To Play the Fool

by Laurie R. King

  “Such as a five-foot-eleven white male with a Texas accent who called himself John?”

  “Such as. You know anyone in Chicago?”

  “ ‘Anyone’ meaning anyone on the police department? No.”

  “I don’t, either. Well, I met someone at a conference once, but he and I had differing views on such things as search-and-seizure and putting down riots. He wouldn’t give you the time of day. What about Kenning down in Vice? He had a brother, didn’t he?”

  How, wondered Kate, could I have forgotten either Hawkin’s phenomenal memory or his personal-touch method of getting information? When they had worked together before, she had tended to turn to the computer; Al depended on someone’s cousin Marty who had been mentioned at the last departmental ball game.

  “I’ll ask,” she said. Computers didn’t have it all.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know that we can do anything else here. You want to start the background search on him? I’d do it, but I’m testifying in that Brancusi case Monday and I need to go over it carefully. It’s going to be a bitch.”

  “No problem, I’ll get it going. Except—how about you call Kenning and ask for his brother’s name? He’s probably home watching the game, and you’re more likely to know when it’s over than I am.” She grinned at him and he, unembarrassed, grinned back.

  “Paperwork, you know?” he said. “I only turn on the tube for the noise.”

  “Sure, Al. Have a beer for me, okay?”

  “Talk to you later. Thank the professor for the tea.” He let himself out, and a minute later Kate heard a car door slam and an engine start up. She picked up Sawyer’s book on fools and began to leaf through it, waiting for Professor Whitlaw to emerge, but she had barely started the introduction before the door opened and the professor came down the hall.

  “I apologize,” she said. “As I said, it was a shock. Now, please tell me what I may do to help my old friend.”

  “Er, I don’t really know.”

  “I must see him again.”

  “I’ll let you know when we find him.” They owed her at least that much, Kate figured, but something in her voice alerted the professor.

  “You sound as if you have some doubts about it.”

  “He may go to ground for a few days,” she said evasively.

  “You don’t think it’ll be more than that, do you? He won’t run away completely, surely.”

  Kate always hated this sort of thing. With a suspect, you knew where you stood: Never answer questions; don’t even act as if you heard them. With a witness, just evade politely. But with an important, intelligent, and potentially very helpful witness, evasion created a barrier, and she couldn’t afford that.

  “Professor Whitlaw, we don’t know what to expect, and I doubt you could help us any in figuring it out. I’d say offhand that the David Sawyer you knew is gone. He’s Brother Erasmus now, and Brother Erasmus could do anything.”

  “Not murder, in case you are thinking of him as a suspect. Not as David Sawyer, and not as a fool.”

  “I hope you’re right. He’s an appealing character.”

  “That hasn’t changed, at any rate. Perhaps there’s more of David there than you think.”

  “We shall see. Thank you very much for your help with his identity. And I take it that you would be available for assisting in an interview with him?”

  “That’s right; you said he was difficult to communicate with. I had forgotten, in all the uproar. Yes, certainly, I shall be glad to help. Perhaps I’d best brush up on my Shakespeare.”

  “That reminds me—the name of his son. You said it was Jonny, I think?”

  “Short for Jonathan, yes. Why?”

  “The first time I met him, he seemed to be trying to explain himself to me and Dean Gardner, and he said something about vanity, and Absalom, and he also said that David loved Jonathan.”

  “Odd. Isn’t it Jonathan who loved David?”

  “That’s what the dean said. He seemed to think it was very unusual for Erasmus to change a text.” Although, come to think of it, he had done so again that day. Surely the Lewis Carroll poem told us, Speak roughly to your little boy?

  “I’m sorry, but I find it difficult to imagine a fool who is so structured in his utterances.”

  “Imagine it. But if as you say his son was named Jonathan, then perhaps he was trying to tell us that he believes his ‘vanity’ led to the death of his son. That’s very close to what you’ve just told me, which proves that he can communicate; he can even change his quotations if he wants to badly enough.”

