Free Fogtown by Peter Plate Page B

paper shimmered in the daylight. It trilled musically in the breeze, making a fanning sound. “Take it,” she said. “It’s a gift.”
    The proof was right in front of Richard Rood, but he didn’t believe it. The money had to be bogus. It had to be a booby trap. It had to be an ambush. She was conning him. Thinking he was a dupe. Everybody was running a racket. Even this old dame had a gig she was hustling. He was too clever to fall for it. “Let me peruse that shit,” he said.
    Snatching the bills from Mama, Richard expertly ran his fingertips over the money. The paper was crisp. Good texture. The ink didn’t smudge. Everything was in alignment and squared properly. The picture was solid. Ben Franklin looked like Ben Franklin. It wasn’t a counterfeit. The cash was genuine. He grunted with reluctant approval. The money was tight. But what was she was doing with it? There was a ton of it in her box. And why was she giving some of it to him? She had nothing to gain by doing that. “It’s the real McCoy,” he admitted.
    “Then keep it.”
    Richard cupped his ear. “Did I hear you right?”
    “You did.”
    Giving money away to a total stranger made no sense to Richard Rood. It didn’t compute. Nothing was for free. That was the way of the world. Whatever you wanted, you bought or absconded. If you couldn’t do it, that was too bad—you had nobody to blame but yourself. A man without money wasn’t alive. A man without the courage to steal what he needed was even less than that. Baffled, he asked, “What do you want from me?”
    “Not a thing.”
    “That’s malarkey. You gotta want something.”
    Mama was firm. “I don’t want a damn thing from you.”
    “Then why are you doing this if you don’t want nothing? You some kind of masochist?”
    “Because God cares about you.”
    “God?” Richard was bamboozled. He jerked a thumb at his chest, maddened by what she’d said. “He cares about my butt?” He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was gaining on him. “That’s bull pucky. He doesn’t give a fuck about me. Never did.”
    “Yes, he does.”
    “Who says? I don’t hear him saying shit. Never have. He doesn’t even know who I am.”
    “I’m his messenger.”
    “You his what?”
    Richard conjured up a likeness of the unsmiling Islamic brothers in suits and bow ties and fedoras who sold bean pies and peddled newspapers next to the BART entrance at Seventh and Market. Most of those dudes were ex-cons harder than nails. Richard was confused. People owed him money, beginning with that little white boy Stiv. The cops were on his tail. He was sick, maybe with a bug, maybe that hepatitis C, and this woman wanted to discuss religion? Bring up God? He couldn’t cope. It was too deep for him. He said to Mama, “You ain’t a Muslim, are you?”
    Mama Celeste fit the lid back on the shoebox. The world was such a strange place. Everything was upside down. This man and her—she didn’t even know his name—might never see each other again. At least one of them should profit from their meeting. “No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m just doing what God instructed me to do.”
    “He told you to do this, to give me a bunch of hundreds? What did he do, call you up on the phone? Send you a fax?”
    “No.”
    “But he wanted you to give me these here Franklins?”
    God was in everything. He was in the office buildings, the trolley cars and in city hall. He was in the trees, in the flowers, in the clouds overhead. He was in newly minted cash. He was in the hearts of criminals too. Mama said, “He did. This money is his gospel.”
    “Why is he doing this?”
    “Because you need it.”
    “How’d you know that?”
    “Do you know anyone nowadays who doesn’t need a thousand bucks?”
    It dawned on Richard that he could take the shoebox from her. It would be a lark; the money was just sitting there. But he held himself back—it was torture to do that. Real bad. Impulse control had never been