Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Behind him, Turnbull shouted, “Mullins!”

  Toby stepped onto the ledge. From what he could see, it went around the outside of The Hat.

  Roundsy, roundsy…

  A gondola dropped onto the track. The ledge began to vibrate. The tourists were screaming in their own fright.

  Toby tried to jump back, off the ledge. The vibration was too much. He had already been shaken half a meter down the ledge.

  The gondola was pirouetting in front of Toby. The people’s faces looked truly frightened.

  To his right, another gondola dropped onto the track.

  Somewhere a voice shouted, “There’s a kid out there!”

  Toby sat down. Whatever traction the soles of his sneakers had given him he lost. The seat of his shorts gave him none. The vibration of the ledge was banging up his spinal column. His teeth were chattering.

  The second gondola was pirouetting in the air in front of him. The tourists were laughing. One, who was not laughing, was trying to point to him. Roundsy, roundsy…

  Toby’s feet went over the edge. He tried to hold himself back with the flat of his hands. He fell forward. Below him, all Fantazyland moved, tilted. Wind shouted in his ears.

  His fingers grabbed the outside gondola track. He was hanging from the rail by his fingers. He held on, dangled in space.

  The track began to shake. Toby looked up. A yellow gondola had dropped onto the track. It would run over his fingers.

  Toby let go.

  Downsy, downsy…

  Below him, Fantazyland zoomed closer.

  “Ow!”

  His mouth banged shut. His knees, the small of his back, his neck jolted. His feet had landed on something. He tried to steady himself. The wind helped. He bent his knees and put out his hands and let himself down.

  Toby was well outside The Hat, outside the gondola track. He was on a black guard rail.

  Lying on it, he hugged it with his arms and legs. Fantazyland was still far below him. The roofs were many colors and many shapes. The paths seemed aimless. People looked like little bugs. The wind filled his ears, bringing snatches of carousel music. He could hear the lovely, awful noise of the air-cushion boat on the lake.

  Then he heard the gondola track rattling.

  Toby looked up.

  A red gondola was coming. One man was in it. Under his flapping jacket he wore an Uncle Whimsy T-shirt. The man’s arm was reaching out of the gondola at him.

  Toby put out his left hand for the man to grab.

  But instead, he felt the man’s hand against his ribs…pushing!

  Toby held onto the rail tight, with both arms.

  The gondola was gone.

  Toby was panting. The wind made his lips flap.

  A sudden melody blew in from the carousel. He recognized Waltzing Matilda. He had heard that song years ago when he had gone with his parents and His Majesty to some big, sunny country where all the people were big and sunburned and laughed loud and grabbed him and hugged him.

  At the sound of the track rattling, he looked up again. A green gondola was coming.

  Augustus. He said his name was Augustus. Colonel Augustus Something. Why did he say he was my knuckle?

  Colonel Augustus Turnbull was in the gondola. He was aiming a pistol at Toby. He was coming very close. The hole in the pistol’s barrel was a perfect circle.

  The gondola spun the man around.

  The gun went off.

  Toby turned his head. He was looking outward at the sky. He looked down. Fantazyland swayed, like a rug moving under his feet.

  He shot The Hat! Colonel Augustus Something-or-other shot Uncle Whimsy’s Hat!

  “TOBY?”

  The next gondola was pink. Spike was standing up in it, waving both his arms.

  “Wake up, punk! Le’s go! Reach out here. Come on! Le go that thing!”

  Sitting up a little, keeping both legs wrapped around the guard rail, Toby sent his arms toward Spike.

  Spike yelled, “Grab me! Lean in. Come on, le’s go!”

  The inside of Toby’s legs got scraped. His head was moving. He closed his eyes. There was a massive hand on each side of his rib cage. The back of his head bounced on something metallic.

  He looked up. He was on the floor of the gondola. The sky above him was spinning. Spike’s head was going in a circle. Spike’s hand was on Toby’s bare stomach.

