The Daykeeper's Grimoire

by Christy Raedeke

  It takes me a moment to remember where I am until the guy next to me exhales loudly and leans away like I’m a leper. I try not to do anything weird for awhile, and between the meals and movies, the rest of the flight goes fairly quickly.

  I’m glad I have the window seat as we land in San Francisco. As soon as I see Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge and the sparkly blue water my heart caves in on itself. I can’t take in enough of the scenery and I keep my nose pressed to the cold window until all we see is tarmac.

  When the plane door opens I breathe deeply, sucking in the moist air. I wonder if there is any place on Earth that smells like this, the intense combination of salt water, fog, muddy bay, and eucalyptus trees. This first breath of air makes me more homesick for my old, uncomplicated life than anything yet.

  Walking directly to the cab stand, I make my way to the city. On the way, I call Mom to let her know I landed safely. The connection is clear but she sounds so far away.

  I ask the driver to drop me at the coffee shop across from the Transamerica Pyramid where Justine and I had agreed to meet. As I step out of the taxi I see her in the window of the café and I run toward her; it honestly seems like years, not weeks, since I’ve seen her. My whole life has changed, but here she is, same old Justine, just as excited to see me as I am her.

  “I can’t believe how crazy your life is turning out to be!” she says, pulling back from our hug to look at me, I guess to see if I’ve changed at all.

  We order mochas and before we can even sit down, Justine says, “Okay, I can’t wait any longer. I have new news.”

  “What is it?” I ask, hoping that this is not about backing out of Peru.

  “I stalked that Canadian guy who works for F.R.O. last night when he left the Pyramid. Look.” She reaches for something in her pocket and then sets a Montgomery Grand Hotel key card on the table with a snap like she’s laying down a winning poker hand.

  “You got his room key?”

  “No! I got the room next to his. I told you, I’m total spy material. I have found my calling.” She leans in and starts to whisper, “I waited outside the Pyramid all afternoon and then followed him. He had one of those metal briefcases and although he was trying to hide it with his jacket sleeve, I saw that it was chained to his wrist.”

  “Like handcuffed?”

  “Yup.”

  “Because the info is so top secret?”

  “Exactly. Which means that if you want to find out what this creepy guy who threatened you is up to, we need to get that briefcase.”

  I look at her closely to see if she’s joking.

  “Come on—obviously these are not good people, right?” she says. “So getting some answers about why they’d be harassing you is completely justified.”

  I’m leaning so far forward in my chair that the back two legs are off the ground. I lean back so the chair doesn’t come out completely from under me. “You don’t think he saw you follow him to his room do you?” I ask.

  “Do I look like someone he’d be worried about? I followed him to the hotel, got into the elevator, and off on the same floor. I walked in the opposite direction and when I heard his door click, I ran down and got the room number.” She taps the key card on the table to punctuate her sentence. “I listened at the door for a minute to hear if anyone else was in there, but then I heard the shower start up and that gave me the perfect idea for how to get into his room.”

  “So what’s your plan?” I ask.

  “You mean our plan,” she says, tipping what’s left of her mocha back steeply to catch all the gooey bitter chocolate at the bottom. “Let’s go to the hotel and I’ll tell you everything.”

  In our room, an enormous suitcase sits in the corner and two outfits are laid out on the bed. “What’s up with the schoolgirl thing?” I ask. “Does Cruelties have uniforms now?”

  “No, this is my disguise. Have you ever looked around a hotel lobby? There are a bazillion little cameras down there, especially at the desk. When this dude finds his case missing and tells the management about it, the first thing they’re going to do is look through the video tapes to find out who asked for a second key.”

  “Ah, good thinking.” I pick up a frumpy old maid outfit. “So I guess that makes me the ugly housekeeper?”

  “Hey, just be glad I didn’t get one of those totally inappropriate maid costumes that Ashley Levinger wears every Halloween.”

  “Yeah, thanks. I do like that this one will actually cover my butt.”

  “It’s not exactly Montgomery Grand Hotel regulation, but how will this guy know anyway? There’s almost zero chance he’ll even see you.”

  “So run me through the process,” I say as I slip the scratchy polyester dress over my head.

  “At about 4:30 I’ll hide in the corner of the lobby. I’ll call you when he comes into the hotel to give you a heads up, then you listen for his door to close. I’ll ask for another key to his room but when they give me a new key, then the key he has no longer works, so it’s really important that he is already in his room when I request a second key.”

  “Got it. But do you really think they’ll just give you a key?”

  She makes the look-at-me gesture with her hands and says, “Who would deny this child a room key?” Then in a small voice she says, “Um, I just came down to get a candy bar at the gift shop and forgot my key. My dad is in the shower so he doesn’t hear me knocking. Room 2013? Under Tremblay?”

  “Can I just say you are a genius?”

  “Yes. Yes you can,” Justine says, getting into her fake school outfit. She pulls a long brown wig out and puts it on. “Real hair,” she says, braiding it tightly, “I splurged.”

  I look at the clock. “It’s 4:20.”

