The Love-Haight Case Files

by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle

  The gargoyle’s laugh sounded like metal spoons ringing together. “Evelyn Love, humans do not always need a reason to hate. I have seen so many years in this city and watched so many emotions. When the city first sprouted, the Chinese were used for labor and hated by many of the whites. Later, the blacks were hated by Chinese and whites. Color of the skin, Evelyn Love. Mine is green, and that could be all the reason Franklin Arnold needs to hate.”

  “Color of the skin,” Evelyn repeated softly.

  “Let me put it another way.” He finished the third beer and made an ahhhhhing sound. “Gargoyles, OTs as the humans label us and others … OTs are the new illegal alien.”

  He stood, and Evelyn joined him, grateful to get out of her crouched position. He scraped at the grit and tar that had stuck to the backs of his legs.

  “I am thankful you came to visit,” Bjoernolf said. “You are welcome to return. If you want to learn more about Franklin Arnold, perhaps you should visit his church.”

  She tipped her head in question.

  “Saints Peter and Paul, la cattedrale d’Italia ovest, the Italian Cathedral of the West.”

  It was circled on her map.

  “Franklin Arnold attends church there, with his wife.”

  “How do you know that, Bjoernolf?”

  “The gargoyles on the church told me. They are my brothers.” He pointed to her backpack. “Can you leave a few more? Gudlaug has not had a beer in a long while. The crackers, too. Gudlaug likes crackers.”

  Evelyn left the rest of the six-pack and the wheat crackers. That still gave her another six-pack, a bag of cashews, and a tin of gumdrops to work with. Her backpack lighter, she jogged down the nine flights and out the door, nearly bumping into a man on the sidewalk and swallowing an “oh!” of surprise. He was one of the two she’d spotted earlier, the one with the cell phone.

  He turned and walked in the opposite direction, looking once over his shoulder, black eyes locking momentarily with hers.

  Evelyn shivered, and not from the chill wind that whipped down the street. She really was being followed.

  Chapter 2.6

  Evelyn jogged a few blocks and stopped to look over her shoulder, finding no trace of the guy she’d seen at the bottom of the fire escape or the other man she’d seen earlier. But they were there, shadowing her; she had that annoying gut feeling. No use calling Thomas, he couldn’t pick up the phone, and Gretchen wasn’t due in for another hour. She called Dagger, but all she got was voicemail, and in the end was glad for that. What could Dagger do? Follow her to each gargoyle bedecked building on her list? That wouldn’t be happening, and she wasn’t about to stay indoors just to be safe. Besides, Thomas had been in the law office when they got to him.

  Evelyn set her jaw. Tough, she could take care of herself. But she’d nevertheless pay close attention to the hairs on the back of her neck. If they rose too high, she would head for a local precinct house. In the meantime, she would make her shadows work to keep up with her. She ran faster, and this time “The Beat Goes On” managed to tumble through her head. She put her feet in time with it, and the blocks with their pine bough decorations and waving Santas blurred.

  Saints Peter and Paul was a beautiful church, but Evelyn had yet to see a Catholic church that wasn’t in some way impressive. Ironically, its address was 666 Filbert Street. The church splayed across the street from Washington Square. A lovely location, a lovely church; Evelyn thought she might attend a service here.

  The heavy wood door was unlocked, and she tugged it open to the warm scent of vanilla tapers. Evelyn’s concerns instantly diminished; churches had that effect on her. Worries were somehow less significant, and all the demons she faced were not so dangerous. She breathed deep and asked herself: “What brings you joy today?” It was one of her little rituals.

  Immersing herself in the law brought her joy, working with Thomas, meeting a new gargoyle this morning, and now being here, in this holy building. All those things brought her joy.

  She found some literature on a small table and skimmed one of the pamphlets. Administered by the Salesians of Don Bosco and serving the Archdiocese of San Francisco, this place had—since its consecration—been the cultural center and home church of the bay area’s Italian American community. In the past decade it had also become the home church for much of the city’s Chinese American Roman Catholics. The church offered weekly masses in English, Italian, and Mandarin.

  According to the schedule, Father Jones was holding confessions until noon, so without hesitation Evelyn padded inside the cavernous church and waited.

  There were only two penitents ahead of her, one an undead creature she was unfamiliar with—not a ghoul. Not a ghost, as it obviously had substance and was dressed in khaki trousers and an overlarge Starbucks sweatshirt that hid any details about the form beneath.

  The creature—she could not tell if it was male or female—had gray, deeply wrinkled skin, except for a smooth bald head that reflected the warm lights. It worked a rosary with its thin fingers. She would ask Zaxil later; he seemed to be an expert on the various OTs in the city and could maybe tell her what it was.

  She looked away, not wanting to be caught staring at the creature. She spent the empty minutes appreciating the impressive arches and the colorful windows. When it was her turn, she slipped into the confessional booth. A small wooden crucifix hung above the lattice.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” She said it out of habit. But she hadn’t sinned, not really, not since her last confession. She’d not even profanely used God’s name in speech. “I have thought poorly of a man named Franklin Arnold, a man I met briefly outside the courthouse and who I saw yesterday under troubling circumstances. I find myself at cross purposes with him, and I detest him.” That was true. She’d been wishing only ill for the man who’d bludgeoned Thurman to death with the wrecking ball and who was no doubt looking forward to doing the same thing to Pete and the other gargoyles in the city. “We are taught to forgive, but I cannot find it in my heart to forgive this wretched man.”

