The Adventures of Young Elizabeth and Rollo, the Wondercat* (*Who thought he was a dog?)

by Les Cohen

  * * *

  Episode 11:

  As A Rule, It’s Always Helpful To Roll The Window Down First, Before Jumping

  Whoa! I’ve never turned around so quickly. The voice was familiar, but seemed so out of place, I almost forgot for the moment where we were. It was deep, raspy and far more menacing than the few times I’d heard it before. It was – I couldn’t remember his name to save me. – the “super,” the maintenance man from my father’s building, his short, black and white beard looking more gnarly, like a pirate, than I remembered. I’d hardly seen him before. Except for a few polite greetings in the lobby or hallways of the building where my father worked, he’d been largely invisible. I’d missed the well-worn desperation in his eyes, and the slight accent in his voice, almost Americanized away over decades of living here.

  We were standing now, against the house with Mr. Cavanaugh – Right, that was his name! – four or five feet away. Five will get you ten, an expression I’d picked up from.. I don’t know, from someone when I was a little kid. ..Well, five will get you ten, “Cavanaugh” wasn’t his real name. “If he’s here,” I thought quickly to myself, “he’s up to no good and probably wouldn’t have used his real name when he’d been hired.”

  “We were just leaving. You’ll ride in the other car with Pietro.”

  Wait a minute, “Why should we? There’s three of us, one of you...” I’d forgotten for the moment about the other two guys. “...and my parents and the police are on the way.” And then it occurred to me, “You got a gun or something?” (I have no idea why I wasn’t too scared to ask.)

  “No gun. I don’t need one. Even better, I’ve got, ....”

  “He’s going to hurt Rollo,” I gave my brain advance notice of what I thought we were about to hear, “if we don’t go with him.”

  “...your grandfather.”

  And then, for a moment at least, I came completely back down to earth. “What are you talking about?” My voice was suddenly calm. I wasn’t afraid or nervous. I was.. I was in control. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the best way to describe it. “My grandfather’s been dead for...”

  “Dead soon, maybe, Miss, but not yet.” It was the smaller of the two Russians, the one with red hair on his head and face, walking up on my right, his buddy dragging the old man who was barely able to walk on his own. I’m pretty sure he’d been beaten. The sound of the rear door to the shack banging shut behind them hung in the air longer than it should have.

  “Let me make it simple. Either you – just you Elizabeth – come with me or I’m going to beat your grandfather ‘to a pulp,’ as you say, whatever that means, and dump him off the side of one of your oh so scenic bridges.”

  The old man started to speak up. “No, honey, they just want to use...” but, before he could finish, the big one holding him up smashed a powerful right fist into the old man’s gut. He didn’t pass out, although I almost did just watching it, but it sure cut short whatever he was about to say. Grandfather or not, I wasn’t going to let this happen. Besides, I wasn’t kidding about the police. In fact, I was surprised, and more than a bit disappointed under the circumstances, that they weren’t here already.

  “That’s enough!” Mr. Cavanaugh stepped forward and grabbed me hard by the arm.

  “Let her alone, Manny,” the old man struggled to reach for Cavanaugh. “She’s...,” but he started coughing and Mr. Cavanaugh cut him off.

  “You always did talk too much, Joe.” And then he turned to me, tightening his grip on my arm. “Besides, if she’s nice, and you tell me what I want to know, no one’s getting hurt.” Now, why didn’t I believe him?

  Apparently, neither did Bobby... believe him, that is. Lunging forward to help me, Bobby wedged himself between the two of us, but only for a second until the red-haired man pulled him off and slung him into Connie and both of them back against the house. (This guy was way stronger, and a whole lot meaner than he looked, and he looked plenty mean enough just standing there.)

  “Get the old man into the back seat of my car. He’s not going anywhere. I’ll drive him myself. And you two and the girl,” Cavanaugh said to the large man, “ride together in your car. ..Move! We’ve got to hurry.”

