How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  A couple of steps into the alley, I raised the flashlight’s beam to a historical marker. It was set into the wall of the building that housed the store belonging to Frank Napis’s next door neighbor.

  The plaque commemorated the liquor store that had occupied the premises during the Gold Rush era.

  Built in 1866 and occupied by A.P. Hotaling & Co., this building housed the largest liquor repository on the West Coast. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire due to a mile long fire hose laid from Fisherman’s Wharf over Telegraph Hill by the U.S. Navy. This prompted the famous doggerel by Charles Field:

  If, as they say, God spanked the town

  for being over frisky,

  Why did he burn the churches down

  and save Hotaling’s whisky?

  All of the whisky had been drunk up long ago. The barrels had been replaced by a collection of fine Persian rugs, mahogany tea tables, and puffy, poodle-impersonating lamp fixtures.

  I panned the light down the alley to a fork that branched off behind Frank Napis’s store. Treading softly through the early morning darkness, I turned the corner leading to the back side of the Green Vase.

  It was easy to see why Frank had blamed the leak on Oscar’s gutters. Oscar had applied the same approach to maintenance of the outside of his building as he had to the inside. White plastic elbow joints connected an odd collection of metal piping materials that were pinned precariously to the side of the building.

  Next door, strong, solid iron neatly lined the edge of the roof. Frank’s gutters were aligned with flawless precision to the windows and eaves. Every inch of the building stood in stern rebuke to the crumbling exterior of the Green Vase. Even the small dumpster outside was parked in perfect parallel with the back stoop.

  Yawning, I turned to face the opposite side of the alley and the lot that Frank had suggested I check out as a potential source of the infamous water leak.

  The scavenged building was still in the deconstruction stage of its renovation process. Large swaths of thick plastic and blue tarp covered its empty window slots. A breeze wheezed through the cracks, gently pushing the coverings in and out, as if the building were breathing on a ventilator, recovering from the trauma of its recent surgery.

  “The work’s been stopped for several weeks now,” Monty had told me, speaking in his authoritative, renovation-expert voice. “I think they’re hung up on some sort of permit issue.”

  Halfway around the far side of the building, I found a loose tarp and pulled it back, revealing the gutted interior. The building had been stripped to its framing. The flooring was carved out down to the concrete basement. A hollow shell was all that remained—a shadow of the previous self, patiently waiting to be remade.

  The first edges of daylight were beginning to lift up the corners of the surrounding darkness. I glanced furtively up and down the alley; then I pulled the tarp back to its widest position and stepped gingerly inside.

  Coilings of ripped out electrical wire and shards of broken pipe were strewn across the concrete floor. Rusted nails jutted out of splintery beams. I puzzled at the fresh bird droppings that seemed to spot every surface before craning my neck up to the scalped rafters. A ten-foot square opening gaped in the center of the roof.

  This location seemed a much more likely spot for Oscar to have found a Leidesdorff-related relic than the construction site Ivan had taken me to across town. The landfill under this stretch of Jackson Square had been filled in soon after the Gold Rush started, in the years immediately following Leidesdorff’s alleged death.

  I walked across the concrete floor, hopping over shovels, jackhammers, and an empty lunchbox, and made my way towards the corner that ran parallel to Frank Napis’s store.

  The concrete basement in this section of the building had been torn up. Huge chunks of pummelled stone were piled next to a gaping hole, which was at least ten feet wide. I leaned over the gap, peering down into the damp dirt.

  The morning’s sun continued to roll up into the sky, but this back corner of the building was still darkened in shadow. Circling my flashlight around the dug-up opening in the concrete, something in the dirt below caught my eye. I crawled over the edge and eased myself down into the hole to get a better look.

  As my feet sank into the soggy bottom of the small pit, I saw the likely cause of the seepage into Frank Napis’s basement. A broken water main poked out of a small bubbling pool of water and mud. It looked as if the diggers of this hole had hit the pipe. They had been distracted, I suspected, by the sudden appearance of a ship’s bow in the bottom of the pit.

