A Hitch at the Fairmont

by Nick Bertozzi

  Jack stood. “Aunt Edith!” he called.

  A muffled banging came from the stack of luggage. Jack pressed his palms against it. “These bags aren’t against the wall,” he said. “There’s a space behind them. But how did he stack them up so quickly? He was only in here a few minutes.”

  “There must be a way to get behind them without unstacking them,” Hitchcock said.

  A large case stood upright in the lower right corner of the “wall.” Unlike the others, this bag wasn’t lying on its side. The broad top of the case faced out toward the room. Jack popped the clasp. It swung open like a door. The back of the case had been cut out. The edges of the hole were jagged.

  “It leads to the space behind the bags,” Jack said. “C’mon.”

  “I don’t believe I will fit through the hole,” Hitchcock said. “Go on. I’ll follow when I’ve made a large enough entrance.” He dragged one of the empty trunks to the wall. Using it as a step ladder, he took down bags from the top of the stack.

  Jack crawled through the secret entrance. The space behind was dark and narrow. Jack was reminded of some of the crevices he’d squeezed through on his caving trips. Against the wall, opposite the suitcase entrance, was a camping lantern and a pack of matches. Jack lit the lantern. He held it at arm’s length to see the far side of the “luggage cave.”

  There, on a sagging luggage cart, her hands tied to it, Aunt Edith squatted, kicking a suitcase at the bottom of the pile. She was gagged, but her eyes reflected the lantern light like the polished points of two obsidian knives.

  “SHE’S HERE,” JACK CALLED. His aunt was disheveled and dirty, and Jack thought she deserved to feel twice as bad as she looked. The gag was a filthy old towel, tied in back. It was repulsive. She was repulsive. But Jack felt sad for her too. Even though she claimed to be a “survivor,” the past few days must have been an ordeal. Jack loosened the gag and worked it past the wattle of flesh under her chin.

  “My sweet young boy,” Aunt Edith said. “Here to save your favorite auntie. Oh, thank goodness you’ve come. Now be a good boy and untie my hands.”

  Jack stepped back.

  “Come now, Jack. Auntie is in no mood for jokes. Untie me!”

  Jack crossed his arms.

  Aunt Edith’s lips pursed in that little way she had. Her nose twitched. “Jack,” she said. “Dear. You don’t know what I’ve been through. Abducted and held prisoner here by that brutal man. I must have been here weeks and weeks. Just sitting on this hard cart, wondering what would come of me. And barely any food. Why, I’ve practically wasted away to nothing. And the worst of all, not knowing what my fate would be. Oh, Jack, it’s been dreadful.”

  “Then you must know how my mother feels,” Jack said. His sympathy evaporated, leaving an angry residue.

  “Your mother? I’m sorry, Jack, but I don’t understand. Of course, we were all so sorry about what happened to her, but I am sure her . . . departure . . . was quick and painless. Nothing compared to what I’ve had to endure.” Those little obsidian eyes darted left and right.

  Jack remained silent.

  A section of the bag wall tumbled away, and Hitchcock stepped into the space.

  “My aunt,” Jack said by way of introduction.

  “My word!” Hitchcock said, taking in her great girth, of which he and two cantaloupes were merely a fraction.

  “My dress,” said Aunt Edith. “What is that woman doing in my dress?”

  “We’re working to find my mother,” said Jack.

  “Your mother is dead.”

  “She better not be,” said Jack, the last of his pity vanishing. “Not if you value your life.” He turned to Hitchcock. “What’s the sentence for murder and kidnapping?”

  “That would constitute a capital offense,” Hitchcock said. “Though, they no longer hang people in California.” Was that relief on Aunt Edith’s face? “I believe the gas chamber is the modern, preferred method. One is located just across the bay, in San Quentin.”

  “You kidnapped my mother,” Jack said. “You were going to sell her into slavery. But you didn’t pay the man you hired to kidnap her. Now that man is threatening my mother’s life.”

  “I’m the one who was kidnapped,” said Aunt Edith.

  “Yes. A kidnapper who was kidnapped herself,” said Jack.

  “That’s what we refer to as ironic,” said Hitchcock.

  “We saved you,” said Jack. “Now it is time for you to pay us back. Where is my mother?”

