Tom

Raymond lost Martin’s money.

What are you talking about?

Laird goes: Martin told me. Raymond told him and then Martin told me. I still buy him breakfast, you know, to make sure he eats, and we talk.

Getting Martin breakfast, that’s really nice of you, I say. Have him over to your bachelor pad, do you? You cook those Egg McMuffins yourself?

Laird ignores my dig. He had sort of adopted Martin. At least that’s what he wanted people to think. Like he was Martin’s Mother Teresa. Look at me. Look at how I’m doing more for Martin than anybody else. Then Raymond stepped in and did for Martin what Laird hadn’t, and he didn’t boast about it either. Raymond’s a minister. He preaches on Sundays at a storefront church a few blocks south of here near Civic Center Park. Not some guy with a matchbook degree, but a real minister with a real degree from the University of San Francisco hanging above his desk inside a frame nice enough to know he didn’t buy it at Walgreens. That frame and diploma are the only unhumble things about Raymond.

Raymond was handling Martin’s money through a friend at a bank, Laird says. You didn’t know that?

I don’t answer. I look up at the sky, feel the sun on my face, and let out a long breath. Of course I knew. Everyone knew. Martin talked.

I got a meeting with McGraw, I tell Laird.

I don’t really. I just want to get away from Laird. It’s barely past nine in the morning. I got in ten minutes ago. I need coffee. Lots of coffee.

I already told McGraw, Laird says and gives me this smirk. But don’t worry. I didn’t tell him how much. What was it? Ten, fifteen thousand? More? I’ll leave it to you to tell him that. I don’t want to make you look bad.

Another maddening smirk.

I don’t have anything to look bad about, I say.

I feel Laird watch me go. I keep walking down Leavenworth toward McGraw’s office and make like I’m buzzing the bell to be let in the door but I’m really looking out the corner of my eye at Laird. I have enough to do without worrying about him. Raymond supervises the shelter and drop-in center. Until recently, he answered to Don, my program coordinator, but Don got hired by the AIDS Foundation right before I was going to lay him off. If Don was still here this would be on him to fix. But he’s not here. So now I got to deal with Laird. And McGraw. Son of a bitch. You picked a good time to go, Don.

Laird crosses the street to a convenience store. This speed freak we all call Big Pete hits Laird up for money, but Laird shrugs him off. Laird’s not into speed freaks. He likes to make out like he helps the Martins of the world. They’re more sympathetic than speed freaks jonesing on the sidewalk. He likes to act high and mighty with speed freaks. Get all NA in their face.

As soon as Laird walks into the store, I hurry back to Fresh Start without coffee. Raymond’s sitting at his desk, back to the door, staring out a window at a boarded-up building, his Bible open on his lap. In the alley separating a vacant building from the shelter, pigeons fly past, flapping loudly in the dim light.

Laird knows, I tell Raymond.

Raymond ignores me, reads aloud from the Bible: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.

Put the Bible up, Raymond. Laird knows your buddy walked with Martin’s money.

Raymond raises his head and without turning around says, Laird was just up here.

What did he say?

That Martin told him I lost his money.

And what did you say?

I told him what happened.

Why?

It was the truth, Raymond says.

I watch a pigeon strutting back and forth on the ledge of a broken window puffing its chest at another pigeon.

The truth? Jesus, Raymond, fuck the truth. We’re talking about our jobs here.

Goddamn Laird. He’s one of these formerly homeless guys who get off the street, rent a room somewhere, and spend all their time around places like Fresh Start pretending to help other homeless guys when really, they’re just living off Social Security and doing nothing more than what they did when they were homeless: hanging out on the street.

Laird said that before he was homeless, he used to be a manager for an AT&T office in the Financial District until his marriage went south and he went all to hell. I don’t know. The guy can’t spell worth a lick, and his teeth are as crooked as a boxer’s nose. Small, red, blotchy mushroom clouds dot his face like something exploded beneath his skin. The result of a childhood allergy, he tells anyone who asks.

