The Gypsy Game (12 page)

Watching the strange eyes shadowed by masses of hair and beard, April began to be aware of rumors drifting through her mind. Scary, stealthy thoughts, flitting here and there like the wings of tiny, vicious bats. Rumors about the kinds of things a person might do who looked and lived so differently from the way the parents of other kids did and who didn’t seem to care at all what other people thought of him. When the dark eyes touched hers, she shivered, but they moved on, and when they stopped, they were on Ken.

“ ‘Come on in, Alvillar’?” he asked. “Isn’t that what I heard you say, Ken?”

Ken nodded. “Yeah, but I meant … That is—I thought it might be Toby. I was hoping it would be, anyhow.”

“Then you don’t know where he is?”

Ken shook his head, and one by one the others did, too, as the fiery eyes moved from face to face.

It wasn’t a lie. They didn’t know. Not at the moment. And if they really didn’t know where Toby was right now, it surely wasn’t a lie not to mention that they had known just last night. But then, as if he were reading their minds, Andre Alvillar said, “But you
have
seen him. Since the thirty-first, that is? Since the night he disappeared?”

Toby had said not to tell anyone they’d seen him,
especially
his father, so no one said yes, but no one said no, either. Instead, they all looked at one another—hoping to let someone else decide how to deal with the question. At least that was what April was doing, and she was sure the others were, too. But as it turned out, they didn’t have to answer because Andre Alvillar seemed to have read their minds. Or perhaps their faces.

“You have,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yes,
yes!
I see that you have.”

April had been bracing herself for him to yell at them for not letting him know, or even to grill them about where and when they’d last seen Toby. But, instead, he did a very weird thing. Turning away, he walked across the yard, pounding his right fist into his open left hand. His face was turned away, but what he was doing looked like anger. When he turned, April caught a glimpse of white teeth, as if, behind all that curly black hair, he was almost smiling. Or maybe growling? A shiver crawled up April’s back, and when she glanced at Melanie, she guessed that Melanie was feeling the same kind of thing.

When he was almost to the fence, Alvillar turned and came back, and then, as he reached the center of the yard,
he did another strange thing. Putting his hand to his forehead, he took a deep breath and sat down on the ground. Just sat flat down without saying anything, and went on sitting there staring into space, as if sitting flat down on the dusty ground were a perfectly normal thing for a grown person to do.

So Andre Alvillar sat on the ground staring at nothing, and the four kids stared at him, and after what seemed like an incredibly long time, he took another deep breath, sighed, and said, “Well, at least he wasn’t kidnapped. We do know that?”

For several long seconds no one said anything. For just a moment April thought of saying, “Well, we did last night, anyway,” before she realized what a lot of other questions that would bring up. Congratulating herself on remembering to keep her mouth shut, she only clenched her teeth and shrugged. But this time Melanie seemed to have forgotten.

“Did
you
think he might be kidnapped?” Melanie asked.

The lean, bony face, like Sherlock Holmes’s, only a lot hairier, turned toward Melanie. “Yes,” he said. “I did think it was a possibility.”

“Why?” This time Ken was asking a question.

Alvillar thought for a moment before he said, “It’s rather complicated, Ken. I’m not sure I can go into it right now, but it has to do with his grandparents. With Toby’s maternal grandparents. They’ve been trying to get legal custody of Toby.”

April and Melanie exchanged amazed glances. Glances that said how surprised they were that Toby had been telling
the truth, or at least a lot more of the truth than anyone had believed.

“Legal custody?” Elizabeth whispered to Melanie.

But it was Andre Alvillar who answered. “Adoption,” he said. “They wanted me to give up my right to Toby as my son, to make it possible for them to adopt him legally. But I refused, of course.”

“But Toby didn’t want to be adopted,” Ken said. It was a statement but also a kind of question.

Alvillar shook his head. “No. No, indeed. He made that quite clear.” A brief facial movement twitched the bushy beard. “As a matter of fact he told me that if he had to live with his grandparents, he’d run away and join the Gypsies.” He gestured toward the mural. “That’s why I thought of coming here to this—” He paused, looking around the yard. “To this Gypsy community. But obviously he isn’t here.”

Everyone nodded.

“At least not at the moment.”

