Golden Gate

by James Ponti

  “Wow, that was quick,” joked Brooklyn.

  “When we get back to the FARM, I need you to show me how I can help look for Annie and Robert,” she said. “I feel terrible for Mother. I’m obviously not as good with a computer as you are, but there has to be something I can do.”

  “Absolutely,” said Brooklyn. “I’m determined that we will find them. Yesterday was a dead end, but it wasn’t the end.”

  “You know,” joked Sydney, “there’s a Motherism for that.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “Dead ends are only course corrections to help you find the right direction.”

  Brooklyn laughed. “God, he is so corny with those things.”

  “I know,” said Sydney. “But they really work.”

  Alcatraz was a rocky island with little vegetation that stood tall out of the water a mile and a half offshore in San Francisco Bay. Over its history it had been home to a lighthouse, a fort, a military prison, and a bird sanctuary. For one nineteen-month period, it was occupied by activists protesting for better treatment of Native Americans. But it was most famous for its history as a federal penitentiary.

  From 1934 through 1963, Alcatraz was home to some of the country’s most dangerous and notorious criminals, including Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Mickey Cohen, and Robert Stroud, the famed Birdman. Now it was a historic landmark run by the National Park Service that welcomed nearly one and a half million visitors a year.

  One of those visitors had been Parker Rutledge, who came to the island the day before he was murdered. Now Sydney, Brooklyn, Paris, Rio, and Kat were retracing his footsteps to see if they could find any significance in his scheduled “meeting” with R.F. Stroud. Monty was still in the city, following up on a few other appointments they’d found in his datebook. Normally, they would’ve broken up into teams, but Monty didn’t want any of the kids to miss out on visiting Alcatraz, so she went alone.

  “You’ll have a lot of fun,” she’d said that morning in the hotel. “Certainly more fun than if you were driving around with me all day.”

  Meanwhile, Mother was on a marathon thirteen-and-a-half-hour flight from Australia and was due to arrive in San Francisco at seven that evening. They were all going to have dinner together and figure out their next steps.

  “Welcome to the Rock!” a park ranger said over a loudspeaker as the passengers disembarked from the Clipper. She gave a brief orientation talk at the same spot where prisoners once arrived to begin their sentences. Above her a weathered sign proclaimed:

  UNITED STATES

  PENITENTIARY

  ALCATRAZ ISLAND AREA 12 ACRES

  1 1/2 MILES TO TRANSPORT DOCK

  ONLY GOVERNMENT BOATS PERMITTED

  OTHERS MUST KEEP OFF 200 YARDS

  NO ONE ALLOWED ASHORE

  WITHOUT A PASS

  “Imagine how chilling it was to come here and see that sign,” Paris said. “All you had to do was look across the water and you could see civilization and freedom, but you realized that even though you could see it, you could never go there.”

  The elevation change from the dock to the prison was one hundred and thirty feet, and the team had to climb a series of steep paths and stairways. Once they made it, they joined a tour being led by another park ranger. It was fascinating. They walked along the different cellblocks on concrete pathways named after famous American streets like Broadway and Michigan Avenue. They toured cells, went through the cafeteria and laundry, and walked across the exercise yard. The highlight was at the end when they were looking into one of the cells and the ranger asked, “Does anybody want to know what it’s like to hear that door shut behind you?”

  There were fifteen people in the group, but the only one to raise a hand was Rio.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” asked the man. “It’s kind of scary in there.”

  “No problem,” Rio claimed.

  “Well, then, let’s lock you up,” the ranger said playfully. “By the power vested in me by the National Park Service, I sentence you to serve time in Alcatraz.”

  Rio entered the cramped cell as the ranger continued.

  “It’s five feet wide and nine feet deep,” he said. “So I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Rio said confidently.

  “You say that now, but how does this change things?” replied the ranger.

  He closed the door, and it made a loud metal-against-metal clanging that sent a shiver up Rio’s spine.