I don’t ask questions, but I wonder: Wouldn’t an AT&T office manager know how to spell and have dental insurance and maybe see a doctor for his face? It seems to me more must have happened than a loused-up marriage to go from the Financial District to the street just like that. If he ever worked in the Financial District.

What I do know is that every time Laird sees one of my staff fuck up, he runs in and rats them out to their supervisor. He used to rat them out to me until he realized I didn’t really care one way or the other that so-and-so was late one day, or that so-and-so had cussed out a client, or that so-and-so took a longer than usual lunch break. This would never be allowed at AT&T, Laird would say.

Well, motherfucker, I told him one time, you’re not at A fucking T and T anymore, are you? You’re in the Tenderloin. We hire the goddamn homeless and a lot of them have done nothing but drink from nine to five since whenever and now they got a lot to learn. With all your office management experience, Laird, do you want to teach them the fine art of working for a living? And by the way, Laird, what exactly do you do now?

That put the brakes on Laird knocking on my door ragging about my staff. At least I thought it had.

There’s nothing I can do now but go see McGraw, I tell Raymond. For both our sakes.

Raymond nods.

An uneasy quiet settles between us, interrupted by the cooing of the pigeons. I look around the empty shelter. Not much to it. A meal and an army cot for the night. Open seven at night, kick everyone out the next morning by six, and send them over to the drop-in and the jobs counselor. A lot of the guys just sit around all day until the shelter opens again. Pretty simple. But then Raymond helped Martin and it got all kinds of complicated.

Raymond told me he had it all worked out. The bank teller was a good friend and would handle Martin’s money so Martin wouldn’t get ripped off. Then a week ago he told me his buddy had walked with Martin’s money. Raymond said he would find the guy and get it back. I should have fired Raymond then and saved my ass, but I didn’t. I just wanted Raymond to do what had to be done and for the whole thing to go away.

I screwed up. Listen to your gut. I listened to Raymond instead. I knew we should have stayed away from Martin’s money. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. But for a moment I thought we could actually help Martin. Martin, whom we’d all given up on. That this time we’d actually get him off the street, like we had tried to do so many times before. Raymond had a plan. Something none of us had thought of before. It made a lot of sense.

So I guess I did listen to my gut.

Before you see McGraw, Raymond says, you should know that Laird said he was going to file a complaint.

What kind of complaint?

A complaint about us to the grievance committee of the board of directors. About how we handled Martin’s money.

We?

You and me.

Shit. I knew about the bank, but I didn’t know your friend would walk with Martin’s money.

I think knowing about the bank is the same as handling his money, Raymond says.

We got to stick together, I say, ignoring the sour look Raymond’s giving me. I’m going to McGraw. What I’ll do is tell him you’re going to pay Martin back. I’ll say: Raymond will set it right. I’ll tell him how good your work has been and maybe I can convince him to suspend you and no more. Suspension without pay for a week or something. That’s a pinch but it beats being fired.

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful, Raymond says. The poorest of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety. But your root I will destroy by famine; it will slay your survivors.

I don’t know what you mean by that, Raymond. I really don’t. I’m trying to save your job and mine. Whatever happens, you got to leave my name out of it. If I’m caught up in this, I can’t back you. Then it’s the old every-man-for-himself routine.

I reach across his desk to shake his hand. A bunch of pigeons flap past, breaking the tension, and I step back at the noise and drop my hand.

For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity, Raymond says.

Goddamn, more Bible talk. Like I told him, I knew about the bank but I didn’t know the bank teller would walk. That’s the truth. I don’t care what Raymond thinks. And if he can’t think clearly, he’d better start looking on the employment page of Craigslist. Because if he thinks I’ll back him at the risk of my own job when all he can do is quote the Bible, well, then so much for thinking.

I leave Raymond’s office and walk outside. The fog remains heavy and drips form along my face, pushed by the wind. Big Pete is still outside the drop-in trying to shake down staff for smokes. His dope-fiend partners Ross and Jim are with him scratching their arms like they have fleas. They used to work in the shelter before they started using again. Clean for five years, then boom, got the itch. Now they make no sense. Their minds are rattled like someone shaking a jar filled with marbles.

