by Bruce Wagner
“Did he … did he mention me?” It was all she could think to ask.
“Katrina—I’m not sure how … intact he is.”
“Have you seen him?”
He shook his head adamantly. “Only Samson. Marcus didn’t remember him. Or didn’t let on.”
“Is he still in jail?”
“He’s been released. I’ve put him somewhere under guard, for his own sake. The doctors are tending him now; he has lived his life on the streets and bears the scars. Though he seems quite pleased and grateful to be free.”
She licked the sweet salt of tears from her lips and grew strangely calm. “Father,” she uttered. “I wish it were all a dream … I’m like Tull now! Suddenly, I don’t know anymore. I know how I was when I came to see you that day at work—so crazed. But now—now I’m not sure I even want him to be here—”
He took her shoulders again, but this time it was his gaze alone that held her. “You mustn’t say it, Katrina—mustn’t even think it. You will face this man, I’ll help you. Listen to me! Long ago I told you my grandson would come into a piece of intelligence and that it would be your duty to be candid. That, you were: with a dignity that absolutely floored me—took me marvelously by surprise. You will face this man with the courage you’ve shown since you faced Toulouse. You will face your husband, Katrina! And settle the books once and for all.”
At that moment—and if here we do lapse into genre, it is hoped we can be forgiven—she fainted dead away.
†It would not be the first time that a criminal, living or dead, was “tripped up” in like fashion, and will likely not be the last; though one can be sure that this history’s done with the knotty device. While admitting such an artifice to be a hardy staple of the mystery genre in days gone by, the author would hope that while there is plenty of mystery in our tale, there is less genre too.
CHAPTER 39
Thanksgivings
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In comparison to Marcus’s previous lodging, the Hotel Bel-Air—though more an antacid pink than Red House—was most congenial (at least it was no Big House). He occupied a large series of rooms and was never left alone.
He even cooked for the men who guarded him, wearing a dainty, ill-size apron about his waist for the task. He made a mean pomegranate sabayon—the color of which resembled the aforementioned bismuthal lodgings—that when poured over mille-feuille pillows melted in the mouth like stardust.
The entourage of healers was vast: psychotherapists and physicians, nutritionists and body-workers, barbers and manicurists and of course the hulking men in well-tailored suits who stood at the door with tiny earpieces, as if covertly auditing the drone of a bureaucratic god. He did not find the circumstances at all oppressive, and actually marveled at the suite’s wallpaper and chintz, which though not topflight had the effect of reminding him of patterns designed by that distinctive genius with whom he once shared such affinity and ardor, and from whom he felt himself sadly receding each fallish Californian day, days marked less by chill and chimney smoke than by the sight of the hostelry’s storybook swans.
For after a week had passed, Louis Trotter, at the urging of his son-in-law’s mental-health supernumeraries, declared it a fine idea for him to stroll the grounds with the men in suits as chaperons. Tourists and other passersby must have thought him to be a King Nerd who had bottomed out à la Brian Wilson when, in fact, Marcus’s world had gone from “lockdown” sandbox to oysters indeed.
The education—or re-education—of Mr. Weiner proceeded with uncommon speed. He had always been an apt pupil, but now that it was his own life he was studying, he did his homework with especial rigor, unclouded by hallucination.†
With the case happily resolved, the detective was allowed to come and go as he pleased, and the expansion upon their already cordial bond was mutually healing. They made small talk and took their meals by the patio or pool. Out of the blue, Marcus spoke of wishing to visit the new cathedral downtown before it was filled with “tiresome” parishioners; he had a fondness for empty churches. Along that vein, he unleashed an impassioned filibuster on “the preservation of ancient buildings,” radiantly evoking St. John’s in the Wilderness—his sanctuary in the early fugitive days of his Adirondack unraveling. Just as Samson was wondering if he should delve into that episode, Marcus himself brought up the arrest, even referring to the detective’s “official” visits those many years ago.
