by Les Cohen
“Er-errrr-rr.” The creaking of the hinges on the door to my room, just when I was about to type my first words for the evening, “gave proof through the night that my cat was still there.” (Thank you, Francis Scott Key, sort of.) His otherwise stealth movements would have never given him away. “Where you been, Rollo?” To the bathroom, was my guess, given that lighter than usual gait I had come to recognize years ago. Pushing his unusually large head, nose first, through the half inch or so opening I had left for him, he liked to look around, left then right, just to make sure the coast was clear. “Oh, no,” I warned him, seeing that he was poised to jump up on the bed. “First, get the chips,” I reminded him, pointing toward my open closet door. “We’ve got work to do.”
What’s that? Your cat doesn’t fetch things? Well, Rollo’s no ordinary feline, and are you just beginning to realize that?
“rrrark!... Rrrraaarrrrkkk!!”
“What?... Okay, okay. We’ll share the guacamole.” He could smell the container I’d just opened on my desk. “But if you never get here with the chips, neither one of us will have any.”
“Rrr,” which, under the circumstances, meant “Deal.” So, it’s really more like I’m his human, than he’s my cat. Which is fine. I like to think of us as a team. I can type. He has fur. We’re happy with that, and that sound you would be hearing if you were here is the noise a large bag of chips makes being dragged in his teeth across the rug next to my desk. Can he fetch? Count on it.
“Give me that! ...Com’on. Let go. We’ll share. ..I promise.”
Open the bag. Chips spread out on the desk next to my laptop. Some guacamole, stuck to the plastic lid from the container, that I could have wiped off for myself, but left there for the Wondercat who was now sitting behind my screen, peering over at me between licks. “Time to type, furry,” I told him, rubbing my hands together, cracking my knuckles and polishing the tips of my digits with my thumbs, like I was about to open a safe, in the air over the keyboard. “It’s all in the fingers.”
“Merrk.”
“Yeah, yeah. One for the road,” I popped a whole chip in my mouth, “and I’m typing.”
By now, the boat was at a pretty good angle, so low in the back that water was just about coming over the stern – and when that happened, we were done for. Bad grammar to end a sentence like that, I know but, under the circumstances, I really wasn’t concerned about being remembered for using an occasional dangling preposition. The cabin was already half full and tilting to the left, low on the port side which I’m throwing in just in case these are more or less the last words I ever say. At least you’ll know I knew something about boats. Funny, the things you think about when you think you might not be thinking much longer, and while you’re pounding for your life, thigh deep in rising water, on the inside of a cabin door. You’d think we could have just knocked the door down, karate style, with a couple of swift kicks. So did we, but we couldn’t. After all, if it had been that easy, I wouldn’t be writing about this, would I?
“HELLLLLLLPP!!!!!” Eleanor was doing her best to get anyone to hear her. We had drifted up creek a bit, but weren’t more than ten yards from the dirt and sand that passed for a little beach in the front of the house.
And Rollo? What was Rollo doing? Among the three of us, he was the calm one. At first, I thought he was hiding up front, under the bow deck, on the cushions that hadn’t gotten wet yet, but then I realized he was pushing against the porthole in the center across the front of the cabin. “Hey,” I called out to Eleanor, “..that porthole’s open!”
“You work on it,” Eleanor could see I needed a change of pace. “I’ll try the door again.” And so I sloshed my way to the front and up on the cushions. It wasn’t easy, but I pushed it open. “Hellllllp!! BOBBEEEE! ...Rollo!” I grabbed his head in both my hands to make absolutely sure I had his attention. “Get help. You understand? Find Bobby! No foolin’ around now. Go get help. ..Now, Rollo!.”
“MEEAARKK!!” He literally screamed at me, shaking his head out of my hands, the fur above his eyes coming together. I couldn’t fit out that porthole, but he sure could. Rising up, in one smooth motion he turned and twisted his body, reached forward with both arms onto the rim of the porthole, ears back, and pulled his head through, while I picked up and pushed his furry butt the rest of the way, and that wasn’t easy. Not because he’s got an exceptionally big butt, mind you, although he does eat a tad too much from the table and probably should exercise more. (Hey, I’m telling you all this while Rollo licks the guacamole off his paw with that “What?” look in his eyes when he catches me watching him.) It’s just that this front porthole was even smaller than the two on the sides, and all cats are, shall we say, “back-end loaded.” Rollo’s real power, the strength of his forearms notwithstanding, was in those chunky, no, “muscular” rear legs and rabbit-like feet I’d seen launch him from the floor to the top of our refrigerator. No kidding. I wouldn’t have believed it either, if I hadn’t seen it myself.
