Tanner’s Tiger

Chapter 5

I think the helicopter pilot was drunk. His eyes wandered in and out of focus, and he had a disconcerting habit of looking over his shoulder instead of paying much mind to where we were going. The network of capillaries around his nose further suggested a fondness for alcohol, as did the aroma of good Canadian whiskey that issued from him. All of this might have bothered me a good deal more if I hadn’t already been too bothered about Minna to pay much attention to him.

“Usually give people a full tour,” he was saying. “All the pavilions, the rides, give you the whole feel of the fair.”

“Just keep going around in circles.”

“Makes a person dizzy.”

“Ever-increasing concentric circles,” I said. “She went into the damned building and she isn’t in it now. Must have come out of it. Keep circling, she has to be here somewhere.”

“Dizzy,” he said, turning to me and gesturing with one hand. “Dizzy as a dean.”

I tried to ignore him. I wished he hadn’t kept mentioning dizziness; a helicopter is sufficiently disorienting when it moves in a straight line, and I was beginning to feel overcome by a well-nigh irresistible desire to vomit. I kept my eyes on the ground, amazed that there could be so many people down there without any of them being Minna.

She was usually very good about not getting lost or, failing that, at arranging to get found again. Now, whirling uncomfortably in the air, the helicopter’s propellers roaring madly overhead, I wondered if it might not have been a better idea to have kept both feet on the ground. It was the idiot Cubans who had made me blow my cool. Obviously Minna had simply wandered away. Given time and opportunity, she would wander back. But the staccato rattle of violence that the Cuban Pavilion projected had evidently left its mark on me. Even as I thought it all out, I couldn’t entirely dismiss the notion that something horrible had happened.

“She could be at the Lost and Found,” my pilot said.

“Where’s that?”

“Admission gates. People turn in glasses and umbrellas and binoculars and children. Always have a lot of kids there. You just go on down and pick out one that looks right to you.” I had to look at him to be certain he was joking. “The things they find. In the morning, you know, they sweep up at La Ronde, that’s where the amusements are, where the young kids hang out, why they’ll come up with a ton of bras and such. The whole world’s going around in circles. It makes a man dizzy.”

We banked wildly – I think he was gesturing with the helicopter as less mobile men do with their hands. I placed both of my own hands upon my stomach and coaxed it back into place.

“Took two kids up the other day, I don’t believe either of them was a day past sixteen, well, you won’t believe what went on in the back there. You know, I just took a peek to see what was going on” – he craned his head toward the rear of the craft, holding the copter on a collision course, aiming dead center at the top of the British Pavilion – “just took a peek, wouldn’t you know, and I decided to shake ’em up a little, have a little fun with them, see? So just as they’re going at it hot and heavy, you know kids, how they get all wrapped up in what they’re doing” – the idiot was still glancing reminiscently at the rear of the plane; the British Pavilion still loomed menacingly in front of us – “why, I just gave the wheel a wrench like this, do you see, just like this, and if that didn’t bounce them around some!”

And he gave the wheel a wrench, do you see, and we veered to starboard and missed the apex of the pavilion rather narrowly. I promptly threw up and didn’t even mind, deciding it was better than dying.

“I think we’d better go down,” I said.

“Now I’ve gone and made you ill. Clumsy of me.”

“If you could drop me near the Lost and Found-”

“Want to have another quick look around first? There’s time.”

“I don’t think so.”

Minna was one of the few children in the area who was not at the Lost amp; Found booth. The small frame structure overflowed with small boys and girls, who in turn overflowed with tears. All of this bedlam was presided over by a young woman with light blonde hair, freckles, and a look in her eyes that suggested that at any moment she might break under pressure and go stark raving mad. And it might have been fun to watch her do so. But while I was there she remained as brittly calm as a hurricane’s eye, holding a tissue to this nose, patting that head, cooing to one little wretch while inhibiting the vandalism of another. Had I been somewhat less distressed, I might have fallen in love with her.

“I’m sure your daughter will turn up,” she assured me. “They all do, you know. One after another.”

“One minute she was there,” I said, “and the next minute she wasn’t.”

“They’re like that.”

“Yes.”

“And they almost always get here before the parents. That’s what’s so amazing. As if the parents don’t even notice they’re gone, oh, sometimes for hours.”

I didn’t think it was that amazing.

“There is a baby-sitting service, you know.” She wrinkled up her forehead. “Unless some of them feel guilty about actually abandoning their children, but once they’re lost, you know, then they want to take advantage of it! Do you think that could be it?”