  “It’s nothing,” Rio said, determined not to show any fear. “I could stay here all day.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” replied the ranger. “Because my supervisor’s not going to be by here with the key for at least another hour.”

  “Wait, what?” Rio said, suddenly panicked.

  The man smiled and pulled a key ring out of his pocket, and everybody laughed.

  “Let’s hear it for our inmate,” the ranger said as he freed Rio, and everyone in the group clapped.

  “How was it?” Paris asked Rio when he returned to the group.

  “You couldn’t pay me to go back in,” said Rio. “Not even with food.”

  The ranger asked if anyone had any questions, and Paris raised his hand and asked, “Can you tell us which cell Robert Stroud was in?”

  “Ah, the Birdman,” said the ranger. “He spent most of his time in solitary in a cell on the hospital wing, which you can’t see. But when he was out here among the population, he was on Dog Block—that’s cellblock D, the very last cell at the end.”

  After the tour, the team headed straight for cellblock D and Robert Stroud’s cell. It was much like the one Rio had just been locked in. It was painted light green along the bottom half and white on the top. There was a cot with a blanket, a small sink and toilet, and a desktop that folded down from one wall. Along the back was a window with two layers of caged bars, and a pair of shelves that held some of Stroud’s personal books. The cell was open, but a Plexiglas door kept visitors from entering and disturbing it.

  “Is this where we think Rutledge came?” asked Sydney.

  “It makes sense,” said Kat. “Whenever there was a name in his datebook, it stood for a place. This is the most logical place for R.F. Stroud.”

  “Yeah,” said Sydney looking at an information poster. “According to this he was almost always in solitary confinement, so he rarely left this cell.”

  “So this has to be the place,” said Paris. “But who was he meeting?”

  “Another spy?” said Rio.

  “I’m having trouble seeing that,” said Paris.

  “Why?”

  “It completely makes sense for two spies to meet in an alley in Chinatown or on a bench in the park,” he answered. “Both of those places are kind of anonymous and easy to get into and out of. But to come to Alcatraz you have to buy tickets, take a ferry, climb up the hill, and find cellblock D. And then, when you meet, you’re surrounded by tourists walking around taking photographs, and if anything goes wrong, you’re stuck on an island.”

  “I agree,” said Sydney. “It doesn’t feel like a meetup with a spy.”

  “Then who?” asked Brooklyn.

  “I think he came to meet Stroud,” Kat said, pointing at the cell. “Think about it. The two of them couldn’t have been more different. One’s a terrible criminal and the other’s an MI6 spy. One’s a villain and one’s a hero. But they both love birds. They really love birds. So I think he came because he was curious and wanted to get a sense of Stroud. See his cell. Look at which ornithology books he had. Look at the—”

  She stopped midsentence as something caught her eye and a smile slowly formed on her face.

  “And?” asked Paris.

  “And what?” said Kat, still looking at the shelf.

  “You were in the middle of saying something, and then you just kind of stopped.”

  Kat turned to Rio. “Can you pick this lock?” she said motioning to the lock on t
he Plexiglas door.

  “Sure, I can pick any lock,” he said. “But I am not going into the cell, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t need you to go in,” she said. “I only need you to pick it. Just like Rutledge did.”

  “How do you know Rutledge picked the lock?” asked Paris.

  “Top shelf, third book from the right,” she said. “It’s his bird book.”

  “They’re all his bird books,” said Rio, confused.

  “Not Stroud’s,” said Kat. “Rutledge’s. The missing one.”

  The others looked and saw what Kat was talking about. Alongside Stroud’s books on canaries, pelicans, and others was a volume with a distinctive blue spine with red horizontal stripes. It matched the spines of the books Sydney and Paris had stolen from the Bodleian. It was the final one of Rutledge’s handwritten field journals.

  “Here?” asked Paris. “Why would he leave it? Was he trying to hide it?”

