The Love-Haight Case Files (15 page)

“There were protestors, and people signed petitions.”

“All they did was get their pictures in the paper. You actually did something. Thurman told us you really tried.”

She smiled and slipped off her backpack, struggling with the zipper because she’d packed it so full. “I brought beer. I don’t know if you like—”

“Ah, Oskar Blues.” The gargoyle whistled appreciatively. “Pete said Oskar is fine. My name is Bjoernolf.”

“Bjoernolf. Pleased to meet you.” Evelyn handed him a can. She figured she’d been standing still long enough so the contents would have settled. She was right; the beer didn’t spew all over when he popped the tab and took a sip. “Pete told you it was good, the beer, and you mentioned talking to Thurman. We’re a few miles—”

“We can talk, all of us. A gift of the stone. Surprised Pete did not explain that to you.”

“How do you talk across the distance?” She fished inside the backpack and pulled out a box of wheat crackers.

“Sound travels through stones and concrete. You just have to know how to listen to the hum. Being carved from the same mountain helps.”

“I see.” She tipped her head to the far corner of the building. That gargoyle looked to be a twin to the goblin-like one in front of her. “Would your … friend … like to join us? I brought a couple of six-packs. I have crackers and some cashews, too.” She had splurged at the grocer’s last night.

“Just the beer for me, thanks.” He sat cross-legged on the roof, and Evelyn noticed some of the tarry material sticking to his legs. “And as for Gudlaug … she will not join us. She does not talk to humans. I am not so prejudiced.”

“Oh.” Evelyn squatted. She’d played catcher on her high school softball team and through her first two years in college; she could hold the pose a while. “So … I could talk to you just by talking to Pete, huh? He could relay what I said?” She was thinking she would be able to talk to all the city’s gargoyles, like one big conference call. It would save a great deal of time. The notion of finding time to study for admiralty class flitted in the back of her mind.

“It does not wholly work that way.” He finished the beer and crushed the can with a gesture so easy, like she might crumple Kleenex, and then looked expectantly at the backpack. She produced another beer. “Stone is slow and takes its time. Something said today might not be heard until tomorrow or the day after or after that. The hum—vibrations—might travel faster to the north than to the south. It might hold itself steady in a place before moving on, encountering an obstacle that stops it for a while.” He drank the new beer slowly. “Indeed this is very good, Evelyn Love. Oskar Blues, I will remember this brand.”

She started … she hadn’t told Bjoernolf her name.

“So I will have to visit every gargoyle in the city.” She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. She pulled out the map and made some notes in the margin. She had stuffed her backpack so full she couldn’t fit her iPad inside and so had to settle for this. She scrawled
Bjoernolf will talk
and an arrow to his spot on the map.
Likes beer. No crackers.

He continued to sip the Oskar Blues.

“I just came here,” she said after several moments of quiet, “to let you know that I’m trying—me and Thomas, the attorney I work for—to find ways within historic preservation and zoning restrictions to stop Arnold from tearing down your buildings. We can’t stop him from buying the buildings … provided the owners want to sell, but we’re working to prevent any more demolition. I can’t promise you success, but I will do everything I can. Pete is a friend of mine and I—”

“—want to save Pete, and thereby save the rest of us.”

Evelyn handed him a third beer and put his two crumpled cans in her backpack to throw away later. “I want to save all of you.” Her voice held conviction; she really meant it. “Franklin Arnold seems to hate gargoyles, OTs in general.” She found Bjoernolf easy to talk to, like he was an old chum she could pour her heart out to. “I’ve done a lot of research on him. He owns a dozen buildings, two corporations, and a warehouse. I think he has some local politicians in his pocket. And he has plans for condominiums. He recently bought two restaurants near the airport. Both had been closed, and he has made no announcement about what he’s doing with them. And I can’t find anything anywhere that hints at why he dislikes OTs.”

