I was kneeling beside six-year-old, ringlet-haired Katie, who was departing by wheelchair after her appendectomy and happily showing me a thank-you drawing she’d made for me to add to my collection. I saw the approach of slender, fortysomething Susan, an RN whom I loved for her bright blue eyes, smiles, and sharp sense of humor. Today she was not smiling, which telegraphed that something was up.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Dr. Winslow,” Susan said with an exasperated tone unusual for her, “but we’ve got a problem in the ER. There’s an older woman who refuses to talk to anyone but you.”

  One older woman came to mind. “Did she say her name was Hudson?”

  “We couldn’t get her name,” Susan said. “She was mostly just muttering gibberish.”

  I followed to investigate. We walked through the double doors into ER Reception, and Susan pointed out the woman—although there was no way I could have missed her.

  She had a filthy scarf pulled over matted, stringy hair that hung partly across her gaunt, smudged face, which was missing a few front teeth. She wore cheap, scratched sunglasses. Mismatched, stained clothes hung loosely on her frame, and she smelled like a brewery. She was truly off-putting. Her painful, stooped posture suggested a hard life, and it might have aroused genuine sympathy in me under normal circumstances. But not that day.

  I took one look at her and pointed harshly toward an examining room. “Go in there. Now!” I saw Susan blink with surprise at my unusually callous attitude.

  The woman shuffled ahead of me into the room, her voice raspy, “Thank you very kindly, Doctor.”

  I followed, then slammed the door shut for privacy and spun around, furious. “What the hell are you doing?” I grabbed the woman’s ratty scarf and pulled it—and her hair—right off her head.

  “Yowwww!” Holmes yelled. “That hurt!”

  He stood up straight now, his large faux breasts ballooning beneath the worm-eaten, seedy sweater as he ran his lean fingers through his own long dark hair. He was thoroughly shocked. “How on earth did you recognize me?”

  “Your patent leather shoes.”

  “Really?” He planted a hand on his hip. “I thought I’d slovened them up rather well.”

  “Not rather well enough,” I said, narrowing my eyes and doing my best to look as acerbic and cocky as he often did. “I also ob-served the configuration of cocaine injection scars on your left forearm as well as the two moles on the back of your right hand, the faint but distinct smell of your pipe tobacco, and—” I caught myself. “Goddammit, I’ve been hanging around with you too much!”

  “Upon my word, Winslow,” he said with a hearty laugh, as he scraped the blacking off his front teeth, “you are coming along wonderfully!”

  “Why the hell are you in this ridiculous— Did you find Lieutenant Ortega?”

  “Yes!” he said with the greatest exuberance I had ever seen from him. “He has yet to be rescued, however. Now what I need from you are twenty dollars.”

  “What?”

  “For our tattooed and fascinating friend Charley Moriarty. Come, come,” he beckoned impatiently. “You have my word I shall pay you back . . . as soon as I have the means.”

  I fished for the small billfold in my scrubs with annoyance. “Oh right. And when might that be exactly? And Charley Moriarty because—?” I cut myself off as it came to me in a flash. “Because he runs that storefront mission, where you got this stunning ensemble.”

  “Well deduced again, Winslow! Indeed, Charley became my clothier,” he said, cheerily displaying his squalid attire. “He gave me the pick of his hand-me-down haberdashery, even provided my delightful hairpiece.” Then in a very serious, confidential voice he said, “Thus accoutred, I could—and did—prowl about the Embarcadero waterfront last night without attracting any notice while pursuing our investigation. I promised Charley a donation to his mission.” He snatched from me the twenty and then another ten. “Excellent, that will give me trolley fare as well. My thanks.”

  “But what about Ortega?”

  “He shall soon be safe. At one this afternoon, you must meet me at the restaurant La Serre on Washington Square to witness the successful completion of our case!” He grabbed the ratty wig and with a flourish swept past me out of the room.

  “Wait a minute!” I shouted, heading into the hallway.

  To the consternation of patients and staff alike, Holmes was parading hastily down the corridor toward the ER exit as I tried to catch up.

