How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “You mean he faked his death?” I asked incredulously, trying to recall facts from my research on Leidesdorff. “What about the encephalitis? He fell sick with fever. Everyone saw him pass out . . .”

  “Yes,” Mr. Wang replied, his eyes twinkling. “They all thoughtthey saw him die.”

  “There was a funeral procession through town,” I protested. “He was buried in the floor of the Mission Dolores chapel.”

  Isabella purred loudly as Mr. Wang’s bony fingers rubbed the space on her head just behind her orange-tipped ears.

  “You’ve heard of the famous architect, Willis Polk?” he asked. “Back in 1916, he was commissioned to do a restoration of the Mission to try to protect it against future earthquakes. He put steel girders into the walls, supports into the ceiling, and laid tile over the dirt floor.” Mr. Wang paused and ran his tongue over his nicotine-stained teeth. “In order to sink the footings for the tile, Polk had to move Leidesdorff’s grave—it was located too close to the wall. The workers dug down underneath the marker, looking for the body. They dug and dug, but they never found him.”

  I sucked on my bottom lip, still skeptical. “What do you mean by new place of employment?” I asked. “Here, in San Francisco?”

  Mr. Wang nodded. “There have always been rumors and speculations about William Leidesdorff, particularly his suspicious death. According to one story, Leidesdorff picked up a special sleeping drought during his travels . . . one that would mimic the symptoms of a heavy fever, then induce a deep, almost undetectable sleep.”

  Mr. Wang smiled indulgently. “Your uncle tracked down writing samples from the ledger for Leidesdorff’s warehouse and that of the Tehama Hotel. They were an exact match.”

  At any second, I felt as if I might fall backwards into the begonias. “The hotel that Joseph Folsom built—where Leidesdorff’s warehouse used to stand?” I asked.

  Mr. Wang nodded appreciatively. “Ah, you’ve been doing your homework. You see, Captain Folsom wasn’t really around much.” A whimsical expression flickered across his thin face. “What with all of his trips to the Virgin Islands trying to prove that Anna Spark woman was Leidesdorff’s rightful heir.”

  The text of the Ralston book I’d been reading earlier that evening leapt in front of my face as I murmured, “The Tehama Hotel was later replaced by William Ralston’s bank.”

  Mr. Wang gleamed, his yellow teeth even more dingy in the lamplight. “When Ralston bought the land, he had the entire structure of the hotel carted off to another lot down the street. He told people he couldn’t bare to destroy the lovely, old building. That allowed him to have the bank built directly on top of the old foundations.”

  Mr. Wang stroked his chin, his grin growing wider. “Of course, the tunnel’s access to the bank has been closed off for almost a hundred years now.”

  “And this,” I said, scanning the cramped confines of the flower stall. “This is where Leidesdorff’s flower garden used to be. Behind his house.”

  “In the beginning, this was the start of the tunnel. It allowed Leidesdorff to travel between his house and warehouse undetected. Now, it’s just one stop along the turnpike.” Isabella looked up at Mr. Wang as he chuckled raspily. “The city engineers had a dickens of a time shoring up around that old sewage pipe when they put the BART line in underneath Market Street. They couldn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to tear it out.”

  BART, short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, ran a subway line underneath the bay between San Francisco and Oak-land. The train traveled underground for several stops in downtown San Francisco, running along Market Street.

  “The tunnel runs all the way to the other side of Market,” I said, trying to follow in my head the pencil line I’d studied on the parchment. “Where does it go from there?”

  Mr. Wang stroked Isabella’s head and then looked back up at me, his narrow eyes squinting in the meager light. “I think I mentioned that Mr. Leidesdorff was a resourceful type. You see, while Captain Folsom was scouring the Virgin Islands for Mrs. Spark, Leidesdorff became close to a particularly influential guest at the Tehama. A man who could appreciate the value of an underground tunnel—one that could give him secret access in and out of his bank. One that could be expanded to run to the site he planned for his fancy new five star hotel.”

  “William Ralston,” I said, finally understanding the connection. “The tunnel goes across Market to the Palace Hotel.”

