“No,” she said. Then she said, “Yes.”
“My dear child. Just give yourself a moment to recover. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s all right. I got the registration number of the kidnapper’s car. It’s right there in my purse.”
Colonel Turnbull went into the living room. He picked up the purse from where she had dumped it on the divan. He took out the piece of paper and studied it in the light. Coming back to the bedroom, he put the paper in his pocket.
“Really doesn’t help much, I’m afraid,” he said. “Not at all, really.”
“But Toby was at that motel. Two nights ago. Mr. Silvermine positively identified him!”
“Did he indeed?”
“And he gave me the car registration number. It’s a rented car. It hasn’t been turned in yet. Can’t you find the car?”
“How?”
“The police. Put out an all-points bulletin, or whatever they call it.”
“My dear Christina. Don’t believe what you hear on television. There are thousands of cars missing in California alone. The police don’t find any of them, unless one happens to drop from a helicopter through the police station roof.”
“Still—”
“Christina, we are not going to the police on this matter. Do you want this story on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, New York Times, London Times by tomorrow morning? That wouldn’t leave your husband much room to negotiate, would it?”
“I don’t care!”
“Others do,” Colonel Turnbull said primly. “And, too, I’m talking about negotiating for your son’s life.”
“Your own men! They’ve been following me for two days. Tell them to go look for the car.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’ll do just that.”
He went back into the living room. “You just rest awhile,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Why don’t you use the telephone here?” she asked.
“I’ve disturbed you enough,” he said at the door. “Get some rest.”
Thirty-Seven
A young couple scampered past Turnbull on their way to the tennis courts. The girl’s tennis skirt and panties were so short easily pinchable areas of her cheeks were showing. The boy’s legs were slim and sinewy.
“Rotten sods,” Turnbull muttered.
The boy glanced over his shoulder angrily. The girl giggled and pulled on the boy’s hand.
“It’s almost nine,” the girl said. “We’ll miss the court.”
The double rows of clay courts were superbly bathed in white light. Most of the players were dressed in whites: shorts, short dresses, jerseys, except for the odd blue, green or red shirt. All the balls that went back and forth over the nets were colored—yellow, pink, red.
To Turnbull, the lit courts were like a station in space. It was a wholly unreal, synthetic environment, with intent people hurrying about doing things of which he had no comprehension.
The tennis courts were for people’s pleasure. As were yacht clubs, ski centers, polo fields, race courses and other places Teodoro Rinaldi had enjoyed all his life and understood completely.
Official son: precious little Teodoro.
At the Orphanage of Saints John and Thomas outside Liverpool, where Augustus Turnbull had spent much of his less than precious youth, only one game had been encouraged by the staff, a particularly vicious form of rugby. As Turnbull remembered it, oversized teams of undersized boys would surround a ball and kick out their aggressions on each other’s bare shins. Every boy was obliged to play. Shinbones that were not raw and bleeding by the end of the game drew contemptuous glances from mates and staff alike.
It was not a game for pleasure. It was a painful torture, exercised methodically, to keep boys beaten back and in hand.
He walked along the fence outside the tennis courts.
“Good shot,” he heard someone say.
Turnbull knew what a “good shot” is. A “good shot” is a shot which gives the victim just enough time to shit in his pants before dying.
Turnbull had made many “good shots.”
The lanky man waiting for Turnbull near Court 7 was watching the people play. Dressed in a gray suit, hands behind his back, Cord seemed absorbed in the game.
Turnbull knew Cord was only pretending not to know Turnbull was behind him.
“Thinking of taking up the game, Simon?” Turnbull said.
Cord turned slightly to him. “I have played,” he said. “I spent fifteen months in Hong Kong once when people thought I might be useful there.”
“Were you useful there?”
Cord said, “Yes. Had a lot of time off. One of those stop-and-go situations while the diplomacy boys seesawed. Yes,” he smiled. “At the end I proved to be very useful.”
“Same employers then as now?”
“No,” Cord said. “I have no particular credit with my current employers.”
“You don’t deserve much,” Turnbull said.
The overhead lights whitened Cord’s short gray hair, long gray face, gray eyes.
“How are things going?” Cord asked.
“Bloody awful!”
“How about giving me some facts, Gus?” Cord asked politely.
“Facts?” Turnbull put his face closer to Cord’s and fixed him in the eye. “Fact one: they know we got the boy away from New York by using his own plane reservation. Fact two: they know he’s here somewhere in the Bay area. Fact three: they know what motel he stayed at two nights ago. Fact four: they not only have a full and accurate description of this Mullins character, they know his full name and home address.” Cord turned his head. “Fact five: they even have the registration number of the car Mullins is using.”
Cord’s eyes were directed at the tennis players, but they were not focused.
“You’re right, Gus. This is bloody awful.”
Turnbull hit Cord’s shoulder with the heel of his hand.
“One bloody, silly, spoiled bitch has been able to trail you right up to your bloody ass!”
Cord looked at the ground. “The Ambassador’s wife? Christina Rinaldi?”
“Rinaldi!” Turnbull shouted.
