Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Aw,” Spike said, “she’s nothin’ more than a Uncle Whimsy groupie gettin’ the minimum wage.”

  “Come on over here, Spike,” Toby said. “There are some more roses.”

  “Yeah!” Spike said “I never seen a garden like this!”

  * * *

  Spike wanted to drive a bumper car again, so he did. He smashed into everyone he could with maximum force, calling everybody in sight “Bastid!” shaking his fist in all directions at once, not seeing any cars that came at him from his left.

  Toby watched through the fence. He had had his last bumper car ride with Spike.

  Toby did get him to go with him through The Hall of Knives.

  In the first room they came to, there was a polite, museumlike display of every sort of knife, sword, dagger ever invented by man. In the next room, some people in baggy trousers performed a sword dance. In the third room, furnished as a banquet hall, two cavaliers fought a duel down stone steps, across the room, up onto and along the dining table, scattering roast pigs and fowls and wine glasses.

  Then they were walked through a dark, scary, menacing place. Knives flew through the air. A guillotine clanged down just as they passed it. A great, gleaming, sharpened pendulum swung over their heads, dropping lower and lower. A huge barrel, spinning seemingly out of control, rolling on armatures, approached them from the dark. Swords stuck out all sides of it, at all angles.

  The tourists smiled and laughed and applauded and took pictures.

  Spike backed into the far railing. His face was ashen.

  * * *

  Then they went back to Wild West City to try the shooting gallery again.

  Forty-Six

  Sylvia Menninges followed the Ambassador into his office.

  “The luncheon ran late,” he said.

  He sat at his desk.

  Sylvia said, “Mrs. Rinaldi called.”

  “Oh?”

  “She left a message. She was talking so fast I had trouble getting it all down.” Sylvia looked at her steno pad. “First she said she found the car and that you would know what that means.”

  “She did? She found the car?”

  Sylvia nodded. “In the parking lot at Fantazyland.”

  Teddy sat back. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Sylvia read from her pad. “Please ask Major Mustafa to send people, a lot of people, to assist her right away.”

  “Major Mustafa?” Teddy wrinkled his brow. “Why Major Mustafa?”

  “I don’t know. She also said you were not to trust a Colonel Turnbull.”

  “She said that?” Teddy looked extremely curious. “Why did she say that?”

  “She said…Colonel Turnbull, I guess she meant…gave her a sedative last night.”

  “I see.” Teddy’s face returned to normal. “I see. I’m sure Christina needed a sedative. I’m also sure she resented the hell out of being slipped one. Okay.” He sat up and looked at the papers Sylvia had put on his desk since he had left. “Get on to Colonel Turnbull immediately. Tell him Christina has found the car we’ve been looking for in the parking lot of Fantazyland and he and his men are to join her there immediately.”

  “Shall I say anything to Major Mustafa?”

  “No,” Teddy said. “Leave everything in the hands of Colonel Turnbull.”

  Forty-Seven

  Cord had followed Christina from the bungalow.

  He had parked where he was directed to park in Fantazyland’s huge lot and then stood by his car, looking over the rooftops of other cars sparkling in the sunlight. He watched her drive up and down the rows of parked cars, evading the attendants who yelled and waved at her. He figured she was looking for Mullins’ car, but he had no idea what led her to look for the car in Fantazyland’s parking lot.

  He saw her stop near the front of the lot, in front of a blue two-door car. She parked nearby. Watching her, he began walking at an angle among the cars to where she was. She ran from her car back to the blue two-door.

  From a distance, he watched her flatten the car’s tires, break open the hood and rip things out of the engine.

  When the attendant in the electric cart came along, she ran toward the main entrance to Fantazyland.

  By the time Cord got there, she was using one of the telephones.

  He waited in one of the box-office lines. After telephoning, she got into his line, about a dozen people behind him. Simon Cord preceded Christina Rinaldi into Fantazyland.

  When she came through the main gate, he was standing, hands behind his back, listening to the music from the bandstand.

