How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “Oh, he got around pretty good for an old guy,” Ivan said, a slight edge in his voice as he cinched the padlock around the gate.

  “You’re sure it was this lot?” I asked, still perplexed. The fake cufflink had only heightened my suspicions.

  Ivan looked up from the lock. The curve of his face seemed to harden. “I’m sure,” he replied curtly. He shook his head at our disheveled appearance. “I’ll let Monty walk you home if that’s all right. I need to head off in the opposite direction.”

  MONTY AND I trudged through the empty downtown streets, a muddy, earthy-smelling pair.

  I turned my head to look at Monty. A slide of packed brown goop covered his charcoal gray slacks from the top of his angular hip to the edge of his tailored cuff. Another smear of mud sheathed the back of his shoulders. Drying flakes fell to the ground with every scraping step.

  “What do you think?” Monty asked, elbowing me with a crusting sleeve. He slapped a bolus of damp dirt under his chin, creating a mud-brown beard. He worked the tip with his fingers, shaping it into a cone, and turned towards me, running a primping hand along the side of his head.

  I ignored him.

  We rounded a corner, turning down the street towards Mr. Wang’s flower stall. A faint glow burned in the window. “Probably sneaking another late night smoke,” I thought.

  Monty pointed to the lit window as we approached. “Looks like Wang’s still up.” He cupped his grimy hands around his eyes and peered in through the steamed glass. “Let’s see what old Wang is up to.”

  Monty’s back stiffened. “What’s he doing in there?” he asked, his voice ilking repulsion.

  “Who?” I demanded, trying to push my way up to the window. Rough, plywood boards had been cinched down over most of the stall to protect it at night from intruders. The portion of the window that remained unshielded was just wide enough for Monty’s head, and I couldn’t get him to budge.

  “Look at him—chatting away with Wang.” Monty suctioned his tongue against the roof of his mouth and released it with an imperious, smacking sound. The mud-soaked soles of his wingtips slapped against the sidewalk as he tapped the toe of his foot up and down. “What’s he up to?”

  I pushed up onto my tiptoes, trying to leverage an angle to see in, but it was impossible for me to top Monty’s towering, mud-tipped curls. I returned to the flats of my feet as the door creaked open. Mr. Wang’s pale, balding head turtled out through the opening.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said genially, as if he had been expecting us. “Please,” he beckoned with a gnarled hand, “come inside.”

  The door swung open, but, before we could pass through, a hunched figure pushed his way out. His spitting, gravelly voice ground back towards Mr. Wang’s slight shadow. “That’ll do it for me, Wang.”

  Harold Wombler wore the same pair of baggy, disintegrating overalls he’d worn the first day I met him. The loose, flapping jowls of his cheeks were carpeted with scratchy patches of grisly stubble. His sunken, blood-shot eyes surveyed Monty’s mud-crusted appearance in a single, shifty motion.

  “Nice outfit, Carmichael,” he sneered as he barreled past us and lurched down the street, gimping along on his game leg.

  Monty sputtered at Harold’s retreating figure, struggling for a response. He turned to me, flabbergasted, “Did you see that?”

  I shrugged sympathetically. Monty glanced down at his mud-soaked suit and blew out a heavy, frustrated sigh. His lips rolled inward, flattening his mouth out like a frog’s. He drew himself up, pushed the flat of his hand against the door that had swung shut behind Harold, and strolled resolutely into the flower stall.

  “Good evening, Wang,” Monty said in a grand, pompous tone.

  I followed him through the entrance. The warm, muggy atmosphere inside the flower stall fogged up my glasses.

  Mr. Wang patted me fondly on the back. “You always bring the most interesting guests,” he said, glancing at Monty’s unusually un-fastidious attire.

  I found a clean spot on the inside of my shirt and wiped my lenses while the scents of freshly cut flowers and stale tobacco filtered through my sinuses.

  “I gather Ivan’s taken you to the construction site,” Mr. Wang said calmly as he gangled back to his metal folding stool. He slid into it and pulled a cigar out of a side pocket in his jacket. His yellowed fingernails flicked on a lighter and held it, shakily, in front of his face.

