The 8th Confession

These were the unwashed, the uncounted, the unnoticed, fringe people who slipped through the cracks, lived where the Census Bureau feared to tread.

They stank and they twitched, they stammered and scratched, and they jockeyed to get closer to Cindy. They reached out to touch her, talked over and corrected one another.

They wanted to be heard.

And although a half hour ago Cindy would have avoided all contact with them, she now wanted very much to hear them. As time passed and the police didn’t come, Cindy felt a story budding, getting ready to bloom.

She used her cell again, called her friend Lindsay at home.

The phone rang six times before a masculine voice rasped, “Hello?” Sounded to Cindy like maybe she’d interrupted Lindsay and Joe at an inopportune moment.

“Beautiful timing, Cindy,” Joe panted.

“Sorry, Joe, really,” said Cindy. “But I’ve got to speak to Lindsay.”

Chapter 2

“DON’T BE MAD,” I said, tucking the blanket under Joe’s chin, patting his stubbly cheeks, planting a PG-13- rated kiss on his mouth, careful not to get him going again because I just didn’t have enough time to get back in the mood.

“I’m not mad,” he said, eyes closed. “But I am going to be seeking retribution tonight, so prepare yourself.”

I laughed at my big, handsome guy, said, “Actually, I can’t wait.”

“Cindy’s a bad influence.”

I laughed some more.

Cindy is a pit bull in disguise. She’s all girlie-girl on the outside but tenacious through and through, which is how she pushed her way into my gory crime scene six years back and wouldn’t give up until she’d nailed her story and I’d solved my case. I wished all of my cops were like Cindy.

“Cindy’s a peach,” I said to my lover. “She grows on you.”

“Yeah? I’ll have to take your word for it.” Joe smirked.

“Honey, would you mind -?”

“Will I walk Martha? Yes. Because I work at home and you have a real job.”

“Thanks, Joe,” I said. “Will you do it soon? Because I think she’s got to go.”

Joe looked at me deadpan, his big blue eyes giving me the business. I blew him a kiss, then I made a run for the shower.

Several months had blown by since my cozy apartment on Potrero Hill had burned out to the walls – and I was still getting used to living with Joe in his new crib in the high-rent district.

Not that I didn’t enjoy his travertine shower stall with the dual heads and a gizmo that dispensed gel, shampoo, and moisturizer, plus the hotel-style bath sheets folded over a heated brass rack.

I mean, yeah. Things could be worse!

I turned the water up hot and high, soaked and lathered my hair, my mind going to Cindy’s phone call, wondering what she was so charged up about.

Last I heard, dead bums didn’t make headlines. But Cindy was telling me this was some kind of special bum with a special name. And she was asking me to check out the scene as a favor to her.

I dried my hair, padded down the carpeted hallway to my own walk-in closet, which was still mostly empty. I stepped into clean work pants, shrugged on an aqua-colored pullover, checked my gun, buckled my shoulder holster, and topped it all off with my second-best blue blazer.

I bent to ruffle the silky ears of my lovely border collie, Sweet Martha, and called out, “Bye, honey,” to Joe.

Then I headed out to meet Cindy’s newest passion: a dead bum with a certifiably crazy name.

Bagman Jesus.

Chapter 3

CINDY STOOD AT the dead man’s side and filled her notebook, getting down the names, the descriptions, the exact quotes from Bagman Jesus’s friends and mourners.

“He wore a really big cross,” said a Mexican dishwasher who worked at a Thai restaurant. He sported an Adidas T-shirt and jeans under a dirty white apron. Had koi tattooed on his arms. “The cross was made of two, whatchamacallit, nails -”

“It was a crucifix, Tommy,” said a bent white-haired woman leaning against her shopping cart at the edge of the crowd, sores on her legs, her filthy red coat dragging in the street.

“’Scuuuuse me, boss. What I meant was, a crucifix.”

“And they weren’t nails, they were bolts, about three inches long, tied together with copper wire. And don’t forget that toy baby on that cross. A little pink baby.” The old woman held a thumb and forefinger an inch apart to show Cindy how small that toy baby was.

“Why would someone take his crucifix?” the heavyset woman asked. “But his b-b-bag. That was a real leather bag! Lady, write this down! He was murdered for his s-s-stuff.”

“We didden even know his real name,” said Babe, a big girl from the Chinese massage parlor. “He give me ten dollah when I had no food. He didden want nothing for it.”

“Bagman took care of me when I had pneumonia,” said a gray- haired man, his chalk-striped suit pants cinched at the waist with twine. “My name is Bunker. Charles Bunker,” he told Cindy.

He stuck out his hand, and Cindy shook it.

“I heard shots last night,” Bunker said. “It was after midnight.”

“Did you see who shot him?”

“I wish I had.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“Will you let me through?” said a black man with dreads, a gold nose stud, and a white turtleneck under an old tuxedo jacket who was threading his way through the crowd toward Cindy.

He slowly spelled out his name – Harry Bainbridge – so Cindy would get it right. Then Bainbridge held a long, bony finger above Bagman’s body, traced the letters stitched to the back of Bagman’s bloody coat.

“You can read that?” he asked her.

Cindy nodded.

“Tells you everything you want to know.”

Cindy wrote it down in her book.

Jesus Saves.

Chapter 4

BY THE TIME Conklin and I got to Fourth and Townsend, uniforms had taped off the area, shunted the commuters the long way around to the station entrance, shooed bystanders behind the tape, and blocked off all but official traffic.

Cindy was standing in the street.

She flagged us down, opened my car door for me, started pitching her story before I put my feet on the ground.