“It’s possible.”

“So actually it’s rather unusual that you found your way here before your daughter. It doesn’t often happen that way.”

“Well, I took a helicopter.”

“Did you? Oh, my. You certainly are a conscientious father, aren’t you?” She separated two potential assassins, then sighed and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Have you had her paged? You might do that.”

“Where do I go?”

“That tent over there, do you see it? I don’t suppose it’s audible for too great a distance, but one never knows what will work and what won’t. Stop, Betty. Stop!”

I went to the tent and had them page Minna Tanner, requesting her to report at once to the Lost amp; Found booth. During the next two hours they repeated the message perhaps a dozen times, during which time I learned that the girl at Lost amp; Found was named Myra Teale, that she came from Hamilton, Ontario, that she was a divorcee, and that she had no children. I suspected that it would be a very long time before she ever had children on purpose.

Throughout this stretch of time I remained generally anxious without doing too much out-and-out worrying. Anxiety is essentially a passive state that can be endured indefinitely – modern living very nearly demands as much – but actual worrying is far too active a process to be carried on for great stretches of time. I suspect, for example, that those people who insist they spend all of their time worrying about the bomb or pollution or mongrelization of the race or whatever are guilty, at the least, of semantic inaccuracy, if they are not genuine liars. No one can spend very much time worrying about the bomb; one either lives anxiously in its shadow or limps off to the land of Catalonia.

Hell. I spent two hours not exactly worrying about Minna, and not successfully paging her, before reaching two conclusions – that Minna was unlikely to appear at the Lost amp; Found booth, and that Myra Teale was far too harried to respond favorably to an offer of dinner, or some such. So, for that matter, was I.

Minna was more apt to take matters into her own hands than to run to form. The most likely place for her to turn up, I decided, was our hotel. While I had felt compelled to hunt for her, she would feel no similar compulsion to seek me out; instead, realist that she was, she would proceed at once to our room and wait, patiently or not, for me to rejoin her.

I left the fairgrounds, following the signs to Autobus 168, which would carry me back to downtown Mon- treal. The bus was rather less crowded than the Expo Express and less jolting than the helicopter. I got off at Dorchester Boulevard, took another bus several blocks eastward, and walked a short distance to my hotel.

I did all of this quite automatically, and without paying very much attention to what I was doing or where I was going or what was transpiring around me. I had to look for Minna at the hotel before I did anything else. Whatever happened afterward depended upon whether or not I found her there. Any number of other topics demanded my attention – the Cuban Pavilion, the course of action to be followed, even the eventual method of reentering the United States – but it was pointless to think about these things until I had returned to the hotel and found or not found Minna. So I didn’t think of them, and because it was no time for trivia, I did not think of anything else either. I walked and rode and walked with a sort of numb head, and found my hotel, and climbed the stairs, and knocked on the door to our room, and opened it, and found no Minna there.

I went downstairs to ask the landlady if she had been back, but the landlady did not seem to be present. I went outside and looked around, and saw no one I recognized, and went back to the room to wait. I was hungry and spent a few moments weighing my hunger against the likelihood of Minna’s returning while I was out eating. It was a few minutes before I thought to leave her a note – when I develop a numb brain, it stays numb for some time – but ultimately this did occur to me, and I began writing a note, and there was a knock at the door.

I jumped up, rushed to the door, yanked it open. I looked where Minna’s little blonde head should have been, and what I saw was a massive silver belt buckle. My eyes crawled upward, past a great expanse of red shirt to a firmly chiseled jaw, a hawk nose, a pair of ice-blue eyes, and a Smoky The Bear hat.

“Mr. Tanner-”

“What happened to her? Where is she?”

“Mr. Tanner, I’m Sergeant William Rowland of the Royal-”

“Is she all right?”

“-Canadian Mounted Police. I-”

“Where’s Minna?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, sir. I-”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I-”

“My little girl is missing.”

“Yes, sir. I know.”

“You don’t know anything about her? Where she is?”

“No.”

“Then, uh, what are you doing here?”

“I’m afraid I have to place you under arrest, sir.”

“Illegal entry,” he was saying. “Suspect that’s the only charge you’ll have to contend with, Mr. Tanner. They’ve been going easy on subversion and conspiracy charges, especially with regard to foreigners. My guess is you’ll just be charged with illegal entry.”

“How about mopery?”

He ignored this. “You’ll have to come with us now, sir.”

“Us?”

“My fellow officer is waiting downstairs.”

