The Gypsy Game (16 page)

Toby-Tony did as he was told, and by the time he’d
helped Garbo gather up her blankets and climb the stairs, he’d learned quite a lot more about Garbo and her fellow cellar rats. Like for instance the fact that both Vince and Mickey had been in institutions at one time.

“Institutions?” That didn’t sound too reassuring. “What kind of institutions? You don’t mean like—like they’re crazy, or something?”

Garbo chuckled. “No, not crazy. At least Mickey isn’t. ’Fraid poor old Mickey doesn’t have what it takes to go crazy.” When Toby just stared at her in bewilderment, she went on, “In this stark raving world of ours, it’s usually the ones who started out with a certain amount of smarts who eventually freak out and flip their everlasting lids. That’s definitely not our Mickey’s problem. His gears are just missing a few cogs.”

“And Vince?” Toby asked, remembering the sharp, fierce eyes, and the wicked knife.

“Vince? Crazy? No. Not exactly. Didn’t used to be, at least. Guess old Vince used to be some kind of businessman, believe it or not. But then a few years ago his head got kind of smashed in, and ever since then he gets these terrible, blinding headaches. Real doozies! Drives him right up the wall sometimes. Lost his job, and the doctors took all his money.”

“Wow,” Toby said. “That’s a bummer. Does his head ache like that all the time?”

“No. Not all the time.” Garbo shook her head. “They come and go. But sometimes they last for days. Mickey takes care of him when he’s out of it, or he’d probably have been dead by now. And the rest of the time Vince takes
care of Mickey.” Garbo laughed her unfunny laugh. “They’re quite a pair. Good roommates, though. Except you don’t want to go messing with Vince when his head’s bad. Times like that he’s got a pretty short fuse.”

They were out on the path by then, and before she left, Garbo showed Toby where it was possible to get water from a faucet behind the liquor store and the way to something she called “Jeb’s sanitary facility,” which was a makeshift outhouse that her old friend, Jeb, had built in the midst of some bushes in the backyard of the church. Then she warned him again to stay off the streets and set out at a slow shuffle toward downtown.

Toby got a drink, used the sanitary facility, which was anything but sanitary and smelled awful, and then sat on the back steps for a while trying not to notice what a dark and gloomy day it was. Trying not to think at all, actually. The trouble with thinking in a situation like this, he decided, was that as soon as you got started on a useful train of thought, you got sidetracked onto something else. Something useless and completely depressing, like where your dad was right at that moment and what he was doing and how he was feeling.
Just don’t think about it
, he told himself firmly.
Concentrate on something useful, like planning what you’re going to do next, for instance
.

But then, as soon as he started to make plans about where to go and what to do, he got sidetracked again onto the risks involved in going anywhere, and the maybe even greater danger of staying where he was. The danger of staying in a cold, damp, dirty basement full of crazies and lamebrains, where you would never know when you might
be tromped on for not having any more food in your backpack or maybe even knifed by a guy with an extra-bad headache.

The next sidetrack was about food. Just thinking about all the great stuff the other kids had shown up with, the doughnuts and egg rolls and apples and cheese and bread, made him swallow hard. If only he’d rationed it out, leaving at least one doughnut and maybe some cheese and bread for today. But he hadn’t, of course. He’d wolfed most of it down immediately, back in the storage yard, and the rest of it, except for that one chunk of stale bread, in his cement-pipe fox hole. Thinking about bread made him remember the small, slobbery chunk in his backpack, but he wasn’t quite desperate enough for that yet. Almost, but not quite.

Thinking, Toby decided, was just too depressing, and under the circumstances there was only one way to stop doing it. Returning to the dark, cold basement, he crawled into his rat’s nest of blankets and went back to sleep.

WHEN SCHOOL WAS finally over that day, April and Melanie met Elizabeth outside the fourth-grade room and headed for home—walking fast. But they’d only gone a block or two when there was the whir of wheels and a bicycle whizzed past barely missing them, and then screeched to a stop. Elizabeth squealed in terror, and all three girls leaped for safety. Plastered against the wall of the nearest building, they turned to look—at Ken, of course.

“Hi,” he said. “Don’t forget. Be there”—he looked at his watch—“in ten minutes.”

