A third conspirator emerged from the bushes and growled out a welcome.
“Well, go ahead, then. Make yourself at home.”
The alligator heard the familiar sound of a fish pellet skipping along the ground, and his stomach once more took the lead.
Trundling down the ramp, he followed the trail of pellets, gobbling up each one as he eagerly waited for the next signal.
The ground grew soft beneath his feet. Mud oozed up between his splayed toes. He found himself at the edge of a body of water—one far larger than that of his Swamp Exhibit.
He held back, unsure if he should enter, but the soft plunk of a pellet dropping into the shallows convinced him to proceed.
As Clive disappeared beneath the surface, a last sound echoed into the night.
Chomp.
Chapter 22
A CRUEL CHICKEN
NEAR MIDNIGHT IN the apartment above the Green Vase showroom, Isabella stood in the doorway to the third-floor bedroom, assessing the scene.
Once more, her person had drifted off to sleep with a book laid open on her chest. Her glasses were tipped sideways on her face, and the light over the bed remained on.
Isabella sighed her disapproval. This was not a healthy routine.
She turned her attention to the bed’s other sleeper.
Rupert lay stretched out on the covers beside the woman, his length sprawled across the bed’s width, his tail hanging over the side. Every so often, the tail’s fluffy orange tip twitched, the indication of much larger action occurring in Rupert’s dream.
Knowing her brother, the dream involved eating. Not much to work with, Isabella summed up, momentarily stymied.
Isabella’s small, pixielike face pinched with thought. Her person wasn’t yet ready for the next day’s events. There was still one more clue inside the Green Vase for the woman to sort out, and it was Isabella’s job to nudge her down the right track.
Isabella’s gaze shifted from the tail’s latest gyration to the green chicken-restaurant flyer resting on the bedroom dresser.
Hmm, she mused cannily. That might just work.
• • •
RUPERT NUZZLED THE soft comforter beneath his head, flattening the side of his face into the blankets. His left front leg was tucked beneath his chest, while his right one stretched out with his paw turned up so that the tufts of white hair that grew between his toes poked into the air. Every so often, the exposed paw stretched, flexing to reveal the long curve of each claw.
It was a state of full and complete relaxation.
Rupert’s furry eyelids fluttered at the single image that filled his sleeping brain. He had no need for complicated plotlines or a complex cast of characters. He was content with simple dreams.
All he could see was a plate piled high with fried chicken.
• • •
RUPERT WHEEZED CONTENTEDLY and rolled over onto his back, immediately transitioning into another loose, tension-free position. As his bulging stomach puffed out, he adjusted his imaginary plate, rotating the image in his head.
The chicken’s crispy coating began to pop and snap, as if it had just been removed from a hot skillet. A purr rumbled through Rupert’s chest, and he smacked his lips, savoring the illusion.
But as Rupert opened his mouth to take a bite from the top piece of meat, the sizzling sounds suddenly took on a more menacing tone. A low hissing growl spat out from the plate, challenging him to a duel.
Surprised, Rupert flipped over.
There were few situations in life where he took an aggressive stance. In most cases, he preferred flight over fight. He had been bested by his sister one too many times.
But not tonight. Not against a plate of chicken.
Emboldened by his dreamlike state, he gathered his feet beneath his body and summoned his sleeping muscles for a pounce. Then, with a mighty roar, he lunged toward the taunting chicken, swatting wildly, claws extended.
The chicken, it turned out, had far more manpower than Rupert had anticipated.
After a loud human shriek, he found himself soaring through the air. Still half-asleep, he landed with a thunk on the wooden floor.
• • •
A MOMENT LATER, Rupert’s wobbly blue eyes peeked out from beneath the bed skirt. Tentatively, he scooted himself forward, his pudgy body hugging the floor as he slid out from under the bed, on the hunt for the dastardly fried chicken.