“Oh. My little girl-”

“Yes, sir. That would be Minna, sir?”

“She’s lost.”

“I’m certain we’ll be able to locate her, sir.”

“How?”

“Children do turn up, don’t they, sir? If you’ll come downstairs with me now, sir…”

I turned around. There was a window. If I wanted to, I could make a run for it, crash through the glass, and wait below on the sidewalk for them with a leg or two broken. It seemed foolhardy. They always get their man, anyhow, and if I were going to be gotten, I decided I might as well be intact at the moment of capture.

I followed him down the stairs. Outside, at the curb, another uniformed Mountie stood alongside a splendid pair of chestnut horses. This second Mountie was almost as tall as Sergeant Rowland, who in turn was almost as tall as the horses. He said, “Tanner?”

I nodded. It seemed a little late to deny it.

“Now, that’s a bit of luck, isn’t it?” he said to Rowland. “No one with him, I don’t suppose?”

“Room was empty.”

“A shame, but at least we let him go to ground. Not enough to get the fox, you ought to know the location of the foxhole as well. Wonder how many more of the terrorists we’ll find in this bloody hotel.”

“I just came here,” I said, “because they had a room available.”

They ignored me. “Might be worth posting a man here,” Rowland said. “Might mention as much back at the post.”

“Might do.”

“How did you find me?”

They looked down at me again. “Left a trail a yard wide, you did,” said the one who wasn’t Rowland.

“At the fair?”

“At the fair. That page coming over the public address – now, we couldn’t honestly miss that, could we?”

I had wondered myself at the advisability of using my own last name when paging Minna, but hadn’t seen any enormous drawback. Immigration officers and customs inspectors may have lists of undesirables, and when they do, I am usually on them. But the Expo, even with the cute little passports they gave out, seemed a different sort of proposition.

“And what with your name and picture circulated just this morning all over the country-”

“What!”

“Illegal entry,” said Rowland. “Crossed the border at Buffalo-Fort Erie. Why, Fort Erie had it on the wire middle of yesterday afternoon. And I’d say the government had your photograph on file. Don’t know as I would have recognized you from it, but with the page and all…”

Somehow or other Jerzy Pryzeshweski had fouled things up. It had not occurred to me that it was unsafe to abandon a Polish truckdriver with a blowout. Evidently the problem of getting back across the border had been insurmountable for him, and he had blown up as thoroughly as his tire.

“Followed you all the way from the fairgrounds, we did,” Sergeant Rowland said. “A good thing those buses make plenty of stops en route.” He reached up to pat the neck of one of the horses. “Old Chevalier here had himself a merry ride.”

“You followed me from Expo on horseback,” I said.

“We did, indeed.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked up at them and at the horses and at the sky. It was warmer than ever. Probably, I thought, as warm as New York. Perhaps even warmer. We need never have left, Minna and I. We could still be there, and in that case I would not be under arrest and Minna would not be lost and-

“Illegal entry,” I said.

Sergeant Rowland nodded.

“What will they do to me?”

“Deport you, I’d guess. Wouldn’t you say, Tom?”

“Sometimes, now, there’ll be a jail sentence, but that’s if they should press charges for what you’ve done in Canada. Not likely, I shouldn’t think. Simple deportation for illegal entry, especially what with the Buffalo police pressing for extradition for a more serious crime.”

“For a what?”

“Kidnap, wasn’t it, Tom?”

“Kidnaping, forcing the victim to convey you across an international boundary, and I’m not certain what else.” He smiled winningly. “Don’t think you’ll have to worry about being kept long in Canada, Mr. Tanner. Just long enough for them to process the paperwork, don’t you know, and then ship you back to the Stateside people.”

“Of course you’ll be questioned, I’d say. Contacts in Montreal and I don’t know what. Why, I don’t know but that they’ll want to know more than a little about your terrorist friends and what they have planned. But you’ll be in an American jail before long.”

If I ever got out of jail, which seemed less likely by the minute, I would have to do something about Jerzy Pryzeshweski. Something terminal.

“About the girl,” I said.

“The girl?”

“My daughter. Minna.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I really have to find her,” I said. “You see, she disappeared. Here one minute, then gone.”

“Of course she’s in the country illegally, too-”

“Well, the hell with that,” I said. “I just want her with me.”

“Turn up soon, I suspect. Think so, Will?”

“They generally do,” Rowland said.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, “but-”

“Trust they’ll take it up with you once we get back to the station. Tom, you lead the way on Chevalier, how’s that? And Mr. Tanner and I will follow on Prince Hal.”