A tennis player shouted to them, “Quiet, please!” He said to his opponent, “Take two serves.”
“Christina Rinaldi,” Turnbull finally said.
“Hard to believe.” Cord shook his head.
Turnbull took Christina’s piece of paper out of his pocket and slammed it against Cord’s stomach.
“Hard to believe, eh? This was in Christina’s purse. Mullins’s name, address, car registration number.”
Cord tipped the paper toward the tennis lights to read the handwriting.
“And,” Turnbull said, “they know Mullins and the kid are still floating around this area somewhere. Mullins didn’t even have the sense to change cars. He’s still driving the car he picked up from the airport when he arrived!”
“They said he was thick,” Cord said. “Dubrowski’s friends said there’s nothing between his ears but dead roaches.”
Turnbull put his finger against Cord’s lapel. “Tell me, Cord, why can’t we be perfectly certain right now that Tobias Rinaldi is dead and his body’s just waiting for Sunday morning’s sunlight to be discovered?”
Cord cleared his throat. “It would be the most natural thing to presume.”
“You sound like a ruddy professor!”
“Listen, Turnbull, this is my job—”
“—And a ruddy good job you’ve made of it, too!”
“Gus, you’re out of control. I’ve got to see this thing through, with or without you. Do you understand?”
Turnbull pushed his finger hard against Cord’s chest. “If Mullins has wasted the kid because he doesn’t know what else to do, and the kid’s body is found tomorrow, you and I have had it. The world isn’t big enough for you and me to hide in.”
A tennis player was standing inside the fence, peering through the edge of
light at them in the shadows. He said quietly, “Are you gentlemen guests here?”
“We own the place,” Turnbull said.
“That’s not true. Please leave.” The tennis player went back to his baseline.
Cord said, “Gus, get control of yourself—or else. Try to keep your sanity—at least until Monday night.”
Turnbull hit Cord hard on the side of his head. As Cord staggered off-balance, Turnbull aimed a kick at his groin but instead contacted with his kneecap.
Cord’s hands began to rise.
Turnbull hit Cord with all his weight and power just below the short ribs. As Cord fell forward, Turnbull hit him in the face.
A woman screamed.
The tennis player ran back to the inside of the fence.
“Hey!” he yelled.
Cord’s head was on the ground. Turnbull kicked it just above the ear.
All the witnesses were on the other side of the tennis fence.
Turnbull turned his back on them and walked out of the lit area. He found a path winding among some rhododendron bushes.
Thirty-Eight
“Ah, Colonel Turnbull.”
Christina had spent a long time standing under the shower, letting the hot spray play on her neck and shoulders. Dressed in a robe, she had opened her bedroom door to see if Turnbull had returned. Just as she was closing the door, the front door to the bungalow opened and Turnbull stepped in.
“I was looking for you,” Christina said. “Thought I’d turn in, see if I have any luck sleeping.”
The expression on Turnbull’s face Christina had never seen before. His ruddy skin seemed redder than usual. In his eyes, for the first time, seemed to be some recognition of her as a person—a body.
She gathered her robe more tightly around her.
“Before I try to sleep, I just wonder if…the car’s registration…”
Turnbull closed the door behind him. He took a long, narrow black case out of his jacket’s inside pocket. He went directly to the tall reading lamp on the divan’s end table.
“…if you’d tell me what I should do next, what we should do next. I’d feel so much better if we had a plan, if I had a plan…if I knew what the plan is…what…”
Turnbull turned around. “You’re not supposed to be doing anything, Christina. Just being quiet.”
There was a hypodermic syringe in his right hand.
“Let me handle everything from this point.”
He held the syringe up to the lamp and pushed the plunger. A colorless fluid jetted from the needle.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“This won’t take a moment.” He walked toward her. “Please cooperate.”
“No!”
Christina tried to get by him, tried to get to the front door. He grabbed her wrist and swung her around. She felt the back of her leg against the coffee table.
“No!”
Turnbull’s left hand was grabbing for her arm.
She pulled it away from him, regained her footing. She put the flat of her hand against his chest and pushed.
Suddenly, Turnbull’s left fist smashed against her right cheekbone.
There were darting silver slivers of light against a deep, black field. Her knees were on the floor. She saw the surface of the coffee table.
The flesh of her arm was being squeezed. She pulled in breath. Her cheek was on the coffee table.
She was tumbling, going among, through, the moving silver streaks into the blackness.
Thirty-Nine
In Room 39 at the Motel Rancho O’Grady, Spike dropped his newspaper from his bed onto the floor. For a while, he looked at the opposite wall.
Then he said, “Once there was this gang after me—a gang of real badasses—Holy Devils, they called ’emselves. This was in Passaic, see? Fac’ is, I had killed one of their gang members, with a knife. Clean, fair, honest fight, all that. This guy had tromped on my foot at a disco place, see? So I invited him outside, to kill him.
“First, he didn’t wanna go, see, ’cause he didn’t have no gang with him. But I poked fun at him, and all, and the girls laughed at him.
“So I laughed him into comin’ out to get killed.
