Cole Fire, page 3
Cole took his time being seated and watched the crowd as they turned and settled on the grass. When he looked back at the small stage, to his amazement, a man stood where seconds before the guitarist had been.
Dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a simple work shirt, he could have been any of a million working guys you could pass on the street or stand in line with at McDonald’s, never even noticing them. His hair was a shaggy medium brown, cut in no particular style, and his face was that of the average white man, with a short brown beard your see on any street. He was neither handsome, nor was he unattractive. He was a face in the crowd. He stood about five foot ten, was of medium build, had the look of someone who enjoyed the outdoors and spent a lot of time in the sunshine. The only striking feature of this man was his eyes.
Even from where Cole sat he could see they were blue. Not just blue, though; they could only be described as piercing, nearly luminescent blue. As he looked across the silent crowd he seemed to see every face. When he turned toward the side where Cole sat, he could have sworn that they looked eye to eye. Cole didn’t like the feeling of looking into the eyes of this man.
“It is a day like no other. And we will never see its likes again,” he began. In the distance you could hear the low hum of traffic, a horn honked and a bus revved its engine, but the crowd was silent. Cole wondered for a second if they were even breathing. “It is said that the end of days will come upon us like a thief in the night. I am here to tell you that thief is in the driveway. The wickedness and evil that surrounds this city is not unique. The whole world over, people have turned away from Truth and has chosen their own path.” He spoke with a calm authority. Without straining or shouting, his voice carried across the crowd. This was Jesse Monday, the man Cole was sent to see.
His message was pretty simple. Find the Truth, the end is near. Just like the thousands of cartoons over the years in the New Yorker magazine, yet he was not a longhaired prophet of doom in a long white robe. He was an ordinary-looking guy with a simple style and delivery.
“There was a man who lived in a house by the side of a road that ran along a canyon. The only way to the beautiful valley beyond the canyon was across the walkway he built in front of his house. In front of his house near the road was a pile of round river rocks. The man who lived in the house was old and didn’t like talking to the people who passed by. He spent his days just sweeping the walkway, clearing the trash and repairing the boards that would wear out along the walkway.
“He thinks he’s better than us,” people would grumble as they passed the house. The Hermit just ignored them and that made them grumble all the more.
One day a man picked up one of the river rocks and threw it at the Hermit’s house. It hit the side and rolled away. The Hermit didn’t pay it any mind. He just went about his business. A while later, another man picked up one of the rocks and hurled it at the house. This went on for several days. The pile of rocks was getting smaller as each day passed.”
Jesse paused and stepped down from the platform.
“Finally the pile of rocks had all but disappeared.” Jesse bent down and picked up a small stone that was in the grass and turned it in his hand. “The Hermit used all the rocks that were thrown at his house to make a lovely flower bed all around the front of his house.” He turned and hopped back up on the small wooden stage.
“A large, angry man came along, who had thrown a rock almost every day at the Hermit’s house, and picked up the last rock. “Hey, Hermit!” the man yelled. “Here’s your last rock!” and with that he threw it with all his might at the house. Just then the walkway below his feet began to shudder. The angry man removed the last of the stones piled up to counter-balance the weight of the walkway. The walkway fell into the canyon, along with the man.” Jesse tossed the small stone in his hand back onto the grass.
“After that the people would come to the far edge where the walkway used to be and call at the house, “Hey, Hermit!” Jesse cupped his hands over his mouth and pretended to yell. ‘Please, rebuild the walkway!’ But you know, the Hermit couldn’t hear them.”
Jesse stood perfectly still and looked out at the crowd. Then he said, “Those rocks are just like the good, true things in the world. They balanced out the path in our lives, but all too many of you chose to just throw them away. Just like the Hermit, the Truth we find can help to build things of beauty. You must learn to lead a balanced life. Let the stones of righteousness outweigh the evil in the world before it destroys your path to Truth. Soon all the rocks will be gone in this world. There will be no one to hear our cries for help. Truth will be gone forever. It is up to each of us to reach out and share the Truth.”
After an hour of similar stories Jesse left the platform, and as the crowd stood to sing another song with the guitarist, he disappeared into the trees. The crowd stayed for a while just talking and laughing, but within a few minutes they picked up their blankets and lawn chairs and drifted back the way they came.
Cole watched as three men in jeans and work boots came and knocked down the platform, and each carrying a piece of the wood, slipped into the trees. As the crowd drifted away, Cole remembered the deaf girl. He scanned the crowd but she was gone. Funny he should think of her, he thought.
* * *
Cole’s thoughts were interrupted by the blaring horn of a graffiti-covered seafood truck that nearly hit him as it came barreling out of the alley to his right. Almost three years had passed since he first saw Jesse in Golden Gate Park. He’d only been in San Francisco a couple of weeks and never heard of the scruffy street preacher that was now praised by as many people as those who reviled him.
As he made his way to his office, Cole was struck by the solemn mood in the building. Small clusters of people stood around in hushed conversations. He passed several women in their cubicles who were weeping. Three people stopped Cole to ask if he’d heard the news. At his office door he met Chuck Waddell who was putting a note on his door.