  He shouted back at me, “Be there promptly at one o’clock!”

  “Holmes!”

  But he hurried grandly on. “And it’s imperative that you come on your motor-bicycle! Do not fail me on that. Now I have a busy morning, as I’m sure you do also, Doctor, so adieu!”

  At the ER’s wide exit, he turned to look back while swinging the wig jauntily in a little circle over his head and gave me a courtly bow, then he disappeared out the door.

  The stunned patients, doctors, and nurses he had passed by all stared after him, then they slowly turned to look at me.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  17

  La Serre was a sunny, classy French restaurant on Filbert Street, across from Washington Square. On the inside, white latticework panels airily divided the place into variously sized, inviting alcoves for dining. Elegant table settings with white and French blue linens abounded with delicate fresh flowers in centerpiece vases. I was at a table for two, far too much on edge to think about eating. I sat, nursing some San Francisco water in a fine crystal glass. Per the master’s request, I had arrived promptly at 1:00. By 1:20, my stomach was in knots.

  Then I realized with trepidation that across the flowery room, sitting at a more secluded table with a couple of well-to-do people, was the imposing figure of James Moriarty Booth.

  I’d seen a picture of him on a police report that Holmes had printed out, but being in his actual presence was more than unsettling. I studied him as he was offered a bottle of wine by a white-gloved, painfully obsequious blond waiter. Booth took the bottle, turned it over in his hands to examine it, and dismissively refused it. The waiter shrugged and moved off.

  After waiting another eleven minutes, I was getting really fearful, when God’s gift to crime detection arrived at my table. His spirits were as buoyant as when he’d left the hospital a few hours earlier. Apparently dressing in homeless drag bolstered Holmes’ mood. Now he was outfitted in the dapper afternoon frock coat and silk vest he’d worn when he first walked down that stairway at Mrs. Hudson’s house. His deerstalker was in his hand.

  “My apologies for the tardy arrival,” he said breathlessly. “I had some final details to attend to.”

  I had stood up to face him and said sotto voce, “Did you see who’s here?” I indicated with a nod of my head the far end of the restaurant, where Booth was cheerfully engaged in conversation with his cronies, entirely unaware of us. Holmes glanced for only an instant, then turned back to me.

  “May I suggest,” he said with a sour expression as he snagged my jacket from the back of my chair, “that we find a place where the air is less polluted?”

  As requested, I’d arrived at the restaurant on my motorbike, and once outside I walked quickly to it, grabbing my helmet, asking, “Where are we going?”

  “Up there.” He pointed at Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill, two blocks east of us.

  “What? Holmes, do you know what time it is?”

  “It is 1:34,” he said, waving away the spare helmet I was trying to hand him. “No, thank you.”

  “It’s the law,” I snapped. “And what about Ortega? You said at 2:30 he’d be—”

  “All will be well, Winslow.” He reluctantly donned the helmet over his ear-flapped cap as he climbed on behind me. “Do get along now.”

  I started the bike. “But why are we going up—?”

  “I have my reasons, Doctor. Off we go now.”

  With a taut, worried face I drove us up curving Hill Road as hurriedly as was safe. Reaching the top of the hill, I parked the bike and he hopped off saying, “Let’s go up there, Winslow.”

  “Holmes,” I began as I locked the bike, “I want to know exactly why we had to come all the way—” I turned to see that he was already on the move. With a grunt of irritation, I followed him up the wide steps beneath Coit Tower.

  As we reached the small terrace beside the westerly base of the tower, he appeared not to have a care in the world. “Will you please tell me what is going on?” I said.

  “Everything that should be, I guarantee you. There’s nothing to be done for a while, so we may comfortably enjoy the view.” He took off his deerstalker and, taking pleasure from the breeze, looked northwest across the glistening bay to the Golden Gate and beyond, then back in the northerly direction of Sausalito. “That island in the bay is where the Alcatraz prison sits, eh?”

  “Yes,” I said tersely.