I cross my arms against the cold and lean against the shelter building. A rat scurries along the curb and I almost jump out of my skin. I slump against the building again, heart pounding. Sometimes, I wonder when I lost it. I don’t know. I don’t. I remember as a teenager, I backed into a car and broke one of its taillights. I had just gotten my license. I left a note on the windshield with my name and number. I told my father, thinking he’d be all kinds of proud of how I took responsibility, but instead he read me the riot act about how the owner of the car would call and take us to the cleaners for every nick and scratch. I was sixteen and the old man made an impression. You get raised to do the right thing and tell the truth, but not if it might bite you in the ass. That’s the message. Whether I learned that then or learned it later and just think I learned it then, I can’t say.

I should have known Raymond, being a minister and all, would cause problems. I hired him last year. His first day on the job he taped a piece of paper above his desk with this on it: There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. Deuteronomy 15:11.

Well, if God commanded that Raymond take on Martin, he gave him a tough assignment. Martin’s a big old bald-headed crazy bastard, maybe about fifty. He dresses in black and wears a winter coat streaked with bird shit no matter how warm the weather. He talks to himself for long stretches at a time. Whatever he’s hearing inside his head tears him up. He’ll sit giggling in a corner unaware of how much he sweats and stinks by wearing that heavy coat. He carries bags of salt and pours the salt in his mouth like normal guys would peanuts. The counselors in our mental health program refer him to San Francisco General every now and then. The doctors tranq him and he comes back to the drop-in doing the Thorazine shuffle.

Then one day Laird stepped in all high and mighty with his AT&T bullshit. Saying how we got to do this, that, and the other for Martin. Do an intervention, he said. We can’t just sit back and let the man eat salt. We have to intervene.

Well, goddammit, Laird, I said, intervene then. You go and take on this guy and hold his hand and put him on every goddamn waiting list around for this and that halfway house and see just what the fuck you can do for him. And if you do get him in somewhere, how long do you think he’ll stick? How long do you think it will be before he stops taking his meds and wanders off? You think we haven’t tried, Laird? You think Martin hasn’t sampled the hospitality of several halfway houses after weeks and weeks of effort on our end? I tell you what, Laird. I’ve been doing this job for fourteen years. We’re done trying, Laird. We got a good little routine now with Martin. He hangs in the drop-in and eats his salt, and we give him a shelter bed. Works for Martin. Works for me.

Laird complained to McGraw, who was busy making appointments with some suits downtown about the youth program. Kids are good for fundraising. People care about kids, the younger the better. They’re like puppies. People don’t care about homeless adults. They’re not puppies. I can just see McGraw listening to Laird and noticing his fucked-up yellow teeth and how he spits a little when he talks. McGraw’s a flowchart guy. Information flows from the bottom box to the box above it and from that box to the next higher box. He’s the top box. Laird skipped some boxes going directly to McGraw. McGraw doesn’t like to see the flow interrupted. He sent Laird back down the chart to me and I sent him further down to Raymond. McGraw didn’t follow up and neither did I.

Then someone from the mayor’s office called about Martin. I could only guess Laird had complained to somebody at City Hall. I told the someone who called that Martin was seeing our counselors on a daily basis, that he used the drop-in center during the day and slept in the shelter at night, and the someone said, I see, and we both hung up.

Never heard another thing from the mayor’s office or from Laird either. He had done his thing. He had stirred up his little shit and convinced himself of his power. Not that he didn’t care about Martin. On a scale of one to ten, I’d say Laird was about a two, because, as he said, he would get Martin breakfast.

Raymond however was a ten and then some. He took Martin on like a mission.

I stay standing outside the shelter trying to clear my head. Trying to think. How do I tell McGraw we lost all of a crazy homeless guy’s money? I won’t. I can’t. My legs feel locked at the knees. I don’t want to move, but I got to. I got to get on and deal with McGraw. Better me going to him than him calling me in.

