To Play the Fool

by Laurie R. King

  “Did he wear a hat?”

  “The first time I saw him, no. He was dressed as a normal businessman. The time he drove out, he looked like a cowboy, with snakeskin boots and a hat with a turned-up brim—a cowboy hat.”

  “Do you remember the make of car?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “How did you know he had one, then?”

  “John described it. He said it was big and ostentatious because his brother had a small…sexual organ.”

  “Did he smoke?”

  “Thomas or John?”

  “Either.”

  Sawyer thought for a moment. He looked now like an tired old ex-professor on the skids, and it would have taken a considerable leap of the imagination to place him in a black cassock.

  “John smoked cigars, expensive ones, from time to time. I never saw him with a cigarette, although he carried one of those disposable lighters. I don’t remember about Thomas, but I was only with him about ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Think about it and let me know if you come up with anything.”

  “He may have been a smoker, come to think of it,” Sawyer said, sounding surprised. “His hands—they were tidy. Small, fussy hands. But the nails were discolored, yellow. Like a smoker’s.” The pauses between his words were becoming brief, more sporadic. His speech was almost normal, but he looked so tired.

  “Is there anything else you know about Thomas Darcy?”

  “He was here in San Francisco on the day his brother died.”

  “Was he, now?” Hawkin almost purred with satisfaction.

  “Yes. I normally saw John before I would go to Berkeley. I would meet him somewhere in the park, often in Marx Meadow before I walked up to Park Presidio, where Joel picked me up. That is where we met that day.”

  “What time did you meet him?”

  “In the morning. Perhaps nine. We walked through the meadow and up into the trees, and he told me that his brother was coming to see him again. And he told me that he had decided what to do about the piece of land his brother was so desperate to sell. He told me…he said he had made up his mind to disappear again, but before he went, he was going to sign over his half interest in it. Sign it over not to his brother, but to me.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Can you imagine? It wasn’t enough to confound and rob his brother; he had to do it in a way that would take over my life, as well. The property was worth four or five million dollars, he told me. It is not possible to own that much money; he wanted it to own me.”

  “What was your response?”

  “I was angry…very angry. I thought…I had hoped that after more than a year of working with him, he would begin to grow, to let go of his wickedness. Instead, it had grown within him. I was so incensed, I shouted some words at him and then walked away from him. In fact, it took me so long to calm myself that I forgot about Joel. He had waited and then left. I had to walk and thumb rides across the Bay.”

  “But you didn’t actually see Thomas Darcy?”

  “Oh yes, I did. He was sitting in a car parked along Kennedy Drive, reading a map. He didn’t see me, I don’t think, but I saw him. I might not have recognized him, because he’d grown a beard, but I saw his distinctive hands on the map, and after all, he was on my mind, since John had just told me that he was going to meet him.”

  “What kind of car was he in?”

  “It was not the one John had described. This one was small, white, ordinary. New-looking.”

  A typical rental car, Kate thought, writing the description on her pad.

  “I suggest, Dr. Sawyer,” said Hawkin evenly, “that it is fortunate for you that Thomas Darcy did not notice you.”

  Sawyer held up his left hand, rubbed his thumb on the indentation carved there by his ring, which now lay in an envelope in the property clerk’s basement room, and shook his head slowly. “Poor, poor Beatrice. A queen among women. She saw him. She must have.”

  “Not that day. Earlier, when he drove his own car out from Texas, then she saw him. The rest was Thomas Darcy’s guilty imagination, reading too much into her words.”

  “Did she suffer?”

  “I don’t think so. The same as John, a hard, fast blow to the skull, immediate unconsciousness, and then death.”

  “Poor child. So pointless. Will she have a funeral?”

  Hawkin was taken aback at this unexpected question. “I really don’t know. It depends on whether or not someone claims the body. The city doesn’t pay for elaborate funerals.”

  “She had no family left. I will perform the ceremony.”

  “We’ll have to see about that.”

  “I can raise whatever money is required, Inspector Hawkin. And although I suppose my license has expired, back in another lifetime I was once an ordained priest.”

  Late that night, Kate went up to the sixth-floor jail and stood outside David Sawyer’s cell. He was on his knees on the hard floor, his hands loosely clasped, and he looked up when she appeared. A smile came into his eyes and his face, and he got to his feet.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said.

  “Dear Kate. What a pleasure to say your name, Inspector Martinelli. Names are one of the few pleasures I have longed for. I was not praying. I don’t seem to be able to pray, but going through the motions is calming. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wanted to say thank you, for today. I know what it cost you. Or at least I can begin to guess.”

  “Had the payment been made a month ago, a life would have been saved. No cost would be too great, were it to change that.”

  “I’ve often thought how nice it would be if we could know the future,” Kate said, and realized with surprise that she was now comforting him. The thought reached him at the same time, and he gave her a crooked smile. Then he did a strange thing: He put his right hand out through the bars and, with his fingers resting in the hair above her temple, he traced a cross with his thumb onto the skin of her forehead.