  The red-haired man took over, dragging me, faster than I could walk at first, around to the other car, his huge friend going to the driver’s side and getting behind the wheel. Both cars were angled toward the water and would drive around the front of the cabin on their way back to the main road. “You two,” Cavanaugh barked at Bobby and Connie, pointing at them with as threatening a forefinger as I’d ever seen, “stay right where you are.” They got the point, looking around, and then at each other, for any idea that might help.

  Bobbie and I looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say or do, but then, turning to look into the window next to where he was standing, a noise inside the shack caught Bobby’s attention. “Take a look at that!” he whispered to Connie, pointing with a nod of his head while the men got into their cars. It was Rollo, up on hind legs, trying to turn the knob of the cabin door that his captors had closed behind them on their way out, but he couldn’t. Unable to follow them, he took one quick look around, which was all the time he needed, until something at the other end of the room caught his eye, the torn top screen panel of the door to the porch behind him. The windows across from us were still open, but he didn’t know for sure where an escape that way would take him. Besides, even though he couldn’t see us, he could hear and smell for sure that we were outside, on the side of the cabin across from the window where Bobbie and Connie were standing.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he was off the ground, banking off the wall in front of him, to the right of the door, and then rolling to his left in mid-air to land upright on the bench under the windows across the room. (I got to tell you, Rollo’s “bank and roll” has always been one of my favorite moves. To be honest, if it was me, I’d have just turned, run across the room and leaped up at the door, but not Rollo. He needed to gain altitude. Besides, would Superman be as cool if he took the train, instead of flying beside it, or the elevator when he can “leap tall buildings with a single bound”? I don’t think so. No, Rollo knew what he could do, and I think he wanted to make sure he had the height to hit the top of the door with the force he needed to go through it.) His rear claws scratching into the wood for traction, up onto the dresser to the left of the screen door, and then, still climbing and without a second’s hesitation, in a move only a cat of this speed and power could accomplish, pushing off the edge of that dresser, climbing still higher to catch the upper screen just where it had peeled back. The force of his impact ripped through what was left of the door, and sent him tumbling out of view... only for a second.

  “Chunk. Chunk, chunk,” and the doors to both cars were shut, engines starting up in unison. I struggled to get out, but against the overwhelming strength of the man in the back seat, looked out the driver’s window to see, back on his feet, Rollo tearing out the front of the porch and coming back toward us, just as the lead car with Mr. Cavanaugh and “Is he really my Grandfather?” pulled away. Fearing he’d be run over, Bobby and Connie both started shouting, “ROLLLLOOOO!!!” but the cat was too busy to listen. Up on the hood of the first car as it moved under him, on to its roof, and then down and off the trunk, there he was, dust swirling around him, left arm out, right arm back, with the nerve to challenge the second car in which I was riding in the back.

  “Guh-smeek.” Rollo sneezed to clear the dust from his nose. Head down, his eyes were dead on the big Russian behind the wheel.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the red-haired man told his driver, looking through the windshield from the back seat at the animal that dared to stand in their way. “And while your at it,” he said, softly at first, “RUN OVER THAT F**KIN’ CAT!!” He was shouting this time, thrusting his arm and the pointed finger at the end of it in the direction of y
ou know who. (“Personally, I don’t think it’s ever necessary or helpful to use profanity, but only a poor excuse for a lack of vocabulary and descriptive skills – a sure sign of dull-wittedness, if you ask me.” At least that’s what one of my elementary school teachers, Miss Brewer, used to tell us. As for me, to honest, I’ve been known to drop the “s” bomb now and then, but only for effect when it really counted, so I like to tell myself.)

  Bobby and Connie were still screaming as loud as they could, but with the noise and dust from both cars leaving so quickly, there was no telling what was happening. “BOOM, ka-BUMP!” The dirt road was uneven, with ruts and holes, and their car bounced as if it had hit or run over something, but they couldn’t tell what for sure.

  “Got him!” The driver seemed proud of himself.

