How to Catch a Cat (4 page)

HIKE AND SEEK

THE CANE’S RUBBER
tip squeaked against the concrete as Oscar pivoted toward the pavilion’s main stage. He pulled down the brim of his cap, shielding his eyes so that he could squint into the sunlight.

The stage was at least a hundred feet away from the wide screen that had been set up for the overflow audience. The crowd stood with their backs turned to him, but after several minutes’ scrutiny, Oscar identified Hoxton Finn’s ruffled head and, beside him, the shorter noggin of the news station’s stylist.

Mabel was nowhere to be found.

The camera had captured the Ninja somewhere in the reporter’s vicinity, but the woman had been on the move. Surprisingly nimble for her age and physique, at this point, she could be anywhere in the crowd—or on her way out the front gates.

Frustrated, Oscar hobbled toward the stage. In six months of searching, he’d never been this close to catching her. He couldn’t give up now.

He coughed out a short wheeze, and his chest constricted. His heart was giving out on him; he knew his long life was nearing its end.

He didn’t have much time left.

This might be his last chance to stop Mabel’s killing spree.

—

PANTING FOR BREATH,
Oscar reached the rear of the audience, just as the mass of people turned to face him.

The onlookers had shifted their attention to a roped-off corridor that would be used to bring the America’s Cup trophy onto the stage.

Forged in 1851 to commemorate the first regatta, the silver chalice was carried on a gilded platter held at shoulder level by a pair of tuxedo-clad ushers, who were in turn flanked by armed security guards.

The crowd migrated toward the corridor, and Oscar was soon caught in a crush of spectators angling for a view of the famous trophy. Heads bobbed up and down, bodies weaved from side to side, and arms stretched high, holding camera phones up in the air.

The frenzy intensified as the sailing crews joined the cup in the corridor, preparing to escort it onstage.

The sailors would be boarding their boats immediately following the cup presentation ceremony, so they were already dressed for the day’s crucial race. Each man was covered from head to toe in a specially constructed wetsuit made of a reinforced material that looked like high-tech chain mail.

In yet another change over the cup’s earlier competitions, the crew members were professional athletes, brawny men who had trained for over a year to handle the physical demands of the flighty new boats—and who were difficult for an aging old codger with a cane to see over.

Stymied, Oscar glanced back at the television screen. The shot homed in on the silver cup as the ushers lifted it onto the stage. But in the background at the corner of the frame, he caught a glimpse of moving clothing.

Mabel was headed toward a hangar at the far end of the pavilion grounds.

With everyone’s attention focused on the stage, the hangar’s technical display would likely be unoccupied.

Clutching the cane, Oscar lumbered toward the hangar’s wide entrance, determined to nab the Ninja and end her killing ways for good.

He didn’t stop to consider that his own image might have been flashed across the event camera’s wide screen—or that he and his clunky cane had been spotted, an easily discernible discrepancy among the face-painted, flag-waving racing fans.

The Ninja had waited six long months for the opportunity to finish off the man who had exposed her crimes.

She’d spent endless hours contemplating how to exact her revenge on the meddler who had upended her murderous routine.

As Oscar approached the hangar entrance, the question had to be asked.

Who was hunting whom?

—

OSCAR STEPPED INTO
the hangar and cautiously looked around.

It was a cavernous building, capable of accommodating several hundred spectators.

But at this moment, Oscar appeared to be the only person inside its exhibit area.

The applause from the pavilion stage echoed dully through the open rafters, amplifying the emptiness of the space.

Monty had attempted to reinsert himself into the proceedings. There was a sound of shuffling followed by the Baron’s crisp voice as he regained control of the microphone.

“Thank you, Monty. Let’s have another round of applause for Mayor Carmichael . . .”

Oscar shook his head. Monty would not be kept silent for long.

He dismissed the noise from the stage and concentrated on the hangar.