“That was quick,” Chuck said retrieving the note from the rack on the door. “I was just leaving this.” He handed Cole the envelope. “I jotted down a few things I want to make sure you cover. I know, I know, you don’t need me to tell you how to write an article. It is just that, well, I have some mixed feelings about Jesse Monday and...”
“Your e-mail not working? What’s going on, Chuck?”
“Just before Chris, before he...” Chuck stopped short. The memory of his partner, lover, and best friend being killed was something that Chuck still couldn’t fully deal with. “He’d begun following Jesse, I mean he was interested in, hell, I don’t know what I mean. I just want the truth, Cole, you know what I mean, the truth?”
“You mean was Jesse Monday a prophet, or the second coming, or something besides a street preacher? Come on, Chuck, I know a lot of people put a lot of stock in this guy, but he was what he was, right?”
“I don’t know. Chris thought he was something very special. Said he did miracles, healed people. I know it sounds stupid but he said he even raised the dead.”
“And now he’s dead,” Cole said flatly.
“And now he’s dead,” Chuck looked small and pale as he spoke of his murdered partner. “But Chris said that he would come back, you know, resurrect, just like Jesus. If there is something to all this, if there is a chance that Chris is in heaven or someplace better than this life, I want to know if we can be together. I mean...” Chuck took a deep breath. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Chuck’s voice cracked as he laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“No, I think grief takes a lot longer than you realize.” Cole reached over and patted his old friend on the shoulder. “We all live with the hope that we’ll be with those we love in the hereafter. Death would be too painful to deal with without that hope. Monday was a great teacher, and did a lot of good for this community, but I’m not sure how much divinity I would hang on him.
“Look, I’ll poke around into this whole thing and see what I can find out. We have a lot of material on Jesse Monday and his followers. Let’s see what I can put together.”
“That’s all I ask.” Chuck turned and made his way to the elevators without another word.
Cole flopped down in his desk chair and rubbed his face with both hands. In all his years as a reporter and columnist, he had never faced a story that challenged his sense of structure more than this one. Chuck didn’t care about the story, at least not on the surface. He wanted answers, universal answers; Cole was not the one to give them. Jesse Monday was a hot button for hundreds, maybe thousands, since he appeared on the scene three years ago. The fundamental beliefs and understanding of religion and how it was supposed to work were turned upside-down by a soft-spoken street preacher and his rag-tag army of followers. Not since the heyday of the hippies had San Francisco seen so much attention paid to the outermost fringe elements of the city.
Cole’s spiritual life had been dormant, dead, or dysfunctional for years. There were no words to really explain his lack of interest or need for things spiritual. Four years ago when he was reunited with Ellie, the need for prayer was thrust upon him. He had lost her for over twenty years. Alone, drifting and consumed by his work, he lived in the shadow of finding her again until he was bogged down in a hopeless mire of depression and apathy. Their reunion was short-lived and he lost her again, only this time to a terminal illness.
He cried out to God for Ellie’s healing, her forgiveness, and finally in the soul- wrenching pain of losing her. His answer was discovering that they had a daughter, Erin. The faith that she shares with her husband Ben, and the way they are raising their daughter, showed Cole that a life of faith was not one of hypocrisy or charlatanism, but a strong foundation that they built their lives on.
Then there was Kelly Mitchell. Her faith was as natural and as much of her being as her smile and her wit. Her faith was something she was, not something she did. The strange circle that spins around his life didn’t prepare Cole for his newly discovered daughter being married to the son of the woman he would fall so deeply and truly in love with. Should they ever marry, the twisted branches of the family tree would surely confound future generations of genealogists.
Cole had no use for long-winded preachers or show biz production church services. He went, on occasion, to the same church that his friend and baseball buddy Cornell attended with his family. The stomp and shout exuberance of the congregation gave him hope for a heaven filled with people just like them.
The difference between the big church in the Mission District, and the small fellowship in the newly remodeled warehouse in Sausalito that Kelly attended, was in in the racial lines the congregants broke down into. Where the black church boasted a choir of at least a hundred in purple robes with no need of amplification, Kelly’s church’s worship team of old guitar-playing hippies that sang a combination of old hymns and new repetitive choruses and were miked, equalized, and pushed through a dozen JBL house monitors.
Cole often joked when confronted with the dogma of an overbearing proselytizer that he only believed two things, “First, there is a God, and second, you’re not him.” That, in a nutshell, was what bothered him most about Jesse Monday. Cole was sure if and when he met God, The Almighty would not find it necessary to tell everyone who he was. Moreover, in the history of mankind, and to the best of his knowledge, Cole was pretty certain that God never needed to hire a P.R. team.
It took Cole almost a minute to find his business card file in the chaos of his desk. He flipped through cards old and new until he found Carter Washington. He punched in the number and waited.
Four rings and a very mechanical woman’s voice said, “Carter Washington’s office, how may I help?”
“Cole Sage calling, is Mr. Washington in?”
“Who are you with?”
“I’m by myself,” Cole said dryly.