  “Absolve te, Kate Martinelli,” he said. “What you and your partner did was both necessary and right. No apology is due.” For a moment, he rested his entire hand, warm and heavy, on the top of her head, then retrieved it and stepped back from the bars. “Good night, Kate Martinelli. I hope you sleep well.”

  Twenty-Seven

  By nature he was the sort of man who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride, that vanity which is very near to humility.

  Kate was involved in the final stages of the case and even testified during the trial of Thomas Darcy, but her heart was not in it, and the case seemed remarkably distant and flat in the wake of the revelations of David Sawyer’s statement.

  Once they had the name, the case quickly became watertight: plane tickets, a gasoline station receipt, and a hotel clerk with a good memory placed him in San Francisco the week his brother was killed. The identity of the John Doe in the park was confirmed as that of Alexander John Darcy through the partial fingerprint raised by forensics and the dental X ray sent by his Fort Worth dentist. By the time Thomas Darcy was faced with Beatrice, he had become slightly more wily, but he had still used a credit card to hire a car; the newsagent in Fort Worth testified that Darcy had received the Wednesday San Francisco paper with the interview of Beatrice on the day after it had appeared; and Darcy was remembered by the sales clerk in a Pacifica hardware store where he had bought a pair of narrow, strong wire cutters. He even took the wire cutters home with him to Texas, where they were found in an odds-and-ends drawer in his kitchen. Forensic analysis proved that the clippers had been used on the cut ring found near Beatrice’s body, a ring remembered well by many, including the owners of Sentient Beans, who testified at Darcy’s trial, as well. The partial fingerprint lifted from the side of the ring had enough points of similarity to clinch the case.

  For his brother’s death, he was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, but for the killing of Beatrice Jankowski, the charge of first-degree murder persisted to the final
verdict.

  He was never tried for the death of his brother’s dog Theophilus, although traces of canine blood were identified in the crevice between the sole and upper on the right boot of a pair in his closet.

  Before all that, though, on the day Thomas Darcy was arrested in Fort Worth, Kate went to the jail and personally supervised the release of David Sawyer. She waited outside while his orange jail clothes were taken from him and his jeans and shirt, duffel coat and knit cap, the worn boots with the dust of Barstow still on them, the knapsack with two books and a jug of stale water, and the worn gold wedding ring were all returned to him. When he came out into the hallway, he was met by the sight of Inspector Kate Martinelli, propping herself up against a carved hiking stick nearly a foot taller than she.

  He stopped.

  “I thought you might want your stick back,” she said.

  He did not answer and made no move to take the staff; he said only, “Is there some place we can go for coffee?”

  She carried the awkward pole through the halls, into the elevator, out the doors, and down the street, finally threading it through the door of the coffee shop to lean it against the greasy wall in back of her chair, all the time wondering if he was going to leave the damned thing with her and what on earth she would do with it.

  The waitress came by with her pad, looking as tired and disheveled as the chipped name tag pinned crookedly to her limp nylon uniform.

  “Just coffee, thanks,” Kate said.

  Sawyer looked into her dark eyes and smiled. “I, too, would like a cup of coffee, please, Elizabeth. Would you also be so kind as to give me some cream and some sugar to go in it?”

  The woman blinked, and Kate was aware of an odd gush of pleasure at Sawyer’s undisguised enjoyment of the words he was pronouncing. He seemed to taste them before he let them go, and she thought she was catching a glimpse of what Professor Whitlaw had meant when she described his power as a public speaker.

  Their coffee came quickly. Sawyer opened two envelopes of sugar, stirred them and a large dollop of cream into the thick once-white mug, and put the spoon down on the table.

  “Beatrice’s funeral is this afternoon,” he said.

  “I planned on going. Al, too.”

  “I asked Philip Gardner to take the service.”

  “Your license being expired,” she said with a smile.

  “I did not feel I had the right to the cassock.”

  It suddenly struck Kate that he was not wearing his wedding ring, either. She set her cup down with a bang. “Now look, David, you can’t go around taking all the world’s sins on your shoulders. You didn’t kill her; Thomas Darcy did. You’re less to blame than the newspaper reporter.”

  “I only intend to shoulder my own sins, Kate, I assure you.”

  “Then why—”

  He put up a hand. “Please, Kate. This is something I must wrestle with alone, although I do truly appreciate your willingness to help me.”

  “Where will you go? Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Eve wishes me to go to the house she is borrowing, after the funeral. In fact, she has asked me to go with her to England, assuming she can persuade the authorities to issue a passport to a man with no identification papers.”

  “And will you?”

  Sawyer let his eyes drift away from Kate until he was focusing on the wall behind her. For a very long time, he studied the piece of carved wood that stood there, and slowly, slowly his face began to relax, to lose the taut, pinched look it had taken on with the news of Beatrice’s death. Eventually he tore his gaze away from the staff and looked back at Kate, but he did not answer her question. Instead, he asked, “Will your friend come to the funeral, as well?”

  “My friend?” Do you mean Lee? I hadn’t thought to ask her. It’s difficult for her to get around. She’s in a wheelchair.”

  “I know. Still, she might find it a good experience.”

