Jumper

by Steven Gould

  The thought of carrying a VCR into a pawnshop frightened me. I didn’t care that I was uncatchable. If someone was itchy enough I might take a bullet. Perhaps I was being paranoid. If I stole something worth more? Jewelry? Go to the museum and rip off paintings? The more expensive the item, the more chance I had of not making any money from it, getting ripped off or killed.

  Maybe the government would hire me?

  I shuddered. I read Firestarter by Stephen King. I could imagine being dissected to find out how I did this thing. Or drugged so I wouldn’t do it—that’s how they controlled the father in that book. Kept him on drugs so he couldn’t think straight. I wondered if they already had people who could teleport.

  Stay away from the government. Don’t let anyone know what I can do!

  Well, then—I guessed I’d have to steal money itself.

  The Chemical Bank of New York is on Fifth Avenue. I walked in and asked the guard if there was a bathroom in the bank. He shook his head.

  “Up the street at the Trump Tower. They have a rest room in the lobby.”

  I looked distressed. “Look, I really don’t mean to be a problem, but my dad’s meeting me here in just a few moments, and if I’m not here he’ll kill me, but I really got to pee. Isn’t there an employees’ rest room somewhere?”

  I didn’t think he’d buy it, but the lie, plus any mention of my father, was making my distress real. He looked doubtful and I winced, knowing he was going to send me away.

  “Ah, what the hell. See that door there?” He pointed to a door past the long line of teller’s windows. “Go through there and straight back. The bathroom is on the right at the end of the hall. If anyone gives you a problem, tell them Kelly sent you.”

  I let out a lungful of air. “Thanks, Mr. Kelly. You’ve saved my life.”

  I went through the door as if I knew what I was doing. My stomach was churning and I felt sure that everyone who passed me could read my intentions and knew I was a criminal.

  The vault was two doors before the bathroom. Its huge steel door hung on hinges larger than myself, open, but a smaller door of bars within was shut and a guard sat before it, at a small table. I paused before him, looking past him to the interior of the vault. He looked up at me.

  “Can I help you?” His voice was cold and he stared at me like a high school principal looks at a student without a hall pass.

  I stammered, “I’m looking for the bathroom.”

  The guard said, “There are no public rest rooms in this bank.”

  “Mr. Kelly said I could use the employees’ rest room. It’s kind of an emergency.”

  He relaxed a little. “End of the hall then. It’s certainly not here.”

  I bobbed my head. “Right. Thank you.” I walked on. I really hadn’t gotten a good enough look. I went into the bathroom and washed my hands.

  On the way back I stopped and said, “That sure is a huge door. Do you know how much it weighs?” I stepped a bit closer.

  The guard looked annoyed. “A lot. If you’re quite through using the bathroom, I would appreciate it if you returned to the lobby!”

  I pivoted. “Oh, certainly.” I stared at the door again from my new angle. I saw carts and a table up against one of vault’s interior doors. The carts had canvas bags on them, as well as stacks of bundled money. Another step and I glimpsed gray steel shelves against another wall.

  Got it!

  The guard started to stand up. I looked away from the door and saw his face color.

  “On my way,” I said. “Thanks for your directions.”

  He growled something, but I walked briskly down the hall. As I walked past the lobby guard, I smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Kelly.” He waved and I went out the door.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, back in Stanville, first reading the encyclopedia entries under Banks, Bank Robberies, Alarm Systems, Safes, Vaults, Time Locks, and Closed-Circuit Television, then skimming a book on industrial security systems that I found in Applied Technologies.

  “David? David Rice?”

  I looked up. Mrs. Johnson, my geography teacher from Stanville High School, was walking toward me. I looked at the clock—school had been out for an hour.

  I hadn’t been to school in three weeks, ever since the first day I had jumped. I felt my face get hot and I stood up.

  “It really is you, David. I’m glad to see you’re all right. Have you gone home then?”

