How To Tail a Cat (23 page)

Chapter 60

BUSKER CLIVE

HOXTON FIN STOOD
beside a wooden sun-bleached pier at Fisherman’s Wharf, trying to ignore the raucous, deep-throated whelping of the sea lions clustered on the floating platforms behind him.

A number of gawkers had gathered on the pier, curiously watching the arriving news vans. It was a mixed crowd, the locals being easily distinguishable from the out-of-towners. Most of San Francisco’s permanent residents were well acclimated to the city’s regular foggy fifty degrees; they wore light jackets and the occasional scarf. Tourists, on the other hand, huddled in recently purchased sweatshirts, many bearing some version of the city’s logo or initials.

Word of Clive’s most recent appearance had circulated quickly. More and more people pushed against the nearby barrier, craning to see the reporters who were filming on the pier.

Hox huffed out a resentful grunt. He wasn’t the only one who had been tipped off by the Previous Mayor.

• • •

HOX TURNED TOWARD
his producer, who had arrived with the rest of the crew not long after Hox jumped out of his taxi. The news team had failed to get a shot of the elusive alligator, but the tourists who had been on the pier at the time of his arrival had provided plenty of cell-phone footage. The photos were already being uploaded to the station’s main studios.

Constance Grynche nodded her approval, indicating they were ready to begin. Hox swatted off the stylist, who had climbed onto his ever-present stool to fiddle with the reporter’s hair; then he squared his shoulders toward the camera.

Trying not to think about the absurdity of the report he was about to give, Hox brought a portable microphone to his mouth.

“This is Hoxton Fin reporting from Fisherman’s Wharf.”

• • •

AS HOX BEGAN
filming his segment, one of the many buskers who performed for the tourists at the Wharf breached the crowd barriers and crept up behind the reporter, trying to squeeze into the camera’s shot. Like many of the Wharf’s street artists, the man was dressed in a shiny aluminum suit, hat, and shoes; every inch of exposed skin, including that on his face and hands, was covered in silver paint.

“Less than thirty minutes ago,” Hox intoned, unaware of the busker’s antics, “witnesses here at the Wharf reported yet another sighting of the missing albino alligator from the California Academy of Sciences.”

As the busker assumed more and more comical poses behind the reporter’s back, the cameraman glanced questioningly at the producer, but she merely nodded serenely, signaling him to continue filming.

“Although it remains unclear how Clive is being transported around the city, he appears to be on a sightseeing tour, of sorts. This is his third appearance in a highly trafficked area.”

A second silver-painted busker joined the first, lifting his friend a few feet into the air so that the man could make swooping arm movements on either side of the spike in Hox’s hair.

“I believe we have a picture of the latest sighting to show you on our screen,” Hox continued, pausing for the image to be spliced into the feed.

The cameraman blinked back tears as the busker mimed disapproval of Hox’s hairstyle, removed his own silver-painted hat, and gently set it on the reporter’s head.

Grimacing, Hox wrapped up his spiel.

“As you can see, both Clive and the man accompanying him were wearing tinfoil accessories.”

Chapter 61

THE ALLIGATOR LINE

THE NIECE TURNED
the corner onto Jackson Street, discouraged and depleted. Her uncle had once more disappeared without warning, leaving her to muddle through on her own. Her tote bag hung heavily from her shoulder, the packet of money inside it weighing down her thoughts.

“Make sure Clive gets home.” She muttered her uncle’s last message as she approached the Green Vase’s front door. “How am I supposed to do that?”

Then she glanced down at the green paper sack from the fried-chicken restaurant. She suspected her uncle already had a plan in place to wrap up that detail. Likely, it wouldn’t be long before she found out what predetermined role she had been assigned. With a frustrated sigh, she slid her key into the front door’s lock and turned the tulip-embossed handle.

• • •

AS SOON AS
the niece stepped inside the Green Vase, she sensed that something was out of place.

Rupert was front and center, of course, eagerly bouncing up and down, his wobbly blue eyes glued to the paper sack she held in her hand.

Isabella, however, was putting out a clear warning. The cat trotted urgently from behind one of the back bookcases, vigorously chirping with her voice as her tail swung stiffly through the air.

The niece quickly scanned the showroom. The display cases appeared to be undisturbed, and the hatch to the basement, she noted with relief, was firmly shut.

Eyes narrowing, she focused on the rear of the store, where Isabella continued to circle.

“You can come out, Monty.”

As her skinny neighbor stepped from behind the bookcase, the woman glanced toward the ceiling. The frozen hunk of chicken was in the freezer section of the upstairs refrigerator—too far away to be of use on this occasion.

