“You got the message then,” Harold grumped as his passenger struggled to fasten the uncooperative metal buckle of the seat belt.
“Yup,” Monty replied, his sleepy voice waking with sarcasm. “Subtle, Wombler. Really subtle.”
Harold allowed himself the pleasure of a smug grin; then he cranked the engine and rolled off down the street.
From the few bits of paint remaining on the truck’s chipped and dented shell, it was difficult to guess the original color of its exterior. A jagged crack branched its way across most of the windshield. The plastic molding of the dashboard was blistered and hardened from years of unprotected exposure to the sun; the remains of the glove compartment rested at Monty’s feet on the passenger side floorboard.
Monty carefully shifted his legs around the glove compartment and directed his half-lidded eyes toward the driver.
Harold wore a heavily stained T-shirt beneath a pair of quickly disintegrating overalls. A shredded flannel shirt that was missing the majority of its buttons draped over the bent curve of his shoulders.
Most of Harold’s greasy, black, dandruffy hair was covered by a dingy baseball cap. The yellowed whites of his eyes sunk into dry, blotchy skin that sagged loosely below his jawline. Slumped forward in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel with his wrinkled, gnarled hands, it looked as if the truck were being piloted by a withered worm.
The streets of Jackson Square were dark and deserted as Harold swung the truck left at Sansome. Few cars moved along the city streets. Most of the residents of San Francisco were still tightly tucked in their beds.
A few blocks later, the truck slowed at an empty light for a left-hand turn onto Broadway. All the while, the truck’s engine cycled roughly in a coughing, stuttering manner.
Monty shivered and wrapped his arms across his chest, trying to warm himself against the damp chill rushing in through the gaping passenger side window. He had given up wrestling with the immovable handle that would have been used to roll up the glass partition.
Monty stared out the open window at the silent street as the truck chugged up Broadway, passing through the poorly delineated convergence of Chinatown and North Beach. A gaudy collection of strip clubs, their neon signs flashing flesh-promising adverts, pressed up against a handful of sooty dim sum joints and specialty grocery stores whose banners were marked more prominently by their Chinese characters than the faint English subtitles printed underneath. The price of every inch of space in downtown San Francisco was at such a premium, there was no room for gradual transitions.
The truck rumbled with the roar of an escalating avalanche as it worked to pick up speed. The increased vibration threatened to dislodge the more loosely attached of its parts.
“Where are we going?” Monty tried to yell over the racket.
“Cliff House,” Harold replied bluntly. The truck hit a deep pothole that caused the front bumper to scrape against the pavement before the cab jolted up wildly on the recoil.
“Why?” Monty hollered, straining his voice to be heard over the engine as he reached between his knees to steady the bouncing glove compartment.
“For the view,” Harold spit out through pursed lips.
A taxi screeched by in the open left-hand lane as both vehicles entered the Broadway tunnel. The brick and concrete walls swallowed the truck, amplifying the already deafening squall of the motor.
The taxi quickly disappeared into the distance, leaving the truck to trundle alone through the cave of the empty tunnel. The round opening on the opposite end appeared first as a blinding halo of artificial light before slowly softening into the contours of a streetlamp-lit street. Monty tried to tuck his cold-numbed hands into the bottom hem of his sweater as the truck emerged from the tunnel’s exit and a fresh blast of chilly air shot through his open window.
Once free of the tunnel, the road sloped upward toward the wide boulevard of Van Ness. Harold scaled back the engine to an uneven idle as they waited at the light. He turned his stiff neck to look at the passenger seat.
Monty had wrapped every available limb over and around one another in his attempt to fight off the chill. He looked like a pale, sweater-clad pretzel.
Harold gummed his dentures; then he reached his right arm behind the back of the truck’s bench seat, grabbed a dingy brown blanket, and tossed it into Monty’s lap.
Monty sniffed at the blanket disdainfully. “Smells funny,” he complained as he stretched the thin cloth over his body.
Harold rolled his eyes and swung the truck south onto Van Ness. One of the city’s main thoroughfares, the street was a mixture of commercial warehouses and residential apartment blocks. A line of tightly packed cars filled in both curbs; every possible parking space had been consumed for the night.
