How To Tail a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  • • •

  JAMES LICK’S HOMESTYLE Chicken had only been open since late spring, but the fledgling diner had already become a mainstay in San Francisco’s competitive culinary scene.

  Lick’s short menu consisted of fried chicken and a limited number of accompanying fixings: coleslaw, mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy. But the abbreviated offering had proved wildly popular with the young professionals who worked in the nearby financial district. The restaurant’s green and gold takeout boxes had become a common sight in the high-rise office buildings that housed the city’s many legal and financial firms.

  Surprisingly, the diner’s near-overnight success had been achieved without the typical commercial enhancers of advertising or promotion. Praise of its food had spread solely by word of mouth.

  Certainly, the storefront did more to discourage than entice patrons. A tattered green awning hung over the dusty windows; the peeling gold letters painted onto the fabric were almost impossible to decipher. From the sidewalk, it was difficult to tell if the place was even in operation.

  The establishment’s reclusive proprietor generally kept out of sight, leaving the front-counter operations to his business partner, Harold Wombler a perpetually grumpy man with greasy black hair and sagging, wrinkled skin.

  Mr. Wombler was rarely seen wearing anything other than a ragged T-shirt and threadbare overalls, the latter of which showcased his bony knees and rather too much of his hairy white legs. Despite Wombler’s unappetizing appearance and his tendency to growl at customers, the popularity of Lick’s Homestyle Chicken continued to grow. The sumptuous meals kept eaters coming back for more.

  • • •

  THE PREVIOUS MAYOR glanced around his parking space, checking for observers, but his presence in the alley behind the restaurant appeared to have gone unnoticed. The car keys jingled in his hands as he studied the scene, trying to be sure.

  The PM frequented North Beach on a regular basis, but Lick’s was not the kind of establishment he typically patronized. After the notorious garlic incident, he had assured his readers that, henceforth, he would be steering clear of any eatery that failed to meet his exacting standards of dining and decorum—in particular, he had vowed to avoid restaurants with a kitschy one-item focus.

  He’d never hear the end of it if anyone caught him walking into Lick’s.

  Checking his reflection in the rearview mirror, the PM shoved the bowler down over his brow, turned up his shirt collar, and stealthily stepped out of the car.

  His leather shoes squeaked as he scurried across the alley, painfully pinching his toes, but he refused to slow his pace. The sound of a car backfiring echoed from a few blocks away, causing him to jump into the air and then swiftly crouch to the ground. After another quick look around, he resumed his course with intensified speed.

  It was with a great deal of relief that he pulled open the rotting screen door at the rear of the restaurant and, slightly panting, ducked through its darkened doorway.

  • • •

  THE PREVIOUS MAYOR stood in a corridor next to a rack of cast iron skillets and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. He reached instinctively for his hat, his fingers fiddling with the feather tucked into its brim as he lifted it from his head and rotated it sideways to block his face from any potential onlookers.

  A shadowed figure turned from a stool at a nearby kitchen counter and grunted out a greeting.

  “Relax, Mayor,” the man said with a derisive snort. “Your cover’s safe. It’s just me.” He nodded at the empty dining room. “Evening service hasn’t started yet.”

  The PM’s face reddened as he dropped the bowler to his chest.

  “Wombler,” he replied in the sanguine tone of a practiced politician. “Nice to see you.”

  Harold wiped his palms on the flour-dusted apron tied loosely around the waist of his frayed overalls. He gummed his dentures, sliding them in and out of his mouth as his beady black eyes stared at the PM. After several seconds of surly deliberation, he gave a shrugging hmnh and tossed his head toward the ceiling.

  “He’s waiting for you upstairs,” Harold said curtly. Gripping an ache in his left hip, he returned to the vegetables spread out across the counter.

  The PM hurried to the stairwell, intent on vacating the dining area before a customer arrived.

  When he reached the foot of the stairs, however, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, smiling sheepishly at the counter.

