Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

want to know what happened to Norman Williams.”
    Mrs. Madrigal’s Wedgwood eyes turned into saucers. “You knew him?”
    “Don’t give me that!” snarled Betty.
    “Betty, honestly, what are you talking about?”
    “I hired him, and you know it! What did you do? Buy him off?”
    “He disappeared several months ago. He just never came back, Betty. My God, was he a detective?”
    “How demurely you lie.” Betty sprang to her feet. “I should have known better than to expect the truth from you. And I think it’s about time that Mona learned the truth about her real father!”
    “Betty, please …”
    “Unless, of course, you’ve already told her, in all your liberated candor.”
    Silence.
    Betty smiled savagely. “I didn’t think you had.”
    “How can you be so vindictive? You’ll only hurt her.”
    “You said it yourself. Mona’s over thirty. She can take it. She’s a big girl now.”

The Sacred Rock
    I T WAS DUSK WHEN THEY REACHED NOB HILL. IN FRONT OF the Mark and the Fairmont, pastel-colored tourists scrambled in every direction. They reminded Mary Ann of baby chicks that had been dyed for Easter and were looking for their mothers.
    But these people, more likely, were looking for their children.
    Like Mona’s mother. Like Michael’s parents and Burke’s and her own. And even like Mother Mucca. Stunned and scandalized, yet secretly titillated, they had flocked to this latter-day Sodom to observe firsthand the fate of their long-flown offspring.
    There was fear in their eyes. And confusion. And a kind of mute despair that made Mary Ann want to reach out and hug them. Some of them were nearing the end of their lives, yet, in many ways, they were the chicks. They were the children of their children.
    The traffic light changed. Burke and Mary Ann pressed through the mob at the crosswalk and strode west up California Street. To their right, the mud-brown fortress called the Pacific Union Club squatted disapprovingly in the midst of this middle-American chaos. Silent, foreboding, impenetrable.
    Mary Ann ran her fingers along the massive bronze fence that protected the building, examining its ornamentation for some sort of rose motif. Nothing. Only Nancy Drew found clues that easily.
    When they reached Huntington Park, they sat on a bench near the fountain, their backs to the PU Club, their eyes fixed on the mammoth rose window of Grace Cathedral.
    “Did you call them?” asked Burke.
    Mary Ann nodded. “A woman in the cathedral office says there’s a Holy Communion service tonight.”
    “What time?”
    She looked at her watch. “Forty-five minutes.”
    “We should go in now, then. I don’t want to be there with a lot of people around.”
    “Why?”
    He smiled and pointed to his mouth. “I’ve had enough scenes for one week.”
    “You don’t think you’ll …?”
    “How do I know?” he shrugged. “I think we should stay long enough to see if it triggers anything, then get the hell out.” He smiled at his own phraseology, apologizing to the huge window. “Sorry about that.”
    “Burke, before we go in …”
    “Yeah?”
    “I was just wondering. Back in Nantucket, when you went to church there, did you believe that the wine turned into blood and the bread turned into flesh?”
    He smiled. “Didn’t everybody?”
    She shook her head. “We were Presbyterian. It was all grape juice to me.”
    “I guess we were pretty High Church,” he grinned.
    “Don’t you find that a little grotesque?”
    “Maybe. If you stop to think about it long enough. But not grotesque enough to make a hot news story, if that’s what you’re thinking. Look, Mary Ann, for most Episcopalians, it’s just a bunch of words. If you actually backed a High Churcher into the corner, he might say he believed he was drinking the blood of Christ, or eating His flesh, but I think most people regard it in a kind of mundane, symbolic way.”
    “Have you thought about why you might have been writing a story on it, then?”
    He chuckled. “You’re more literal than the High Churchers. Look, you said Jack Lederer told you I had mentioned the word ‘transubstantiation’ in connection with the story I was writing. In a broad sense, that word can simply mean transformation. Hell, maybe I was talking about my career … or anything. The only reason Lederer wrote the word down was because he himself didn’t know what it meant.”
    A chill evening wind whipped through the little park. Mary Ann turned up her coat