  “Oh dear. I’m afraid I’m getting too old for this kind of mental gymnastics. I shall have to think about what you’ve told me.”

  “That’s fine; there’s nothing more you can do now, anyway. You have my number, if you think of anything. Thanks again for your help. I’ll let myself out.”

  Sixteen

  He suffered fools gladly.

  It was dark outside but still clear. Kate got into her car and drove to the Hall of Justice. By the time she arrived, her bladder was nearly bursting from the cups of tea she’d drunk, and she sprinted for the nearest toilet before making her way more slowly to her office, the coffeepot, and the telephone. It was Saturday night, although early yet; business would pick up soon. Her first phone call was to her own number.

  “Jon? Kate. I’m going to be stuck at the office for a while. I hope not too long, but don’t hold dinner. Oh, you didn’t, good. Are you going out? Well, if you decide to, give me a ring and let me know who’s there instead, okay? Thanks. Oh, I hope not more than a couple of hours, maybe less. Fine. Right. Bye.”

  Then the computer terminal and the other telephone calls, and when Al called with Kenning’s brother-in-law’s (not brother; Al, unusually, had gotten it wrong) name and home number, she called through to the Chicago police, found that the man was on duty the next morning, and decided that little would be gained by bothering him at home on a Saturday night. There was no trace of David Sawyer on the records—hardly surprising, since David Sawyer had virtually ceased to exist a decade before.

  There was not much more she could do tonight, so she gathered her coat and made her way to the elevators, deaf to the ringing telephones and shouts and the scurry of activity. She stepped aside when the doors of the elevator opened and two detectives came out, each holding one elbow of a small Oriental man in handcuffs, with dried blood on his shirt and a monotonous string of tired curses coming from his bruised mouth.

  “Another Saturday night,” she said as she slipped through the closing doors.

  “And I ain’t got nobody,” sang the detective on the man’s left arm. The doors closed on the rest of the song.

  Outside, in the parking lot, Kate was seized by a feeling of restlessness. She should go directly home, five minutes away, let Jon have his evening out, but she’d told him two hours, and it had been barely forty minutes. Time for a brief drive, out to the park.

  Erasmus—Sawyer—no, Erasmus—habitually spent Saturday with tourists and then Sunday in the park, roughly four miles away. Did he walk? Was he already in the park now, bedded down beneath some tree? Where did he keep his stash, his bedroll and clothing, the small gym bag Dean Gardner had fetched from the CDSP rooms and which had been returned (with its contents of blue jeans, flannel shirt, bar of soap, threadbare towel, and three books) when Erasmus had been turned loose after making what could only loosely be called his statement?

  Kate got into her car and turned, not north to home but west into the city. She drove past the high-rise hotels and department stores and the pulsing neon bars and busy theaters into the more residential areas with their Chinese and Italian restaurants and movie theaters, the pet stores and furniture showrooms closed or closing, until she came to the dark oasis that was Golden Gate Park.

  The park held over a thousand acres of trees, flowers, lawn, and lakes, coaxed out of bare sand in painful stages over patient decades, wrenched from the gold-rush squatters in the 1850
s and now returning to their spiritual descendants a century and a half later, for despite the combined efforts of police and social services and parks department bulldozers, a large number of men and women regarded the park as home.

  Kate drove slowly down Stanyan Street and along Lincoln Way, cruising for street people who were not yet in their beds. At Ninth Avenue, a trio of lumpy men carrying bedrolls leaned into one another and drifted toward the park. She turned in, got out of her car, and waited for them under a streetlight.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said. Astonished, and suspicious, they stumbled to a halt, eyeing her. “I’m looking for Brother Erasmus. Have you see him?”

  “She’s a cop,” one of them said. “I seen her before.”

  Kate reached into her pocket and drew out a five-dollar bill that she’d put there a minute before. She folded it in half lengthwise and ran it crisply through her fingers. “I just hoped to talk with him tonight. I know he’s usually here in the morning, but it would save me some time, you understand.”

