To Play the Fool Page 8

  When the lab results were in, Al had Kate drive him across town to the park. He stood within the fluttering yellow tapes marking the crime scene and stared at the ground.

  He said deliberately, “I think a man wearing a pair of those expensive men’s boots that make you two inches taller stood here and talked with John, smoked a cigarette, walked around, picked up something—baseball bat, tree branch, nightstick—and hit John with it as hard as he could. John collapsed but didn’t die, and the man dragged him away from the stump and under the bush so he was invisible. He then stood behind that tree over there, smoking cigarettes—which he pinched off and put in his pocket, except the one he dropped—and watching John die. Cold-blooded, deliberate, smoking and watching.”

  “I can’t see this as a pleasure killing,” objected Kate.

  “No. Too casual, no ritual. And he didn’t come in close to watch; it was more just waiting. He wanted John dead, didn’t mind if he suffered, but didn’t want to be too close. Could have been simply caution—he could get away more easily from over there if someone came down the road, couldn’t he?”

  “You think he had a car along one of the streets outside the park?”

  “Let’s get some posters up, see if anyone noticed something. Funny, though, about the cigarettes.”

  “What about them?”

  “Why did he pinch them all and take them?”

  “To leave nothing behind. He watches too much television, thinks we can find him from a fingerprint on paper. Or just didn’t want us to know he was here.”

  “Why not knock the ashes out into the cellophane wrapper, then? I’ve done that myself, smoking on a tidy front porch. And why didn’t he worry about his footprints? They’re at least as distinctive as his smoking habit.”

  “Maybe the TV programs he watches only deal with fingerprints. That could also be why he waited for the man to die instead of bashing him again—he wasn’t necessarily cold-blooded, just afraid of getting blood on his clothing. With the single hit, he was probably clean, but multiple blows would increase the risk of contamination.”

  “You have an answer for everything, Martinelli. How about this one: What kind of man habitually pinches his cigarettes out rather than smashing them?”

  “You’re the smoker, Al. You were, anyway. I don’t know. Someone showing macho? Like striking a match with your thumbnail to show how tough you are. Someone about to put the butt in his pocket and wanting to make sure it didn’t light his pocket on fire?”

  “You’re probably right,” he said absently.

  “Okay, Al. What kind of man would you say habitually pinches off his smokes? And why do you think it’s habitual?”

  “Because he went through at least six or eight of them without once forgetting and putting it out against the tree or under his foot. Pretty calculating for a guy standing there smoking nervously, waiting for a friend to die.”

  “Friend?”

  “Acquaintance at least. And you may be right about the reason for the habit. Or it could be he’s a man who doesn’t mind a bit of ash but doesn’t want to toss a burning butt onto the ground. Someone who works around flammable things, maybe. Or someone concerned with the litter. Groundskeepers rarely toss away their cigarettes, knowing they’ll have to clean them up.”

  “So, we have a short, vain groundskeeper in expensive boots who is friends with a homeless man who doesn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, bashes him on the head, and stands around being tidy until the homeless man dies.”

  “Yep, that’s about it,” said Hawkin.

  “I like it.” Kate nodded and followed Hawkin to the car. “Sure, that is a doable theory. Let’s give it to the DA and just arrest every gardener in the city, starting with the park workers. Get a bus and shovel them in.”

  “You’ll take care of it, won’t you?” asked Hawkin. “I have a date with Jani tonight.”

  “No problem. Drag ’em in, beat ’em up, get a confession, be home for dinner.”

  “I knew I could count on you, Martinelli.”

  Nine

  The way to build a church is to build it.

  Six days, seven days. Lee came up with some references and sent Jon in several directions to pick them up and request more from the university’s interlibrary loan service. She began to read and digest, in between physical therapy, a trip to the doctor’s, the lengthy preparation for and exhaustion following an appointment with one of her two clients, and sleep. Dean Gardner phoned Kate every day, even though Erasmus had been released, until finally, to get rid of him, Kate gave him the same research assignment she’d given Lee: Find me someone who knows what a Fool is.

  Kate didn’t quite know why she was interested, though she did know that it had more to do with the enigma that was Erasmus than with the investigation into John’s murder. She mentioned her by-proxy academic investigations to Hawkin only in a passing way; he, in turn, nodded and told her to let him know if anything came up.

  Nine days after the murder, eight days after the cremation, the first faint hairline crack appeared in the case, although Kate did not at first recognize it as such. She was mostly annoyed.

  “Dean Gardner, I do not have any news for you. I haven’t even seen Erasmus since—oh, he is? Of course, it’s Thursday.” Erasmus had been told not to leave San Francisco, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that he was following his usual rounds. “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh yes, he seems in good spirits. The reason I called is that I have some suggestions for that question you put to me. Do you have a pencil?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The first name is Danny Yamaguchi. Danny is a woman, a professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. Her specialty is cults; she should know if there is a Fool’s movement. Second is Rabbi Shlomo Bauer. He’s a GTU visiting professor this semester; his field is Jewish/Christian relations in Russia from the seventeenth century to the present. And third is a Dr. Whitlaw, who teaches at one of the redbrick universities in England and is over here on a sabbatical. I don’t know her, but I was told that she’s something of an expert on modern religious movements.” He then gave Kate telephone numbers for Yamaguchi and Bauer, explaining, “Dr. Whitlaw is staying with friends in San Francisco, but I couldn’t come up with her number. The only one I have at the moment seems to be an answering machine. I’m sure I’ll have a number for you in a few days, and I know she’s coming to lecture here the end of next week, but do you want the machine’s number?”

