Fetching his bike from the curb, Spider steered it as nonchalantly as possible across the street toward the Green Vase antiques shop. He peeked into the windowpanes as he approached, but his vision to the showroom’s far corners was blocked by a row of bookcases.
He leaned his bike against the nearest tree and sidled up to one of the crenellated iron columns at the edge of the building. Still trying to look like a casual pedestrian, Spider inched out from behind the column and gradually shuffled in front of the glass.
As his eyes focused on the rear of the room, he caught a glimpse of Mr. Carmichael jumping up from a large recliner before the man’s slender shadow moved once more out of view.
Frustrated, Spider pressed his nose up against one of the green vase shapes embedded in the front windows. He cupped his hands over his forehead, blocking the glare from the street, just in time to see Mr. Carmichael disappear down an opening that had appeared in the floor.
Pulling back to the cover of the column, Spider glanced up and down the block. Not another soul stirred. It was an oddly unsettling but, he thought, convenient circumstance.
He rushed to the shop’s front door, ready to slip inside. Heart racing, he wrapped his hand around the tulip-embossed knob, but despite his forceful twist, it refused to budge.
Puffing out a disappointed sigh, Spider stared through the door’s glass panels at the open hatch—so close and yet so far. He’d lost his mark. He might as well get back on his bike and return to City Hall.
But as he gripped the handlebars and prepared to shove off, he noticed an opening for an alley just past the next shop down.
Maybe, he thought with renewed optimism, there’s another way inside.
• • •
SPIDER ROLLED HIS bike down the sidewalk, past the papered-up windows of the store adjacent to the Green Vase, and nosed his front wheel around the corner into the alley.
On the lookout for a rear access point to the showroom, he pedaled slowly along the narrow passageway. About a hundred yards later, the corridor’s steep brick walls opened for a somewhat wider easement that ran behind the backside of the antiques shop.
Taking a right turn down the easement, he quickly arrived at the space behind the building that housed the Green Vase. There he found a small cloth-covered car parked beside a metal Dumpster.
The trash bin saw more frequent use than the vehicle, Spider surmised, after peeking beneath the cover and seeing that the car’s battery leads had been disconnected.
He switched his attention to the redbrick building. There didn’t appear to be a street-level door on this side, he noticed with chagrin . . . but there was a window one floor up.
He took a few steps back and estimated the distance between the Dumpster and the window. It was a stretch, but he just might be able to swing it.
Glancing up and down the empty alley, he parked his bike and shoved his notepad into the front pocket of his coveralls. Then, latching onto the Dumpster’s top rim, he pulled himself up onto its lid. The rubber soles of his high-top sneakers dug into the sides of the bin as he scrambled onto the dented metal roof.
“Who-wee,” he muttered to himself as he took in a whiff of the fumes from the refuse in the container beneath his feet.
The Dumpster creaked as Spider eased his weight toward the building’s brick wall. Cautiously, he crept to the edge of the metal lid. His eyes firmly fixed on the window’s bottom ledge, he slapped his hands together and bent his knees in preparation for the jump.
“Here goes nothing,” he said as he leapt into the air.
• • •
IT TOOK MORE of a stretch than Spider had anticipated, but his flailing fingers managed to catch the ledge as his body slammed against the brick wall. Straining to keep from falling, he lifted his chin to peek in through the second-story window.
“It’s a kitchen,” he squeaked as the muscles in his arms and hands began to burn.
Craning his neck, he could see a small but functional cooking area with a worn wooden table on one side, a countertop sink and a dishwasher on the other.
He spied a book laying on the table. “The History of the Steinhart Aquarium,” he noted painfully. He wouldn’t last much longer; his fingers were about to give out.
Looking down, he grimaced at the brick—windowless—wall that made up the rear of the building’s first floor. He’d gleaned all he could from this vantage point. He might as well go back around to Jackson Street. Maybe by now Mr. Carmichael had emerged from the basement.
Resigned to the ten-foot fall, Spider was just about to release the ledge when he realized that the kitchen window was slightly loose in its frame.
“Hold on a minute . . . ,” he said, tamping down the screaming pain in his fingers.
Grunting from the effort, he lifted himself up onto his right elbow. Then he reached with his left hand for the seam between the glass and the frame. A hard shove caused the window to creak open about two inches. Gritting his teeth, he pushed again, but the window refused to budge any further.
Spider’s body swung precariously back and forth as he tried to gain leverage. His knees dug into the brick wall, and he hefted his weight higher up on the ledge. The window groaned, giving another inch, as he thrust his arm upward.
“Just one more . . .”
Grating as if it had been years since its last movement, the pane finally slid open.
“Aha!” he shouted with relief.
• • •
AS SPIDER DANGLED from the ledge outside the open kitchen window, he was suddenly overcome by a rush of caution. He was about to cross the line from mere observation and harmless impersonation to something a bit more delicate in nature. He could get into serious trouble if he were caught breaking and entering a private residence.
The concern left him as quickly as it had arrived. He was working for one of the most powerful men in San Francisco. Surely, the Previous Mayor could bail him out if anything like that happened.
“Nothing ventured, nothing . . .”