I walk toward the admin building, each step an effort. Then it hits me and I stop so fast I almost fall over. A way I can tell McGraw that Raymond lost Martin’s money but that we won’t have to pay it back. Raymond will have to be the fall guy for this to work but he’s the one who got us into this mess. What else can he expect? Payback’s a bitch. I got it almost worked out when I hear Big Pete calling me.

Pete’s about as wide as the block and more than six feet tall. He’s always moving, little darting moves like he’s trying to fake someone out. At the same time his head bops around like one of those little dolls you see on the dashboard of a taxi, but he’s retained his muscle somehow. Hands thick as bricks. When he fights, his fists emerge from the long sleeves of his frayed trench coat like something shot out of a cannon. We don’t allow him in the drop-in or the shelter, because one time, for no reason, he kicked someone’s ass so bad the guy nearly died.

Hey, man, Pete says, jogging across the street, coat flapping around his waist. Jim and Ross watch him.

What’s up, Pete?

It’s all good, you know that.

He laughs, puts on his sunglasses and leans down by my ear like we have some secret deal going on.

You help me out, man? Loan me a dollar?

I like that. Loan. I reach into a hip pocket for the change I keep on me so I don’t have to pull out my wallet. I always give Pete money when he asks for it. I’d rather do that than have him coldcock me for my wallet. Jim and Ross stretch their necks out trying to see how much I hand him. Four quarters. Pete takes it without a word.

One morning several months back, after everyone had been kicked out of the shelter, Raymond came to me and said, We got to get Martin on disability so he can get a place to live. I told him the last time we tried to get Martin on disability was about three years ago. He was denied because of an obsession he had at the time with trash. He used to pick up bits of paper on the sidewalk outside the drop-in for no other reason than he got a kick out of doing it. No matter how small, Martin picked it up and threw it away, talking to himself the entire time. Sometimes, he just shoved the bits of paper in his coat pocket. I’m not going to say the sidewalks were much cleaner, but they weren’t as cluttered, I’ll give him that.

When the disability people came out to interview Martin, they saw him doing his thing with trash and were impressed but in the wrong way. They said Martin’s trash fixation showed he cared about his community. Therefore he was not all that nuts. Therefore he could find a paying job like janitorial work. Therefore he didn’t need disability.

The book of Proverbs says, If you mistreat the poor, you insult your Creator, Raymond said when I finished telling him the story.

What’s that supposed to mean?

That failure does not excuse us from doing nothing, Raymond said.

I didn’t stand in his way. I figured Martin would be denied and Raymond would find another Bible quote and move on. What I hadn’t counted on was that by then, Martin had some things going for him. He had stopped picking up trash. Instead, he had started eating salt. The disability people stared slack-jawed as Martin ground mouthfuls of salt instead of answering their questions. Raymond stood behind him, Bible in hand.

Whether it was through God’s intervention or the salt, Martin got his disability. Not only did he get it, his start date was rolled back to his original disability application three years earlier. Crazy Martin got $21,600 dropped in his lap just like that, plus the start of a regular monthly check of six hundred dollars.

Laird was stewed, man. He gave Raymond looks that Ray Charles could have seen were so full of hate that they’d have made even Muhammad Ali nervous. Laird complained to me that Raymond should have spoken to him because he had been helping Martin. That he had been working on something with Fresh Start’s mental health guys. And what were you working on, Laird? I didn’t wait for an answer because he and I both knew he didn’t have one to give. But he had one more curveball to throw.

What are you going to do now?

What do you mean?

How’s he going to handle all that money by himself? Did you ever think of that?

The bastard had a point. Once Martin cashed his check, Big Pete and every dope fiend in the city would be on him like white on rice and that twenty-one K would be gone, man, gone. They’d beat his ass, take his money, and leave him bloody and broke if not dead.