  * * *

  Cord ambled into the shade of a giant pink mushroom and stopped. A child went by, accidentally brushing his cotton candy against the sleeve of Cord’s gray suit. He brushed it off and looked at his watch. It was five minutes past five.

  Christina Rinaldi, dressed in a light, beige suit, was standing near the cotton candy stand. Her eyes were roaming high and low in each direction, methodically. She was alone.

  Slowly, she began to move in the sunlight in the direction pointed by a sign saying, TO THE PAST.

  At a good distance to the side and a little behind her, keeping in the shade as much as possible, at her pace, Cord followed her.

  She was passing a carousel, slowly, looking at the children revolving on it, the air filled with the loud, clanging carousel music, London Bridge is falling down….After watching it go around once, she looked off to her left.

  Suddenly, Christina’s body braced as if jolted by an electric shock. She was screaming. She was yelling something.

  She began to run.

  Cord glanced down the slope to see what she was seeing, but saw only a crowd of tourists going through the fortlike gates of Wild West City.

  A man ran past her. In his left hand was a gun. He reached the crowd at the gate wall before her and began to weave through them, pushing and shoving, waving his gun.

  The people smiled and stepped aside for him.

  Another man ran up behind Christina, a man wearing an Uncle Whimsy T-shirt under his jacket. As he passed her, he pushed Christina’s shoulder, making her land too hard on her right shoe heel, snapping it. As she fell to the walkway’s hard surface, he spilled his bag of peppermints. By the time he got to the crowded Wild West City gate, he, too, had a gun in his hand.

  The people smiled and let him through.

  Smiling, they even let long-legged Cord stride through.

  In the middle of the main street of Wild West City, a cowboy, wearing a black hat, black shirt, black patch over one eye, was cracking a bullwhip and snarling.

  Among the whipcracks was a gunshot. The cowboy’s head jerked toward the gate. He saw two men running toward him with drawn guns. The cowboy dropped his whip, vaulted a water trough and dropped to the ground, facedown, hands over his hat.

  Down the street, Cord saw a man and a boy. They looked around.

  Toby Rinaldi and…Mullins.

  There was another pistol shot.

  Three constables came out of the crowd at the entrance gate and began running down the street.

  The marshal came out of his office. He looked for the whipcracking villain. There was another gunshot and the marshal ducked back into the office.

  Mullins and Toby ran to their right, up onto a raised-board sidewalk.

  The two men fired at them nearly simultaneously.

  At the end of the block, Mullins tripped off the sidewalk. He stumbled in the street. The child ran back for him, grabbed his arm and pulled him along.

  None of the tourists screamed or backed away.

  The tourists smiled and laughed and applauded and took pictures.

  Mullins and the boy were halfway up the next block. The man in the Uncle Whimsy T-shirt fired again into the crowd.

  Cord could see neither the boy nor Mullins.

  The crowd did not disperse. They laughed at the two men, standing in the middle of the street, their faces agape.

  The three constables, mustaches
bobbing, billy clubs in hand, were running up the street toward them. The helmet of one fell off. Long, blond hair streamed behind her.

  The men stuffed their guns into their pockets and took off at an angle to each other. One ran through the swinging doors of a saloon. The other went up the street before darting through the open door of The Glassware and China Shoppe. The constables ran after them.

  The tourists gave a hearty round of applause.

  * * *

  Down the street, Christina was standing by the gate, her shoes in her hand. Even from a block away, Cord could see her eyes moving wildly.

  She had a black eye.

  Moving at an angle, Cord walked half a block to where he had last seen Mullins and the boy.

  It was not obvious from a distance, but there was a narrow space between two frame buildings, covered by a board fence. Cord pushed up against it with his fingers. It swung open. He stepped through it.

  There was a narrow alley running between the two buildings. At the far end of the alley were covered garbage buckets.

  Cord walked to them and turned the corner of the building. Near the back wall were scuff marks in the dirt. He crouched.

  In the dirt was half-dried blood.