“You jerk!” April yelled. “Don’t you know it’s against the law to ride on the sidewalk? Don’t you know you could kill …”

Melanie was pulling on April’s sleeve and shushing her, and when April finally wound down, Melanie said, “We can’t. We can’t be there in ten minutes. Besides, I don’t even know if I can be there at all. We have to pick up Marshall and then I have to get permission and then …”

Ken looked disgusted. “Okay, okay.” He jumped back on his bike and started off, calling back over his shoulder, “Just get there as soon as you can. We’ve got to start right away.”

That’s when they began to run the rest of the way to the
day-care center, breaking all existing records. After they picked up Marshall, he slowed them down some until April and Melanie decided to take his hands and pull him along between them as they ran. It worked pretty well, but it turned out that Marshall didn’t like it. He didn’t complain while they were running, but when they finally got to the Casa Rosada and April asked, “Wasn’t that fun, Marshall?” he jerked his hands away and said, “No!”

“Why not?” Melanie asked. “Did we hurt you?”

Marshall shook his head thoughtfully. “Not hurt. Dragged. You dragged me!” he said, and stomped up the stairs.

As it turned out, getting permission to go to the Gypsy Camp wasn’t much of a problem after all. To Melanie’s surprise, her mother seemed to have stopped worrying about kidnappers because of an article in the morning paper. And because of another article, she now seemed to be more worried about rain. While her mother was in the kitchen fixing Marshall’s honey and peanut butter afternoon sandwich, Melanie snuck in a quick call to April. The line was busy at first, but then April answered.

“Hey,” Melanie said. “Your phone’s been busy.”

“Yeah, I called Caroline. You know, about going to the Gypsy Camp. She said okay as long as I wear my raincoat.”

Melanie laughed. “That’s just what my mom said. My mom says the paper said there’d be rain, and”—Melanie’s voice dropped to a whisper—“and a lot of new stuff about Toby.”

“Yeah, that’s what Caroline said too. About how the police have decided that there’s reason to believe that Toby
just ran away, instead of being kidnapped, or any other foul play kind of stuff.”

“Right,” Melanie said. “I guess that’s what it said. So we can go to the Gypsy Camp, as long as we all stay together. My mom sounded pretty relieved.”

“Caroline was relieved too, I guess,” April said. “But she’s still awful worried about Toby. And curious. Caroline is major-league curious about the whole thing. She kept asking me if I had any idea why Toby would run away.”

“My folks are the same way,” Melanie said. “My mom thinks we should have noticed that something was bothering Toby. Last night she kept asking about that day we were all in Toby’s dad’s studio. And they really freaked when I told them what it looked like. My dad said he’s heard some pretty weird rumors about Toby’s dad from some people who used to know him when he was in graduate school.”

“What rumors?” April asked.

Melanie shook her head. “I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. But it was about something that happened a long time ago, back when Toby was a real little kid.”

It was just then that Mrs. Ross came into the room, followed by Marshall, who was still chewing on his last mouthful of honey and peanut butter. Mrs. Ross reminded Melanie that she’d promised that they’d all stay together. “And don’t forget your rain gear,” she added.

“Yeah,” Marshall said in a sticky voice. “Don’t forget boots.”

Melanie had gotten Marshall into his new yellow slicker by the time April came down the stairs, but they were still arguing about which boots he was going to wear. “But
those ones match,” he was saying, pointing to their mom’s yellow boots.

“They’re way too big,” April said. “What if we have to run? You can’t run fast enough in big boots like that.”

Marshall grinned. “Yes I can,” he said. “If you drag me. If we have to run fast, I’ll let you drag me. Okay?”

At that point Melanie gave up arguing and went back in to ask her mother about the boots, and then they still had to put them on him and stop by for Elizabeth. So it was an awful lot more than Ken’s ten minutes before they were finally on their way.

They were going down the front steps of the Casa Rosada when Elizabeth asked Melanie if she’d told her folks about the policemen who’d been looking for Toby. And without stopping to think about Marshall being right there listening to everything, Melanie said, “Well, I told them that some policemen had talked to us, but I didn’t say where exactly. I didn’t mention that they actually came inside the Gypsy Camp because …” At that point she happened to see the look on Marshall’s face and stopped in midsentence. But it was too late.

