“Sir, I believe you called the police department?” she said.
“When constabulary duty’s to be done,” he replied, one eyelid drooping infinitesimally in a near wink.
“Could we have your name, sir?” she asked.
Instead of answering, his right hand went toward the side of the brown robe, where a pocket might be; instantly, both men at her side leaped forward to seize him, yanking his arms around and making him stagger back with a grimace of pain.
“Wait, wait!” she told them. “Don’t hurt him. Sir, do you have any weapons in your pocket? Anything sharp?”
He shook his head.
“Do we have your permission to check for ourselves?”
He nodded.
“Would you please lean with both arms against the back of that bench? Let him go,” she told the two uniforms.
The old man turned and leaned his arms onto the bench, automatically spreading his feet apart as he did so: he’d been patted down before. Then again, anyone who looked like this would have been picked up regularly, no matter his behavior.
His pockets, accessible through slits in the seams of the brown robe, held no gun or knife. Some coins, a pencil stub and folded sheets of paper, and a nearly flat wallet. She held out his wallet to him. “Is this what you were after?” she asked.
In answer, he took it from her and opened the billfold portion. There was no money that she could see, but he took out a piece of folded newspaper and offered it to her.
“You want us to look at his pack?” Torres asked her.
She met the brown eyes above her. “Sir, do you mind if we take a look at your belongings?”
“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine,” the monk said, extending one hand in a sweeping gesture toward the beat-up rucksack on the ground. Torres picked it up and unbuckled the top, while Mendez picked apart the ancient folded square of newspaper.
It was the upper half of a front page, seven-year-old San Francisco Chronicle. In the center was a photograph showing four people, standing in conversation.
Although the page was all but worn through on its fold lines, she recognized the figure with the white hair, the dark robe, and the long walking stick with the knob on top that was currently leaning against the end of the bench — in the grainy newsprint, the stick was tucked against his shoulder as he leaned forward to listen to a dark-haired woman not much taller than Mendez herself. To the woman’s left stood the familiar image of a black man wearing a dashing hat who could be only the then mayor of San Francisco. Next to the man in the robe was the fourth figure, a middle-aged man whose face was vaguely familiar.
When she read the caption, she realized why:
“Mayor Willie Brown and Inspectors Martinelli and Hawkin of the SFPD talk with the self-styled ‘Brother Erasmus’ at the funeral of homeless woman Beatrice Jankowski on Saturday, St. Mary’s Cathedral.”
Hawkin, she knew that name. And Martinelli — they’d been involved with a couple of cases that got a lot of press.
The faint bell of memory rang slightly louder. Hadn’t one of those cases been something extremely quirky to do with the homeless population of San Francisco? A murder case in which a sort of patron saint of the homeless population had played a part? One Brother Erasmus?
She opened her mouth to ask him about it, but suddenly Torres exclaimed and thrust out the object in his hand. It was a small, thick leather-bound book with onionskin pages, closely printed in some heavy writing.
“Arabic!” he exclaimed. “And it’s got notes to himself in the same language!”
For a moment, just an instant, it crossed Mendez’s mind that there might be a terrorist cell here in Rio Linda, the world’s least likely place. She shot a glance at the accused man’s face, but the old bearded man had one white eyebrow raised in a look that was more quizzical than guilty. Of course, it was possible that terrorists had now started enrolling in acting school . . .
“Let me see that,” she said. Torres gave her the book and transferred his hand to the butt of his gun, flipping off the snap to be ready when the old man reached for the trigger of his vest bomb. She opened the book and immediately shook her head — she had no idea what the words said, but she’d watched enough television news to know what she was looking at.
“This isn’t Arabic, Torres, it’s Hebrew. And for heaven’s sake, take your hand off your weapon.”
“Hebrew?”
“Sure, it’s all square and boxy — Arabic is all curves and curlicues. Haven’t you ever noticed the banners and signs on the news?”
“So . . . what? A Jewish terrorist?”
“This is a Bible,” she said. “No, look, don’t bother going through the rest of his pack. I know who this is. You’re Brother Erasmus, aren’t you?” she asked.
“A muddled fool, full of lucid intervals.” His smile was like a beatitude as he held out his hand to her.
“Er, right,” she said.
She gave him her hand and felt it wrapped in a smooth, strong, warm grip that again evoked her grandfather, who had grasped the wooden handle of a hoe until the last day of a long life. But this man’s fingers were long and thin and considerably less bashed about, and reminded her of that Dürer engraving of praying hands that used to be so popular when she was growing up. “Sergeant Bonita Mendez,” she told him.
He held her hand a moment, then let her go.
“Thanks, Torres, you and Wong can get back on patrol. I’m fine here.”
Reluctantly, and not without protest, the two patrol officers separated themselves from the library forecourt and returned to their car. Watching the two men swagger off, Mendez regretted, not for the first time, that a uniformed officer’s equipment belt encouraged such a gait.
