Faye-Bella waved me in to Bonbons Chocolat as I walked past.
“Hi, Bella, what’s up?” I was talking to her, but I was looking at the coconut chocolates in the big glass case. She used tongs to pick one up without asking me, dropped it into a little pleated paper cup, and put it on the top of the case. Yep, I was probably here too often. My own customers at Aromas were either less habit-driven, or I wasn’t paying enough attention to them. Although, now that I came to think of it, I guess a lot of them did just come in for refills of the same shampoo or lotions. That made me feel better, for some reason; maybe I wasn’t so inattentive after all. I pulled some change from the front pocket of my jeans and put it on the case, then picked up the sweet and nibbled it.
She said, “Matthew was asking about you this morning; he seemed anxious to talk to you.”
“Matthew always seems anxious,” I said, and then sighed. It wasn’t Matthew’s fault that every conversation with him was an effort. It was hard to know what was best. Was he better off on the streets or in some sort of permanent living situation with rules about showers and clean clothes, where he would get decent meals and help with his medications? I was still aghast that a city as rich as this one, in a country as rich as this one, was comfortable letting people live on the streets—hungry, filthy, and often in need of help. My grandfather told me once that it was possible to ignore the poverty in the streets of Mumbai or Delhi, that fairly quickly one simply stopped seeing the poverty and the lives it held in thrall. I didn’t ever want to be like that, but the enormity of changing even a small thing about people’s lives was daunting. I admired Ben’s ability to keep soldiering on in the face of indifference and outright hostility to his work with abused and homeless women.
“True,” she said ruefully. “And I wouldn’t have known for sure what he wanted, but he kept saying ‘black; no sugar,’ and I know you’re his favorite barista.” She smiled at me. “I suppose I’m guessing it was you he wanted.”
I looked out onto the street. “Does anyone know where he goes when he’s not here?”
“Apparently he has a place near the Panhandle, up past Weller. In some sort of derelict building. Some days he goes down to the cable car turn-round at Powell to pick up a few dollars from the tourists.”
“It’s not much of a life.”
“He doesn’t have a lot of coping skills. And you hear these terrible stories about homeless people being beaten up. A few years ago someone doused one poor guy with gasoline and set him on fire.” Her eyes were wide with horror. “Anyway, I was worried too, so I asked around.”
I hadn’t done anything to find out Matthew’s story, if he had any sort of comforts in his life, if he was safe, or if he had family. “That was really nice of you, Bella.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I think it was because I started to look after his comforter for him,” she said.
“He’s lucky to have you,” I said, still feeling guilty.
“It’s all of us, really,” she said. “Father Martin makes sure he gets a shower occasionally; you get him his morning coffee and a pastry; Julie up at the sandwich shop gives him lunch some days, and Jonnie at the pizza place gives him a slice and a soda on other days. Marge from the drugstore gives him a toothbrush and toothpaste and a comb every now and then. It really does take a village sometimes. We have to look out for each other.” Tears lingered on her lashes; she pressed her lips together and nodded. “Anyway, you can ask Matthew tomorrow what he wanted; although maybe he’ll have forgotten by then.”
But Matthew wasn’t in his doorway the next morning, or the next, and I forgot about what Bella had said until three days later, when Nat and I were trying to think of how Sergei had been lured to the empty building, or his body transported there in the small hours. There was no guarantee some local wouldn’t roll out of Coconut Harry’s, or step off a late-night bus up on California, at an inopportune time. Even in our famously laissez faire city, I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing a dead body being carried through the streets without at least taking a selfie. How had that been done?
“San Francisco isn’t like London, with CCTV cameras on every corner,” I said. “They’re intrusive, but one of them would come in handy now.”
“Matthew might’ve seen something that night,” Nat said, and I thought of Matthew’s shopping cart. If there was one thing almost no one would remember or think was important, it was a homeless man pushing a shopping cart. It wouldn’t take the killer much more effort than wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and tossing another blanket over the body.
“We should try and find him,” I said. “I haven’t seen him for a few days.”
“How we gonna do that?”
“Bella said he lives in a derelict building near the Panhandle. Maybe we could find it. Or maybe Father Martin knows something.”
“I’m trying to remember what I know,” Father Martin said when I called. “I think someone here said he has a place in an old—police station, maybe? Something like that.”
“Do you think you could find out?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. He just hasn’t been around, and I was wondering if he’s okay.”
“Let me ask around this evening and see what I can find out.”
He called me early the next morning, more helpful than I expected given our oddly abrasive first meeting. One of their volunteers thought Matthew lived in the semi-basement of a decrepit former firehouse near the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’ll call you if we find him,” I said instead.
