Nine Lives Last Forever

by Rebecca M. Hale

  Monty had wrapped every available limb over and around one another in his attempt to fight off the chill. He looked like a pale, sweater-clad pretzel.

  Harold gummed his dentures; then he reached his right arm behind the back of the truck’s bench seat, grabbed a dingy brown blanket, and tossed it into Monty’s lap.

  Monty sniffed at the blanket disdainfully. “Smells funny,” he complained as he stretched the thin cloth over his body.

  Harold rolled his eyes and swung the truck south onto Van Ness. One of the city’s main thoroughfares, the street was a mixture of commercial warehouses and residential apartment blocks. A line of tightly packed cars filled in both curbs; every possible parking space had been consumed for the night.

  Several blocks down, the gilded detailing on City Hall’s enormous dome picked up the first glints of the arriving sun. Harold squinted at the building and muttered to himself.

  “Sorry?” Monty piped up from the passenger side. “I didn’t catch that.”

  Harold gripped the steering wheel and did not respond as the rusted-out truck lumbered further down Van Ness, turning right a few minutes later. Harold navigated a nest of one-way streets with the reckless confidence of a seasoned cab driver; then he proceeded up Fell Street toward Golden Gate Park.

  A procession of low-rise apartments crowded the landscape, each unit designed as a rectangular cube, closed in on at least two of its sides to accommodate the tightest possible packing within the uninterrupted flow of buildings. Row after row of bulging bay windows lined the street, designed to snag every available ray of sunlight for the units’ otherwise dark boxes.

  Neighborhood sifted into neighborhood, becoming increasingly residential as more and more full-sized houses squeezed into the dime-sized lots. Occasional clumps of grass popped up into the gaps between residences. This, combined with a denser population of trees, signaled the truck’s approach to the entrance of Golden Gate Park.

  The roadway angled, feeding the truck into a narrow two-lane street, which was banked on either side by a dense thicket of forest. All evidence of the surrounding city immediately slipped away.

  “So, uh, hmmm.” Monty cautiously cleared his throat. “When Dilla recruited me into your little group, she was a bit light on the specifics.”

  “I would have hoped so,” Harold replied tersely, without elaboration.

  “Did Oscar really know where Sutro’s stash is hidden?” Monty asked, his eyes glittering with speculation.

  “Don’t push your luck, Carmichael,” Harold replied curtly.

  The truck continued to roll across the smooth black tarmac of the park road. A pair of early-rising joggers braved the brisk, cool breeze on a running path cut parallel to the street. Every so often, the trees parted for an open field, the entrance to a museum, or an improbable herd of buffalo. The close proximity of the encircling city was lost completely.

  About ten minutes later, the Pacific Ocean loomed up ahead, its presence palpable long before its churning waters could be seen. A briny zest fogged the air as the bank of trees thinned and fell away. The dilapidated shadow of Harold’s truck emerged from the western thicket of Golden Gate Park to face the ocean’s wild, foaming edge.

  Monty shuddered deeper into the dingy blanket as the truck turned onto a highway that skirted the coast’s wide, sandy beach. The vehicle rounded a curve beneath the scraggly outcropping of Sutro Heights and pulled into an empty parking lot next to the darkened, windswept Cliff House.

  Monty yawned pointedly as he glanced around. “There’s no one here.”

  “Just wait,” Harold growled. He pulled the gear lever into park and turned off the headlights. The sputtering engine expired with the weariness of a spent horse.

  The unlikely pair waited in uncomfortable silence. Monty picked up the grimy edge of his covering and offered it to Harold.

  “Blanket?”

  Chapter 11

  A TRIANGULAR-SHAPED SMUDGE

  THE BLINDS WERE pulled down tight, but the first cracks of Thursday morning had begun to weave their way through the slats and into the third floor bedroom above the Green Vase. I rolled over, groaning at the intrusion, but a slight disturbance in the far corner of the room caught my attention. Something was moving—something small and amphibian in nature.

  Plunk.

  I sat up, propping my head against the pillow, blinking my eyes in disbelief at the tiny figure shuffling timidly across the room toward me. It was a green frog wearing a feathery orange mustache.