  “Maybe he was done with it,” suggested Kat. “Maybe he didn’t need it anymore and thought it’d be cheeky to leave it with the Birdman’s books.”

  “If that’s true and he was done with it,” said Brooklyn, “then maybe he solved the case, figured out who Magpie was.”

  It took Rio only thirty-five seconds to pick the lock, and because the cell was so small, Sydney had to take only two steps in to reach the shelf. She grabbed the book, and without even looking at it hid it under her sweatshirt and started walking toward an exit. Rio locked the Plexiglas door again, and everyone followed.

  Sydney led them to the far end of the exercise yard, and they formed a semicircle alongside the fence. This was as much privacy as they could get.

  “We don’t know for sure that it’s Rutledge’s,” Sydney said, the book still hidden under her sweatshirt.

  “Let’s find out,” said Brooklyn.

  Sydney pulled it out and handed it to Kat, who’d been doing most of the work decoding the other bird books. She opened it to the first page and smiled.

  “This is it.”

  “Wow!” said Paris. “Just wow.”

  “With this we can find out everything that happened the last six months of his life,” Sydney said. “We can compare it to his datebook and photographs and pick up his trail.”

  “We can do better than that,” said Kat. “Brooklyn was right. Here on the last page it says that he’s figured out who Magpie is.”

  “Are you serious?” said Rio. “What does it say?”

  “It’s the drawing of a magpie in a birdcage,” she answered. “Underneath it says, ‘October twelfth.’ And next to that, ‘Magpie: life list number eight three seven.’ ”

  “Does it say who it is?” asked Rio.

  “Not that I can tell,” she said. “At least not yet. But give me a little time.”

  “October twelfth?” said Sydney. “But he was here on the thirteenth. Where was he on the twelfth?”

  “Squaw Valley,” answered Paris. “We’ve got to get out of here and call Monty,” he continued as he pulled out his phone. “We’ll meet up at the hotel and figure it out.”

  “Oh no,” said Brooklyn. “This is bad.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Kat. “This is great.”

  “No, it is very, very bad!”

  Brooklyn took a deep and nervous breath.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Sydney.

  The recreation yard overlooked the steep path that led to the prison. While the others were focused on the bird book, someone had caught Brooklyn’s eye. It was a man, and he stood out because, unlike the other tourists, who were looking around at the prison and surrounding area, he was walking fast, his eyes studying his phone. There was a distinctive quality about the way he walked that she recognized. She couldn’t place it at first, but the path wound back and forth all the way up, and when he turned, she knew exactly who it was.

  He’d shaved his beard and dyed his hair blond, but she still recognized his face and spied the tattoo on his neck.

  “That’s Emil Blix.”

  35. Fort Point

  “HOW DO THEY PUT UP with this bloody traffic?” Monty exclaimed in frustration as she looked through the windshield toward an endless line of taillights. It had been hard enough for her to transition from driving on the left side of the road, as they did in the UK, to the right. But San Francisco’s endless steep hills and its notorious gridlock were making a frustrating day even worse.

  She’d already run into two dead ends trying to track down locations listed in Rutledge’s datebook and then struck out at the hospital checking to see if any of his possessions had made it into lost and found.

  “ ‘I’m sorry, but we have no record of a Mr. Stroud ever being admitted to this hospital,’ ” she said, doing a mocking impression of the administrator who’d been exceedingly unhelpful.

  She’d tried to be patient with the woman. She’d even showed her a copy of the park service report that Kristin Gilson had filed saying that an ambulance took him “to the UCSF Medical Center.”

  “ ‘Well, he’s not listed on the computer, which means he never got here,’ ” Monty said, doing another scathing impression. “ ‘Maybe whoever wrote the report got it wrong.’ ”

  Monty wondered if that had been the case. Could the ranger have made a mistake? She pulled over and dug through her purse until she found Ranger Gilson’s business card. She grabbed her phone and dialed.