  The priest listened raptly, and in turn she listened to his words of advice and absolution.

  “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” the priest concluded.

  “For His mercy endures forever,” Evelyn replied. Then she gained permission to access the roof where she would try to talk to the church’s gargoyles. They would be safe; according to her research, Arnold had no designs on buying and demolishing any of the city’s churches. She hoped their names were easier to pronounce than Bjoernolf and Gudlaug.

  The access door to the roof was narrow, and she guessed the church’s maintenance workers were by necessity skinny. She picked her way across a slightly canted section of roof, heading toward a lion-faced gargoyle. Balancing carefully, she opened her backpack, but she stopped as her fingers touched a can of beer. Pete had told her gargoyles favored beer of any kind—at any temperature and at any time of the day, but it didn’t seem proper to open a beer on the roof of Saints Peter and Paul.

  “Hello?” No response. “Please.”

  She gave up and made her way to a gargoyle with an eagle’s head. These gargoyles were a mix of greens, darker at their bases, like Pete and Bjoernolf and Thurman, but paler from the hips up, and almost white at the tops.

  “Hello?” She tried again. “My name is Evelyn Love. I am a friend of Pete, the gargoyle on Haight. Today I met Bjoernolf, and he suggested I come here.”

  Nothing.

  She looked away from the church and toward Washington Square. The park was popular with both tourists and locals and was circled by a variety of eating establishments. Her stomach rumbled at the thought. She’d not bothered with breakfast, intending to either grab something as she’d jogged or cave and eat the gumdrops. Lunch definitely, she’d circle the park and pick something different, a restaurant she’d never been to. There were people milling in the park, Evelyn suspected there always were. The park and this church had been featured in a few sce
nes in Clint Eastwood’s first Dirty Harry film and featured again in the Scorpio Killer, and the park in Bedazzled.

  Evelyn could barely see the Benjamin Franklin statue in the park from her vantage point.

  “I wonder if statues have life,” she mused, and then quoted Michelangelo. “‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’”

  She moved past the angel gargoyle, which likewise hadn’t answered her, and headed to the ox-headed gargoyle, suddenly realizing the significance of the sculptures. It had probably been spelled out in the literature on the table inside, if only she’d bothered to read further. The ox visage looked at the same time sad and wise, and she felt moved to voice another quote, from the book of Ezekiel.

  “I saw a windstorm coming out of the north … an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire were what looked like four living creatures. Each had four faces and four wings.”

  The ox gargoyle turned its head and added: “Their faces looked like this—each had the face of a man, and on the right side the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces.”

  Evelyn said: “Then there came a voice from above the expanse over the heads of the living creatures as they stood with lowered wings. Over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a form like that of a man.”

  “—and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, such was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord,” the ox finished.

  She sat next to the gargoyle. “You symbolize—”

  “Luke, and that is my name. The eagle is John, the angel Matthew, and the lion Mark. They are not so willing to talk to humans as I.”

  “Thank you for talking to me, Luke.” Evelyn pulled out her map and wrote the gargoyles’ names on it, drawing a line to the church’s address, and noting that Luke would talk.

  “Thank you, Evelyn Love, for trying to save my kin.”

  They chatted about nothing in particular for a while—the park, people walking by, the weather. When Evelyn felt she had established a reasonable rapport, she brought up Arnold and watching Thurman shattered yesterday.

  “Did Thurman feel much pain, Luke? Did he suffer? Did—”

  “A building is just a thing without one of us,” Luke said. “It has appearance, beauty or plainness, a purpose, but it has no soul. We gargoyles give buildings some of our essence, share our hearts and personalities, breathe life into the stone and protect it, help it stand against nature’s forces. Such buildings have souls. Callously destroying a building touched by such life is an unconscionable thing. A sin. Thou shall not kill.”

  So he wouldn’t answer the question, which was an answer as far as Evelyn was concerned. Thurman had felt a lot of pain. “I won’t let it happen to Pete. I can’t. I’m going to stop Arnold.”

  “Forgive Franklin Arnold,” Luke said. “For he has sinned.”

  “He attends this church.”

  The ox gargoyle nodded, bringing to Evelyn’s mind the image of a bobble-head. “Yes, he does, Evelyn Love. With his wife.”

  “Young, Chinese.” Mark joined them, startling Evelyn. She nearly slid off the roof. She hadn’t heard the lion-headed gargoyle approach.

  “They are generous to this church, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold,” Mark continued.

  “But Franklin Arnold is oblivious,” Luke said.

  “Oblivious that his wife—Mei-li—is Other-Than-Human.” This from Mark. “She appears human, save in confessional. There she takes on her true form.”

  Evelyn swallowed hard at the revelation and found a blank spot on the map to scrawl more notes. “Seriously? She is an—”

  “OT, as your kind calls them,” Luke said.