The nods were less confident.

“But he has been here?”

No nods, but no firm shakes either. Andre Alvillar stared at their faces for a long time before he sighed and got to his feet. “I think I understand,” he said. “And it’s obvious that I’ve created an ethical dilemma, so we’ll leave it at that for now.” He looked around again, holding their eyes with his strange magnetic stare. “However, I’m glad to know that he has been seen quite recently, alive and well?” It sounded like a question. A question that no one answered except for some confused head twitches, half nod and half shake. “But
if you should see Toby again in the near future, will you please ask him to let me know that he is alive and well?” Suddenly stepping closer, Andre Alvillar grabbed Ken’s shoulder with one hand and April’s arm with the other. “You must promise me that much, Ken!” His burning eyes moved to April. “And you too. You must promise!”

April found herself nodding helplessly, and then the gate creaked open and the weird bushy-haired man was gone.

Ken was the first one to say anything. What he said was, “
Sheesh
! Ethical di—something or other. What does that mean?”

Nobody knew. “I’ll look it up,” Melanie said. “As soon as we get home. Eth-i-cal di-lem-ma. Help me remember, April.”

April said she would. But at the moment what she really wanted to know was just how much of the stuff Toby had told them was true. “Like, all that crazy stuff about his grandparents wanting to get him so they could be the power behind the throne.” She threw up her hands. “Nobody believed that for a minute. Right? And now it looks like maybe it’s the truth, or at least part of it is. So what about the rest? About him being the next king of the Gypsies, or whatever.”

“Naw.” Ken shook his head. “That’s not the truth. I mean, if Tobe had known that he was going to be a king someday, he’d have told me a long time ago. Tobe and I always tell each other important stuff like that.”

“But maybe he just found out about being king,” Melanie said. “Didn’t he say his grandparents just found out about it? That kind of makes sense. Because if people had known about it all along, why didn’t his grandparents try to
get him a long time ago?” Everyone agreed that
did
make sense. Melanie was good at logical stuff like that.

“So maybe he really did run away because he didn’t want to go live with—” Elizabeth started before Melanie interrupted her.

“But that can’t be it,” Melanie said. “His dad said he refused to let them have him. They couldn’t
make
Toby go live with them if his father wouldn’t give his permission, could they?”

Lots of head shakes. “There just isn’t any sensible explanation,” April said. “Like I said, it’s just all a big mystery.”

“No.” Ken was frowning. Ken didn’t like mysteries any more than he liked ancient ceremonies and other off-the-wall kooky stuff. “No, not all of it,” he said. “We know some things for sure. Like that Toby wasn’t really kidnapped. That’s one thing we know for sure. And …”

“And that’s about it,” April said. “We don’t know if he really ran away to keep from being kidnapped, like he said. And we don’t know how much of what he told us was a lie.” She thought for a moment. “And I guess we don’t really know if his father was lying about not letting him be adopted.” She rolled her eyes knowingly. “Maybe his father
was
lying and what he was really planning to do was to sell him off to his rich relatives, like he was a used car or something.”

It was a new idea, and a shocking one. They were still considering the possibility when suddenly Elizabeth said, “Look. Look at Bear.”

They all looked. On the other side of the storage yard Bear was scratching the fence with both front feet. At the foot of the fence just below the plank that had once been
the only entrance to the Land of Egypt. Everyone gasped and ran.

A moment later they were all clustered around the plank which, before the fence had been repaired, had been loose at the bottom so that it could be swung to one side. A board that once again seemed to be a little bit loose. Sure enough, when Ken gave it a good whack with his closed fist, it came loose with a rusty creak and swung back, leaving a very familiar narrow entryway.

“So that’s it,” Melanie whispered. “That’s how he got out. Maybe he
was
in here when Ken knocked, and he did say, ‘Who is it?’ and then he heard those detective guys talking and he just squeezed out through here.”

“Yeah,” Ken said. “You know what I bet? I bet he knocked this board loose again way ahead of time. Like yesterday or something. You know, got it ready, just in case. Just in case he ever needed an escape route. Tobe’s the kind of guy who would think of doing something like that. So then, when he heard those dudes talking to me, he grabbed his stuff and slipped out and ran.”

