Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Smell food?” Toby asked.

  “Fac’ is, I do. Yes, I do.”

  They went along the corridor slowly. Spike stayed near the right wall, putting his hand out to it frequently.

  They followed their noses to the large, still darkened employees’ cafeteria. In the dim light from the corridor, they found the serving counters and went behind them. Most were bare. On one near the cash registers there were some sandwiches wrapped in cellophane and some half-pint cartons of milk.

  They stood in the dark and munched.

  “What did you get?” Toby asked.

  “Roas’ beef.”

  “I got tuna….What did you get this time?”

  “Roas’ beef.”

  “I did, too.”

  The great fluorescent ceiling lights began to flicker on in waves.

  A man in a white apron stood in the kitchen door holding a large spoon.

  “Hey!” he said.

  Toby dropped his sandwich. “Let’s go!”

  “Nice to know ya,” Spike said.

  They dodged around the counter and ran through the dining area.

  “Hey, you! Come back here!”

  They turned left down the corridor and kept running.

  Toby looked back.

  The cook was standing in the middle of the corridor. “HEY!”

  Toby pushed limping Spike around a corner into another corridor that ran to the left.

  Fifty-Seven

  Christina felt her feet were buried in hot sand.

  She woke up, sat up and looked at them. She was on a couch in the Health Office.

  She couldn’t see her feet very well in the semidark, but her fingers told her how swollen and lacerated they were.

  Standing on them was agony.

  There was a lamp on the desk. She snapped it on.

  On the wall beside the desk was a medicine cabinet with a glass front. It was locked. She broke the glass with a desk stapler. Inside were liquid antiseptics, salves, ointments. Sitting in the desk chair, she poured almost everything she could find onto her feet, one after the other, rubbing them as hard as she could stand. The pain and the pleasure went up the back of her legs to the back of her head.

  Under the typewriter was a pair of nurse’s white shoes. Gingerly, she tried one on. It was blissfully loose.

  Removing the shoe, she wrapped both feet in Ace bandages she found in the medicine cabinet. Then she put the shoes on and laced them tight. She stood up. It would be possible to walk. She would walk. She snapped out the desk light and opened the door.

  Fifty-Eight

  Colonel Turnbull was under the bench in The Victorian Railroad Station, hands folded across his chest, suit coat bunched under his head, finally asleep.

  “Colonel?”

  “Shut up.”

  Monks was over him, on one knee.

  “Shut your face.”

  “People around here,” Monks said softly. “Employees arriving. Better move.”

  “I said, Shut up!”

  Reaching around, Turnbull used the edge of the bench to pull himself into a sitting position. He worked his way up to his feet.

  “Rinaldi,” Turnbull said. Coughing, he corkscrewed phlegm out of his chest and spat it on the railroad station’s floor.

  “Shh,” Monks said. He retrieved the Colonel’s coat from under the bench.

  “There’s an elevator in there.” Monks held the Colonel’s coat. “It goes down somewhere.”

  The other two men were standing in the stationmaster’s office. The elevator door was open.

  His eyes red, his hands shaking, Turnbull stepped into the elevator.

  Fifty-Nine

  MEMO

  INTERNAL ONLY

  FANTAZYLAND CONSTABULARY DEPARTMENT

  MONDAY A.M.

  FIRST REPORT

  COPY NUMBER: One

  Drew Keosian

  Item 1: Dodge Aspen Stationwagon left in main parking lot last Saturday P.M. identified by Nevada Police as stolen. Owner notified. Will pick up Wednesday. Name of Gotlieb.

  Item 2: Pink Card Employee (cook) José Jones reported seven twenty A.M. two persons in or near employees’ cafeteria: man, about thirty, torn trousers, limping; boy, about ten, white shorts, blue shirt; together.

  Item 3: Pink Card Employee (aquamaid) Kathy Runson reported eight-three A.M. bikini top missing from locker third time in week.

