Oscar Rockledge had been working for the Minkerton Company for over sixty years, and by virtue of his seniority had certain rights other employees didn’t have.
        Like the privilege of bypassing the normal chain of command, and sending a telegram directly to the President of the firm: OUR BOY PLENTY COOL STOP KNOWS SOMETHING STOP TELL MARSHAL STEP LIVELY AT DEPOT STOP ROCKLEDGE ENDS
        The telegram sat on Allan Minkerton’s desk when he made a brief and very secure phone call to the Director of the FBI that morning.  Steaming freshly-brewed coffee and hot blueberry scones waited for him once he was through talking to Rover.
        Whether he’d have the appetite for them or not depended on how the phone call went.
        "Well, Mr. Director, I can tell you what Oscar Rockledge thinks . . . yes, that Rockledge . . . yes, he was on the train by coincidence . . . yes, well he's sent me a wire from the train. 
        “He thinks Tucci knows something, but is playing it in a very canny manner.  No, that's my expression, not Rockledge's.  He also said, quote, tell Marshal to step lively at the depot, endquote.  Well, old habits, I suppose.  He's had more dealings with U.S. Marshals than your agency.  Really, sixty-seven years, it could hardly be . . . yes, that's what I think. 
        “Minkerton's can't do a thing on the train unless he commits a crime or cracks, and like Rockledge says, he's too cool for that.  Oh, certainly, we'll keep an eye on him all the way to San Francisco, but once he steps off the train, he's the Bureau's prey, not ours.  We'll have him in sight until the train pulls in, of course, but that is the limit on what the Agency can do for the Bureau.  You'll have to watch the train when it comes in.  I'll send a telegram to that effect right away. 
        “Yes, we'll telegraph any changes in what Tucci does.  Yes, sir.  Hmmm?  Yes, I will have Mr. Rockledge drop by your San Francisco office, certainly.  Good day, Mr. Director."


        “San Francisco!  San Francisco, next stop!” the conductor called out as the train started to slow down in preparation for its arrival at Union Station.  Tucci heard the call as he finished combing a small dollop of pomade into his headfur, and after looking at himself in the mirror again – clean shirt, light pullover sweater and light brown trousers – he left the car’s bathroom and collected his grip. 
        As he left the passenger car he smiled at O’Hanlon.  “Good luck in your next assignment,” he said cheerfully.
        All the tiger did was raise an eyebrow and bare a pawful of claws, with a meaningful glance at the hare.
        Once he stepped onto the platform he was wary again.  The FBI had different ways of doing things than Minkerton’s.
        Ways that usually involved bright lights and rubber hoses, if the more lurid stories told were any indication.
        He headed over to the telegraph office, ears erect and alert for any noise that might give his pursuer away, and asked the clerk, “Any messages for Springer?”
        The pronghorn antelope looked at him, then consulted a clipboard.  While the clerk was looking, Tucci glanced around as casually as he could.
        People milled around, as was normal for a busy train station in the heart of a major city.  A few were looking around waiting for arriving passengers.
        One, a feline with a tortoiseshell pattern to his fur, was looking right at him. 
        That was probably one G-man.
        “Here you are.  That’ll be fifty cents.  Sir?”
        “Huh?  Oh!  Sure, here you go, and thanks.”  Tucci paid and read the message.  “Excuse me,” he asked the clerk, “can you give me directions to the Odeon Theater?”  While the clerk gave him the route, the hare crumpled up the paper and stuck it in a trouser pocket.  He gave the antelope another fifty cents as a tip.
        A mass of people just disembarked from Los Angeles was heading for the exit, and he joined the crowd, his ears dipping in the hope that he could lose his tracker in the group.
        He looked up and almost stopped.
        Rockledge was standing by the exit, casually leaning against the doorframe. 
        He nodded.
        Tucci returned the nod before stepping out onto the sidewalk and headed up the street under a dreary and overcast sky.  He walked casually, at an unhurried pace, but was glad of the fur covering his paws or the white skin stretched over his knuckles would have been too clearly visible.
        At a street corner he looked behind him and, sure enough, Tortoiseshell was following at a discreet distance.  The feline looked to his right at another cat, this one dark gray with a tabby pattern, and Tucci started across the street as the light changed. 
        He dodged in front of an approaching streetcar, then doubled back and grabbed at a railing, hoisting himself up into the car. 
        The trolley proceeded up the street.
        His two shadows apparently lost him at that point, and he allowed himself to relax.
        Just a tiny bit.
        Three blocks later he alighted from the cable car and doubled back, resuming his route to the theater.  He expected it to be watched – surely the FBI wasn’t stupid, and ‘Springer’ was a dead giveaway for a lepine.
        Sure enough.
        There was a dark gray tabby wearing an ill-fitting suit and a fedora standing on one street corner, and as Tucci looked at him he gave a jerky nod.  A glance at the opposing corner revealed Tortoiseshell.
        No. 
        Not stupid at all.
        He led them around for several blocks, nearly losing them again in a crowd.  He briefly considered getting a taxi but discarded the idea.
        He was almost out of money by now, and had only a few things worth pawning.  And that was even if the G-men gave him the time to find a pawnbroker.
        It was an hour or two after sunset when the lit marquee of the Odeon presented itself.  Tucci paid for a seat and entered.
        Aware that the two FBI agents didn’t follow him in.