  “How ironic that its evildoer inmates should have had such a tantalizing view of a golden city that was inaccessible to them.”

  I was in no mood for his Tripadvisor philosophy, and I lit into him. “Holmes, I reworked my entire schedule so I could help you today. I deserve to be told what is going on.”

  He glanced my way. “Oh, please don’t take it personally, Winslow,” he said with a prissy smile as the brisk wind stirred his long dark hair. Then he sighed, admitting, “I’m afraid it’s just my own damnable nature. Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.”

  I knew lots of medical Latin but had to puzzle that out word by word. I guessed at the proper translation: “Everything unknown . . . for magnificent . . . is? – Everything unknown is . . . taken for being magnificent?”

  “Exactly. Brava,” he said. “The magician gets no credit for magic once he’s explained his trick. I think—” I could see that he was struggling to continue, that what he had to say wasn’t easy for him to confide, but finally he did. “The one thing I’ve always feared is that if I reveal too much the inner workings of my methods, people may conclude that I’m exceedingly . . . ordinary.”

  Was he pulling my leg? It was impossible to think that anyone—particularly the egoistic man himself—would ever consider Holmes ordinary. But his deeply thoughtful expression and slight frown gave the impression that he actually believed his thesis, that he truly harbored that insecure dread.

  I sat with a huff on the low stone wall, my nerves on edge. I was still annoyed with him for not sharing everything with me but was nonetheless curious where he was going with this.

  He remained standing and said, “Winslow, you do deserve to hear me acknowledge . . . formally”—I could see how he was forcing himself to say this—“that I am actually . . . somewhat . . . impressed by you.”

  I kept my voice level. “Don’t patronize me, okay?”

  “Certainly not.” Then he went on, his eyes brightening, “But you must understand that one test of a true detective, of a sharp intellect, is penetrating a disguise. As you did with mine. Watson never managed it.”

  “But Irene Adler did,” I sharply reminded him.

  “Correct. And you are the first since her to accomplish it.” He flinched slightly as though instantly sorry that revelation had escaped his lips.

  I, on the other hand, took a breath as my ego inflated, but I refused to let any pride show, and I wanted to get some answers. I stood up to face him. “Well, bully for me. But listen, Mr. Holmes—”

  “And a true friend,” he interrupted, sitting down on the wall himself with an appreciative expression, “is one who helps when you’re depressed.” He looked up at me. “You’re a whetstone for my mind, Winslow. You stimulated me out of my doldrums. You put me back in contact with . . . my mistress!”

  “Your what?” I was stunned. “Who is she?” I realized that I’d said this as though he’d cheated on me.

  “No, no, no,” Holmes chuckled. “Women have seldom been an attraction to me, Winslow. My brain has always governed my heart.”

  His eyes met mine directly and with such an unusual softness that I almost expected him to say, “Until I met you.”

  But he didn’t. Not out loud, at least. Not then.

  He drew a breath and went on, “My mistress is my work.” He pumped his fist for emphasis as he said, “Casework, not cocaine, is my real drug.” He looked at me and repeated the quote I had read about him from a century earlier: “There truly is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”

  “Alright then,” I said, trying to set aside my confused personal emotions and make him focus. “What about this case?” I pressed. “You’ve gotten on top of it? Luis Ortega is out of danger or—?”

  “He shortly will be,” he said with a damnably private grin as he stood up and walked casually toward the gentle grassy slope on the eastern side of the tower. I followed with my annoyance rising toward fury.

  Holmes gazed out over the city. The air was crystalline, the view spectacular. He could see all the way across the lengthy span of the Bay Bridge to Oakland beyond. San Francisco sparkled like the Emerald City. But I was entirely riveted on him.

  “Listen, Holmes—”

  “Ah, what remarkable changes in over a century.” His eyes scanned up the tower beside us, which rose 210 feet above our heads. “This tower certainly wasn’t here when last I stood on this hilltop. Looks rather like a nozzle, doesn’t it?”