  Just because he didn’t want to be seen eating at Lick’s didn’t mean he was immune to the kitchen’s appetizing aroma.

  Harold’s flat lips curled into a sarcastic response. He waved a dismissive hand in the air, as if swatting a fly, and then grabbed a skillet from the rack by the door.

  “I’ll fix you a box on your way out.”

  Chapter 4

  THE MILLIONAIRE TRAMP

  GRINNING HUNGRILY, THE Previous Mayor began climbing the narrow ascent to the private offices on the restaurant’s second floor. Halfway up, the vertical tunnel of ancient wood paneling turned a sharp corner. The PM paused on the landing, reflecting on the man he was hoping to find at the top of the stairs.

  He had arranged this meeting mostly on conjecture, based on an educated guess of the proprietor’s real identity. There was still a chance, he supposed, that James Lick was nothing more than your everyday restaurant entrepreneur, a regular guy with a special knack for frying chicken and an unusually strong aversion to publicity.

  But the PM didn’t think so. A long list of indicators had convinced him otherwise.

  • • •

  THE FIRST INKLING had come a few weeks earlier, when the Previous Mayor had stopped in at City Hall to chat with the night-shift janitor. It was a routine visit, one he made several times a month, more frequently if circumstances required.

  During the PM’s many years of experience in local politics, he’d found City Hall’s cleaning staff to be one of his most valuable sources of information. The janitors had full unfettered access to every corner, closet, and restricted stairwell of the domed building and could circulate, virtually unnoticed, within earshot of the most confidential of conversations.

  Moreover, they had exclusive possession of an otherwise untapped source of intelligence. In the PM’s view, you could often learn more from the trash a person left behind than you could from the unveiling of his most zealously guarded secrets.

  And, in most instances, he thought with a grin, the trash was a lot easier to access.

  • • •

  THE PM KNEW a thing or two about the janitorial profession. When he’d arrived in San Francisco as a young man in his late teens, he’d taken a job cleaning the pews at one of the city’s largest churches.

  The PM smiled at the memory. He had picked up a lot of valuable information during that early period of employment, some of which was still useful to him today.

  Granted, he’d come across a few odd individuals during his janitorial dealings over the years. A couple of the characters he’d encountered had been downright strange.

  But after several decades of navigating the complex competing interests that sought to influence the power structure at City Hall, he’d never once been blindsided by a political opponent. The janitors had always come through for him—even though they generally remained oblivious to the significance of their contributions.

  • • •

  IT WAS ON a recent janitorial visit to City Hall that the PM discovered the fried-chicken clue.

  He’d been accompanying one of his janitorial informants on the evening rounds through the building’s basement. The janitor had just given the PM the details of the latest spat between the Current Mayor and the President of the Board of Supervisors.

  Given the long-standing animosity between the two men, there was little surprising or newsworthy in this development, and the PM had yawned off the information. He had been in the midst of formulating a follow-up question that might steer the conversation t
oward more productive grounds when his sensitive nose latched onto a familiar smell.

  Stopping short, the PM sucked in a full whiff of the distinctive scent.

  “What’s that . . . Who’s that . . . Where’s that coming from?” he stuttered with disbelief.

  The amused janitor pointed toward an area housing overflow office space for the Current Mayor’s junior staff.

  His nasal senses fully engaged, the PM stepped into a narrow corridor of cubicles.

  • • •

  ALL OF THE desks were darkened and empty, save for the one at the far end of the row, where a bleary-eyed staffer bent over his desk, staring hypnotically into a computer monitor as he munched on a leg of fried chicken.

  The young man wore a T-shirt, blue jeans, and high-top canvas sneakers—not unlike the outfit the PM had favored in his youth.

  A well-worn bicycle painted the reddish orange color of the Golden Gate Bridge leaned against the corner of the cubicle, the chinstrap of a plastic helmet looped around its handlebars.

  The PM paused, struck by another image from his past. He couldn’t help remembering the beat-up bike he’d used to get around during his early days in San Francisco.