Nat and I drove over to the Panhandle and scoped out several blocks on either side before we found it. It was very obviously a squat, since no sane person would have allowed the place to be occupied legally. Not by human beings, at least. The front of the building was sealed with plywood and two-by-fours over the windows and doors, and it was surrounded by a formidable chain-link fence. The narrow vacant lot next door must have been too small for the city to approve a building permit; it was overgrown with eucalyptus trees, shedding their bark in long, ragged ribbons. For some reason I was reminded of the dancers at the Venus. We made our way back along the fence, the ground under our feet slippery with years, perhaps decades, of fallen eucalyptus leaves, seedpods, and strips of bark. Both the firehouse and the vacant lot backed onto a ten-foot retaining wall topped with wooden palings, so there was no way in there. But near the wall, the fence had been pushed and flattened until it was possible, if not easy, to climb over onto a strategically placed, upturned crate in the firehouse yard. Nat went first and helped me across, grumbling when he caught the sleeve of his sweater on a stray wire. We approached the back of the firehouse, and I went down three uneven stone steps to a door, hanging on one hinge and sheltered by the second-story overhang. When I couldn’t get the door open, Nat came down to lean his weight against it. It screeched and scraped until it was more or less open.
Matthew’s crib was an education in the variety of pungent smells caused by moldy newspapers, cats, old fast-food containers, and a nonfunctioning toilet. The atmosphere was like a physical barricade. We both stopped on the threshold and looked into the room as far as we could, which wasn’t very far. Canyon walls of unstable piles of cartons, papers, pallets, and random pieces of plywood and lumber reaching almost to the ceiling loomed over a narrow walkway leading into the apartment. A cat ran at us, back low, ears flat—and as we stood there exchanging an appalled look, a carton slithered off one of the towers and took one of the smaller stacks down. It landed with a thump more or less at our feet, missing the cat by inches and raising a miasma of dust and another appalling stink. The cat made its escape. Nat coughed and pulled his sweater up at the waist to hold it around his mouth and nose.
“Doesn’t help,” he said, and dropped the sweater again. He looked into the apartment and then back at me. “I’m not steppin’ one foot in there,” he said loudly, as if I’d suggested it. When I turned my head, took a deep breath, and started to go through the door, he grabbed my arm and said hastily, “And you, either. God knows what kinda germs are floatin’ around.” He had a point. Even if I wanted to go in—and I really, really didn’t—I wasn’t sure I could inhale more than once without throwing up. “Matthew!” I shouted from the doorway. The silence was broken only by some loudly buzzing flies making a dash for the open door. We both ducked reflexively. Ugh.
“He’s not here; let’s go,” Nat said.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
He raised a fist and cupped it in his other hand. “Rock, paper, scissors?” he said hopefully. “Two outa three?”
I rolled my eyes and held my hands around my mouth. “Matthew! Are you home?”
This time I did hear something. It was coming from somewhere in the depths of the room.
“Probably another cat or somethin’,” Nat said cautiously. “Smells as if the place might have one or two. Or three.”
The noise, this time obviously a low groan, came again. That was no cat. I sidled to the center of the labyrinth as quickly as I could without knocking against anything or slipping on something foul, and gagged at the smell. The only light came from a couple of ground-level windows, grimy and barely translucent, but I could still see more than I really wanted to, as I grabbed at a pile on the floor of disintegrating newspapers and trash covered in maggots.
I uncovered an ankle with a foot at an odd angle, wearing a tattered sport shoe. “Nat! Come and help!”
“Dear God, do I hafta?” But he came around the corner quickly enough, saw what I was trying to do, and bent to help. I knew it was Matthew under there, but I found myself hoping it was someone else, some stranger I didn’t need to feel responsible for. Another moan came from the pile of trash. It was wispy, weaker than the first, and contained a small squeak that didn’t seem to bode well for his lungs. And then I uncovered Matthew’s face. His eyes wandered until they settled on mine. “Call 911,” I gasped at Nat as I tried to smile at Matthew. “He’s still alive. You’ll be okay, Matthew. You’re nearly out of there.” He closed his eyes and started to mumble. “Coffee, black. Coffee, black.”
I was crying now and barely managed to choke out, “That’s right, Matthew, coffee, black. Hang on, okay?”
I kept digging, flinging things off him at random, and Nat finished the call and bent down again to help at first, but then stood to lean back against a wavering tower that seemed in danger of falling and flattening us all.
By the time the fire truck and the EMTs arrived, I had managed to uncover Matthew’s chest, so at least he was able to breathe, but he had lapsed into unconsciousness. He was looking terrible. His face was badly scraped up, he’d bled heavily from a head wound, one of his hands was crushed, and one of his legs looked broken. And heaven knew what kind of internal injuries one of those toppling mountains had caused. The wheezy breaths continued, but they scarcely moved his chest at all, and I was afraid that each one would be his last. The EMTs pushed their way to us, hauling their cases and pulling on latex gloves, moving sideways so their shoulders wouldn’t catch on anything. I got out of the way, which wasn’t easy since there was so little room to maneuver, and slipped and stumbled back to the door. The EMTs made it clear they needed Nat to stay, and as I brushed past him he was resolutely holding back the slanting, unstable tower, looking anywhere but at Matthew’s bloody wounds or at his own torn and bleeding hands. Mine were no better; they were scratched and filthy, and my nails were ragged.