  The sky stopped spinning. Spike’s head straightened. The muscles in his neck were bulging. Both his hands grabbed the safety bar.

  They were moving straight ahead.

  The gondola was gathering speed.

  “You know, kid…” The world went dark. “…this ain’t percisely my favorite ride….”

  Sixty-Three

  Christina was looking down from a scaffold into what appeared to be a sixteenth-century banquet hall. Two men dressed as cavaliers, lace collars and cuffs, plumed hats, were dueling with swords. They jumped onto the banquet table, leaped over a soup tureen, kicked aside a roast pig…

  The tourists smiled and laughed and applauded and took pictures.

  She examined the crowd carefully.

  No Toby.

  In the crowd there were three boys of about his age. One was blond and overweight and hot. He looked like an apple being baked. One was so skinny his knees looked like doorknobs. The third glowed. She thought he looked rather like Toby.

  How many small boys had she seen the last few days that looked something like Toby…? It was a phenomenon with which she was familiar. Missing Toby so much, frequently in a street in New York, in a department store, passing Central Park in the car, Christina would catch her breath at the sight of a boy for a fraction of a second she would think was Toby. For a long moment then, she would be sad at the thought of Toby in school in New Hampshire, at a sailing camp on Cape Cod—being somewhere, anywhere away from her. The last days, in the airport, in the streets, at Fantazyland, the phenomenon of seeing someone who was like Toby, who she wanted to believe was Toby, had been frequent. The psychological phenomenon was cruel.

  In the white shoes, Christina had plodded along the main Underground tunnel corridor. The constable, the man in the long overcoat, the limping man—even the chattering monkey—had disappeared.

  Wanting to get out, back to the surface of the earth, Christina took elevators.

  The first brought her to the inside of a mammoth music box. The din it made was horrible. The flowers that bloom in spring, tra la…She knew she was in Princess Daphne’s Flower Palace.

  She did not know where she was when the door of the second elevator opened. She was facing a green wall. Immediately, a five-foot duck waddled onto the elevator. It stood beside her, looking sideways at her curiously. Silently, Christina rode the elevator down again with the duck.

  The third elevator brought her into the stomach of a whale. She looked through a window in the whale’s side. Pilot fish dangled on barely visible wires. A submarine glided through the murky water.

  She finally went through an ordinary door, up a steep iron ladder and along a scaffold. At least from there she had seen some children, even if Toby wasn’t among them.

  The metal scaffold began to quiver. At about the pace of a heartbeat. Footsteps. She looked ahead through the gloom. The tall, skinny man in the gray suit appeared in the distance, walking toward her.

  Quietly, she moved in the opposite direction.

  Below her another room, oddly lit, opened up. She looked over the railing and down into it.

  A long rope swung ponderously back and forth. At the end of it gleamed a razor-sharp pendulum. Around the room were guillotines of various sizes and styles. One after another, the blades would rise slowly, then fall with a horrendous clash.

  Moving back and forth in the room in a frightening, lurching manner was a huge wooden barrel. It turned slowly as it moved back and forth, up and down. Long, flashing knives stuck out of it at every angle, from every direction. Looking at it, Christina became nauseous.

  T
his must be The Hall of Knives. Behind a rope, tourists stood. For once, they looked solemn, surrounded as they were by machines of death.

  Someone grabbed the hair at the back of Christina’s head, pulled her back, roughly twisted her head around.

  Turnbull’s face was an inch from hers. The veins in his eyes bulged.

  “Christina…Finch…Rinaldi!” The last word struck her in the face with spittle. He yanked her hair harder. “Where is the boy?”

  “Stop!”

  “You don’t have the boy, do you?”

  “No! Stop!”

  “You don’t know where the boy is, do you?”

  “No. No, I don’t!”

  “But I have you, haven’t I?…Christina Rinaldi.”

  Holding on to her hair, he pulled her head back, twisting her neck.

  “I have you…and I shall have the little bastard…won’t I?”

  Long, bony white fingers appeared on Turnbull’s shoulders.