  “Lee has been to a depressing number of funerals over the last few years,” she said flatly. He nodded his understanding, finished his coffee, and stood up. Kate went to the cash register to pay their bill, and when she turned back to the room, she saw that Sawyer was standing outside the door. The staff was still leaning against the wall. She retrieved it, followed him outside, and stood beside him, looking at the familiar dingy street.

  He was watching a filthy, decrepit, toothless individual pick fastidiously through a garbage can on the other side of the street. Kate waited to hear some apt quotation about the human condition, but when he spoke, it was in his own words, about his own condition. “Everything I told you, with the exception of seeing Thomas Darcy in a car reading a map, would be discounted as hearsay evidence, come the trial, would it not?”

  “Some of it would, yes.”

  “Most everything, I think. You do not need my testimony.”

  “That depends on what forensics finds. If he covered his tracks carefully, we’ll be up shit creek.”

  “With my scant evidence your only paddle.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Well. I don’t imagine a defense counsel would permit it to get by without considerable battering. We shall just have to trust that more concrete evidence will be forthcoming.

  “Thank you for your friendship, Kate Martinelli,” he said abruptly. “I shall see you at the church this afternoon.”

  “Wait—David. Do you want your walking stick?”

  He looked at it, then looked at her, and a smile came onto his face: a sweet smile, a dazzling smile—an Erasmus smile.

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do,” he said, and reached out his hand for it. He cupped his palm briefly over the smooth place on top of the carved head and then ran his hand down the shaft to the other worn patch just below shoulder height, and then he turned and walked away.

  To her surprise, when Kate got back to her desk, she found herself phoning Lee to ask if she wanted to go to the funeral of this homeless woman whom Lee had never met. To her greater surprise, Lee said yes.

  Half a dozen photographers lounged around the steps to the church, but Kate had expected them, so she continued on around the block to a delivery entrance. The mortician’s van was parked there, and she pulled up behind it, extricated Lee and her chair from the car, and they entered the church through the side entrance.

  There was a surprisingly large congregation. Kate recognized many of the faces in the pews from the investigation, most of them street people, a few store owners in Beatrice’s home area of the Haight. Krishna and Leila from Sentient Beans were sitting in the front row; the three veterans, with the damaged Tony in the middle, looking ready to bolt, sat in the last pew back. News reporters swelled the ranks and added contrast in the form of clean neckties and intact jackets. Al Hawkin sat almost directly across the church from them.

  But no David Sawyer.

  Kate took all this in as she was pushing Lee into a place along the side aisle. Then she took a seat beside her at the end of the pew.

  She became aware of Philip Gardner’s voice coming from the altar.

  “We thank you for giving her to us,” he was saying, “her family and friends, to know and love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.”

  A movement caught Kate’s eye, one of the white-gowned deacons at Dean Gardner’s side. It took a moment for her to realize it was David Sawyer. It took a while longer for her to recognize him, to her astonishment, as Brother Erasmus.

  The service flowed past them. People stood up and read, haltingly or fluently. A hymn was sung, and another, and then Philip Gardner was raising his hands in blessing and declaring that the Lord would guide our feet into the way of peace, and it was over. The cassocks and surplices fluttered up the aisle, people began to shuffle in their wake, and then Sawyer, or perhaps Erasmus, was sitting in the pew ahead of Kate, with Lee’s hand in his. The ring, Kate noticed, was back on his hand. She made the introductions, although they hardly seemed necessary.
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br />   “The wounded healer,” he said quietly in response to Lee’s name.

  “I might say the same of you,” Lee answered.

  “Ah. Answer a fool according to his folly,” he said with a grin.

  “And are you? A fool, that is?” Lee leaned forward in the chair to study the old face opposite her. “Am I speaking with Brother Erasmus, or David Sawyer?”

  “I am Fortune’s fool,” he admitted. “An old doting fool with one foot already in the grave. A lunatic, lean-witted fool. How well white hairs become a fool and jester.”

  “I think white hairs suit a fool very well. How does it go? ‘This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool.’ ”

  The old man looked, of all things, embarrassed, and he seemed grateful for the interruption when Al Hawkin joined them. He stood up to shake Hawkin’s hand.

  “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”

  The detective laughed. “Never that. I just wanted to thank you for your help and wish you well.”

  “All’s well that ends well.” He turned to Kate, and she waited for his smile and his words, taken from someone else but made his own, and they came: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and grant you peace.”

  “I take it you’re planning on going back onto the streets?” she asked.

  “It is better never to begin a good work than, having begun it, to stop,” he said quietly.

  “You’re getting old, David,” she said bluntly. “It’s a young man’s life. Talk to Philip Gardner. You can do your good work at the seminary.”

  He nearly laughed. “Amongst all these stirs of discontented strife. O, let me lead an academic life!”

  Kate had not heard Professor Whitlaw’s approach until the English voice came from behind her, sounding both disappointed and sad.

  “He was a scholar,” she said, stressing the past tense, “and a ripe and good one.”

  Brother Erasmus focused his gaze over Kate’s shoulder but only shook his head gently.