“No Twin Towers that,” he said, with gentle irony. “The woman—the one who said I struck her? Crazy as a loon! I never raised a hand to a woman in my life! Beaten by a ‘john,’ she was. But I was in terrible shape—oh, terrible. Wasn’t I, Sam? Oh good Lord.”
“How did you wind up there, anyway? I thought you’d hardly visited Twig House before the wedding.”
“How? Don’t know. Some things—a lot of things—are just lost. We did go there once or twice; the lakes always had a strong and lovely pull. Tear o’ the Clouds … been up there, Sam?”
“Not in a long while.”
“Perhaps because it was Essex County—I have ties there, you know. Across the Atlantic.” He brought himself up. “Or had ties, should I say. I’m losing some of those old ties,” he said, with a wink of apprehension.
So they sat or sunned or strolled among the swans, talking of this and that: a bit about Mr. Trotter and the twenty-four-cylinder, $3 million, quarter-million-ton, two-stories-high earthmover he’d bought, with tires that dwarfed a man—and a bit about Dodd—and a bit about the movie world and popular culture—but never a word of their shared true love. Sometimes they watched television, an activity interrupted by the hilarious regularity of Marcus’s “Oh, good God!” outbursts. Once, a film featuring his old client Tom Hanks and a bulldog came on through the satellite dish and Marcus was riveted. “That’s Tom,” he said. “By God, that’s Tom, isn’t it?” He said it over and over. “But the story—it’s mad, isn’t it? But charming! But absolutely mad.” (He was still determining what and who was crazy, and when and if it was all right to say or be so.) At night, while the men in suits sat before the droning tube, he lay on his bed staring at the letter from Gilles, exhausted—there was so much to do, and yet it seemed he’d forgotten how to do anything. A torrent of thoughts and schemes and projects rushed to his head, just as they had in the William Morris mind-set of old. But he was sorely paralyzed; and could not go marathon-walking, even if he had a mind to.
Harry and Ruth delivered a trove of picture albums, and Marcus soon ran “Red” and “Lands” together like a native, no longer infusing his boyhood community with comic biblical import. Though images of himself as a toddler left him scratching his head, he began to scrutinize the souvenirs with a growing titillation—bar mitzvah photos were of exorbitant interest, like clandestine documents detailing the arcane rites of Guinean tribes. Delicately, with Polaroid and Kodachrome time line, the Weiners drew him toward adulthood. He loved the snapshots taken at the Huntington—here they huddled at the foot of the Japanese bridge; there, crouched at the lily pond. Young Marcus stood in the library of that great institution beside a tapestry, and his older self brought it closer and cooed, as if recognizing something he had woven with his own hands.
His parents were grateful to be asked the random personal question—for example, What happened to his father’s face? “I had a stroke, son,” Harry said. “But it hasn’t slowed me a whit.”
Marcus nodded and cooed, like an acolyte handed a koan.
Ruth brought pomegranate preserves made especially for him; he slathered them on a cracker, wincing as they hit the palate—the three had a good laugh about that, because even thirty y
ears ago he had not liked her results. The men in suits admired the jelly well enough and were given some to take home. The men in suits seemed to eat pretty much anything.
Ruth Weiner left the wedding album home, for a mother’s instincts told her it was too soon. But Harry, rascal that he was, managed to smuggle something past—not that his wife knew, even in hindsight, that she would have objected. One day at the Bel-Air, he presented his son with a package wrapped in rice paper. Marcus tore it open and stared blinkingly at News from Nowhere, the very book that Toulouse, whose existence was still unknown to him, had held in his hands not long ago.
The former agent hung his head and remembered. (But could not remember why or when he had mailed it to Redlands.) This was the thing he’d been accused of stealing, and had stolen, but had lied about when confronted; not even his parents knew of that episode—nor was their son aware that Mr. Trotter, using Detective Dowling as a go-between, had compensated the aggrieved booksellers shortly after his final flight. The longer he held it, the heavier it became, its history soaking his cells the way certain medicines act on the muscles of a horse when sponged upon its coat; for this book of William Morris’s marked a kind of beginning of the end. He had taken its name for his own diary …
He pressed the book to his chest and sunk into the divan, disconsolate. Ruth and Harry rallied futilely around him. His mother suggested it was time to go home, but when she tried to take the book, thinking it had already vexed him enough, he resisted, so Harry told her to let it be.