  Cord stood up and looked around. It was becoming dusk. The light in the alley was diminishing rapidly. He went back and forth, up and down, but could find no more blood. He could not discover which way Mullins and the boy had gone.

  He went back down the alley and through the fence. There was almost no one in the main street.

  But in the middle of it, shoes in hand, the shoulder of her suit jacket torn, staring at him as he came through the gate, was Christina Rinaldi.

  UNCLE WHIMSY IS GLAD YOU HAVE ENJOYED YOUR DAY AT FANTAZYLAND BUT NOW MUST BID YOU GOOD NIGHT SO ALL UNCLE WHIMSY’S FRIENDS CAN GET THEIR REST AND COME OUT TO PLAY TOMORROW.

  A woman’s voice sang over the loudspeakers: Good night until tomorrow…Sweet dreams you shall have…

  Cord turned left and walked along with his head down until Christina was no longer watching him.

  Forty-Eight

  Had there been, or had there not been, a shooting incident at Fantazyland that afternoon?

  The question was bursting Drew Keosian’s gut.

  He stood at the podium, waiting for the last few constables to straggle in after patrolling the grounds one last time before complete dark. They were to make sure all the guests of Fantazyland had returned to their homes, hotels, motels, campers to dream their sweet dreams so they could come out to play tomorrow.

  Infrequently, but occasionally, they would discover someone still on the grounds, incredibly drunk (only beer was provided at Fantazyland) or stoned, after closing. Once they found an old senile woman wandering; another time, a veteran lying in a path, immobilized because the metal pin in his hip had suddenly disintegrated. Another time the body of a thirteen-year-old girl had been found, abandoned by her terrified friends when she had died of a coronary infarction in the Doll Museum.

  More frequently, they had to search for the missing child while keeping frantic parents calm in Drew’s office. Almost invariably, the child was found asleep somewhere, under a bush or near the waterfall. (They had learned from experience to look first for sleeping children near the waterfall.)

  There were always the two or three cars left in the parking lot without explanation. Had friends met or been made and gone off in one car? Had engine trouble or personal illness gone unreported but just caused the car to be left there overnight? The next day they would be gone. There were seldom the same cars there for more than one night. About six stolen cars a year were found abandoned in Fantazyland’s parking lot.

  Through the window Drew could see the headlights of the electric patrol tricycles still pulling up.

  At thirty-seven, Drew Keosian was a professional lawman of a rare type. A graduate of Oral Roberts University, he had had his early police training with the Chattanooga, Tennessee, police force. He hated having to deal with the poor, the disenfranchised, the ill, the violent.

  Drew believed absolutely in the thick line between the lawful and the lawless, right and wrong, good and evil. He loved his job at Fantazyland. He considered it a great moral experiment, an imitation of God’s creating Eden. Fantazyland was a beautiful garden filled with innocence, where people could be children forever. It was his job to make this moral experiment work.

  As chief constable he had few, if any, of the problems of chiefs of police forces of similar size. In his eight years at Fantazyland there had been only one serious crime, and that was the rape of an employee, an older lady who worked at a hot dog stand. There was the occasional purse mislaid. Every few months a gang of pickpockets would work Fantazyland for a day, but the constables were trained to spot them quickly and deal with them summarily. There was some petty shoplifting.

  Fantazyland was private property. Constables could and would deny obviously drunk, stoned, or seemingly disturbed people entrance. Everyone coming into Fantazyland was scrutinized by at least one constable.

  It was Drew’s job to keep the snake from Eden, to keep genuine evil from Fantazyland, and he took it as his holy mission to do so.

  An hour or two earlier, Constable Hidgson had phoned in breathlessly saying there were two men firing guns in the middle of Wild West City. Tourists. Real guns.

  Drew had hurried to Wild West City (he had not run; the tourists might be alarmed) and found nothing in particular going on.