  For some reason I was surprised that the school knew I’d run away. I started to agree. It was so much easier to lie, to say I’d come back and that I’d be in school tomorrow. I know that’s what I would have done a month before. Take the path of least resistance. Avoid fuss. Say whatever was necessary to keep people from being mad at me.

  I hated for people to be mad at me.

  I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I haven’t. And I’m not going to.”

  She didn’t seem shocked or even surprised. “Your father seems very worried. He came up to the school and talked to all your classes, asking if anyone had seen you. He’s also put up those posters... well, you’ve probably seen them around town.”

  I blinked, then shrugged. Posters?

  “What about school?” she asked. “What are you going to do about classes? How are you going to go to college? Or get a job?”

  “I... I guess I’ll have to make other arrangements.” I felt good about not lying to her, but was still afraid she was going to disapprove of me. “I tried to take the GED,” I said. “But they won’t let a seventeen-year-old take it without parental permission or a court order.”

  Mrs. Johnson licked her lower lip, then asked, “Where are you staying, David? Are you getting enough to eat?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m okay.”

  Her words seemed chosen very carefully. It dawned on me that she wasn’t going to bawl me out for missing school or for running away. It was as if she was trying to avoid spooking me—avoid scaring me off.

  “I’m going to phone your father, David. It’s my duty. However, if you like we can talk to the county social worker. You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to.” She hesitated and then finally said, “Does he abuse you, David?”

  The tears came then, like an anvil falling out of a clear blue sky. I thought I was fine up until then. I squeezed my eyes shut, and my shoulders were shaking. I kept quiet, stifling the sobs.

  Mrs. Johnson took a step toward me, I think to hug me. I recoiled, stepping back and turning away, wiping furiously at my eyes with my right hand.

  She dropped her arms to her side. She looked unhappy.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath, then two more, the shakes gradually diminishing. “Sorry,” I said.

  Mrs. Johnson spoke then, softly, carefully. “I won’t call your father, but only if you come see Mr. Mendoza with me. He’ll know what to do.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m doing okay. I don’t want to go see Mr. Mendoza.”

  She looked even more unhappy. “Please, Davy. It’s not safe on the street, even in Stanville, Ohio. We can protect you from your father.”

  Oh, yeah? Where were you for the last five years? I shook my head again. This was going nowhere.

  “Do you still drive a gray VW, Mrs. Johnson?” I said, looking over her shoulder.

  She blinked, surprised by the change of subject. “Yes.”

  “I think somebody just hit it.”

  She turned her head quickly. Before she figured out that you couldn’t see the parking lot from where we were standing, I jumped back to the Brooklyn hotel.

  God damn it all to hell! I threw the industrial-security book across the room, then scrambled to get it, a wave of guilt washing over me, both about getting angry and about mistreating a library book. Books didn’t deserve to be abused... did people?

  I curled up on the bed and pulled the pillow over my head.

  It was dark when I sat up, dazed and uncomprehending, waking in slow, confusing stages. For a moment I looked around, expecting to find
Mrs. Johnson standing over me and telling me many fascinating facts about western Africa, but I woke up a little more and the dim light coming through the thin shade revealed the room, my condition, my state of being.

  I stood up and stretched, wondered what time it was, and jumped to the Stanville Library to look at their wall clock. It was 9:20 P.M. in Ohio, and the same in New York. Time to get to work.

  I jumped to my backyard, behind the oak tree. Dad’s car was in the driveway, but the only lights on were in his room, the den, and my room. What’s he doing with my room? I felt panic rising, but forced it down. Ignore it. You’ll be able to get to your room.

  The gardening stuff was in the garage, on a shelf above the lawn mower. Rakes, shovels, and a hoe hung on nails across the wall below the shelf. I appeared before this collection and groped past insecticides, fertilizer, grass seed until my hands closed on the old gardening gloves. I put them on, then jumped to the front driveway.