Several blocks down, the gilded detailing on City Hall’s enormous dome picked up the first glints of the arriving sun. Harold squinted at the building and muttered to himself.
“Sorry?” Monty piped up from the passenger side. “I didn’t catch that.”
Harold gripped the steering wheel and did not respond as the rusted-out truck lumbered further down Van Ness, turning right a few minutes later. Harold navigated a nest of one-way streets with the reckless confidence of a seasoned cab driver; then he proceeded up Fell Street toward Golden Gate Park.
A procession of low-rise apartments crowded the landscape, each unit designed as a rectangular cube, closed in on at least two of its sides to accommodate the tightest possible packing within the uninterrupted flow of buildings. Row after row of bulging bay windows lined the street, designed to snag every available ray of sunlight for the units’ otherwise dark boxes.
Neighborhood sifted into neighborhood, becoming increasingly residential as more and more full-sized houses squeezed into the dime-sized lots. Occasional clumps of grass popped up into the gaps between residences. This, combined with a denser population of trees, signaled the truck’s approach to the entrance of Golden Gate Park.
The roadway angled, feeding the truck into a narrow two-lane street, which was banked on either side by a dense thicket of forest. All evidence of the surrounding city immediately slipped away.
“So, uh, hmmm.” Monty cautiously cleared his throat. “When Dilla recruited me into your little group, she was a bit
light
on the specifics.”
“I would have hoped so,” Harold replied tersely, without elaboration.
“Did Oscar really know where Sutro’s stash is hidden?” Monty asked, his eyes glittering with speculation.
“Don’t push your luck, Carmichael,” Harold replied curtly.
The truck continued to roll across the smooth black tarmac of the park road. A pair of early-rising joggers braved the brisk, cool breeze on a running path cut parallel to the street. Every so often, the trees parted for an open field, the entrance to a museum, or an improbable herd of buffalo. The close proximity of the encircling city was lost completely.
About ten minutes later, the Pacific Ocean loomed up ahead, its presence palpable long before its churning waters could be seen. A briny zest fogged the air as the bank of trees thinned and fell away. The dilapidated shadow of Harold’s truck emerged from the western thicket of Golden Gate Park to face the ocean’s wild, foaming edge.
Monty shuddered deeper into the dingy blanket as the truck turned onto a highway that skirted the coast’s wide, sandy beach. The vehicle rounded a curve beneath the scraggly outcropping of Sutro Heights and pulled into an empty parking lot next to the darkened, windswept Cliff House.
Monty yawned pointedly as he glanced around. “There’s no one here.”
“Just wait,” Harold growled. He pulled the gear lever into park and turned off the headlights. The sputtering engine expired with the weariness of a spent horse.
The unlikely pair waited in uncomfortable silence. Monty picked up the grimy edge of his covering and offered it to Harold.
“Blanket?”
Chapter 11
A TRIANGULAR-SHAPED SMUDGE
THE BLINDS WERE
pulled down tight, but the first cracks of Thursday morning had begun to weave their way through the slats and into the third floor bedroom above the Green Vase. I rolled over, groaning at the intrusion, but a slight disturbance in the far corner of the room caught my attention. Something was moving—something small and amphibian in nature.
Plunk.
I sat up, propping my head against the pillow, blinking my eyes in disbelief at the tiny figure shuffling timidly across the room toward me. It was a green frog wearing a feathery orange mustache.
He hopped in the direction of my bed, his progress seemingly unimpeded by the hairpiece attached to the stubby, blunt end of his nose. The pointed corners of his tiny, well-groomed whiskers curved upward in a perky, almost stylish fashion.
The little frog tilted his head, studying me as if he were intrigued by my presence. The red ribbon of his tongue zipped out of his mouth and lightly tapped the mustache perched on top of his upper lip.
“Ribbit.”
As if summoned by the sound, a second frog appeared. This one was heavier set with a pouchy, rolling stomach and rounded, fat-cushioned shoulders. His mustache was thicker, each side of it drooping down to the floor, the mammoth hairpiece nearly collapsing under its own weight.