On to the bow, he skid to a stop just in front of the anchor which was tied there, looked over his shoulder around the side of the cabin, turned, patched-out until his rear claws dug in to make contact with the deck, and bolted back up and over the roof of the cabin. “Where’s he going?” Eleanor looked up toward the sound of Rollo running above them, but only for a second and then...
“Ladies and gentlemen, put your tray tables and seatbacks in their upright positions, this cat is preparing for TAKEOFF!!” Apparently, seeing that the boat had turned about so that the shack was directly behind us, over the stern, Rollo had decided to dive into the water as far out the back as he could. On to the roof of the cabin, up onto the roof over the pilot’s wheel, and “We have liftoff!” He was flying all right. I figure it was about ten feet from there to the back edge of the boat, now almost completely under water, and Rollo cleared that point by, had to be, a good three to five feet before he hit the water, head down, both arms out, just like a taught him. At that point, it wasn’t maybe twenty, twenty-five feet more to the edge of the cabin property at the bottom of the hill. Under the water for only a moment and back up to...
Wait a minute. It’s me again. Future Elizabeth. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Don’t be ridiculous. Cats can’t swim. Dogs, yes. Cats, no.” Now that is a common misconception. All cats.. Well, most cats.. I don’t know about all cats. There’s probably some cat out there that can’t, but most cats can swim fine. They just don’t like to, which is why there are no swimming events in the cat summer Olympics. Just kidding, but they really can swim and Rollo was no exception. No breast stroke, mind you, but he paddled well and had a great forward kick with those big rabbit feet of his I mentioned only a moment ago.
No more than a minute or two later – while Eleanor and I continued to scream, the water already up to our armpits and coming in the portholes soon! – Rollo hit the beach. “Lock that one on your side!” I told her, pointing with a nod of my head. I didn’t mean to be shouting, but it just sounded that way in the limited air space we had left. “I’ll do this one and the one on my side.”
Not even pausing to shake himself dry, or waste a moment looking back over his shoulder, Rollo blew up the hill through the tall grass at full speed, his head down for minimum wind resistance. It was like something out of one those National Geographic specials they have on TV. “Chee-tah,” I mumbled out loud, rooting him on, hoping some ancient ancestral bloodline would get him to help in time. Pressing my face up against the porthole, he was out of sight now, and I was beginning to wonder if we weren’t out of luck. “Funny,” I thought to myself, “how what started out to be such a good day might end so badly.” It was like I was watching this happen to someone else on the six o’clock news, except that it was me, and Eleanor trying desperately to pry open the cabin door with a cheap stainless steel knife she’d found, but that kept bending and clearly didn’t have what it takes.
We c
ouldn’t hear or smell them, of course, but apparently Bobby, MR and Connie were still around the back of the house out of earshot of our screaming for help. Well, I wasn’t there to see it, but apparently, the three of them were there talking and turned when they heard Rollo reach the grass by the porch at the front of the house, leap onto the stump of an old fallen tree and Blastoff!! Rollo was up and still rising, catching Bobby in the face, his wet belly fur – I’m talking about Rollo’s, of course. – smacking a startled Bobby in the mouth, pushing him back into Connie who fell back into MR and like dominos they were down.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Bobby, scrambling quickly off the yard to get back on his feet, pulled Rollo off his chest and held him at arms length, his hands under Rollo’s armpits, Rollo’s furry arms sticking straight out to either side – but only for a moment.
“He’s all wet!?” MR was so observant.
“Hheeee!!” It was loud, and threatening. Rollo’s mouth was wide open, his large incisor teeth, top and bottom, clearly in view. Scary stuff. Lots of saliva. You get the point? So did Bobby. Startled, he jerked his hands away, and let the cat go. On his own now, Rollo did a one eighty as he landed, leaving a small cloud of dust on his way back to the water. Zero to whatever in no time at all.
MR looked at Connie, Connie at MR and Bobby, and Bobby back at both of them, and then they started running as fast as they could, which was good because, remember that “water over the stern” point I made earlier? Well, that was starting to happen just about when the three of them made it to the top of the hill. Seconds later, with Rollo – “Mearrk! Mearkkk!!” – leading the way along the edge of the water, all three of them ran into the creek and began swimming toward the boat, not a whole lot of which was still showing.