  I looked back towards the broom closet, disbelievingly. “And Oscar figured all of this out?” I demanded, pursing my lips. “Before he died?”

  Mr. Wang’s expression grew serious. “I’m afraid, my dear,” he said softly. “That may have been the reason why he died. I think he may have uncovered something more than the tunnel in his research.”

  The rain poured down steadily outside. I listened to the drops beating against the window, pondering on Mr. Wang’s revelations, each train of thought inevitably traveling to the missing diamonds, which had last been seen in the vault at Ralston’s bank.

  There was a bump at the door leading to the street. Isabella leapt lightly from Mr. Wang’s lap as he dropped the remains of his cigarette on the floor and smashed it with his foot.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” he said.

  He opened the door, and a young woman with long, black, silky-straight hair leaned in. She gave him a reproachful look, whispered something to him, and left.

  “My daughter’s giving me five more minutes before she turns me in,” he said. He patted the cigarette box in his pocket and smiled ruefully. “I’m not supposed to be having these.”

  “It’s a disgusting habit,” I said stiffly. I stepped closer towards his chair. “You don’t think that Oscar had a stroke that morning, do you?” I bit down on my lip, unable to voice the horrifying implication.

  “That,” Mr. Wang said, pulling out a small, black wallet from his coat pocket and flashing a police badge at me, “is what I’m trying to find out. I retired from the force several years ago, but I still have some connections there. I’ve been making some discreet inquiries.”

  “The autopsy?” I asked, my voice faltering.

  “There was no autopsy,” he confirmed, shaking his head.

  “But, someone called me,” I insisted.

  Mr. Wang stroked his upper lip thoughtfully, his fingers instinctively searching for the ever-present cigarette. “What do you remember about that conversation?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “There wasn’t much to it—it took less than a minute. It was a man’s voice. He told me that Oscar had died of a stroke—and that he didn’t suffer much.”

  I gave Mr. Wang a disapproving look as he pulled out a second cigarette and lit it. He puffed silently for a moment, his eyes glazing over as he savored the toxic smoke.

  “You know, when Leidesdorff first came to this part of California, it was just a small Mexican outpost that few people knew about. It must have seemed like a perfect place to escape from all his troubles—to start a new life.”

  Mr. Wang took another pull on the cigarette. The smoke was starting to irritate my eyes, but I couldn’t turn away.

  “But then the United States annexed the territory of California, and gold was beginning to be discovered up in the Sierras. Leidesdorff knew that everything was about to change—that soon this place would be flooded with people. People who might recognize him and send word back to New Orleans.”

  Mr. Wang wheezed weakly, his face bluing as his body seized for oxygen. He held up a pale, veined hand as his incapacitated lungs struggled to compensate. Finally, he continued.

  “Leidesdorff sold his warehouse to Folsom, but he was still using the secret room underneath it to store all of the gold he was collecting—from liquidating his assets and from what he’d been able to collect so far on the property in the Sierras.” Smoke funneled over his head as Mr. Wang crossed his scarecrow legs at the knees.

  “Leidesdorff snuck in and out of the room using the tunnel. At that point, it ra
n along the shoreline. It opened up at a little inlet cove, away from the main center of town, so that he could come and go unseen. The tunnel was a lot less stable in the beginning. Just a hole in the mud propped up by wooden beams. Ralston financed the up-grade to brick when he built his bank building—and its extension through the landfill to the basement of the Green Vase.”

  “The line on the map represents the tunnel,” I muttered, almost to myself.

  “On Oscar’s map?” Mr. Wang coughed again, smoke furling out through the narrow slits in his nose. “Yes, he was quite proud of himself for mapping it out. I assume that’s what was in the package I gave you.”

  Mr. Wang looked down at his watch, then glanced nervously at the front door. “There was one other person who knew Leidesdorff’s secrets. When he came to California, he brought with him a young woman to work as his maid. She ran his house, took care of him.”

  Mr. Wang dropped the half-smoked cigarette near the first stump and squashed it as a stern, gray-haired woman walked quickly past the window and pounded on the front door.