“Tattletale,” Monty hissed at Isabella. She arched her back, the hair along her back bristling in response.

“What are you doing in here?” the niece demanded.

Monty dropped down onto the leather dentist recliner and kicked back the lever. He crossed his bony legs one over the other.

“I need your help,” he said with a lazy yawn.

The niece didn’t hesitate in her response. “No.”

“
Aht
,
aht
,
aht
,” he replied, wagging his finger in the air. His thin mouth stretched into a jubilant smile. Then he meted out the sentences he knew would have the desired effect.

“I’ve got a line on the alligator. I need you to help me return him to his rightful home.”

Chapter 62

THE NOMINATIONS

THE BOARD OF
supervisors’ meeting was well under way by the time Hoxton Fin wrapped up his report from Fisherman’s Wharf and hopped a cab to City Hall. He slipped through the back doors of the meeting chambers and found an open seat next to an individual dressed in a chicken costume.

“What’d I miss?” he whispered, leaning toward his neighbor’s feather-covered shoulder.

The clucking response was uninformative, but Hox soon pieced together what had happened during the early proceedings. After a lengthy public-comment period, Jim Hernandez had opened the floor to nominations. Motions supporting Hernandez for mayor had already been defeated three times by five-to-six vote counts. They were now moving on to alternative candidates.

Hox yawned as a motion was raised to nominate the Previous Mayor. He could tell from the supervisors’ faces that this, too, would fail. It might be another couple of hours before the board moved to a meaningful vote.

A scribe from a competing paper waved at Hox from a seat ten feet away, pointed at his head, and gave Hox a mocking thumbs-up. Hox grumbled a reply, halfheartedly accompanied by a rude gesture in rebuke.

He would never admit it to Humphrey, but despite all the negative feedback—or perhaps because of it—the new hairstyle was starting to grow on him.

• • •

JIM HERNANDEZ SIGHED
and tabulated the results of the most recent motion. The Hail Mary pass to nominate the Previous Mayor had been doomed before the voting on the motion even began.

He leaned into his microphone and announced wearily, “By a count of four to seven, the motion fails.”

A cloud of speculating whispers rose from the audience as the supervisors looked at their laptops, cell-phone texts, and, finally, across the table at one another, each one sizing up their next move.

Hernandez surveyed the scene. All of the board members, himself included, were still holding out hope for his or her own nomination. He took a sip from a stale cup of coffee, his third of the meeting. It was going to be a long night.

There was a stirring on the left row of supervisors’ desks. Hernandez cleared his throat as one of the supervisors raised her hand.

“Do we have a nomination?”

The woman nodded affirmatively.

“The floor recognizes the Supervisor from Twin Peaks.”

“Thank you, Supervisor Hernandez. I would like to nominate . . .”

A ripple of murmurs swept through the audience, momentarily distracting the speaker. She glanced down at her cell phone as it vibrated on her desk and gasped with surprise.

“Clive!”

Hernandez jerked forward toward his mike. “Excuse me?”

The supervisor smiled apologetically.

“I’m sorry, sir. There’s been another sighting.”

• • •

HOX’S EYELIDS HAD
begun to droop as he fought off the urge to doze off into a nap. The upper seating area had grown uncomfortably warm, particularly next to the feathered chicken costume.

But his head snapped to attention at the exclamation from the floor of the chambers. As he shifted his weight forward, a woman on the row ahead of him held up her cell phone. Reaching over the back of the woman’s seat, Hox grabbed the phone from her hand and turned its display so that he could see the image she had just uploaded.

“What in the . . .” the person in the chicken costume sputtered at the picture.

Instantly awake, Hox tossed the phone back to its owner and scooped up his backpack. The rest of the reporters were still gathering their gear when the heavy wooden doors to the supervisors’ chambers swung shut behind him.

Chapter 63

COMMUTER CLIVE

A CAVERNOUS REDBRICK
building at the corner of Washington and Mason housed the massive iron gears that powered San Francisco’s cable car lines. The enormous round rims took up most of the building’s basement, where they spun, day in and day out, with ceaseless humming unity.

From a small museum on the powerhouse’s second floor, the public could look down on this churning feat of engineering. For those wanting to take a more hands-on approach, several refurbished cable cars were also on display.

The city was proud of its long history with the hill-climbing carts. Several groups were actively dedicated to the preservation of this somewhat antiquated mode of transportation. A number of local craftsmen worked to rehab the cars that had been decommissioned over the years.

It was one of these that creaked out of a storage barn next to the powerhouse and teetered around a sharp corner headed toward the financial district.

