the night but come home without the kids and Orson, or that I would fail in the rescue and also lose Sasha and Bobby and Roosevelt and Mungojerrie in the process.
With friends, this is a cool world; without friends, it would be unbearably cold.
I washed my face a third time, peed to show my solidarity with Mungojerrie, washed my hands (because my mom, would-be destroyer of the world, had taught me hygiene), and returned to the kitchen, where the others were waiting for me. I suspect that, with the exception of the cat, they had been through a ritual similar to mine, in other bathrooms.
Because Sasha — like Bobby — had noticed fishy types all over town and believed something major was soon to go down, she had anticipated that our house would be under surveillance by the authorities, if for no other reason than our connection with Lilly Wing. Therefore, she had arranged for us to meet Doogie Sassman at a rendezvous point far beyond prying eyes.
Sasha’s Explorer, Bobby’s Jeep, and Roosevelt’s Mercedes were parked in front of the house. We would surely be tailed if we drove off in any of them; we would have to leave on foot and with considerable stealth.
Behind our house, beyond our backyard, is a hard-packed dirt footpath that separates our property and those flanking it from a grove of red-gum eucalyptus trees and, beyond the trees, the golf course of the Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club, of which Roosevelt is half-owner. Surveillance probably extended to the footpath, and there was no chance that the watchers assigned to us could be bought off with invitations to Sunday brunch at the country club.
The plan was to travel backyard to backyard for a few blocks, risking the attention of neighbors and their dogs, until we were beyond the purview of any surveillance teams that might have been assigned to us.
Because of Manuel’s confiscation celebration, Sasha possessed the only weapon, her.38 Chiefs Special, and two speedloaders in a dump pouch. She wouldn’t relinquish the piece to Roosevelt or Bobby, or to me — not even to Mungojerrie. She announced, in a tone brooking no argument, that she would take the risky point position.
“Where do we meet up with Doogie?” I asked as Bobby stowed the sole remaining cinnamon bun in the refrigerator and I finished stacking cups and saucers in the sink.
“Out along Haddenbeck Road,” Sasha said, “just beyond Crow Hill.”
“Crow Hill,” Bobby said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Sasha didn’t get it for a moment. Then she did: “It’s just a place. How could it have anything to do with those drawings?”
I was more concerned about the distance. “Man, that’s seven, eight
“Almost nine,” Sasha said. “With all this new activity, there’s nowhere in town we could meet Doogie without drawing attention.”
“It’s going to take too long to cover that much ground on foot,” I protested.
“Oh,” she said, “we’ll only go a few blocks on foot, just until we’re able to steal a car.”
Bobby smiled at me and winked. “This here is some moll you’ve got, bro.”
“Whose car?” I asked her.
“Any car,” she said brightly. “I’m not concerned about style, just mobility.”
“What if we don’t find a car with keys in it?”
“I’ll hot-wire it,” she said.
“You know how to hot-wire a car?”
“I was a Girl Scout.”
“Daughter’s got herself a car-theft merit badge,” Roosevelt told Mungojerrie.
We locked the back door on the way out, leaving blinds drawn and some lights dialed low.
I didn’t wear my Mystery Train cap. It no longer made me feel close to my mother, and it certainly didn’t seem like a good-luck charm anymore.
The night was mild and windless, bearing a faint scent of salt air and decomposing seaweed.
An overcast as dark as an iron skillet hid the moon. Here and there, reflections of the town lights, like a rancid yellow grease, were smeared across the clouds, but the night was deep and nearly ideal for our purposes.
The silvered-cedar fence surrounding this property is as tall as I am, with no gaps between the vertical pales, so it’s as solid as a wall. A gate opens onto the footpath.
We avoided the gate and went to the east side of the backyard, where my property adjoins that of the Samardian family.
The fence is extremely sturdy, because the vertical pales are fixed to three horizontal rails. These rails also would serve us well as a ladder.
Mungojerrie sprang up the fence as if he were lighter than air. Standing with his hind paws on the uppermost rail, forepaws on the top of the pales, he surveyed the backyard next door.
When the cat glanced down at us, Roosevelt whispered, “Looks like no one’s home.”
One at a time, and with relative silence, we followed the cat over the fence. From the Samardians’ property, we crossed another cedar fence, into the Landsbergs’ backyard. Lights were on in their house, but we passed unseen and stepped over a low picket fence into the Perez family’s yard, from there moving steadily eastward, past house after house, with no problem except Bobo, the Wladskis’ golden retriever, who isn’t a barker but makes every effort to beat you into submission with his tail and then lick you to death.
We scaled a high redwood fence into the yard behind the Stanwyk place, leaving the thankfully barkless Bobo slobbering, wagging his tail with an air-cutting
I had always thought of Roger Stanwyk as a decent man who had lent his talents to the Wyvern research for the noblest of reasons, in the name of scientific progress and the advancement of medicine, much as my mother had done. His only sin was the same one Mom committed: hubris. Out of pride in his undeniable intelligence, out of misplaced trust in the power of science to resolve all problems and explain all things, he had unwittingly become one of the architects of doomsday.
That was what I’d always thought. Now I wasn’t so sure of his good intentions. As Leland Delacroix’s tape had revealed, Stanwyk was involved in both my mother’s work and the Mystery Train. He was a darker figure than he had seemed previously.
All of us two-legged specimens dodged from shrub to tree across the Stanwyks’ elaborately landscaped domain, hoping no one would be looking out a window. We reached the next fence before we realized that Mungojerrie wasn’t with us.
Panicked, we doubled back, searching among the neatly trimmed shrubs and hedges, whispering his name, which isn’t easy to whisper with a straight face, and we found him near the Stanwyks’ porch. He was a ghostly gray shape on the black lawn.
We squatted around our diminutive team leader, and Roosevelt switched his brain to the Weird Channel to find out what the cat was thinking.
“He wants to go inside,” Roosevelt whispered.
“Why?” I asked.
Roosevelt murmured, “Something’s wrong here.”
“What?” Sasha asked.
“Death lives here,” Roosevelt interpreted.
“He keeps the yard nice,” Bobby said.
“Doogie’s waiting,” Sasha reminded the cat.
Roosevelt said, “Mungojerrie says people in the house need help.”
“How can he tell?” I asked, immediately knew the answer, and found myself repeating it with Sasha and Bobby in a whispered chorus: “Cats know things.”
I was tempted to snatch up the cat, tuck him under my arm, and run away from here with him as if he were a football. He had fangs and claws, of course, and might object. More to the point, we needed to have his
Forced to take a closer look at the Victorian house, I realized the place had a