But Martin wanted his money. He might have been crazy as a crack whore, but he wasn’t so far gone he didn’t know he had been approved for disability. And Laird kept tweaking him: Where’s your money, Martin? Where’s your money?

Raymond had given the disability people the shelter as Martin’s address. He locked the big check and the monthly checks that followed in a safe and put Martin off when he asked about them by giving him a few bucks out of pocket. But Laird wouldn’t let up. He would buy Martin breakfast and ask him why he hadn’t received his money.

The checks started piling up. Laird took Martin to the disability office to complain. The disability people called and asked why we weren’t giving him his money. I told Raymond this couldn’t continue.

Raymond said he would get Martin a bank account so he could deposit his money and save it. I said, Yeah? Martin’s going to walk into a bank and set up a savings account? I’ll go with him, Raymond said. What’s to stop him from withdrawing all of it at once? I said. I’ll make it a joint account, Raymond said. He can’t withdraw anything without my signature.

I’d had other staff, formerly homeless guys like Laird, get the good Samaritan bug and try to help some of our other head cases with their money by managing it for them. But each time the money got the best of them. They’d take a bit here, a bit there. They’d start getting high again. Finally, they’d disappear and the money with them, leaving the head case howling at the moon.

If I let Raymond help Martin start a bank account, the rest of the staff would want to know why I wouldn’t let them do the same thing for the many other Martins we had. They’d have all these dollar signs dancing in their eyes and accuse me of letting Raymond get over with Martin. I’d have a small riot on my hands.

No way, I told Raymond, and explained why.

Wait, he said. I know someone who could do it for me. A bank teller. He goes to my church.

Sometimes I envied Raymond his faith. How he could read passages from the Bible and believe without question. If you ask me what I believe, I couldn’t tell you. Surviving, I guess. Not giving a shit. I wonder when I first walked around someone passed out on the sidewalk and did not think: I just walked past a body on the sidewalk. When I first got into social services, I used to check to see if they were breathing. A few times, they weren’t. I called 911 and waited around for the police or the ambulance. And whoever showed up first would always ask at some point, Why’d you check to see if they were breathing? As if that was the strangest thing to do. And maybe I finally agreed that it was. I don’t know. I stopped doing it after a while though. I mean, they were dead. It was a little late to see if they were breathing.

After I give Big Pete my change, I keep walking to the admin building, passing the convenience store on the corner of Turk and Leavenworth where guys deal crack and stray dogs nuzzle through trash and get kicked in the ass. I push the buzzer, say who I am, and listen for the door to unlock. I jog up a flight of stairs to McGraw’s office and knock on his door. It swings open and I see him hunched in front of his computer half reading aloud from a budget spreadsheet. He has on a suit and one of those thin leather ties I see billboard models wearing. He’s going bald and shaves his head, and the ceiling light’s reflection shines his scalp. McGraw adjusts his glasses and scrolls down to a column of numbers. Then he swivels around in his chair, careful not to spill files stacked ankle high around his feet, and faces me.

What’s up?

You have a minute? I ask.

Sure, he says. I wanted to talk to you anyway.

There’s a problem with Raymond and a client.

I know. Laird told me about it. That’s why I wanted to speak to you. What’s going on?

Yeah, I saw Laird on the way over.

McGraw looks back at his computer and smiles.

We’re doing really, really well, he says pointing at the spreadsheet. Too well. We’re under budget. We have to start spending more, otherwise the mayor’s office will reduce our city contracts next year.

McGraw stretches his arms and cracks his knuckles. He takes off his glasses and rubs them against his jacket. A few months back, he had me tell the different program directors to reduce spending so we’d make it to the end of the year in the black. I guess everyone cut back too much. Now, we have the reverse problem. Not much of a problem though. I can see McGraw’s already thinking how to spend the extra cash. A new computer maybe? I clear my throat. McGraw glances at me again with this oh-damn-forgot-you-were-here expression.

About Raymond, I say.

Right. Like I said, Laird came by and said Raymond lost someone’s money?

