Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“So this is the secret weapon!” she said. “I’ll have to admit my husband used me as a guinea pig for some of your early creations.” She was referring to the pomegranate-and-almond mille-feuilles. “He wouldn’t tell me they had been baked by someone else — not at first. And he’s been trying to duplicate them ever since! But I’ll have you know he’s been an abject failure.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” said Will’m graciously, and Gilles was gladdened he’d rallied to his defense.

“My husband tells me you also design fabric.”

“Suchwise I have been known to indulge.” The words came forth, but he felt emptied out and wickedly desolate.

“Quite the Renaissance man! I’d love to see one of your patterns,” she said diffidently. “When you have the time.”

Gilles offered coffee and sweets — a few customers came and went — Will’m mopped and moped — all the while pondering how to wangle things around to the girl.

“Tell me, Gilles, do you and the wife have children?”

“No.”

“Well then, niece or nephew?”

“We have two nieces,” offered Mrs. Mott.

“One this high?” he asked, holding an enormous hand around the height of Amaryllis’s crown.

“No — why do you ask?”

“It’s just that I was passing by some days ago and about to come in. And I thought I saw a child — I was afraid I’d give her a fright, so I stayed away. I am loud and unkempt, you know. So I kept a distance. And I was just wondering … well if she belonged to you .”

“Oh no! Heavens!” he said, looking at his wife with the realization.

“Gilles, he’s talking about the girl .”

“The girl! Yes . She appeared out of nowhere .”

“Then there was a girl,” said Will’m anxiously.

At ease now and happy to have a story of her own, Lani recapped their experience — how she had received a call from her husband alerting her to the emergency; how, in her duty as a trained court-appointed special advocate and occasional volunteer at children’s court, she had phoned the child-abuse hotline (legally required, she added); how the police had come to the bakery, then taken the girl to the precinct; how Lani held her ground so that she was allowed to stay while the child was interviewed by the social worker, who was “rather green” (just then Gilles reached over and proudly patted her hand); how Lani then accompanied both girl and CSW to yet another building until “suitable placement” was procured—

“But,” stammered Will’m, “but where is she now ?”

“Now? Well … we — we don’t know,” said the baker, turning toward his wife. After all, she was the professional.

“With a family, I suppose,” said Lani. “Hopefully, a nice one.” This last, she smugly directed to Gilles.

“But — but why did you call the police ?”

“She already said. She had to.”

“I am required — by law,” answered Lani defensively. “As a court-appointed special advo—”

“—but why didn’t you take her in yourself —”

“You can’t just ‘take in’ a child, Will’m,” said Gilles, shoring up Lani with a cocked eye. “They put you in jail for that sort of thing.”

“That’s a very long process. And besides, Gilles and I — we’re not set up for that.” Meaning (not that it was anyone’s business) that adopting a child wasn’t an option. Lani set about her chores again in contrived fashion, wishing she were someplace else.

“The girl will be all right,” said Gilles, vacantly. He ascribed their visitor’s overweening interest in the castaway’s cause to sheer eccentricity; all the man needed was to be reassured. “She’ll be fine . We did the right thing, Will’m — by the book!”

“She will not —she will not be all right. And by whose book, sir!”

Lani stopped and beheld him. She was quaking.

“You say they’d put you in gaol — when it’s her they put in there! They chased her down and shackled her up like an animal! The girl was meant to be here , that’s what I told her — that you were my friends and would let no harm befall her! Now I see I’ve done the worst thing — sold my girl to the murderous police! The police, who give twopence for hill or valley or heart or soul! ‘You’ll do right well with him’— him meaning you —I told her. I swore to her as the poor thing looked straight in my eye. She’d have jumped through a hoop from a building if I’d told her — and now it looks as if she has, into deep space! See what’s done? My girl’s alone out there! And me a dead man, knocking at a gate!”

He stomped and snorted, and with that he was gone.

“Well, how do you like that?” said Gilles, setting down his mug. “So he’s the one who dropped her off! Now, how would he even know a child like that? Standing around with us playing dumb … and what did he mean ‘she’s in jail.’ We should probably call the police, Lani, no? Don’t you think? Maybe he knows her folks. Maybe he—” A lurid brainstorm darkened his face, cheapening its features. “Lani … do you think there was something funny there? ‘My girl,’ he called her. Something ‘Fritz Lang’—you know the Peter Lorre film — I mean, going on —between him and—?”

“No,” said his wife, still trembling. “No, Gilles, I do not .”

Shaken by the homeless gentleman’s tirade, she steadied herself against one of the steel mixing machines and was overcome by shame, the shame of what she already knew: that her entire life she’d taken pride in doing the right thing—“by the book.” The useless right thing.

Carroll Avenue was cushy, but the once right and honorable George Fitzsimmons knew it would not last forever; he was under the 4th Street Bridge sussing old digs when an unmarked car pulled over.

“Hi there — can we talk a moment?”

Seated beside the detective was Someone-Help-Me, who, having successfully brought hunter to quarry (he knew Fitz and Will’m were “tight”), busied himself with a grotesque celebratory lap dance solitaire , a seizure of freakish, self-satisfied gesticulations.

Samson Dowling stepped from the car and approached. Fitz put both hands on his crutch, cockily casual. The dirty dynamo got out too, sneering and twitching and muttering, and Fitz was not unhappy when Half Dead, gray rag of rat in his jaw, flew from the concrete stanchioned underslope and leapt at the traitorous fucker, knocking him backward.

“Mutant peesuh shit !” He frothed and feinted as the mongrel went for a mouthful. “ Kill ’ im, I will, crackhead Half Man!”

“I’ll suck your dick first.”

“You!” barked the detective at his scurvy partner. “ Outta here— now . Now!”

Someone-Help-Me lurched toward the L.A. River, peppily escorted by man’s best and mangled friend; the duration of Doppler’d vocalization made it apparent the dog’s enthusiasms took more than a moment to diminish. That the detective cared not a whit about the attack (really only bluster) and seemed near the end of his tether with this varminty vermin, viz. the cocksucking snitch, endeared him to Fitz just a little. For Fitz had no great love of the Man.

Dowling cordially introduced himself, adding that he’d seen Fitz on the streets the last year or so. Something about his interrogator put him at ease, which of course made him more defensive than ever.