She turned to the man at her side and said, “Sir, I’m going to need to make some phone calls. Do you mind coming with me to the station house? You could have a cup of coffee or something,” she added, lest he think of it as an arrest.
He stretched out a long arm for the rucksack Torres had abandoned, half-searched, on the bench, retrieved the carved staff, and walked beside her to the unmarked she’d driven there.
She put him in the front, threading the staff over the seat back, and pulled out of the library parking lot. Neither of them spoke on the drive into town, although it was not an uncomfortable silence, merely restful. At the station, she helped him get his walking stick out and led him inside.
“Sir, I’m going to put you in an interview room for a few minutes, and I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve made my calls. Is there anything you need? Coffee, soft drink, something to eat?”
“I am glad I was not born before tea,” the old man remarked.
“Tea? I’ll see what we can do. Officer Scarlotti, would you please make a cup of tea for the gentleman in Interview Room One?”
“Tea?”
“Yes, there are some bags in the cabinet. And take him the milk and sugar, in case he wants them.”
“Milk and sugar?”
“And offer him the package of cookies,” she added, and closed the door before he could repeat that as well.
It took four calls to track down Inspector Kate Martinelli of the San Francisco Police Department, but eventually Mendez reached her at home. A woman answered; a child was talking in the background; Martinelli came on the line; and the background noise cut off.
Mendez began to explain: odd phone call; enigmatic remarks; the caller tracked to a local library; seemed to match the identity of the man known as Brother Erasmus; and she wondered —
“Our Holy Fool is there? In Rio Linda?” the detective interrupted.
“Apparently.”
“Good Lord, I’ve often wondered what happened to the old man. How is he?”
“He looks fine. Thin but healthy.”
“If I wasn’t in the middle of ten things, I’d be tempted to drive down and say hello. Tell him hi from me, would you?”
The affection in Martinelli’s voice was not the usu
al reaction of a Homicide detective to a witness and onetime suspect, Mendez reflected.
“I wanted to ask you about him, whether you’d say he was reliable, but it sounds like you’ve already answered my question.”
“I don’t know about reliable, since Erasmus might well have his own agenda, but I’d say he’s the most honest man you’ll meet.”
“If you can figure out what he’s saying,” Mendez said.
“Does he still talk that way? Everything in quotes?”
“Are those all quotes?”
“That’s how he talked then. It took us forever to figure out what he was trying to say.”
“Why does he talk that way?”
Martinelli was silent for a moment, then said, “He would probably call it penance for his sins. He lost his family, years ago back in England, in a way he felt responsible for. Personally, I thought he was trying to keep his mind so busy, he didn’t have energy left over for his own thoughts. He is actually able to speak directly, in his own words — he finally did when he was helping us with our case — but it seemed to be very hard on him. I think you’ll find that, if you listen carefully, his meaning becomes clear. Have you figured out what he’s after?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said he called you and said something about an ‘infant crying in the night.’ Has he suggested yet how he can help you?”
“You think he knows something about one of my cases?”
“People open up to him, even the most unlikely people.” Something about the way the detective said this made it sound like an admission. “And if he didn’t know anything, why would he have called? Do you have a case involving a child?”
Mendez was silent, picturing the abandoned bedroom of twelve-year-old Enrique Escobedo: neatly made bed, rock poster on the wall and a Lego spaceship below it, bulletin board pinned with drawings of friends and celebrities, dozens of science-fiction books on the shelf unit. “I might.”
“Well, he had some reason to come to you. You might start there.”
Mendez thanked her, repeated the promise to pass her greeting on to the old man, and hung up. She then phoned the priest at the Catholic church downtown — not her own parish priest, but she knew him. He knew immediately whom she was talking about.
“The kids call him St. Francis, because he has a way of coaxing birds into eating from his hand. He’s been at Mass a few times over the past few weeks. I’m not sure where he lives or how he supports himself, although I’ve seen people slip him money, and they often bring him something to eat.”
“Elijah’s ravens,” she commented.
“Exactly. Nice fellow, odd, but a calming influence. There was a scuffle in the food line one day, and he stepped forward and put his hands on the two men’s shoulders, and they calmed right down. What’s more, he had them eating lunch together afterward, talking up a storm while he sat with them and nodded.”
“Have you talked with him?”
“Don’t know if I’d call it talking with him, but I’ve sat and talked to him several times myself. Very restful kind of fellow. Knows his Bible better than I do.”
“But you’d say he’s a trustworthy sort?”
The priest did not hesitate. “I’d say he’s a saint of God.”
When she hung up, she sat tapping the desk for a while, then returned to the interrogation room. When she glanced through the door’s small window, she could see the old man, long hands tucked together in his lap, gazing in silent contemplation at his staff, which was leaned in the corner. She turned the knob and stuck her head inside.
“I need some lunch. You want to join me?”
He rose and picked up his knapsack and staff, and followed her out of the station.