  Still reflecting on the similarities, the PM surveyed the chicken-eating scene.

  The staffer’s desktop was stacked with note-filled tablets, scribbled-on sheets of paper, and several heavy binders containing drafts of pending city ordinances. A stained coffee cup perched atop one of the piles, its remaining liquid having long gone cold.

  It was rare to find any showing of motivation in the lower ranks of an outgoing administration; most political staff spent the transition period angling for their next job. This fellow, however, was so surprisingly intent on his legislative project—and the fried chicken—that he hadn’t noticed the PM and the janitor standing nearby.

  The PM squinted at the name tag hanging from the staffer’s neck. Beneath the cheery photo of a youthful dark-skinned man with a grinning smile read the words, “Spider Jones.”

  After a long moment of silent observation, the PM cleared his throat to draw the staffer’s attention.

  “Say, son,” the PM had asked, pointing to the conspicuous green and gold takeout package discarded in the canister near the staffer’s desk. “Where’d you get that meal?”

  “New place . . . just opened up in North Beach. It’s unbelievable,” the man had replied between mouthfuls. “I’d offer you a bite but . . .” He’d smiled and looked greedily down at his remaining portion.

  “No, no, that’s all right,” the PM had replied, holding his hands up in refusal, although his mouth had begun to water.

  With difficulty, he’d meted out his oft-repeated mantra.

  “I don’t eat anything that comes in a box.”

  • • •

  IT HADN’T TAKEN long for the Previous Mayor to track down the name and address of the new fried-chicken restaurant. That had been a relatively straightforward procedure.

  Obtaining an audience with the camera-shy proprietor, however, had been a far more difficult task.

  Despite the restaurant’s unprecedented popularity, James Lick had declined all of the local news media’s requests for interviews, directing their inquiries to his uncooperative and decidedly unphotogenic business associate, Harold Wombler.

  As a result, little had been written in the culinary press about San Francisco’s growing fixation with Lick’s signature fried chicken. The man behind the addictive recipe remained a mystery.

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH FEW DETAILS were known about the restaurant’s owner, the biography of its historical namesake was well documented.

  A figure from San Francisco’s Gold Rush past, the original James Lick was commemorated on freeway signs, placards at local schools, and as the primary benefactor to a prestigious observatory in the hills east of San Jose.

  For those unfamiliar with Lick’s life story, each of the restaurant’s takeout bags included a green paper insert providing brief anecdotes about the man’s legacy and achievements.

  Many saw the flyers as a convenient cover, another means of preserving the current Lick’s anonymity. But for the PM, the historical references had been a further hint to the elusive proprietor’s identity.

  The story of James Lick seemed tailor-made for the man the PM suspected had now taken on the moniker.

  • • •

  MANY INSTANT MILLIONAIRES emerged in the years following the California Gold Rush. One the richest of that group was James Lick.

  A piano maker from Pennsylvania, Lick traveled throughout South America before finding his way to California’s then Spanish-held territory. Upon arrival at the isolated backwater of Yerba Buena (the predecessor to San Francisco), Lick surveyed the town’s peninsular landscape and predicted that its route of future growth would likely extend out into the bay. Betting on this hunch, he proceeded to invest his entire life’s savings on water lots located along the shoreline—parcels of land that were then physically underwater.

  Prior to the spring of 1848, most thought Lick a fool. The real-estate transactions left him cash poor, and, for several years, he lived in extreme poverty. He reportedly slept on the street and was frequently seen in his ragged suit, begging for food.

  With the onset of the Gold Rush, however, the keen foresight of Lick’s land purchases became clear. As the city began scraping sand from nearby dunes to fill in those once-worthless water lots, Lick’s net worth skyrocketed.

  Strangely, the sudden onset of enormous wealth did little to change Lick’s pauper lifestyle. Even after his dramatic reversal of fortune, he continued to dress in the same shabby clothes; his gaunt figure still reflected a diet of malnutrition.