“Prince Hal is that horse,” I said.

“Why, right you are, sir. Now, if you’ll just ride up forwards like, not too far up on his neck but leaving the saddle for me, and I’ll give you a hand up if the stirrup’s not easy for you, and-”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

They weren’t. I have ridden horses before, and I do not doubt that I will do so again, but I would much prefer not to. I don’t mind donkeys, nor do I much mind riding on a cart behind a horse or a mule or whatever, but bouncing along on top of a horse makes me feel like a horse. Or a part of one, anyway. Sergeant Rowland gave me a hand up, and I landed very unpleasantly with a leg on either side of the beast, and Tom got onto the other horse, and Rowland leaped deftly into the saddle behind me. Chevalier led the way and we followed on Prince Hal, and by this time, as you may well imagine, quite a crowd had collected. I guess the populace had gotten the gist of things, because a few sympathizers shouted “Québec Libre!” from the sidelines, and one spectator actually had the effrontery to pelt poor old Chevalier with an egg. Most of the crowd, however, either had no political sympathies for me or preferred to keep them hidden. As far as they were concerned, it was all an interesting spectacle; the cheer they raised was nonpartisan, expressing equal enthusiasm for the Mounties, for me, and for the two splendid, if uncomfortable, animals who carried us.

“Not much of a hand at this sort of thing, sir? If you try to move when he moves, do you see-”

“He bounces,” I said.

“A good gait, he has. You move with him, see.”

I moved with him whether I wanted to or not. We cut west on Ste. Catherine, moving inexorably toward downtown Montreal. I asked where exactly we were going and Rowland gave me the address, but it didn’t do me much good; it was a street I hadn’t heard of before. It didn’t really matter, I decided. Uncomfortable as the ride might be, the next few days or weeks or months promised to be considerably less comfortable.

I couldn’t take the kidnaping charge seriously; Jerzy would withdraw that soon enough, one way or the other. But there was still enough potential doom in the air without it. And Minna’s absence, I decided, was far more sinister than I had at first realized. Perhaps the Cubans had machine-gunned her in the courtyard. Perhaps the Argentinians had kidnaped her for the white slave trade. Perhaps some agents from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic had recognized her as the rightful Queen of Lithuania. Perhaps someone from the Israeli Pavilion wanted to use her blood to make unleavened bread. Perhaps-

Hell. I had accepted the Cuban Pavilion assignment, after having been provided with every possible opportunity to cop out. Now it was impossible to carry it out. Everything had already gone wrong, and once I disappeared inside whatever sort of fortress the Royal Canadian Mounted Police maintained for American kidnapers, I would be completely out of control; even more things could go wrong, and there wouldn’t be anything on earth I could do about them.

There is a sort of situation in which the thinking processes quickly wither utterly away, leaving in their wake an animal who lives wholly in the present and responds automatically and instinctively. And so, though I would rather prefer to say that I planned what happened next, I can honestly make no such claim. It sort of happened.

We were approaching the intersection of Ste. Catherine and Rue de la Something. The light was green. Chevalier and Tom had already crossed the intersection, and we were moving into it, Prince Hal and Rowland and I. I was perched on the horse’s neck and feeling like one, and Sergeant Rowland had one arm over my shoulder, the reins in his hand, and Prince Hal, for his part, was proceeding at what I guess was a brisk trot.

So I grabbed the reins in one hand and tugged back hard, and then I dropped them momentarily to take Rowland’s arm in both hands, one at the elbow and the other back near the shoulder. I couldn’t really get my back into the maneuver, but the sudden cessation of forward movement on Prince Hal’s part made up for what I lacked in leverage, and I supplied a sort of pivotal movement with my shoulders and ducked my head and threw up and out with both arms, and Sergeant William Rowland of the RCMP sailed over first my head and then Prince Hal’s head before landing upon his own.

I sort of bounced backward, aiming for the saddle. This didn’t work as well as it might have – I hadn’t remembered about the saddle horn – but I did wind up in the right place. I snatched up the reins in my right hand. I’m not sure which hand you’re supposed to hold the reins in, if it matters. I aimed my feet at the stirrups and couldn’t reach them. So I pulled Prince Hal’s head around sharply to the right, and I kicked my unstirruped feet into the sides of his rib cage, and the noble beast took off down Rue de la Something as if someone had told him the randiest mare in creation was waiting at the next corner.

I held on for dear life. If I had planned all this, I might have begun praying, but it didn’t occur to me.