  He hopped in the direction of my bed, his progress seemingly unimpeded by the hairpiece attached to the stubby, blunt end of his nose. The pointed corners of his tiny, well-groomed whiskers curved upward in a perky, almost stylish fashion.

  The little frog tilted his head, studying me as if he were intrigued by my presence. The red ribbon of his tongue zipped out of his mouth and lightly tapped the mustache perched on top of his upper lip.

  “Ribbit.”

  As if summoned by the sound, a second frog appeared. This one was heavier set with a pouchy, rolling stomach and rounded, fat-cushioned shoulders. His mustache was thicker, each side of it drooping down to the floor, the mammoth hairpiece nearly collapsing under its own weight.

  “What is going on here?” I murmured drowsily as Isabella cracked open a sleep-crusted eye. The frogs’ arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed by the orange and white feline heap on the bed beside me.

  “Izzy, do you see them?” I asked, groggily glancing at the spot on the covers where she and Rupert were tightly wound around one another.

  With slow, exaggerated movements, Isabella extracted herself from the curling cat cocoon. She stretched her mouth open into a wide yawn and rolled her rough pink tongue out at me. She gave me a skeptical look as I pointed emphatically at the floor beside the bed.

  We both leaned to peer down over the edge, but the frogs—and their mustaches—had disappeared.

  I CRAWLED OUT of bed and stumbled toward the shower, trying to dislodge the disturbing imprint of the morning’s dream.

  Isabella trotted ahead of me, leading the way to the bathroom. Rupert snorted sleepily as he snuggled deeper into the blankets. It was far too early, in his opinion, to be up and about.

  Frogs, I thought, puzzling as I twisted on the shower nozzle and waited for the water to heat up. They were making a strange convergence in my life—first at City Hall, now in the Green Vase. Both locations seemed unlikely amphibian habitats. The pair from my bedroom, I decided, must have been imagined.

  I waited until the hot water began to steam up the mirror over the sink, then I pulled back the curtain and, after carefully inspecting the bottom of the tub for any froggy green interlopers, I climbed in.

  My thoughts traveled to the frog essay in the shiny green Mark Twain books, the first one dropped off by Harold, the second one, indirectly, by Dilla.

  The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County had swept the country when it was first published in 1867; it was one of Twain’s earliest writing successes.

  The tale was a bit harsh for modern, more sensitized, readers. The poor, hapless frog referenced in the title suffers the brunt of a cruel practical joke. In order to sabotage the frog’s chances in a jumping competition, the antagonist of the story pours buckshot down the frog’s throat to weigh it down. Even though the frog is eventually relieved of its stomachful of iron, I couldn’t really see the humor that had so delighted Twain’s early fans.

  I began sudsing up my hair with shampoo, drowsily contemplating the ethical implications of frog torture as I began to search for a connection between the Calaveras County frog and the pair who had hopped into my early morning dream with their feathery orange mustaches.

  TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, I stepped out of the shower, feeling refreshed and fully awake. After slipping on my clothes, I grabbed a small handheld vacuum cleaner and used it to suck up the telltale sprinkling of litter in front of the red igloo. Rupert, clearly, had begun his day.

  The c
ats were probably in the kitchen waiting for their breakfast, I thought, as I plodded down the steps to the second floor.

  “Rupert, Isabella,” I called out. The apartment seemed almost unnaturally quiet, but I didn’t think anything of it.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, still supple from the massage of the hot water, and flipped on a switch for the kitchen’s main light on the wall just inside the entrance.

  I was utterly unprepared for the mess that greeted me.

  Dishes that had been left to dry the night before in a rack by the sink were now strewn across the kitchen floor, several of them cracked, chipped, or shattered into pieces. Joining the pottery were several of Oscar’s cookbooks that had been knocked off of their shelf, their spines spread wide, loose pages fluttering out.

  A spinning spice rack from the counter by the sink had been upended. Tiny individual flakes, dried seeds, and a mixed dusting of spices were spread across the kitchen. Some of the finer particulates still hung in the air, creating a heavily scented haze.