He glanced briefly up at the mattress as his person shifted her position. The bedsprings squeaked as she covered her head with a pillow. Still muttering about Rupert’s unprovoked attack, she quickly drifted back to sleep.
The woman was obviously unaware, Rupert thought, of the dangerous plate of food rustling in the hallway just beyond the bedroom.
• • •
AS RUPERT SLUNK across the wooden floor and past the bathroom door, his quivering nose picked up on a distinctive fried-chicken scent. Stealthily, he followed the smell down the steps to the second floor.
At the bottom of the stairs, he lifted his head toward the kitchen, a logical location, he reasoned, for a rogue plate of food. But, after a thorough sniffing, he rejected this course of pursuit.
His prey had traveled instead to the living room.
Stalking the renegade chicken, Rupert tracked the odor onto the couch. Rooting his head through the cushions, he traced the trail across the piece of furniture and over the opposite armrest to the end table near the window.
There, the aroma intensified. He sensed he had at last cornered his target—the frisky fried chicken was hiding inside a half-empty tissue box positioned on the end table next to a brass lamp.
His head hovered over the round hole at the top of the box for a long second and then plunged inside.
• • •
CRUEL CHICKEN, RUPERT thought a moment later as the tissue box clamped down around his head.
• • •
A LOUD THUMP provided the second jarring awakening of the night for Oscar’s niece. Groggily, she propped herself up on an elbow. With a wide yawn, she straightened her eyeglasses and looked around the bedroom.
“What now?” she demanded, searching the room for the feline sleep disruptors.
But neither cat appeared to be present.
More bumps sounded from the floor below. Rubbing her eyes, the woman wandered into the hallway and down the stairs to the living room.
Taking in a deep breath, she crossed the threshold and flipped the light switch on the wall. “All right,” she said sleepily. “What are you two . . .”
She didn’t take time to finish the sentence. Sprinting on still half-asleep legs, she raced across the room to the end table on the far side of the couch where a large, fluffy cat with a tissue box stuck on his head was about to knock over a fragile brass lamp.
• • •
THE NIECE GRABBED the base of the lamp with one hand, the tissue box with the other. Giving the box a tug, she pulled it from Rupert’s head.
The cat’s expression was a strange mixture of gratitude and longing. He stared hungrily at the box and licked his lips.
“What’s got into you?” the woman asked, perplexed.
Yawning, she peered into the box.
“How did this get in here?” she mumbled as she spied the green insert from the fried-chicken restaurant.
The niece stretched out her arm to set the lamp back on the end table so she could retrieve the insert from the tissue box. But as the lamp rotated in her hands, the bulb rattled in its socket.
The woman’s face puzzled at the sound. Squinting at the bulb, she reached her hand beneath the ceramic globe to tighten it in its fittings.
“Hmm,” she mused sleepily.
Meanwhile, Rupert began sniffing the tissue box, which, in the woman’s distraction, had fallen onto the floor.
The niece bent to plug in the lamp’s cord. As she did so, the bulb began to glow, and the once dull gray ceramic surface streamed with color.
“Would you look at t
hat?” she said, her voice filled with wonder as she slowly spun the lamp’s base.
“Issy, I think it’s the Steinhart. The original aquarium.” She pointed at the image depicting the aquarium’s interior scene. “And that’s the Swamp Exhibit.”
Isabella turned for the stairs to the third-floor bedroom as Rupert’s head, once more submerged in the tissue box, began to bump against the side of the coffee table.
Isabella paused at the bottom of the steps and issued a last summary comment.
“Mrao.”
Chapter 23
PIER SEVEN
A FEW HOURS later, alarm clocks began to ring across the city. The shrill retort was accompanied by the weatherman’s sad pronouncement: San Francisco’s Indian summer would soon be coming to an end. A storm was gathering strength in the Pacific and would make landfall later that night.