That night, instead of Gilles’s letter, he turned the utopian novel over in his large hands. He examined the frontispiece.
Ex Libris
This Book Belongs to Marcus Weiner
He was beset by nausea, disgusted by the pretentious ass, the wag who thought a juxtaposition of names—William Morris the showman and William Morris the designer—so incredibly amusing; it was himself he hated. His mind regurgitated an agency mosaic: a speedy mail-room apprenticeship; staff retreats in Santa Barbara; romantic weekends at San Ysidro Ranch (though he wasn’t at all certain it was a ranch, and couldn’t remember who used to go there with him); openings of restaurants and openings of films and openings of little retail palaces filled with ruinously expensive clothes; first-class flights to visit clients the world over—Fiji, Ireland, Paris—lavish vacation jaunts to Venice and Sri Lanka, pyramids and power spots and the thousand wonders of lava beach, fjord and dune; cay, cwm, atoll. All those breakfasts and lunches and screenings with desperately self-assured faces, famous and egregiously unknown. A name wafted back: John Burnham, the colleague to whom he had told his premonitory dream of becoming Chairman of the Disembodied …—but the whole of these meandering mental aerobics, though invaluable to his rehabilitation, would not lead him to Katrina, for too much scar tissue had formed.
Other matters weighed heavily upon him, specifically one that took precedence even over the fate of the orphan girl, and had been stirred by his parents’ restoration of the forbidden fruit of his kleptistic act—the other “News from Nowhere,” his news, needed to be retrieved, for it was a vital piece to the great puzzle of where and what he had been. He had already layed his hands on it, with his little cab ride; and the timing of the trip to Public Storage—coming just before his arrest—seemed a powerful omen. He only hoped the journal (Weiner’s, not Morris’s) would be intelligible. Like the proverbial man who in the middle of sleep jots down the secret of the universe only to find jibberish in the morning, Marcus feared that the diary, ten years in the making, might be useless. Sometimes long-buried things decay when exposed to light and air.
Now each time he saw the hidden earpieces of the men in suits, he thought of her.
He would retrieve his manuscript, and Jane Scull in the bargain.
Marcus had not yet visited with the old man, though on his release from the Towers, they had spoken by phone.
He knew Louis Trotter to be his “father-in-law,” but the scarring earlier noted made him subject to a selective dysphasia that robbed things of context and meaning. Still, such were Mr. Trotter’s patriarchal powers (and so genuine his concern for this creature) that Marcus relied on him for all manner of “pieces of intelligence.” So it was not unusual that he asked his mentor to grant a furlough to visit his dear friend Jane so that he could get back the journal she had in safekeeping; it had been his last request of her. He also told Mr. Trotter it would not be a bad thing for him to help this woman, as she was disabled and might benefit even more than he from the quality of care so kindly made available; and as she—his Janey—was the most decent, hard-luck being he’d ever known and he would do anything for her if ever he had the means. (This, he offered with characteristic charm and humility, not wishing to tax Mr. Trotter’s energies or goodwill.) When the old man consulted Marcus’s therapist on whether a small road trip would be kosher, the lady raised a flag, astutely hypothesizing—for she was no slouch, and even knew her Victoriana—that this new “Jane” (if she existed at all) might in fact be a delusionary stand-in for the other: the Jane Burden of William Morris, the famously adulterous wife of which therapist and client had had numerous discussions early on, in fresh-from-Twin-Towers pre-Zyprexa days. He had been doing so well; she wanted to be sure he wasn’t mixing himself up with Morris again or confusing Jane Burden with Katrina Trotter—or some such combination. If this were the case, the analyst coolly cautioned that Mr. Weiner’s lauded progress would need to be reassessed. They went to his son-in-law’s rooms to talk over the matter. Mr. Trotter was glad to see Marcus good-naturedly assure both himself and therapist alike that Jane, unburdened—this Jane—was indeed the very special, very dear Jane Scull, boon companion and erstwhile shelter mate. The digger stopped short of deeper inquiry, wisely deciding it was none of his damn business.
