Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Robby opened his eyes. Frankie was still staring at him, awaiting the answer. “Sorry, sir. I can’t think of one person who cares for me. Now may I have some more jam?”

  “Of course, you can, darlin’. It’s a wonder your pants didn’t fall down, with your stomach so empty.”

  Frankie concluded, “We have to throw him back, Marie.”

  “Throw him back?”

  “He’s too little a fish to fry.”

  “Why, he’s not a fish at all. He’s a wee homeless boy.”

  “Homeless! That’s what you should have thought of before you kidnapped him! There’s no one in the world who’d give up a burp for this boy.”

  “You mean, throw the little fish back into the sewers of New York? There are sharks out there, Frankie. Bad people.” Marie rolled her blue eyes to indicate to Frankie how bad those bad people were. “I couldn’t sleep if we did that, Frankie. I have a conscience.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Ask your Uncle Guido, Frankie. Now there’s a man who knows how to turn a dishonest dollar.”

  “Uncle Guido won’t give me the time of day since I married you. He thinks you’re a pipe straight to the police. Only Tony he talks to.”

  “We’ll ask Tony then.”

  “Tony? Give him some of the profits? It’s not bad enough we’re feedin’ him now?”

  “He’s your brother, Frankie, and may have a better criminal mind than you. He’s never seen the inside of a jail, and yet I know he does not tip-toe through the world in an entirely righteous manner.”

  “That draft-dodger.”

  “He’s a quiet man, Frankie. A man of peace.” Marie leaned forward assertively in her chair. “Frankie, darlin’, your Uncle Guido doesn’t like you because you’re bubble-brained. Next to you, a subway train has more originality in the directions it takes.”

  “He thinks I’m bubble-brained because I married you! He doesn’t think it. He knows it! You have to be one bubble-brained Italian to eat Mulligan stew all your life!”

  “Have you noticed all the grape jelly is gone? And the bread? I’ve never seen anyone eat a whole jar of grape jelly before.”

  “The King is a hog,” decided Frankie.

  “It was very good, Mrs. Savallo. Thank you.”

  “Shush! Is that Tony now?”

  Frankie listened. “If that was Tony, you couldn’t hear him.”

  Marie said, “I didn’t hear him.” She began to gather the teacups from the table. She said, “I felt him.”

  Robby turned to the door, just as it began to open.

  12

  A Man of Peace

  Tony Savallo’s eyes, steady, direct, were in Robby’s as the door opened. His eyes clasped onto the new, unexpected element in the room as if he had seen Robby through the door and had only opened the door to get a better look. Robby had the impression that if there had been a mouse in the corner behind the stove Tony would have seen it, too, instantly, and without moving his eyes.

  “Hey, Tony,” Frankie said loudly from his wheelchair. “Come meet His Lordship!”

  “You’ll like some tea, Tony?” Marie was bustling faster than ever. “I’ll warm the pot.”

  Without his appearing to move, the door behind Tony closed. It latched with a barely audible click.

  “Come sit down, Tony. Quick, Marie, some tea for Tony.”

  As Tony came across the room to Robby he took his right hand from the pocket of his windbreaker and kept it at the level of Robby’s face. Even when Tony moved he seemed absolutely still. Standing directly before Robby, Tony settled the weight of his body on his right hip. His right pant leg brushed Robby’s knee. Tony cupped Robby’s left jawbone in his right hand and turned Robby’s face up fully toward his own. Robby smelled from him the smell of lead pencils. The skin of Tony’s face was clear and tight. His eyes were wide-set and black. The immobility of Tony’s face appeared to come from its skin having been stretched too tightly over his skull. The long, smooth muscles in his neck were repeated on both sides of his wrist and the back of his hand.

  “This is Tony, kid. My brother.” Frankie shrugged. “A draft-dodger.”

  “He’s against fighting,” amplified Marie. “A man of peace.”

  “I fall off a roof,” Frankie said, “spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Tony’s got legs, but won’t go to war.”

  Gently, Tony’s hand moved up Robby’s cheek, opened into fingers and combed through his hair. “War is inefficient,” said Tony to Robby. “Don’t you agree?”

  “It can make a bloody mess, sir.”

