Most felines do not enjoy travel, but I’m not like most felines. Not in the least.
For that reason, I was most thrilled when the human I watch over, Tammy Lynn, received a notice of an estate sale to be held December 30th and 31st in San Francisco. The estate belonged to the owner of the city’s oldest and largest antiquarian bookstore. Since Tammy is the owner of a new and used bookstore in Wetumpka, Alabama, and since the person she most wants to spend New Year’s Eve with, Deputy Sheriff Aiden Waters, has to work that night, she decided to take a little vacation and attend the sale rather than sit home alone. And she would, naturally, take me with her.
She and Aiden agreed to hold their own private celebration when he has some time off.
We spent our first day in the city at the estate sale, held in what had been the bookstore. Tammy was ecstatic to find many collectibles she knew would be salable back home. She ended up buying six boxes of books.
That’s fine. I, too, appreciate literature, particularly if it has to do with my hero, Sherlock Holmes. I will admit, however, to more than a little annoyance when Tammy returned to the bookstore on the second day. After all, it is New Year’s Eve, and our last full day in the big city.
Although I can read—something of which, as a cat, I am quite proud—I didn’t subject my sweet self to an agonizingly long airplane flight replete with the indignities of TSA agents searching not only my carrier box but my person, to spend time in a bookstore. I want to see the city!
I will say the bookstore isn’t all bad since I’ve met a pretty calico cat named Callie who lives there. Tammy allowed me out of the carrier to roam around with her.
Callie tells me about her deceased owner’s special book, one he kept hidden. Intrigued, I ask her to show it to me.
The two of us climb to the top of a tall bookshelf. There, I find a black leather-bound book that says only Diary on the cover. I flip it open and see Alphonse Gabriel Capone, 1934 hand-printed on the first page. Interesting, I think, and suspect Tammy will find it equally so.
I wait until she comes looking for me. I meow, and as she looks up, I tap the diary with my paw until it reaches the edge of the bookshelf. One final tap causes it to fall into Tammy’s waiting hands.
As I predicted, she had the good taste to be intrigued.
The young woman running the cash register appears bored and uninterested in her job. I suspect she is only there because of the estate sale. Her expression quickly moves to irritated when she sees that the diary has no price marked. Further, she seems to have no idea who Al Capone was, or why anyone would care about his diary. Let me just add here that I am no longer surprised at how few young people know historical figures, including fairly recent ones. And yet I, a cat, do know them. Al Capone is usually considered to have been this country’s best-known gangster during the days of Prohibition. As Public Enemy #1 he’s been featured in innumerable movies and television shows. I also know that when the FBI finally caught him and sent him to Alcatraz prison, it wasn’t for the terrible murders and other crimes he’d committed, but for the only one the Feds could make stick: income tax evasion. Witnesses to Capone’s other crimes tended to have very short life spans.
Finally, Tammy offers ten dollars for the diary, and the cashier takes it.
With that, Tammy gives in to my boredom and the fact that she has already spent more money than she had planned on. After tucking the diary into her handbag, we leave the sale.
Tammy wants to ride a cable car, so we take the one that runs along California Street up to the top of Nob Hill. We get off for her to see the sights, and then she plans to walk through Chinatown and North Beach, ending at Fisherman’s Wharf for a fresh seafood dinner. From the wharf we should be able to see Alcatraz out on the bay—the very island where Al Capone had been imprisoned.
But, alas, things rarely go as planned.
As we get on the cable car, I know something is wrong. I try to warn Tammy, but she seems to think I’m fussing because of the strange vehicle we’re riding. Now, I’ll admit being on a rickety contraption pulled along by a cable under the ground rather than powered by a motor, bothers me. But that isn’t the reason for my worry.
I don’t appreciate being shushed. Tammy should know by now that to ignore my warnings is never a smart thing to do. In fact, I’d say it’s very bad form.
San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield was glad to be home. She and her partner, Bill Sutter, had finally made an arrest in their latest case, a complex murder investigation. Most likely the accused would end up taking a plea deal. As long as the murderer was locked away, Rebecca didn’t care how he got there.
New Year’s Eve was often an especially busy time for the police. Too much liquor flowed, and emotions ran high as successes as well as disappointments of the past year were remembered. And those who dwelled on all that went wrong in their lives, often ended up becoming a problem.
Rebecca thought she might take a short nap, expecting she’d be busy as the night wore on. She was about to lie down on the bed in her postage-stamp size apartment, a space converted from a storeroom in the back of a garage thanks to the city’s housing shortage, when she heard her dog bark.
Spike, a Chinese crested/Chihuahua mix, was in the backyard, a bit of greenery in the heart of San Francisco. He was small, about eleven pounds, and his body was hairless and pink with a few large brown spots. His only fur was on the top of his head, lower legs, feet, and the tip of his tail. Even Rebecca, who loved him dearly, had to admit he was a strange-looking dog.