  The cowboy villain told him people were shooting at him, and he didn’t like it. The cowboy marshal said he wasn’t sure. He said he had come out onto the boardwalk, not seen the cowboy villain, saw the whip on the ground, yet heard what he thought were whipcracks. He wasn’t absolutely sure what else he had seen.

  Constable Gladstein told him there had been no shooting as far as he knew, but he might have been on his break at that moment.

  Before him now in the police station briefing room, all the constables were seated in their chairs, all with their helmets off, some with their mustaches off, the black handlebar mustaches of the rest clashing weirdly with their blond, brown, red or even natural black hair.

  From the podium, Drew asked, “Any bodies tonight? Anyone missing, drunk, lost?”

  There was no response.

  He said, “Box office tells us supposedly there’s an eight-count difference between ins and outs. Eight people who entered Fantazyland today but didn’t leave it.” He looked at the roomful of tired constables. “Anybody seen any strays? No?”

  The chief parking-lot attendant (the only person in the room dressed in khaki; the night watchmen wore undecorated blue suits) said, “Drew? There are seven automobiles left in the parking lot tonight.”

  “Seven? That’s unusually high.”

  “One looks like it’s been vandalized. Three flat tires. Motor wires and hoses on the ground.”

  “No one complained?”

  “Yes and no. Jack Dibbs said the lady who owned or rented the car spoke to him and ran off saying she was going to call her husband. He must have come and picked her up.”

  “I see. Anything else unusual?” Drew Keosian felt his stomach muscles tighten. “Hidgson, what about this shooting incident you reported?”

  “Three of us saw it,” he said.

  Katy chimed in right away. “Two men with handguns ran into Wild West City and fired several shots. Couldn’t tell what they were firing at.”

  Katy, at twenty-three, was the most definite member of the force. Her reports were always the most clear, succinct and certain. Two months before, she had identified and turned in Alf Worsham, known pickpocket. His own pockets were clean, but the state of California was grateful to collect Worsham, anyway, as there were several bad check charges outstanding against him.

  “Was it some kind of a gag?” Drew asked.

  Katy said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Who was the third constable?”

  “I was,” Mac Innes said.


  “Do you think it was a gag?”

  “Guess so. Musta been blanks. Couldn’t been shootin’ like that, really shootin’, without hittin’ somebody.”

  “Did you apprehend these characters?”

  “Got away,” Hidgson said. “We waited in turns at the main gate, but couldn’t recognize them as they went out—if they went out the main gate.”

  “Description?”

  “Two men,” Katy said. “One wore an Uncle Whimsy T-shirt.”

  “No one has complained,” Drew said carefully. “That right?”

  The constables looked at each other and at him.

  Drew exhaled slowly. “Must have been a gag. Remember that time that gang from some fraternity got naked out at the ice cream parlor and sang, Beat me, daddy, eight to the bar…? You weren’t here then, Katy.”

  “We caught them,” Mac Innes said.

  “We could pick them out of the crowd,” Hidgson said.

  Drew said, “Okay, everybody. See you tomorrow.”

  Drew went into his office. His hands were shaking. Katy did not think it was a gag.

  If there had been a shooting incident at Fantazyland this afternoon—even as a gag—the public must never, never know about it.

  Forty-Nine

  “Shit, Toby. They took down ol’ Spike.”

  “Shh.”

  “They got me. They shot me. They put a bullet in me.”

  Spike was lying on the floor of Ms. Lillyperson’s Cottage, clutching the calf of his leg. His hand was covered with blood.

  Toby was sitting cross-legged near him. He was peering through the cottage’s second-story dormer window.

  Outside, Ms. Lillyperson’s residence looked a graystone cottage on a rise above the walkway up to Princess Daphne’s Flower Palace. Inside, it looked like a packing crate.

  “Not in you,” Toby said. “They put a bullet through you. Through your leg.”

  Toby already had rolled up Spike’s pant leg and examined the wound. He thought it something, seeing Spike’s zebra sock all bloody.

  “Never thought nobody would get ol’ Spike down. Who’d want to shoot me?”