In the cramped studio apartments that filled the neighborhoods surrounding the financial district, bleary-eyed law clerks, junior stockbrokers, and young financial analysts crawled out of their beds, pulled open their tiny closets, and stared morosely at the clear plastic bags of dry cleaner–wrapped clothing hanging inside. Then, slowly, their faces turned to look out the nearest window.
A bright sun spread across the bay, blooming the sky into a precious crystal blue.
For many, the siren’s song was too tempting to ignore.
In several as yet unoccupied high-rise office buildings, suspiciously strained, frog-throated voice mails began to accumulate in the mailboxes designated for those calling in sick.
• • •
THE WIDE SIDEWALK lining the waterfront Embarcadero quickly filled with life. A number of healthy thirtysomethings converged on the sunny space, warily watching for potential office informants—lest they be forced to explain the miraculous curing of their earlier flulike symptoms.
Much of this growing crowd concentrated in and around the Ferry Building, queuing up for fresh-brewed coffee, munching on lox and cream cheese stuffed bagels, and browsing the area’s numerous specialty markets—all while constantly texting and talking on their mobile devices.
A number surrounded the tables and benches set up on the ferry-receiving side of the building, while others ventured about a hundred yards away to Pier Seven, a long wooden walkway that angled off the Embarcadero into the bay.
• • •
BENEATH SAN FRANCISCO’S BUSTLING concrete shoreline lay a seawall whose origins went all the way back to the city’s beginnings.
Constructed in the mid-1800s as part of the landfill operation that created the financial district, the wall ran in parallel with the length of the Ferry Building. Its base had been dug into the mud flats that once swamped the area.
The project took nearly fifty years to complete, but it forever changed the port, enhancing the fortunes of both the surrounding city and the owner of the surfacing water lots, James Lick.
• • •
A MODERN-DAY VERSION of that earlier vagabond millionaire hobbled slowly past the colorful scene outside the Ferry Building. With his ragged clothing and taped-together shoes, few paid him any attention, other than to step out of the way to avoid brushing up against his dingy-looking exterior.
Lick soon made his way to the entrance for Pier Seven. Rubbing a stitch in his lower back, he paused to look inland.
From this angle, the city spread out before him like a map, its layout easily discernible as the streets sloped gently upward. At the center of his view, the Transamerica Pyramid spiked the landscape, a radial point that matched up almost directly with the path of the pier.
The alignment was more than coincidence. Prior to the introduction of the seawall, wooden piers, similar to the one where Lick now stood, had pronged out into the water, linking the Montgomery Street shoreline with ships moored in the bay.
As the landfill project progressed, those piers became the lower streets of the financial district and the raucous Barbary Coast.
Pier Seven, both its historic and contemporary versions, followed the track of Pacific Avenue, which ran two blocks north of the Transamerica Pyramid’s wide base—only one block away from the Green Vase antiques shop.
• • •
LICK’S EYES SWEPT over the scene, lingering on the streets of Jackson Square, before he turned to face the water. With a short grunt of dismissal at the sharp pain in his back, he began the long walk across the rough wooden planks toward the end of the pier.
Iron railings flanked either side of the walkway, bulging out at regular intervals to accommodate the mounting of a light post. Every so often, Lick paused at a bench bolted into the wooden planking to rest an aching joint. Then, after a short break, he resumed his slow, methodical pace, resolutely plodding over the uneven boards.
Fishermen lined the railings near the walkway’s end. These were serious, somber anglers, intently focused on their outflung lines. Buckets of ice waited optimistically at their feet, ready to store and preserve the day’s catch.
A wide square formed the pier’s terminus, which was packed to capacity with fish-luring devices, everything from simple wooden poles to flexible high-tech fiberglass rods. Due to the fierce competition for spots over deep water, positions along this portion of the pier had been staked out for hours.
The location’s success was evidenced by the rank stench emanating from its collection of buckets as well as the circling flock of seagulls eagerly waiting to pounce on any discarded scraps.
• • •
LICK SIDLED UP next to an elderly Asian man who, given the number of rods he had propped up against the railing, must have arrived on the pier at the crack of dawn.