  Dad’s Caddy gleamed in the streetlight, a huge, hulking beast. I walked to the passenger side and tried the door, gently. It was locked. I looked in, at the plush upholstery and the gleaming dash. I could vividly remember the smell of it, the feel of the seats. I closed my eyes and jumped.

  The car alarm went off with a whooping shriek, but I was expecting it. I opened the glove compartment and took the flashlight. The porch light came on and the front door started to open. I jumped to my room.

  The alarm sounded a great deal quieter from here, but still unpleasant. I was sure that porch lights were coming on all over the neighborhood.

  The ski mask was in the bottom drawer of my dresser, buried under several pairs of too-small long underwear. I found it just as the car alarm stopped. I started to jump, then realized I didn’t have the flashlight in my hand. I looked around the room and saw it on the dresser.

  The front door shut and I heard footsteps in the hallway. I picked up the flashlight and jumped.

  The gloves were leather, old and stiff. They hurt my fingers just to bend them. The ski mask was large enough, even though it was four years old. All the stretch was gone and it was pulled out of shape, but I thought it would work. Positioned right, it covered all of my face except my eyes and the bridge of my nose. The bottom half hung loosely over the rest of my face, but it concealed it.

  It itched like hell.

  I jumped.

  I appeared in a pitch black room with dead air and a smooth floor. I waited a moment before I turned on the light, steeling myself for the scream of an alarm. I was also afraid I wasn’t in the right place and didn’t want to rush the moment of failure’s discovery.

  I didn’t hear any alarms, though, for all I knew, lights could be flashing on a dozen monitor consoles from the bank all the way to the police station. If there were other teleporters in the world, wouldn’t banks know about them and take measures? Like flooding the vault with poison gas when it was locked? Or booby traps? The air around me turned thick, and the darkness pressed in on me until I thought that perhaps the very walls were moving in. I flicked the flashlight switch without conscious volition.

  So much money!

  The carts I’d seen earlier were stacked high—either with neatly bundled piles of money or with trays of rolled coins or rough canvas bags with “Chemical Bank of New York” stenciled on their sides. Most of the shelves held bundled stacks of new bills.

  I closed my eyes, suddenly dizzy. By the vault door there was a light switch. I turned it on and fluorescent lighting lit the room. There didn’t seem to be any TV cameras in the vault, and I couldn’t see any little boxes on the wall that looked like any of the heat sensors I’d read about that afternoon. No gas flooded from vents. No booby traps sprang into action.

  I turned off the flashlight and went to work.

  The first cart I came to was obviously from the previous day’s deposits. The money was definitely used, though bundled neatly. I picked up a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. The paper band wrapped around the middle said “$5,000” and was stamped with the Chemical Bank’s name. There was a cardboard box on another cart. It was filled with packets of one-dollar bills, each packet holding fifty bills. I tried to estimate how deep the stack went, then shook my head. Count later, Davy.

  I picked up the box and jumped to the hotel room. I dumped it on the bed, then jumped back.

  I started at one end and moved to the other. If the packets looked new, I checked to see if the bills were in serial-number order. If they were I left them. If they weren’t I put them in the box. When the box was full, I jumped to the hotel room, dumped the contents on the bed, and jumped back.

  When I was done with the loose money on the carts, I checked the bags. They seemed to be transfer deposits from subbranches, all in used bills. I took all the bags, without checking the contents of the others. Money was already spilling off the edges of the bed so I put the bags on the floor, under the bed.

  The shelves held new bills, the range of their serial numbers neatly written on their paper bands. I left them and took a last look around. Still no ringing alarms. The door was solidly shut.

  It didn’t matter. If what I had read about time clocks was true, it would take a very special set of circumstances to open the door before the next morning, even if alarms were ringing.

  For one brief second I considered leaving a thank-you note, perhaps even some spray-painted graffiti, but decided against it.

  I imagined there would be enough excitement the next morning without that.

  I jumped.

  Chapter 4

  On Times Square the big electronic billboard said it was eleven o’clock. I blinked. I’d done the whole thing in under forty minutes, and that included getting the gloves and the flashlight.

