To Play the Fool (9 page)

"Interview by inference," Hawkin grumbled. "How
the hell can we transcribe a whole session filled with shrugs and
eloquent silences?"

"It might not be so bad. The problem is interpreting the
meaning of his words. For example, it looks like he's confessed
to John's murder, but I may have misunderstood him."

"Explain."

Kate told him what had happened in the restaurant. "And Dean
Gardner agreed that to have Erasmus using the words of a biblical
murderer could be taken as an admission of guilt. So I read him his
rights and brought him here." Kate decided it wasn't
necessary to mention the little scene outside.

Hawkin shook his head and then began to laugh. "As you say,
it's nice to have a variety of nuts to choose from." He
drained his Coke and swept the rubbish into the wastepaper basket.
"Let's go see what sense we can shake loose from the holy
man."

A camaraderie actually founded on courtesy.

At home, sitting at the dinner table, Kate asked a question.

"Do you know anything about fools?"

Lee finished chewing her mouthful of lasagna and swallowed.

"It's not a clinically recognized category of mental
illness, if that's what you're asking. Far too
widespread."

"Not this kind of fool. This one thinks of himself as some kind of prophet, spouting the Bible."

"You mean a Fool?" Lee said in surprise, her emphasis placing a capital letter on it. "As in Holy Fool?"

"As in," Kate agreed.

"How on earth did you find one of those?"

"He's connected with that cremation in the park. Seems
to be a sort of friend or maybe spiritual leader, if that isn't
too farfetched, to the street people in the area."

"That would make sense, I suppose."

"So what do you know about fools?"

Kate watched Lee take another forkful while she thought.

"Not an awful lot, off the top of my head. It's a
Jungian archetype, of course, a way of counteracting the tendency of
social and religious groups to become concretized. The Trickster is a
combination of subtle wisdom and profound stupidity, a person both
divine and animalistic." She pinched off another square of
lasagna with the edge of her fork, ate it. "Many of the most
influential reforms, certainly in religious history, have been made by
people who fit the description of fools. St. Francis, for example, was
a classic fool: He was the son of a wealthy family, who suddenly
decided it wasn't enough, so he gave it all away and went to live
on the streets, preaching simplicity. Let's see. In the Middle
Ages, the court fool was the only one who could speak the truth to the
king. Clowns are a degenerated form of fool. Charlie Chaplin used
traces of Trickster behavior. I don't know, Kate, I'd have
to do some research on it." She chewed for a while longer, on the
food and on the idea. "You know, I vaguely remember this guy at a
conference, years and years ago, in the Berkeley days maybe, who
presented himself as a fool. A very deliberate and self-conscious
evocation of the archetypal figure--it must have been a Jungian
conference, come to think of it, one of those weekend things sponsored
by UC Extension or the Jung Institute."

"Do you remember anything about him?"

"Not really. Tall fellow, had a beard, I think. White. Him, I
mean, not the beard--he was young, not more than about
thirty."

"You're sure about the age?"

"Kate, love, this was--what, fifteen years ago? All I
remember is that he was taller than I was, hairy but neat, wearing
motley and carrying this skinny little cane with an ugly carving on it,
and trying hard to project an aura of wisdom and self-confidence,
although I think at the time I was not impressed. I picture him as
uncomfortable, and I think I wondered if he felt silly. Memory is too
unreliable to be sure, but I'm fairly sure if he'd been
much older I would have been even more struck by his lack of
self-assurance. I take it your fool is too old."

"He is. I'd say he's a very healthy seventy, seventy-five."

"No, I don't think the man I remember could have been
anywhere near fifty. Is there no way of finding out who he is?"

"We're making inquiries, but so far everything's
negative. Nobody knows where he came from,- he was not carrying any ID.
He won't tell us anything."

"He doesn't talk?"

"Oh, he talks. Just doesn't always make sense. He speaks
in phrases taken from someplace--the Bible, Shakespeare, things
like that."

"Everything
he says?"

"So far as I can see. I don't know, of course,-
I'm just a Catholic, and everyone knows Catholics don't
read their Bible. But I've been told that." She explained
about Dean Philip Gardner and the Graduate Theological Union. "He
says they're quotes, and I'll take his word for it.
They're definitely not straight speech."