She stepped outside to see what the fuss was about. On the fence sat a cat with a luxurious black coat and large green eyes. It looked down at Spike, who bounded back and forth, yipping and barking.
Then, to Rebecca’s surprise, the cat leaped off the fence and strolled over to Spike. Spike immediately froze and gaped in surprise at the bold creature. As did Rebecca.
The cat stretched his neck warily toward Spike, then both touched noses. Spike tried sniffing other areas of the cat in his doggy way until the cat swatted his snout to teach him better manners. Rebecca noticed that the cat hadn’t extended his claws, so Spike wasn’t in the least hurt.
In fact, the dog’s tail was wagging so fast it looked like a windshield wiper set on high.
“Well, where did you come from, kitty?” she asked. She hadn’t seen him in the neighborhood before. “You’re much too pretty to be living on the streets. Maybe you’d like some food and water inside while I check the lost cat list at the Humane Society.”
She opened the door to go into her apartment and the cat followed.
In the kitchen, she poured fresh water into a bowl and set it on the floor, calling the cat to it. Then she found a can of tuna in the cupboard.
She was opening the can when she noticed the cat had reached into her handbag, which she had tossed onto the sofa, and slid her badge out. The badge had dropped open on the floor. She’d be darned if it didn’t look as if the cat was reading her identification. Of course, that was impossible.
“Come on, little guy,” she said, placing a bowl of tuna on the floor beside the water. “I expect you’re hungry and thirsty.”
After he’d eaten, she picked him up and petted him, both to make sure he was friendly and to check that he was a he. He was.
She then phoned the lost cat hotline. Although she heard no description of a black, green-eyed cat as lost, she left a message listing him under found cats in case his owner phoned in.
As the call ended, she heard a knock on the door.
She opened it to find Richie Amalfi holding a pizza box.
“Happy New Year!” he said.
“It’s not quite time yet. But for pizza, anytime is worth celebrating.” She kissed him and opened the door wide for him to enter.
“Who’s the newcomer?” Richie asked as he put the pizza on the kitchen counter. Then he knelt down and rubbed the cat’s head and behind his ears. “Friendly, isn’t he?”
“He is.” Rebecca got out plates and opened bottles of Dos Equis Amber, which was currently Richie’s favorite bottled beer. She was starving, and the pizza smelled delicious.
They sat at the dinette.
“He’s Spike’s new friend,” Rebecca said, taking a slice. “I thought Spike didn’t like cats; he usually barks at them. But this one is different. I swear, he acts as if he understands what I’m saying to him. And as if he should be able to answer. It’s all peculiar. Anyway, he’s so beautiful and well-cared for, I’m sure someone is out looking for him. I reported that I’d found him.”
“I’m sure his owner will turn up. But tell me, how is everything at work today?” Richie asked, his first slice nearly gone already. He was well aware how erratic her schedule was when she was on call.
“So far, so good,” she said. As they finished eating, Rebecca told him how glad she was to have wrapped up her latest case and that no new case had, as yet, turned up.
“So you might make it tonight?”
She smiled. She could hear the hope in his voice, and she felt the same way. Richie owned a nightclub. How he became its owner was a long, complicated story that had much to do with the closeness they felt for each other now, despite their major—and she meant major—differences.
In fact, the only reason they were together had to do with the nightclub where she had once arrested Richie for murder. But then, after he broke free and was on the run, he showed up at her apartment and asked her to help prove his innocence. She should have immediately tossed him right back in jail, but there was something about the guy. Weird, yes. She’d never had that reaction to anyone she’d arrested before. In fact, she wouldn’t have given the time of day to any of them, let alone listened to their sob story declarations of innocence and wrongful arrest.
So, she had handcuffed him…and then she listened.
And eventually things worked out. After all, if she hadn’t figured out who the real killer was, Richie wouldn’t be walking around free today.
But she had; he was; and now they were hoping to spend New Year’s Eve together at his nightclub.
“So far,” she said, “the good citizens of San Francisco aren’t killing each other, and as long as they stay well behaved, I can ring in the new year with you.”
“Great.” He stood. “I’d better go home, get cleaned up, put on a nice tux, and in a while head down to the club to make sure we‘re all set for tonight. We’ve got a great dance band, lots of champagne, and fancy appetizers. People go all out for New Year’s Eve and I want to make sure we’re ready for them. I’ll send a car to pick you up.”
“I can drive myself.”
“No way. It’s amateur night on the streets with too much drinking and driving. Besides, parking will be tight around the club. Let me know what time you’re ready and someone will be here.”
He opened the door to leave, but she stopped him with a quick kiss. To their surprise, the cat darted past them into the backyard.
“Oh no!” Rebecca cried, running outside. “I didn’t think he’d do that.”
They looked all over the backyard, but couldn’t find him.
“Where could he have gone so quickly?” Rebecca asked.
“I didn’t see him go over the fence,” Richie said, “but he must have. There’s no other explanation.”