  Turnbull looked around.

  The face of the tall man in the gray suit was paper white. In the dim light, the pupils of his eyes were almost colorless.

  Turnbull let go of Christina’s hair. He turned around to face the man. They all stood close together on the narrow scaffold. Christina’s back was against the thin metal railing.

  “Yes, Simon?” Turnbull said softly. “What do you want?”

  “I need the woman, Gus.” Cord’s tone was as reasonable as a teacher explaining geometry. “I need the boy. Only another few hours.”

  “Another few hours for you to mess up again, Cord? For me to lose them both?”

  “Gus—”

  “No!” Turnbull roared. “I’ve shit in this bed! If they don’t die, and die now…” Holding his hands before his chest, he tightened his fingers as if squeezing tennis balls “…I’ve yet to get precious Teodoro….”

  “Another few hours, Gus.” Cord’s pale eyes flickered at Christina. “Then you can waste the whole family, all we care.”

  Turnbull swung his fist. He hit Cord on the jaw.

  Then his fingers dug into Christina’s neck. The balls of his thumbs pressed into her throat

  She tried to raise her knee, but Turnbull was too close.

  There was a flash of white over Turnbull’s shoulder as Cord chopped him in the neck.

  Turnbull let go of Christina.

  “Gus, you’re insane,” Cord said conversationally.

  Cord slammed the side of his hand against Turnbull’s throat.

  Turnbull staggered forward. He drew his other hand back to his shoulder to swing at Cord.

  Cord laced his fingers together and put them against Turnbull’s face. He stepped beside Turnbull and threw his hips against Turnbull’s and pushed.

  Turnbull’s feet rose from the scaffold. Blood was dribbling from his nose and mouth.

  Cord, sideways to the railing, had all his weight on one foot.

  Immediately, impulsively, instinctively, Christina jumped and hit Cord’s near shoulder with both hands. She put her full weight into the blow. Cord’s waist was well above the railing, his head already on the other side.

  Cord turned his face to Christina. He knew he was falling. The expression on his face was totally indifferent.

  Christina’s left hand clutched the railing. From below there was a loud, delighted screaming.

  She looked over the railing. Both men had landed on the twirling barrel of knives.

  Turnbull was spreadeagled on his back. The knives that protruded from his stomach glistened with blood.

  Cord had landed on his stomach. Knives pierced his shoulder, his chest, his back, one leg.

  The barrel lurched round and round, back and forth, up and down, rotating the bodies. Blood dripped onto the floor in crazy patterns.

  The tourists smiled and laughed and applauded and took pictures.

  Sixty-Four

  “Ma’am, what are you doing here?”

  For the moment, Christina could not answer She was in the main corridor of Fantazyland’s Underground again. All the lights were on. She could not remember how she got there. Had she ever left?

  She pressed the heel of her hand against her temple. She remembered kneeling on some iron rungs…the scaffold…vomiting…dry retching. Then wanting to go somewhere, anywhere, walking…

  She looked around the walls and ceiling of the brightly lit tunnel.

  There was a constable standing before her. His face was surprisingly tanned, for that handlebar mustache, that bobby’s helmet. There was a patrol vehicle standing in the middle of the corridor. There was another man, dressed in a light sports jacket. He had his hand on her arm.

  “My name is Drew Keosian,” he said. “I work here at Fantazyland. I want to help you.”

  Far up the corridor, a man limped around the corner. One of his pant legs looked wet, adhered to his leg.

  Behind him loped a small boy. White shorts, blue jersey…

  “Oh, my God,” Christina said.

  Keosian looked around.

  “Toby!”

  He looked straight at his mother.

  What is he doing? What is Toby doing?

  The boy put his hands on the man’s back, turned him around and pushed him. He hurried the man back around the corner, out of sight.

  “Toby!” Christina screamed again.

  Keosian and the constable jumped onto the patrol vehicle. The cart accelerated instantly, quietly.

  Its brake lights flashed as it went around the corner.

