“Why weren’t you there last night?” Dallas said.
“Came up the highway last night, headed right into the village to get me something to eat. I don’t go there much, they watch that place. All locked up, but they watch it. Last night, found me a bit of overhang to sleep under.” He looked hard at Dallas. “I wouldn’t want to lose my good shelter, up there. Winter ain’t over yet. That wind and rain, fellow could die of pneumonia.”
“That stone building?” Max said.
The old man nodded.
“We’ll see no one runs you off, at least for a while-if the school finds nothing wrong. No fires inside there. Understand?” Again, the old man nodded. “Can you describe this man?” Max said. “Tell us when and where you saw him?”
“Up at the school, like I said. Across the street in them woods, watching the front. And then the other time at the side, near the old stone house. Watching the play yard. Kids outside both times. Watching them orphan kids.”
“What did he look like?” Eleanor prompted.
“Couldn’t see much, him turned away. Skinny. Skinny head. Big ears. Short hair and them big ears sticking out.”
“And he was watching the children?” Dallas said. “For how long? What did he do while he was watching them?”
“Long time, maybe half an hour or better. First time, just stood there looking and done nothing much. Stood kinda limp, hands down on his crotch. Next time, he had a camera, taking pictures. Long thing on the front of the camera like a telescope, taking pictures of them kids.”
“When was this?” Max said.
“Maybe…over a week. Maybe two weeks. Just after one of them bad storms-the storm before last, I think. Cold. Sure looked nice and warm in that big school, firelight through the windows and all them colored lights on that big Christmas tree, and the smells…Smell of baking, of gingerbread and spices,” the old man said longingly.
Joe watched the old fellow for a moment with a keen sense of camaraderie. Homeless men, the tomcat thought uneasily, like homeless cats, out in the storm without shelter. He might hassle Clyde unmercifully over the quality of his meals and his own shelter, but in truth Joe was mighty thankful for his home. His kittenhood, trying to survive alone in San Francisco ’s alleys, had been no picnic-he still didn’t like the garbage stink of Dumpsters.
Joe remained at the PD until the old man ran out of things to tell the officers, until Eleanor put the old fellow back in her squad car, to drop him at the hole-in-the-wall café where he wanted to have breakfast.
She told Max she’d pay the restaurant bill for him before she left. Joe thought the old man wasn’t a drinker, at least he hadn’t smelled of booze, but Max wanted to be sure he ate, and didn’t slip out again to buy wine. Strange old man, Joe thought. Somehow a cut above most homeless, some of whom would kill a man just for the thrill.
Joe watched Juana gather up the child to take her to the seniors’ house, where McFarland would meet them; and the tomcat left the station wondering where Dulcie had gotten to and thinking about a little snack in the alley behind Jolly’s Deli-a gourmet experience that was, always, a far cry from anything remotely connected to Dumpsters.
10
C ORA LEE FRENCH had been up since well before daylight on this cold winter morning. She had always been an early riser; her housemates teased her that she wanted the newspaper on the doorstep when her bare feet first swung out of bed. But this morning, even after she’d showered and dressed and put her breakfast on the table, the paper still wasn’t at the front door.
Over a solitary breakfast of instant oatmeal, and then three Christmas cookies with her last cup of coffee, she had, out of desperation, read yesterday’s classified section. Breakfast didn’t taste right without something to read, and by the time she’d finished eating, she knew more than she wanted about how hard it was to get skilled help, how high real-estate prices and rents were climbing, and how many small animals were coldly given away to strangers, via the want ads, as casually as one would donate one’s unwanted clothes. She left the house wondering what had happened to the sober responsibility that had infused the training of her own generation.
Getting old, she thought, amused at herself. Old and cranky.
The interior of her car was bone-chilling cold, the wet windshield soon fogged over. Waiting, with the wipers swinging, for the engine to warm the interior and clear the glass, she glanced at her shopping list, which included half a dozen last-minute Christmas errands she’d put off in deference to choir rehearsals; then she headed down the hill to the village, the oaks and pines dripping, the dropping street and the rooftops below her shining from the rain.
The grocery would be open, but she’d have to wait for the shops, even with their earlier holiday schedules. Banker’s hours, she thought, and laughed at herself again because she wanted all the stores to open up at dawn-she couldn’t help it if she was a morning person.
Though when she was doing a play or concert, like the upcoming Christmas pageant, she would be a night person, too, for a while, enjoying afternoon naps when necessary to provide sufficient sleep. You can sleep when you’re dead, Cora Lee believed. That was one of Donnie’s favorite sayings. Even when they were kids, he’d said that, quoting his own father. Now, with Donnie’s reemergence into her life, Cora Lee was interested to note that they both still used that expression.
Happy-go-lucky Donnie French. He’d been the closest thing to a brother she’d had. Inseparable playmates when they were small, blue-eyed, golden-haired Donnie, and her own dusky, black-haired coloring caused folks, even on New Orleans ’s streets, to turn and stare at them. Donnie, suddenly back in her life. What a wonderful Christmas present for them both.
As she left her car, heading into the market, the air was filled with the scent of pine from the cut trees stacked outside the door. Red and green decorations hung within, festooning the tops of the shelves beneath gold garlands. The store was filled with popular Christmas tunes and with the spicy smells from the bakery. This time of year she missed having family and children of her own. Her husband dead for so many years, and they’d never had children. But now she had family again, real family, besides her housemates and her close friends.
She and Donnie had been a pair when they were kids, Cora Lee the dusky tomboy, Donnie the sweetly smiling blond charmer-but Donnie was always the bolder and more adventurous, the wilder troublemaker. A pair of scoundrels. Well, they’d never gotten into serious trouble, just pranks and dares, and foolish acts of poor judgment. And Donnie, despite his sometimes wild and defiant ways, had been in some respects the more even-tempered.
He had been the methodical planner when he set his mind to it, when they had something to gain. While she had swung crazily with her overwhelming moods, between soaring joy often generated by the jazz music that surrounded them on New Orleans’s streets and a deep sadness generated by her mother’s own sadness-at their poverty and then at her father’s senseless death from stray gunfire.
Even as a child, Cora Lee had known instinctively that she would have to make her own happiness as she grew older, that she would have to learn how to lift herself out of the kind of sad days that her mother experienced. She hadn’t known, then, the word “bipolar” or the other fancy terms. But she had understood her mother as best a child can, and she had vowed never to fall into the kind of mourning to which her mother had succumbed.
She had vowed that she would be strong enough to lift herself out of sadness. And always, she had refused to call those dark moods depression. She still hated that overused, catchall word that was used to describe so many different situations.