Rebecca put her hands on her hips. “Well, maybe he wasn’t lost after all, and knows his way home. We can only hope.”
She walked to the end of the yard with Richie. Her “garden apartment” had an odd layout. To get to it, one had to go through a door next to the garage that faced the street. The door led to a breezeway beside the garage. Past the breezeway was the backyard, and across it was Rebecca’s apartment. Being a cop, Rebecca liked the fact that anyone trying to get into her apartment had to go through two solid, locked doors.
Richie headed down the breezeway to the door that led to the street. He opened it and was stunned when the black cat appeared out of nowhere and sprang in front of him, and then out to the sidewalk.
“What the—” he yelled, almost tripping.
“Go get him!” Rebecca cried. “I’ll get my house keys and be right behind you.”
She ran back to the apartment, grabbed her shoulder bag with her keys inside, locked the doors, and hurried down the street after Richie.
He was standing on the corner, arms folded, waiting for her.
“I swear,” he said when she reached him, “that cat is acting like he wants us to follow him.”
She saw the cat halfway up the block—a very steep block leading to the top of Nob Hill, one of the most exclusive areas in the city with the magnificent Grace Cathedral on one end, the elegant Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels on the other, and between them, Huntington Park and the stodgy Pacific Union Club.
She and Richie hurried after him. They had nearly reached him when he darted further up the block.
“Oh, no! There’s a lot of traffic up there, including a cable car. I hope he doesn’t get confused by all the clanging and people jumping on and off and end up getting run over! He’s too sweet for that.”
“If you ask me,” Richie said, “he’s too smart for that. In fact, there’s something strangely intuitive about him. I say we keep him if his owner doesn’t show up. I suspect he’d be a help to me.”
Rebecca gave him a severe glare. She tried not to think of the way he and the two men who worked for him, Henry Ian Tate, aka Shay, and Vito Grazioso, made most of their money. If those three worked together with a clever cat, heaven only knew what mischief they could get into. What they did already was bad enough, although since meeting and dating Rebecca, Richie swore he always stayed on the correct side of the law. Or, pretty much so.
Actually, if she were being fair, she’d have to admit that the only times he acted in any way “sketchy” these days was when he was trying to help her, and at times to save her life. He was, in the nicest meaning of the term, a badass.
And despite her better judgement, she who had always been so uptight and correct in everything she did that Richie used to call her Rebecca Rulebook, found she rather liked that about him.
Just being with him made her feel a lot freer than she ever had before.
But even so, she was a cop through and through. And Richie knew it.
Now, he looked at her disapproving expression and chuckled.
Just then, the cat turned the corner onto California street and headed toward Chinatown.
“Oh, no!” Rebecca cried. “We’ll never find him if he goes down there. It’s filled with back alleys and odd little enclaves and heaven only knows what else.”
I’ve never been anywhere with such steep city streets. I now understand why cable cars are popular here. Big trucks and heavy busses would never make it up some of these hills, and could lose their brakes after just a couple of trips down them.
I’m surprised at how much humans struggle walking up the hills, especially those carrying shopping bags filled with groceries and other necessities. I never thought about how easy life is in a small town where parking is plentiful and free. Here, I’ve seen parking lot fees that are more than many people earn in a day back home.
Home…how I like the sound of that. It had been a stroke of luck for me to find a policewoman. I’d been hoping to find some food and water, and then to go off on my own to continue my duties for Tammy. But after being with Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield a while, I realized she could help my investigation go a lot faster. I guess, in the biped world, she’s an attractive woman, tall, with blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail, sparkling blue eyes, and a pointy chin. She clearly works out, not only because she could climb the hilly streets without getting breathless, but because her body is sleek and well-toned. Tammy Lynn, I’m afraid, could take a few pointers from her.
The fellow with her is quite smitten by the lady cop. He’s as dark as she is fair, with wavy black hair, dark brows and eyes, and tanned olive-toned skin. Even I, a cat, can tell his clothes are not only fashionable but also expensive. I’ve only seen a man’s Patek Philippe watch in a magazine, not on anyone’s wrist…until now.
It’s clear, he’d do anything he could to help the lady cop if she asked him.
Now, I just need to get them to realize they want to help me.
Rebecca and Richie eyed each other. “Are we crazy following a stray cat through city streets?” Rebecca asked. She considered herself the practical, logical one of the two. And there was nothing practical or logical about what they were doing. “He could be leading us to his home—or maybe to an area filled with nice, yummy mice to eat.”
“I don’t think so,” Richie said. “You’ve seen how he looks at us with those huge green eyes. If he could talk, I suspect he’d be saying ‘Come on, dudes. Move it.’”
Rebecca chuckled. “Dudes? Well, if he said that, I’d certainly follow along.”
From California Street, the cat trotted along Stockton to Washington, and then entered Ross Alley. In San Francisco of the 1880s and 1890s, Ross was the site of many a battle between what the public called hatchet men, as criminal associations or tongs fought each other for control of the drug trade, gambling, and prostitution in Chinatown. And the services such tongs provided were used not only by the Chinese populace but also by many non-Chinese residents and visitors to the city.