“He came out with me, back o’ this place, and he pulled a knife. I had a knife, too. I only had to sashay around with him a little before I stuck my knife in his eye, see? Deep….”
Spike looked at Toby.
On the other bed, Toby lay on top of his blanket, head on the pillow. Facedown on his chest was the Uncle Whimsy Comic Book.
Toby was asleep. On his face was a happy smile.
It was ten fifteen. Spike chuckled and turned out the light.
Forty
Christina could not understand what she was doing on the floor. Looking up, she was seeing partly the underside of the coffee table, partly the ceiling.
The telephone was ringing.
Her neck was twisted so that one ear was almost pressing against her shoulder. A part of her face hurt. Her cheekbone. She explored it with her fingers. Her skin stung to the touch.
Sitting up, she discovered her neck was stiff. There was daylight in the room. The reading lamp was still on. She reached up for the telephone. She wanted to stop its ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Rinaldi? Christina, it’s me. Mary Brown.”
“Hello, Mrs. Brown…Mary.”
“You all right, Christina?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“Guess I just woke up.”
“I know I’m not supposed to be using the Residence’s phone long-distance without permission,” Mrs. Brown said, “especially for any personal craziness of my own—”
“That’s okay.”
“I waited until nine thirty. I couldn’t figure if it’s six thirty in the morning where you are or twelve thirty noon, so I thought I’d be safe if I called at nine thirty. I guess it’s six thirty where you are.”
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be chatting with her housekeeper, listening to Mrs. Brown’s voice in the morning, dressed in her robe. But why was she sitting on the floor?
“It doesn’t cost so much callin’ on Sundays, anyway, does it?”
“No. That’s all right. I’m glad you called. I suppose I should have called you.”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I had a dream. And I’ve been thinking about it. I haven’t been sleeping—at all. So last night I took one of those pills Mr. Ambassador keeps in his medicine chest, secondaries or something, you know, sleeping pills?”
“Seconal?”
“Yes. Well, maybe it made me dream. Anyway, it made me sleep. Electronic age. Here’s an old woman telling you about her dream over three thousand miles of telephone wire.”
“What was it?”
“I dreamt Toby’s at Fantazyland.”
The fingers of Christina’s free hand kneaded the back of her neck.
“Mrs. Rinaldi, you know I’m not someone to believe in dreams. Although, I will say, the Old Testament’s full of ’em and I understand some head doctors make a business of ’em. But this dream was too real. I saw Toby. You know Uncle Whimsy’s Hat? Fantazyland has made some kind of mountain out of it, and there are rides through it or something. I saw Toby staring up at it. Big bears and rabbits all around him. He was wearing white shorts and a blue shirt. His hand was up, I mean, his arm was, you know? As if his hand was in the hand of someone else—an adult. And then there was this rush of air, and darkness, in my dream, and I felt Toby going through some kind of a tunnel. He was laughing. Crazy, isn’t it? But it was so real.”
“Mrs. Brown, I’m sure it was real. It was what you wanted to dream. It’s what you want to think.”
“I thought so, too. I’m not as crazy as all that. Have I ever told you a dream before? I’ve never had one so real. Then I began thinking. Since three fifteen this morning, when I woke up, af
ter the dream. I’ve been thinking and remembering certain things.”
“Mrs. Brown—”
“Half a moment, Christina. That boy’s been determined to get to Fantazyland for longer than you know. More than two years ago, I first heard of it. On the plane, that time we were flyin’ to Mexico to talk to them about oil or whatever. I went forward in the cabin to get Toby away to bed and His Majesty had just finished readin’ him a chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, and Toby was askin’ him, the King, ‘Will we go to Fantazyland, sir?’ and His Majesty looked at the Ambassador, and the Ambassador said, ‘Not this trip, Toby. We’ll be too far south. Maybe someday we’ll get there, if they have us,’ and it was I, Mrs. Rinaldi, who took Toby back to the little bunk and strapped him in, and he said he was goin’ to Fantazyland. First I’d heard of it. And he’s been talkin’ about it ever since, to you, to me, to the Ambassador….”
“Yes but—”
“And, by God, Christina, I believe he’s there. I know Toby. He’s a determined little chap. Knows what he’s doing every minute. He looks like he’s puttin’ up with things, he does, but he’s a genius at settin’ himself a goal and gettin’ there. You don’t even see him doin’ it. Like his father, he knows how to handle people, and like you, Christina, he knows how to mark time and appear to be patient and then assert himself at just the right moment, in just the right way. Forgive me for complimenting you both. But I know you a great deal better than maybe you think I do, after nine years bein’ with you. Great believer in blood, I am, especially where your son, Toby, is concerned. Put Toby on the West Coast of this country, within a few miles of Fantazyland, and, by God, Christina, even bound hand and foot, he’ll see himself there.”
Christina said nothing: she was envisioning Toby at Fantazyland. Toby had shown her the pictures, too.
Where had the idea of this trip to the West Coast really come from? Christina had thought it was her idea—a family vacation, an attempt to give Teddy a break.
But the timing of it was so bad. Resolution 1176R. Who laid down the timing of this trip?
“Oh, Mrs. Brown….”
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