I'll Let You Go

by Bruce Wagner

  Lani swallowed her drink and closed her eyes like a mystic in mourning for the folly of the whole race of man. Smiling, she set the glass down and seamlessly uttered the words that finally vanquished all his remaining doubts:

  “We are going to save that little girl.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Awakening

  At the arraignment, the letter was passed to aka William’s lawyers, who forwarded it to Twin Towers. Various official eyes had been already upon it by the time it reached the prisoner’s:

  Dear William,

  They would not let me visit, so I am writing this to you. Lani and I feel so awful that you are in that place, and would like to help in any way we can. Lani is trying to aid Amarillys, just as you wanted us to from the very beginning. But she is in “the System” now and believe me it doesn’t make things any easier. We know there is trouble regarding a woman who passed away, but we do not know anything about it and hope you were not involved, and if you were, that perhaps the reason was that you were not in your “right mind” or maybe even that you were protecting the girl. Because we have heard terrible things about that woman. (Who I believe to be—was—Amarillys’s mother.) We will visit you as soon as is allowed. I was at the arraignment and once I learned that only a relation would be able to visit, I gave this to Detective S. Dowling (who I believe you know) to pass on. We even tried sending croissants and pastries, not so good as yours I’m afraid, but they said it was forbidden. You have all our best wishes.

  Gilles and Lani,

  Your “amis” at Frenchie’s

  He read the missive twice more, and, after a baffled interlude, began to assemble the pieces.

  Amarillys … the girl! They were speaking of the girl, his angel …—Lani and Gilles—those kind, gentle people—the Frankish baker who had given him work, honest work, and paid him an honest wage. His wife—Lani, he read again—who’d merely done what she felt was right by the child and for which aka Topsy aka William Morris Marcus (here, he pounded his fist on the wall of the cell, for he knew not even his own name) had wantonly berated her. And what had this clot of aliases done in the first place but drop the pitiful orphan off in the early-morning hours beside a trash bin and shove her toward his benefactor—what nobility!

  He kicked and slapped at his cell, then sat on the bed and hung his head. He picked up the page again.

  is in “the System” now …

  “The System” … did he mean the girl was—the little girl is in jail. The horror of it! His friend Fitz had told him so! He remembered now: the girl had been captured in a dragnet—

  He stood and read the letter some more while he paced. Amarillys, in jail …—he imagined her as a fish, flopping and expiring on the ground, and wished to tear his hair out. But the worst part, the very worst, was to read the words

  (Who I believe to be—was—Amarillys’s mother.)

  But how—how could it be? Phantasmagoric! The detective (and Fitz too) had been trying to tell him, but it never made any sense. Now it came together, and he felt like an amnesiac struck by a rain of blows to the head that restored an old order, an order transformed to new. All of Dowling’s queries … and those of the lawyers—were about the woman who lay dead in the St. George by his hand—the dear child’s mother! By Topsy’s hand. Suddenly, it stood to reason. He’d been seen carrying the orphan off, a block from where the murder was committed … could it be? Could it really? That he was in this place—these Towers—that he was in “the System”—for killing the mother of his adored Amaryllis? Hellish abomination! Then that would mean the woman’s death had led to the girl’s being in “the System” too …

  “Guard!” he cried. “Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard!”

  The detective—or the baker Gilles and his wife—or the parents from the Red Lands—someone must arrange for him to visit the child so he could tell her he hadn’t touched a hair on that woman’s head, and let her see he was whole and humble and still in the world for her! She would bury her head in his arms and cry as she used to; and then if he was very brave, he would tell her that her dear Topsy was nevermore. He would tell her who he was—or was becoming.

  A man named Marcus Weiner.

  As much as the author, out of sheer affection, would like to drop in on those Bel-Air denizens who, being out of earshot of Grannie Ruth’s revelation, remained unaware of the dramatic return of Marcus Weiner—namely Katrina and Toulouse—the propulsion of narrative demands that such a visit be postponed. We will concentrate instead on a triad of developments that occurred in the ten days that followed the arraignment and which significantly altered the course of California v. aka William Marcus.

  The DNA extracted from the suspect failed to match that found in the vagina and anus of the deceased. This alone was not definitive proof that Mr. Marcus wasn’t the murderer: an accomplice still could have committed the rape. But the defense rightfully considered the results more than a good thing. The troublesome ascot still nettled.

  Shortly after the laboratory returned its findings, Amaryllis was discharged from the Alhambra infirmary and returned to MacLaren, where she lashed out bitterly against the entire staff, not even sparing true-blue Dézhiree, who no longer recognized the girl and mourned a relative innocence lost. When a visitor from the district attorney’s office told her that she would have to appear in court to identify the ascot belonging to her friend, Amaryllis told him to eat shit and die, a command which, to his credit, was omitted from his report.

  Lani was the only one she allowed near. The earnest CASA came each day and eventually told Amaryllis of an idea she and her husband had—they wanted her to come live with them. Amaryllis was startled and suspicious, but it would have been impossible to misinterpret Mrs. Mott’s resolve. The child pretended not to heed and let three days pass before inquiring when such a move might occur. The CASA said it depended on her behavior, for that was the gauge used by the court in such actions. She told Amaryllis that the court’s decision would be handled with particular care, as in this case living in their home would be the first step in a formal adoption. She and Gilles had already begun classes with the goal of accreditation.