• • •

THE BRAKEMAN AT
the helm of the cable car was an elderly Asian fellow. Despite his crippled limbs, Mr. Wang proved to be surprisingly nimble at maneuvering the heavy metal hooking mechanism along the car’s center shaft. He grinned beneath a red cap with a wide front brim, ringing a brass bell mounted to the brakeman’s station as the old cart lumbered up a steep incline.

Wang slowed the cable car at a hilltop intersection, braking for traffic to clear. Then he steered the rig down California’s dramatic slope. As the car made the turn, several drivers stopped to stare at the two passengers seated on the outer left bench.

Sam Eckles wrapped one hand around a safety pole to keep from falling out onto the pavement; with the other, he gently patted the neck of the large albino alligator sprawled across his lap.

Wearing his own red cap, Clive grinned out at a foggy San Francisco.

• • •

ABOUT A HUNDRED
yards behind the cable car, a red-faced reporter with a faux-hawk hairdo chased as fast as his ampu-toed foot would allow.

Chapter 64

HIS BEST CHANCE

THE NIECE SAT
on the living room couch in the apartment above the Green Vase showroom, staring at the brass alligator lamp as she waited for her ride to Mountain Lake. A few minutes earlier, Monty had set out on foot to recover his van from the alley behind the now-defunct fried-chicken restaurant. Any second now, he would drive by to pick her up.

She had at first refused to participate in Monty’s ill-conceived rescue operation, but the prospect of at least nominally complying with her uncle’s parting request—combined with the potential spectacle of her gangly-legged neighbor wrestling a live alligator—had proved too tempting to resist.

• • •

A GROGGY BURP
croaked up from the opposite side of the couch, interrupting the niece’s thoughts.

Rupert lay stretched across the couch’s firmer cushions while his distended stomach struggled to digest the large chicken meal he’d just scarfed down.

The niece sighed as he let out a satisfied wheeze and rolled over onto his side. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him that the dinner was likely the last of Oscar’s chicken—at least for the foreseeable future.

• • •

A HONK ECHOED
up from the street outside. The niece grabbed her tote bag and hurried through the kitchen to the stairs leading to the first floor.

The bag bumped against her hip as she skipped down the steps. In it, she’d stashed her flashlight and a first-aid kit—both of which she suspected she might need before the night’s escapade was over.

A moment later, she stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned to lock the front door. The van, this time driven by its rightful owner, idled on the street as she trotted around to the front passenger-side door.

“What about the cats?” Monty demanded as she climbed in.

“They’re inside,” she replied, pointing up at the second-floor apartment, where Isabella’s tiny head peeked through the binds. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

Monty looked perplexed. “But we always travel with the cats.”

The niece sighed tensely. “
We
’ve only traveled together once,” she corrected him. “On the trip to Nevada City.”

Once had been more than enough, she thought with a grimace.

Monty turned the key in the ignition, killing the motor.

“My instructions were very clear,” he said officiously. “For this alligator extraction to be successful, it’s essential that I bring both you
and
the cats.”

“Whose instructions?” she demanded, although she knew the answer. “Look, Monty, there’s no reason to drag the cats into this.”

The driver was unpersuaded. He shook his head in vehement disapproval. “No cats, no deal. It’s bad luck to try it without them.”

The niece unbuckled her seat belt and pushed open her door.

“Oh good grief.”

• • •

“OKAY, THIS IS
it,” the niece called out as she hefted the second carrier into the van’s rear cargo hold. She pushed the crates up against the floor brackets so they wouldn’t slide around during the drive. Rupert yawned sleepily inside his carrier, while Isabella stared alertly out of hers.

Monty waved from the driver’s seat and cheerfully restarted the engine.

Dusting her hands on her pants legs, the woman stepped away from the bumper so she could secure the back door. But as she grabbed the handle and prepared to swing the door shut, she noticed a small round lump on the floor between the cat carriers and a black canvas bag filled with Monty’s gear.

Leaning back inside the van, she peered down at the brown fish pellet.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

• • •

MONTY SWITCHED ON
the radio as the van left Jackson Square. It was tuned to a local government-access station that was broadcasting the board of supervisors’ meeting.

The president’s voice crackled desperately through the speakers, “Does anyone have a nomination? Anyone? Anyone?”

“I’m surprised you’re not there,” the niece said. She pointed at the Current Mayor’s bobblehead jiggling on the van’s dashboard. “What with your various political interests and all.”

“Oh, I offered to go,” Monty replied quickly. “But the Mayor thought there was a better chance of success if I stayed away.”

The niece glanced over at him skeptically. “Success of what?”