  “Muir Woods ranger office,” answered a man’s voice.

  “Yes, hello,” said Monty. “I’m looking for Ranger Gilson. Is she available?”

  “Sorry, Kris isn’t here,” said the man. “She’s working at Fort Point today.”

  “Fort Point?” asked Monty. “Where’s that?”

  “At the base of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he answered. “On the city side.”

  Monty could see the bridge from the car. She was close. Finally, a lucky break today.

  “Great,” Monty said. “Thank you.”

  “Do you want to leave a message?”

  “No thank you,” she said. “I’ll catch up with her another time.”

  She ended the call and programmed Fort Point into her GPS.

  Even though she was only a few miles away, it took a little more than thirty minutes to get there. The ranger on the phone hadn’t been exaggerating. Fort Point was a four-story redbrick fort that was literally at the southern anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridge’s support arches spanned directly over it, much like the roof of a domed stadium.

  A sign at the entrance notified visitors that the entire top floor and parts of the second and third floors were closed to guests because a project was underway to restore the brickwork.

  “Excuse me,” Monty asked a ranger. “I’m looking for Ranger Gilson. Is she available?”

  “She’s in the office,” said the man. “Is she expecting you?”

  “No, but yesterday she was helping me, and there are a few more questions I need to ask her.”

  The ranger got his walkie-talkie and turned to Monty. “What’s your name?”

  “Alexandra Montgomery.”

  “Hey, Kris,” the ranger called into his walkie-talkie. “I have an Alexandra Montgomery here to see you.”

  “I don’t know an Alexandra Montgomery,” came the reply.

  “Of course,” Monty said. “I probably never told her my name. Just tell her that it’s the woman from England she was helping yesterday. The one with the family friend who loved Labradors.”

  He passed the message along, and Gilson replied that he should send her right up.

  The man gave her directions to the ranger’s office, which was on the third level.

  “That part of the fort is closed to guests,” he explained. “So please don’t disturb any of the areas where they’re doing the repairs.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  The fort had five sides ringing an open courtyard. Monty
followed the directions to the third floor and knocked on the door marked RANGER’S OFFICE.

  “Come in,” called a voice.

  Monty entered to find Gilson sitting at a desk. She’d obviously been working on her computer.

  “Hi,” Monty said. “So sorry to bother you. I called Muir Woods, but the ranger said you were here, and since I was nearby, I just dropped by rather than called. This will just take a second.”

  “Okay,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “Well, first, I was wondering if perhaps our conversation yesterday jogged your memory at all. Did you happen to remember anything after I left?”

  “No,” she replied. “I told you everything I remember.”

  “And the hospital,” said Monty. “I went to UCSF Medical Center today, and they had no record of him ever being there. Could he have gone somewhere else?”

  Gilson thought about it. “He could have,” she said. “I was there when they loaded him onto the ambulance, but it’s ultimately up to the paramedics to decide where to take him. I assumed it was UCSF, but I could’ve gotten that wrong.”

  Monty mentally ran through everything from the day before. She pictured the Cathedral Grove.

  “And at the Cathedral Grove, you found him by the plaque for President Roosevelt, right?”

  At this point the ranger was getting perturbed. “Yes, as I told you yesterday. Now, I’m really sorry about Mr. Rutledge, but I don’t have anything else to tell you, and I have a ton of paperwork I have to take care of.”

  “Yes, of course,” Monty said, chastened. “I apologize for taking so much of your time.”

  She stood up to leave, and that’s when she realized what had been nagging her. The part that didn’t fit.

  “One more thing,” she said.

  “What is it?” Gilson asked, exasperated.

  “How did you know his name was Rutledge?”

  The ranger gave her a quizzical look. “What?”

  “You said it yesterday and you said it again just now. You called him Rutledge. How did you know that was his name?”

  “I’m sure I read it on his identification from his wallet.”