  “You would adopt me?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. No hesitation.”

  “What happens if you don’t want to do it anymore?”

  “We don’t change our minds like that.”

  “What if I do something bad or you move away?”

  “You’d move with us. Once we make a decision, that’s it, OK? We don’t turn our backs on it—we don’t turn our backs on you. If you do something ‘bad,’ we’ll just deal.”

  “What if you die?”

  “I’m not expecting to.”

  “Neither was my mother.”

  “I know that, honey.” She put her hand on Amaryllis’s, and the girl let it stay. “What happened to your mother is very sad, and very … unusual. Things do happen in this world—people get sick, people go nuts, people die. People get killed. But I think I have a relatively long life ahead of me. At least I like to think that,” she laughed. “I’d like you to think that. This would be an adoption, OK? That’s permanent. That’s how the courts look at it, and that’s how we look at it. It’s forever. I want you to look at it like that, too—for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.”

  “What about the babies?”

  “If you’re with us, in a stable home, the chances are good—definitely better than where we’re at now—that we could establish regular visits.”

  “Would you adopt them?”

  “I don’t even know if that’s in the realm of the possible; I’m not sure what their status is. Your brother and sister may be happy where they are.”

  “They’re not!”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “They’re not happy!”

  “One thing at a time, OK, Amaryllis? Let’s worry about you right now—then we’ll see about them.” The girl relaxed, seeming to go with the logic of it. “For me, for
us, we’d like to have you in our home because we love you. And we would hope you love us, or learn to. So I want you to think about it.”

  “How can you love me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Of course I know you.”

  “Only for a little. You didn’t raise me. You can’t suddenly love me.”

  “I can—and I do. You see, Amaryllis, I believe a person can decide … can make the decision to love. And then love follows.”

  Over time—a short time, for children and the human heart always astonish by the speed with which they heal—Amaryllis lowered her guard. She asked Lani where she lived and where she would be going to school. She asked if she could have a bicycle and a computer. She asked if she would be able to have friends sleep over and even mentioned, albeit briefly, a certain group of children who had taken care of her during her travels (and travails) … but discreetly said no more.

  When she felt the girl was ready, Lani eased “Topsy” into their conversation (she knew that was how he was known to her). She questioned her about the same things William’s lawyers did when they visited the child at Mac—but from a different place.

  Amaryllis repeated that Topsy had never, in her knowledge, come to the motel where she lived with her mom and the babies. How then, asked Lani, did his ascot make its appearance there? (The silken tie was the one thing left that, forgiving the phrase, stuck in the CASA’s craw; naturally, she withheld referring to the place from which it made its grisly “coming-out.”)

  She related how one day under the bridge, after Topsy had provided food for herself and the babies, the wind had brought a chill; the sun was setting and he worried she had no sweater. He gave her the ascot to wrap about her neck. Amaryllis loved its shininess and golden teardrops and kept it to wrap around her Box of Saints. She never gave it back. In a separate matter, she said there had been visitors to the St. George suite—but ones she had never mentioned and was unsure she ever would. They were unspeakable.

  Lani conveyed all this to the detective, who put her in touch with the defense—it was the CASA’s feeling that she could get the girl to testify to as much in court. The attorneys were concerned it still wasn’t enough to clear him; the testimony of a combative child, diagnosed as “labile and hypervigilant” and “with flight of ideas,” currently being weaned from Effexor, Neurontin, Ativan and Cogentin, was not the most convincing.

  At this juncture, as it is wont to, a deus ex machina explained all.

  Samson Dowling was awakened by an early-morning call from Jerry Whittle, a coroner’s assistant whom he had known for years. Whittle was a funny, meticulous eccentric who, at the age of forty-nine, still lived with his mother in San Marino. He visited the detective regularly after he got shot, and made Samson laugh and forget his pain awhile. When he was discharged, the odd couple went to ball games and barbershops together, and had the occasional steak and martini at Musso & Frank’s. Whittle aspired to writing but could never settle on a niche: he liked the idea of creating a mystery series based on a coroner’s assistant, a kind of bush-league Kay Scarpetta, but also had a mind to tackle a book of ruminative essays in the Death to Dust or How We Die mode, or maybe even a precious memoir along the lines of the one by that well-known fellow who called himself a “mortician poet.”

  Whittle had been the first from the coroner’s office to arrive at the scene of the Kornfeld homicide. He took tissue samples and scrapings—it was he who had discovered the ascot in the throat, drawing an excited parallel to the pupae similarly found in The Silence of the Lambs—and snapped photos of the deceased, which he added to his collection (he’d flirted with publishing a volume of Weegee-type photographs, getting someone like DeLillo or Ellroy to write the text).

  “I’m telling you, Sam, I’m looking at both sets of photographs. Now. As we speak.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The knots, Sam, the knots are the same.”