Connie, a Red Cross trained lifeguard, got here first and easily pulled herself over the already submerged rear of the boat. Unfortunately, the pressure of her weight just made it worse and she began to slide back into the water until Bobby and MR showed up and grabbed onto the deck around the sides of the boat, to keep it steady.
“Unlock the door!” MR was shouting at Connie, pointing again and again, as he scrambled up onto the deck, toward the engine compartment that Connie was using to steady herself, waist deep in water, but only a good arms length short of the cabin. “Take out the screwdriver,” the one somebody had used to lock us in, “before the cabin goes under water!!” The end of its yellow plastic handle was almost completely submerged. Yes, friends, what they could see, but we didn’t know then, was that someone had stuck the business end of a screwdriver into the hole in the latch where a lock would have gone, making sure we were trapped inside. Too bad it was lost, the police would tell us later. There might have been some interesting fingerprints on it.
“MR!” Bobby was shouting at him from the starboard, the right side of the hull, where Bobby was just touching the side of boat, having given up trying to keep it from sinking any faster. “You’ve got to let go! WE’RE JUST MAKING IT WORSE!!” which was exactly what MR did, slipping down into the water, but staying close, treading water while Connie did her job. The boat was sinking, and there was nothing they could do about it.
By now, Eleanor and I were sucking air from the space between the beams that held up the cabin. It would be close, but we would make it. Closing the portholes turned out to have been a really good idea, trapping a pocket of air against the inside of the cabin ceiling.
“Should one us,” MR shouted over to Bobby, “swim back and call an ambulance? ..just in case?!” It was a good, smart question, but Connie didn’t think it would be necessary.
“No,” Connie answered just as she helped Eleanor swim through the cabin door, Elizabeth right behind her. Getting away from the boat was no problem, now that most of it was underwater, and swimming to the beach was easy. We could have almost walked there were it not for the sharp drop off only a few feet into the creek. Even so, by the time we had made it those relatively few feet back to safety, the boat was all gone, only the tip of its running light still visible, like a buoy marking the site.
We sat there in the dirt and sand for a moment, catching our breath. “Good work guys,” I thanked them, holding Rollo in my lap while we caught our breath.
“Yeah,” Eleanor did her best to say it with the sincerity it deserved, coughing slightly to clear some creek water out of her throat. “Way to go. No kidding guys.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Connie, the first of us to stand up, was right. We had no idea where those men had gone or what they might do next, so leaving made really good sense. Walking quickly up the broken steps past the house, back to the car, we were still shivering a bit from the cold water, but glad to be getting out of there. Our clothes would have to finish drying in the car, on Connie’s mother’s new car upholstery. Too bad. We weren’t hanging around at the creek until they did.
A couple of hours later, we – just the five of us, including Rollo – were sitting down again, this time in the family room at my house. Connie had dropped us off and left, after talking briefly to the police, to go out somewhere with her boyfriend. I lent her some towels for the seats in her car, and told her to keep the windows rolled down for a while to help the seats dry out. It was getting dark soon, and we all agreed to meet the following morning at ten, back at the shack on Harness Creek, to give the police as much more information as we could. We were wiped, not so much from the day’s excitement or the time, because it was still early, but from having ordered more Chinese take-out than anyone in their right mind would have thought we could eat. But we did, eat it all that is, as if we had something to prove by doing it. Actually, MR still had half an egg roll in his hand, holding it up by his face, looking at it as if it was either it or him.
“You can do it.” Eleanor whispered in MR’s direction. And, opening his mouth as wide as any of us had ever seen, he did, smashing the entire piece against his face with the palm of his hand still stuck there for a moment while he started moving his jaw.
“So, what now?” Bobby was looking straight at me, while Eleanor and I were secretly rehearsing our plans for doing a Heimlich Maneuver – which my cousin, Mark, tried to tell me, when I was a kid, was something boys did when they put their arms around you in the movies – just in case MR had popped more than he could chew.
“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had more than my share of near death experiences these past few days.”
“Yeah.” Eleanor was agreeing with me. Middle Ralph, too, but all he could do was shake his head, his cheeks still bulging a bit from the egg roll that had given its all to make him happy.
“Thanks, guys. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in all this, but it’s really me they’re after.”