  Item 4: Black Card Employee (watchman) Grieves reported eightthirty A.M. meeting Black Card Employee (watchman) Billy Joe Carfer on path near Future Transport Rocket at one-fifteen A.M. driving patrol vehicle erratically. Not responsive when spoken to. Carfer, age twenty-two, is known to have an interest in art.

  Item 5: White Card Employee (nurse) Lydia Kozol reported eightthirty A.M. office medicine chest broken into, salves, bandages missing. Also missing were her shoes.

  Item 6: Disturbance reported in aquamaids’ locker room eight-forty-seven A.M. Pink Card Employee Kathy Runson sent to Personnel.

  * * *

  Chief Constable Drew Keosian had his hand on his desk telephone before he finished reading the morning report.

  Joe Grady, his second-in-command (Mobile Unit), picked up.

  “Read the morning report yet, Joe?”

  “Yeah. That Kathy Runson sounds like a hot ticket. What’s she got the other aquamaids haven’t got? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Keosian had never been keen on indecent reference. In his job, he had to accept a certain amount of it.

  “A man and a boy in Fantazyland Under. At dawn. The man possibly wounded.”

  Drew Keosian had not slept well. He had tried to conceptualize how there could have been a real shooting incident in the Wild West City—how two men could possibly have shot into that crowd without hitting anybody. He told himself it couldn’t have happened.

  “Yeah.”

  “And I doubt either the man or the boy stole Nurse Kozol’s shoes.”

  “Or Kathy Runson’s bikini top…”

  “Put half the available constables into the Underground. Tell them what they’re looking for. I’ll be going right down myself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Joe, this character, Item Four, Billy Joe Carfer, watchman?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Fire him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Drew put the telephone receiver back on its yoke. From his desk drawer he took a .38 caliber handgun. He checked it quickly. Standing up, he dropped it into his pants pocket.

  Leaving his office, crossing to the elevator, he reminded himself, Even in Eden, the snakes….

  Sixty

  In the dim light of the main corridor of the tunnel there were four people.

  Christina was aware that far up the corridor a man was limping away from her. She had no idea who he was. More to her interest, behind her down the corridor was the tall man in the gray suit she had last seen asleep in the chair. I’m seeing rather too much of him, she thought. Behind him, a constable had stepped into the corridor. He was standing still, looking in her direction.

  Christina looked back and forth.

  Around a corner came a monkey wearing a red hat. It was riding a green unicycle. Over its shoulder it carried a yellow umbrella.

  The monkey chattered at Christina insistently. In warning? In anger?

  The walls echoed the monkey’s chatter.

  Suddenly, there was light. Everywhere. Blinding light. It poured from the tops of both walls. Triangled behind glass between walls and ceilings were fluorescent lights.

  The tall man in the gray suit shouted, “Mullins!”

  On top of his echo the constable shouted, “Hey! Freeze!”

  Chattering nervously, the monkey made a perfect U-turn on its unicycle. Furiously it pedaled up the corridor and around a corner.

  Christina shouted, “What’s happening?”

  Pale eyes staring, the tall man in the gray suit strode quickly past her.

  The constable flun
g off his helmet and ran after him. His nightstick bounced against his leg.

  The man with the limp had disappeared.

  Christina yelled after the constable, “What’s happening?”

  In the corner remained only the echo of her own voice.

  Sixty-One

  Toby, walking ahead of Spike in the tunnel, had just turned a corner. Behind him, instead of Spike, came a monkey on a unicycle, shaking its fist. It rode in a circle around Toby and tried to hit him over the head with an umbrella.

  “Hey, lay off!” Toby said.

  As the lights in this corridor came on, the monkey rode away, looking back at him angrily.

  From around the corner came the sound of shouting. A woman’s voice was shouting a question. A man’s voice was shouting a statement, or a name. The edges of the voices were blurred by the hard tunnel walls.

  Spike came around the corner, favoring his wounded leg. He was moving fast.

  “Let’s go,” Spike said. “Go, go!”

  * * *

  They went.

