I crossed my arms to keep myself from reaching out and shaking her. “For your sake, Roberta, I hope everyone believes that’s true.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe someone realized that Lucas had to be sober to stay here. They overhear you say that he wants to get in touch with me-a newspaper reporter. You said…” I thought back. “You said, ‘The things he wants to talk to you about are
“Well, perhaps.”
“Think, Roberta! Suppose someone didn’t want Lucas’s quest to succeed.”
“But that can’t matter now. He’s dead.”
“Don’t you get it? No one is certain that Lucas died a natural death.”
“The police said it was a heart attack!”
June Monroe turned toward us when she heard Roberta say this. Her eyes narrowed, and she began to walk back to where we stood.
“Be careful, Roberta. I mean it. Please.”
I suddenly realized that I sounded just like Frank. I hoped Roberta wasn’t as stubborn as I am sometimes.
“You should be careful, too,” she said. “I heard about, well, his street name is Two Toes.”
“You know him?”
“Yes, he’s much brighter than he may seem, and that’s partly why he’s dangerous-he’s delusional, not dumb. Most schizophrenics are intelligent, a few are violent. He’s both. Without discussing particulars, let’s just say a person may not be violent because he’s schizophrenic. Perhaps he’s like other violent people: he grew up with it, worked with it, or lived with it. Often it’s in his history long before the onset of his schizophrenia. Even when he’s not on medication, Two Toes can be lucid and rational. In those times he controls his anger. At other times he’s childlike or just withdrawn. Most of the time he’s harmless, but he has had episodes of becoming extremely brutal. Don’t underestimate him.”
“Thanks, I won’t,” I said, just as June reached us. “Ready to go?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied, studying us.
“Wait!” Roberta said. “It just dawned on me. Lucas’s things.”
“His things?” June asked.
“From his locker. We-we cleaned it out yesterday. But I didn’t know where to send his things. I suppose you should have them, Mrs. Monroe.”
She took us back to her office, and opened one of the file drawers. She pulled out a brown paper grocery sack, gave it to June.
JUNE DIDN’T OPENthe sack until we were back in the car. As we sat in the parking lot near the shelter, I watched her examine Lucas’s meager legacy.
At first, it appeared to contain nothing more than a few articles of clothing. She pulled each carefully folded item out of the bag and placed it on her lap.
A gray T-shirt.
Two pairs of white socks, one dark pair.
Three pairs of briefs. Perhaps someone else would have been embarrassed, or even thought it comical to see underwear pulled out of a bag. I only felt sad when I saw them. A T-shirt could have been worn by anyone. Not these most intimate items. Death with dignity. What a laugh. This kind of accounting of personal belongings is due to all of us some day, I suppose. Perhaps it’s best if it comes to us only after death.
June kept reaching into the bag. Next came a handful of AA tracts. I was looking through them when I heard her moan softly. In her hand was a little Bible.
“I gave this to him,” she said, and pressed it to her lips. She was crying as she handed it to me.
There was a piece of paper in the Bible, marking the Twenty-third Psalm. I was trying to make out something scrawled on the paper when June Monroe pulled out the last item in the bag.
22
HIS THERMOS,” she said.
“His thermos? Why would a man with so few possessions need two thermos bottles?” I asked.
“No, there’s only one in here,” she said.
“There was also one in the hotel room. At the Angelus.”
“I don’t understand…”
“There was an open thermos bottle in the room where he died. But this thermos was here, at the shelter. So someone else must own this one…or someone else owned…”
“Why are you looking like that all of a sudden?” she asked. “Is there something I’m not understanding? You’re saying this Two Toes fellow who took Lucas’s ring left this thermos behind?”
“No. The homicide detective you talked to last night-now that I think about how he put it, he wasn’t very clear with you about this. Even though Lucas died of a heart attack, the coroner was puzzled, because Lucas seemed to have a healthy heart. That’s why the coroner is doing the toxicology studies.”
“Poison?”
“He thought it was a possibility. But the studies take weeks to complete.”
“You’re saying someone brought Lucas some kind of something in that other thermos?”
“I’m saying it’s very possible. A lot of things in the hotel room didn’t make sense-the missing ring, the pennies, the scrapes and bruises. But now we know that the thermos wasn’t Lucas’s. It explains how someone could have poisoned him.”
“Someone poisoned my boy…” She was looking at me in total disbelief.
“Maybe.”
“Who? Who would want to kill him?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe someone felt threatened by him.”
“Threatened? By a man who lived like this?” she asked, motioning toward the shelter. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Big tears rolled down her face. “Why wouldn’t he come home to me?” she whispered. “Why live in these places? On the streets of this city? I could have offered him a roof and meals. I would have taken care of him.”
I didn’t say anything.
She shook her head. “Pride. That devil’s pride in him. So hard in him, like a rock. Nothing could break it.”
I looked out across the parking lot, watching a group of men walking slowly toward the shelter door. “I’m not sure the people out here always know why they stay on the streets,” I said. “Maybe there aren’t any good reasons. But as for Lucas-how old was he when his father died?”
“About twelve, I guess. Why?”
“Old enough to be aware of his father’s drinking, and maybe what it cost you?”
She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“So maybe he just wanted you to be proud of him, and he wasn’t quite there yet. Like that money for the phone call.”
“What do you mean?”
“He probably knew you could afford the call he made to Las Piernas. Maybe he just needed to show you that he wanted to pay his own way.”
“But I would have cared for him better than these people did. He’d rather be here all alone, not a friend in the world.”
“He had friends here.”
“Who? That man in the kitchen? You?”
“I wasn’t much of a friend. I’ve admitted that to you. But Lucas made friends here. Even on the street. His