        The interior of the theater was plunged in darkness as Tucci found a seat near the back of the room and sat down.  The concluding music of the short subject, something about the logging industry, faded away and more familiar music heralded one of the Fleischer Popeye cartoons.
        The hare shifted nervously in his seat. He knew how Dillinger had been killed, gunned down as he left a movie theater similar to this one not too many years ago.  What was going on outside?  Were his shadows waiting for reinforcements?  Were they watching the exits? 
        Was he to be shot down in an alleyway?
        The cartoon ended.
        A fanfare announced the feature presentation, a film that had come out the previous year about drug addicts.  Catnip Madness told the story of people whose lives and the lives of those around them were destroyed by the 'demon herb.'
        Again, he wasn’t a very religious hare, but he’d tried the drug once or twice when he was younger and found it to be not at all demonic.  It was controlled by the Synod, however, along with other substances that expanded the consciousness and were used in some religious ceremonies.
        Tucci fidgeted, his tail flagging back and forth and causing him to squirm.  One ear twitched, then the other.
        A soft whisper, barely audible over the film.
        "'Holy State, or Holy King, or Holy Peoples’ Will.'"
        He gulped, and whispered in reply, "'Have no truck with the senseless thing – order the guns and kill.'" 
        Whatever had possessed Broome to use Kipling’s MacDonough’s Song as a basis for a recognition code? The hare wondered.  After he had learned the code he had read the work it was drawn from, and the cadence and words had chilled him.
         "Bathroom," the soft voice said.
        A figure several rows down and on the extreme right of the row turned, his corvine silhouette visible against the screen. "No talking during the movie," the crow hissed, and turned back to watch the picture.
        Tucci sat back and watched the movie for another few minutes, then stood and moved down the row to the aisle.  As he did so he looked at the row behind him, and was unsurprised to find no one there. 

        The sun had set before the movie had finished, and Winifred “Freddie” Burke was down to his last cigarette.  Two more agents had arrived to help the gray tabby and his tortoiseshell-furred partner    watch the possible exits from the theater.  The hare had been very cagey in almost managing to elude them, but he’d gone to ground.
        All they had to do was wait and be on the alert.
        The gray tabby tossed his cigarette away as the audience started to leave the Odeon.  His partner was watching the alleyway so the hare couldn’t escape, while the other two were watching the other exits.
        He tensed as a brown-furred lepine in brown trousers and a sweater walked out, trailing behind a married couple.  Burke and his partner closed in, following at the usual discreet distance while they waited for orders to detain him for questioning.
        They followed him all the way back to Union Station, where the man boarded a train headed south to Los Angeles.
       