  Spike dragged his leg after him. He kept his hand behind his thigh to continue pushing his leg forward. He was still losing blood. His face was drained, white.

  Leading, Toby decided their direction.

  “Come on, Spike. In here!”

  “Aw, shut up, ya little punk.”

  “Through here, Spike! Hurry up!”

  “Punk kid. I’m hurryin’!”

  They went up an elevator marked, RED CARD EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  Just after the elevator door closed behind them, they discovered they were in the target area of a shooting gallery.

  “Aw, shit!” Spike dropped to all fours. Rifle pellets shot over their heads and thwacked against a thick mat. “Now everybody’s shootin’ at ol’ Spike!”

  They crawled through a cabin tunnel and dropped into a room full of loud, huge, hot machinery.

  “Wait a minute, Toby! Gotta sit down. Gotta rest. All my blood leaked out, ya know…”

  “Too noisy here,” Toby shouted.

  “Gimme a chance, willya, kid?”

  Spike followed him.

  Underground, they went along iron scaffolding. Deep pits of machinery—humming, hissing, thumping, pumping machinery—yawned below them. Toby ran from pit to pit. Waiting for Spike, he looked down at the machinery, studying it. The machines were enormous, but intricate.

  Spike worked his way along the scaffold, averting his eyes from everything below him. He kept both hands on the thin railing.

  “Wow!” Toby said. “Look at that!”

  “Yeah, yeah, kid. You look at it.”

  * * *

  They went through various twists and turns of a tunnel not big enough for a horse. An organ was screeching shrill, spine-tingling music. It reverberated from the walls, ceiling, floor.

  “Hey, Spike! Look at this!”

  Toby had found a small, narrow, green-tinted window in the wall. It took Spike’s eye a moment to adjust.

  He was looking into the living room of Spooky House. An open coffin was at one side of the room.

  The corpse was a young lady. Her hands were around the stem of a rose upon her breast. At the coffin’s foot was a lit candle. A flour-faced hag, a ghost, long white hair down the back of her long nightgown, passed through the room. The arm of a standing suit of armor clanked a chain.

  And the organ screeched.

  The tourists smiled and laughed and applauded and took pictures.

  In the middle of the crowd were the two gunmen who had shot at Spike and Toby the day before. With them was a third man—a heavy man in a bulky, rough suit. Each was looking around and up and down the walls in a far more methodical manner than were the tourists.

  “Hey, Spike!” Toby punched him in the arm. “Spooky House. Remember? We’re in the walls of Spooky House. Cool, huh?”

  Spike looked away. Something in his stomach was bothering him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Cool. I think we better keep movin’, kid.”

  “Don’t you want to rest? I want to watch the people be scared.”

  Spike limped on. “You can watch me.”

  * * *

  Toby was the first up a metal ladder. At the top, he pushed open a trap door and pulled himself through. In this tunnel there was a railroad track. He stood in the middle of it.

  A railroad train was heading straight for him. Its headlight was piercing. The whistle was urgent, shrill.

  “Boo!” Toby said to it. “You’ll never hit me!”

  He helped Spike through the trap door.

  “Look at this, Spike. Remember that ride we were on? You go through the tunnel and you think a train is going to hit you and you get right up to it and it’s only an illusion and suddenly it isn’t there anymore? We’re there! I mean, here. There’s the train.”

  Spike stood on the track.

  “You forgot somethin’, Toby.”

  “What?”

  The structure beneath their feet was trembling.

  “A train goes through here. Punk kid! The one we were on.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Toby said. “I forgot.”

  He had dropped the trap door.

  A train of wagonettes came around the curve. Aboard were tourists—so many white arms and faces—screaming and laughing.

  Spike said, “Shit!”

  He grabbed Toby’s shoulder and pulled him against the wall.

  The tourists swayed by them, eyes gleaming, mouths open, hair flying, row after row, screaming at the illusion that they were about to be hit by an oncoming train.

  The eyes of one girl fell on Toby. Her head snapped around. She looked at him again.