  Fearing the worse, I spun around desperately, looking out the side and then rear windows, my mouth mostly covered by the large hand of my adversary, his other arm around my waist. ..And there, as their car began the left turn around the corner of the porch to circle around the cabin, there in the confusion I caught a glimpse of a familiar form I could barely make out – a flash of gray and brown fur moving in the dust. Somehow, I managed to pry the man’s disgusting hand away from my face, just at the moment I made eye contact with the furry creature now running beside us, lunging to shout to him through the open rear window on the passenger side, “Rollo! Roof! Window!!! NOWWW!!”

  Connie and Bobbie looked at each other. They’d heard it, too, but what did it mean? They knew I was always working with Rollo on his vocabulary, but what was that?? Whatever I was talking about, he got the point. Not even waiting for our car to go by, Rollo dug his front legs into the turf, lowered his left shoulder almost to the ground, and let the momentum of his rear end continue forward, pulling his body around 180 degrees from the direction he had been running. Barely missing the car’s rear bumper, he was well on his way toward the back of the house while both cars headed across the front and began their turn around the other side, the narrow space and rough surface slowing their pace. Up, onto the shed and then up again to the roof, he climbed its gradual slope at full speed while Connie and Bobby ran toward the back to see what they could do. Making it to the top of the roof, Rollo slowed just barely until he caught sight of both cars coming around the front from his right.

  Meanwhile, I knew what I had to do. Turning, to his surprise, to face the man next to me in the back seat, I grabbed his head, locking my fingers behind it, and shoved it face down with all the strength I had, throwing myself over onto his back, and him under me. It was just the move I needed to reach the window handle on the other side and begin turning it, as fast as I could, to lower the glass. Meanwhile, on the roof, bits of shingle tore away beneath Rollo’s paws as he made his final turn. Sparks flew as the claws of his left rear foot scraped a nail head here and there where the shingles were missing. And then “Oh!” Elizabeth winced as she caught sight of him losing his footing, a piece of bent flashing catching the side of his rear leg as he ran along the edge of the roof, the blood obvious even from her distance.

  “Look!!” Bobby had just spotted the detective’s police car, still well down the dirt road, but coming fast and on a collision course with the first of the two cars.

  “Watch out!!!” Connie shouted, both of them now running straight out of the clearing, their arms waiving the police car out of the way – but then blocking Mr. Cavanaugh’s, whatever his real name was, escape was the whole idea.

  Racing along the roof, the first car was just passing below him, a few feet away from the shack, but that wasn’t his target. Turning to his right to look down, but never slowing his acceleration, Rollo saw me looking up at him for just an instant as I fought to keep lowering the window. Open, or not, Rollo was coming. He’d have to lead this jump just right, and the one look back at her car would be the only fix he’d have. Locked on target, he slipped for a moment as one shingle slid out from under him, but still he continued to gain speed, head down, looking straight ahead. The car would just have to be there. Out of time, and out of roof, his rear paws catching the edge perfectly, Rollo was airborne.

  One again, it was one of those weird times – I sure have a lot of moments like this. Way too many, if you ask me. – in your life, when something’s about to happen and your brain speeds up, making everything around you seem like its happening in slow motion, like when I opened the door to my father’s office to find the two Russians waiting for us. Well, this was another one, this time for both Rollo (I’m guessing) and me. Risky? Sure, but then I knew even then that there are instants in life when there are no second chances, no holding back. It was one of those things you would never try if you took the time to think about it, and couldn’t do twice even if you did.

  “Boom!” Made it! ..Well, almost. Rollo banged into the last couple of inches of glass I hadn’t rolled down yet and against the rear door, but he held on. (You know, it was one of those cars where the rear glass doesn’t go all the way down in the back. “Now you tell me?!” Rollo would have said.) If he hadn’t had his forearm strength, Rollo would have hit the ground for sure, probably to be crushed under the rear wheel on that side. Meanwhile, I was upside down fighting and kicking the red haired man in the back, but somehow managed to extend one arm to the window that Rollo was able to reach and pull him into the car.