  “Okay, gotta run. I’ll call you when I see him come in.”

  I flip on MTV so I can turn off my brain. At 4:35 she calls and says, “Ground squirrel on the move.”

  My mouth instantly goes dry. I hang up the phone and put my hands over my face. Am I going insane? The way I just nod and say okay to crazy schemes until I have to actually act on them and then I freak out, like right now?

  I look at myself in the mirror, jet-lagged and scared in a two-sizes-too-big maid outfit and wonder what I am doing. What if I get caught? Why didn’t I stop this train earlier? Could I be going crazy and not know it?

  I practically jump out of my skin when I hear the faint ding of the elevator stopping on our floor. Bolting over to the door, I press my eye to the peephole. A tall guy with Raggedy Ann red hair walks by. He looks exactly like Slugworth from the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie, same sunken cheeks, waxy skin, and dead eyes, except with red hair. The hair is really strange—it looks unnatural for a grown man to have red hair and wrinkles at the same time. Hair like that should only be on kids.

  As soon as I hear his door close I call Justine.

  “It’s go time,” I say. That lame line seems appropriate right now.

  Hoping to control him from my side of the wall, I sit on the edge of the bed and chant, “Don’t get in the shower, don’t get in the shower, don’t get in the shower.”

  When Justine comes back in the room, I hop up from the bed. “Thank god you’re back. Did you get the key?” I almost hope the answer is no.

  She looks insulted. “I can’t believe you even asked me that!”

  “Sorry, I knew you would. I’m just freaked out; I didn’t want him to get in the shower before you got back in case he took a really short one.”

  She points her finger to the ground next to the wall. “Sit here and listen while I get changed again and then we can switch.”

  I sit and put my ear to the textured wallpaper. Then Justine comes back and sits next to me holding the wig and a brush. “Let me take out the braids for you.”

  “Oh, I’m going to wear it too?”

  “Absolutely. We have to have a security video plan for you as well.”

  “So once I get the briefcase, I can’t come ba
ck here, right?”

  “Not in this outfit, at least. See that big boy?” she asks as she points to the mammoth rolling suitcase in the corner of the room. “When we hear the water turn on, you get in it.”

  “Okay …”

  “We don’t want them to ever see you leaving this room in a maid outfit, so I’ll roll you to the stairwell and then you get out and do your thing.”

  “Got it. I’m going to hang one of these hotel robes over my arm, that way once I get the briefcase I can hide it under the robe before I walk back out the door.”

  “Perfect. Just make sure to go back to the stairwell, not to this room. I’ll have a change of clothes for you and we’ll slip the briefcase into the suitcase.”

  “Then we’ll just go down a floor and come back up the elevator?”

  “Yup. And no one will suspect a—” she doesn’t finish because we hear the water turn on.

  I must look seriously scared because she puts her hand on my knee and says, “Caity, you can do this.”

  We both stand up and Justine unzips her suitcase. Without saying a word I curl up inside it, clutching a Montgomery Grand Hotel robe from the bathroom. She tosses in the pants and top I was wearing before I got changed and then zips me in. It actually feels kind of good to be safely curled up inside. Justine wheels me out of the room and into the stairwell and then she unzips the case and I reluctantly get out. “Here’s the key,” she says. “You’ll do great.”

  My hands are shaking. I try to steady them by clenching my fists as I walk. I get to Tremblay’s room and listen at the door. The shower is still running.

  I very gently slip the key card through the slot and open the door. I hold the door open with one foot as I lean forward to look into the room for the case and see it’s under the desk.

  I can’t reach it without going all the way into the room, so I have to let the door close. Praying to all my dead relatives to help keep Tremblay in the shower, I creep over to the desk. There’s a chain attached to the handle of the case so I quietly gather up all the links, grab the briefcase, and run toward the door, stopping to flip the robe over the case before I leave.

  I try to walk through the hallway so I don’t look suspicious, but as I get closer to the door of the stairwell I can’t help but run. In fact, I run all the way in and then straight down one flight of stairs, taking them three at a time. I feel like I could run all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge right now, my adrenaline is pumping so fast.

  Justine comes flying down the stairs after me. We don’t even speak; she unzips the suitcase and I roll the briefcase into the robe and then put it in. I shake off the wig, pull my pants up under my maid dress and then rip the dress off. Justine is ready with my shirt and slips it right over my head, then scoops up the dress and the wig and puts them in the suitcase. We open the stairwell door and walk out, directly to the elevator, which we take back to our own floor.

  Once back in the room, we listen at the wall for the shower. It’s still going. I can’t believe we did all that within five minutes. We set the briefcase on the bed and stare at it.

  “Now what?” I say.

  “You’re the safecracker’s daughter,” she replies. “You tell me.”

  “Dad actually has a laptop version of this briefcase; it’s called a Zero Halliburton.”

  “Your dad totally wants to be in covert ops, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah. What a joke.” The lock is a three-digit rolling one. I push one of the wheels with my thumb. “I think we have to just go through all the possible combinations, 1-1-1, 1-1-2, 1-1-3, on and on until you run through all nine numbers in all three positions.”