Rebecca liked to remind herself that the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same as what the police now called ‘cartels’ were involved in many of the same activities, only their weapons of choice have moved from hatchets to machetes and guns.
The black cat waited beside a brick building inside the alley. As she and Richie neared him, he ran down the outside steps that led to a basement. There, he scratched at a door. Worn paint faintly showed the number 19.
“We’ll have him cornered,” Rebecca said. “We can grab him.”
“I want to see what’s behind the door,” Richie told her. “He led us here for a reason.”
She pursed her lips. “I hate to admit it, but I think you’re right.”
He went down the stairs and saw that the door’s lock had been broken. Glancing back at Rebecca, he turned the knob, and the door opened. The cat scooted past him and into the room.
Richie stuck his head in to find an empty storeroom, then opened the door wide. “I wonder who this belongs to.”
Rebecca joined him. “I didn’t think any space was left empty in this part of the city.” Overcrowding was the norm in Chinatown as it was in most of the tourist areas of the city.
Richie pointed at the cat. “Our little buddy seems to have found another door he wants us to go through.”
They crossed the small storeroom and opened the next door. It led to stone steps heading downward. Richie used the flashlight in his phone to view what appeared to be a cellar. The walls were musky and damp, made of rough wood covering stone and dirt.
But as they descended the stairs, another smell, both familiar and sickening, reached Rebecca. “Uh, oh,” she murmured.
Richie put his hand to his nose. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said. “Let’s look for the body.”
Rebecca found herself in the odd position of calling in a homicide and assigning it to herself. She explained to people, strange as it was, that she was trying to catch a cat who showed up at her apartment and that she was thinking about adopting. The cat had led her to the body, and she had no idea why.
“You were following a stray cat?” her partner, Bill Sutter, asked when he arrived on the scene.
“It’s a very nice cat, and if I can’t find its owner, I’m keeping him. He’s smart, and it was clear he wanted me to follow him. If I hadn’t, this body would never have been found. I wonder if the dead man was the cat’s owner?”
The Medical Examiner, Evelyn Ramirez, was also there. “Leave it to you, Rebecca, to find a body on New Year’s Eve. Couldn’t you have waited until January 2nd to report it?”
“Sorry. I guess these murders find me,” Rebecca said.
The victim was a man who looked to be in his sixties, short, thin, with gray hair and badly pock-marked skin. He had no identification or cell phone on him. He had been stabbed in the back.
The crime scene technicians found a few drops of blood on the stairs coming down to the cellar as if the victim may have run from his attacker and somehow managed to come down there to hide and, ultimately, die.
Rebecca glanced at Richie who was leaning against a wall, holding the black cat, and giving her a look that said he was as unhappy as Evelyn at the murder case she suddenly had to handle. So much for their big plans for New Year’s Eve.
On the other hand…
She looked at the cat. He knew about the murder and had led her to it. Maybe he saw who had done it? If he were a dog, she could imagine seeing if he could find a trail by sniffing. But a cat? She’d never heard of a cat helping law enforcement. Still…
Dr. Ramirez had her staff roll the body over so she could take more tests and discovered that he had a book stuffed inside his shirt. She pulled it out and gave it to Rebecca.
Wearing the rubber gloves she had borrowed from Sutter, Rebecca opened the book. “It’s a diary,” she said. A little blood from the man’s wound had spilled onto it, causing some of the pages to stick together. She unstuck them. There wasn’t a lot of writing in the book, as if someone might have had good intentions about keeping a diary, but soon grew tired of it. She understood. She had abandoned several diaries after a couple of months either because life was too busy to take the time to write in them or, more often, because life was so dull she didn’t want to memorialize how boring it was.
A quick glance over at Richie, however, caused her to amend that thought. Life was never dull around him. Now, his head was bent as he studied the cat. His wavy black hair was tousled from their run through the streets, and his eyes dark and troubled as if he were lost in thought as he gently petted the cat. She couldn’t help but think how good it felt when those sensitive hands touched her.
She drew in her breath.
Now was not the time or place for such thoughts. Still, he flummoxed her.
As much as she would have loved their relationship to be tried and true and last forever, she didn’t see that happening. They were too different: their backgrounds, their view of life, and the way they lived it, too much at odds. Someday she expected those differences to become overwhelming. Then, it would be time to move on.
One of the many differences between her and Richie was that he’d had a lot of tragedy in his life, from the time he was a little boy and his father was killed, to more recently, the death of his fiancée. Yet, he remained surprisingly optimistic. She, on the other hand, was far too much of a realist for that.
At Richie’s nightclub, Big Caesar’s, they played a lot of old songs. She’d come to know and love a Gershwin song from the 1930s, They Can’t Take That Away from Me. It said that even after love had ended, a person would always have memories of how good it had once been. That was how she viewed her time with Richie. No matter what the future brought, she could never forget him. And she didn’t want to.