  “Might as well.” She wrote it down, thanked him, and prepared to hang up, when he interrupted her.

  “I also have that list of passages Erasmus was quoting. Shall I send it to you?”

  Actually, Kate had forgotten about it. “That would be helpful. Just send it to the address I left with you.”

  “There was just one odd thing—it struck me when I was thinking about that conversation. One of his passages was wrong. That’s never happened before, not that I’ve ever caught. Remember when he was getting so worked up about something and cited David’s lament over his son Absalom? Before that he said, ‘David made a covenant with Jonathan, because he loved him as his own soul.’ I’m sure he said it in that order. In fact, I was aware of it at the time because it’s wrong. It’s Jonathan who makes the covenant with David.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it would in the biblical context, but I don’t know if it was only a slip. I just wanted to mention it, because it was unusual.”

  Kate thanked him, reassured him yet again that she would phone if there was news, and firmly said good-bye. She dutifully wrote the information down, then went out to pick up Al Hawkin so they could tie up the interviews of the people who lived in houses facing Golden Gate Park, on the slim chance they might have noticed, and remembered, the booted man nine days before. The inquiries had to be made, but she was not too surprised when the slim chance had faded into nothingness by the end of the day.

  That night she took out her notebook an
d phoned the three numbers. At the first, a tremulous voice with limited English informed Kate that her granddaughter was away until Tuesday and then hung up. There was no answer at Rabbi Bauer’s number. The number for Dr. Whitlaw was indeed an answering machine, which rattled at her in a woman’s rushed voice: “You’ve reached the Drs. Franklin answering service, please leave your name, number, and a brief description of what you need and we’ll try to get back to you.” That last qualified offer was none too encouraging, but Kate left her name, without any identifying rank, her home number, and the message that she needed to reach Dr. Whitlaw and would the recipients of the message please phone back, whether or not they were able to pass the message on to Dr. Whitlaw, thank you.

  When she hung up, she found Lee looking at her, forehead wrinkled in thought. “Was that something to do with your fool case?”

  “A rather thin lead to finding an expert, yes. Nobody home.”

  “I just wondered, because a couple of the names sounded familiar—Yamaguchi and Whitlow.”

  “Whitlaw.”

  “Was it? It might not be the same person. Those were a couple of the names I’ve come up with. Jon’s requested a book for me that was edited by a Whitlow or Whitlaw…on the Fools movement of the twentieth century.”

  “You don’t have anything yet?”

  “Do you want to go up and get the folders and I’ll look? It’s on my desk next to the computer, a manila folder labeled ‘Fools.’ ”

  It was there. Kate came back downstairs with it and handed it to Lee, who opened it on her lap and started sorting through the pages.

  “Oh, I meant to mention,” she said without looking up from the file, “Jon has a friend whose brother installs those stairway lifts in peoples’ houses; he said he’d do it for cost plus labor. The only problem would be that when we want to tear it out, it’ll leave marks on the woodwork. What do you think?”

  It was fortunate that Lee was busy with her papers and did not look up—fortunate, or deliberate. Kate felt her face stiffen in an impossible mixture of shock and relief and despair: This was the first time Lee had admitted that her time in the wheelchair might not be brief. The first time, that is, since the early months of complete paraplegia, when suicide had seemed to Lee a real option. Kate turned and walked out of the room, looked about for an excuse, saw the coffee machine, poured herself a second cup, although she hadn’t drunk her first yet, and took it back into the living room.

  “Any idea what it would cost?” she said evenly.

  “It would still be a lot, several thousand dollars, but there’s an extended-payment program, and they buy it back when you’re finished with it. I don’t really mind going up and down on my butt. Actually, it’s good exercise, but it is slow. I just thought it would save you and Jon a few hundred trips a week up and down, fetching things for me.”

  Anything that could increase Lee’s sense of independence was to be snatched at, and Kate’s face was firmly in line when Lee looked up, a paper in her hand.

  “Anyway, it’s something to think about. Here’s that printout. D. Yamaguchi, Stanford, and E. Whitlaw—you’re right, it is Whitlaw—Nottingham, England. You said she’s here?”

  “Dean Gardner thought she was visiting friends in the city.”

  “The titles of her articles and the one book look like what you need. I should have some of them Monday or Tuesday, if you want to look through them before you see her.”

  “Good idea. If she calls and I’m not here, see if you can get a real phone number or an address from her. Want another coffee?”

  “No, this is fine. Could you stick that tape into the machine for me?”