  “That will take forever!”

  “Got any other ideas? I can’t exactly call my mom and ask how to break into a Zero Halliburton.”

  We hear a shout and a glass hitting the wall next door. Justine’s olive skin goes white. I can’t feel my feet on the ground. We both push our ears to the wall and listen.

  He’s on the phone with someone. We catch bits and pieces, “been a breach … seconds ago … complicated situation …

  dripping wet … by the time … dressed … locked down …”

  The minute I hear locked down I know we have to leave.

  “Oh my God, we have to get out of here!” I whisper.

  We throw everything, including my small rolly suitcase and backpack, into Justine’s massive suitcase and run to the elevator. As much as time sped up while we were taking the briefcase, time is moving in slow motion now as we watch the numbers on the elevator. I’m anticipating the ding so desperately that when it finally does sound, it actually hurts my ears. We scurry on and as the elevator doors close I see Tremblay’s door handle move. We back up as far as we can into the elevator, but he sees me just as the doors close.

  I reach into my pocket to make sure I still have the address that Bolon gave me.

  We make a swift exit to the street, straight into a taxi. The driver tries to get us to put the suitcase in the trunk but we just cram it in next to us.

  “It’s okay, please, just go, we’re really late …” Justine says.

  I start to hand him the note with the address on it, but then realize we should cover our tracks a little better. Instead, I say “Chinatown, please.”

  We’re really close to Chinatown and could probably walk faster than this guy could drive us through the one-way streets, but at least we’re safely in a car.

  Then Justine says, “Look behind you.”

  I turn slowly around and see a black car with two older men in it, both in suits. Their car is practically touching ours, they’re following so closely. “Do you think they’re …”

  She nods.

  I lean forward to the driver. “Sir, do you watch those race-around-the-world TV shows?”

  He looks at me like I’ve asked him if he eats earwax. He shakes his head.

  “Well, we’re on a show and we’re racing against our dads who are in the car behind us.” As he looks in the rearview mirror, I pull a $100 bill out of my pocket and show it to him. “If you can ditch our dads and drop us by the Stockton Tunnel, that would be great.”

  The driver takes the money and nods. We’re at a stoplight waiting for a cable car, but right as it’s about to pass us our driver hits the gas. Justine and I are thrown back and I know that we’ll be hit by the cable car. I close my eyes and wait for the impact, but it never comes.

  I peek over the back of the seat—the men are still there. The driver is shaking his head and the passenger is talking on a cell phone. Our driver is taking my hundred-dollar offer very seriously and is all over the road. For a moment I almost hope we get pulled over by the police; at least we’d be safe in jail. The cab goes so fast down Filbert Street that we catch air, and when we land and bounce a few times I wonder if the old cab can hold itself together. Then we do a speedy turn that throws Justine and me at the door. My lip hits her shoulder and splits open. I have to keep my tongue on it to keep it from bleeding everywhere.

  We’re getting farther and farther from Chinatown, but we manage to get two cars ahead of the men. Then our driver reaches for his cab radio and says something in another language. We’re in an industrial area that I’ve never been to before, driving ridiculously fast because there are no pedestrians. The men are trapped behind a slower car, and we see them veer right and left, trying to find a way to pass or intimidate the driver in front of them into going faster.

  Then our guy hits the brakes and skids into a cab garage. We see the bumper of the other car just before the tall metal door comes down behind us. The garage is a pass-through style, so another door opens in front of us and our driver zooms through, tires screeching. He weaves his way back to the center of town, not going more than a block before turning. We never see the car following us again.

  “Nice job!” I say.

  He shrugs and says, “I am from Bombay.”

  “The parking garage on Kearny, please.”

  The smell of Chinatown
hits us before we even see it. Over the years, I’ve spent many afternoons here with Uncle Li visiting his friends, mostly herbalists and doctors of Chinese medicine. They’d always serve me tea and cookies and give me weird things to look at like pickled snakes and dried animal organs. Sometimes if I had a cold or a headache they would do acupuncture on me or give me funky-tasting herbal remedies. If this place Bolon told me about doesn’t work out we can always come back here and stay with one of Uncle Li’s friends.

  We get out at the garage, hail a different cab, and slide in, suitcase and all. I show the driver the address on the paper and then Justine and I slump down in our seats, partly to hide and partly because we are so overwhelmed by all of this.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Justine asks.

  I show her the paper. “Muchuchumil Imports. Bolon gave me this address and said to go there if I needed help in San Francisco.”

  We both take turns peering out the back window, and every time we’re surprised that no one is following us. “Do you think they knew we took the case or do you think they followed everyone who left the hotel?” Justine asks.

  “I think Tremblay caught a glimpse of me in the elevator. Did you use your real name at the hotel? I guess you’d have to with a credit card—”

  “What kind of crappy spy would I be if I used my real name and Mom’s credit card? I went to the bank and got one of those pre-paid American Express traveler cards. You load money on it and it looks and works like a credit card.”