, and that’s when I noticed a tiny red button above it. It had to be the release, so I pushed it.
The door did not open.
Instead, something began to rumble.
A moment later the world fell out from under me.
I screamed as the box of the oven plummeted, quickly and smoothly. The lightbulb dimmed and lit, dimmed and lit, and I was so freaked out by what was happening that I gaped at it like a hypnotized moth as it tracked my rapid descent. Finally I felt the box begin to slow, and when it stopped, the lightbulb popped on brightly. A vacuum of wind rose behind me, and the back of the oven separated top to bottom, like a small set of inverted elevator doors. I slid out into semidarkness, where, a few feet away, a heavy metal door sat in a brick wall. I approached slowly, squinting at words printed in gold paint that were chipped and worn.
Looking closer, I saw that the
I pushed open the door, which swung heavily on old hinges, and stepped inside a high-ceilinged, brick-walled room filled with stale air. A circle of natural light fell from somewhere high above. Squinting up, I saw that I was deep at the bottom of what, to the outside world, appeared to be the bakery’s smokestack. I peered through