Marshall, who had been stomping along happily in the big yellow boots, stopped stomping and stared at Melanie, his big eyes wide and accusing. “Policemen?” he asked. “In the Gypsy Camp? Did they see Bear? Did they take him to the pound?” Marshall’s face was beginning to look like one of the sad masks actors wore in the ancient Greek plays. Grabbing Melanie’s arm, he began to shake it. “Did they?” he howled. “Did they take my Bear to the pound?”

It wasn’t easy to calm Marshall down and convince him
that Bear was all right. That the kind of policemen who looked for missing kids usually weren’t interested in stray dogs. Or bears either. Especially not bears! But Marshall wasn’t buying it. He started to run, falling over his big boots every few steps and howling at the top of his lungs. He went right on howling until they got to the gate, unlocked it, and shoved it open. And there Bear was, bouncing around, licking faces, and nearly knocking people down, as usual.

Ken was already at the Gypsy Camp all right, sitting on the edge of the shed floor, holding a Domenico’s Deli bag on his lap. He was frowning, but when Melanie asked him if he’d been waiting long, he just shrugged and said, “Not all that long. I had to go to the deli first.”

“To the deli?” April asked. “Why?”

“Because I wanted to bring some more food. You know, just in case we find Tobe and he’s hungry again.” His grin was a little sad. “You know how Tobe is. He gets hungrier than anybody. I was going to raid the refrigerator again, but then I found out my mom was kind of suspicious about all that stuff I brought the other night. So I went to Domenico’s instead.”

“Humph!” April said, thinking,
You might have told us. You might have said you were going all the way to the deli first, instead of yelling at us to be here in ten lousy minutes
. But since they were already late, she didn’t figure they had time for a really good argument. So she only changed the subject by asking Ken if he’d found any clues when he’d looked around last night.

Ken shook his head. “After all of you left, I walked up
the alley a couple of blocks and then down the other way. I didn’t see anything. But I’m going to look some more now. Are you guys going to help?”

They all said they would help if they could, but what could they do? “There’s the whole city,” Melanie said, “and he might be anywhere. Where should we start?” She looked up at the gray January sky. “And whatever we do, we’ve got to do it right away, because it’s supposed to start raining pretty soon.”

Everybody agreed that they had to start soon, but nobody had any very good ideas about how. Or where. Ken said they ought to split up and go in different directions and then meet back at the Gypsy Camp in one hour, but nobody else thought that made much sense.

“Besides,” Melanie said, “we promised we’d stay together.”

Ken shrugged, and after that they just stood around thinking and disagreeing about what they ought to do. When April suggested that they could start at the doughnut shop because Toby was so crazy about doughnuts, nobody took her very seriously. But then Elizabeth came up with a slightly more reasonable idea.

“Maybe we could go out through the hole in the fence like Toby did and then … and then just use our imaginations.”

Ken looked at her suspiciously. “What do you mean, use our imaginations?” Ever since he’d been talked into becoming an ancient Egyptian, Ken had been suspicious of people who went overboard on the imagination bit.

Elizabeth ducked her head and looked embarrassed. “I just meant, we could go out through the fence like he did,
and then just stand there and pretend we’re Toby and imagine what he might have done next.”

Nobody really thought it would work, not even Melanie. But since no one had come up with a better plan, they decided to give it a try. They squeezed out into the alley, one at a time, and started concentrating on being Toby and imagining what he would do. They were concentrating so hard that no one, not even Marshall, noticed what Bear was doing. It wasn’t until Bear was out into the alley and running around in circles, that they began to react.

“Bear!” Marshall shrieked. “My Bear’s running away.”

“CATCH HIM!” Ken shouted as Bear dashed past. “Grab him.” He lunged and missed, and Bear went on running in circles. Then everyone got into the act, grabbing at Bear as he went by, until suddenly Melanie yelled, “Wait! Wait, everyone. Leave him alone. Look what he’s doing.”

They all saw it then. What Bear was doing was sniffing the ground every once in a while like a bloodhound following a scent: running and stopping and sniffing and then taking off again. Following quietly at a distance, they rounded the corner just in time to see him stopping by a long section of concrete drainage pipe. The same piece of pipe, it occurred to April, that the early Egyptians had once used as a hiding place way back in the beginning of the Egypt Game.