Mr. Wang’s bald, turtle-shaped head hid beneath a floppy canvas hat. His anemic body was almost lost in a pair of loose-hanging slacks and an oversized Windbreaker. His empty wheelchair waited close at hand, but he stood leaning over the railing, his wizened gaze never leaving the tiny red and white cork floating in the water about twenty yards away.
Lick picked up one of Wang’s unmanned rigs. After digging around in Wang’s toolbox, Lick pulled out a flashy lure and a jar of bright red fish eggs. Scooping out a half-dozen eggs, he expertly baited the hook.
Lick’s calloused hands turned the handle’s crank to tighten the slack in the line. Then he flicked his wrist back, snapped the rod over his head, and swung it forward. The lure zinged through the air, landing on the water about thirty feet from the pier.
After Lick completed his toss, Wang gummed his thin lips and said cryptically, “Everyone’s in place.”
Lick nodded in agreement. His weary blue eyes remained focused on the floating line as he replied quietly, “Time to raise the curtain.”
Wang’s cork suddenly bobbed down into the water. With lightning-fast reflexes, the tiny man spun the reel’s handle.
Lick stroked his chin as a fish flew out of the water and landed flopping on the pier. “Is Clive ready for his big debut?”
Deftly, Wang released the catch from his line and dropped it into a cooler by his feet. His narrow face cracked into a small grin as he turned to look at his coconspirator.
“I certainly hope so.”
Chapter 24
THE SWORD
IN A THREE-BEDROOM penthouse apartment atop one of San Francisco’s most prestigious residential hills, the Current Mayor stood in his living room, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the city’s shoreline.
The view swept across the bay, capturing the rock-faced island of Alcatraz and the towering red ladders of the Golden Gate Bridge. On a clear, cloudless morning like this one, he could see all the way to Sausalito.
It was going to be another gorgeous day in San Francisco, the kind of day that made him think he might almost miss this place when he left for Sacramento—almost.
• • •
“TIME TO GO, honey,” his glowing wife said as he tugged anxiously at the narrow blue tie circling his neck. “Your driver will be downstairs with the car any minute now.”
She ushered him into the foyer, brushing the back of his suit jacket to smooth out a wrinkle.
At the front door, he turned to kiss her on the cheek, nervously patting her growing baby bump as he checked his reflection in a mirror hanging on the entryway wall.
In the months since their wedding, his wife had gradually been scaling back his daily allocation of hair gel. She preferred a more natural look, she’d told him, not long after announcing her pregnancy. That, and she was worried about exposing their child to high concentrations of the gel’s potentially toxic chemicals.
The Mayor had tried to accommodate her request, but he was growing more and more concerned about the stability of his swept-back, gel-anchored hairstyle.
After a quick peck on the cheek, he released his wife and, fretfully cupping his hands over his carefully coiffed crown, proceeded to the door.
As his hand wrapped around the knob, he glanced longingly at the umbrella stand by the entrance. It was packed with ten or more long, sharp-pointed, rain-repellent devices.
His wife noted the direction of his gaze.
“No need for an umbrella today,” she trilled merrily, but with an unmistakable edge of sternness. “You’ll be home long before the storm moves in tonight. There’s not a drop of rain in the forecast until then.”
“No, I suppose not,” he replied briskly, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. He pulled open the door, desperately wishing he could reach over to the stand and grab one of the handles.
• • •
STILL TRYING TO reassure himself, the Current Mayor strode onto the sunny sidewalk outside the apartment building.
His wife was right. (She was always right, he was beginning to understand.) There was no reason to carry an umbrella in weather like this.
He stepped to the curb, where a black town car waited, its engine humming expectantly. The driver, who doubled as the Mayor’s bodyguard, extracted his enormous frame from behind the wheel, lumbered around the front of the car, and swung open the rear passenger-side door.
“Mornin’, Gov,” the man said in a powerful voice.
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