To Play the Fool (20 page)

"Can I help you with something?" he asked.

"I'm interested in disappearing tricks," she said.
She picked up a trick plastic ice cube that had a fly embedded in it,
studying it carefully. "I had something large disappear, right in
front of me. I'd like to know how it was done. I know that
magicians don't like to tell their secrets, but"--she
put down the joke ice cube, and leaned forward--"I would
really like to know."

As she'd thought, he folded immediately.
"I--I'm really sorry about that,- I didn't
know--I mean, I could tell you were a cop, but I thought you were
just hassling him. They do it, to the street artists and stuff, and
he's such a harmless old guy, I just thought it was a joke when
he came shooting in here and held his finger in front of his mouth and
then ducked behind the curtain."

So he'd been standing there less than ten feet away. Hell. She
went and looked at the small, crowded storage space. He sure
wasn't there now.

"How did he know this was here?"

"He comes here every week. Oh yeah, I sell him things
sometimes, magic stuff--you know, scarves and folding bouquets,
that sort of thing. He changes clothes here and leaves his stuff in the
back while he's working. I don't mind. I mean, he's
not that great a customer, never spends much money, but he's such
a sweet old guy, I never minded. What did you want him for?"

"Did he go out through the back?"

"Yes, that door connects with a service entrance. I let him out after you'd gone."

"Did he leave anything here?"

"He usually does,- he changes out of his costume and leaves it
here, but this time he was in a hurry. He just wiped the makeup off his
face, took his coat out of the bag and changed his shoes, and took the
bag with him."

"Well, all I can say is, don't complain about crime in
the streets if a cop asks for your help and you just laugh in her
face."

"What did he do?" the man wailed, but Kate walked out of the shop and drove off.

When she got home to Russian Hill, Lee had gone to bed, Jon was
sulking over a movie, and her dinner was crisp where it should have
been soft, and limp where it had started crisp. However, she consoled
herself with the idea that at least she knew how Brother Erasmus
avoided carrying his gear all over the city with him.

There was never a man who looked into those

brown burning eyes without being certain that

Francis Bernardone was really interested in
him.

For the first time since he had come to San Francisco, Brother
Erasmus did not appear on Sunday morning to preach to his flock of
society's offscourings, to lead them in prayer and song and
listen to their problems and bring them a degree of cheer and faith in
themselves. The men and women waited for some time for him in the
meeting place near the Nineteenth Avenue park entrance, but he did not
show up, and they drifted off, singly and in pairs, giving wide berth
to two newcomers, healthy-looking young men wearing suitably bedraggled
clothes but smelling of soap and shaving cream.

At two in the afternoon, Kate called Al Hawkin. "I think
he's gone, Al," she told him. "Raul just called,- he
and Rodriguez hung around until noon and there was no sign of him. All
the park people expected him to show,- nobody knows where he might be.
Do you want to put out an APB on him?"

"And if they bring him in, what do we do with him? We
couldn't even charge him with littering at this point. Unless you
want to put him on a fifty-one-fifty."

"No," she said without hesitation. Putting Sawyer on a
seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold would keep him in hand, but it would
also open the door wide for an insanity plea, if they did decide to
charge him. Beyond that, though, was a personal revulsion: Kate did not
wish to see Brother Erasmus slapped into a psychiatric ward without a
very good reason. Damn it, why did he have to disappear?

"It may come to that, but let's give it another twenty-four hours."

"Okay. And, Al? I talked to the guy in Chicago, he's
going to fax us some records when he can dig them out. And before that,
on my way in, I stopped by and talked with that antique-store owner
Beatrice told me about." She reviewed that conversation for him,
the trim woman in her fifties who had seemed mildly disturbed by her
occasional lover's death, but mostly embarrassed, both by the
affair's becoming public knowledge and by how little she actually
knew about the man: He was not one for pillow talk, it seemed. She did
say that he had a fondness for boastful stories about an unlikely and
affluent past, which she dismissed, and a habit of denigrating the
persons and personalities of others, often to their faces.

"Which is pretty much what we've heard already."

"I know. Well, I'll let you know if the Chicago information comes in. Talk to you later."

