"Gee, thanks, Tommy boy. Thing is, my psychic reader told me never to answer any call that comes two minutes before I want to leave - it's sure to be a bad omen."
They both sat and watched it ring.
"Who's on call?" he asked.
"Calvo." There was no need to say more: They both knew he would be late. He was always late.
"Could be the lottery," he suggested.
"I never buy lottery tickets."
It rang on.
"You answer it, Tommy."
"It's my wife's birthday tonight; she'd kill me if I was late."
Ring. Ring.
"If you wait long enough, the shift will be over and you can leave."
Ring.
"Sounds pretty determined," he commented.
Kate stretched out a hand and picked up the instrument. "Inspector Martinelli."
"Kate? I thought I had missed you. This is Grace Kokumah, over at the Haight/Love Shelter. We talked, three, four weeks ago?" Her voice added a slight question mark at the end of the sentence, but Kate knew her instantly: a big, dignified black-black African woman with the flavor of her native Uganda rich in her voice and her hair in a zillion tiny glossy braids that ended in orange beads. Kate had met her three years before, when Lee had worked with her on the case of a fourteen-year-old boy with AIDS.
"Yes, Grace, how are you? Enjoying the rain?" Too many years of drought made rain the central topic of most winter conversations.
"We have many holes in our roof, Kate Martinelli, so I do not enjoy the rain, no. We have run out of buckets. The entire neighborhood has run out of buckets. We are making soup in roasting pans because our pots are busy catching drips. Kate, are you still interested in a boy called Dio?"
Thoughts of time clocks and home vanished.
"Do you have him there?"
"I do not have him, no. But one of my girls, who heard from a friend of a friend… You know?"
"Is she there? Will she talk to me?"
"To the famous Inspector Casey Martinelli? Yes."
Kate made a face at the receiver.
"I think it is better for you to come here," Grace suggested. "Tonight?"
"I can be there in half an hour, less if the traffic's clear."
"We will be very busy for the next hour, Kate. We are just serving dinner. Best you come a little later, when we have finished with the dishes. Then Kitty will be free to talk with you."
"If I come now, can you use a hand, with serving or washing?"
Grace's laugh was rich and deep. "Now I think you know that to be one stupid question, Inspector Martinelli."
"Fine, see you soon." She dropped the phone onto its hook and started to gather up her papers.
"Sounds like a hot date there, Martinelli."
"Sure you don't want to bring your wife? Dinner at the soup kitchen, give her a slice of life for her birthday present?"
"It's not my wife's birthday. What gave you that crazy idea?"
"I can't think. G'night, Tommy."
"Stay dry. So much for your psychic reader."
Kate's steps faltered briefly as his words triggered a vivid memory: Jules, speaking with such seriousness about her long-past childhood, when she lay in bed inventing horrors as a talisman to keep the real ones at bay. Anything that can be imagined won't happen.
Now why should I think of that? Kate asked herself as she waited for the elevator. Dio, I guess, and Jules, and meeting Dio at last and what I will see in his eyes and his nose and his skin, how far gone he'll be.
The serving was over and the nonresident recipients were reluctantly scattering for their beds in doorways and Dumpsters and the bushes of Golden Gate Park when Kate blew into the Haight/Love Shelter. Grace Kokumah stood with her hands in the pockets of her sagging purple cardigan and watched without expression as Kate came to a halt next to the thin and already-yellowing Christmas tree and dropped her burden with a clatter before beginning to strip off the astronaut helmet, the dripping and voluminous orange neck-to-ankle waterproof jumpsuit, and the padded gloves. When Kate had popped open the snaps on her leather jacket and run a hand through her brief hair, the woman shook her beads.
"The city's finest, a vision to behold."
"Do you want the buckets or don't you?" Kate growled.
"Where did you find them?" She studied the waist-high stack, no doubt wondering instead how Kate had managed to transport them without being lifted up, cycle and all, by their wind resistance and dropped into the San Francisco Bay.
"Stole them from the morgue; they use them for the scraps. Joke! That was a joke!" she said to the horrified young people at Grace's back. "Macabre cop humor, you've heard of that. The cleaners buy soap in them, nothing worse than that. Do you have anything to eat? I'm starving."
"This is a soup kitchen, despite the temporary absence of stockpots. We have bean soup tonight, which has had a dry ham bone waved through it, we have white bread with margarine, and we have weak orange drink."
"The season of plenty, I see. Do I have to wash dishes first?"
"A person who brings us eight five-gallon buckets is permitted to eat before she labors. Kitty, would you please show Kate where to wash her hands, and then give her a bowl of soup?"
Once in the cramped corridor that wrapped around the kitchen, Kate touched the girl's arm.
"Grace tells me you might help me find a boy named Dio."
The girl cringed and fluttered her hands to shush Kate. "Not here. Later. I'll come to Grace's room." She scurried off.
So, Kate thought, I wash dishes after all.
After bean soup, and after a largely symbolic contribution to the piles of dirty dishes, Grace rescued her and sent her off to the room she used as counseling center, doctor's examining room, office, and, occasionally, extra bedroom. Within five minutes Kitty skulked in, shutting the door noiselessly behind her. She wasted no time with small talk.
"You're lookin' for a guy named Dio?"
"That's what he called himself last summer, yes."
"What do you want him for?"
"I don't, particularly. Why don't you sit down, Kitty?"
"God, I don't know if I should do this. I mean, I don't know you."
Kate reached into the pocket she'd taken to using instead of the awkward handbag and held out her identification folder between two fingers, mostly as a means of keeping the girl from bolting. Kitty took it, looked at it curiously, handed it back. She sat down and studied Kate's tired face, recently cropped hair, and biker's leathers.
"You look different."
Kate snapped shut the picture of the good Italian girl with the soft hair and the wary smile without glancing at it.
"Don't we all."
"You are that dyke cop whose girlfriend got shot?" she asked uncertainly. Kate did not wince, did not even pause in the motion of putting the ID back into her pocket.
"Yep. Now, tell me, how did you hear I was looking for Dio?"
"Grace put it on the notice board. Course, I don't know if it's the same guy, but it's not like a common name, is it?"
"She posted a notice that I was looking for Dio?"
"Not you. Just that there's word for him. You haven't seen the board? It's in the dining hall, just a bunch of those really ugly black cork squares Grace glued up and sticks notices on, like if someone calls her from Arkansas or something saying, "Have you seen my little girl? Tell her to call Mummy." There's just his name and a note to see Grace. Lots of them have that. She talks to kids and tries to convince them to call home, once they know someone's interested." From the way she spoke, nobody at home had expressed any interest in Kitty for some time.
"So you met Dio."
"Not me. A friend. No, really," she said, seeing Kate's skeptical look. "This guy I met walking down the Panhandle, you know? He gave me a cigarette - and honest, it was just a cigarette. Grace throws you out if she smells weed on you. Anyway, we got to talking about, well, things, you know? And he came back here for dinner and to look at the board and see if maybe… Well, there wasn't nothing for him on it, but then he sees the name Dio and acts kind of surprised, and he goes, "I thought Dio was an orphan," and I go, "You should tell Dio his name is up" - I mean, not like anyone wants to go home, you know, but still, it doesn't hurt to make a-phone call, does it, and they might send some money or something. Well, anyway, he said he'd tell Dio if he saw him."