  “ ‘S tomorrow Sunday?” asked the second man, with the slurred precision of the very drunk. The others ignored him.

  “He don’t come on Sa’day,” stated the third man. “You have to wait.”

  “Do you know where he is tonight?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Never is.”

  Kate had to be content with that. They hadn’t told her anything, but she gave them the five dollars anyway and left them arguing over what to do with it, spend it now or save it until tomorrow. All three had looked to be in their sixties but were probably barely fifty. She turned to look at them over the top of her car, three drunk men haggling in slow motion over a scrap of paper that represented an evening’s supply of cheap wine.

  “Where did you serve?” she called on impulse. They looked up at her, blinking. The third man drew himself up and made an attempt at squaring his shoulders.

  “Quang Tri Province mostly. Tony was in Saigon for a while.”

  “Well, good luck to you, boys. Keep warm.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” The other two men automatically echoed his thanks, and she got into her car and turned around and reentered the traffic on Lincoln Way.

  In the next twenty minutes, she gave away another fifteen dollars and got more or less the same answer from a woman with darting eyes who pulled continuously at her raw lips with the fingers of her left hand; from a sardonic, sober elderly gentleman who would not approach close enough to take the contribution from her hand but who picked it up from the park bench with a small bow once she had retreated; and from the monosyllabic Doc, whom she recognized from the initial interviews.

  Satisfied, she left the park, intending to go home but then finding herself detouring, taking a route slightly north of the direct one, and finally finding herself in front of the brick bulk of Ghirardelli Square, still lighted up and busy with Saturday night shoppers. Oh well, she was nearly home; she would only be a little late.

  There were four shops that Erasmus might have slipped into that afternoon, plus two blank and locked doors and a stairway up to the main level of shops. Two of the shopkeepers had at the time seemed merely harassed and innocent on a busy afternoon, one of them had been with a woman who was contemplating an expensive purchase and had not seemed the sort to shelter an escaped fool, but the fourth—Kate thought that she would have another word with the fourth shopkeeper, smiling behind his display of magic tricks and stuffed animals.

  She parked beneath the NO PARKING sign in front of the shop and strolled in, her hands in her pockets. The man recognized her instantly; this time his amusement seemed a bit forced, and he was flustered as he made change for the woman who was buying a stuffed pig complete with six snap-on piglets. Kate stood perusing the display of magic tricks until the customer left and he was finally forced to come over to her.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “I’m interested in disappearing tricks,” she said. She picked up a trick plastic ice cube that had a fly embedded in it, studying it carefully. “I had something large disappear, right in front of me. I’d like to know how it was done. I know that magicians don’t like to tell their secrets, but”—she put down the joke ice cube and leaned forward—“I would really like to know.”

  As she’d thought, he folded immediately. “I—I’m really sorry about that; I didn’t know—I mean, I could tell you were a cop, but I thought you were just hassling him. They do it, to the street artists and stuff, and he’s such a harmless old guy, I just thought it was a joke when he came shooting in here and held his finger in front of his mouth and then ducked behind the curtain.”

  So he’d been standing there less than ten feet away. Hell. She went and looked at the small, crowded storage space. He sure wasn’t there now.

  “How did he know this was here?”

  “He comes here every week. Oh yeah, I sell him things sometimes, magic stuff—you know, scarves and folding bouquets, that sort of thing. He changes clothes here and leaves his stuff in the back while he’s working. I don’t mind. I mean, he’s not that great a customer, never spends much money, but he’s such a sweet old guy, I never minded. What did you want him for?”

  “Did he go out through the back?”

  “Yes, that door connects with a service entrance. I let him out after you’d gone.”

  “Did he leave anything here?”

  “He usually does; he changes out of his costume and leaves it here, but this time he was in a hurry. He just wiped the makeup off his face, took his coat out of the bag and changed his shoes, and took the bag with him.”