  I crouched down on my knees, running my hand along the three feet of exposed planking. The boards were rough and splintered—frangible from the years of underground decay.

  I scanned back and forth along the stretch of planking, confused by the angle of the structure. The boat, I finally realized, was upside down. It must have capsized and sunk here back when this lot of land was still under water.

  I slid my fingertips around the bulging edge of one of the boards and pulled gently upward. The board gave easily, falling away from the boat and into my hands. It was as if it had been previously removed and simply reinserted into the open seam. The boards on either side of it came up just as easily.

  I piled the removed planking on the floor of the pit and crept up to the opening in the boat. The missing boards provided about a foot and a half wide gap along the exposed portion of the bow.

  Someone had scraped away much of the dirt—now a wet, pasty mud—that had been packed in around the upended interior of the boat. I stared into the inky blackness, trying to make out the faint outline of the object that had been unearthed inside. Trembling, I raised my flashlight towards the opening.

  The pale, nacreous gleam of a human skull leered up at me.

  I jumped away from the boat, stifling a scream. My feet slid on the slippery mud, and I found myself sitting on the dark bottom of the hole, staring at the boat’s hull and its long, rectangular opening.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the terrifying image from my panicked vision. After several thirsting gulps of damp, earthy air, I steeled myself to take another look. Had this been the construction site that had lured Oscar’s interest? Had the hull of this boat shielded the last vital clue that Oscar had unearthed prior to his death?

  A tight clenching in my heart, I crept back towards the boat. Wincing, I aimed the flashlight down into the hole and willed myself to look inside.

  Enough of the mud had been scraped away from the corpse so that I could tell that it lay on its back, stretched out along the length of the bow.

  I’d never seen a human body in that state of decay before—the flesh rotted away leaving nothing but bone. I was amazed at how much expression could still be communicated by the skeletal form. The corpse conveyed a frantic, terrified expression. The jaws of the mouth gaped open as if struggling for air. The arms were thrown outward, pounding helplessly against the walls of the upended boat.

  Shreds of a faded leather coat draped from the bones. At the neck, the frayed edge of a cloth shirt peeked out from underneath the deteriorated leather collar. I panned the flashlight over to the nearest bony wrist.

  The slightest sliver of the cloth shirt lined the sleeve of the leather coat.

  Biting down on my lip almost to the point of drawing blood, I slid my hand into the hole and reached towards the skeletal wrist. The fabric of the rotted leather coat rolled like felt in my fingers as I cautiously slid it back.

  The cufflink that had been pinned into the shirt was missing—someone had removed it. But its imprint was still visible from the years of underground decay spent laying against the fabric.

  The cufflink had stained a clearly visible watermark on the cloth—in the shape of a three-petaled tulip.

  Chapter 36

  ISABELLA CURLED PROTECTIVELY around my legs as I stepped inside the Green Vase, my mind swirling from the morning’s excursion down the alley.

  Something in t
he Leidesdorff story circulating Jackson Square was not adding up. If the corpse under the boat was Leidesdorff, he had not lived long past the fake funeral procession to the Mission Dolores chapel. The Jackson Square neighborhood sat on top of one of the first sections of the bay to be reclaimed by landfill. That pushed Leidesdorff’s date of death back to the 1848-49 time frame.

  I searched through my memory of Mr. Wang’s comments from the night I traveled through the tunnel and found him smoking in his flower shop. There had been rumors and speculations about Leidesdorff for years, but what had convinced Oscar of the story?

  I heard Mr. Wang’s thin, reedy voice scratching through his cigarette smoke. Leidesdorff’s grave had turned up empty during the restoration work on the Mission Dolores chapel—but that was almost a hundred years ago. Oscar’s more recent research had focused in on the matching handwriting samples from Leidesdorff’s accounts and the ledger at the Tehama Hotel.

  I sat down on the dental chair, contemplating the image of the burly Leidesdorff in his warehouse, overseeing the transfer of raw materials and finished goods. It would have taken a diligent accountant to keep track of all of those in-kind exchanges.