  * * *

  Again, Christina was alone in the corridor.

  Toby….What is wrong with Toby…?

  As well as she could on her damaged feet, Christina ran along the corridor.

  He saw me…I know he saw me…He heard me…I know he did. Toby! As she hurried along, Christina tried to clear her eyes of tears. She turned the corner. She looked both ways.

  There was no one at all in sight.

  A little more slowly, trying to even out her breathing, trying to dry her face, Christina walked. The bandages in her shoes were wet with blood. Her feet slipped in the shoes.

  At the next intersection, instead of turning left, Christina crossed the corridor and took the tunnel to the right.

  A five-foot beaver, dragging its tail on the floor, hurried past her.

  Then she heard Toby’s voice. He sounded so casual, as if he were trying to wake her up.

  “Hey, Mom?”

  Christina spun around, slipping in the big white shoes.

  Toby stood against the wall, grinning. Next to him was a door marked, COSTUMES.

  All the breath went out of her.

  “Where you been, Mom?”

  She grabbed him. She folded him into her arms.

  “What’s the matter with your feet? Did you really break your ankles?”

  “Toby, Toby, Toby…”

  “Ma’am? Hey, you! Ma’am! Miss!”

  A constable down the corridor was waving his arm at them as he jogged toward them. “Wait a minute, miss!”

  From under her breasts, Toby looked up at his mother, smiled and said, “Come on!”

  He took Christina by the arm and pulled her a few steps. He pushed a button on the wall.

  A door slid open.

  “In here.” He pulled her in. Grinning, he said, “Up?”

  He pushed another button. The elevator door closed.

  Christina held Toby close to her. She pressed his body against hers.

  Then, like a mother cat, she took his hair in her mouth. She put her wet cheeks against the top of his head and kissed it again and again.

  “Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby,” she said. “Oh, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby…”

  Sixty-Five

  “Mr. Ambassador? I know you asked not to be disturbed at all, but Mrs. Rinaldi is on line 253. She says it is urgent.”

  At his desk, Ambassador Teodoro Rinaldi looked around his office at his staff. They sat with papers in their laps, pens in their hands. The eyes of each of
them had fallen at the sound of Sylvia Menninges’s voice over the intercom.

  He looked at his watch. In two hours he was scheduled to stand before the assembled delegates to the United Nations and submit Resolution 1176R.

  The button on line 253 was flashing. Teddy put his hand on the receiver.

  He was not sure that he wanted to, or could, talk to Christina just then. It was her right; it was her need to ask him what he had decided.

  That afternoon Teddy had received a coldly worded directive from the King ordering him to submit Resolution 1176R.

  Two hours before he was to deliver the speech, Ambassador Teodoro Rinaldi had decided nothing. He had simply continued operating as well as he could, upon the basic principle of diplomacy: keep all options open as long as possible. Many, many times he had learned the greatest mistake was in making a decision before it had to be made. Several times in his professional career he had believed he had all the facts necessary, all the facts available, to make a decision, hesitated just a moment longer and been surprised by a new fact, totally unexpected, that changed his decision totally.

  Pretending they were not there—not hearing, seeing—his staff, in the final meeting two hours before the culmination of all their work, hopes, just before he was expected to offer a masterwork of diplomacy to create a new economic sanity, a new, essential peace guarantee, for their nation, their people, their homes, for the world, sat there, eyes on their laps, doodling on pads. They were aware of his hesitation in answering the phone.

  Urgent? If this was bad news about Toby, the Ambassador was certain he couldn’t assimilate it, accept it; he couldn’t take it.

  He had better hear it.

  Teddy put the receiver to his ear, “Christina?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  The Ambassador looked around at his staff, around the room at the tops of their heads.

  “Toby?”

  Suddenly he was seeing faces in his office. Faces. Not tops of heads.

  “Toby! Are you all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your mother with you?”

  “Sure.”

  The faces were beaming.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Her feet hurt.”

  “What’s wrong with her feet?”