“Hey,” Bobby was smiling to reassure me, “whatever happened to ‘All for one, one for all.’?”
“What’s the name of that candy bar?” MR mumbled through what was left of his egg roll that he hadn’t swallowed yet.
“Three Musketeers,” Bobby told him, matter-of-factly, but then, looking around, “There’s four of us, just like in the book.”
“Five. Five of us.” (Rollo was passed out, upside down, on “his chair,” the one with so much fur stuck to it that nobody else would sit there.) For just a moment, I could see Bobby fencing his way up the marble stairs of some French mansion to save me from the razor sharp blade being held at my neck by the evil lord of the manor. “Thanks for the sentiment, D’Artagnan.” Smiling back at him, my voice sounded so different, so much nicer than usual, I almost didn’t realize that it was me talking. Even Rollo rolled over from his nap to see if Bobby had anything else to say. As it turns out, Bobby never had the chance.
“Are you kidding?” Eleanor was exhausted, mostly from over-eating. “We’re not even the ‘Mouseketeers’.” She looked and sounded sincerely disappointed, but no one was paying attention.
One awkward moment later, “If you two could stop
staring at each other for a second,” MR, his egg roll having gone south, so to speak, to a “better place,” had started talking again, “you’d realize that it’s not Elizabeth they’ve been after.” Bobby and I ignored him, the part about us staring at each other that is, and got back into the conversation.
“What do you mean?” Eleanor asked, sounding awfully serious. “I was on that boat, too, you know.”
“Think about it.” MR loved counting out points with his hands. “One. Elizabeth...”
“Meeek!”
“Sorry. ...and Rollo,” MR said it slowly, enunciating more carefully in the direction of the fabulous feline who had awaken and had been leering at him from under my chin, “get in trouble in the car, but that’s also where the papers were that you found in the safe.”
“No, you’re right, but that wasn’t the first time.” It was an important oversight I had to correct. “The first time was in the office when someone pushed me into the safe.”
“Maybe,” Eleanor could be right, “whoever pushed you into the safe with the papers.. Maybe he wasn’t trying to hurt you, but to protect you from the other two men?”
“Hey,” she was right, “the old man was actually running away from the other two when he closed the cabin door and jumped off the boat! ..and before, in the grocery store parking lot where we were kidnaped. For all we know, he may have wanted to come back and help us, but maybe he couldn’t. ..Maybe,” I just realized, “he didn’t make it,” feeling sad about that I might never get to meet him.
“Sure, but what does the old man have to do with the papers?”
“Exactly, Bobby.” MR clearly thought we were on to something. “I don’t think it was about any of us. I think it’s all...”
Eleanor interrupted to finish the thought for him, “...about whatever was in the safe.”
“Unless...” MR paused, stroking his chin for dramatic effect, “it’s the safe itself.”
We all turned to look at MR together.
“Well, think about it. It’s got to be something valuable they’re after. And, so far as we know, there’s nothing valuable in the safe. Not the papers we’ve seen. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the safe itself that’s valuable.”
“You got to be kidding.” I don’t know why Eleanor bothered to say anything. When MR was in his analytical mode, he was dead serious.
“So why follow the papers we had in the wagon,” it didn’t make sense, “or go down to Harness Creek when the safe is still in my father’s office?”
“Because,” Eleanor snapped her head suddenly in my direction, “maybe they don’t know it. Maybe they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
“It’s heavy, isn’t it.” MR loved figuring things out like this. Maybe it’s not made out of iron. Maybe, just maybe, it’s...”
And we all said out loud, but softly to ourselves, “...gold?”
“Precisely,” Bobby finished the thought, “but, like Eleanor says, the bad buys with the Russian accents haven’t figured that out yet, which is why they’re still looking for the papers that were inside.”
“Of course,” MR was on a roll, and talking fast, his glasses vibrating down the bridge of his nose. “Your grandfather figured that everyone would think what was locked in the safe had to be valuable. I mean, why go to so much trouble to lock it up if it wasn’t, when what he was really protecting was the safe itself.”
“Good ..point,” Eleanor said, one word at a time, jabbing her forefinger at MR to poke his glasses back up against his face. “Let’s go,” and suddenly Eleanor was up on her feet.
“Where?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.
“To you father’s office. Where else?”
“She’s right,” Bobby reached over the coffee table to help me up. (Now, wasn’t that nice? Another chance to hold my hand.) We’ve got to get a closer look at that safe.”