  Nothing in the materials I had read indicated that Leidesdorff had received a formal education. He had grown up on St. Croix, a Dutch colony populated by thousands of slaves who worked on the island’s sugar cane plantations. Despite having a white Dutch father, Leidesdorff’s educational opportunities on the island would have been limited by his mother’s black skin. He’d left home at an early age, penniless, with only the shirt on his back. It seemed unlikely that he would have had the opportunity to learn how to read or write.

  The handwriting on Leidesdorff’s accounts—and on the Tehama ledger—must belong to someone else.

  My fingers drummed the cashier counter as the image in the warehouse expanded. A shadow of a figure stood beside Leidesdorff. The ever present assistant, the only person he would have trusted with his finances, the silent maid—the writer must have been Hortense.

  I strummed my fingers more and more rapidly on the counter. Maybe Hortense had stayed on in San Francisco after Leidesdorff’s death. Could she have been the one who made Ralston’s acquaintance at the Tehama Hotel? Was she the one responsible for the continued digging on the tunnel?

  Sighing heavily, I looked over at the front door. The tulip shape embossed on its handle glinted in the morning light. “And what’s the deal with all of the tulips?” I muttered to myself.

  I set my thoughts aside as Ivan’s truck pulled up to the curb. On cue, Monty stepped jauntily out the door of his studio and danced across the street, a fresh application of citrus aftershave glistening on his face.

  I opened the door and walked out to the sidewalk where Ivan had begun to unload the special glass panels inlaid with the Green Vase icon.

  I began to yawn a greeting to Ivan and Monty, but it caught in my throat as a short, rounded figure stepped out from behind Ivan’s truck.

  “Gordon,” Monty said brightly. “Top of the morning to you!” He grabbed onto one of Gordon Bosco’s pudgy white hands and began an energetic hand pump. Gordon smiled obligingly as he wrenched himself free from Monty’s grasp.

  “Good morning, dear,” Gordon said, stroking the front buttons of his suit as he turned his attention towards me. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you? It’s about your uncle and that business matter I mentioned the other night at the dominoes game.” He ushered me towards the front door. “Perhaps we could step inside?”

  “Okay,” I said timidly.

  I glanced nervously back at Monty and Ivan as Gordon mounted the steps to the Green Vase. He turned the handle, his thumb rubbing the tulip embossing on the doorknob. Sucking in my breath, I followed him inside.

  Gordon strolled into the crowded showroom, his eyes sweeping over the dusty piles and cardboard boxes. Slowly, he rounded the dental chair and turned to face me, his confidence and authority undiminished by the dusty surroundings. I shuffled to a stop in front of the cashier counter, feeling much smaller than the short-statured man in front of me.

  Gordon’s thin lips stretched into a smile. He tilted his head at the stuffed kangaroo standing next to me. “That’s an interesting addition.”

  I smiled meekly, gulping. “I found it in one of the shipping crates.”

  “I see.” The pale skin above Gordon’s lips twitched as he rubbed his stubby fingers together. “Have you found anything else—unusual—in the shipping crates?”

  “No.” There was barely enough air in my lungs to squeeze the word out.

  Gordon ran a hand along the back edge of the dental chair. “Oscar was a good business partner,” he said, his voice slow and measured. “One of the best I ever had.”

  Gordon stepped around the chair, edging closer to the cashier counter. “But, a couple of months ago, I began to think he might have changed his mind about our partnership . . . I began to suspect that Oscar was hiding something from me.”

  My back stiffened against the edge of the counter.

  Gordon stared at me intently. “So I had to proceed with alternative means to keep the pressure on Oscar—to ensure the success of the operation.”

  I shifted uncomfortably against the counter as Gordon turned away from me and strode, Monty-like, through the Green Vase showroom.

  “You see, a couple of years ago, I bought a small biotech company. They were foundering, about to go under, but I had a lead on a new drug that could turn it all around for them.”

  Gordon’s eyes jumped in and out of the open crates as he circled through the room.