  Aunt Edith’s voice iced over. “You seem to have figured out a great deal in the weeks I’ve been held hostage,” she said.

  “You’ve been gone less than three days,” Jack said.

  “Well, have you figured out how to prove any of this? I’m not doing anything to help you. I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about. Kidnapped your mother indeed! What evidence do you have? And who will believe an orphan boy who’s living on the streets?”

  “I’m not living on the streets,” Jack said.

  “Not yet,” Aunt Edith replied.

  “Are you threatening to throw me out of the hotel?” Jack asked.

  “I have no legal obligation to take care of you,” Aunt Edith said. “That note from your mother just stated her intention. It doesn’t bind me in any way.”

  “All right,” Jack said. “Let me get the owner of the hotel, and you can tell him to throw me out.” Jack turned his back on Aunt Edith and made as if to walk out over the tumbled luggage. But before he did, he turned back around and bowed slightly with his hands clasped in front of him. “Yes, madam. How may I be of assistance?”

  Aunt Edith stared at Jack, her face pinched up, her nose twitching as she thought. “You know . . . ,” she said.

  “That I am part owner of the hotel?” Jack said. “Yes, we know. We found the papers in Muffin’s cage.”

  Aunt Edith’s nose started again. Twitch. Twitch. “The papers don’t prove a thing,” she said. “To claim your inheritance you need a numeric code. Without it you’ve got nothing.”

  Points of fear peppered Jack’s stomach. She was right. Without the numbers his claim to the hotel amounted to nothing. And without a home he became just another orphan boy on the streets or in state care. Who would believe anything he said?

  “What makes you think we don’t have the numbers?” Jack asked.

  “You don’t think I’ve searched everything you own? Everything your mother owned?” Aunt Edith said. “During the funeral I examined every paltry item in your and your mother’s apartment, then shipped it up here and searched it again. I looked at every scribble on every slip of paper, but none of them was the required number. Mostly just phone numbers of that ridiculous acting club your mother belonged to. If I’d found the numbers, I might have been able to convince that dreadful bellman to let me go and partner up. He had planned to play the heir himself. He just needed the seven little numbers, as he kept reminding me. If I had them, you wouldn’t be needed at all.”

  “You’re evil,” Jack said.

  “I’m a survivor,” Aunt Edith replied. “You have got nothing—I repeat, nothing—on me.”

  Hitchcock stepped forward. “My dear woman,” he said, “I beg to differ. We do have something. Something very compelling, in fact.”

  “Oh, really. And what is that?”

  “A hostage,” Hitchcock replied.

  He brandished the handbag. The pink leash snaked out from it. He undid the bag’s snap and yanked on the leash. Muffin’s little head popped up. He blinked his eyes and opened his mouth wide, showing his sharp little teeth and pink tongue. “We have your weasel,” Hitchcock said.

  “Weasel! I’ll have you know that Muffin is a purebred Alpine chinchilla.”

  “Then he’ll be all the more attractive to the furriers on Maiden Lane,” Jack said.

  “I understand Alpine chinchilla earmuffs are all the rage,” Hitchcock added.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” said Aunt Edith. She pulled against the ties that he
ld her.

  “We would not only dare. We would do,” said Hitchcock. “When weighing the life of a weasel against that of a mother, the rodent comes up sadly underweight.”

  Aunt Edith had done nothing yet to admit her crime. Her head swiveled left and right, as if she could find some other option closed up in the luggage sets around her.

  “Very well,” Hitchcock said. He dropped Muffin back into the handbag and closed it with a snap.

  “Wait,” Aunt Edith said. “Stefano, the man I hired to kidnap your mother, has a boat at Fisherman’s Wharf. I don’t know the slip number. Untie me, and I’ll take you there.”

  THE CLACK, CLACK OF LINES knocking against masts swelled and faded in time with the waves at Fisherman’s Wharf. A foghorn moaned. A gull cried as it flew overhead and disappeared into the fog bank that crept up the center of the bay.

  “It’s the trawler with the red stripe,” Aunt Edith said, pointing to a large shrimp boat in a slip at the far end of the dock.