“What about the old man?” I asked.
“Look,” Bobby touched the side of my arm for effect, and it was effective, “we don’t even know if he’s still alive. All we know for sure is that he and the Russians don’t get along.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Eleanor reminded us of the old adage, “or something like that.”
“You know,” MR was being overly analytical, “that’s not technically true,” but no one cared and Eleanor got full credit for using the expression correctly.
“I’ll get the accordion binder with the papers, and leave my parents a note. Eleanor, you call your mother and tell her we’re walking down to Main Street and then call her later, after we’ve been there for a while, so she won’t worry, but it’ll be too late for her to tell us not to touch anything. ..Rollo, let’s get this show on the road.” Leaping from the couch, off the table and onto the ottoman where MR had been sitting, Rollo was on top of my backpack which was next to the couch, waiting to get inside, before I made it to my father’s study. In the meantime, Bobby had grabbed the trashcan from under the sink and was picking up leftover bait boxes from the Chinese food we’d ordered, paper plates and empty cans of soda. “My god,” I thought to myself, “he’s gorgeous and he cleans up. He’s like the perfect guy.” Eleanor, who was watching and knew what I was thinking, looked over at me and agreed, telepathically.
“I’m going to the bathroom.” MR must have felt that he had to be doing something.
My father’s study was about the size of an ordinary bedroom, but the floor to ceiling bookcases on every wall, even over the door and around the windows, made it seem barely large enough for the old wood desk in the middle. There were hardwood floors, almost entirely covered by a mostly burgundy oriental rug that my mother never liked. The only other furniture was an old wooden, swiveling office chair on wheels that belonged to his father and, in front of his desk, a floor lamp next to a nice wooden chair, with spindles and a red corduroy cushion tied to the spindles in the back. That was where I sat when he was there, when I stopped by to ask him something and talk about stuff. Nothing in particular. Just stuff. And there were papers, old magazines and folders piled here and there. Sometimes, when my parents were out for a while, I would come in here, sit at my father’s desk and write, mostly fiction, in a journal I kept. Next to writing in my bedroom, and sometimes out in the backyard, on the grass among the trees, it was my favorite place in the house.
My father had apparently been looking through the same papers which were spread about, encroaching on the bills and other things he had pushed aside to make room. Their empty folder was on the floor to the left of his desk, the frayed ribbon that had held it closed for who knows how long lying limp beside it. Moving quickly to collect it all together, I stopped when I touched the old picture of the two men, standing on the wooden sidewalk, somewhere out west.
“We’re ready.” It was Eleanor standing in the doorway, MR and Bobby looking over her shoulders, left and right.
“It’s him, Eleanor. Take a look.”
While they came forward to the front edge of the desk, I moved the photograph under the lamp so they could see its fading images more clearly. “It’s him, isn’t it?” I said, pointing at the man on the right. “The old man with the bad leg.”
“It’s hard to tell. They’re both much younger than the man you saw, and I never got a look at his face.”
“That’s right. You had just fallen down when he came by outside my porthole, but that’s him all right. He’s much older now, but it’s the same face. I’m sure of it.” I had only seen the old man for a couple of seconds, but his face seemed instantly familiar, in a way that age couldn’t disguise and I was sure I would never forget.
“Com’on.” MR was getting anxious. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah,” I was worried the men with the Russian accents might have the same idea. “We don’t want to get there too late.”
Papers in the binder. Tie the bow. Back to the hallway. Put the binder carefully inside my trusty green canvas knapsack I bough
t at Sunny’s Surplus, making sure my flashlight, Leatherman multifunction knife and other emergency items were already in place, and look for my keys to the office. “Got ‘em. Rollo, ...” was all I had to say. Opening the big flap, I barely had time to get my arms through the straps. He was up and in there in a second, almost choking me with his forearms until his butt was settled on top of the papers from my father’s safe lying flat against my back. (It was heavy, but I could handle it.) And we were out the front door.
“Wait!” I had forgotten to leave my parents a note.
“I left them a note for you.”
“Thanks,” I told Eleanor, thinking how great it was to have at least one really, really good friend, and we were off, through Mrs. Gomez’ yard, past her dog, Ollie, who knew Rollo and me too well for him to bother to get up, and on to the first of only a few streets that would take us downtown to my father’s building on the circle, at the top of Main Street.
