To Play the Fool

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.

“I’m sorry, Al.”

“American justice, don’t you just love it. I was looking at the stuff your friend in Chicago sent.”

“Did it come? Was there anything?”

“Two blots on Saint Erasmus’s past. A DUI when he was twenty-five—forty seven years ago—and then ten years later he plead guilty to assault, got a year of parole and a hundred hours of community service.”

“Any details?”

“Not many. It looks like what he did was pick up a chair in a classroom and try to brain somebody with it. They were having an argument—a debate in front of a class—and it got out of hand. The gentle life of the mind,” he commented sardonically.

“Damn the man, anyway,” she growled. “Why the hell did he have to run off like that?”

“Exactly.”

“What?”

“Why did he run?”

“Oh Christ, Al, you’re not going to go all Sherlock Holmes on me, are you? The dog did nothing in the night,” she protests. “Precisely,” says he mysteriously.“

“You are in a good mood, aren’t you?” observed Hawkin. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“Now you sound like my mother. Yes, I had a couple of hot dogs from the stand in the park.”

“There’s the problem. You’ve got nitrates eating your brain cells.”

“Since when do you care about nitrates? You live off the things.”

“No more.” He placed one hand on his chest. “I am pure.”

“First cigarettes and now junk food? That Jani’s a powerful woman.”

Al Hawkin stood up and lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. “Come on, Martinelli,” he said. “I’ll buy you a sandwich and you can tell me about the Brother Erasmus fan club.”

¦

EIGHTEEN

¦

Some might call him a madman, hut he was the very reverse of a dreamer.

It was now two weeks since John had been killed, thirteen days since his funeral pyre had been lighted, and Kate woke that Tuesday morning knowing that her case consisted of a number of details concerning a fine lot of characters, but the only link any of it had was a person she would much prefer to see out of it entirely.

Kate had been a cop long enough to know that likable people can be villains, that personality and charisma are, if anything, more likely to be found attached to the perpetrator than the victim. She liked people,- she sent