They walked down the street to the take-out burrito stand, which was doing brisk business with an assortment of children in soccer uniforms, the playing fields being just two blocks away. They waited their turn, the old man ordered by laying a finger on the vegetarian option, and two minutes later they had their fragrant meals before them on one of the stand’s heavily scarred wooden picnic tables. She peeled back the paper and bit in; Erasmus was of the fork-and-knife school, taking a fastidious surgical approach to the object with his plastic utensils. His staff lay stretched out on top of a low concrete-block wall, and for the first time, she noticed that the fist-size swelling at the top was not an amorphous knob of wood but a heavily worn carving. Studying it, she realized that when it was new, it must have resembled its owner — beard, flowing hair, hawklike nose. She smiled.
“I spoke with Inspector Martinelli in San Francisco,” she said.
“Subtle and profound female,” he murmured.
“Yeah, she seemed to admire you as well, and asked me to say hello. She also said that you might have some information regarding an active case. That it might be the reason you called.”
He put his fork down and reached through the pocket-slit of his robe, pulling out a folded scrap of newsprint that was considerably fresher than the one she had found in his wallet earlier. He laid it in front of her, resuming his fork as she picked up the clipping.
The Escobedo boy’s grinning school picture looked out at her.
She knew what the article said without having to look — she felt by now that the words had been carved on her heart. It had been published on March 9, one week after Enrique Escobedo had vanished from his house, and his babysitter, Gloria Rivas, had been gunned down on the front walkway of the home. When the article was written, Rio Linda was still quivering with apprehension; they were now coming up on the two-week anniversary, and Detective Bonita Mendez hadn’t slept an eight-hour night in thirteen days.
“You have information about this?” she demanded.
He frowned at the rice and beans spilling out of their wrapper, and she could see him decide on an appropriate quote. “Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.” The stress placed on the final word suggested the direction of his meaning.
“Look, sir, can’t we just drop this whole quotation business? This isn’t a game.”
He raised an eyebrow in sympathy and said, “The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.” He chewed a mouthful, watching her intently. She propped her head in her palms and shut her eyes.
“You’re telling me that you don’t actually have any direct knowledge that could lead me to Enrique Escobedo,” she said. “You have only guesses, except that I have to jump through hoops to try to figure out what you mean, when I’m so tired that even if you were talking sense, I’d have problems sorting it out. I have to say, if you’re trying to help, I wish you wouldn’t. You’re wasting time that I don’t have.”
She felt his touch then, the dry firmness of his skin as his fingers wrapped around hers, gently pulling her hand from her face. She looked into his eyes, dark into dark, and saw her torment reflected there.
“To every thing there is a season,” he stated, as if the words had never been said before. “A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.” The repetition of the word alone was soporific; Mendez wanted to lay her head onto her arms right there on the picnic table. “Take up thy bed. And if we do meet again, why, we shall smile.”
“You’re telling me to go home and have a nap.” His eyes crinkled: Yes. “You’re probably right. But you haven’t told me what you wanted me to know, about Enrique Escobedo.”
“Those that have eyes to see, let them see.”
“Do you have any idea how irritating this is?” she snapped.
“The discourse of fools is irksome,” he agreed.
“So why do you do it?”
The crooked smile he gave her was filled with apology and empathy. He said, “He wrapped himself in quotations — as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.??
?
“There’s nothing wrong with a beggar’s rags,” she told him.
But Brother Erasmus merely said, “Like him that travels, I return again.” He set the tip of his first finger against the table: Here. Then he spread both hands out on the dented wood, all fingers outstretched except the thumb of his left hand, tucked under the palm.
“You want me to meet you back here at nine o’clock?” she interpreted. “Tonight?”
By way of answer, he folded the paper around his half-eaten burrito, tucked it and the plastic fork and knife into his knapsack, and walked away, his staff beating a syncopation to his steps. The carved head was pointing backward; it seemed to watch her as it rose and fell.
She shook her head to get the ridiculous notion out of her mind. But in one thing, the man was surely right: she did need some rest if she wasn’t to be utterly useless. She phoned the station and told Scarlotti that she was going home and wasn’t to be disturbed for anything short of a catastrophe. Inevitably, he wanted to know what she meant by “catastrophe,” but she slapped her phone shut and tossed her debris in the trash.
She drove home, fed the cat, kicked off her shoes, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up over her head. And although she expected perhaps twenty minutes of fitful rest, Bonita Mendez slept like a babe in its mother’s arms, her dreams filled with the warm brown eyes of wise old men.
When she woke, it was dark, and the bedside clock told her it was nearly seven. She fried up some eggs, onions, and jalapeños, wrapping them in some of the tortillas her mother had made, topped with her sister’s fiery homemade salsa. Rested, fed, and warm inside, she then took a long, hot shower, washed her hair, dressed in plain clothes with a jacket to cover her gun, and went by the station in the vain hope that something — anything — had come to light in the case. There was nothing.