To Play the Fool by King Laurie R

Author:King, Laurie R. [King, Laurie R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, thriller
ISBN: 9780553574555
Amazon: 0553574558
Goodreads: 170226
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1995-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

A certain precipitancy was the very poise of his soul.

It really was a stunningly beautiful morning, Kate thought with pleasure, the kind of day that tempts people from New York and Boise to move to California. It is easy to brave the earthquakes and the unemployment and the killing mortgages when a person can eat lunch outside wearing only a cotton shirt, knowing that much of the country is up to its backside in snow. Strolling along in the carnival atmosphere, kites dipping out over the water, the air smelling of fish and aftershave, the waters of the Golden Gate sparkling, with the bridge, Mount Tamalpais, and the island fortress of Alcatraz looking on benevolently, Kate could forget for a few minutes that she was here on business. She paused to examine the odd wares of the shop that sold live oysters complete with pearls, stopped again to watch a young black kid standing on a box playing robot while his buddy made sure everyone had the hat held under their noses, and then she bought an ice cream cone--for camouflage, of course. By then she had spotted Erasmus. She went up casually, hiding behind hat and cone and the large crowd he had attracted.

He was dressed as Rosalyn Hall had described him, in khaki trousers, a too-small blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, and running shoes that were just a bit too long. He also had a Raiders cap perched on the back of his head and an exaggeratedly garish gold watch on his wrist. His face, as Rosalyn had said, was very lightly shaded. From the side where Kate stood, his face above the beard seemed slightly more dusky than usual, but when he turned around, she saw that the left side of his face was pale, almost chalky. Subtle, and disconcerting.

The most striking thing, however, was not Erasmus himself but his wooden staff: Propped upright against a newspaper vending machine, it wore on its carved head a miniature Raiders cap and a pair of child's sunglasses, and beneath its chin a scrap of the blue-and-white T-shirt fabric covered the worn piece of ribbon. Kate had not really noticed how like Erasmus the carving was, probably because the wood was so dark that the details faded, but it was all there: the beard, an identical beak of a nose, the high brow beneath the cap. The staff was Erasmus reduced to fist-sized essentials. Only its eyes were invisible behind the miniature black lenses.

Erasmus was talking to the staff. He seemed to be reciting a speech in a Shakespearean cadence (speaking with a clipped midwestern sort of accent), striding up and down in the small area of sidewalk that was his stage, seemingly unaware of any audience but the staff, which stood erect, gazing back enigmatically at him from the orange metal newspaper box.

And then the staff spoke. For a moment, Kate felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise at the hoarse whisper, until she realized it was merely a very skillful ventriloquism she was hearing.

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