  “MearrrkkkKK!!” Rollo went right for the head of the driver, his rapier sharp teeth drawing blood from the large man’s neck. It was just the distraction we both, Rollo and I, needed. Taking his hands off the wheel for only a moment, their car swerved out of control into the woods and banged to a stop into the remains of a fallen tree.

  The first car, the one with Mr. Cavanaugh and my grandfather (Really?) had gotten past the police and my parents who had swerved to their right just as they made the clearing to avoid a head-on collision. With luck, the other police car, still on its way, would head them off. Meanwhile, the detective, the police officer with him, and my parents, Eleanor and MR all ran to meet Bobby and Connie who were already at the second car helping Rollo and me out. Fortunately, I walked away in pretty good shape, the violence of the crash cushioned by the man I’d been struggling with in the back seat. He, on the other hand, had seriously hurt his back and wasn’t going anywhere. The large man in the front seat was dazed, nearly unconscious and taken into custody without a struggle. Both the Russians were handcuffed and put into two other police cars that arrived just moments later. And Rollo, well he was fine, although it would take him almost a week to get that “What was I thinking?” look off his face.

  As for the car with my grandfather, it never made it to the end of the road and back onto the highway. There was another police car on its way, not far behind my parents, that Mr. Cavanaugh drove into the woods to avoid. Police followed it on foot where they found it, abandoned. No sign of either Cavanaugh or my grandfather anywhere.

  There would be court stuff to do as a witness for the case against the two Russian men the police arrested. Other than that, it seemed we were pretty much done, except for the lingering “Why?” All the two Russians would tell us was that it was about money. How much and where exactly all this money might be, they hadn’t been able to find out. Mr. Cavanaugh may have hired them, but didn’t trust them enough (“Who would?”) to tell them.

  Rollo got two stitches from the vet to close the cut on his rear leg. Other than that, we’d all come through it okay, all the better for a badly needed good night’s sleep. The following afternoon, the five of us found ourselves hanging out at my place, on our way to getting back to normal. My mother was in the kitchen making brownies to cheer us up, but the fact was, we were feeling pretty good, all things considered. My father, who was coming and going from his study seemed unsettled, and wondered, as I did too, if we’d ever see my grandfather again. It was strange for me, not really being able to remember him, thinking he’d died and then finding out he was still
alive. I couldn’t image how it was for my Dad. He told me once that, since his father died years ago, it was sometimes as if it had never happened and, at other times, as if it were only yesterday. Mostly, it was something he thought about more than he would admit. So now what?

  My father, who had been on the phone for a while, came back in to our family room carrying one of the folders from the safe and clearly excited about something. “Hey guys. Honey,” he turned toward my mother, “come over here. Wait ‘til you see what I found out.” Plopping down on the couch, right in the middle where we were sitting, he reached inside the folder and took out the old brown and white picture of the two men. My mother came over and sat on the coffee table in front of him. “See this guy standing next to your grandfather?” Of course we did. “Well, it’s Mr. Cavanaugh. It’s also my father’s brother, my uncle Manny!” We already knew that. “Forty years and a beard later, I didn’t recognize him. Absolutely, never occurred to me that it was him, working as the maintenance guy at the office these past few months.”

  “The police aren’t entirely sure how all this fits together, but apparently he was your grandfather’s partner in some business years ago that didn’t amount to much. They had a falling out, and Granddaddy bought him out by taking over the payments on some land they’d been trying to develop out west, and they went their separate ways. Manny got into more and more trouble, while your grandfather came back here when I was born and bought that first little seafood restaurant, the one he’s standing in front of in the picture on the wall upstairs.”

  We sat there listening to this story, apparently less impressed with all this than he was. He was my father, so I had to be the one to ask, “Soooo?”

  “Okay,” my father continued, leaning forward to the edge of his seat, “here’s where it gets interesting.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said to myself.