  “Uh oh,” he said, giving me a wink. “That’s the boss. My time’s up.” His knees cracked as he stood up and hobbled to the door. His thin voice was almost a whisper as he concluded, “The last anyone saw of the housekeeper was at Leidesdorff’s fake funeral.”

  Keys clicked in the lock, and the door flew open. The withered old woman strode across the threshold like a sumo wrestler. Mr. Wang gave her a humble, apologetic look as she scolded him sharply in a language I couldn’t understand.

  I scooped up the cats, struggling to arrange one on each arm, and followed Mr. Wang outside where the rain had slacked off to an intermittent drip.

  Mr. Wang waved goodbye. His wife locked the door behind us and steered him down the street as I turned towards the Green Vase.

  “Wait,” his wheezing voice called out behind me as he shuffled breathlessly back. “Let’s,” he said painfully between gasps for air, “let’s keep this a secret for the time being.” He patted the shirt pocket where he’d stuck his badge in behind the carton of cigarettes.

  “Those things are going to kill you, you know,” I said reproachfully.

  “I’m afraid, my dear, they already have.” He chuckled ruefully. “Death is a relative concept.”

  Chapter 22

  THE FURRY, ROUND rump of Rupert squeezed under the six-inch crawl space of a credenza in the musty showroom of the Green Vase. Several half-empty boxes stacked haphazardly on its surface swayed back and forth as Rupert wiggled along underneath, tunneling his way through the substructure’s undergrowth of spiderwebs, lint, and dust. I could just make out the apricot-orange tips of his ears as his shadowed, blue eyes peeked out the other side, stealthily tracking his target.

  She sauntered past his hidden position, feigning interest in the corpse of a long-deceased cricket swinging enticingly from the frayed upholstery of the swivel-mounted dental chair. The pipe of her long, graceful tail arched into a question mark, its orange tip flashing like a lure on the end of a fishing line.

  Rupert studied her carefully, hardly believing the luck of his location. The bushy end of his feather duster tail thwumped against the floor underneath the credenza as he plotted his next move. He shifted his weight back and forth, the white wires of his whiskers twitching with anticipation. His back legs coiled up, and he prepared to launch.

  Isabella paused and stared, as if mesmerized, into the dead eyes of the bug, her head following it back and forth, back and forth. Rupert quivered like a tightly wound spring; he couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

  There was a poof of dust as he charged out from under the dusty piece of furniture. Isabella hopped up onto the seat of the dental chair, the pads of her feet touching it for only a second. A sly smile spread across her face as she leapt nimbly from the seat of the recliner to a spindly side table three feet over.

  In hot pursuit, Rupert pounded onto the dental chair—already slightly spinning from Isabella’s touch and go. His added momentum increased the rotation of the chair, moving him farther away from Isabella, but he was determined to keep up the chase.

  Rupert clambered up onto the thick, leather back of the swiveling recliner and hurled his heavy mass towards the delicate table, but his arrival sent it tipping. He tried to jump clear, but his back feet tangled in the scrolling wood detail that rimmed the top edge. The wobbling table and awkward, scrambling cat crashed to the ground while Isabella smugly looked on from the top of the bookcase.

  It was Friday morning. The cats and I had spent another night in the flat above the Green Vase. My apartment had begun to feel more and more alien to me—the last vestige of my quiet, predictable, pre-Monty life.

  He strode through the front door of the Green Vase just after breakfast, for no apparent reason other than to recline on the stool by the cash register, wingtipped feet propped up on the counter, mining the morning’s paper for tidbits of the latest local gossip.

  “Let’s see,” Monty said, shaking the edges of the paper to stretch out the center fold. “What do we have in here today?”

  Monty shifted so that he could cross one long leg over the other. The cuff of his gray trousers slipped up to reveal his skinny, black-socked ankles. His bony back curved against the nearby wall, so that his pink and gray bow tie rested pertly on the folds of his black cashmere vest. Cufflinks in the form of miniature pink flamingoes, each with one leg crooked up under its body, decorated his wrists.

  “Ah, here’s a bit on the Mayor. This should be good.”