Two more shortcuts and, about twenty minutes later, we were coming around the back of the old hospital, on the dark side near Spa Creek, when MR got the bright idea that he wanted to go down Prince George Street and cut over to Main Street to pick up the new copy of Popular Science at Read’s – or so he said. It was really Mad Magazine he was after but, for some reason, he wouldn’t ever admit it, as if we wouldn’t ever take him seriously again. If only he knew that we didn’t take him seriously now, maybe he’d realize that it didn’t make any difference.
“Alright, you guys. Eleanor and I are cutting on up to the Circle,” in the direction I was pointing with a jerk of my head. “We’ll meet you there, outside my father’s building.”
“Are you sure you don’t…” Bobby actually seemed to be worried, but I cut him off.
“Yeah. We’ll be okay. No one even knows we’re out here.” I told him over my shoulder, already a few steps on my way up the street, with Eleanor walking on the curbside, weaving in and out of the parking meters.
“We’ll be fine,” she piped in, swinging completely around one of the poles to face them. “I’m guessin’ you’re the scared ones,” she giggled, never even trying to keep a straight face. “Couple of cute guys, alone, at night in the big city. I don’t know? I’d be worried if I were you.” And she laughed at MR, rolling his eyes while I caught the smile on Bobby’s face. Eleanor was a natural flirt, who just couldn’t help herself.
“Com’on. You’re falling behind.” She was two meters in back of me now, parking meters that is, but caught up quickly and we started talking, about nothing in particular, while the boys disappeared around the corner.
It was dark out, but hadn’t been that way for long, with some clouds, but not much chance of rain and hardly any moon. In two blocks, there would be plenty of street light with more than a few people coming and going to and from the movie and restaurants that were still open nearby. I was excited, but tried not to show it, and couldn’t wait to take a good look at the safe for the first time since I’d seen it up close from the inside. Two blocks and we’d be back out in the open. In the meantime, these old narrow streets, cars parked along both sides as closely together as they could, these streets that I had walked so many times seemed strange and creepy. Usually, it was the colors and textures, the flowers in a pot here and there and lights that would catch my eye, but tonight it was the shadows I kept seeing, in and about the odd assortment of townhouse porches, stoops and telephone polls, and the air felt heavy and unseasonably cool.
“Let’s get off the sidewalk.” Eleanor felt it, too.
“Sure.” There were no cars coming or going and more light in the street, compared to the sidewalk where we had been walking. Being careful, in the dark, not to trip on the cracked and uneven sections, we’d been dodging trash cans – Tomorrow was garbage day. – and brushing up against parked cars when steps from a house came out too far for us to walk side by side. The street would be an easier walk.
“What is it, Rollo?” He’d been quiet, but moving, shifting his position so much it was becoming uncomfortable for me to carry him, struggling to get out. There was less room in there than usual what with the folder I’d brought with us. Maybe that was the problem.
I turned to Eleanor, not wanting to take off my pack. “Help him get out,” which she did, and Rollo was down on the badly worn brick that had replaced the cobblestone a century or more ago. “You stay close, Rollo,” I told him, looking down to make sure he’d heard me, but he was busy. Something was distracting him up ahead to the left where an even smaller side street, an alley really, with houses, came in on an angle. I was on Eleanor’s left, walking with Rollo on my right, between us, when two shapes appeared at the far corner. They were men, we guessed from their size, but too far away, with only the glow of a lone streetlight behind them, for us to make out their faces.
We almost paused, almost stopped there in the middle of the street, but that would have been admitting that we were spooked. “Look familiar?” Eleanor wanted to know, wondering if they could be the two I had met at the grocery store and got to know until they rolled my parent’s wagon into the river, the same two who might have locked us in the cabin and pulled the plug to lose us in Harness Creek.
“It’s nobody. Nobody knows we’re here.”
“Maybe they were following us?”
“I doubt it.” The thin one on the right was smoking, finishing up the one cigarette he was holding and throwing it to the sidewalk without even bothering to step on it. It wasn’t a big deal, but not the kind of thing I thought someone who lived around here would have done, and then they started to cross the street, taking advantage of a driveway between the parked cars on their side to move on the diagonal toward us. The memory of the smell of stale cigarette smoke on the one, shorter kidnapper’s clothes came back to me, and I wondered if it was better to stare at the two of them, or pretend as if we weren’t paying any attention.