  Mr. Wang’s narrow, nicotine-plundered chest emitted a suffocating wheeze as it pulled in air and heat through the tobacco leaves. He sunk back into his chair, his body relaxing as the drug permeated through his weak, anemic body. His bony fingers crawled up to his smooth, balding head, thoughtfully tufting its few remaining follicles.

  Monty’s right arm strutted against a wall; his left leg crooked jauntily into a triangle. The leather creases in his wingtips oozed out a slimy, black sludge.

  Monty’s long, pasty face carried a cynical expression. “What makes you think we’ve come from a construction site?” he queried, as if there were multiple locations within walking distance where a person could manage to cover himself with this much mud.

  “Call it an educated hunch,” Mr. Wang said, his eyes sweeping over Monty’s mud-rumpled clothes. His gray eyes narrowed inquisitively. “Did you find anything?”

  Monty stared at Mr. Wang suspiciously. “What’s it to you, Wang? What’s your angle in all of this?”

  Mr. Wang reached into his front pocket, pulled out the black wallet, and flashed his badge at Monty. “I’ve been investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of the lady’s uncle.” He flipped the badge shut and slid it back into the pocket behind the crumpled cigarette pack. “I’m retired from the force, you see.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, there mister,” Monty said, striding boldly up to Mr. Wang and snatching the badge out of his pocket. A trail of drying dirt shattered on the floor behind him. “Let me take a look at that.”

  Mr. Wang raised his thin eyebrows, but did not object. He winked at me as he took another puff on the cigar. The smoke circled above his head and percolated up to Monty’s careful scrutiny of the badge.

  Monty held the badge up to a bare light bulb strung from the rafters of the flower stall. He made a strange earthy statue in the lambent light; smears of mud flattened the hair on the sides of his head making its shape even more conical than usual.

  “Hmnh,” Monty grunted shortly, handing back the badge. “Seems authentic.”

  Mr. Wang grinned wanly. “Thank you for your stamp of approval, Mr. Carmichael.” Another puff of smoke eased its way out of the pinprick holes of his nostrils. “Now, please tell me about your excursion to the construction pit.”

  Monty’s eyes swept down to his clothes. “All we came up with is lots and lots of mud.”

  I nodded, confirming, not wishing to discuss my discovery of the counterfeit tulip cufflink until I’d had a chance to study it more closely.

  Another puff smoked out of Mr. Wang’s head, obscuring his expression. “That’s disappointing,” he said quietly. “I had hoped we might get a hint to the last artifact Oscar unearthed before his death.”

  “Well, Wang, here’s the way I see it.” Monty stepped out from the wall, stroking his crusty eyebrows as he began to pace the meager confines of the flower stall. “We know that Oscar was well on his way to sorting out this Leidesdorff fellow—how he managed to fake his death back in 1848. Oscar found the entrance to the tunnel and unearthed that tulip-shaped key.” Monty paused and swung around to give me a pointed look. “I’d say it’s a pretty good guess that Oscar got his hands on Leidesdorff’s sleeping potion.”

  A faint smile formed on Mr. Wang’s colorless face as Monty began to lollop through the room.

  “Let’s go back to Leidesdorff and what happened in 1848.” Monty paused and raised his bony index finger to the rafters. “I have a theory.”

  I groaned loudly, but he ignored me.

  “I’ve been doing some research on this Leide
sdorff character. It turns out he was quite a gambler. He’d bet on anything. If two ants were crossing the sidewalk, he’d ante up a position on the one he thought would make it to the other side first.”

  Monty reached a corner of the room and continued his march behind the rack of tulips, the top of his head bouncing just above its horizontal edge.

  “Right before his death, Leidesdorff organized a horse race—the first one in Northern California. It was held out by the Mission Dolores chapel. The same chapel where he was allegedly buried a few days later.”

  Monty came to an abrupt halt as his walking space ran up against a wall. He spun around in a military style turn and resumed his purposeful strut along the back side of the tulip rack.

  “Leidesdorff must have made all kinds of bets before that race. Imagine the temptation for a guy like him.”