Yeah, Raymond just told me. That’s why I came to see you. It’s serious.

McGraw spins around and faces the computer, begins scrolling columns of numbers. He really doesn’t want to deal with me.

How serious?

Well, I say, Raymond helped this client by getting him on disability. And then he got him a bank account and set him up with a guy to manage his money. And the guy screwed up somehow.

Who’s this guy?

A bank teller. I had told Raymond we can’t handle a client’s money. And I thought that was that. But without telling me, Raymond goes and asks this guy he knew, this bank teller who attends Raymond’s church, to handle the client’s money. To be the cosigner, you know, on the bank account so the client couldn’t take out all his money and blow it without the teller signing off on it.

McGraw sighs and turns back to face me again. All he wants is for me to go away so he can stare at his good numbers. I can hear him mumbling, trying to figure out how he can move money from this line item to that line item. Especially if he can slip more money into admin. Line up some salary bonuses for management maybe. Raymond’s an unwanted interruption.

And then what? McGraw says.

Well, according to Raymond, it was going good for a couple of months. But then the teller got laid off. His last week on the job, the client comes in for some money. He signs the withdrawal slip, the teller fills out the rest like he always had. But this time he put in for all the money and closed the account. He gave the client his little bit of cash and kept the rest. In other words, he basically took all the money and split. Raymond hasn’t seen or heard from him since.

McGraw rests his chin in his hands and sucks in a deep breath.

You’re saying the bank teller stole the client’s money?

Yes, except for the little bit he gave the client. The teller just lost his job. I think he saw this as a chance to have a cash cushion.

When’d you know about this?

Today, I say, looking right at McGraw and willing myself not to blink. Just now.

Laird seemed to think you knew all about it from the start.

I didn’t, I say. You know how Laird is. Always looking for somebody to point the finger at.

McGraw cleans a thumbnail with a pen cap.

Yeah, that’s Laird, he says. If it’s a cloudy day he blames us. OK, what do we do about this?

I know what I have to say but choke on it and cough. I wipe my mouth, try to get rid of the bad taste on my tongue. I can’t even swallow. Just say it, I think. It’s the only way. Sorry, Raymond.

We fire Raymond, I say, speaking a little too fast.

Of course we fire Raymond, McGraw says. But what about the money that’s missing? I don’t like it, but we’re going to have to pay it back. How much we talking about?

I hesitate again. I’m not about to say, You know, McGraw, you’re right. We got to pay Martin back. But all that extra money you think you have? You don’t because we owe Martin twenty-odd grand.

McGraw would have to tell his board of directors. The mayor’s office would demand an investigation. Our city contract renewals would be fucked. I’d be out of a job so fast the door wouldn’t have time to slam my ass on the way out.

I tell McGraw: The client’s owed like five hundred dollars or something, but we don’t pay a thing. Raymond does. We tell him to sign over his last payroll check to the client. It will cover what was lost and then some. Raymond can keep the change. As part of the deal, we’ll call his firing a layoff. Raymond can get unemployment that way. He can use us as a reference. He’ll agree. He won’t have a choice, and we’ll stay out of it.

McGraw nods, picks at his chin. I don’t move. As long as Martin gets a disability check each month, he won’t understand how much is missing.

All right, McGraw says. Write this all up and fire Raymond. Lay him off I mean. I’ll have the fiscal department draft a statement for him to sign agreeing to turn over his check to the client. Anything else?

No, everything else is fine.

We have to be careful who we hire, McGraw says. I’m sure Raymond had good intentions, but we want people who know when to leave their good intentions at the door. We don’t have expectations. We’re not trying to save lives. Just trying to make them a little better.

Right, I say.

He turns back to his computer. I leave his office and am out in the hall when McGraw calls me back.

Put out a memo for me, he says. Tell the program directors we’re under budget. Tell them to think of some things they need and how they’d like to spend the money. Bus tokens. Anything we can blow it on and get away with. And we got some people coming by next week from the Bank of America Foundation. Let me know who you’ll set me up with, who our success stories are this month.