  “About eight years ago, a year before your grandfather ‘died’...”

  “I thought he died ten years ago?” I reminded him. “You always say ‘ten’ years when you talk about it.”

  “No, honey. I don’t know, I’m just rounding off. ...You were, what, seven, maybe eight years old?”

  “Stay with your point, dear.” Thanks, Mom. My friends and I weren’t getting any younger listening to all this.

  “Sure. ..About eight years ago, over 30 years after my father bought the property he once owned with his brother, Manny, he sells it. Your grandfather sells it. What had originally been in the middle of nowhere outside Denver, after all this time, was now prime, world class suburban commercial property. Selling price? Get this... Over twelve million!”

  “Dollars?!” (What else, MR?)

  “Whoa,” was all I or any of us could manage to say. And then quiet.

  “Hey... We’re rich!” It took a second, but Eleanor had finally gotten the point.

  “No way, good buddy,” I rubbed her shoulder, smiling at her, but thinking how nice it would be if she really was my sister. “Who adopted you?!”

  “Besides, guys,” Bobby was right, “it’s your grandfather’s money. He’s still alive, remember?” At least I hoped he was.

  “You remember, honey...” He was talking to my mother. “...how we never understood what happened to so much of my father’s savings? Well, he was protecting the property, to make sure taxes would be paid on it until it could be sold. The police have found the attorney in Denver that handled it for him all these years, and who took care of the sale. He hadn’t been in touch with my father since then, and had no way of knowing...,” my father turned back to me. Talking more slowly now, his voice taking on a more somber tone, “...that your grandfather had died, so we thought. No reason for the attorney to contact family which is why we didn’t find out about the property when your grandfather disapp..”

  “So,” Eleanor was a little reluctant to ask, “why did he do it? Why would anybody fake his own...”

  “Well, some of this is conjecture, but I’ve talked to the detective and it makes sense. ..When his brother, Manny, heard about the sale, in trouble with what amounts to the Russian mob and desperate for money, he told the Russians about your grandfather, and they threatened to hurt us if he didn’t cooperate. Sure, he should have gone to the police but, knowing your grandfather, he probably didn’t think they could protect him, or us. I know it’s extreme, but he must have thought that faking his death was the only way to make absolutely sure we’d be okay. With him dead, that should have ended it, and it did. Even so, Manny kept track of us, just in case we started acting like we had money which he was pretty sure we did.”

  “And Grand Daddy’s been hiding ever since?” I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that he would have cared so much to do this, and so little that he would have left me without my grandfather all these years. And my father without his.

  “Apparently, he’s been coming and going, the police aren’t sure how many times, but he actually had an apartment someplace not far from here where he would stay and keep in touch with what was happening to us.”

  “To be honest,” and my mother always was, “It’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”

  “Hey,” my father wasn’t in the mood for making excuses, “what do you want me to say? ...Unfortunately, Manny’s associates had been watching the attorney in Denver all these years. When he shipped us the safe, Manny figured that it was his (your grandfather’s) way of getting the money to us – even if he was dead.”

  “Why now, Mr. Coleman?” Bobby was wondering the same thing we’d all been thinking. “I mean, shipping the safe after all this time?”

  “Actually, he didn’t mean to. That was a mistake. Apparently, the company that had been storing the safe and some other papers left over from their business together, your grandfather’s and Manny’s, went out of business and tried contacting your grandfather through his attorney to come pick up his stuff. The attorney tried to reach him, but in the meantime, his office had the safe sent to me, thinking he was following instructions that my father had given his law firm years earlier in case something happened to him.

  “So Mr. Cavanaugh.. So Manny knew Grand Daddy was alive?”

  “I don’t think so, honey. I think it was as much a surprise to him, as it was to us. Anyway, he moved into a motel out on the highway, and got a temporary job as the maintenance man in our building to keep track of me and the safe. The two Russian guys were hired by Russian mobsters to help Manny out, and to make sure they got paid. What he didn’t count on was that your grandfather was still alive and was going to do his best to make sure nothing happened to any of us – and you, especially, Elizabeth.”

