Nine Lives Last Forever

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “This will never work,” she said tartly as she slammed the car door shut behind him.

  Monty flashed her a toothy smile, one that had been artificially brightened hours before. The square shoulders of a velvet-fronted tuxedo almost doubled the width of his narrow frame. In his left hand, he carried a velvet-trimmed top hat—which, of course, he would never bring close to his carefully styled mountain of hair.

  He had pulled out all of the stops with tonight’s Mayorshellacking pompadour. The crest of the molded wave topped out at nearly two and a half inches above the rim of his forehead. Several of the pigeons snoozing in the eaves above the entrance to City Hall poked their heads up out of their roosts to take notice.

  It had been heavily publicized that the Mayor would be attending a charity event at the Museum of Modern Art this Saturday night. Several celebrities had flown up from Los Angeles to lend their support, ensuring that there would be significant coverage by the local news media. Everyone, including the night shift security guards manning the Civic Center entrance of City Hall, expected that the Mayor would be outfitted in his finest garb this evening.

  The weekend night shift, who generally didn’t see much of either the Mayor or Monty, was also the least likely of City Hall’s security crews to see through Monty’s Mayor impersonation. If he kept his head down and moved fast enough through the scanners, it was our hope that the guards would assume he was simply running up to his office suite to pick up a forgotten last-minute item. Monty had practiced his mayoral voice for several hours that afternoon, but, having heard a sample, we all recommended against him using it.

  Monty thoughtfully rubbed the pointed tip of his chin with his right hand as he paced deliberately up the steps in a carefully constructed rush. The Mayor’s hurry was always a controlled motion, even when he was pressed for time. Any sudden jerking motion might disrupt the careful balance of his hair.

  At the top of the steps, Monty waved his top hat at the security station, pulled open one of the heavy glass iron-framed doors, and walked inside.

  Miranda hissed into her walkie-talkie as Harold pulled the white van into the service entrance parking lot on the opposite side of City Hall. “I can’t believe it. He’s in.”

  The small parking lot was brightly lit but, at this late hour, completely deserted. Harold backed the van up so that the janitorial services sign Monty had affixed to its side was clearly visible to the video cameras feeding live pictures to the security guards at the front entrance. At this precise moment, in any event, we expected that the guards would be preoccupied by Monty’s mayoral entrance.

  Holding my breath, I lifted the handle on the back door of the van and pushed it open. It took longer than I had anticipated to wrestle the cat-filled cart out onto the concrete sidewalk leading up to the service entrance. I could see Harold, still sitting in the driver’s seat, watching me skeptically through the rearview mirror.

  With a grimace at Harold, I finally began rolling my cart down the ramp to the entrance. I gripped the security badge Monty had borrowed from Sam’s closet and hopefully waived it in front of an electronic scanner mounted onto the framing of the door. An internal latch clicked, releasing the lock. I swung the cart in front of me and through the open door as quickly as possible.

  Once inside, I stood still for several seconds in the dimly lit basement level of City Hall, waiting for the sound of sirens or the halting voice of a security guard.

  There was nothing but a still, eerie quiet.

  Chapter 34

  FOLLOW THAT FROG!

  THE BASEMENT HALLWAYS of City Hall were far more desolate and foreboding at night than they had been in the afternoon of my last visit. The flat white non-coloring of the walls and floor soaked up the darkness, merging into a shapeless shadow that seemed to close in on me from every angle.

  The wheels on my cat-filled cart squealed against the tile floor as I pushed my cargo forward, my feet shuffling loosely in Harold’s oversized boots.

  Isabella propped her front feet up on the interior edge of the cart so that she could look ahead down the hallway. Her own sharp vocal sounds added to the squawk of the wheels as she tried to give input to our speed and direction.

  Rupert cautiously eased the top of his face over the opposite side of the cart, nervously surveying our dark surroundings. After a brief assessment, he popped back down inside and tunneled under the blankets.