  The boat looked abandoned, as indeed did the entire marina. Many of the boats had slipped out into the bay to await the Festival of Progress fireworks show that would start in a little while to celebrate the earthquake anniversary. Those left behind had furled sails or were battened down and dark.

  Jack, Hitchcock, and Aunt Edith padded silently down the dock. There were no lights illuminating the boat. The name painted just below the bow gunwale was barely legible. It might have been Bon Voyage. The red stripe along its hull was chipped, and barnacles formed crusty pockets below the waterline. A high main mast thrust up straight behind the pilothouse. Three long booms crowded up to the mast. These were arms, hinged at the bottom to the mast, that were lowered to extend far over the sides or back of the boat, to trail nets. Or they could have been if they were neatly maintained like the others at the wharf, instead of a tangle of rigging and ropes. The whole place stank of dead fish and decomposing kelp. Abandoned boats don’t last long on their own, thought Jack as he climbed onto it. Hitchcock hoisted up the skirt of his dressing gown and hopped easily aboard. The two of them helped Aunt Edith lumber on.

  Old nets littered the stern. There was clearly no one on deck. The pilothouse was dark, empty. A quick inspection belowdecks showed it, too, was uninhabited.

  Jack glared at his aunt. “There’s no one here!” he said. “Was this some kind of trick?”

  Aunt Edith smiled and shrugged.

  Jack calmly lifted the handbag from Hitchcock’s wrist and held it out over the water. They could all hear Muffin scratching inside it.

  “I’ll do it,” Jack said.

  Aunt Edith made a move toward Jack, but Hitchcock held her back.

  “Two against one isn’t fair,” she said. The handbag swung back and forth, hooked by Jack’s slim finger. “The Aventure Malgache should have arrived by now and will wait just outside the Golden Gate. Captain Grummaker is an old acquaintance of mine. Stefano was to use this boat to bring your mother to him during the height of the fireworks, when any witnesses would be distracted and the coast guard would be busy with all the drunken pleasure-boaters. From there she would be brought to her new life.”

  “Slavery, you mean!” Jack said. “If she’s been hurt . . .”

  “She’ll be fine. Even if Stefano threatened to, he wouldn’t kill her. They don’t pay for dead slaves, you know. Not anymore.”

  She settled her bulk onto a crate of gear to wait. Jack pulled Hitchcock aside.

  “What if she’s wrong?” Jack asked. “What if they don’t come?”

  “She seems rather confident,” Hitchcock replied.

  Jack threaded the silver charm out of his shirt and began worrying it, rolling it between his fingers and into his palm.

  “But Aunt Edith’s been locked up for days,” he said. “And we never gave this Stefano his money. What if he makes good on his threat. What if he kills her?”

  Hitchcock squeezed Jack’s shoulder silently.

  The minutes ticked by, measured by the clattering of the lines and the shush of the breaking waves. The fog advanced, thicker, heavier, creeping under cuffs and collars and dampening spirits.

  Each time the clack, clack swelled again, Jack gripped the silver charm and looked toward the gangway. Was it footsteps this time?

  “She will be here,” Hitchcock said.

  Jack wasn’t so sure. The world around him disappeared in a wash of gray, as if to foreshadow his fate.

  “I’ll be alone,” he said. “If we don’t save my mother, I’ll have no one.”

  “So it may seem,” the director said. He tossed the trailing sleeves of his gown over his arms, then stretched his hands out. “But perhaps your vision is too narrow.” He formed a frame with his fingers so they both could gaze through it. A gray, formless square was all there was to see. “In real life no frame bounds our possibilities. No director limits what we are shown. Do you know what I see?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “I see a troupe of actors using their talents to help a friend. Now you try.”

  Jack squeezed the silver charm tightly in his fist. The fog swirled in the frame of the director’s hands. “I see Opal.”

  “And what is she doing?”

  “Feeding me.” Jack smiled. “A Cheer-Up Chocolate Chew.”

  “Who else?”

  “Schultzie,” Jack said. “He’s writing me a letter, inviting me to stay with him and his dad.” He shot an angry look at Aunt Edith. “And he’s hand-delivering it.”

  “And do you know what else I see?” Hitchcock continued. “A director of films who has grown to respect the talent and bravery of a certain young man, and would never let him come to harm.” He gazed again through the frame of his hands. “So, a final lesson. In the cinema we see with our eyes.” His hands flew apart, breaking the frame, and arced around to envelope Jack’s fist. “In life we see with our hearts.”