She shook away such thoughts and turned back to the murder before her. She opened the diary to the first page. It read: Alphonse Gabriel Capone, 1934.
“Do any of you know Al Capone’s full name?” she asked.
“Al Capone? The gangster?” Richie asked.
Rebecca flipped through the diary. The script was like that of a child, hard to read, filled with misspellings and sentences that made little sense. The diary would need to be studied with care to figure out what, exactly, Capone was trying to say.
Rebecca read the name and date in the front of the diary.
“That sounds like Al Capone,” Sutter said, coming over to look at the small book. “And that was the year they sentenced him to Alcatraz. What is that thing?”
At the back she found a receipt for ten dollars from an estate sale. She phoned the number on the receipt and learned the sale would continue until seven p.m. If she learned who had bought the diary, it would be a good start to the investigation.
“I’ll check this out,” she said to Sutter as she quickly used her phone to take pictures of the receipt, the diary and the few inside pages with writing on them. Then she put the diary into an evidence bag. “Let’s hope our dead man bought the diary and used a credit card to pay for it.”
Sutter nodded. “Good. That might be faster than the traditional approach, and today, I’m all for fast.”
“Big plans for tonight?” Rebecca asked, surprised. She’d never known Sutter to have a date.
“Nope. Just some good classic movies on TV, an unopened bottle of single malt Scotch, and a very comfortable recliner. That’s my favorite way to bring in the new year.”
She went to Richie. “I’m going to see what I can find out. I think I’ll take the cat with me. Strange as it sounds, something tells me it would be a smart thing for me to do.”
“For us to do,” he said. “I’m going with you.”
An Uber ride from Chinatown took them to the estate sale.
She showed the cashier a photo of the receipt. “Can you tell me who bought this?”
The young woman smiled. “I don’t need the receipt if that’s her cat.”
“Her?” Rebecca asked.
“He looks like the cat that belongs to the nice gal who bought that book. She was from the South. I could tell by her accent. Also, I knew she wasn’t local because she was real friendly and open. She told me she came out here to mix a little vacation with picking up some unique books for her store.”
“Do you have a credit card or any other identification for her?”
“Nope. We’re cash and carry. All sales final.”
“Did she tell you her name or the store’s name?”
“I don’t think so,” the cashier said. “Oh, wait. She said something. Terri? Toni? Shoot. Oh, wait. I think it was Tammy. That’s right, Tammy. That’s a southern name, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. And without a last name, it didn’t much matter. “Tell me about the diary she bought. Al Capone’s diary.”
The woman looked at the photo of the diary on Rebecca’s phone. “Oh, yeah. Some guy’s diary.”
“You don’t know Al Capone?” At the woman’s blank stare, Rebecca added, “Scarface? The Untouchables?”
Richie chimed in. “Eliot Ness? Prohibition?”
The young woman’s eyebrows rose higher and higher as they threw the words at her. “Nope. Never heard of him. I didn’t know him when she bought the diary, and I still don’t. But he’s not important.”
“Why not?” Rebecca asked.
“Nobody even bothered to price his diary.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t part of the sale?” Rebecca asked.
“No. I’m saying nobody cared about it. If they had, they’d have priced it.”
Richie glanced at Rebecca and rolled his eyes.
“Did you notice anything at all about the woman that could help us find her?” Rebecca asked.
“Only that she was here for the estate sale. Oh, and she mentioned she had a hard time finding a hotel that would take her cat. But then she found one. And she was excited about riding a cable car to the top of Nob Hill.”
Rebecca and Richie thanked the clueless clerk and left.
“Now we know how the bookstore owner bought an Al Capone diary for only ten bucks,” Richie said. “To a collector, it’s probably worth about a hundred times that.”
“If anyone can read it.”
“Let me try.” Richie took the phone, flipped through the pages she’d copied, and read aloud. “Sonny b’day. Big day.” He turned to the next photo. “Mae wants to move. Worried.” And another. “Don’t know.”
He looked up at Rebecca. “Maybe it isn’t worth over ten bucks. The guy wasn’t exactly loquacious.”
“I understand he was barely literate. Maybe that’s as good as it got.”
Richie flipped through several more photos with next to nothing on them, but then he stopped. “Hoy. 19 Ross Alley.” He looked at Rebecca. “That’s all it says. That’s where we were, but what does it mean?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“I know a way we might find out,” Richie said.
Richie phoned his good friend, Henry Ian Tate, who preferred to be called by the name of Shay. Shay’s background was a state secret, but Richie knew he’d been a sniper with the Marine Corps, plus he worked for several start-up high-tech firms in Silicon Valley, and had made a fortune on Wall Street. The background was wildly varied, but as Richie got to know Shay, he realized a lot of the same cut-throat, highly focused skills were needed for all of them.