  We came to the end of the first hallway, and I struggled to steer the cart into a left-hand turn. One of the wheels skidded on the tile flooring, refusing to make the appropriate swivel. Isabella leaned over the top edge of the cart to try to determine what was causing the impediment.

  “Whoop! Watch out Izzy,” I called out as the stubborn wheel suddenly gave in and the cart lurched forward.

  Isabella’s claws dug into the heavy plastic of the rim as she worked to regain her balance. Further cart instructions in a much harsher tone were subsequently issued.

  The light that had fed into the previous hallway from the service entrance was snuffed out when I made our left-hand turn. The cramped darkness of the second hallway immediately began to squeeze tighter and tighter around the edges of the cart.

  I reached for my flashlight. Tension crept across my back as I fumbled with the switch, desperately anticipating the broad beam that would appear from the lens at the end of the flashlight’s long canister.

  No sooner had the light flicked on than a sliding swoop rushed up on me from behind. In the two seconds it took my eyes to convince my brain that the black-clad form popping his top hat was Monty, my knees nearly collapsed beneath me.

  “Everything go according to plan?” he asked jovially, spinning around the cart, clicking his heels in the air. “It turns out there was no one at the guard station. We could have just walked in.”

  I glanced anxiously around the dark hallway. The absence of security guards in the building was not exactly reassuring.

  Isabella sniffed skeptically at Monty’s top hat as he bent over the cart to check on the cats. A two-inch stripe of Rupert’s face peeked out from beneath the pile of blankets.

  “There’s my ace team of frog hunters,” Monty boasted proudly.

  Isabella suddenly shifted her stance as she picked up a movement on the floor further down the hall.

  “Wrao,” she said as she angled around Monty and leapt out of the cart.

  Rupert wiggled halfway out of his nest of blankets and poked his head over the rim. He watched briefly as Isabella stalked across the tile floor in a hunting crawl; then he turned back toward me with a pleading look.

  “All right,” I sighed and pushed the cart forward, now with Rupert at the helm.

  The group of us inched down the hallway, following Isabella as she slunk after a small, springy body hopping along the tile floor. Her shoulders rocked slowly back and forth as she homed in on her prey. The frog paused and looked back, a fearful expression on his flat green face.

  Isabella licked her lips. Her tail swirled back and forth behind her, the orange-tipped end snapping with anticipation.

  “Uh, Monty?” I asked as Isabella prepared to pounce.

  “You know, she’s about to gulp down that frog.”

  Monty shot me a startled look; then he bounded forward.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Monty called out, swooping up Isabella by her midsection as the frog fled down the hallway. “Hold the phone, there, girl! We’ve got to follow the frog, not eat it,” he admonished as he dropped her back inside the cart.

  Isabella issued a long, disgusted hiss.

  “Let’s get going,” I said, giving the cart a shove.

  Monty cocked his head sideways. “Flashlight?” he asked, holding out his free hand as he stared down the dark corridor.

  I handed the light to Monty, and he aimed it into the darkness. Isabella’s frog was now gone, but as Monty waved the beam in an arc around us toward the opposite end of the hallway, his arm suddenly froze.

  “Check it out,” h
e said, intrigued.

  Ten feet past the intersection where I had turned into the second hallway, the flashlight illuminated a pilgrimage of at least half a dozen frogs, all of them heading straight toward us.

  “Where are they coming from?” Monty murmured as he walked toward the parade of frogs.

  Isabella chirped impatiently from her perch on the rim of the cart. With effort, I swung the cart around and reversed course.

  As we progressed down the hallway, Monty trained the flashlight on the line of locked doors. The beam brushed over door after door until he focused it on one at the far end that was slightly ajar. A small green face poked out of the opening and hopped into the hallway.

  “Monty,” I whispered cautiously as I suddenly realized where we were. “Isn’t that your office?”

  “Mine’s the one next to it,” he replied, shaking his head in puzzlement. “That’s Sam’s cleaning closet. It shouldn’t be open. I locked it up myself this afternoon.” He flicked the sleeve of my overalls. “When I picked up this for you. Sam is supposed to have the day off.”