  Mark sat next to Evelyn, his large form dwarfing hers. “And there is humor in her form. Mei-li means beautiful or pretty.”

  “Mei-li is a real foxy lady,” Luke chuckled.

  “Enough!” Mark scolded. “I overstepped the bounds. You did not have to join me, brother.”

  “A fox?”

  “Leave it at your term, Evelyn Love,” Mark said. “An OT.”

  Evelyn’s mind spun. “Is she … Mei-li … trying to stop her husband from buying the old buildings? Is she trying to stop him from—”

  “Sending wrecking balls against our kind?” Luke asked. He shook his head. “She has her own plans, Evelyn Love. Forgive Mei-li, for she has sinned.”

  “And will sin again,” Mark said.

  “Tell me!” Evelyn said. “Those plans. What are they? Do you know?”

  Luke nodded. “Of course we know.”

  “But we cannot tell you,” Mark said. “What is said in the confessional is between the penitent and God. The sanctity of the confessional stands. We cannot repeat what was said inside the confessional.”

  Luke’s face brightened ever-so-slightly. “And so I can say this: you would do well, Evelyn Love, to think like a good police detective.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Follow the money,” Mark said. “And follow Mei-li.”

  She made a few more notes on the map, replaced it in her backpack, and stood, careful not to slip. Mark reached out a stony paw to steady her. “Thank you, Mark, Luke.”

  “You have been most kind,” they said practically in unison. It sent a shiver through her. It was what Thurman had said yesterday.

  Luke nudged her backpack. “Perhaps you should not be so burdened on the rest of your journey this day, Evelyn Love.”

  She took out the remaining six-pack and the bag of cashews and tin of gumdrops. It made it easier to squeeze through the narrow access door when she left.

  Chapter 2.7

  Time had melted with the gargoyles. Evelyn left Saints Peter and Paul in the mid-afternoon. Her stomach snarling its demands, she jogged across to Washington Park, stopping at the Benjamin Franklin statue and looking back at the church. It was even more beautiful at a distance. Maybe she’d come back this Sunday.

  She usually attended services at Saint Agnes’s in the Haight-Ashbury district. Called “the last chance church” by those in the neighborhood, Saint Agnes drew gays, straights, and OTs, and Evelyn was comfortable there. But it didn’t have highly conversant gargoyles, and it didn’t have Franklin and Mei-li Arnold as parishioners.

  “What am I hungry for?” Food, she decided, scanning a row of restaurants across the street on the far side of the park. Any type of food, and a decent amount of it. Her eyes lit on a Thai restaurant, which looked to be the closest. She headed toward it, at the same time catching sight of the man with the cell phone. He was with two figures wearing ball caps and dark gray hoodies, their faces so shadowed she couldn’t see any details.

  The man pointed at her, and the two strangers started off on a run.

  Evelyn bolted, aiming straight for the Thai restaurant. She would dash inside, pull out her cell phone, and call Detective Reese, the woman who investigated Thomas’s murder. She cut across the grass—shorter than taking the sidewalk—hurtled a small bed of gravel and dead flowers, and raced into the street, narrowly avoiding a rusted-out Datsun.

  Not pausing to look over her shoulder, she charged through the restaurant’s front door and skidded to a stop, nearly slamming into the counter. Though it was well past lunchtime, the place was crowded. More than a dozen tables were occupied, the nearest by a middle-aged man and a blue-tinted fey in provocative enough clothes to suggest she was a hooker. The odd pair looked up at Evelyn’s sudden arrival, and then resumed eating. The place smelled amazing and was warm and colorful, the walls a rich red decorated with gilded dragons and watercolors with Thai printing ringing the images.

  “Follow me.” A waitress appeared at Evelyn’s elbow and guided her to a small table at the back of the dining room.
r />   Classical music filtered softly from speakers high on the walls, and the sonorous buzz of conversations lulled Evelyn into a little security. Her breathing slowed and she felt the rosy rush on her face fade. She’d be safe here—as long as she remained inside the busy restaurant. She hadn’t been followed into the office complex where she’d met Bjoernolf, or into the church, and so they were looking to catch her out in the open.

  Catch her and do what?

  Maybe just talk to her.

  But for some reason Evelyn didn’t think so. Their interest didn’t have the “conversation” feel to it. Rather, it had the stalker-intent-to-do-something-bad feel. Dagger had taught her to never ignore her gut.

  “Tea?”

  “Yes, please.” Evelyn sat, facing the door and the window, which was cluttered with an assortment of green plants but afforded enough of a view that she could watch for the hooded pair.

  Along the wall to her right was a large aquarium, probably a hundred and fifty gallons. Shubunkin, Orandas, and fan-tailed goldfish swam, seemingly in time with the music.

  “The red curry chicken, please.” Evelyn saw it among the specials advertised on a placard near the cash register; it was one of her favorites, and so she hadn’t even bothered to look at the menu. Besides, she had enough in her wallet for a “special.” And maybe there’d be money left over for dessert.

  “Fried rice or white?”

  “Fried, no green onions.”