  Kate obediently fed the indicated videotape into the mouth of the player, turned on the television, and, while she was waiting for the sound to come up, looked at the box: The Pirates of Penzance.

  “Another heavy intellectual evening, I see,” she said, grinned at Lee’s embarrassment, and went off to do the dishes. Lee thought Gilbert and Sullivan hilarious; Kate would have preferred the Saturday-morning cartoons.

  After a while, she heard Jon’s voice above those of the cavorting sailors. A minute later, he came into the kitchen, dressed in his mauve velour dressing gown, and took two glasses and a squat bottle out of the drinks cupboard.

  “We really must have a crystal decanter,” he complained, pouring out a thick red-brown liquid. “Would you like a glass?”

  “What is it?”

  “Port, my dear. I thought it might be fun to reintroduce gout as a fashionable disease.”

  “No thanks. Say, Jon? Just now Lee said something about installing a lift on the stairs. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Yes, well, I thought it might not be a bad idea.”

  “I agree. I suggested it three or four months ago and she nearly bit my head off.”

  “Did she? Well, times change. I admit I did bitch—a small bitch, a gentle bitch—about the state of my knees on those stairs. And, er, I also pointed out that she could probably deduct the depreciated cost of it as a business expense, now she’s working again.” Jon studied his fingernails for a moment and then looked up through his eyelashes at her—difficult to do, as he was four inches taller than she. Kate began reluctantly to grin, shaking her head.

  “By God, you’re a sly one. And she fell for it. I’d never have believed it.” He laughed and whisked the glasses off the counter. “Jon?” He turned in the doorway. “Good work. Thanks.” He nodded, then went to join Lee in front of the television.

  An hour later, Linda Ronstadt was bouncing around a moonlit garden in her nightie, flirting with her pirate, when the phone rang. Kate picked it up in the kitchen, where she had retreated with a stack of unread newspapers.

  “Martinelli.”

  “This is Professor Eve Whitlaw, returning your call.” The voice was low, calm, and English.

  “Yes, Dr. Whitlaw, thank you for phoning. I am the—”

  “Is that pirates?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The music you’re listening to. It is, yes. Not perhaps their best, but it has a few delicious moments. You were saying.”

  “Er, yes. I am Inspector Kate Martinelli of the San Francisco Police Department. We are investigating a murder that occurred recently in Golden Gate Park. The reason I am calling you is that one of the persons involved refers to himself as a ‘fool,’ and I was told by the dean of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific over in Berkeley that you might be able to tell me exactly what this man means when he uses that description.” By the time Kate reached the end of this convuluted request, she was feeling something of a fool herself, and the sensation was reinforced by the long and ringing silence on the other end of the line.

  “Dr. Whit—”

  “You’ve arrested a Fool for murder?” the English voice said incredulously.

  “He is not under arrest. At most, he’s a weak suspect. However, he’s a problem to us because it’s very difficult to understand what he’s doing here. The interviews we’ve held have been…unsatisfactory.”

  The deep voice chuckled. “I can imagine. He answers your questions, but his answers are, shall we say, ambiguous. Even enigmatic.”

  “Thank God,” Kate burst out. “You do understand.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I may be able to throw a bit of light into your darkness. When may I meet this fool of yours?”

  “You want to meet him?”

  “My dear young woman, would you ask a paleontologist if she would care to meet a dinosaur? Of course I must meet him. Is he in jail?”

  “No, at the moment he’s in Berkeley. He will be back in San Francisco by Saturday, I think, and I could put my hands on him by Sunday. Perhaps we could arrange a meeting on Monday?”

  “Not until then? Ah well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. However, my dear, if you lose him, I shall find it very hard.” There was a thread of steel beneath the jovial words, and Kate had a vivid picture of an elderly teacher she’d once h
ad, a nun who used to punish tardiness and forgotten homework with an astonishingly painful rap on the skull with a thimble.

  “I’ll try not to lose him,” she said. “But I wonder if before then you and I could meet.”

  “A brief tutorial might well be in order. Tomorrow will be difficult; the entire afternoon is rather solidly booked. Let me look at my diary. Hmm. I do have a space in the early afternoon. What about one—no, shall we say twelve-thirty?”

  Dr. Whitlaw gave Kate an address in Noe Valley and the house telephone number, wished her enjoyment of the remainder of Pirates, and hung up. Kate obediently poured herself a tiny glass of the syrupy port and went out to sit between Lee and Jon on the sofa, watching the equally syrupy ending of the operetta.

  Ten

  When Francis came forth from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather in his cap; as a crest or even a crown.

  At under five and a half feet with shoes on, Kate was not often given the chance to feel tall, except in a room full of kids. In fact, when the door opened, she thought for a moment that she was faced with a child. It was the impression of an instant’s glance, though, because no sooner had the door begun to open than it caught forcibly on the chain and slammed shut in her face. The chain rattled, the door opened again, more fully this time, and the person standing there, colorful and gray-haired and of a height surely not far from dwarfism, was not a child, but a woman of about sixty.