  The paper crackled as Monty brought the sheet in closer to his face, and his head slipped from view behind the printed shield. “It’s another dating debacle for the Mayor,” he said, perusing the article. “Here, listen to this.”

  The Mayor dined last night at Ciao, a popular Italian restaurant in North Beach. He was accompanied by yet another starlet from that city to the south, a fetching girl with a bit part in an ‘artsy’ independent film coming out this summer.

  Isabella hopped up on the counter, her attention fixed on Monty’s right wrist. Her eyes zoomed in on the flamingo’s gold leg as it flickered in the early morning light.

  Upon arrival, the Mayor took a seat at a table near the front window while the starlet pushed her way through the packed restaurant to the unisex powder room near the kitchen.

  Isabella stretched out her neck and curiously nudged the metal bird, the pink of her nose the same shade as its painted feathers. Unaware of Isabella’s attentions, Monty shook his hand as if shooing away a fly. Isabella ducked under the flying fingers, her hunting instincts piqued by the sudden movement. Her tail began to swing back and forth as Monty continued.

  The Mayor scanned his menu, running a careful hand over his thick hair, swept back, as usual, with a shellacking coat of hair gel. He’d read halfway through the list of offerings when an elderly admirer approached his table.

  The lovely lady was an inspirational barrage of color—with a disposition to match. She insisted on toasting the Honorable M. with a glass of the house red.

  “Dilla,” Monty gasped as he turned the page to pick up the rest of the article. Isabella’s head swung back and forth, following his arm, her eyes never leaving the dangling flamingo.

  Those of you who have frequented this establishment will remember that the house wine is served in signature ceramic carafes, fashioned into the shape of a chicken, with the spout decorated as the bird’s beak.

  To the surprise of the wait staff and nearby tables, our engaging spinster clucked loudly as the celebratory beverage glugged out of the container and into her glass.

  Monty gulped, his eyes bulging. He shifted his arms up to read the bottom half of the paper. Isabella raised a tentative paw towards the nearest cufflink and gently swatted it. The bird’s gold leg teetered as Isabella rose up on her hind legs to nose it. Monty, engrossed in the article, failed to notice.

  All eyes in the cozy, family style dining room were soon on the Mayor’s colorful compani
on as she urged him to cluck reciprocally while the waiter filled his glass.

  A growing crowd of diners moved in to cheer on this heretofore unreported Tuscan tradition. In short order, the entire restaurant began calling for the Mayor’s best chicken impersonation.

  At long last, the Honorable M. succumbed to the pleadings of the people, stood up and let out the kind of clucking cackle this proud city expects of its fearless leaders—just as the stunned starlet emerged from the powder room.

  Representatives from the Mayor’s office have so far declined to comment.

  “Oh, Dilla,” Monty sighed, suddenly lowering the paper, startled to find Isabella’s unblinking, ice-blue eyes inches from the tip of his nose. He jumped back, nearly falling off the stool in the process.

  “Are you sure it was Dilla?” I asked from the other side of the room. I’d been sifting through another open box while Monty read.

  “I’d bet my favorite pair of shoes on it,” he said, easing cautiously away from Isabella as Ivan’s truck pulled up outside.

  IVAN MADE A quick job of demolishing the old brick exterior of the Green Vase. By early afternoon, the deteriorated fronting had been stripped away leaving the wood framing exposed like a skeleton.

  Monty returned after lunch, allegedly to help supervise, and resumed his accumbent position on the stool behind the cashier counter. Rupert joined him, sprawling out on the counter as the two of them watched Ivan work.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Monty said loftily.

  Rupert, busy grooming stray pieces of litter from the fine, feathery hairs of his tail, snorkeled encouragingly.

  “I think you’re quite right, Rupert.” Monty’s fingers reached up to his thick, frizzy curls as he stared out the window to where Ivan’s long, golden-brown waves shone in the sun. “The mullet is definitely making a comeback. What would you think if I grew mine out a bit longer in the back. Maybe down to my shoulders?”

  I looked up from the latest box, my hands on my hips, shaking my head.