Outside the admin building, I rest my hands on my knees and take a deep breath. My body feels strange to me, as if it’s no longer mine. I look around with a feeling of total detachment as though I’m seeing the TL for the first time, hovering between the street and the sky in a low-flying plane.

I think about what I’ll tell Raymond. I smell the stink where people have pissed on the sidewalk, cover my nose, and head to the shelter. McGraw was much easier than I expected. Too easy. I mean, really, I was nervous at first but then it was nothing not to tell him about the twenty-one grand. To say that Raymond’s check would cover everything.

What bullshit, but it’s what McGraw wanted to hear. Like the Bank of America types coming next week, these people who give money to Fresh Start. Sometimes they call and ask to see the shelter and drop-in, especially around Christmas. The day before they show up, I run around and get the staff to mop and clean the place. Then I go to thrift stores to buy clothes for the people we want to pass off as success stories. The guys who have some sort of job history, who don’t get hammered every damn day and who are pretty reliable volunteers. Guys who have all their teeth and their fingers aren’t stained with tobacco tar. Guys who look pretty much like anyone else.

I give McGraw their names and he introduces them to the funders like they’re his personal friends. Here’s Richard or Terry or Mick. He’s in our jobs program. And as Richard or Terry or Mick works with our jobs counselor, he also volunteers in our maintenance department to develop skills he can put on a résumé. We believe in self-help, McGraw will say.

Richard or Terry or Mick is a good homeless person. Soon he will rejoin the nuclear family. The funders smile and leave satisfied. They are good people too for helping out a place like Fresh Start. They’ll come by again next year and get their ticket to heaven punched once more.

After they leave, I’ll give Richard or Terry or Mick a few bucks so they can buy some booze or score some dope and calm their nerves after talking to suits for an hour. Just be here again next week, I’ll tell them. We got some more people coming by.

As Raymond would say: He who chases fantasies lacks judgment. I mean, really. After a while, it gets so way past sickening that I no longer feel disgust. I don’t. I just keep telling everybody what they want to hear.

Just before I go into the shelter, I get this uneasy feeling. Laird won’t shut up with Raymond gone. He’ll keep talking shit and saying how I knew from jump street what was going on with Martin’s money until something else comes along that he can bitch about. But when will that be? He knows we owe Martin a shitload of money. I stop walking. He knows. He’ll ask Martin if we paid him back. He’ll ask how much we’ve given him. Martin will tell him. Laird will ask more questions. He’ll figure it out. That we haven’t even come close to paying Martin twenty-one K.

Raymond is sitting at his desk reading his Bible. He looks up at me and says, In my trouble I cried to the Lord, and He answered me.

What’s that from?

Psalms. Chapter 120, verse 1.

Close the Bible, Raymond.

He leans forward, leaves the Bible open.

I know, he says.

I’m sorry, I say. I tried.

Thank you.

McGraw wants you to sign your check over to Martin. To make up for some of the money you lost. Fiscal’s going to write something up and then you sign it and then Fresh Start will cut your last check to Martin.

I’ll do that, Raymond says without looking up. What about you?

What about me?

What did McGraw do to you?

I’ve been suspended without pay for a few days.

I’m sorry.

It’s nothing compared to you.

Raymond looks down. I don’t know if he’s reading the Bible again or just staring at the floor praying. I’m talking to him like I rehearsed the words from a script. The secret to lying is that you have to believe what you’re saying so you don’t even know you’re lying. You become someone else. This isn’t me talking. I’m reciting someone else’s lines.

What about the rest of it?

The rest of what?

Martin’s money?

McGraw says we’ll cover that, I say.

Raymond looks up. I hold his stare.

You should go by the end of the day, Raymond. I’ll tell the staff. McGraw’s calling this a layoff. You’ll be eligible for unemployment. We’ll give you a reference. He’s giving you a break. He doesn’t want an honest mistake to dog you.