  People still swarmed the square, young adults mostly, in pairs and groups. Some of them lined up at movie theaters, others just walked along Broadway looking into the stores that were still open. There was a festival atmosphere like the midway of carnival.

  I walked into a shop filled with T-shirts, most of them extolling the virtues of New York City. “Welcome to New York City—Now Leave,” said one. I smiled, even though I was trembling and reaction was making me nauseated.

  In my pocket was a packet of twenty-dollar bills, fifty of them. I’d taken off the paper wrapper and made sure I could pull them out one at a time, but I was still nervous. The back of my head, where the muggers had hit me, was aching and I kept looking over my shoulder in almost involuntary twitches.

  Christ, Davy, you’re broadcasting victim like crazy. Calm down!

  The T-shirt store also sold luggage—cheap nylon bags, duffles, overnighters, sports bags, and backpacks. That’s what I really wanted. I picked up one of each kind and color.

  The clerk stared at me, then said, “Hey, kid, unless you’re going to buy all of those, look at one at a time, okay?”

  I kept on picking up bags and he came around the end of the counter, an angry expression on his face. “Didn’t you hear me? I said—”

  “I heard what you said!” My voice was shrill and loud. The clerk took a step back and blinked. I took a deep breath, then said in a quieter voice, “I’ve got twenty bags here. Ring them up.” I walked over to the counter and put the bags on it.

  The clerk still hesitated, so I took some of the twenties out of my jacket pocket—more than I meant to, in fact. Probably half, around five hundred dollars.

  “Uh, sure. Sorry I yelled. You know we get some kids in here who shoplift. I’ve got to be careful. Didn’t mean nothing by it. I—”

  “Fine. Don’t worry about it. Just ring it up, please.”

  As he rang up each bag, I stuffed them into the largest one, a duffel with a shoulder strap.

  He must have felt bad about misreading me, because he gave me a ten-percent discount for quantity. “So that comes to two twenty-two fifty with tax.”

  I counted off twelve twenty-dollar bills, then said something I’ve always wanted to say. “Keep the change.”

 
; He blinked, then said, “Thanks. Thanks very much.”

  I walked out the front of the store, turned right, and jumped.

  I sorted the money by denomination first, piling the packets against the wall opposite the bed. I had to move the cheap dresser across the door to give me room, but I didn’t mind. I was feeling pretty paranoid by now, so I hung the quilt over the window shade, completely blocking the window.

  By the time I cleared the bed and had reached the bagged money, I had two piles of ones over two feet high, twenty-five packets to a layer. I didn’t stop to figure amounts yet. I continued my sorting, throwing the empty bank bags on the bed. Once, I jumped to the Stanville Library to check the time.

  Finally, I finished sorting and stacking. I hadn’t figured amounts yet. That would come later.

  I gathered the empty bank bags, then, and put my ski mask and gloves back on. It was 2 A.M.

  I took several deep breaths and tried to keep calm. Nervous exhaustion was setting in, though I wasn’t in the least sleepy. I concentrated on the interior of the vault and jumped, trying at the same time to keep the Stanville Library in my mind in case they’d opened the vault.

  They hadn’t.

  Jeez, I left the light on. I dropped the bank bags on one of the empty carts and turned to turn off the light. Light? Christ! Where’s the flashlight? My heartbeat increased and I felt panic in my throat. Oh, God. I don’t need this. I sagged against the wall when I saw the flashlight on the first cart I’d emptied. I knew it didn’t have my fingerprints but it might have Dad’s. And where were you, Mr. Rice, last Friday night?

  Right here in Ohio, of course. But I don’t know where my son is....

  I picked the flashlight up, turned off the vault’s lights, and jumped back to the hotel room.

  I’d been hurrying, stacking the money so I could take the bags back before morning. I didn’t want them in my possession. I realized that I could get rid of them anywhere. I could even put bricks in them and drop them into the East River, but I thought that there’d be more confusion if I left them in the vault.