“Rollo,” I remember almost whispering his name. Turning slightly to my right, lowering my shoulder and pointing to him, the back of my hand facing up and flat out, a foot above the pavement, I called to him again. “Up, Rollo,” and, in a flash, he moved up my arm onto my shoulder, steadied by his powerful left forearm laying across the back and left side of my neck, his body to the right of my face, so close I could feel him breathing. His head down below the plane of his own shoulders, neck extended, Rollo looked as far as his golden eyes could see, his razor sharp sense of smell sniffing the air wafting toward us.
(They did this, Elizabeth and Rollo, now and then, but it was never clear which one of them was protecting the other. On the street, he could have escaped almost any threat, going places where no person could follow him. But running from a fight wasn’t his style. She knew that, and thought he’d stand a better chance if she kept him close at hand. On her shoulder, he had the high ground from which he could leap to challenge any threat, giving her that extra moment to escape. They were perfect for each other.
What he lacked in size, he more than made up by his speed, extraordinary senses, his courage and cunning. Although still young and inexperienced – Her instincts were good, although still a work in progress. – she compensated with determination and resourcefulness which were nothing short of exceptional. These traits, in and of themselves, were impressive, but it was their commitment to each other that made them better than either would have been alone.
Together, they were unexpectedly formidable, a strange sight at the very least, this huge housecat, eyes glowing in the reflection of the streetlight not fifty feet ahead, there on the shoulder of the young girl who kept walking, her friend, Eleanor, at her side. And the men gave them wide berth as they crossed to the other side and went, between two cars, onto the steps of one of the houses, the larger one of the two taking out his keys. Rollo looked back at them, his head turning slowly to his left as the three of them cleared the rise in the street and, at the corner, could see the lights of Church Circle, people on the sidewalks
and cars waiting for the traffic lights to change in their favor at the top of Main and Prince George.)
“Hey.” Bobby shouted up to them as he and MR came up past the tree next to Elizabeth’s father building. Coming around the corner, the two girls looked past their friends to see the lights reflecting in the water at the dock way at the bottom of the Main Street hill while Rollo jumped down onto a bench they were walking past and from there onto the plaza.
There were two keys to the office. One opened the outside door to the building which was supposed to be locked after eight o’clock on weekdays, and after five on Saturdays and Sundays when very few of the tenants came into work. The tenants there were professionals – a couple of lawyers, an architect, an advertising agency, an insurance company (the one with the umbrella logo) and my father. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what he did for a living, except that it seemed to change from time to time.
It was eight thirty-five when we got there, well after the building should have been closed for the night.
“The door’s open,” MR was the first to point out. “I mean, it’s not only unlocked, it’s actually open a little.”
“No kidding.” Eleanor couldn’t help herself. MR was always stating the obvious and Eleanor was always calling him on it. It was sort of a game with the two of them, but tonight MR wasn’t interested in playing.
“Shouldn’t it be locked?” MR asked while he read the building hours sign through the glass panel next to the door.
“Sometimes someone will leave it open if they’re just running out for a minute, you know, to pick up a sandwich.” That was the truth, but it didn’t sound all that reassuring. “I’ve done it myself, on the weekends when I’m doin’ stuff for my father and I leave to go on an errand for him without my key.”
Bobby, standing a few feet away from the wide steps to the front of the building, had been looking up and shook his head from side to side. “Nothing.” Except for the lights in the center hallways, inside the door and on every floor above it, he couldn’t see any of the office lights you’d expect if someone were working late.
“Hey, guys. Let’s not let our imaginations get the better of us.” Well, someone had to take charge and, given a choice, I picked me. With that, I opened the door all the way and stepped into the hall, cat in my backpack again and the other Musketeers close behind. Bobby was the last one through and turned to pull the door shut, “Chunk,” pushing hard against it, just to make sure it was closed. Pausing there in the entry, the five of us looked left, then right, and down the short hallways on either side that led to the corner offices. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it wasn’t there, and we moved on out, from the spot of light under the ceiling fixture just above us, to the next one a few feet down the cracked marble floor. It was clean and made those squeaky noises sneakers make on the basketball court at school.