"How strange."

"You'd say that isn't standard behavior for a fool?"

"I don't know that there is such a thing as standard
behavior among fools," replied Lee, "rules of behavior
being almost a contradiction in terms. Still, I wouldn't have
thought that speaking only in quotations was completely consistent with
being a fool. In fact, I'd have said fools would be the last
people to constrict themselves in that way. Spontaneity would be their
hallmark, clever wordplay, and a definite, urn, suppleness in mind and
body. Two things that I possess not, at the moment. I'd have to
make a deliberate effort and research the topic before I could give you
more than a superficial idea, I'm afraid."

"It's not superficial, and you're doing fine.
It's very helpful, especially knowing there was a fool in the
woodwork ten or fifteen years ago, even if it's a different man.
Would you like to look into it for me, see if you can find out who he
was, or maybe find someone like him?"

"For you, or for the department?"

"I suppose it would be for me. I doubt they'd pay you a
consultancy fee, if that's what you're asking."

"It isn't that. I'm just... I don't know."

"What is it, sweetheart?" Kate could see that Lee was troubled but couldn't understand why.

"Oh nothing. No, I guess it is something," said the
therapist. "I just don't know how I feel about getting
involved in another case."

"Oh God, then don't, hon." She took Lee's
hand from the table, kissed it, held it tightly. "I don't
want you to touch any of my cases,-I don't want them to touch
you. The question of who fools are or were is of no earthly
importance,- I can't imagine it has the slightest relevance to
the case. This man who calls himself Brother Erasmus, he interests me,
that's all. I don't know what to make of him and I was
curious about what you might know." She did not add, And I
thought it might interest you, give you a project that was challenging
but not strenuous. Think again, Kate. The last and only time Lee had
been involved with one of her lover's cases, she'd ended up
with a bullet tearing through two of her vertebrae and a multiple
murderer dead on her living room floor, ten feet from where they were
now sitting. A lack of enthusiasm for future involvement was not only
understandable, it was to be encouraged.

"It was a bad idea, hon. Forget it." She gave Lees hand
a squeeze and let it go, but Lee did not immediately resume her meal,
and Kate kicked herself for her stupidity.

"It's not a bad idea," Lee said slowly.
"When I said I don't know how I feel about it, I meant just
that: I don't know. I think I'm expecting to feel
apprehension, but I honestly don't know if I am. If anything,
there's an absence of emotional overtones, just a vague interest,
intellectual almost. Perhaps the apprehension is so strong that
I'm blocking it. There's a degree--What are you
laughing at?"

Kate wasn't laughing, but she was grinning widely. "God, you sound like a therapist, Lee."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "I am a therapist."

"I know," Kate said, loving her, loving the surge of
affection and exasperation and normality that had hit her, and then she
really was laughing, and Lee with her. When it had washed on, Lee
picked up her fork again and continued where they had left off.

"If it's just for you, I'd be happy to see what I
can do. Jon has the modem up and running, this would be a good exercise
in learning how to use it in research."

"If you want to, if you have the time, I'd appreciate
it. But I want it kept on a purely theoretical level. If you find
someone, I don't want you talking to them, even through the
computer. I don't want your identity out there at all. The last
thing we want is the press standing in our petunias and looking in our
windows, and the case is colorful enough already without you getting
involved."

"Actually, I think Jon dug out the petunias and put in some
sweet peas, but I agree. Newspaper reporters know how to use computer
nets better than I do. Now, tell me more about this fool of
yours."

Dinner progressed with the story of Erasmus, told as entertainment,
with the dark moment of the cremation and the possible confession
downplayed and the conversation in the parking lot behind the Hall of
Justice omitted altogether.

Jon came into the kitchen just as Kate was putting on the coffee. He raised his eyebrows at the plates in the sink.

"Aren't you a clever girl, then?" he murmured.

"What do you mean?"

"She hasn't eaten that much in a month," he said,
and then in a normal volume added, "Well, toodles, ducks,
I'll be seein' ya. Dr. Samson has his beeper on, so buzz me
if you have to go out.
Arrivederci,
Leo," he called.