When Shay answered the call, Richie asked if he could make any sense out of the Al Capone diary entry on Hoy and Ross Alley. Shay did a computer search and in less than a minute reported back. “Found it,” he said, then he chuckled.
Richie’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Rebecca who was listening. She, too, looked stunned. Shay never chuckled.
“Do you remember that hyped TV show about opening Al Capone’s vault?” Shay asked.
“Vaguely,” Richie replied as Rebecca shook her head. “But it was empty, right?”
“Exactly,” Shay said. “Capone was said to have collected a lot of gold, jewelry, and US money that was never located. But his vault was found, and one night on live TV, the public watched for about two hours as the vault was broken into. A TV newsie named Geraldo Rivera emceed the show. Finally, they opened it and, just as you said, after all that build-up, it was empty.”
“Sounds like great TV,” Richie muttered, waiting to hear what it all meant.
Shay continued. “Lots of people now believe Capone moved his valuables out of the vault before he went to prison. But he didn’t know which of his Italian buddies to trust since things were falling apart for him and the different gangs were fighting each other. A Chinese friend, Johnny Hoy, had no such conflicting loyalty. Some people think Capone had someone, most likely his wife, give the guy his valuables and told him to hide them. No one’s ever figured out where, and Hoy was murdered soon after Capone was sent to Alcatraz. It could be you’ve stumbled across Al Capone’s annotation of where Hoy hid his valuables.”
Richie’s mouth dropped. “Holy shit! You think so?”
“Could be. A guy like Capone probably would want to know his money and valuables were close at hand, and if he was in San Francisco, I suspect he’d want his money here. But tell me,” Shay said, “where did you find this diary?”
“It was part of an estate sale.”
“Whose estate?”
Richie turned to Rebecca, who answered. “It was from an estate sale belonging to a collector of old books and all kinds of San Francisco memorabilia named Richard Johnston Mellington.”
“Let me see who that is,” Shay said. “Hmm…”
“What does that hmm mean?” Richie asked.
It took a couple of minutes before Shay got back to him. “This is wild. A man named James Aloysius Johnston was warden of the Alcatraz prison when Capone arrived and remained in the position until 1948. Capone left the prison in 1939 when syphilis affected his brain. It’s possible he left his diary, and the warden picked it up and kept it in the family. You might have something there.”
“Let’s retrace the cat’s steps,” Rebecca suggested to Richie after he thanked Shay and ended the call.
“What are you thinking?” Richie asked her.
“I live on the downside—the poor side—of Nob Hill. The cat had to have been in my area to have wandered into my backyard. But then he led us to Chinatown. What if Tammy did take a cable car up to the top of Nob Hill and something happened to her up there on California Street? And that’s why the cat was in my neighborhood?”
“Meow!” the cat cried, which caused both Rebecca and Richie to face him with shock on their faces.
“Let’s go,” Richie said.
They hopped the California Street cable car and got off near Grace Cathedral. Rebecca had been tightly holding the cat, but immediately upon reaching the street, he wriggled free and ran down the block.
At the Huntington Hotel, one of the city’s finest, the doorman was holding the door open for a guest. The cat ran past him and into the lobby.
“We need to catch that cat,” Rebecca said, flashing her badge at the perplexed doorman.
“Yes. Good,” he said as he stood aside for them to enter.
Rebecca stopped a moment to stare at the surrounding opulence.
A bellboy was already chasing the cat, and Richie ran after him, trying to help. But the cat gracefully leaped from sofas to tabletops to chairs as the clumsy humans did all they could to avoid knocking anything over as they bumped into lamps and furniture trying to keep up with the feline’s twists and turns. The cat was no doubt thoroughly enjoying himself.
A manager hurried toward them, arms outstretched. “What’s going on out here?” He also joined the chase, but after two spins around the lobby, he stopped to catch his breath and faced Rebecca. “Is that Trouble?”
“More than you can imagine,” she said as, once more, the cat evaded Richie’s hands.
“No, I mean, is that his name? Trouble.”
The cat turned toward the manager and jumped up on a chair beside him, one covered with an exquisite silk fabric, and then he spread his claws. If anyone tried to lift the cat up or otherwise caused him to run, he could easily shred the fabric.
“Trouble?” Rebecca repeated.
The cat turned his emerald-like green eyes on her, and gave a sweet, high-pitched, “Meow.”
Rebecca faced the manager. “How do you know his name?”
The manager was all but hyperventilating as he eyed the expensive silk in the cat’s grip. “Someone mugged a young woman right outside our hotel earlier today. In broad daylight! They stole her purse and knocked her to the ground. She hit her head rather badly. She needed a place to sit and drink some water, so my doorman helped her inside. He’d witnessed the whole thing. Unfortunately, the cat carrier she was holding opened when it hit the ground, and her cat ran off. She was much more worried about the cat than anything else. She said something very strange, in fact. She said once the cat knew she wasn’t seriously injured, he chased after the robbers, trying to get her purse back for her. The hit on the head must have made her hallucinate.”