  Tony put his hand back into his pocket and watched Marie putting more tea leaves into the pot.

  “Lissen, Tony, sit down.”

  With his huge arm Frankie swung Marie’s chair around, putting it into a more inviting position for Tony.

  Even sitting in Marie’s chair, Tony still did not seem to be at the table. It was more as if he were on a park bench, looking at everyone across a path.

  “See, Tony, it’s like this.” Frankie was pulled right up to the table, both elbows on the surface. “Marie kidnapped this kid.”

  Such information, to Tony, was not cause for an aria. It was not even cause for a raised eyebrow.

  “Right off the street. He was goin’ to school and was lost or somethin’. And he turns out to be this English duke or somethin’. She recognized him from the newspaper. He’s in this mornin’s paper. Marie, get Tony the paper.” Marie hustled from the sinkboard with the crumpled newspaper. “Hey, Marie!” protested Frankie. “The newspaper’s still all covered with garbage! Whatsa matter with you?”

  She shook the newspaper over the sink. “I didn’t know I was going to kidnap a child, especially this child, when I was doin’ up the breakfast dishes, darlin’.” Quickly she laid the smelly newspaper flat on the kitchen table again in front of Tony. She placed her index finger on Robby’s picture. “He ate a whole jar of grape jelly in one sitting, Tony. Would you believe it?”

  “See? He’s a duke or somethin’. He knows the King. The King of England, Tony.”

  Tony’s eyes flickered acknowledgment of the newspaper laid before him.

  “Only, Tony, see? Marie, the dumb broad, when she kidnaps the kid doesn’t realize he’s an orphan. She has to come home to me to find that out. His parents got killed in the war. Where does it say that? Down here, see? All he’s got is an aunt who is a farmer somewhere. It’s like that, see? So we’ve been sittin’ here discussin’ who’s gonna pay his ransom, you got me?”

  “Look at his clothes, Tony.” Again Marie Savallo tucked her fingers down under Robby’s shirt collar as if selling the item through fair examination of detail. “Everything special made for him and hand-sewn like a cardinal at his altar and he’s only a wee boy whistlin’ in the street.”

  “But, you see, Tony, we got this big problem: Nobody cares about the kid, see? I mean, that’s a big problem for us. An uncle he’s supposed to have uptown doesn’t exist. The bastard’s an orphan, Tony!”

  Tony remained like a young lion in sunlight, not blinking.

  “And, Tony, you know I can’t go to Uncle Guido. You know how it is between us, with Marie and all. He thinks she’s an informer or somethin’. And, you know, since I fell off the roof, you know, well, Uncle Guido thinks I got less brains than a mailbox.”

  Marie put a cup of tea in front of Tony.

  He said: “Thank you.”

  Frankie said, “So what do you think, Tony?”

  Marie sat down in the fourth place at table, her hands to her cheeks.

  Tony drained his teacup, silently.

  “The best idea we got, Tony, is to try hittin’ up the King of England.” Frankie’s laugh at their best idea was a little nervous. “Only you can’t just call up the King in England. It’s long distance, Tony.”

  “A fearful long distance,” agreed Marie.

  “So what do we do, Tony?”

  “There must be an embassy,” said Marie Savallo.
“Of course there is. In Washington, I bet it is. We should call up the Ambassador from England, Frankie.” Excited by her own idea, Marie’s index fingers made roads through the garbage on the newspaper. “Tell the Ambassador to tell the King we’ve kidnapped a little friend of his, a nice little lad in short pants named all those names he’ll remember from the competition over the strawberry jam pot, and we want one hundred thousand dollars for his return, and none of his English funny money, by the way.”

  The Savallo brothers were looking at Marie. Frankie’s mouth was open. “A hundred thousand dollars! Have you gone nuts?” Frankie jerked his thumb at Robby. “Who’d pay a hundred thousand dollars for this kid? He’s not worth his weight in wood the termites have been at!”

  Robby didn’t know the value of a hundred thousand dollars, but he did consider one hundred thousand anything rather a lot. On the other hand, at Pladroman House in Mayfair he had seen wood the termites had been at and thought himself more substantial than that. If left to his own appraisal, Robby would assess his worth in neither terms whatsoever.

