She carried the awkward pole through the halls, into the elevator, out the doors, and down the street, finally threading it through the door of the coffee shop to lean it against the greasy wall in back of her chair, all the time wondering if he was going to leave the damned thing with her and what on earth she would do with it.
The waitress came by with her pad, looking as tired and disheveled as the chipped name tag pinned crookedly to her limp nylon uniform.
“Just coffee, thanks,” Kate said.
Sawyer looked into her dark eyes and smiled. “I, too, would like a cup of coffee, please, Elizabeth. Would you also be so kind as to give me some cream and some sugar to go in it?”
The woman blinked, and Kate was aware of an odd gush of pleasure at Sawyer’s undisguised enjoyment of the words he was pronouncing. He seemed to taste them before he let them go, and she thought she was catching a glimpse of what Professor Whitlaw had meant when she described his power as a public speaker.
Their coffee came quickly. Sawyer opened two envelopes of sugar, stirred them and a large dollop of cream into the thick once-white mug, and put the spoon down on the table.
“Beatrice’s funeral is this afternoon,” he said.
“I planned on going. Al, too.”
“I asked Philip Gardner to take the service.”
“Your license being expired,” she said with a smile.
“I did not feel I had the right to the cassock.”
It suddenly struck Kate that he was not wearing his wedding ring, either. She set her cup down with a bang. “Now look, David, you can’t go around taking all the world’s sins on your shoulders. You didn’t kill her, Thomas Darcy did. You’re less to blame than the newspaper reporter.”
“I only intend to shoulder my own sins, Kate, I assure you.”
“Then why—”
He put up a hand. “Please, Kate. This is something I must wrestle with alone, although I do truly appreciate your willingness to help me.”
“Where will you go? Do you have a place to stay?”
“Eve wishes me to go to the house she is borrowing, after the funeral. In fact, she has asked me to go with her to England, assuming she can persuade the authorities to issue a passport to a man with no identification papers.”
“And will you?”
Sawyer let his eyes drift away from Kate until he was focusing on the wall behind her. For a very long time, he studied the piece of carved wood that stood there, and slowly, slowly his face began to relax, to lose the taut, pinched look it had taken on with the news of Beatrice’s death. Eventually he tore his gaze away from the staff and looked back at Kate, but he did not answer her question. Instead, he asked, “Will your friend come to the funeral, as well?”
“My friend?” Do you mean Lee? I hadn’t thought to ask her. It’s difficult for her to get around. She’s in a wheelchair.“
“I know. Still, she might find it a good experience.”
“Lee has been to a depressing number of funerals over the last few years,” she said flatly. He nodded his understanding, finished his coffee, and stood up. Kate went to the cash register to pay their bill, and when she turned back to the room, she saw that Sawyer was standing outside the door. The staff was still leaning against the wall. She retrieved it, followed him outside, and stood beside him, looking at the familiar dingy street.
He was watching a filthy, decrepit, toothless individual pick fastidiously through a garbage can on the other side of the street. Kate waited to hear some apt quotation about the human condition, but when he spoke, it was in his own words, about his own condition. “Everything I told you, with the exception of seeing Thomas Darcy in a car reading a map, would be discounted as hearsay evidence, come the trial, would it not?”
“Some of it would, yes.”
“Most everything, I think. You do not need my testimony.”
“That depends on what forensics finds. If he covered his tracks carefully, we’ll be up shit creek.”
“With my scant evidence your only paddle.”
“That’s about it.”
“Well. I don’t imagine a defense counsel would permit it to get by without considerable battering. We shall just have to trust that more concrete evidence will be forthcoming.
“Thank you for your friendship, Kate Martinelli,” he said abruptly. “I shall see you at the church this afternoon.”
“Wait—David. Do you want your walking stick?”
He looked at it, then looked at her, and a smile came onto his face: a sweet smile, a dazzling smile—an Erasmus smile.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do,” he said, and reached out his hand for it. He cupped his palm briefly over the smooth place on top of the carved head and then ran his hand down the shaft to the other worn patch just below shoulder height, and then he turned and walked away.
To her surprise, when Kate got back to her desk, she found herself phoning Lee to ask if she wanted to go to the funeral of this homeless woman whom Lee had never met. To her greater surprise, Lee said yes.
¦
Half a dozen photographers lounged around the steps to the church, but Kate had expected them, so she continued on around the block to a delivery entrance. The mortician’s van was parked there, and she pulled up behind it, extricated Lee and her chair from the car, and they entered the church through the side entrance.
There was a surprisingly large congregation. Kate recognized many of the faces in the pews from the investigation, most of them street people, a few store owners in Beatrice’s home area of the Haight. Krishna and Leila from Sentient Beans were sitting in the front row,- the three veterans, with the damaged Tony in the middle, looking ready to bolt, sat in the last pew back. News reporters swelled the ranks and added contrast in the form of clean neckties and intact jackets. Al Hawkin sat almost directly across the church from them.
But no David Sawyer.
Kate took all this in as she was pushing Lee into a place along the side aisle. Then she took a seat beside her at the end of the pew.
She became aware of Philip Gardner’s voice coming from the altar.
“We thank you for giving her to us,” he was saying, “her family and friends, to know and love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.”
A movement caught Kate’s eye, one of the white-gowned deacons at Dean Gardner’s side. It took a moment for her to realize it was David Sawyer. It took a while longer for her to recognize him, to her astonishment, as Brother Erasmus.
The service flowed past them. People stood up and read, haltingly or fluently. A hymn was sung, and another, and then Philip Gardner was raising his hands in blessing and declaring that the Lord would guide our feet into the way of peace, and it was over. The cassocks and surplices fluttered up the aisle, people began to shuffle in their wake, and then Sawyer, or perhaps Erasmus, was sitting in the pew ahead of Kate, with Lee’s hand in his. The ring, Kate noticed, was back on his hand. She made the introductions, although they hardly seemed necessary.
“The wounded healer,” he said quietly in response to Lee’s name.
“I might say the same of you,” Lee answered.
“Ah. Answer a fool according to his folly,” he said with a grin.
“And are you? A fool, that is?” Lee leaned forward in the chair to study the old face opposite her. “Am I speaking with Brother Erasmus, or David Sawyer?”
“I am Fortune’s fool,” he admitted. “An old doting fool with one foot already in the grave. A lunatic, lean- witted fool. How well white hairs become a fool and jester.”
“I think white hairs suit a fool very well. How does it go? ”This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool.“ ”
The old man looked, of all things, embarrassed, and he seemed grateful for the interruption when Al Hawkin joined them. He stood up to shake Hawkin’s hand.
“Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”
The detective laughed. “Never that. I just wanted to thank you for your help and wish you well.”