  Despite the influence and power he’d wielded as a real-estate mogul, Lick’s miserly mannerisms had been mocked throughout San Francisco. He was known by his nickname, the “Millionaire Tramp.”

  • • •

  “THE MILLIONAIRE TRAMP,” the PM had mused when he’d read the short story printed on the green restaurant flyer he’d salvaged from the young staffer’s trash bin.

  He could think of no better alias for the hermitic old man who had once cooked his fried chicken in a kitchen above a Jackson Square antiques shop.

  And so he had persisted.

  • • •

  AFTER THE MODERN-DAY Lick failed to return the PM’s phone calls or reply to the messages his new unofficial intern couriered to the downstairs kitchen counter, the PM took the matter to an expert—one who resided most days at a tiny flower shop in the city’s financial district.

  In all outer aspects, Wang’s flower stall appeared similar to countless others scattered throughout the downtown area. The low one-story structure was packed with bright racks of blooming vegetation and multi-colored bouquets.

  Each day, the racks were rolled out onto the sidewalk, an attempt to catch the eye of the well-heeled office workers strolling past during their lunch and coffee breaks. A demure young Asian woman with long, shiny hair manned the cashier register, greeting each customer with a serene smile.

  But there were a few subtle differences, not visible from the street-side view, that set Wang’s flower shop apart from the rest.

  Behind the racks of petaled plumage, in the dark recesses of the store’s back room, the farthest inner wall contained a door leading to a broom closet—the floor of which opened to a tunnel system that ran beneath the city’s financial district.

  Near the broom closet’s tunnel entrance, a wizened Asian man sat in a wheelchair, peacefully smoking his pipe as he monitored the comings and goings both in his shop and in the passageway below.

  If there was anyone who could arrange an audience with the fried-chicken connoisseur—previously the enigmatic shopkeeper of the Green Vase and, even farther back, the most fascinating janitor the PM had ever met—it was the Montgomery Street flower-stall owner, Mr. Wang.

  Sure enough, a few days after seeking Wang’s intervention, the PM had b
een granted the invitation for today’s meeting.

  • • •

  THE PREVIOUS MAYOR stroked his gray-flecked, neatly trimmed mustache as he stared up the darkened stairwell toward the second-floor living quarters above the fried-chicken restaurant.

  He hoped his perseverance had been worth it.

  Gripping the railing, he smiled with confidence.

  It had to be Oscar, he concluded wryly.

  No one else could have convinced Harold Wombler to don a chef’s apron.

  • • •

  A MOMENT LATER, the Previous Mayor reached the summit of the stairs, clapped his hands together triumphantly, and stepped into a large, open room.

  Light streamed through a pair of bulging bay windows that looked down on Columbus Avenue. To the left, the outskirts of Chinatown crept up against the spiked tower of the Transamerica Pyramid; North Beach’s cluster of Italian restaurants filled in the view to the right.

  Behind the restaurant and around the corner, the PM added in a mental aside, Jackson Square and the Green Vase antiques shop resided in secluded obscurity.

  Against the far wall, a tiny hairless mouse played happily in a wire cage filled with a maze of plastic tunnels and several wire-rimmed exercise wheels. In a corner of the cage, a doll-sized wardrobe held a colorful collection of mouse-sized jackets, each one neatly wrapped around a miniature clothes hanger.

  In the next slot over, a low table held a glass terrarium filled with mounds of natural greenery. Inside, two frogs lounged beside a small pool equipped with a tiny pump to circulate its water.

  The amphibian pair looked up as the PM crossed the threshold. Both blinked a demure welcome; then their froggy gazes shifted toward a spot in the middle of the room.

  The PM turned toward the dusty piles of papers, deteriorating cardboard boxes, and roughly hewn crates that took up much of the center floor space. Crouched over one particularly disorganized-looking heap was an elderly man with thinning white hair, short rounded shoulders, and a middling paunch.