  “I’d been sitting on the board here in Jackson Square long enough to hear the Leidesdorff rumors. How he faked his death, hooked up with Ralston, maybe even made off with those missing diamonds.”

  My breath shortened as Gordon’s tiny feet turned back towards the front of the store. His turnip-shaped figure advanced through the room, twisting deftly around cardboard boxes and display cases until he stood, once again, behind the dental chair—only a few feet away from me.

  “As the story goes, somewhere in his travels, Leidesdorff came across a recipe for a sleeping drought that would put a person into a trance—slow down their body functions—so much so that they looked as if they were . . .” Gordon’s hands crunched down on the head cushion of the chair as he leaned towards me and said squarely, “dead.”

  Gordon’s keen eyes squinted together as if he were trying to look inside my head. “I hired Oscar to track down the recipe. He knew everything about the Gold Rush era. I was sure that he was the man to find it.”

  Gordon took two swift steps towards the counter, his dark eyes curdling with his suspicions. “That Sunday morning, I came by the Green Vase to get the formula from him.” He paused and pursed his thin lips. “But he was already . . . gone when I got here.”

  I looked down at the short man glaring up at me, now no more than six inches away from my chin. There was a faint reddishness on his upper lip, just beneath his enormous, strangely immobile nose.

  “That formula is worth a great deal to me. I’ve banked everything on it. We’re already in licensing negotiations to partner the development of the drug with several large pharmaceutical companies. This could revolutionize the treatment for traumatic injuries, replace anesthesia for surgeries. The potential applications—and revenue streams—are endless.”

  I turned my head towards the stuffed kangaroo, trying to avoid the flecks of spit issuing from Gordon’s hardening lips. “What about the brain swelling?” I asked, remembering the description of Leidesdorff’s symptoms. “It sounds like there were some pretty gruesome side effects.”

  “Don’t worry your pretty head about that, dear.” Gordon’s thin lips curled up, as if they held a valuable secret. “All I need is the information that Oscar uncovered about the formula. I’m quite certain that it—and whatever else he might have found—are hidden here, in the Green Vase.”

  The sound of breaking glass c
rashed against the sidewalk outside; Ivan had dropped one of the glass-containing cartons.

  Gordon stepped back from me. As he turned towards the door, he tugged down on the cuffs of his sleeves, which, for once, appeared to be missing their tulip-shaped cufflinks.

  “I would appreciate it,” he said, his voice flattening to a more business-like tone, “if you would let me know as soon as you find it—the formula that is. The diamonds are yours to keep. That was my agreement with Oscar.”

  I watched Gordon exit out to Jackson Street. He breezed past Monty and Ivan, who were both bent over the dropped container, picking up shards of glass from the pavement.

  I chewed on my lip, pondering Gordon’s business plan and wondering how William Leidesdorff had found his way to the bottom of the bay so soon after taking the potion Gordon was so desperate to get his hands on.

  Chapter 37

  BY NOON, IVAN had finished with the installation of all but the broken pane of glass. He left only after issuing numerous apologies for the breakage. Shortly after his departure, Monty sped off for an appointment.

  I decided it was time to pay a visit to Mr. Wang.

  I slipped in among the lunch crowds as I approached the flower stall. Mrs. Wang and her daughter were swamped with customers, but Mr. Wang was nowhere to be seen.

  Just then, the slight figure of Harold Wombler emerged from behind an enormously wide man contemplating the begonia rack. I watched as Harold lumbered jerkily inside the store.

  “Does he not own another pair of overalls?” I thought as the breeze caught one of the flaps of material and flashed the pale skin of his knobby knees.

  Harold Wombler swung behind the tulip rack, nimble despite his gimping leg. The top edge of the broom closet door opened and closed. No one else in the crowd of shoppers seemed to have noticed.

  I glanced over to where Mrs. Wang had begun to interrogate the overweight begonia shopper. Her daughter was busy counting out change at the register. I slid behind the tulip rack and turned the knob on the broom closet door.