  “Exactly, Holmes,” I said, quickly to dispense with exasperating small talk. “Old Mrs. Coit loved riding on fire engines, so she ‘beautified the city’ by leaving us with a big nozzle. Now, you listen to me.” I poked hard at my watch. “It is 2:11, a man’s life is on the line, and you’re up here—”

  “‘When one has done all one can, it is wise to calm the mind by quiet contemplation.’” He glanced professorially. “That is a tenet of the Buddhism of Ceylon.”

  “It’s not Ceylon anymore,” I snapped, “it’s Sri Lanka. Now, will you please—”

  “Even the names of countries have changed?” That startled him into a nanosecond of reflection about the challenges he’d created for himself. He took a quiet breath, then said, “Winslow, please accept my deepest apologies for the inconveniences I’ve caused you.”

  “Then stop causing them and tell me—”

  “I promise to vacate your premises soon. Perhaps, by way of recompense, I could offer some insights for the Victorian novel I’ve observed you’re writing.”

  “You’ll stay long as you need to, okay? That’s not the issue!” I stepped closer to him, trying to look him straight in the eye. But he kept glancing down at the streets below us, ignoring me. That did it: My extreme concern for Luis Ortega boiled over. I exploded, shouting with rage.

  “You will tell me right this instant what the hell is—”

  “Aha!” he bellowed even louder, went wild-eyed and scared the wits out of me.

  “What?”

  “Come quickly, Winslow!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along, running back toward the base of the tower.

  “Holmes, what is it?”

  “Hurry! No time to waste!” He had me running flat out to keep up as we raced around to the front of the tower and down the steps toward my bike as he clapped the deerstalker onto his head.

  I was now worried that his violent mood swings might indicate a truly unbalanced mind. He grabbed his helmet from the back seat, pulled it on over his cap, and quickly climbed on behind me, shouting, “Start the bike, Winslow! Down the hill at once!”

  I dropped the bike into gear and almost did a wheelie as I peeled out of the parking lot. Hill Road is steep as it curves down around Telegraph Hill, but I was fairly skillful with the bike and had driven this road many times.

  Holmes’ surprisingly strong left arm was tightly around me from behind as he urged me on. “That’s it, Winslow! Around that vehicle!”

  I had to violently weave around a slow pickup truck that was headed downward, then I quickly cut back in before an oncoming bus made roadkill out of us.

  “Would you mind telling me where we’re going?” I shouted over the noise of the bike and the traffic I was dodging.

  “Our destination is the Embarcadero! Pier 15!”

  “That’s what Ortega’s ‘P 1-5’ meant? That he scratched on the wall at the plant?”

  “Yes. I suspected Ortega meant the wavy line as the universal symbol for water, hence my logical deduction. Hurry now, Wats—er—Winslow! The game’s afoot! There’s not a moment to lose!”

  I continued to weave rapidly through the slower-moving traffic.

  “Is Ortega at Pier 15? Did you see him last night?”

  “Of course.” Holmes said like it was a given. “No one paid any attention to a stoop-shouldered, shaggy old woman poking about, pushing her rickety shopping cart along among rubbish bins. I approached a rundown waterfront warehouse near Pier 15, where a sizable cabin cruiser was moored. Moving stealthily closer, I peered in through a broken board and saw a man sitting on a chair. It was Leftenant Ortega, unshaven and fatigued. His hands were tied behind him. His forehead was glistening with perspiration as he leaned back against the greasy brick wall. His eyes were focused upward, reflecting deep grief. Three burly men were in attendance. One had long hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was saying to Ortega, ‘After the snake bit him, your buddy Civita just laid there in some serious pain, let me tell you. He was pissed, staring at us, but he couldn’t do nothing.’ Then with a nasty laugh, he added, ‘Civita’s never going to arrest anybody again.’ I witnessed Ortega’s grief transform to fury, but it was impossible for him to act against them.”

  That made me shout back ferociously at Holmes over my shoulder as I steered the bike, “And why didn’t you just call the police right then and there?” I was seething. “I can’t believe you’d use Ortega as a pawn!”