  Monty raised a cautioning hand as we crept up on the cleaning closet. He eased over to the door and placed one ear against its surface. Then, he nudged the door open a few more inches and stepped inside.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said, sounding surprised.

  Isabella leapt out of the cart and followed him through the doorway. With a sigh, I scooped up Rupert and stepped around the cart to take a look for myself.

  Several tiles had been removed from the center of the cleaning closet, creating a square hole in the floor, each side of which was about two feet long.

  Monty knelt at the edge of the opening, set his top hat on the floor beside it, and trained the beam of the flashlight into the darkness below.

  “Whoa,” he called out in amazement as he leaned down into the hole. Isabella filled in the remaining space, sticking her head next to his. Between Monty’s bent-over frame, Isabella’s swishing tail, and the bulky top hat, my view was blocked.

  “What do you see?” I asked curiously. Rupert squirmed in my arms trying to get his own view of the action.

  “Wrao,” Isabella called out informatively as Monty’s feet suddenly kicked back in repulsion.

  An indistinguishable squelch issued from beneath the floor. “Whap . . . right in the face,” Monty muttered. “Oh no. Here he comes again . . .”

  I stepped aside as Monty jerked his head up, trying to extract himself from the opening in the floor. He misjudged the size of the hole and caught the back of his head on the front edge of its rim.

  Bonk.

  “Ow!” Monty cried.

  The rebound from the impact threw him off balance, and his hands lost their grip on the slick tile floor. Isabella dodged Monty’s flailing legs as the flashlight and top hat toppled down into the hatch after him. The subsequent racket that ensued seemed to indicate that he was rolling down a short hill in the substructure beneath us.

  Isabella stuck her head back into the hole to watch Monty’s tumble. When the commotion beneath us quelled to silence, she looked up at me to report her findings.

  From the tone of her voice, I gathered she didn’t think much of his chances of returning.

  “Wrao.”

  Chapter 35

  THE MOAT

  I NUDGED ISABELLA aside and leaned over the edge to look down into the hole. Nearly twenty feet away from the opening, the flashlight’s beam cascaded out across the foundation’s substructure, illuminating an intricate network of scaffolding and pilings. Monty’s prostrate shadow lay on the edge of the lighted area.

  Rupert and Isabella stuck their heads next to mine as the three of us peered into the darkness.

  I hesitated and then called out, “Monty? Are you all right?”

  He sat up and brushed off the front of his tuxedo jacket. “I’ve still got my hat,” he said, holding it up to the light.

  As I waited for Monty to right himself, my senses began to adjust to the darkness beneath me. A dank, earthy smell oozed up out of the hole, accompanied by a quiet humming sound. A mingling chorus of higher and lower pitched murmurs seemed to be rising out of the substructure. The longer I listened to the sound, the more its individual components began to stand out—the croaking vocal cords of hundreds, if not thousands, of frogs.

  Isabella had apparently come to the same conclusion.

  “Wrao,” she said, her voice awed.

  There was a shuffling sound on the mounded dirt just below the opening in the floor. I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus in on the shaded spot.

  A small green frog looked timidly up through the hole, as if it had been waiting for me to detect its presence.

  “Ribbit.”

  Isabella stiffened on the ledge beside me. Instinctively, I grabbed for the loose fur on the back of her neck as the intrepid frog leapt up from the darkness and onto the floor of the janitor’s closet.

  Isabella’s blue eyes shone. Despite my efforts to hold her back, she lunged forward, her front feet swiping at the tile floor as the little creature sprang up into the air and vaulted away from the hole in the floor.

  I managed to slow Isabella just enough for the frog to escape her reach, but I had, unfortunately, forgotten about Rupert, who faced no impediment to his frog pursuit. His fuzzy white mass launched toward the springing frog, his front legs floundering wildly through the air.