They all agreed that was probably it. “But where do you suppose he went?” April asked. Pushing the board aside, she slipped out into the empty, deserted alley. One at a time, the others followed her, sliding through easily except for Ken, who had always been a little too broad for such a narrow opening. While he was squeezing his way through, Bear tried to follow, but they shoved him back inside and put the plank back over the opening.

“He can’t have gotten very far,” Ken said. “We could search up and down the alley anyway.”

April didn’t agree. “Not very far?” she said. “Toby’s a fast runner. He could be, miles from here by now.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Anyway, I can’t help search right now. I have to get home right away. I promised my mom I’d come straight home. She’s been real nervous about kidnappers lately.”

“Me too,” Melanie said. “I have to get going. But maybe tomorrow after school we could come back and do a big search. I think my folks would let me come back to the Gypsy Camp tomorrow if we promise to all stay together.”

“Okay,” Ken said. “But I’m going to look around a little. Like, maybe he’s not far from here, hiding behind some garbage cans or something.”

So Ken went off down the alley, and the three girls ran toward the Casa Rosada while, behind the fence, Bear sat near the loose plank and whined softly to himself.

THAT AFTERNOON, at the very moment when Ken was arriving at the gate of the Gypsy Camp, Toby had been rearranging the stuff in his backpack, getting it ready in case he had to make a quick exit. Actually there wasn’t much to arrange. On New Year’s Eve, when he finally realized that the only thing he could do was run away, it was already so late that he barely had time to throw a comb, a few socks, an extra pair of jeans, and a flashlight into his pack. Not much to start your whole life over with. But there it was, all his worldly goods, taking up no more than a couple of inches at the bottom of the beat-up old backpack.

But now, of course, thanks to the rest of the Gypsies, there was also quite a bit of food. He peered into each of the bags, three paper ones and Ken’s king-sized plastic job. The egg rolls were all gone and the doughnuts, but there were still a few cookies, two apples, a good-sized piece of cheese, and a big chunk of French bread. It would all fit into one of the paper bags now, so he consolidated, tearing open the others to let Bear get at the crumbs. Then he finished the job by zipping up the pockets and adjusting the straps. Everything was ready if he had to make a fast getaway. And just barely in time.

He heard the bicycle first, a whir of gears and then the
squeal of brakes and skid of tires on gravel. It definitely sounded like Ken, particularly the squeal and skid. Ken was that kind of a bike jockey. He’d just called, “Who is it?” and was on his way to the gate when suddenly the other noises began to kick in. The sound of a motor first, the crunch of wheels on gravel, the slamming of car doors, and then the voices. Strange men’s voices!

He waited long enough to be sure, until he heard one of them mention his name, actually say something about Tobias Alvillar, before he grabbed his backpack and ran for it. Ran right to the old entrance he’d had the good sense to put back into working order earlier that same day, just in case something like this should happen.

Of course Bear tried to come with him, but he pushed him back and slid the plank into place. A split second later he was off around the corner and out into the main alley, running in a kind of terror-stricken panic like a poor hunted fox. But he hadn’t gone far before he spotted a kind of fox hole. Actually, a long section of cement drainage pipe lying along the edge of the alley waiting for the new sewer system to go in. After throwing his backpack as far back into the pipe as he could, he wiggled and squirmed his way in after it.

He stayed in the pipe for quite a long time. It was a fairly tight fit, big for a pipe, but not all that big. Which was a good thing actually, since it might not even be considered worth investigating as a possible hiding place. At least not by the guys whose voices he’d heard—big, deep voices that probably came from big, deep chests. Guys who might have forgotten how small a space a skinny kid could squeeze himself into if he was desperate enough. As a matter of fact
the kind of space, it occurred to him a few minutes later, that even a skinny kid might have a little bit of trouble getting back out of.

He wondered about that for a while—the getting-out problem—before he got up his nerve to give it a try. But then, just as he started to claw and wiggle backward down the pipe, he began to hear footsteps. The footsteps went past him down the alley and then slowly came back, as if the person was looking for something. With fear suddenly tightening his throat, he frantically clawed and wiggled back the other way and then lay still, holding his breath and straining his ears. But after the footsteps faded away for the second time and didn’t come back, his panic slowly began to fade.