  “I tell you, Marie,” Frankie reiterated, “no one would pay one hundred thousand dollars for this kid, duke or no.”

  “Sure,” Marie said quietly, but with great determination, “I wouldn’t give the darlin’ up for a penny less.”

  “Tony,” Frankie shouted. “Make this woman shut up and tell me what to do, willya?”

  Tony got up from the table. He put his hands over his head as far as they would go and clutched them together. He stood on tiptoes and stretched his whole body. He rotated his torso and yawned. He said, “Keep him.”

  “What?”

  It was Frankie who spoke, but husband and wife looked equally shocked and perplexed by the comment.

  “It’s what you want to do.” Tony relaxed from his aspirations and put his hands back in his pockets. “You can’t have a kid of your own. Marie wants this kid. She kidnapped him, sure, but not for money. For love.” Tony’s unmoving eyes included Robby in their scope. “Keep him and love him.”

  “Tony!” Marie seemed embarrassed and appalled that her criminality should be so impugned before her husband. “It’s not true at all.” Tony’s eyes locked in hers.

  “We’re too poor, Tony, anyway,” she said. “This is an expensive lad. You didn’t see what the boy had for lunch. A whole jar of grape jelly and a plateful of bread. That’s all right as an investment, Tony, the fatted calf and all. But, every day, Tony, feedin’ him while he’s growin’? And would you have me hand-sewin’ things for him till I’m old and blind?”

  Frankie’s eyes, as he stared at Marie, were incredulous. Marie’s eyes shifted lowly as if her mind had been violated.

  Tony stood nearer one of the cots.

  “Tony, before you nap…” Marie got up from the table. “…I need five dollars for the groceries.”

  “Sure, Marie.” Tony took a bill from his pocket and handed it to her. The number ten was in the corner of the bill Robby saw.

  “I’ll just get my coat,” Marie said. As she moved quickly around the room collecting her coat and hat and purse she kept looking back at Frankie whose incredulous eyes were following her. She seemed to think Frankie was working up to an aria d’agilita which would prove too great a strain for her ears. “I’ll be back,” she said, as she scurried through the door.

  “This time bring back the groceries!” Frankie shouted after her. “You bring back a herd of elephants, I’ll kill you! Don’t bring back a single elephant! Not even one!”

  From the cot on which Tony lay came the sound of a chuckle.

  Frankie looked at Robby and then at the pieces of his picture puzzle all over the floor. “Columbus,” he said to himself. Then he shouted at the closed door again: “You see Mussolini in the street, leave him there! He wouldn’t like your Mulligan stew parmigiana anyway! Neither would the Roosevelts or the King of France!” In a much lower voice, Frankie said, “Neither do I.”

  From the cot came no sound at all—not even the sound of breathing.

  Frankie muttered, “I wonder what she really went out to do.”

  13

  In Durance

  “Columbus!” Frankie Savallo sighed.

  Robby was going around the room on one knee picking up the pieces of the picture puzzle. His eyes kept going to one of the unoccupied cots. On one cot Tony Savallo was stretched out, flat on his back, hands folded over his waist. He had not removed his sneakers. Apparently he was asleep—his eyes were closed, his breathing was regular—but there was nothing in his posture which suggested he was relaxed. He looked like a motor which was running in neutral. Working his wheelchair around the room, Frankie scooped the newspaper off the kitchen table, brought it to the sinkboard, and rewrapped the garbage in it. “Columbus!” He sighed again. Robby brought the picture puzzle pieces to the kitchen table in fistfuls. Some of the pieces had been stepped on by Marie.

  Finally, Frankie wheeled himself to the table and began studying the puzzle again. Robby stood on one foot, watching him from behind heavy lids. Frankie looked at him. “You must be as tired as a streetwalker in Venice,” he said. “Marie pulling you all over the city. Why don’t you crawl into that cot there by the stove, and grab some shut-eye?”

  Robby was happy to. It had been weeks since he had been in anything resembling a bed. He took off his blazer and shoes, loosened his necktie and got under the blankets.

  His pillow was against the white side of the stove. Across the room a torn green shade puffed back and forth in the window draft.

  “Got to do something.” At the table, Frankie muttered to himself. He had not moved many of the pieces of the puzzle. “What in heck do you say to an ambassador?”