  They sat for a moment in unbroken silence. Then the clacking began again. Hitchcock let his hands fall. Jack opened his fist, the bones of his hand creaky like when he clenched a pencil too long.

  In the dim marina lights he rubbed at the impression the charm had left on the pad of flesh between his wrist and thumb. He thought to trace the letters he had so often seen on the charm, IPSE OIS. But the impression was, of course, a mirror image.

  210 3291

  “Huh!” Jack said, pulling Hitchcock aside. “I see something else.”

  He held his hand up to Hitchcock.

  “Look. Seven little numbers.”

  THE CLACKING LINGERED LONG after the most recent swell had passed. Footsteps. Footsteps rattled down the gangway toward the dock. Jack and Hitchcock ducked behind the shrimp nets and gear, dragging Aunt Edith after them. A bright blue light flared overhead, and a boom echoed along the bay. The earthquake anniversary show had begun. Fireworks threw halos of light through the fog scrim that had settled over the marina. Shadowy figures on the gangway materialized and winked out with each burst of light. One shadow was small, not much bigger than a child, but moved with the assurance of a man. The other was large and oxlike. The light bounced off her horn-rim glasses. With greedy eyes Aunt Edith watched them approach, but Hitchcock put his finger to his lips, then gestured to the handbag and ran his thumb across his neck. A third figure stumbled between the other two, a tall, slim woman. All three disappeared when the first volley of fireworks drifted as ash to the water.

  Another boom, and a white light threw The Suave Man, Stefano, into closer view. The woman who was his ox of an accomplice trundled behind. In the fading light the slim woman between held her head high. She was dirty. Her face was turned away, but there was no mistaking her hair—golden and elegantly twisted on top of her head, despite the wisps that stuck out like dandelion puffs.

  “Mom,” Jack whispered. His heart kettle-drummed in his chest. He had to close his eyes and count to ten to keep himself from gasping in noisy draughts of air.

  He opened his eyes again, willing them to adjust and pierce the
opaque night. A strobe of low flashes shot through the lines and masts of surrounding boats.

  His mother was there.

  She was alive.

  All chill vanished. Jack’s flesh wanted to leap from his bones like butter from a hot griddle. His voice wanted to call his mother with a report to rival the pyrotechnics above him.

  But Hitchcock stopped him. The director had spied something else in the flashing lights. He pointed to The Ox and then raised a hand with the thumb and index finger extended. Just like at the mission, The Ox had a gun.

  Stefano hopped on board. He turned on the light in the pilothouse. The Ox ambled along the dock. She held Mom’s bound wrists, while casting off the lines. She stepped heavily onto the boat as it pulled out of the slip, jerking Jack’s mother after her. The boat rocked, and Jack’s mother stumbled against The Ox, whose eyes squinted savagely behind her horn-rims. She pushed Mom brutally to the deck.

  Jack, who for nearly a month had let so many feelings fall silently into that bottomless pit inside, howled in anger and fear. “No!”

  And a great number of things happened at once.

  The Ox aimed her gun toward the pile of nets.

  Hitchcock grabbed a long gaff hook, such as is used to haul in fish.

  Stefano threw the throttle to full. The boat lurched forward.

  Jack fell.

  The handbag bounced across the deck, pink leash trailing behind. Aunt Edith, who hadn’t lost her ability to exploit weakness in an instant, snatched it up.

  “Two against two. Now the odds are even,” she cried. “Stefano. Come quick. You have unwanted passengers.”

  The Ox drew a bead on the nets, but Hitchcock was far too quick for her. He swung the hook with all his might. The Ox squealed. The hook landed square on the back of her gun hand. A shot rang out as the gun struck the rail, the sound lost in the noise of the fireworks. The gun slid along the gunwale and tumbled overboard.

  But Hitchcock wasn’t the only one who could improvise a weapon. The Ox grabbed a harpoon gun and aimed it at Hitchcock. It had a longer range than his hook. Jack’s mother tried to interfere, but The Ox was simply too big. She shoved Jack’s mother roughly toward the pilothouse and The Suave Man.