  There was never really any contest; the frog was far too nimble. It was halfway to the door leading out of the janitor’s closet when a surprised Rupert realized, too late, that he had ill-timed his leap. He dropped down through the opening in the floor, following the same trajectory as Monty into the substructure of City Hall.

  Isabella and I leaned back over the hole, listening to Rupert’s scrambling feet as he slid down the dirt embankment.

  “Wao-ooo,” Rupert’s frightened voice called up.

  Down at the bottom of the short hill, a white glow hopped up into Monty’s arms.

  “Oh, hello there, Rupert,” Monty welcomed him, now apparently recovered from his own tumble. “Nice of you to join me. Let’s see what we’ve got down here.”

  I pushed up off of the hatch and swung my feet over its ledge, trying to find a more comfortable seated position. Isabella lay down beside me and stretched her mouth open into a yawn. She was quickly becoming bored with frogs she wasn’t allowed to chase.

  From this position, if I tilted my head to the right angle, I could follow the beam of the flashlight as Monty and Rupert explored the substructure.

  “Hey! Here’s some of those base isolators,” he called up. “They look just like the one in the display. Look here, Rupert. See the rubber lump in the middle of the column? It separates the building above us from the ground we’re standing on.”

  I sighed, anticipating the demonstration Rupert was about to receive.

  Monty’s voice echoed through the substructure. “When there’s an earthquake, the ground moves like this . . .”

  Whump. The flashlight’s beam bounced wildly across the substructure.

  “What happened?” I called down through the hatch.

  “It turns out it’s rather slippery down here.”

  I glanced over at Isabella and shook my head. Stretching my back, I leaned away from the hatch again, this time surveying the surroundings of the janitor’s closet.

  Sam’s cleaning cart, far grungier than the one I had been wheeling around, was pushed to one side. A collection of mops, brooms, and a dingy-looking mop bucket filled in the rest of the space. On the back wall, running just beneath the ceiling, a rectangular window similar to the one in Monty’s office let in a streak of light from a streetlamp outside.

  “Why don’t you come on back up?” I asked, shivering from the eerie emptiness of the basement. “And make sure you bring Rupert.”

  Monty’s voice seemed far away. “Yep, yep, yep. Don’t worry. We’re headed back your way . . . hey, what’s this?”

  I leaned back over the
hole. Monty panned the flashlight toward the edge of the underground area. The lip of the concrete moat that surrounded the foundation was barely visible in the beam of light. The earth around the moat seemed to be undulating with mounded movements.

  I watched as Monty bent over the side of the moat and trained the flashlight into its curved depth.

  “It’s full of water,” he said, his voice transmitting bewilderment.

  I glanced up at the ceiling in the janitor’s closet. “It’s a moat, isn’t it?”

  Monty cleared his throat authoritatively. “That’s just a term of art . . . in, ah, earthquake retrofitting technology. This isn’t a castle. It’s not supposed to have water in it.”

  “Who knew?” I whispered, raising an eyebrow at Isabella. She looked unimpressed.

  Monty’s voice continued to report up through the hatch. “The moat is completely full. There must be hundreds of gallons of water in it. All flowing around in a circle. Round and round and round . . .”

  I jerked my shoulders to the side as a second frog popped up from the substructure and into the janitor’s closet. Isabella watched as it hopped out the door and into the hallway. With a petulant sideways glance at me, she rested her head on her front paws.

  Monty was still inspecting the moat. “There are millions of tiny black things swimming around in the water. Comma-shaped dots with tails.”

  I stared down into the darkness, trying to interpret his observations. “Tadpoles?”

  Monty’s response came echoing back. “Yes, yes, the moat is teaming with tadpoles.”

  “That explains where all of the frogs are coming from,” I replied.

  “Ooh! Hey, there goes one with legs. Half-frog, half-pole. Look at that, Rupert. Fascinating.”

  Rupert made a murmur that sounded like concurrence.

  “The note said to follow the frogs,” I called down into the hole as I dodged yet another exiting frog. “There appears to be a number of them leaving your area.”