"Have a good time, Jon," she called from the living room, and the door opened and shut behind him.

Kate loaded the dishwasher, put the leftovers in the refrigerator,
and took the coffee back into the living room. The television was on
and Lee was on the sofa, slightly flushed from the effort of clambering
from the wheelchair. Kate stood and looked down at her, smiling.

"You look gorgeous," she said.

"Tamara came today and gave me a cut and a shampoo. You should let her do yours,- she's pretty good."

"It's not your hair. It's you."

"Poor Kate, going blind from all the paperwork. Come and sit
down for a while. There's an old Maggie Smith movie on Channel
Nine." Lee had a thing for Maggie Smith.

"The chair's a better place if you're going to_ watch TV. You'll get a stiff neck sitting here."

"I thought maybe if I sat here I could tempt you away from
your paperwork. Then I can lean on you and I won't get a stiff
neck."

Kate put both cups on the table and obediently inserted herself
behind Lee, who leaned into the circle of her left arm. The movie had
just started. They drank their coffee. Kate began to find the warm
smell of Lee's curly yellow hair distracting.

"Did your mother pronounce it
dabl-ya
or
day-li-ya?"
asked Lee suddenly.

"What?"

"Those hideous flowers," said Lee, gesturing at the
screen with her cup. "English people tend to use three syllables,
but I always thought there were two. I should check in the
dictionary," said the scholar.

"Do you want me to go get it for you?" asked Kate, her
face buried in Lee's hair. Her left hand, having migrated from
the back of the sofa, was pressed flat against Lee's stomach, her
forefinger bent and gently circling the rim of one of Lee's
buttons.

"Not just now." Lee slowly finished her coffee.
Kate's was going cold. "Don't you love it, a woman
with bright red hair wearing that color of red? Only Maggie Smith could
pull it off."

"I'm jealous of Maggie Smith," muttered Kate happily.

They never did see the end of the movie.

Murder cases not solved within two or three days tend to drag on
into weeks, and this was no exception. The fourth and fifth days passed
without any startling revelations. Kate and Al Hawkin had agreed that
Brother Erasmus was not likely to run, so after Thursday's
fruitless question-and-statement session he was handed back his staff
and allowed to walk back out into the city of Saint Francis. Kate,
rather to her surprise, found herself making a detour from a Sunday
morning shopping trip to drive slowly through Golden Gate Park, where
eventually she came across Erasmus, dressed like a tramp and walking
along the road in the midst of a group of street people. The
raggle-taggle congregation might have been from another world compared
to the group of his admirers in Berkeley, except for one thing: on
these faces was an identical look, a blend of pleasure, awe, and love.

Hawkin saw him once, too, although his sighting was accidental, when
he passed Erasmus on his way home from work one afternoon. Erasmus was
not wearing his cassock then, either, but a pair of jeans and a
multicolored wool jacket. He was sitting in the winter sun on a low
brick wall, reading a small green book and eating an ice cream cone.

The millstones of justice continued to grind. Their John Doe's
lab work showed no signs of alcohol, drugs, or even nicotine and
indicated that his last meal had been a large piece of beefsteak, green
beans, and baked potatoes at least six hours before his death. Death
had been due to a blow with a blunt object to the right side of the
skull, which, judging from the angle, had been delivered by a
right-handed person standing behind the victim as he sat on the stump a
few feet from where Harry and Luis had found his body. Death had been
by no means instantaneous, although unconsciousness would have been.

John had bled slowly, both internally and onto the ground, for as much as an hour before his heart stopped.

There was one other piece of possible evidence, which Hawkin
interpreted as sinister, though Kate privately reserved judgment,-
twenty feet from the body, at the foot of a tree, had been found a lone
cigarette stub that had been pinched off, not ground out. Oddly,
though, the-drift of ashes on the ground around the tree was
considerably more than could be made from one cigarette. The crime
scene investigator estimated that five to eight cigarettes could have
produced that quantity of ash. There was another, smaller pile of ash
just in front of the stump. In three places at the site were found boot
prints, none of them complete, but together an indication that a pair
of size nine men's heeled boots, not cowboy boots but similar,
had been there within a day of the time John had died.