The main display featured several practice boats. These were prototypes that had been used by the competing teams early on in their training. The finely tuned details of the versions being used in the championship were guarded secrets, despite the fact that the boats were visible to the public during the actual races.

At this high level of competition, seconds of advantage could make all the difference, and each team claimed to have developed numerous improvements to the initial designs.

It was impossible to know whether there was any truth to these assertions. If nothing else, the claims alone had the effect of psyching out the opponent.

With so much of their fate left up to the fickle nature of the wind, sailors—particularly those involved in racing—tended to be both paranoid and highly superstitious.

Oscar edged toward the nearest boat, his senses on high alert. The Ninja had proven her elusive skills time and again. Even with her face plastered across the local news media, she had circulated freely in San Francisco, evading capture without a single reported sighting.

If she could hide so easily in plain sight, she could find plenty of ways to mask her presence in a near-empty hangar.

The catamaran’s shiny surface gleamed in the dim light. Leaning on his cane, Oscar peeked beneath the boat’s polished hulls.

The space was empty, save for the sharp rudders that extended down from the hulls’ curved surface.

He lifted his gaze to the upper portion of the craft. The boat had been staged without its extended sails—even the hangar’s high roof was unable to accommodate the sky-high sheets.

Sturdy bracing welded to the metal sides held the two hulls together. A canvas of thick webbing stretched between the hulls, a support feature that allowed crew members to move from one side of the boat to the other.

The narrow hulls provided the boat’s only interior space. Most of the crew members spent the race balancing on top of the craft, leaping across the support netting, and manning the rigging, a complicated network of ropes and pulleys that controlled the sails.

As Oscar examined the craft’s sophisticated structure, he detected a small flicker of light inside the nearest hull. He leaned over to look down the interior length—and gasped at a sharp pain in his chest.

The cane fell clattering to the ground, quickly followed by the heavy
thump
of his body.

SEMICONSCIOUS

“SAN FRANCISCO IS
a young city.”

The Baron’s words echoed into the hangar from the stage outside. After the introduction of the two competing teams and the exhibition of the America’s Cup trophy, the business mogul had reserved a few minutes in the program for his concluding remarks.

Lying on the hangar’s concrete floor, Oscar winced at the stabbing ache that raked through his chest, but the voice continued, overlaying the pain.

“Compared to its older East Coast cousins and the gray-haired dowagers of Europe and South America, our beloved city is just a frisky green upstart. I think that’s what first drew me to her. She offers a clean slate for anyone who’s bold enough to write upon. There’s a sense of newness, that anything is possible—and nothing is forbidden.”

Oscar felt his weakened body drift toward a semiconscious state.

“Even among California settlements, San Francisco has a surprisingly late birth date. The remoteness of the location is partly responsible. Throughout much of the last millennium, the Northern California coast was seen as the end of the world. On maps, this faraway region was drawn as a sketchy, ill-defined mass positioned at the edge of the page, if it was shown at all. Before the development of commercial airlines, automobiles, and transcontinental trains, the area was almost impossible to reach. Only the bravest—or most foolhardy—souls dared to attempt the seaborne journey.”

The Baron paused for a sip of water. The microphone picked up a light slurp before he continued.

“But the city’s tender age is also the result of a geographic fluke. For over two hundred years, European explorers repeatedly missed the Pacific Ocean entrance to the San Francisco Bay. A couple of ships even landed on the Farralones, that cluster of rocks just thirty miles to the west, but their captains somehow didn’t see the opening. That all of these mariners were specifically looking for protected ports suitable for settlement makes the failure that much more remarkable. Each one sailed right past the Golden Gate, the passage to the largest estuary on the Pacific side of both North and South America.”

The Baron tapped his fingers against the podium.

“How is that possible?” he asked the silent audience. No one volunteered a response.

“The anomaly can’t be explained by the fog that frequents our coast. Look around you, my friends. We get a number of clear, sunny days. Surely a ship sailing past on a day like this would have seen the opening.”