When Matthew was stabilized enough to move, they brought him out on a sort of clamshell stretcher, closely followed by Nat. As they reached the door, the teetering tower they’d just left behind crash-landed, making a horrible noise and producing clouds of stinking dust that reached me standing just outside the door, and made all of us cough.
The firefighters had used bolt cutters to remove a section of the fence and roll it aside. The EMTs were in a hurry, and I had to shout at their backs, “Where are you taking him?”
“St. Mary’s!” one of them yelled back.
His partner yelled over her shoulder as they transferred Matthew into the ambulance. “You need tetanus shots, and you might have inhaled something toxic. There’s another unit on the way. Wait here.” They stepped up into the ambulance, I got one more glimpse of Matthew looking small and pale, the doors closed, and with hardly a second’s delay they drove off with a splashy display of synchronized lights and sirens. Their speed was heartening; they’d only hurry like that if Matthew were still alive.
I leaned back against Nat’s Jaguar, shaking from the adrenaline. I said to him as he joined me, “Come on, Nat; let’s go to the hospital.”
He had cobwebs in his hair and smears of black and green stuff on his sweater. I supposed I looked much the same and brushed my hands down my jeans. “Ow,” I said. My hands stung.
He gave me an exasperated look and made a futile effort to brush himself off. “The gal said to wait.”
I opened the passenger door and talked to him over the roof of the car. “I know, but we can get checked out at St. Mary’s. And I should call Father Martin.” I got in, pulling out my phone. He climbed in behind the steering wheel with a resigned sigh.
Father Martin arrived at the hospital, flustered and demanding news. He was wearing a thin purple brocade scarf around his neck and carrying a small zippered pouch. I joined him at the reception desk, and we spoke briefly before he was allowed back into the emergency medical bays.
Nat and I sat in the waiting room surrounded by misery and anxiety. People were quietly bleeding or holding crying babies, and in all it wasn’t a restful place to wait. Nat and I were obviously low on the priority list, but we were eventually given tetanus and antibiotic shots and antibacterial salve and gauze for the cuts on our hands. I mentioned the toxic air in Matthew’s place, but since we weren’t coughing or turning blue, the doctor told us to check back with our own doctors and mention inhaling possible particulates to see if we were at risk for what he called chemical pneumonia. If we started to get short of breath, began a fever, chest pain, or swelling of our eyes or tongue, we should get ourselves back to an ER.
I could see Nat running his tongue around inside his mouth. The doctor smiled at us both. “I think you’ll be fine,” he said. “The injuries to your hands shouldn’t get infected.”
Nat stopped feeling his neck glands and looked closely at his hands. “How are we gonna know if they’re infected?”
The doctor’s lips twitched, but he answered seriously enough. “The scratches will get red and swollen. But I’ve pumped you full of antibiotics, and I want you to get these filled and take them for ten days.” He tore off two prescription sheets, handed one to each of us, and returned the pad to the pocket of his white coat.
I managed to get Nat back to the waiting room, where he kept clearing his throat and asking me every five minutes if I thought his eyes looked red.
“What was in Father Martin’s little bag thing, do you think?” I asked in an attempt to distract him. “And why was he wearing that scarf?”
“The scarf is called a stole, and it’s what they wear when they administer the sacraments.”
“Sacraments? Is he saying Mass back there?”
“He’ll be givin’ Matthew the anointin’ for the sick—it used to be a sort of final blessin’ if you looked as if you were checkin’ out.”
I gulped. “Does that mean that Matthew—”
He patted my hand. “Nah. Now priests can give it to you if you’re just sick, even if you might be recoverin’. That’s what he had in that little pouch prob’ly—it includes a blessing with holy oil.”
“Huh. How do you know so much about it, anyway?”
Nat just shrugged. “Early trainin’. It never goes away.”
“Are you Catholic?” I was surprised because I knew the Catholic Church didn’t exactly embrace gay men and women. Or anyone, really, who wasn’t heteronormative. Say what you will about the Church of England, and God knows I’ve said a lot, they’re an accepting bunch.
“I wanted to be. But they don’t want me, so…” He shrugged again.
“Do you go to church? Why don’t I know this about you?”
“You don’t know everythin’ about me, English,” he said, but now he was smiling. “I go sometimes. I don’t know this Father Martin too well; I can tell you this much—there are people on both sides of the aisle who wouldn’t mind him crossing over; know what I mean?”
“You think you’re being subtle, but yes, I get it.” I rolled my eyes. “Is he gay?” I added after a brief pause.
“Dunno.”
I frowned. “But—”
“It’s actin’ on it that’s the problem for them,” he said. He was putting on a careless front, but I decided the Catholic Church could bite me. I held his hand gently in mine, avoiding the sore spots on both our hands. We sat quietly for a while.
Time stopped meaning very much in that weird way it does in hospitals. Eventually, Father Martin came out through the double doors. We stood up and waited for him to get to us. “Matthew’s still with us,” he said quietly, gesturing for us both to sit. “I gave him the sacrament, but he hasn’t regained consciousness. They said it could be hours yet. You two look as if you could use a shower and some rest. I’ll stay for a while and let you know if there’s any change.”