        Tucci almost sighed in relief as the cable car reached its destination at the bottom of one of San Francisco’s scenic hills.  “Fisherman’s Wharf, Father,” the trolley driver said.
        “Thanks,” the hare said.  The dark brown fur of his face was broken up by a white blaze from his nose up between his eyes to just between his ears.  White also tipped each ear, and he was dressed in a black suit with a Roman collar.
        He felt a bit naked without the grip he’d carried all the way from Detroit.  That was in the other guy’s paws now. 
        But he hoped he’d get it back eventually.
        The wharf was crowded with fishing boats off-loading their wares for the market, or lying idle while their crews sampled the night life of the city.  Tucci walked along the docks, nose twitching at the smells of fish and the harbor.
        One oceangoing trawler sat alongside the quay, a limp red and black Rain Island flag hanging from the small flagstaff at its stern and illuminated by a small oil-burning lantern.  The name emblazoned across the transom proclaimed it to be the Driftwood, out of Carlin.   
        Tucci felt his breath catch in his throat.  This was the boat he was told to look for, and his way out of the United States.
        He almost felt like crying.
        He forced the lump in his throat down and called out, “Hello?  Anyone aboard?”
        A match struck fire against the darkness in the lee of the wheelhouse, briefly illuminating a rat wearing worn clothes and a battered Greek fisherman’s cap as he lit a cigar.  “Ahoy, Father.  Whatcha lookin’ for?  Need any succor?”
        That was a code word; hardly anyone used that word anymore.  “I am a stranger in a strange land,” Tucci said quietly.
        The rat had been puffing at his cigar.  “Gershom.”
        “Let my people go.”
        The rat beckoned with the paw that held his stogie, and Tucci gingerly stepped over the gunwale and sagged as he realized that he was no longer on American territory.
        The anxiety he’d felt for the past five days drained out of him, leaving him feel weak and shaky.  “I think I need a drink,” he said.
        The rat chuckled.  “Come on, let’s get you below before someone spots you.”  He led the hare into the crew quarters and asked, “You okay?”
        “Just a little worn out,” Tucci confessed.  “Been a rough few days.  Look, can I use the toilet?”
        “We call it a head around here,” and the rat pointed at a door. 
        “Thanks.”  He extended a paw.  “Enzo Tucci.”
        “Jack Shannon, captain of the Driftwood.”  The rat winked.  “And one of the Magician’s assistants.  Did the shuffle go okay?”
        “I think so.  I don’t think they suspected a thing – never even went into the theater.  Just watched the exits.”
        “Standard.  After you use the head I’ll get you a change of clothes.”
        “Thanks.”  Tucci entered the small closet and closed the door, sighing in relief.
        The small canister of film was starting to get too uncomfortable.


        “Minkerton's job was to watch him, sir,” Vince O’Hanlon said the next day.  “Done.  Rattle him.  Done.  Make some judgments on him.  Done.”  As the tiger spoke, he ticked off each item on his fingers.  “After he got off the train he became yours.”
        The head of the FBI office for the San Francisco area frowned.  The venue wasn’t his office, but a conference room in order to fit the four Minkerton’s agents, himself, and his own quartet of agents.  “I see.  Well, Minkerton’s did a good job, from where I sit.  Now, Burke – Freddie – what the hell happened?”
        The gray tabby shrugged.  “He moved pretty quickly, in and out of the crowd.  I shoulda been ready for that trolley move, I admit – oldest trick in the damned book.  Right now we’re trailing him to Los Angeles.”
        “Still doesn’t excuse losing him in the first place.”
        Oscar Rockledge gave a dry chuckle and heads turned as he said, “Depot work's hard, son.  Ah'd be lyin', iffen I said I ain't never lost no fur in a depot.  Just gotta think like him."  The puma smiled slightly.  “’Sides, yore guys did get back on his trail.”  He squinted a bit.  “Now yew gotta ask yerselves – why’s he headed south now?”
        “Okay, I’ll bite,” the supervisor said.  “Why?”
        Burke hit the table with his fist as it dawned on him and his anger bubbled to the surface.  “Because it’s not him!”
        There was a thunderous silence.
        Finally another G-man asked, “What would Elliot Ness think?”


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