The gargoyle’s laugh sounded like metal spoons ringing together. “Evelyn Love, humans do not always need a reason to hate. I have seen so many years in this city and watched so many emotions. When the city first sprouted, the Chinese were used for labor and hated by many of the whites. Later, the blacks were hated by Chinese and whites. Color of the skin, Evelyn Love. Mine is green, and that could be all the reason Franklin Arnold needs to hate.”

“Color of the skin,” Evelyn repeated softly.

“Let me put it another way.” He finished the third beer and made an ahhhhhing sound. “Gargoyles, OTs as the humans label us and others … OTs are the new illegal alien.”

He stood, and Evelyn joined him, grateful to get out of her crouched position. He scraped at the grit and tar that had stuck to the backs of his legs.

“I am thankful you came to visit,” Bjoernolf said. “You are welcome to return. If you want to learn more about Franklin Arnold, perhaps you should visit his church.”

She tipped her head in question.

“Saints Peter and Paul,
la cattedrale d’Italia ovest
, the Italian Cathedral of the West.”

It was circled on her map.

“Franklin Arnold attends church there, with his wife.”

“How do you know that, Bjoernolf?”

“The gargoyles on the church told me. They are my brothers.” He pointed to her backpack. “Can you leave a few more? Gudlaug has not had a beer in a long while. The crackers, too. Gudlaug likes crackers.”

Evelyn left the rest of the six-pack and the wheat crackers. That still gave her another six-pack, a bag of cashews, and a tin of gumdrops to work with. Her backpack lighter, she jogged down the nine flights and out the door, nearly bumping into a man on the sidewalk and swallowing an “oh!” of surprise. He was one of the two she’d spotted earlier, the one with the cell phone.

He turned and walked in the opposite direction, looking once over his shoulder, black eyes locking momentarily with hers.

Evelyn shivered, and not from the chill wind that whipped down the street. She really was being followed.

Chapter 2.6

Evelyn jogged a few blocks and stopped to look over her shoulder, finding no trace of the guy she’d seen at the bottom of the fire escape or the other man she’d seen earlier. But they were there, shadowing her; she had that annoying gut feeling. No use calling Thomas, he couldn’t pick up the phone, and Gretchen wasn’t due in for another hour. She called Dagger, but all she got was voicemail, and in the end was glad for that. What could Dagger do? Follow her to each gargoyle bedecked building on her list? That wouldn’t be happening, and she wasn’t about to stay indoors just to be safe. Besides, Thomas had been in the law office when they got to him.

Evelyn set her jaw. Tough, she could take care of herself. But she’d nevertheless pay close attention to the hairs on the back of her neck. If they rose too high, she would head for a local precinct house. In the meantime, she would make her shadows work to keep up with her. She ran faster, and this time “The Beat Goes On” managed to tumble through her head. She put her feet in time with it, and the blocks with their pine bough decorations and waving Santas blurred.

Saints Peter and Paul was a beautiful church, but Evelyn had yet to see a Catholic church that wasn’t in some way impressive. Ironically, its address was 666 Filbert Street. The church splayed across the street from Washington Square. A lovely location, a lovely church; Evelyn thought she might attend a service here.

The heavy wood door was unlocked, and she tugged it open to the warm scent of vanilla tapers. Evelyn’s concerns instantly diminished; churches had that effect on her. Worries were somehow less significant, and all the demons she faced were not so dangerous. She breathed deep and asked herself: “What brings you joy today?” It was one of her little rituals.

Immersing herself in the law brought her joy, working with Thomas, meeting a new gargoyle this morning, and now being here, in this holy building. All those things brought her joy.

She found some literature on a small table and skimmed one of the pamphlets. Administered by the Salesians of Don Bosco and serving the Archdiocese of San Francisco, this place had—since its consecration—been the cultural center and home church of the bay area’s Italian American community. In the past decade it had also become the home church for much of the city’s Chinese American Roman Catholics. The church offered weekly masses in English, Italian, and Mandarin.

According to the schedule, Father Jones was holding confessions until noon, so without hesitation Evelyn padded inside the cavernous church and waited.