"Look, Martinelli? Don't get too hooked on this. You
don't have anything to prove." There was silence on the
line for a long time. "It's Sunday," he said.
"Go home. Work in the garden. Take Lee for a drive. Don't
let it get to you, or you'll never make it. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't give me that 'sir' bullshit,"
he snapped. "I don't want to work with someone who obsesses
about their cases."

"All" Kate started laughing,- she couldn't help
it. "You're a fine one to talk about being obsessive. What
are you doing right now? What did I interrupt?"

His silence was not as long as hers had been, but it was eloquent.

"Look, Martinelli," he said firmly, "that Brancusi
case doesn't look good, and there's a lot hanging on my
testimony tomorrow. I don't think you can call that obsessive.
I'm just doing my job. I only meant--"

"Go work in your garden, Al. Go for a walk on the beach, why
don't you? Go to a movie, Al, there's a--"

He hung up on her. She put the receiver down, still grinning, and went home to pry some weeds out of the patio bricks.

Monday morning, Al was in court and Kate was in Golden Gate Park.
While Al was being dragged back and forth over the rougher parts of his
testimony, Kate walked up and down and talked with people. She ignored
the women with shiny strollers and designer toddlers, the couples
soaking up winter sun on spread blankets, the skaters and bikers, and
anyone with a picnic. The homeless are identified by the mistrust in
their eyes, and Kate rarely chose wrong.

She talked with Molly, a seventy-one-year-old ex-secretary who lived
off a minute pension and spent her nights behind an apartment house in
the shelter that covered the residents' garbage cans. Some of
them left her packets of food, she'd received a blue wool coat
and a nice blanket for Christmas, and yes, she knew Brother Erasmus
quite well, such a nice man, and what a disappointment he wasn't
at the service yesterday. A couple of the others had tried to lead
hymns, but it just wasn't the same, so in the end she'd
just marched down the road and gone to a Catholic church, although she
hadn't been to a church in twenty years, and it was quite a
pleasant experience. Everyone had been so nice to her, welcomed her to
have coffee and cookies afterward, and what do you know, as she got to
talking to one of the girls who was serving the coffee, it turned out
that they needed some help in the office, just three or four hours a
week, but wasn't that a happy coincidence. It'd mean she
could buy a real dinner sometimes, such a blessing, dear.

Then Kate talked with Star, a frail young woman with the freckles of
childhood across her nose and a curly-haired four-year-old son who
leaned on his mother's knee as she sat on the bench, his thumb in
his mouth and his eyes darting between Kate and the hillside behind
them, where three small children in Osh-Kosh overalls and European
shoes giggled madly as they lowered themselves to the ground and
rolled, over and over, down the lawn. Star's hair was lank and
greasy and she had a cold sore on her mouth, but her son's hair
shone in the wintery sun and he wore a bright jacket. Star had lived on
the streets since her parents in Wichita had thrown her out when she
was four months pregnant. Her son Jesse had been born in California.
Her AFDC was screwed up,- the checks didn't come. So they'd
been in shelters the last few weeks. Yeah, she knew Erasmus. Funny old
guy. At first she stayed away from him, thought he was weird. After
all, an old guy who wants to give a kid a toy, a person has to be
careful. But after a while he seemed okay. And he was really good with
Jesse. He gave him a party for his birthday back in November, a cake
for God's sake, with his name on it, big enough for everyone in
the shelter. And last month when Jesse had a really bad cough, it was
just after the AFDC screwup, Brother Erasmus had just handed her some
money and told her to take Jesse to the doctor's. Well no, he
hadn't said it like that,- he talks funny, kind of old-fashioned
like. But he had said something about doctors, and it was a good thing
they went, because it was pneumonia. Jesse could have died. And she was
sorry Erasmus wasn't here yesterday, because she had wanted to
talk to him. It was sort of an anniversary--a whole year
she'd been clean now. Yeah, she didn't want Jesse growing
up with a junkie for a mom. And what if she went to
jail--what'd happen to him? And there was a training program
she thought she might start, wanted to talk to Erasmus about it. Well
no, he didn't really give advice, just sometimes in a roundabout
way, but talking to him made things clearer. Yeah, maybe she'd
sign up anyway, tell him about it next week.