MR was first to the elevator on our left, pressing the old-style, spring-loaded button below the up arrow. “No,” I warned them. “That thing hasn’t been doing too well lately. It’s an old building. Mr. Cavanaugh, the man in the coveralls they hired a few months ago to take care of the place, tells me stuff is always breaking down. Let’s take the stairs, just in case.” And so we kept going, went through the frosted glass door at the far end and up two flights to my father’s floor. (Going down would have taken us to the basement and out the fire exit into the alley behind the building.) From there, we went up the hallway, back toward the front of the building to the door on our left with the stenciled letters saying “Coleman” and then “& Associates” on the line below. (Dad told me once that the “Associates” where Mommy, Rollo and me.)
I was the first inside and threw all three switches to my right, on the wall behind the coat rack, to turn on the lights in the main office where my father worked and in the storage area in the back where the safe was. MR plopped down on the leather-covered couch against the far wall. Eleanor walked toward the storeroom to be first to look at the safe. They’d all been in my father’s office many times before, stopping by to use the phone or bathrooms, or take a soda from my father’s little refrigerator, or get a ride home whenever they were downtown even when I wasn’t with them, and so they pretty much knew where everything was. Bobby walked over to the windows to look down at the street where we’d come into the building, and Rollo wriggled out of my backpack onto my back and leaped from there to the floor to begin looking around.
“Now what?” I asked for anyone having a good suggestion.
MR raised his hand. “I recommend...” he began, trying to be serious, but having real trouble suppressing a giggle that was working on the corners of his mouth. “I recommend... pizza!!” And then he laughed out loud, and so did the three of us. Thank goodness, because it had been getting a bit tense.
“Finally,” Eleanor rewarded him with her approval, “a good idea.” Having fully recovered from all the Chinese food they’d had for dinner, it was time for a snack. Besides, it’s a well known psychological fact that eating calms you down.
“I’ll call,” Bobby was volunteering from the phone on my father’s desk. “What do we want? Wait... Large, regular crust, pepperoni on half, green peppers on the other, and make sure you cut all the way through the crust?” I nodded, Eleanor formed a kiss with her lips, and MR just smiled. Bobby made the call, gave the pizza place our address and phone number, and hung up, telling us “twenty, maybe thirty minutes.”
Given a choice between nervous-serious, and nervous-stupid giggling, always take the second one. Sure, we had just finished eating too much Chinese food a couple of hours ago, but this building could be creepy at night, particularly under the circumstances, and we needed to do something normal to break the tension. No matter what the situation, pizza almost always works. Think of it as a snack, but it really wasn’t about the food. Eating pizza together made us feel good, and that was why we ordered it.
“Hey, guys!” Cupping her hand around her mouth to sound a bit like she was talking with a megaphone, there was a hint of urgency in her voice. Eleanor, on her knees, her head and shoulders inside the open safe – Been there, done that. – had found something. “Get a look at this.”
Rollo got there first, his front paws on the bottom rim of the safe, which was off the ground by maybe six inches on top of heavy, rusted iron casters.
“Ouch!” Eleanor bumped her head, trying to make room for the three of us. “Back up. Hey, back up, you’re blocking the light,” which wasn’t all that good to begin with. The ceilings were high in this old building, and the fixtures dim, their globes having yellowed with age and far above from what we were trying to see.
Taking off my backpack, I turned on and gave her my flashlight. “Try this.”
“Here, see these scratches around these screws, near the hinges.”
“They’re new.” MR rubbed his finger along one of them, feeling the scratches still sharp edges.
“Sure. I must have made them when I was trapped inside, trying to unscrew my way out. It was cramped in there, and I was nervous and couldn’t see well. The screwdriver kept slipping.”
“What color is that, under the paint?” Bobby wanted someone else to agree with what he was seeing. The safe had been painted black, but along the lines where the screwdriver blade on my Leatherman had slipped, the color we were all seeing was clearly... gold?!
To be continued…
“Gold? ..I like gold.” Rollo was sleeping on my desk, on top of my Urban History paper. It was only a draft, so I didn’t mind him getting fur on it. Anyway, he was sleeping and didn’t respond. I like gold. He likes shiny things in general, but then who doesn’t.
“So,” I said to myself out loud, “what happens next?” I paused for a moment, lightly tapping the letters across the middle row of my keyboard, waiting to be inspired. “Wait a minute.” I shrugged, realizing I didn’t need to be struck by lighting, heaven forbid, to know how this turns out
. “This is a true story. I’ll just write what actually happened. ..But first, a quick trip to the bathroom. ..Rollo, I’ll be right..” But then I realized he wasn’t paying attention.
* * *