There were only two penitents ahead of her, one an undead creature she was unfamiliar with—not a ghoul. Not a ghost, as it obviously had substance and was dressed in khaki trousers and an overlarge Starbucks sweatshirt that hid any details about the form beneath.

The creature—she could not tell if it was male or female—had gray, deeply wrinkled skin, except for a smooth bald head that reflected the warm lights. It worked a rosary with its thin fingers. She would ask Zaxil later; he seemed to be an expert on the various OTs in the city and could maybe tell her what it was.

She looked away, not wanting to be caught staring at the creature. She spent the empty minutes appreciating the impressive arches and the colorful windows. When it was her turn, she slipped into the confessional booth. A small wooden crucifix hung above the lattice.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” She said it out of habit. But she hadn’t sinned, not really, not since her last confession. She’d not even profanely used God’s name in speech. “I have thought poorly of a man named Franklin Arnold, a man I met briefly outside the courthouse and who I saw yesterday under troubling circumstances. I find myself at cross purposes with him, and I detest him.” That was true. She’d been wishing only ill for the man who’d bludgeoned Thurman to death with the wrecking ball and who was no doubt looking forward to doing the same thing to Pete and the other gargoyles in the city. “We are taught to forgive, but I cannot find it in my heart to forgive this wretched man.”

The priest listened raptly, and in turn she listened to his words of advice and absolution.

“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” the priest concluded.

“For His mercy endures forever,” Evelyn replied. Then she gained permission to access the roof where she would try to talk to the church’s gargoyles. They would be safe; according to her research, Arnold had no designs on buying and demolishing any of the city’s churches. She hoped their names were easier to pronounce than Bjoernolf and Gudlaug.

The access door to the roof was narrow, and she guessed the church’s maintenance workers were by necessity skinny. She picked her way across a slightly canted section of roof, heading toward a lion-faced gargoyle. Balancing carefully, she opened her backpack, but she stopped as her fingers touched a can of beer. Pete had told her gargoyles favored beer of any kind—at any temperature and at any time of the day, but it didn’t seem proper to open a beer on the roof of Saints Peter and Paul.

“Hello?” No response. “Please.”

She gave up and made her way to a gargoyle with an eagle’s head. These gargoyles were a mix of greens, darker at their bases, like Pete and Bjoernolf and Thurman, but paler from the hips up, and almost white at the tops.

“Hello?” She tried again. “My name is Evelyn Love. I am a friend of Pete, the gargoyle on Haight. Today I met Bjoernolf, and he suggested I come here.”

Nothing.

She looked away from the church and toward Washington Square. The park was popular with both tourists and locals and was circled by a variety of eating establishments. Her stomach rumbled at the thought. She’d not bothered with breakfast, intending to either grab something as she’d jogged or cave and eat the gumdrops. Lunch definitely, she’d circle the park and pick something different, a restaurant she’d never been to. There were people milling in the park, Evelyn suspected there always were. The park and this church had been featured in a few scenes in Clint Eastwood’s first
Dirty Harry
film and featured again in the
Scorpio Killer
, and the park in
Bedazzled
.

Evelyn could barely see the Benjamin Franklin statue in the park from her vantage point.

“I wonder if statues have life,” she mused, and then quoted Michelangelo. “‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’”

She moved past the angel gargoyle, which likewise hadn’t answered her, and headed to the ox-headed gargoyle, suddenly realizing the significance of the sculptures. It had probably been spelled out in the literature on the table inside, if only she’d bothered to read further. The ox visage looked at the same time sad and wise, and she felt moved to voice another quote, from the book of Ezekiel.

“I saw a windstorm coming out of the north … an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire were what looked like four living creatures. Each had four faces and four wings.”

The ox gargoyle turned its head and added: “Their faces looked like this—each had the face of a man, and on the right side the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces.”

Evelyn said: “Then there came a voice from above the expanse over the heads of the living creatures as they stood with lowered wings. Over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a form like that of a man.”

“—and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, such was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord,” the ox finished.