  With a final, deafening hoot, the oncoming train disappeared.

  The train of wagonettes clattered on.

  The tourists shrieked away.

  Sixty-Two

  We’re in The Hat. We’re in The Hat, Toby sang to himself. We’re in The Hat. And Spike doesn’t know it.

  They had returned to the main tunnels of Fantazyland Underground. Immediately, Toby smelled food. They walked a short way along the sidewalk.

  Spike stopped. He leaned his hand against the wall. He lifted his damaged leg as if kicking it slowly and looked at his foot.

  “It’s all swole,” he said.

  Keeping his weight off his foot, Spike leaned his back against the wall. In that light, Toby thought Spike looked as white as the girl in the coffin in Spooky House. Even whiter. As white as the ghost.

  “People will come along here,” Toby warned.

  “Like who?” Spike asked. “Ghosts. Sharks. Railroad trains. What else? Jeez, I dunno.” He took a deep breath. “I dunno kid.”

  Toby shrugged. “People,” he said.

  Spike snorted, coughed. “‘People,’” he said.

  He rubbed his good eye.

  “That’s a laugh. ‘People.’ Tell me another.”

  Facing Spike, Toby was balancing himself on the sidewalk’s curb.

  Toby said, “Like the two guys who shot at us yesterday. In Wild West City.”

  “Them two. They shoulda been taken out with the garbage.”

  Quietly, Toby said, “They weren’t. I’m looking at them.”

  Spike’s head snapped up. “You’re lookin’ at ’em?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  Without moving his head, Toby said, “They’re coming down the corridor. To my left.”

  “Yeah? No foolin’.”

  “No foolin’.”

  “They see you?”

  “Sure, they see me.”

  “They got guns?”

  “Suppose so.”

  “Why aren’t they shootin’ at ya?”

  “I’m just a kid. Grown-ups can’t tell kids apart.”

  “It’s me they’ll shoot at. Right?”

  Toby said, “I expect so.”

  “Yeah? So whadda we do? My back’s against the wall. See?”

  “There’s an elevator right next to you
.”

  “Yeah? So there is.”

  “Press the button.”

  The sign on the elevator said, DOUBLE RED CARD EMPLOYEES ONLY, NO OTHER ADMITTANCE.

  “Guess what, Spike? They see you.”

  The elevator door opened.

  Spike looked around.

  “It is them same guys!”

  They got into the elevator. Toby pushed the button.

  The two men were loping down the corridor toward them.

  The elevator door closed and the car shot upward in a surprising, ear-cracking rush. It rose for a fairly long time.

  We’re in The Hat. We’re in The Hat.

  “No stops,” Spike said.

  * * *

  The elevator door slid open.

  Spike looked out. His working eye widened.

  “Oh, Lord,” he said. “Look where we are.”

  “Yeah,” Toby said. “Top of The Hat.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Can’t go back down in the elevator, Spike.”

  Spike limped off the elevator. “Must be some other way down.”

  There was a heavy mesh fence between them and the platform where the tourists stood in line. The front of the line fed people into the small, brightly painted gondolas.

  When a gondola had a party of two or four in it, it would slip down the track and fall onto the rail outside The Hat. Instantly, the people would begin screaming. They would appear against the sky for only a moment before they would drop down to the left, out of sight.

  Music was playing.

  Roundsy, roundsy…

  Downsy, downsy…

  Toby and Spike were on the maintenance men’s side of the mesh fence.

  A man appeared against the other side. Though it was softened by the fence, Toby thought the man’s face dreadful. It was fat and broken with lines and bumps. The red eyes were staring at him.

  “Are you Tobias Rinaldi?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Tobias Rinaldi, I’m your uncle.” The man reached inside his suit coat. “Augustus Turnbull. And I’m going to kill you. And then your mother. And then your precious father!”

  Toby sidled along the fence to his left, toward daylight. He felt wind.

  There was a ledge. It was black, smooth plastic. Like a lip, it curved outward and downward.