  Monty snapped smartly around the corner of the tulip rack and stepped back into the center of the room, clicking his heels together as he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “I think he got himself into a pickle betting on that race.” Monty paused, then asserted, “I think our friend Leidesdorff faked his death to get out from under his gambling debt.”

  “But then, why didn’t he leave town?” I asked. “Why did he stay in San Francisco afterwards?”

  And how, I thought to myself, did he get mixed up with Ralston and the expansion of the tunnel through the new landfill towards the Green Vase?

  Monty stood with his hands on his hips, his face contorting with thought.

  Mr. Wang cut in with a clarifying wheeze. “I think Leidesdorff stayed because he was looking for something—something he lost.” He pointed the burnt ember tip of his cigar towards me. “Or, should I say, someone.”

  My brow furrowed, trying to follow his nuance.

  Mr. Wang tapped the cigar, knocking a ring of ashes off the end. “Do you remember what I told you about Leidesdorff’s maid—the one who came with him from New Orleans?”

  Monty interjected, “New Orleans? Oh, I’ve got you there, Wang. I read that she was Russian—came down from Alaska.”

  Mr. Wang smiled indulgently. “I believe that was part of her cover. It provided an excuse so that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. It allowed her to conceal her French accent.”

  “Hortense?” I asked. “His maid was Hortense?”

  “Leidesdorff’s fiancée!” Monty exclaimed, slamming his fist into his forehead. “Of course!”

  Mr. Wang nodded. “Oscar always thought there was more to the maid than historical references let on.” He shifted back into the metal chair, crossing one knobby knee over the other. “Oscar didn’t buy the story that Leidesdorff left New Orleans to soothe his broken heart. He thought it was a bit too convenient that Leidesdorff’s fiancée was said to have died the night he left town.”

  Mr. Wang’s right hand drifted slowly to the floor where he dropped the spent cigar. “Oscar didn’t think Leidesdorff was the type to give up so easily on something he cared so much about. He speculated that Leidesdorff figured out a way to secret his fiancée out of town with him.”

  “That was Leidesdorff’s big secret,” I guessed. “What he didn’t want anyone to find out.”

  Mr. Wang uncrossed his legs and ground the cigar butt with the heel of his shoe. He smiled wisely. “Leidesdorff knew what the discovery of gold would do to this area. What had once been a perfect hiding place was about to fall under the spotlight of the world—and he would be at the focus of it. His land up in the Sierra foothills ran right alongside Sutter’s, where the first nuggets were discovered.”

  Monty stared avidly at Mr. Wang. “So what happened to her?” he demanded. “What happened to Hortense?”

  “The last anyone saw of her was at Leidesdorff’s funeral,” I murmured.

  Mr. Wang’s voice rasped hoarsely. “Oscar guessed that the two of them had planned to slip out to sea and sail away, probably to an island in the Pacific. Leidesdorff traded with steamers that made regular trips to Hawaii to pick up sugar cane.”

  He tapped his thin lips with a cracked, nicotine-stained finger and said solemnly, “But something intervened, kept them from leaving. Something—went terribly wrong. I think that’s what Oscar uncovered right before his death. That’s the last clue we’re looking for.”

  Chapter 31

  MONTY AND I walked back towards Jackson Square without talking, our flaking footsteps the only conversation. Monty’s favorite wingtips, I noted, would have to be retired.

  The lights from Monty’s studio shone ahead as we turned the last corner. I glanced over at him nervously. He had the disturbing look of a pending comment on his face, as if he had captured a thought that had been buzzing around in his brain and might, at any moment, expel it.

  I sized up the distance to the front steps of the Green Vase. Thirty yards. Twenty yards.

  I held my breath as we passed Frank Napis’s darkened store. My right foot had broken even with the first crenelated column on the edge of the new brick front of the Green Vase—when Monty cleared his throat.

  “Boy, am I tired,” I said, yawning pointedly over the sound.

  “Have you been thinking about my theory?” Monty asked, undeterred by the yawn.

  I paused, ruefully eying the five remaining feet to the front door. I edged slowly towards it, my hand searching my pocket for the tulip key.

  “Which one?” I replied, gritting my teeth. My left foot slid backwards feeling for the first raised step.