“Right,” Rebecca murmured, gazing again at Trouble, who gave her an “Of course, I did,” gaze in return.
“Anyway,” the manager continued, “she hoped he might be prowling around the hotel and asked if we saw a pure black cat with shiny green eyes to keep him here until she returned.”
“Do you know how to reach her?”
“No. Her purse was stolen, as I said, and her phone was in it. We tried to get her to go to a hospital to get her head checked—for a while she was dizzy. But she refused, saying she’d spend the rest of her life paying doctor bills if she did. She was probably right, but still. Anyway, we kept her here as long as we could, but then she left to find her cat. She said if she had no luck she would call back in case he returns here looking for her. And here he is!”
“Did she leave a phone number or say where she’s staying?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about her name?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t thinking clearly and, I’m sorry to say, neither was I. But I think she’ll phone back again. She did once already, in fact. About ten minutes ago.”
Just then, an elderly couple appeared in the hotel's doorway. The doorman held the door as they slowly shuffled inside.
Trouble leaped—without leaving a mark on the silk—from the chair and scurried out the door.
“Darn you, cat!” Richie exclaimed and ran after him.
Rebecca handed the manager her card. “I believe her name is Tammy. When she phones back, tell her to contact me.”
“Criminals rarely return to the scene of the crime,” Richie said when Rebecca caught up to him, “but it seems that cats do.”
They had returned to Chinatown’s Ross Alley. Sure enough, Trouble was by the door to number 19, cleaning his paws and the fur on his forelegs and giving them a What took you so long? look.
“Why are we here again?” Rebecca wondered.
Richie thought a moment, his dark eyes going from her to the cat and back again. “It’s a long shot, but what if there were two people at the estate sale who knew about the diary and the Johnston family’s connection to Alcatraz and Capone? All of a sudden, they saw that Tammy not only found the diary, but bought it. They followed, even rode the cable car with her, and when she got off, they knocked her down, stole her purse with the diary, and took off."
Rebecca could see where he was going. “Once they had the diary, for some reason they fought, and one stabbed the other. Judging from the small blood trail, the one with the diary was strong enough to make it to the address in the diary, but there his strength must have given out, and he died.”
“So the question is,” Richie said, “where is the other man? The killer? Did he follow, find the treasure, and run away with it? Did he find it and run deeper into the underground basements and tunnels that supposedly network the area? Or is he still out there somewhere, looking for the treasure and maybe for the diary?”
“Let’s see what we can learn,” Rebecca said as she and Richie returned to the basement. Try as they might, they couldn’t find a tunnel or even a drainage ditch large enough for anyone to crawl through.
“Damn!” Rebecca said. “The killer got away. I’ll get a photo of the dead man and see if our brain-dead cashier remembers him and if anyone was with him. I won’t hold my breath that she can help us, but I’d better ask.”
“I guess your night will be spent trying to find the dead man’s identity and who might have killed him,” Richie said, disappointment filling his eyes.
“I suppose,” she said morosely. “I agree, it sucks.”
Richie decided he would walk with Rebecca back to her apartment and then say goodbye as she headed to the homicide bureau at the Hall of Justice to work on the investigation. He tried to pick up Trouble, but the cat kept squirming away as if he didn’t want to leave. Finally, Richie took off his jacket, wrapped it around Trouble and carried him back to Rebecca’s apartment. “You are definitely aptly named,” he said to the hissing feline.
He was holding him tight as Rebecca unlocked the street door that led to the breezeway.
“Stop right there!” a voice yelled.
A man holding a large caliber semi-automatic handgun was running toward them.
“Run!” Richie yelled as he tossed Trouble into the breezeway, stepped inside it, and turned to shut and lock the door.
But the gunman was too fast, and Richie, too, had to run.
Rebecca had just unlocked her apartment door when the gunman reached the yard.
“Don’t take another step!” he ordered. “Both of you! Give me the diary.”
She pushed open the door then faced him, hands raised. She kept her 9 .mm Beretta on the top shelf of the tall, thin cabinet right beside the front door. She could reach it and duck inside the apartment, but Richie was out in the yard between her and the gunman. He was too exposed, too vulnerable…too easily in the line of fire.
“The diary is in the evidence locker at the Hall of Justice,” she said.
“No, it isn’t. It’s the reason you found out about the estate sale, even about the lucky bitch who found it. I’ve been looking for the damn thing half my life, and it falls into her lap! Now, hand it over!”
“She used the diary’s sales receipt, dipshit,” Richie said. “She didn’t need to keep the diary to track the buyer.”
“Who’s asking you, asswipe?”
Rebecca glared at the gunman. “You said I. Isn’t the correct term we? What about your partner?”
“What partner?”
“The one you killed.”
The gunman snorted. “He was no partner. Not even a friend. He just pretended to be. He took the diary and tried to stab me! I got him back, got him good, as you discovered. But it was self-defense!”