Star was seventeen years old.

Kate saw her three army buddies from the other night, two of them
lying back on their elbows in the grass with their shirts off, the
third one curled up nearby, asleep. Yes, they had missed Erasmus
yesterday, especially Tony. He got really wild when the Brother
didn't show, started shouting that the old guy'd been taken
prisoner, that they had to send a patrol out to get him back.
"Stupid bastard," commented the veteran with the
collar-to-wrist tattoos, not without affection. The other one shrugged.
Nightmares last night, too, and now there he was, sleeping like a baby.
Maybe it was time to head south. Not so cold in the south, get some
work in the orange groves. If she saw the old Brother, tell him the
infantry said hi.

She looked down at the sleeping Tony as she turned to go. His coat
collar had slipped down. Behind his right ear, a patch of scalp the
size of Kate's palm gleamed, scar tissue beneath the sparse black
hair.

Mark was next, a beautiful surfer boy, lean tan body with long blond
curls. Kate wondered what the hell he was doing still loose, but there
he was, looking lost beneath the bare pollarded trees in front of the
music concourse. Sure, he knew Brother Erasmus. Brother Erasmus was one
of the twelve holy men whose presence on earth kept the waves of
destruction from sweeping over the land. Every so often one of them
would die, and then a war would break out until he was reborn. Or a
plague. Maybe an earthquake.

Then there were Tomas and Esmerelda, standing and watching the lawn
bowling. They were holding hands surreptitiously. Esmerelda's
belly rose up firm and round beneath her coat, and she did not look
well.
St,
they knew who Padre Erasmus was. No, they hadn't seen him.
St,
they had an enormous respect for the padre. He wasn't like other padres. He had married them.
Si, verdad,
an actual ceremony. Yes with papers. Did she want to see them? Here
they were. No, of course they had not filed them. They could not do
that. Tomas had been married before, and there was no divorce in the
Catholic Church.
St,
the padre knew this. But this was the
real marriage. This one was true. And to prove it, Tomas had a
job--working nights. And they had a house to move into on
Wednesday. Small, an apartment, but with a roof to keep out the rain
and a door to lock out the crazy people and the addicts and thieves,
and there was a stove to cook on and a bed for Esmerelda. Tomas would
work hard. If it was a boy, they would name it Erasmo.

Three of the men she talked with would not give her their names, but
they all knew Erasmus. The first one, shirtless on a bench, his huge
muscles identifying him as recently released from prison even if his
demeanor hadn't, knew her instantly as a cop and wouldn't
look at her. However, his hard face softened for an instant when she
mentioned the name Erasmus. The second man, hearing the name,
immediately launched into a description of how he'd seen Erasmus
one night standing on Strawberry Hill, glowing with a light that grew
stronger and stronger until it hurt the eyes, and then he'd
disappeared, a little at a time. Kate excused herself and walked
briskly away, muttering, "Beam me up, Scotty" under her
breath. The third man knew Erasmus, didn't like her asking
questions about him, and was working himself up into belligerence.
Kate, unhampered by bedrolls and bulging bags, slipped away, deciding
to stick to women for a while.

"They love him." Kate threw her notebook down on the
desk and dropped into the nearest chair. Her feet hurt,- her throat
ached: Maybe she was coming down with the flu.

Al Hawkin pulled off his glasses and looked at her. "Who loves whom?"

"The people in the park. I feel like I'm about to book
Mother Teresa. He listens to them. He changes their lives.
They're going to name their kids after him. Saint Erasmus.
God!" She ran her fingers through her hair, kicked off her shoes,
walked over to the coffee machine, came back with a cup, and sat down
again. "Hi, Al. How'd it go in court?"

"The jury wasn't happy with it. I think they'll
acquit. The bastard's going to walk." Domenico Brancusi ran
a string of very young prostitutes, a specialty service that circled
the Bay Area and had made him very rich. He was also very careful, and
when one of his girls died--an eleven-year-old whose ribs were
more prominent than her breasts--he had proven to be about as
vulnerable as an armadillo.