  “The Oscar theory,” he said, and then annotated, “that he pulled a Leidesdorff.”

  Monty gulped as I glared at him, my eyes fuming, but he pressed on. “That he faked his death.”

  “No, Monty, I haven’t,” I said, my tired voice echoing the exhaustion within. I pulled out my key and engaged it in the lock. “I told you. That’s ridiculous.”

  He swooped his index finger in front of my nose. “He’s out there—I know it!”

  “Good night, Monty,” I muttered bitterly. I turned and walked inside, slamming the door shut behind me.

  Something felt amiss in the darkened interior of the Green Vase. In my rush out the front door earlier that evening, I’d only managed to turn the tulip key in the lock. There hadn’t been time to hook the extra padlock over the handle.

  I had the uneasy feeling that someone had paid a visit while I’d been gone.

  My eyes searched the showroom, panning over the dusty bookcases and looming wooden crates. And then I saw it—next to the slender green vase glowing in the dim light entering the room through the plastic-tarped windows.

  Sitting suggestively on the cashier counter was a brand-new, unopened bottle of cat shampoo.

  “Dilla,” I thought with exasperation. “All right, all right,” I mumbled. “I’ll give him a bath.”

  I WOKE UP early the next morning, unsettled and out of sorts from a night of tossing and turning, still trying to ignore Monty’s parting comments.

  A bright sun hit the street outside, promising a gorgeous day ahead. I dug my running shoes out of a box of my belongings and headed out the front door, leaving a note for Ivan in case he came by to resume his brickwork before I returned.

  Jackson Square was vacant, not surprising for such an early hour on a Tuesday morning. But as soon as I turned up Columbus, the fresh, clean sidewalks became tangled with energetic dog walkers, briskly rolling baby strollers, and sleepy waiters sucking down espressos out of steaming paper cups.

  The city’s network of electrically powered buses charged through the streets, menacing at any vehicle or pedestrian that dared to step into their path. Plucky taxi-cabs darted in and out behind the battered bumpers of the buses, taunting the metallic beasts. Overlooking this honking, hollering chaos, several wizened residents of Chinatown practiced tai chi on grassy stepped terraces cut into the housing-packed hillside, their peaceful meditations unheard by the snarl of traffic below.

  I jogged along the sidewalk, winding through the melee of breakfast
tables tumbling out of the tiny Italian bistros. The traffic became less aggressive as Columbus skirted down towards the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf, and I peeled off to the swimming cove where William Ralston had taken his last, waterlogged breaths.

  This bright, sunny morning, the area was already crowded with a screaming, squawking mix of kids and seagulls—wild legs running in all directions. I climbed halfway up the concrete steps to ensure a safe distance from both creatures and sat down for a rest.

  The bay stretched out before me in a beautiful, lazy smile, its deep, blue surface reflecting the cornflower expanse of the sky. The sun baked down on the concrete steps, caressing my forehead with its soothing warmth.

  The markers of a swimming lane bobbed in the water in front of me, but there were no takers this morning. I knew without testing that the beguiling water in the bay would be a frigid, wet-suit-requiring temperature.

  I couldn’t help but wonder about William Ralston and his daily swims in this protected cove. What kind of person would subject himself, over and over again, to a dunking in that numbing, life-sucking cold? It seemed more a form of penitent self-flagellation than a health regimen.

  I tried to imagine his short, tubby figure charging bravely into the chilly water, pushing it out in front of him as he waded in up to his waist. I watched him dive under, the paralyzing freeze of the water blanketing around his torpedo-shaped body, curling its cold, icy fingers around his heart, clamping down on the straining muscles as they struggled to keep pace with the pounding waves.

  Ralston had been out near the edge of the cordoned swimming area, almost past the last buoy, when he’d seized up. A crowd of people had collected on the shore, shouting for the lifeguard, speculating on the identity of the victim, watching as a rescuer pulled the lifeless, barrel-chested body up into a small boat.

  In the days that followed, the city had run wild with rumors on the cause of Ralston’s death: suicide, poison, the unrelenting pressure of the scandal-seeking press. The findings of the coroner’s jury that his death was due to natural causes did little to stem the speculation.