It would have been easy to enlist one of the men in suits for this particular bit of business, but Mr. Trotter’s unfailing instincts told him otherwise. Because the Monasterio brothers were busy enough with dynastic chores, he called up Sling Blade and for a not inconsequential “palming” had him escort Marcus to SeaShelter. (The moonlighting caretaker had been forced to call in sick; and while Dot Campbell was displeased, she strenuously offered to bring chicken soup to his Culver City apartment—an offer as strenuously rebuffed.) Some of the more conservative advisers warned that an outside visit was premature and that he should be accompanied by two guards at least. The old man waved them off. He had his concerns but was learning to let go; if Marcus ran away again, perhaps then it had been in the stars all along. Louis Trotter would do his best and could do no more.
When they arrived at the Olympic Boulevard sanctuary, things were as they had always seemed. The hangar was mostly empty, as residents were not allowed indoors during the day. The skeleton staff greeted Marcus with vacant looks. They didn’t recognize him, for he had lost a great deal of weight (less as a consequence of imprisonment than of the nefarious conspiracies of nutritionist and trainer). He still wore donated clothes, but of a different ilk than prior castoffs; Mr. Trotter’s tailor, Ray Montalvo, had made stylishly incremental adjustments to a number of long dark coats and crisp white shirts sent over from Barneys and Maxfield’s.
The quondam boarder finally introduced himself, but that was no good either, because he used “Marcus Weiner.” A few of the staffers squinted hard before moving closer. “It’s William!” he shouted at last—they recoiled, startled and uncomprehending, yet captivated nonetheless. Sling Blade handily jumped in to clarify, and had never strung more words together in his life: Mr. Weiner—William—had subsequently been cleared of all charges, he said officiously, and was now a free man. On recovering from their initial shock (having long since envisioned their once-favorite “guest” to be comfortably ensconced on death row), the staffers extended a warm and courteous welcome, and soon a half-dozen gathered around. Curiously, they asked no details of crime or exoneration but did somewhat skittishly presume that he had returned to pick up where he left off. The
counselor who not long ago had scanned Le Marmiton’s shelves for tainted treats spoke up, half joking that an official notice of his “acquittal” would have to be presented before William—Mr. Weiner—might actually be reassigned bed and locker. Before Marcus could respond, Sling Blade, with great aplomb, said the gentleman would most definitely not be returning, for his benefactor had arranged that he be well taken care of pending the results of a “massive action against the state involving matters of false arrest, false imprisonment and police brutality, not to mention libel, slander and defamation of character.” The staff took this bulletin with appropriate solemnity.
Now off the hook, they let Marcus know their outrage at the Gestapo-like actions of the SMPD and their cynicism upon hearing the charges proffered. They were free to share with him their hysteria after he’d been hauled away—they were only human!—and how anxious they had been for a while about the, ahem, quality of his desserts, for they wondered if, aside from being an (alleged) strangler and a rapist, he wasn’t a (potential) poisoner to boot—it all sounded so silly now, so screwball!—and how they’d been unsuccessful in their attempts to retrieve the cookies and pastries, because there weren’t any left. That’s how popular the damn things were! (There was money lying around somewhere for William, they assured, royalties on goods sold.) And how they checked the newspaper each day for reports of victims … the lawsuits they imagined! Did you ever see the Keystone Kops? asked one of the staffers, rhetorically. Well, that was us—for a while, anyway.
Even Marcus joined in the laughter.
As Sling Blade had remained stoic, one of the counselors on a more serious note reminded that they had become purveyors of his confections because they wished him to get a leg up, and their intentions had been pure from the beginning—and that he had been the most successful guest to have ever passed through shelter doors. Seeing how at least William was still convivial, they pulled up chairs as he extemporized on his prison ordeal.