  Isabella sat in the basin of the kitchen sink, stealthily licking her front paws. They were covered in a sticky, yellow substance—all that remained of the contents of a small jar of honey that had previously resided on the kitchen table. The accompanying dispensers of cream, sugar, salt, and pepper had all been emptied, contributing to the room’s overall spice mixture.

  Isabella hunched her head into her shoulders apologetically as I scanned the room, stunned by the muddled disarray.

  Rupert, on the other hand, stood proudly on the kitchen table, feet firmly planted in a defiant stance, his tail swinging wildly back and forth, as if he had just protected me from a vicious intruder. A fine white powdery substance, probably flour, covered his head and shoulders, creating a comically aged look to his whiskers.

  “What . . . happened . . . in here?” I murmured, reeling from the extent of the mess.

  “Wra-oooo,” Rupert yodeled in response, the white ruff of his chest puffed out like a lion’s.

  I shook my head, mystified, and grabbed a bottle of kitchen cleanser and a roll of paper towels. I began wiping down the trail of sticky paw prints that tracked across the counters, table, and floor, stopping—in disbelief—when I came to a small triangular-shaped smudge.

  It looked as if it had been left by a frog’s webbed foot.

  Chapter 12

  A PERFECT OUT-OF-EYE SPACE

  PARKED ABOUT A hundred yards down the beach from the Cliff House, the faint outline of Harold Wombler’s rusted-out pickup truck could barely be distinguished in the misty premorning haze of sand and ocean. Inside the cold, damp cab of the truck, its occupants had been listening to the full, battering roar of the Pacific for the last half hour.

  Montgomery Carmichael shifted his body beneath the dingy brown blanket. The cloth reeked of motor oil and engine fluid, but it appeared to be warding off some of the chill. Harold Wombler sat in the truck beside Monty, stolidly silent and hunched behind the steering wheel.

  “Maybe you’ve got the wrong place,” Monty mumbled sleepily, but Harold did not acknowledge this expression of doubt.

  Harold’s runny, bloodshot eyes glanced out across the choppy surface of the ocean, and then back up to the square pillbox edifice of the Cliff House. The pounding sea dominated the small building huddled up against the rocks; the barren scene lacked any of the bustling hallmarks of human activity. It was, as yet, too early for the tour buses to begin making their obligatory stops at this bygone hub of old-time San Francisco’s social oasis.

  This area hadn’t always been so desolate, Harold reflected as he stared up the beach toward the Cliff House’s solid bunker.

  Back in the late 1800s, almost all of the land visible from the pickup truck’s beachside parking spot had been owned by one man—mining millionaire, philanthropist, and eventual San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro. Sutro’s property holdings had extended up and down the beach, including the battered bluff that ran alongside it.

  Sutro had invested heavily in the land’s development, turning his oceanfront acres into a recreational weekend destination for San Francisco’s working-class families. Lands End, as the area became known, included the Sutro Baths, the Sutro Gardens, a collection of privately run amusement park rides, and, of course, the Sutro-era Cliff House.

  If Harold stretched his neck so that he could see above the rim of the steering wheel, he could just make out the rocky outcropping abutting the opposite side of the Cliff House where the Baths had been located. In addition to numerous seawater swimming pools, the aquatic center had featured a theater, several restaurants, a large gymnasium, and a museum. During its heyday, the complex could accommodate up to twenty-five thousand visitors on any given weekend.

  The Baths’ water collection system was a tribute to Sutro’s engineering genius—a trait which had earned him his first fortune in the Comstock mines. For the Baths, Sutro designed a seawall along the shoreline’s rocky embankment. Strategically placed tunnels beneath the wall trapped incoming seawater during high tide. The captured water was then filtered and used to fill several large bathing pools. The collection of pools were all covered by an enormous glass-paned solarium and warmed to a range of temperatures to provide the optimal swimming experience.

  Harold’s weary eyes continued their scan across the highway to the craggy bluff overlooking the beach, where Sutro had built his mammoth mansion. While the living quarters remained private, Sutro had opened up the estate’s elaborate Italianate gardens to Lands End picnickers.