The crowd murmured in puzzled agreement. Taking another sip of water, the Baron let his listeners ponder this curious circumstance for several seconds before he provided the answer.

“I’ll tell you why they missed it, because I’ve been out there myself. In good weather, an optical illusion masks the bay’s mile-wide channel. If it weren’t for the city now built up on the shoreline and the boats that constantly populate these waters, I might even sail past it myself.

“When you look in through the Golden Gate from the Pacific Ocean side, the inner islands of Angel and Alcatraz fill in the space above the water, making the opening look like uninterrupted coastline. The Berkeley Hills fill in the distant horizon, enhancing the effect.”

The crowd shuffled, as many stared across the bay, trying to envision the illusion the Baron had described.

“It wasn’t until 1769—nearly two hundred years after the first European ships began sailing these waters—that a land expedition led by Governor Portola overshot Monterey and stumbled across what would later become one of the busiest ports in North America. Even then, it took another six years before a small Spanish packet ship found the ocean opening.

“As we prepare to embark on the regatta’s last race and the end of what has been an historic America’s Cup, I thought I’d take a moment to share with you the story of the
San Carlos
, the first sailboat to enter the San Francisco Bay. The first ever to cross through the Golden Gate.”

He coughed an aside.

“And, of course, let’s hope that team New Zealand doesn’t get distracted on the far west turn of the racecourse trying to make out the optical illusion.”

—

OSCAR’S EYES FLUTTERED.
The voice from the loudspeaker blurred as images flitted through his brain.

A few details were missing from the Baron’s recap of that signature voyage.

He knew this from his research—and from firsthand experience.

In addition to its Spanish captain, the unique crew of the
San Carlos
had included a portly chef with short rounded shoulders, the man’s niece, and her two cats, a pair of Siamese flame point mixes with white coats and orange-tipped ears and tails.

Off the California Coast

August 1775

SEA LEGS

CAPTAIN JUAN DE
Ayala stood at the helm of the
San Carlos
, surveying the rocky shoreline. The Spanish seaman gripped the ship’s steering wheel, bracing himself against the buffeting wind and the deck’s constant roll. A seasoned mariner, he hardly noticed the disturbance.

The
San Carlos
was a tiny ship, especially compared to the rest of the fleet, but he’d take her any day over the Commodore’s finicky galleon. His vessel had daring and pluck, along with a dogged determination that he couldn’t help but admire.

Ayala looked up at the complicated network of heavy canvas cloth and roped rigging. The
San Carlos
featured two masts, with the forward pole being slightly taller than the one in the rear. Each mast bore three trapezoid-shaped sails, arranged so that the sheets decreased in size as they rose in height. A second set of triangular sails or jibs were strung semihorizontally from the mast poles to the ship’s pointed front bow.

It was a masterful design, optimized to harness the wind, capture the current, and wrangle the ever-changing pull of the tide.

Ayala beamed with pride, a captain in love with his ship.

—

AYALA HAD PICKED
up his assignment on the
San Carlos
just a few weeks earlier. It was his first opportunity to perform as a ship’s top-ranking officer. The position would give him far more visibility within the fleet hierarchy—for better or worse. Any number of Spanish sailors had seen their once-promising careers plummet while attempting to make this type of transition.

Undaunted by the risk of failure, the captain had eagerly accepted the new post. He was ready for the challenge—and for the change of scenery.

Ayala had been serving as second in command to a testy commodore on the fleet’s largest vessel when the opening on the
San Carlos
came up. After months of chafing under the commodore’s niggling constraints, Ayala had leapt at the chance to jump ship.

He wasn’t the least bit bothered by the odd circumstances that had led to his promotion.

The previous captain of the
San Carlos
had fallen ill while the ship was docked at San Blas, a port on Mexico’s west coast.