With a heave, he pulled his body up onto the ledge. Tumbling through the open window, he landed head and hands first on the kitchen’s tile floor.
“Gained,” he completed with a wince.
• • •
GINGERLY, SPIDER ROLLED himself into an upright position and looked around the room. Luckily, no one appeared to have noticed his scrambling entry.
Straightening his baseball cap, he stood and turned to face the stairwell leading to the first floor.
He took a few steps toward it and then stopped.
There was another potential consequence to this risky behavior that he hadn’t considered. The image of his mother’s stern expression flashed before him. What would she say if he were arrested? His face contorted as he imagined the high-pitched tirade that would ensue. The police, he realized, would be the least of his problems—and there was nothing the Previous Mayor could do to mitigate that complication.
Spider glanced at the open window. There was still time to retreat down the alley.
But as he once more weighed the wisdom of his actions, a slight bump echoed from the room below, a muffled, mysterious sound. What was Mr. Carmichael doing down there?
Spider couldn’t help himself. He had to find out.
Nervously, he swiveled back toward the stairs and, treading as lightly as possible, started down the steps to the first floor.
Chapter 38
HELLO, HELLO
SPIDER CREPT CAUTIOUSLY down the stairs toward the showroom. Despite his best efforts, the wood squeaked beneath his feet with every step. And if that noise wasn’t enough to announce his presence, he accidentally slammed his forehead against a low-hanging beam, sliding down a few steps before he regained his footing.
He covered his face as he turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, fully expecting to find a squadron of police officers waiting to make his arrest.
The shop was, instead, eerily quiet. The dentist’s recliner was still empty, ju
st as he’d last seen it. In the wood flooring nearby he spied the open hatch where Mr. Carmichael had disappeared.
Cautiously, Spider approached the opening and peered into the hole. His nose crinkled at the smell that seeped up from the area below. The air was damp and moldy, like a school locker room toward the end of basketball season.
Leaning back from the hatch, Spider flipped to a new page in his notebook. He drew a crude sketch of the shaky, unstable-looking stairs leading to the lower level—a sign of diligence, he told himself, not one of delay. Nonetheless, he continued his nervous scribbling. Even the upstairs showroom, with its shelves full of dusty relics, was starting to feel a bit creepy.
Spider’s pencil jumped on the page as a loud bump vibrated beneath his feet. He took a wide step away from the hatch, gulped apprehensively, and pulled down on the brim of his cap. Tentatively, he eased his body back toward the opening.
As he peeked over the ledge, a man’s voice whispered up from the level below.
“Hello?”
Spider scrambled away from the hole, his dark face paling. His mouth went dry as his lips opened and closed, trying to form a response. His notepad trembling in his fingers, he croaked out a hoarse reply.
“Hello?”
Just then a man and a woman approached the store’s front exterior. There was a grating sound of a key entering the lock, followed by the distinctive clink of the internal metal fixtures shifting in their settings.
Spider dove behind the leather dentist recliner as the door opened and the pair walked inside. He lay motionless, afraid to breathe, as he sprawled across the floor, certain that, this time, he was done for.
The woman’s voice called out from the front of the store.
Spider’s whole body cringed, but he had no idea what to make of the words she spoke.
“I don’t care what you say, Harold. I’m not going to throw that hunk of frozen chicken meat down into my basement.”
Chapter 39
A DIFFICULT PEST TO ERADICATE
“HELLO?”
The first whispered greeting had just left Monty’s lips. He stood by a row of dusty boxes near the back of the room and tilted his head toward the basement ceiling. A moment earlier, he’d listened to footsteps tread down the stairs from the kitchen and tiptoe across the showroom.
“Hello?” A faint reply came down through the hatch.
Monty’s brow furrowed. Someone was in the store above him—and it wasn’t Oscar’s niece. The voice of the upstairs intruder was distinctly male in gender.
“Hellll-looo,” Monty repeated, this time in a more suspicious whisper.
Green eyes narrowing, he began to sneak across the concrete floor toward the hatch.
Despite a diligent search, one enthusiastically aided by Isabella, the only out-of-place item Monty had found in the basement was the niece’s heavy-duty flashlight—mysteriously left turned on and resting haphazardly on the concrete floor.
He wasn’t sure how to explain the earlier bump that he’d heard while sitting in the dentist recliner, but now several strange noises were emanating from the room above. If he’d been a superstitious person, he might have thought a ghost was playing tricks on him.
Monty swung the flashlight’s beam toward Rupert, who was perched on the shoulders of the stuffed kangaroo that stood in the corner behind the drop-down stairs. The kangaroo was as far as Rupert had been willing to venture into the basement’s dark confines.
“Who is it?” Monty mouthed at the chunky white cat, but he received no discernable response. Rupert glanced briefly up toward the showroom and then returned his fearful gaze to the basement’s back wall.
Isabella circled around Monty and leapt gracefully over a teetering cardboard box. Halfway across the room, her furry body dropped into a stalking stance, hugging the ground as she neared the bottom of the steps.