“So how did he get away from you?”
One shoulder shrugged. “He knocked me into a wall. Even stabbed, he was a strong bastard. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, for a few minutes.”
“But you managed to find us,” Rebecca said.
“Yeah, I did. I figured Johnny Hoy would have hid the treasure in Chinatown. I was there looking around when I saw a bunch of police show up. I watched and learned that Billy was dead. I figured he died trying to get his hands on the treasure. So after the area cleared, I looked for it. But I couldn’t find it.”
“Sucks to be you,” Richie muttered.
“Not exactly,” the gunman said with a smirk. “I was out on the street, trying to decide what to do next when you two came along. The more I listened, the more I learned. See, my uncle knew Capone. He knew about the diary and treasure, and a lot of the symbols and stuff Capone used to make notes for himself that others couldn’t read. He taught them to me so if I ever found the diary, I could read it. So turn it over!”
“How many ways can I tell you I don’t have it?” Rebecca shouted.
“Then you’re no good to me!” The gunman shouted back, extending his arm with the gun.
At that, Spike ran out of the house and straight for a planter box in the center of the backyard.
The gunman saw the bizarre pink streak and took his eyes off Rebecca and Richie a split second as if to figure out what in the world had rushed by.
At that moment, Trouble leaped onto the gunman’s back, claws out, and reached his paws around the man’s head toward his eyes. The gunman shrieked in pain and horror as Trouble’s sharp claws dug into his face. He dropped the gun as he tried to dislodge the biting, spitting, scratching cat. Seeing that, Rebecca flung herself into the apartment and reached for her gun, while Richie hurled himself at the gunman’s mid-section like a lineman for the 49ers, knocking him onto the hard cement yard. As soon as the gunman began to topple over, Trouble jumped out of the way.
“Put your hands on your head and get up slowly,” Rebecca said, standing over him, feet apart, two hands on her gun.
Richie picked up the fallen handgun and put it far out of the gunman’s reach.
“Handcuffs are in the cabinet,” she said to Richie. “How about you do the honors?”
He smiled. “I’d love to.”
Rebecca, Spike and Trouble were in Richie’s office in Big Caesar’s night club when the call Rebecca had been hoping for all afternoon and evening finally came in.
“My name is Tammy Lynn, and I was told…”
“I’ve got Trouble,” Rebecca said. As she looked at Richie giving filet mignon to Spike and fresh halibut to Trouble, she realized that was a true statement in more ways than one. She quickly explained to Tammy that she was a homicide inspector in the city and that Trouble had not only helped her solve a murder that afternoon, but helped save two lives, including her own.
To her surprise, Tammy didn’t question her sanity as she said this. She knew if someone had told her such a thing, she’d be ready to call the booby hatch for them.
Finally, Rebecca added, “It’s New Year’s Eve. Trouble is here with his friend, my little dog, Spike. So why don’t you come and celebrate the New Year with us? I understand you’re alone in the city. You haven’t had much of a welcome, but we can try to make it up to you—with good food and drink, if nothing else. We’ll send a car to pick you up.”
Tammy sounded both overwhelmed and relieved. “I would love to join you. And thank you for taking care of Trouble.”
I’ve never been part of such a large celebration. The homicide inspector looks quite pretty all dressed up, her hair loose except for a strand held back on one side with a glittery brooch. And I can see why Richie’s club is a hit—he makes everyone feel welcome. He even got Tammy to dance with him and some other fellows, just enough so she didn’t feel like some out-of-place wallflower. Between food, drink, and dance, Tammy is enjoying herself.
It’s funny that none of the humans noticed a loose brick with missing grout at floor level way in the back of the Ross Alley basement. I noticed it, and with my excellent eyes, even though the area was very dark, I could see past where the grout should have been to a lead box hidden back there. It looked old—like, perhaps, from the 1930s.
But it was of no interest to me and now the diary will remain locked away in an evidence locker as part of the murder investigation. During the killer’s trial, I’m sure word will get out about the possible Capone windfall. I suspect a most entertaining treasure hunt will ensue. I see no need to make that hunt easy for anyone. Let the best guy or gal win.
Hmm. Now what are they up to? Everyone around me is counting.
“Ten…nine…eight…”
Ah, I see…midnight…
“Three…two…one!”
The room erupts in a rousing cheer and people kissing each other. Even Tammy Lynn gives me a hug and a big kiss on the top of my head.
Soon, the band starts to play, and the entire ballroom stands and sings “Auld Lang Syne.”
Okay, I’ll admit the emotion of it even got to me a tiny bit. I’m happy to see the hardworking homicide detective and her interesting boyfriend looking so happy together, and I even deign to smile at my new friend Spike. Even though he’s a dog, he’s not too obnoxious. We give each other a mental high five in mutual recognition of the difficult job we both had over the past year keeping our people safe and happy, and knowing that in the new year, such vigilance must never let up.