Raymond nods, closes the Bible. He puts it in a small leather case and zips it shut. He takes down his university degree from the wall. He looks around his desk as if he should have more things to take with him, but there’s nothing else other than sign-in sheets, referrals, and a box of bus tokens.

I’m going to keep up with Martin, Raymond says. He needs someone to help him. I’ll set up another bank account for him. I’ll manage it this time.

But Raymond, I begin.

He holds up a finger, silences me.

The Christian who is pure and without fault, from God the Father’s point of view, is the one who takes care of orphans and widows, and who remains true to the Lord—not soiled and dirtied by his contacts with the world. James, chapter 1, verse 27. I want you to call me when Martin gets his check from McGraw.

I don’t miss a beat.

Sure, Raymond, I say. I’ll do that.

I go back outside. I stare down at my shoes, my mind a blank for a hot minute before it gets all kinds of crazy with thoughts about Laird and Raymond and how I’m going to handle them. More rats race along the curb into a sewer. My skin crawls. Jesus, they make me feel dirty. I press my hands against my ears, try to keep my mind from racing. Slow down, I tell myself, slow down, but I can’t. I hadn’t thought through on Laird and I hadn’t expected Raymond would want to keep up with Martin. I mean, he just lost his job and all he thinks about is Martin. No, I hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

I look around and try to shake this sense of doom settling on me, but my head feels all stuffed, like it’s about to explode. I see Big Pete across the street with Ross and John still hustling outside the drop-in. Man, to think they had apartments in the Richmond at one time. Now nothing, their faces dirt-streaked and wide-eyed jittery, and their clothes smelling of damp nights spent in Golden Gate Park.

Pete notices me and lifts his chin.

I put up my hands like I’m out of change and shrug.

He laughs. I keep looking at him and just like that I know what I need to do. My head clears. Come here, Pete, I think. He stares back and stops laughing. My eyes don’t budge off his. There’s this invisible line between us drawing him to me. Come here, Pete. He walks across the street under my spell.

What? he says.

You hear about Laird?

Laird? What about him?

He came into some money. I’m talking a lot. Inheritance, I think.

Laird?

Twenty-one grand, man. Twenty-one-and-then-some grand. He’s fat, I’m telling you.

Laird? Twenty-one grand? Bullshit.

He’s got it on him. Showed me the check this morning. He’s showing everybody. You know how Laird is.

I watch the reflection of my face swell and shrink in Pete’s sunglasses.

Yeah, I know how Laird is.

Twenty-some-odd grand, I’m telling you Pete.

You for real?

Serious as a heart attack, Pete.

What’s it matter? Why’re you telling me this?

I want Laird to pick up the slack. I’m tired of giving you all my money.

Pete forces out a half laugh but he’s not smiling. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. His raw smoker’s breath jet-fueled by the funk of his coat stifles my face. Not doing his little speed freak bopping moves. Not doing anything but trying to slow his nerves down enough to think from A to B to C. He knows if he rolls Laird, he can go to any check-cashing place and get money.

Pete turns away and goes to cross the street but hangs back a little, head down like he’s concentrating on his shoes. Ross and John watch him, know something’s up. Pigeons rise from the sidewalk toward what little sunlight is beginning to penetrate the fog. The noise they make crashes down on my head like unfurling rolls of carpet. I don’t move.

I can’t say if Pete will bite or not, but he’s sure thinking about it. Check-cashing places don’t require ID. They take a 20 percent cut, no questions asked. Pete’s doing the math. He doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. He knows he would have seventeen thousand dollars and some change in his pocket just like that.

I think it’s a good bet he’ll roll Laird for his check. Except there won’t be a check. I don’t know what I’ll do when Pete, Ross, and John beat the crap out of Laird and then realize he doesn’t have a dime on him.

I do know that Laird’ll be laid up and in too much pain to do any talking about us owing Martin more money than we paid him. And Raymond? If he really does help Martin get another bank account and then finds out that there’s no check coming from McGraw?

Well, that’ll be a problem too. It definitely will.

I’ll tell him something.