She made a soft clicking sound at Rupert. Apparently, this was a far more effective communication than Monty’s verbal mime. Rupert immediately leapt from the kangaroo’s shoulders and skittered up the stairs.
“Wait for me,” Monty hissed as Isabella followed her brother out of the basement.
Monty scooted toward the exit. A series of footsteps now thumped across the floorboards as more voices entered the showroom.
What was going on up there?
As he neared the stairs, he swung the flashlight’s beam at the ceiling and the shadowed figure who had just moved over the opening.
• • •
“WHY IS THE hatch open?” Oscar’s niece whispered as Harold followed her through the Green Vase’s front door carrying the package of frozen meat. “It was closed when I left.”
Panic swept over her as the worst-possible scenario flashed before her eyes. She would never forgive herself if either of her cats—or, she couldn’t bear to think it, both—had been gobbled up by that alligator.
She raced through the showroom, her feet thundering across the floorboards. She nearly fainted with relief as first Rupert and then Isabella bounded out of the basement.
“What were you two doing down there?” she demanded. “That thing could have swallowed you both in one gulp.”
“Now, do you want to feed the beast?” Harold asked, holding the package out to her.
Grimacing, she took the still frozen parcel from him and stepped up to the hole. She heard a shuffling sound in the basement; then a blinding light turned toward the opening at the top of the stairs.
That alligator was eating her flashlight, she thought with fury.
Channeling the previous moment’s fear that the alligator had eaten her cats, she swung her arms back and prepared to heave the package down into the hole.
• • •
HALFWAY UP THE basement stairs, Monty squinted at the figure bent over the hatch. Blinking, he caught sight of Oscar’s niece standing on the top step, a fierce expression on her face as she leaned over the opening.
A voice on the first floor—one Monty had no trouble recognizing—grumbled loudly. “What are you waiting for? Just toss it in there.”
“Wait!” Monty called out, waving the flashlight as the woman’s arms swung through the air and lobbed a solid, round object through the hatch.
Her action was so unexpected that it caught him off guard. He wasn’t sure if he should rush up the stairs or drop back. It was a costly moment of hesitation.
The frozen package caught him square across his mid-section, knocking him off the steps onto the concrete floor.
“Whug.”
• • •
OSCAR’S NIECE LEANED back from the hatch, a troubled expression on her face.
“How did he get in here?” she asked, perplexed. She put her hands on her hips as she turned to look at the Green Vase’s front door. She’d had the lock rekeyed not more than a month ago. Surely, Monty hadn’t managed to undermine it already.
The wrinkled old man standing beside her wore an unusually jubilant expression on his face.
Harold grunted sarcastically as he began to hobble toward the exit.
“You got yourself a pest, all right,” he said as he reached for the door’s handle. “But this one’s goin’ to be much tougher to eradicate than any old gator.”
Chapter 40
THE FLOWER SHOP
“RIGHT THIS WAY, Clive,” Sam said as he ushered his albino companion down the tunnel away from the Green Vase’s basement. They’d made a hasty departure after the alligator’s impromptu encounter with Oscar’s niece and her two cats.
“We’ve got a busy schedule today,” Sam continued. “Places to go, people to see. The Green Vase was meant to be a temporary stop, anyway.”
With a nervous chuckle, he added, “Just not that temporary.”
• • •
IT WAS SLOW going, navigating over the tunnel’s uneven ground with an alligator in tow. Clive had extremely short legs, so that even his fastest pace left Sam constantly having to stop and wait for him to catch up.
Plus, S
am found that the gator didn’t hurry unless he was chasing after a fish pellet. The plastic bag of treats Sam had brought along with him got lighter with each step. He was starting to worry that his supply would run out before they reached their destination.
And so, it was with great relief a few minutes later that Sam breathed in the strong scent of flowers, indicating that they were nearing Wang’s Montgomery Street flower shop.
A few yards further, they reached a ladder formed out of rebar that had been drilled into the tunnel’s concrete wall.
“You wait here,” Sam instructed, tossing Clive the last of the smelly treats. “I’ll be right back.”
• • •
SAM CLAMBERED UP the ladder, quickly reaching the trap door in the floor of the broom closet at the back of Wang’s flower shop. Pushing up on the door’s flat surface, he poked his head through the opening to look around.
Other than an old mop and a rusty bucket, the closet was empty. The coast apparently clear, Sam proceeded to squeeze his large frame through the hatch. With difficulty, he raised himself to a standing position and turned to face the broom closet door.
A quick check of the handle confirmed that it was, predictably, locked.
Sam fumbled through his overalls, searching for the key he’d used to open the tunnel entrance to the Green Vase’s basement. But after a thorough search through all his pockets, at least as thorough of a search as was possible in the closet’s cramped confines, he concluded that the key was lost. He’d probably dropped it during the trip through the tunnel.
He looked down at his feet, thinking of the creature waiting below. The key was likely sitting in the alligator’s belly.
After checking the handle once more to be sure, he held his breath and lightly rapped against the facing.
• • •
LILY WANG STOOD in front of a large table at the rear of the flower shop, arranging cuttings for a special delivery to Union Square. She had just scooped up a bundle of violet-colored tulips when she heard the first knock.
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