  “Not to be tacky, Mr. Coleman,” MR, clearing his throat, got right to the point, “but where’s the twelve million? It certainly wasn’t in the safe.”

  “Or was it?!” I had an idea, maybe, but first, before I said anything about it out loud, “What did the lawyer in Denver do with the money when Grand Daddy sold the property?”

  “Gave it to your Grand Daddy in person, in a cashier’s check.”

  “And to protect it, he would have...” Eleanor was right on target.

  “Not to mention earn some interest.” MR had already done the math. “At only 5%, that’s $600,000 a year! ...$50,000 a month for, what, eight years. That’s another $5 million!! – plus the compounding! Yikes!!”

  “...he would have banked it.”

  “Right, Daddy, but not at some ordinary bank down the street. He was from Russia. He would have put it in one of those fancy European banks, the ones with the secret, numbered accounts.”

  “Okay, let’s assume he did. We’d need to know the name of the bank, the account number and a password, and it could be anywhere, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands...”

  “No! It’s Switzerland. Here,” I got up quickly from where I had been sitting on the floor and scrunched in next to my father on the couch. Grabbing the folder from the table
, I lifted the flap and began fumbling through the papers for something I’d remembered. “Got it! Listen to this...” What I had was one of the letters my grandfather had written to my father. “Here it is... ‘You’ve got to give those Swiss credit, they make a hell of a safe.’”

  “But that safe was made in San Francisco.” An excited MR began shuffling over on his knees from where he was sitting on the rug to my right. “Bobby told me about the label you found on the door.”

  “Mrrrk.” Rollo wanted to set the record straight, and looked over at MR, asking him to be more precise.

  “What?!” MR looked back at him, but didn’t get it.

  “Sure,” Bobby had been quiet, thinking to himself until then, “he’s telling us it’s a Swiss bank, and...”

  “Not just any Swiss bank,” my father had done some deals involving funds transferred from foreign banks. “I bet he means ‘Credit Suisse,’ one of the largest, most prestigious banks in the world.”

  “Of course,” Bobby had a point to make. You could hear it in the pace of his voice. “’...You’ve got to give those Swiss credit...’ and I bet MR can tell you the account number, or at least where to find it.”

  MR looked puzzled, but it was my mother who asked the question, “What do you mean?”

  “Of course,” MR had just realized what Bobby was talking about. “At your office, when Bobby and I were examining the safe, we found a number on the back of the safe that hadn’t been stamped into the metal not all that long ago. The safe has been repainted a couple of times, at least, but this number was stamped through paint. It had to have been done more recently.”

  “So...,” Eleanor knew what we were all thinking. Why not say it out loud? “What are we waiting for?” And we all got up, ran outside and stuffed ourselves in the wagon.

  “Rollo!” I called out to him, patting my chest as I did, “but he was already outside, running for the open rear door and scrambling to his favor place in the middle of the back seat. He liked looking through the split between the bucket seats, where he could jump into the front, if necessary, or get a better look at what was going on outside.

  “Keys,” my father looked at my mother, “I don’t have the keys.” Fortunately, my mother had them, and we were off.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, including the time it took to park, we were at my father’s office, huddled around the safe.

  “Eleanor, do me favor and get that yellow pad and a pen off my desk.”

  “Sure, Mr. Coleman.”

  “Here.” Bobby was pointing to the plate with the name of the manufacturer – “Henry McCombs & Son,” something, and then “San Francisco” – that Rollo had discovered the other night. An old safe like this had been painted more that once. That was to be expected, but whoever painted it last was either sloppy or in hurry. It wasn’t easy to read, but we could still make it out. “It looks like serial number 17...”

  “Forget that one,” Eleanor interrupted, anxious to find the real thing. “Unless the entire plate is a fake, it’s the real thing. We’re looking for a bank account number.”

