"That was my mother back there!" the Savior shouted. He crouched beside the writhing man who was trying to rise but couldn't seem to get his arms to work. "You just rolled my mother!"
"Aw, shit!" the guy said, his voice a faint wheeze.
"My mother!" he screamed, his face reddening.
"Didn't know, man!" he groaned, every syllable wrapped in pain. "Didn't mean nothin'!"
The Savior turned to Sandy, his eyes wild. "Your turn to be a hero," he said, pointing to the gray handbag beside the man. "Take that back to the old lady he knocked down back near the top of the slope. Tell her you found it on the grass."
Sandy could only stare, stunned.
"Come on, Palmer. Move! I'll meet you over by the basketball courts." He bent again over the fallen man and screamed, "My mother!"
"I know, man," the purse snatcher grunted. "I'm sorry… like really… sorry."
He gave Sandy another look, then trotted out the opposite end of the underpass, leaving Sandy alone with the stranger. Gingerly he stepped closer, picked up the handbag, then beat it back to the sunlight and the park.
The Savior's mother? Was she in the park? Was this her bag?
He spotted a cluster of people near the top of the slope and jogged toward them. An old woman sat on a bench in the center of the cluster, sobbing. Her knees and hands were scraped, her stockings torn.
"… just pushed me," she was saying. "I don't know where he went. I never saw him."
The Savior's mother… Sandy shook his head. Not likely. The old woman was black.
"Did you lose this?" Sandy said, edging into the circle around her.
She looked up and her tear-filled eyes widened. "My bag!"
"Where'd you get that?" said a beefy guy, eyeing Sandy suspiciously.
Sandy handed the bag to the woman, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder and stuck to the story.
"I was walking down by the highway and found it."
"Everything's here!" the woman said, opening her wallet. "Oh, thank you, young man! Thank you ever so much!" She pulled out a couple of twenties. "Let me reward you."
Sandy waved her off. "Absolutely not. No way."
The beefy guy slapped him on the back. "Good man."
Sandy made a show of checking his watch. "Look, I've got a meeting," he said to the man. "Will she be all right?"
"We called the cops. EMTs are on their way."
"Great." To the old woman he said, "Good luck to you, ma'am. I'm sorry this happened."
She thanked him again and then he was on his way down the sloping path toward the basketball courts, trying to process the events of the past few minutes. He'd led a sheltered life, he knew. His exposure to violence while growing up had been limited to a few schoolyard shoving matches. But all that had changed with the bloodbath on the train. His baptism of fire.
But in some strange way he found this new incident even more disturbing. The Savior had acted so quickly, with such decisiveness—one moment the purse snatcher had been cycling by, Sandy had blinked, and next thing he knew the man was flat on his face with two broken or dislocated shoulders and the Savior screaming at him about his mother.
What was that all about?
And more frightening had been the terrible dark joy in the Savior's eyes as he'd hovered over the downed man. He'd enjoyed hurting him. And he'd done it without the slightest hesitation. That was very, very scary. And even scarier was the thought now of dealing with him one on one.
Sandy began to sense that he might be in over his head, but he brushed it off. He wasn't here to threaten this man; he wanted to do him a favor.
But would that matter if he was dealing with a psycho? In an instant the Savior had changed from regular guy to mad dog. And why had he even bothered with the purse snatcher? If the Savior was a wanted felon, why would he interfere with a fellow criminal?
None of this made any sense.
He found the man leaning against the high chain link fence bordering the asphalt basketball courts. He started moving away as Sandy approached, motioning him to follow. Sandy caught up with him in a small grove of trees.
"Why here?"' he said, looking around and noticing that they were partially hidden from the rest of the park. He was uneasy now being alone with this man.
"Because your picture's been in the paper twice this week. Who knows when someone will recognize you?"
"Yeah?" Sandy said, suddenly aglow. Someone recognizing him on the street. How totally cool would that be. "I mean, yeah, sure, I see what you mean."
Sandy sensed that Mr. Hyde had disappeared. The Savior seemed to have returned to Dr. Jekyll mode.
"So tell me," the Savior said. "How are you going to change my lowly criminal life?"
Sandy held up a hand. "Wait. You tell me something first: What was all that business about your mother? She wasn't your mother."
"She could have been. My mother would be about her age if she'd survived."
"Survived what?"
"Death."
Sandy sensed a big sign saying PROCEED NO FURTHER, so he switched to the other question that was bothering him.
"All right then, tell me this: why did you, someone who supposedly wants to avoid the spotlight, get involved in that?"
He gave him a puzzled look. "How could I not? If he'd taken off the other way I wouldn't have run after him, but he was passing right in front of us. To let him sail by would be… like…" He seemed to be searching for the words. "It would make me into an accomplice—an accomplice in rolling a little old lady. Uh-uh."
Sandy stared at him and experienced a flash of insight that seemed to point the way toward getting a handle on this man.
"I think I understand you now," he said, nodding. "You can't tolerate disorder yet you're trapped in a world where everything is spinning out of control."
"I'm not trapped anywhere."
"We all are. But you're doing something about it."
"Are you crazy?"
"Not at all. Look what just happened. A robbery. That's wrong. A prime example of the random disorder afflicting our lives."
"That is life. Been happening every minute of every day since some cave man decided he didn't feel like hunting and tried to steal his neighbor's brontoburger."
"But you made sure this one didn't happen. You reordered the disorder."
"Are you on drugs or did you run out of your medication? You make it sound like I'm out patrolling the streets trolling for wrongdoers. I'm not. This went down right in front of me. And he passed right by me. And I knew what I could do at no cost to myself. Period. End of story. End of discussion."
"But—"
"End. Of. Discussion."
"You ever heard of Nietzsche?"
"Sure. The music guy, right?"
"I doubt it. He was a philosopher."
"Jack Nitzsche? Nah. Used to play piano for the Stones."
"Friederich Nietzsche. Friederich."
"Fred Nitzsche? Who's he? Jack's brother? Never heard of him."
He's putting me on, Sandy thought. He's got to be. But his expression was deadpan.
"He's been dead about a hundred years," Sandy said. "I studied him in college. You really must read him. The Will to Power will crystallize so much of who you are."
"Crystallize… just what I need right now. To get crystallized. Look, forget philosophers and get down to you and me. What do I have to do to get you out of my life?"
Sandy felt as if he'd been slapped. "Hey, look, I'm trying to help you here."
"I think we both know who you're trying to help."
"Damn it, I can bring you in from the cold."