  Of course, if picnicking wasn’t your cup of tea, Harold mused, you could have ventured across the road to Sutro’s recently rebuilt Cliff House for a more refined dining experience.

  The Cliff House was already a well-established San Francisco institution when Sutro built the Baths—but not one known for family friendly entertainment. It had been a favorite haunt of the Barbary Coast crowd and had acquired a scurrilous reputation for the shady activities allegedly conducted in its back rooms.

  Sutro purchased the Cliff House, determined to clean the place up to meet the standards of the surrounding Lands End attractions. His efforts were facilitated by the early-era Cliff House’s complete destruction, not long after ownership was transferred to him. The building imploded when a schooner carrying a load of dynamite wrecked on the hazardous rocks below.

  Sutro designed a new Cliff House that was far more grand and elegant than the one that had preceded it. His Cliff House was styled as a fanciful eight-story French castle. The towering building’s foundation exceeded the horizontal space provided by the rocks beneath it, so that it appeared as if the whole structure might fall into the ocean at any moment. Inside, the glamorous establishment provided fine dining for both the high society who arrived at Lands End in horse-drawn carriages as well as the swimmers who walked up from the Baths.

  It was important to Sutro that the Lands End amenities be both affordable and accessible for San Francisco’s working-class families. He ensured that the entrance fees for both the Baths and the Gardens were kept at a low, nominal rate. Then, to prevent the local railroad barons from gouging Lands End travelers, Sutro constructed his own passenger rail line to transport visitors to the site from downtown San Francisco.

  Harold sighed grouchily as he surveyed the near-empty coastline. Time and neglect had erased almost all evidence of this earlier-era grandeur. Sutro’s palatial Cliff House was destroyed by fire in 1907. The building that replaced it introduced the current shoebox-shaped structure, which, over the years of subsequent renovations, gradually shrank down to its current size.

  Sutro’s elaborate gardens and estate were torn down in 1938 when his heirs donated the land to the city. The rail line succumbed to earthquakes and frequent mudslides. The Baths fell into disrepair and were eventually closed. An ill-fated condo development was planned for the Baths’ property in the 1960s, but the project never commenced construction. The structures above the Baths later burned to the ground, leaving a series of exposed po
nds inside the ruins of the deteriorating seawall.

  The once heavily trafficked stretch of beach was now an abandoned afterthought of the city’s history. While a stop at the Cliff House remained a must-see on many tourists’ checklists, Lands End had long since lost its niche as a regular destination for San Franciscans.

  “A perfect out-of-eye space for this morning’s meeting,” Harold thought as Monty began to snore beneath the blanket. “Shielded from the influence and speculations of the other political power brokers.”

  A moment later, the headlights of a shiny black Lincoln Town Car swept into a parking space close to the entrance of the Cliff House. A uniformed driver leapt out to open the passenger door for a slim, black-coated figure.

  Monty winced from the sudden glare of the car’s lights and noisily roused himself. “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured, giving Harold an impressed look as they watched the man unfold his long limbs and climb out of the Town Car’s leather-seated interior.

  The occupants of the truck watched closely as the slim man paced toward the steps that led down the embankment to the Cliff House’s front door. The man’s knee-length unbuttoned overcoat flapped loosely in the breeze, revealing a dark double-breasted suit and pencil-thin baby blue tie. His brown hair was slicked back, exposing the bulbing crest of his wide forehead.

  Monty sat entranced, his slender fingers absentmindedly trying to brush down his own tight, towering curls, which were springing with even more vigor than usual in the ocean air’s high humidity.

  The Mayor paused briefly in front of the Cliff House entrance. His posture slumped apprehensively, as if he were reconsidering his decision. He wiped his left hand over the bottom half of his face, rubbed his fingers into the narrow corners of his mouth, and thoughtfully flicked his thumb against the pointed stub of his chin.

  After a moment’s reflection, the Mayor smiled to himself, seemingly convinced of the appropriateness of his action. He flashed a solid fence of chalky white teeth and walked inside.