  “Well, all I can say is, don’t complain about crime in the streets if a cop asks for your help and you just laugh in her face.”

  “What did he do?” the man wailed, but Kate walked out of the shop and drove off.

  When she got home to Russian Hill, Lee had gone to bed, Jon was sulking over a movie, and her dinner was crisp where it should have been soft, and limp where it had started crisp. However, she consoled herself with the idea that at least she knew how Brother Erasmus avoided carrying his gear all over the city with him.

  Seventeen

  There was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him.

  For the first time since he had come to San Francisco, Brother Erasmus did not appear on Sunday morning to preach to his flock of society’s offscourings, to lead them in prayer and song and listen to their problems and bring them a degree of cheer and faith in themselves. The men and women waited for some time for him in the meeting place near the Nineteenth Avenue park entrance, but he did not show up, and they drifted off, singly and in pairs, giving wide berth to two newcomers, healthy-looking young men wearing suitably bedraggled clothes but smelling of soap and shaving cream.

  At two in the afternoon, Kate called Al Hawkin. “I think he’s gone, Al,” she told him. “Raul just called; he and Rodriguez hung around until noon and there was no sign of him. All the park people expected him to show; nobody knows where he might be. Do you want to put out an APB on him?”

  “And if they bring him in, what do we do with him? We couldn’t even charge him with littering at this point. Unless you want to put him on a fifty-one-fifty.”

  “No,” she said without hesitation. Putting Sawyer on a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold would keep him in hand, but it would also open the door wide for an insanity plea, if they did decide to charge him. Beyond that, though, was a personal revulsion: Kate did not wish to see Brother Erasmus slapped into a psychiatric ward without a very good reason. Damn it, why did he have to disappear?

  “It may come to that, but let’s give it another twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay. And, Al? I talked to the guy in Chicago; he’s going to fax us some records when he can dig them out. And before that, on my way in, I stopped by and talked with that antique-store owner Beatr
ice told me about.” She reviewed that conversation for him, the trim woman in her fifties who had seemed mildly disturbed by her occasional lover’s death, but mostly embarrassed, both by the affair’s becoming public knowledge and by how little she actually knew about the man: He was not one for pillow talk, it seemed. She did say that he had a fondness for boastful stories about an unlikely and affluent past, which she dismissed, and a habit of denigrating the persons and personalities of others, often to their faces.

  “Which is pretty much what we’ve heard already.”

  “I know. Well, I’ll let you know if the Chicago information comes in. Talk to you later.”

  “Look, Martinelli? Don’t get too hooked on this. You don’t have anything to prove.” There was silence on the line for a long time. “It’s Sunday,” he said. “Go home. Work in the garden. Take Lee for a drive. Don’t let it get to you, or you’ll never make it. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘sir’ bullshit,” he snapped. “I don’t want to work with someone who obsesses about their cases.”

  “Al!” Kate started laughing; she couldn’t help it. “You’re a fine one to talk about being obsessive. What are you doing right now? What did I interrupt?”

  His silence was not as long as hers had been, but it was eloquent.

  “Look, Martinelli,” he said firmly, “that Brancusi case doesn’t look good, and there’s a lot hanging on my testimony tomorrow. I don’t think you can call that obsessive. I’m just doing my job. I only meant—”

  “Go work in your garden, Al. Go for a walk on the beach, why don’t you? Go to a movie, Al, there’s a—”

  He hung up on her. She put the receiver down, still grinning, and went home to pry some weeds out of the patio bricks.

  Monday morning, Al was in court and Kate was in Golden Gate Park. While Al was being dragged back and forth over the rougher parts of his testimony, Kate walked up and down and talked with people. She ignored the women with shiny strollers and designer toddlers, the couples soaking up winter sun on spread blankets, the skaters and bikers, and anyone with a picnic. The homeless are identified by the mistrust in their eyes, and Kate rarely chose wrong.