“What is going on here?” I murmured drowsily as Isabella cracked open a sleep-crusted eye. The frogs’ arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed by the orange and white feline heap on the bed beside me.
“Izzy, do you see them?” I asked, groggily glancing at the spot on the covers where she and Rupert were tightly wound around one another.
With slow, exaggerated movements, Isabella extracted herself from the curling cat cocoon. She stretched her mouth open into a wide yawn and rolled her rough pink tongue out at me. She gave me a skeptical look as I pointed emphatically at the floor beside the bed.
We both leaned to peer down over the edge, but the frogs—and their mustaches—had disappeared.
I CRAWLED OUT
of bed and stumbled toward the shower, trying to dislodge the disturbing imprint of the morning’s dream.
Isabella trotted ahead of me, leading the way to the bathroom. Rupert snorted sleepily as he snuggled deeper into the blankets. It was far too early, in his opinion, to be up and about.
Frogs, I thought, puzzling as I twisted on the shower nozzle and waited for the water to heat up. They were making a strange convergence in my life—first at City Hall, now in the Green Vase. Both locations seemed unlikely amphibian habitats. The pair from my bedroom, I decided, must have been imagined.
I waited until the hot water began to steam up the mirror over the sink, then I pulled back the curtain and, after carefully inspecting the bottom of the tub for any froggy green interlopers, I climbed in.
My thoughts traveled to the frog essay in the shiny green Mark Twain books, the first one dropped off by Harold, the second one, indirectly, by Dilla.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
had swept the country when it was first published in 1867; it was one of Twain’s earliest writing successes.
The tale was a bit harsh for modern, more sensitized, readers. The poor, hapless frog referenced in the title suffers the brunt of a cruel practical joke. In order to sabotage the frog’s chances in a jumping competition, the antagonist of the story pours buckshot down the frog’s throat to weigh it down. Even though the frog is eventually relieved of its stomachful of iron, I couldn’t really see the humor that had so delighted Twain’s early fans.
I began sudsing up my hair with shampoo, drowsily contemplating the ethical implications of frog torture as I began to search for a connection between the
Calaveras County
frog and the pair who had hopped into my early morning dream with their feathery orange mustaches.
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER
, I stepped out of the shower, feeling refreshed and fully awake. After slipping on my clothes, I grabbed a small handheld vacuum cleaner and used it to suck up the telltale sprinkling of litter in front of the red igloo. Rupert, clearly, had begun his day.
The cats were probably in the kitchen waiting for their breakfast, I thought, as I plodded down the steps to the second floor.
“Rupert, Isabella,” I called out. The apartment seemed almost unnaturally quiet, but I didn’t think anything of it.
I rubbed the back of my neck, still supple from the massage of the hot water, and flipped on a switch for the kitchen’s main light on the wall just inside the entrance.
I was utterly unprepared for the mess that greeted me.
Dishes that had been left to dry the night before in a rack by the sink were now strewn across the kitchen floor, several of them cracked, chipped, or shattered into pieces. Joining the pottery were several of Oscar’s cookbooks that had been knocked off of their shelf, their spines spread wide, loose pages fluttering out.
A spinning spice rack from the counter by the sink had been upended. Tiny individual flakes, dried seeds, and a mixed dusting of spices were spread across the kitchen. Some of the finer particulates still hung in the air, creating a heavily scented haze.
Isabella sat in the basin of the kitchen sink, stealthily licking her front paws. They were covered in a sticky, yellow substance—all that remained of the contents of a small jar of honey that had previously resided on the kitchen table. The accompanying dispensers of cream, sugar, salt, and pepper had all been emptied, contributing to the room’s overall spice mixture.
Isabella hunched her head into her shoulders apologetically as I scanned the room, stunned by the muddled disarray.
Rupert, on the other hand, stood proudly on the kitchen table, feet firmly planted in a defiant stance, his tail swinging wildly back and forth, as if he had just protected me from a vicious intruder. A fine white powdery substance, probably flour, covered his head and shoulders, creating a comically aged look to his whiskers.