Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“Oh my God!” cried Lucy. “Why didn’t you tell us!”

Toulouse instantly regretted having opened his mouth. “I’m telling you now . I just found out! Grandpa would kill—”

“I cannot believe you saw him and didn’t say anything! Weren’t you dying to go up to him?”

“And say what? Hey, how ya doin’? It’s me, your son! You know — the one Mom had after you flipped out.”

“But how could you at least not—”

“Lucille Rose,” said her brother. “Please chill.”

The wise guy had spoken. The eyes of Oracle Ed blinked languidly above the veil. “None of this comes as a great surprise,” he continued with studied nonchalance. “I believe I came into that ‘piece of intelligence’—as Grandpa Lou would say — some days ago.”

“Don’t tell me you knew all along,” said Toulouse, prepared to be at once astonished and betrayed.

“Edward!” she rebuked. “You knew and didn’t tell us?”

“I had all the ingredients but didn’t have a recipe — until now. See, for the last week or so, Dad’s been acting very strange. At first I thought it was fallout from the Alzheimer’s. That he was getting ’emotional.’ But then I happened to learn from Eulogio (you know how close we’ve become) that he’s been shepherding dear old Pops to — guess where? The Hotel Bel-Air.”

“But Grandpa said no one knew—”

“I assumed he was having a dalliance. I thought, Good for him —because he sure doesn’t get enough at home!”

“Edward,” said his sister. “That is so mean .”

“When I implied as much out loud, Eulogio said he didn’t think a woman was involved. So then I thought: it’s a man!”

“Ed-ward!”

He squealed with delight. “Now why , pray tell, asked I of Eulogio, why would you think a woman was not involved? Getting information from that fellow is like pulling dumpster-baby teeth. (Well, maybe harder.) Because each time he drove him there, Eulogio responded, each time he drove Señor Dodd , he would later see him strolling about the pond with a heavyset man whose features were much as you described.”

“Fuck!” spat Toulouse. “The whole world knows!”

“The immediate family — and I’m certain Grandpa Lou has taken pains to keep it immediate — is hardly the whole world, Toulouse. So chill.”

“We have to go there,” said Lucy, fiendishly agog at the plotty new developments. Tonight her Smythson would get a workout.

“I glossed it,” said the cousin, kicking himself. “I thought it was just one of Dodd’s pasty Seattle friends holed up in Tinseltown incognito to do a little bullshit consulting on the middle-school project — you know, Billionaire-Boys’-Club stuff. But then it came back to me … one night at dinner last week — remember, Lucy? — Father received a phone call. He stepped away from the table, which was rare; had to be Grandpa Lou. He listened for a second, then shot two words back to the phone.” Edward paused dramatically. “ ‘John Burnham.’ ”

“Yes!” said Lucy knowingly, though just then she wasn’t sure what she knew.

“John Burnham?” Toulouse was lost.

“Then Grandpa said something else, because Father’s forehead wrinkled up and he asked: ‘When?’ ”

“ ‘When?’ ” echoed Toulouse.

“Yes!” cried Lucy. “He said, ‘When?’!”

“—and at this point, Joyce was listening very carefully. Her ear was moving toward the receiver like it was going to fucking dock with it. Then Father says, ‘Did they speak?’ ”

“Into the phone?”

“Into the phone.”

“ ‘Did they speak?’ ”

“Yes!” corroborated Lucy, with great excitation. “And then Dad said, [she lowered her voice in imitation] ‘I’ll take care of it.’ ”

“ ‘I’ll take care of it’?” said Toulouse, sounding — and feeling — like a simpleton.

“Exactly. ‘ I’ll take care of it.’ ”

“What is this, The Sopranos ?”

“Who is John Burnham?” begged Lucy of her brother.

Edward shoved a cappuccino truffle under the veil and crunched. “I didn’t put it together until Boulder called to gossip about Tull snubbing her at the Bel-Air. After she got it out of her system, she went on and on about how she and Diane Keaton had the same agent — John Burnham! That night, I innocently mentioned Mr. Burnham to Mother during a bath. There was a long pause — I mean long . Then she said, ‘He was best man at their wedding.’ Just like that.”

Toulouse sagely nodded.

“What does it mean?” said Lucy, beside herself. “What does it mean ?”

Toulouse filled in the blanks. “Mr. Burnham must have run into my father at the hotel — must have recognized him. They probably spoke, and that’s what the phone call was about. Sling Blade — or some other ‘handler’—probably saw it and reported back.”

“Bingo,” said Edward.

“I guess the cat really is out of the bag,” said Toulouse.

“Not if Grandpa Lou can help it,” said the cousin. “And, believe me — he can help it.”

The gentleman Louis Trotter had received in his living room was the inimitable Mr. Burnham, a higher-up at the William Morris Agency at that time, invited to Saint-Cloud to give express assurance that he would not give away the unexpected return of a fragile old friend — and that if he had already discussed it with, say, a colleague, then would he be so kind to cover his tracks by declaring himself to have been mistaken. Marcus Weiner was by no means the center of Mr. Burnham’s world; thus far, he had only mentioned the brief encounter to Ms. Keaton, his client and confidante. (The actress had of course already told him about her summer holiday with the kids — and of her affection for the profligately talented Katrina; Mr. Burnham had said hello to the latter not so long ago at Ivy at the Shore and found her alluring. Recently divorced, he was on the lookout, but his halfhearted entreaties to Ms. Keaton to play matchmaker had been ignored.) He felt the Trotters were a shade on the paranoid side, but appreciated their sensitivities. A thing like this could attract unwanted press.

This is what led to their summit: after being informed by his father of the swan-side run-in, uneventful of itself yet fraught with potentially hazardous repercussions if not quickly contained, Dodd cold-called the agent, who was also by chance an alumnus of Beverly Vista, albeit some years ahead of him. Mr. Burnham was tickled; having the eccentric billionaire on one’s phone sheet was somewhat of a coup. Dodd quickly gave him the lowdown — while the jailing and other convolutions were withheld, the saga of an ongoing recovery from debilitating mental illness was not. Mr. Burnham was more than happy to comply with the request to, as they say, put a sock in it. He was somewhat taken aback when Dodd, in a transparent and superfluous effort to solidify the agent’s trust, brought up the sketchy idea of a future creative alliance between Quincunx and the Morris agency — something in the digital realm or perhaps an interactive project that might tie in with his plans to rejuvenate old BV. (Until now, Mr. Burnham had been unaware that they had that place in common.) Dodd ended by saying his father was eager to meet him face-to-face. An interview at Saint-Cloud was arranged. As reported earlier, that conference was amicable, leaving Trotter the Elder much at ease. Again Mr. Burnham felt it odd, for he had already given his word; but he had always wanted to meet the legendary digger nonetheless, and seized the opportunity, which did not disappoint.