  “Where’s the other one,” I started looking on the side of the safe where I was standing, “the one that MR found, that hasn’t been painted over?”

  “Here,” Bobby had scrunched down behind the back of the safe and was pointing to the left edge. We all huddled around while Bobby read what he saw out loud, “2-1-5-8-1-0-9-7.”

  Quiet. ..And then my father stood up and headed for his desk. “I’m calling Credit Swiss in New York.” It took a few minutes to find the right number and the right person. “Hi. My name is Robert Coleman. My father, Joseph Coleman, passed away recently.” He was making that part up, and waved his hand left and right, as if to tell us all, “Don’t worry about it,” when he saw my mother and me making faces at him and flopping our arms. Well, at least my mother was flopping her arms.

  I just turned my head and mouthed the words “What are you doing?” at him.

  “Yes, thank you.” The person on the other end was offering her condolences. “..As I was saying, we’ve found papers indicating that he had an account with you. Would you mind checking this account number for me to confirm that it is, in fact, one of yours. ..Yes, it’s 2-1-5, 8-1-0, 9-7. ..Uh, I’d say he’d had to have opened it around eight years ago. ..I see. Could there be any lead or trailing zeros I might have omitted? ..All right, thank you. I’ll check our papers and call you back.”

  He put the phone down and looked up, shaking his head just a bit from side to side. “It’s not one of their numbers. They need ten digits. This is only eight.”

  “Does this mean we’re not going to be rich?” MR could sound so pathetic, but I knew he was only kidding, although I think Rollo took him seriously, jumping up onto my chest for me to hold him. I suspect he was trying to make me feel better, and not the other way around. After all, that’s what friends do.

  Turned out that the Henry McCombs & Son label was the fake after all, painted over to make it look authentic, or at least less obvious. The other number was probably just a diversion. My mother remembered that ‘McCombs & Son’ was the name of a fresh-made ice cream shop on Maryland Avenue where my grandfather used to take me now and then when I was little. It really was Credit Swiss, and the fake serial number had ten digits. Just the right ones, at that. The bank needed a password, but I guessed and got it right the first time. “Notes.” My grandfather used to call me that because, even when I was little... He gave me this pad, the kind with the big spaces between the lines, and a cheap ball point pen. Even then, I’d write everything down. Things he told me. Things I saw. Things we talked about, and that I thought about on my own. Expressions he taught me, like “Five will get you ten.” He called me “Notes” sometimes, and told me I’d be a writer some day. It was just between him and me, and I’d almost forgotten, but I remembered now.

  As for the money, the original twelve million dollars, plus interest, lots and lots of interest? All gone. Withdrawn, all but enough to keep the account open, wired out the day before by someone. The bank couldn’t be sure who, and wouldn’t tell us where it went, not without my father going to New York with papers confirming that my grandfather had died. I’m surprised they told us as much as they did over the phone. Too bad about the money, but I’d rather have had a chance to talk to my grandfather, just one more time. ..Although, the money would have been nice too.

  To be continued…

  “Boop.” It was the diminutive tone of my computer interrupting to give me the news.

  “Hey, I’ve got mail! ..I love e-mail.”

  “Mearrkk. Murrrkk.”

  “Hold on, let me read this. ..Great. He’s coming up late tonight instead waiting until Saturday. ‘Can’t wait to see you,’ I typed back, and signed it ‘E.’ Yea, me!”

  “Murrrr...”

  “Oh, don’t look so depressed.” I swiveled around, reached over to where he was sitting on my bed, grabbed his head in both my hands and massaged his furry cheeks. “We’ll still find time to hang out together.”

  “Meeeeeiaiak!”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll get you something to eat. Com’on. I could use something myself.” For a tough guy, he could look so pathetic sometime. “Microwave, or would you prefer to order some takeout?”

  Rolling his eyes, he scratched himself under his chin. “Okay, you let me know. I’m going to walk next door and see what they’re doing for dinner.”

  * * *