corner of Masonic one morning before it opened. He kissed the owner,- she let him out. He didn’t see me.”
“Is she the only one?” Beatrice shot her a look full of anger and closed her pad.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “Thank you for that. I’ll talk with her, and of course I won’t tell her where the information came from. Is there anything else you know about him?”
Beatrice did not open her sketch pad again, but neither did she stand up and leave.
“Horses,” she said suddenly. “He once said something about quarter horses, I think it was, one day when the mounted police went by. I suppose he was from a farming community of some kind, between the horses and the drawl.”
“Drawl?” asked Kate sharply.
“Yes, he spoke with a drawl. Didn’t you know that?”
“Nobody’s mentioned it that I’ve heard.”
“Oh yes. I mean, it wasn’t strong, like Deep South, but it was there. Texas, maybe, or Arizona, though it sounded like he’d lived in cities for a while.”
Kate thought for a minute. “You said you’d once seen him in a car with someone.” Beatrice did not respond, but flipped open the sketch pad and thumbed the cap off her pen. “When you made your statement downtown,” she elaborated. When the woman merely turned to a clean page and began to run her pen up and down, Kate’s interest sharpened. So far this evening, Beatrice had shown little of the blithe, slightly disconnected stepping-stone quality of the earlier interview: Was it back, and if so, what had brought it? “Do you remember saying that?”
“It was a remarkably ugly car, considering how much money must have been spent on it.”
“An expensive car. Foreign? A sports car? A big car? Cadillac? Rolls-Royce?”
“Just like a ten-gallon hat, all show and terribly impractical.”
“Imagine the problems with parking it,” Kate suggested, with success.
“Exactly.”
“But at least he bought American,” Kate offered tentatively, and held her breath. This system of interviewing a witness was inexcusable, leading questions compounded by guesses and utterly inadmissible as evidence, but there seemed no other way, and indeed, the responses kept coming.
“I never thought that a particularly good argument. The last car I owned was a Simca.”
“The man driving the car looked the sort who would use that argument, though, would you say?”
“I suppose. The cost of gasoline certainly wouldn’t trouble him,” she added in a non sequitur.
“Was he actually wearing his ten-gallon hat when you saw him?”
“No.” Ah well, it was a try, thought Kate. “He didn’t have it on. A ridiculous notion, isn’t it? A hat that literally held ten gallons would be big enough to sit in. It was on the backseat.” By God. Bingo. Kate sat back in the flimsy chair.
“You remember what color the license plates were?” Might as well try for the big prize, if one’s luck is in.
“Color? I don’t remember any color. They weren’t black and gold, though, I’m pretty sure.” The old California plates had gone out of use about the time Kate had her first pair of nylon stockings, so that wasn’t much help.
“I don’t suppose you remember when this was that you saw the two men?”
“My dear Katarina, life on the street does not necessarily mean a person is brain-dead.”
“I didn’t—”
“Of course I remember. It was election day. The church served lunch outside that day because the hall was being used as a polling place and there was a mix-up over who was supposed to hold the soup kitchen instead, so they just worked inside and brought it out the back. Very apologetic, they were, but it was actually quite festive, I thought. Gave one a sense of participation in the democratic process. The last presidential candidate I voted for was George McGovern. He didn’t win,” she explained kindly, hr, no.
“I know that the man was in the city for a few days at least, because I remember seeing the two of them again on the Friday. They came in here. Didn’t stay, just bought something to go, coffees probably, talked for a minute and looked around, then left. I was busy and didn’t talk to them, but I think John saw me. I was a little nervous that he would come over, but he didn’t, so that was all right, and he hasn’t come in since, either. I did not like the idea of his taking over my Friday nights.”
Beatrice took another thoughtful bite, then said suddenly in a muffled voice, “Texas!” Kate waited while she chewed and swallowed rapidly. “Pardon me. Texas, I’m sure, because of the star.”
“Which star was that?”
“The license plate. The Lone Star State. That is Texas, isn’t it? Or is it the yellow rose? No, I’m certain there was a star on it.
“The yellow—” Kate stopped, struck dumb, and slowly shook her head. The old bastard.
“What is it, Katarina? You look amused.”
“Something Erasmus said—or rather, something he told me.” He had told her by humming, over the breakfast table in Berkeley, a tune she had only half-recognized and ignored: “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
So, both Erasmus and Beatrice agreed that the mysterious womanizing John had probably been from Texas, and according to Beatrice, as recently as the first week of November he had retained a (wealthy?) possibly Texan connection.
“Did John smoke, do you know?”
“He did not.”
“Did he wear false teeth?”
“My dear, I never looked in the man’s mouth. Although, come to think of it, he occasionally hissed his’s‘s, and once when he was eating a banana it sounded like strawberries, that
“Let me buy you a coffee,” Kate suggested. “Something to eat?”
Beatrice stopped, suddenly wary, then resigned. “Very well, dear. Krish there knows what I’ll have.”
Kate ordered herself yet another coffee, a decaffeinated cappuccino this time, and asked for whatever Beatrice liked, which turned out to be mulled apple cider with a toasted scone, a large dollop of cream cheese, and some plum jam. She arranged plates, cup, and cutlery onto the inadequate table, retaining her own cup for fear it would end up on her lap, and waited while Beatrice delicately cut her scone and scooped up cream cheese and jam in a practiced heap, then popped it into her mouth.
“I need to ask you a few questions about Brother Erasmus, now that I’ve had the chance to meet him.” Kate’s attempt to make the meeting sound like a social occasion fell flat beneath Beatrice’s rather crumby words.
“You arrested him last week, I heard, and then let him go.”
“No. There was no arrest,- he was not even detained,” she protested, stretching the truth slightly. “I gave him a ride back from Berkeley so we could take his statement, then we turned him loose. I admit it took us a while to get a statement, but that wasn’t exactly our fault, if you know what I mean,” she added pointedly. Beatrice got the point and laughed.
“I can imagine.”
“Does he talk like that to everyone? Using quotes and sayings for everything he says?”
“Is that what he does? Good heavens. I knew he was using the Bible a great deal, but that would explain the sometimes… inappropriate things he says. Surely not
That’s what I was told.“
“How extraordinary. How utterly sad.”
“Why sad?”
“What I was talking about, the power of names, of words.
He must be very frightened of his own words if he never creates any. Terrified of his own thoughts, to push them aside for the thoughts of others.“
Kate stared at Beatrice, who took a mournful bite of her scone. “You’re an amazing person,” she said without thinking.
“Oh no, not really. I just keep my eyes open and think about things. One thing about being on the street, there’s lots of time for thinking.”
“What are you doing here, anyway? I’m sorry if that’s rude, but most of the street people I see are pretty