According to the whispers circulating throughout the Spanish fleet, the man had gone mad and been committed to a sanatorium. The previous crew members had all fled or demanded transfer. Ayala was sailing with a completely new staff, quickly culled, like himself, from nearby ships.

It was a strange way to receive a commission, he thought blithely, but it was a substantial step up over his last position. He had simply ignored the rumors that the ship was haunted.

He was a practical man, and he didn’t believe in such nonsense.

He glanced down at the delicate white cat who sat perched on an upturned bucket by the ship’s steering wheel. She had also transferred over from the commodore’s ship—along with the chef, his niece, and a second feline named Rupert.

“What do you think, Isabella?”

As a rule, Ayala generally didn’t like cats. He certainly didn’t spend a lot of time talking to them.

He was more of a bird person.

The previous captain of the
San Carlos
had left behind a parrot in his stateroom. Ayala had been happy to let the bird stay on board. He named him Petey and warned the chef’s niece that her felines would be evicted from the ship if they harmed his parrot.

The feline propensity for parrot-eating wasn’t Ayala’s only complaint about the furry creatures. He also blamed cats for his constant allergies.

Squinting toward the bow, he scowled at Rupert’s fluffy orange and white lump, snoozing in the sun.

“Flea-bitten freeloader.”

But despite all this feline animosity, the captain made an exception for Isabella.

After checking to make sure no one was looking, he reached over and stroked her orange-tipped ears. “Don’t you agree, Issy? There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Isabella tilted her head, purring at the gentle rub.

“Mrao
.
”

—

AYALA RETURNED HIS
attention to the ocean and the rocky shoreline off the ship’s starboard side.

He did have one concern about his new command: finding their intended destination.

The captain wasn’t altogether convinced of the accuracy of the intel he’d received for the current mission. Gaspar Portola and his men had been in pretty bad shape by the time they arrived in Monterey after their disastrous land expedition. The enormous bay Portola had described sounded like the delusions of a madman.

“Crazy fool,” Ayala muttered. If a bay that large existed off this coast, it would have been sighted long before now.

He’d scoured every map he could get his hands on. The closest landmark was Drakes Bay by Point Reyes. Likely, that’s what Portola’s men had seen.

“I think Gaspar has sent us on a wild-goose chase.”

Isabella stared up at Ayala, her eyes the clear blue of the ocean. The expression on her tiny pixie face conveyed a level of confidence that far surpassed that of the captain.

“Mrao
.
”

—

IF THIS RUN
up the coast was a fool’s errand, Ayala didn’t much mind.

It had been a good time to get away from Mexico City, he thought as Petey landed on his shoulder and began preening his feathers.

Due to the nature of his employment, Ayala was often away from home for months at a time. During one of his recent extended absences, his wife, a glamorous opera singer, had started an affair with a young actor.

The revelation was hardly a surprise to Ayala. He and his wife had been growing apart for several years.

She had met up with him in San Blas right before the
San Carlos
departed. It was a last (but unenthusiastic) attempt at reconciliation. The unhappy couple had taken a walk in a local park to discuss the state of their relationship.

The tense situation went from bad to worse when they happened upon an exotic lizard. Ayala plucked a berry from a nearby tree and offered it to the sharp-toothed creature. Instead of eating the fruit, the beast took off a chunk of the captain’s left big toe.

After the blood, the screaming, and the partial amputation, Ayala and the opera singer decided to formally end their marriage.

Being Catholic, divorce wasn’t an option, but he had readily agreed to an annulment. He had no desire to keep her tied to him—or to compete with the actor.

With the marriage officially over, all Ayala wanted to do was escape it, to match a physical distance to the emotional one he’d already achieved.

He stomped his foot in agitation, startling the parrot, who flew off chattering in affront.

Ayala scowled. The foot injury was affecting his sea legs. He planted his left foot and, despite the pain, pressed down against the deck.

That blasted woman had brought him nothing but bad luck.