“I see. Please hold.”
“Cole, is that you?”
“Hey, Carter, how’s it goin’?”
“Great! Good to hear from you. I know this isn’t social—what am I going to do for you?” Carter laughed.
“Well, you did say if I ever needed anything... This is a little thing, I think,” Cole began. “You’ve probably heard Jesse Monday was shot.”
“I did.” Carter Washington assumed his full FBI voice and Cole could just see him suddenly sitting ramrod straight in his chair.
“I need any and everything you can give me on him.”
“Look, Cole, I know that you understand how things work...” Washington’s voice trailed off.
“So, I won’t expect a fax or a FedEx package in the next day or two.”
“I didn’t say that. Hold on.” After a series of clicks and hums the line went dead.
Cole shrugged, put the phone back on its base, closed the card file and exhaled. A moment later his cell phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Had to get a clear line, you never know who’s listening these days. What the hell you want stuff on Monday for? Never mind. Look, this guy has stirred up a lot of folks back here. What’s your angle on this?”
“The boss wants a feature slash bio piece.”
“You’re not buying into this ‘second coming’ nonsense are you?”
“Who’s putting that out?” Cole saw the conversation going in a whole different direction than he anticipated.
“We’ve had people on the ground in California for three years tracking this guy. I’ll send you everything I can. If you turn up anything though, I would appreciate getting a copy. The sooner we close this thing the better. Our department is being flooded with calls from every Bible Belt Senator and Congressman you can imagine, plus a few northern liberals that would surprise you.
“Your Mr. Monday is seen as a real threat to the Christian community in this country. Throw in a Rabbi or two and you have the majority of religious folks in America none too happy with your crackpot in California claiming to be God, Jesus or whoever, returning to Earth, or whatever.”
“I figured you guys would have an eye on him but I never imagined he was known outside the Bay Area.”
“The fear was that the Jesse for Governor Movement would swell into a Jesse for President Movement. The last thing the boys on the Hill want, is some goofy third party candidate throwing off the delicate balance of our beloved two-party system.” Washington laughed.
“That’s pretty radical talk for a Bureau department head.”
“More cynical than radical, I’m afraid. But God help us if this guy should somehow ‘resurrect.’ That would really throw a monkey wrench into the whole mess,” Washington said with a sarcastic sting to his tone.
The old friends chatted and swapped stories for another fifteen minutes. The conversation started to lag and Cole promised copies of whatever he turned up on Jesse Monday. Carter Washington said he would get an overnight package out before the end of the day. Cole heard the ringing of Washington’s other line and ended the call.
The next call Cole made was to Randy Callen. Without a doubt, Callen was the best researcher Cole had ever worked with. He possessed the uncanny ability to ferret out information on the net almost before Cole could finish explaining what he wanted. Randy’s willingness to tap dance around legalities, and his willingness to slither in and out of places he didn’t belong, had endeared him to Cole long ago.
“Hey, how’s my favorite cellar dweller?”
“I’ll have you know we of the subterranean persuasion refer to our non-windowed abode as the basement, thank you very much.”
“I need everything you can get your hands on about Jesse Monday.”
“Already on it. I figured somebody would be doing the obit. Why you, Cole?” Callen asked with a faint hint of surprise.
“Waddell wants a feature that will double as an obit.”
“How deep do you want me to go?”
“Where ever it leads you, Cole answered.
The fact that Randy Callen could and would be led into the files of state, Federal and private agencies without their knowledge or permission was never spoken of directly, but “where ever it leads” was as close to a direct request for the unattainable as Cole ever got. The world of the hacker was as mysterious and wonderful to Cole as the domain of the surgeon. This was probably a result of his total inability to navigate the installation of the simplest piece of software.
The debt Randy owed Cole for getting him out of the small town paper in Southern California where Cole found him, and into the big league detective work of the Chronicle had been paid long ago. The bond that remained gave the partnership of Sage & Callen an “us against the world” kind of Batman and Robin camaraderie that they both appreciated but never exploited.
“What are you looking for? I mean, in particular?” Randy probed.
“Don’t know. I want to be fair in what I report, but I don’t want to unnecessarily add to the myth and mystique of who he was.” Cole’s thoughts seemed to tumble out unintentionally. “What do you know about him?”
“I was at lunch one day and a homeless guy panhandling in front of Burger King told me that Jesse Monday could heal my hand. The old guy was convinced if I would go see ‘Brother Jesse’ that he would fix it good as new. I told the guy that it was good as new because I was born this way. He didn’t think that was funny.” Randy chuckled.
Randy Callen was born with a hand that was misshapen and looked more like a baby’s foot than a hand. Although his hundred-watt personality covered for the layers of calluses built up from years of stares and comments, Cole knew that it was a source of embarrassment and was rarely spoken of.
“Did you go?” Cole asked.
“Yeah, right.”
“Had to ask,” Cole said.
“I did see him once by accident. He was out on The Avenues and a big crowd was following him. He crossed the street right in front of my car. He looked at me and smiled. Still gives me the shudders.”