  “The knots in the ascot?” He was still foggy.

  “No, Sam! There were no knots in the ascot—Jesus, what kind of detective are you? The knots in the sheet the woman was strangled with. They’re manropes—”

  “Manropes?”

  “Manropes. They’re one and the same.”

  “The same as what?” asked Samson testily. He’d been dreaming so pleasantly only minutes before.

  “The same as the knots in the tie of the guy who killed himself.”

  “Which guy, Jerry? Who are you talking about?”

  “The suicide, on Carroll Avenue—George Fitzsimmons!”

  In fact, Mr. Whittle was correct; the knots were unique.† A macabre death-scene photo of the former DCFS worker, on the floor of his Victorian parlor, was shown to the frog-like Korean manager of the St. George, who quickly affirmed the deceased had indeed visited Geri Kornfeld more than once and during said visits tied a maimed dog to the sidewalk’s rusted-out newspaper rack. The attorneys of Marcus Weiner (for that is how the defendant was now addressed) obtained an order from the court to draw DNA samples from the body of Fitzsimmons, which had not yet been (and never would be) claimed.

  A few expository things happened “offstage” that will never be known by the players in our drama but should be passed on for the sake of thoroughness—it is hoped that for even the less curious reader the by-product may give a parenthetical frisson. The man who had once thought of himself entirely as William Morris (and still did, to a much smaller degree) was a naïf incapable of imagining the horrors that might befall a child, while the once honorable Geo. Fitzsimmons, late, great and faded pride of the Department of Children and Family Services, was capable indeed. His eyes had seen too much. When he first met Amaryllis at the 4th Street Bridge encampment, he saw things in hers that had mercifully eluded the gentleman who hailed from Merton Abbey on the River Wandle. He saw she was on her way to being half dead, and that he might rescue her as he had his own four-legged beauty. So he befriended her mother and gave Geri money to sleep with him; and did not begrudge himself enjoyment of that act. Now, because he suspected but had no proof, and because Geo. Fitzsimmons (ever professional) must be certain, he eventually solicited the woman to let him have the daughter to himself for an hour to do what he liked. He named an amount, and after token protestation, she took the money—a princessly sum of ten one-dollar bills. He asked if she’d ever made such arrangements before, and she was reluctant to say, but was forthcoming after Fitz withheld the pipe. There was a lady, she said with playacted hesitation, to convey that while she wasn’t at all happy about what she had been forced to do to survive (to put food and crack on the table), that while she wasn’t happy, at least it was a woman—no offense to Mr. Fitzsimmons, because she could tell he would not hurt her girl. He was not a pervert, she said—then asked, Was he? She would be in the room with them anyway, she said, now flaunting her motherly instincts. That, she said, was “non-negotiable.” But the thing she was telling him before (her daughter with the woman) was the only time. And her daughter was stoned, she said she made sure of that, so as not to know what was happening or even remember if she did. What a humanitarian. He withheld the pipe some more—and when she told of the others who had had the girl, some for what Fitz determined was less than a lungful, he choked the life from her with a bedsheet of cinches he’d learned from his father, so that in this instance it can never be said that any sins were passed on. Then he surprised himself by sodomizing the body—and that was the moment he married Death. For he suddenly knew in the same way that Jane Scull had when she lay with Please-Help.-Bless that his life was done and that he was three-quarters gone; the demise of his dog made it whole.

  Louis Trotter found her strolling the far side of the Saint-Cloud property near the cutting shed. When she saw him, Trinnie smiled warmly—she was losing a mother, but he was losing a friend and lover of half a century. She kissed him, and his face, an odd mask of worry and resignation, looked mildly electrified. She thought he had co
me to speak of Bluey, soon to be transferred to the Motion Picture and Television Hospital; shrieking by night and by day, she had entered the phase caregivers euphemistically call “fecal play.” It was nearly too much for the hired hands, and simply too much for Winter and the household to bear.

  “She’ll be much better once she’s settled, Father, you’ll see. And I’ll be there all the time, looking after the garden. It’s my garden,” she said, smiling some more. “Remember?”

  “That I do! That I do. Katrina—I don’t know how to say this.” She saw how troubled he was, and her concerns about Bluey were quickly supplanted by the irrational terror that something had happened to her son. As she opened her mouth in a gasp of inquiry, he said, “We found Marcus. He was arrested …”

  “Arrested—” she could not catch her breath “—for—”

  “For a crime he did not commit. He’s been cleared.”

  “Where—where—”

  “I don’t think you should see him just now—”

  “Where!”

  He grabbed her shoulders with a force that took even him by surprise. “Katrina—I am telling you this because I do not wish to repeat my mistake of so many years ago.”

  She went pure white, and her hair was already dank with sweat; he had a vision of her as one of Edward’s Kabuki puppets.

  “Oh, Father …”

  She shivered in his arms like a stranded person airlifted from a great height.

  He stroked her and softly spoke. “He will not leave this time. He is not … wild. He is—he is not Marcus—but—well, I’m not sure who he is. And I’m not sure he knows, either. Harry and Ruth have seen him; it was because of Ruth we were able to track him down.”