LIBERTY SHOULD BE on a track team with those stork legs. My right side is one big knotted-up cramp.
“Slow down!” I yell.
“Keep up!” she yells back.
Finally, a sign for the entrance to Horton Plaza appears. We dash into a maze of walkways at odd angles, past fancy department stores and water fountains and kiosks and escalators and shops.
“The clock should be over . . . there!” Liberty shouts, and we keep running and dodging this way and that, poking down walkways, until:
There it is, in the center of a little plaza. A beautiful old clock, up high on a pole, with lacy metal designs. It looks hundreds of years old—and totally out of place in front of all the modern window displays.
We slow way down before we approach it. Now we need to act cool so we don’t tip off any other Questers.
The clock is like something out of a European fairy tale. It has a big, white face that says Correct Time, San Diego in old-fashioned lettering. All around the perimeter are smaller clock faces that tell the time all over the world.
It makes me think of Dad in Africa. It’s 11:30 a.m. here now—late at night for him. “I’m sure you’ll do great,” he said to me this morning on the phone. Yeah, well, so far I’m not doing so great. It took us forever to get through that first clue. At this rate, we’ll never make it through all seven.
I try to get my breathing under control and stop panting like a dog. I spy a bench—we slide onto it, and Liberty tries to casually open the brochure, like we’re just your average Macy’s shoppers.
“Okay. So. Yeah. So this thing is called the Jessop’s Street Clock. It was built for a downtown San Diego jeweler back in 1907,” she reads to me. We stare at the old, grainy photo of the exact same clock, back more than one hundred years ago, with a horse and buggy by it. “It was relocated here when Horton Plaza was built. A famous local landmark.”
I do the math quickly in my head. “So, if I’m remembering right that the comic called the Clock first ‘struck’ in, say, around 1936 . . . Subtract twenty-nine years from that, and what do you get?”
“You get 1907!” she says. Liberty’s watery green eyes are glowing.
My chest swells with pride. “This clock was twenty-nine years old, already—and still striking on Jessop Street—when the Clock comic was first created! We got this one!”
We sit for a minute, looking at each other.
“Okay, so?” she finally says. “We solved it. What do we do now? Where’s the person? The contact?”
We look around, bewildered, but there’s no one tapping us on the shoulder like Barbara Gordon did at the library. No one who looks Clock related.
Some other shoppers—or maybe fellow Questers—are starting to stroll and linger . . . Two guys in Batman T-shirts are lurking by the front doors of Macy’s. Suspicious, to say the least.
“Let’s walk around,” Liberty says, getting up off the bench.
I try to remember everything I can about the Clock’s alter ego. A lawyer or cop, or something. With an Irish name. McBride? McBrian? O’Brian?
There’s a group of mothers with baby strollers power-walking past. The two Quester dudes are still whispering by Macy’s. A homeless person, wrapped in thick layers of rags and a dirty down vest, shuffles around a corner. He looks so out of place among all the stores. It’s sad. But everyone pretends not to notice him. If this were a real comic strip, the homeless man might turn out to be Rorschach in disguise. Or maybe John Lockdown on undercover assignment.
A group of fancy older ladies push through the doors to Macy’s, bumping the two suspicious-looking Quester dudes. More people arrive . . . I scan them for signs of an old-fashioned lawyer named O’Brian. Or anything clock-related. But: nothing.
There’s a coffee hut across the plaza from the clock. On the awning, it says Java Time. And there’s a picture of a coffee cup with a big clock on it.
Hmm. Liberty and I look at each other. “Time for java?” she says.
We head over, and she steps right up and orders: “Two small regular coffees!”
“Coffee? Really?” I say.
“Yup. My mom won’t let me drink it,” she says, waving a handful of sugar packets. “But she’s not here, is she?”
“By the way, have you checked in yet?” I ask.
Liberty rolls her eyes. “Yeah. I’m texting her.”
“Two regulars,” says the coffee guy, holding out two cups. He’s got on an old hat with a brim, and under his apron, a business suit with big wide shoulders, the kind they wear in the old gangster movies on the classic movie channel.
I take a sharp breath and hold it.
Yup.
His name tag says Brian O’Brien.
Liberty is looking at me, eyebrows raised. I nudge her. She nudges me back. Finally, I get her to step forward and ask the question.
“Hello. I guess my friend here—or teammate, I should say—is kind of shy. But he thinks you might be the Clock guy?” she says. “From, er, Trivia Quest?”
It’s not enough detail. I’m going to have to speak up myself. Heart pounding, I lean over the counter and add, in a whisper: “The big old clock over there, it was twenty-nine—and still striking—when the Clock comic book character came out. Right? It was in the 30s. The Clock, he was the first masked comic book hero! Is that it?”
The big-shouldered barista dude wipes his hands on a towel and whistles softly. “Verrrry good!” His eyes dart suspiciously this way and that. “I’m not supposed to talk too much to you Questers, but let me just say congratulations. This clue was a tough one.”
My chest swells and tightens with excitement.
Brian ducks behind the counter. “Here’s your change, sir,” he says, handing me our second golden token of the day. “And here’s your receipt.” Then he steps back into the shadow.
We walk away from the coffee hut, sneak off around the corner to find a quiet spot where we can check out that receipt.
Which is not a receipt at all, of course. It’s the little gold envelope with the next clue.