  After a few more moments, a few more heavy exhalations on the word Columbus, Frankie, with great determination, wheeled himself over to the telephone on a little table by the door. He hesitated, hand on the receiver, then picked it up and dialed O.

  “Hello, operator? I want to speak to the King’s Ambassador in Washington, D.C….matter of life and death…

  “Which king?…The King of England. What’s his name, George the Third. No, George the Third was king when I was in fourth grade. By now it must be George the Fourth or Fifth…

  “Great Britain? I want the Kingdom of England…U.K.? O.K., that must be it. They musta changed their name, modernized it, you know, keep up with the U.S….

  “Yeah, I’ll wait…”

  Hand over the mouthpiece Frankie stared solemnly at the floor. “What in hell I say? Hello, Ambassador, this is Frankie Savallo, nice Italian boy, New York. Big kidnapper. My wife she never misses a church but likes a big criminal for a husband…” He put his free hand over his eyes. “Ohhhh,” he groaned. “They’ll put me in jail for a million years. I’ll be a little old man in a wheelchair, goin’ around askin’ everyone if they remember the taste of mozzarella. ‘That’s Frankie Savallo,’ they’ll all say. ‘Big kidnapper! Kidnapped the Duke of Tootie-Fruitie. His wife got him sent up for life and married his Uncle Guido…’”

  Suddenly Frankie jerked up in his chair as if called to attention. “Hello? Who’s this? I’m calling the Ambassador from England. Are you the Ambassador from England?…What am I calling about? I’m calling about a kidnapping, is all. You better let me talk to the Ambassador…All right, I’ll wait. But make it snappy, this is long distance…

  “Oh, God, what am I doing? They’d never electrocute a man in a wheelchair. It wouldn’t be nice…

  “Hello? Ambassador?…You’re not the Ambassador? Where’s the Ambassador?…

  “In Warm Springs! Doesn’t he know there’s a war on? Who are you?…Smith-Wilson, head of embassy security. Are you Mr. Smith or Mr. Wilson? What, am I talking to two of you?…Oh, one of you with two names. This is…never mind who this is. Lissen, we’ve got a little English boy here, calls himself Robert Burnes, but the newspaper says he’s a duke, or somethin’, an English duke, sent over here to get out of the way of the bombs, or somethin’…
Evacuated and sent over here, yes…You are English, aren’t you? I mean, you don’t sound like Mayor La Guardia. So you should care…We want some money for this kid, if you take my meaning…

  “What for? So we can give him back! This is an expensive kid. My wife she says he dresses like a cardinal…No, I can’t afford to keep him. We live in one room, three of us, myself, my wife, my brother the draft-dodger. Whoops, shouldna said that long distance…Lissen, you don’t understand me. We want money for this kid. He’s a friend of the King—your King. They arm-wrestle over the strawberry jam or somethin’…Yes, I mean your King. This is an important kid. He doesn’t look like much but the newspaper says he’s important…Burnes, Robert Burnes. He’s got lots of other names, too, just like you, but they’re in the newspaper across the room with the garbage wrapped in ’em…” Frankie sat sideways in the chair and studied Robby in the cot. “Yes, he’s got a roof over his head. You think I’m calling from Central Park?…Sure we fed him. Who wouldn’t feed a starvin’ kid?…What do you mean, he’s all right! He’s not all right! We want money for him! Don’t you see what I mean?…Lissen, buddy, don’t tell me there’s a war on. Isn’t my brother a draft-dodger?…Of course you’ve got funds for such a thing as this. Your King could sell one of his hats, plenty of money…I’m not just a good American, I’m better than that—I’m a good Italian-American!…We have to do our bit for the war effort! You have to do your bit, too, buddy!…Hello? Hello? Mr. Smith? Mr. Wilson?…Hello, English embassy?…It’s my dime! I’m talking to you…Guess I’m not talking to you…” Frankie hung up the phone.

  He sat where he was, by the phone, a moment. “Columbus,” he said. “Phew. What a tight guy. Why should we help out them guys? Won’t even pay a little ransom.” He wiped the sweat off his face with both hands, sat still another moment, as if exhausted, then turned his wheelchair around. “Least they can’t send me to prison for that!”