Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“Is Topsy sick?” she asked.

“Well, we’re not sure,” said the detective. “That’s why we want to talk to him. Now, he said not to tell anyone about leaving you at the bakery. Was there anything else he ever told you not to tell? About any of the things you did together? Even the good things? Did he share secrets with you, like a good friend would? Did he ever tell you he did something bad to anyone? That he hurt someone, even by mistake?”

“It’s OK to tell, sweetheart. Otherwise, we won’t be able to help your friend.”

Amaryllis burst into tears, and the psychologist looked into Samson’s eyes, signaling the meeting should end.

“Thank you, sweetheart. You’ve been very helpful. I didn’t mean to make you cry! Amaryllis — that’s a beautiful name, do you know that? Did your mother give you that name? That’s a beautiful flower. A Christmas flower.”

He reached into a briefcase and pulled out a stiff plastic envelope. He held it out to her; encased within was a deep-blue handkerchief speckled with gold scallop’d teardrops. “Have you ever seen this before?” he asked.

She cautiously nodded.

“Where?”

“It’s Topsy’s.”

“Something he wore?”

“Around his neck.”

“Did he give it to your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

Her jaw clenched and she stared at her shoes. He was losing her again.

“Know what they call it? An ‘ascot.’ I’d like to return it to him.” He stood up, then bent to kiss her cheek. “Keep getting stronger, now — you’re doin’ great. Isn’t she?”

“She sure is.”

“Not mad at me, are you? Can I have a smile?”

Amaryllis eked one out.

“Mr. Dowling has something else to tell you,” said the psychologist.

“I sure do. Saffron and Cody are coming to see you.”

She looked at him, dumbfounded.

“We were able to locate them, and they’re on their way.”

“From what I understand,” said the psychologist, “they should be here either tonight or tomorrow morning.”

Come they did, later that evening. The woman at the foster home where they’d been placed soon after their departure from the St. George could no longer take care of them. That’s all that was said.

As curious as we are to observe the intimacies of the reunited, time and good taste have their limits. We shall leave them alone, for their moments together are precious and deserve exile from prying eyes. Briefly, it may be said that upon first seeing Amaryllis, the young babies, three and five years of age, were stunned and insensate, clasping each other in an odd pantomime of displaced, abject fear; then, spoken to in a persistent, cooing, complex language of animal sounds and shared remembrances, they slowly came around until the trio were overwrought to an ecstasy of desperation, Amaryllis coating them with kisses the way a mother licks her cubs clean. Even the stoic, efficient Dézhiree came undone. So let them be: allow the small, improvised party at the cottage — donated cupcakes, candles and bears all around — to proceed behind closed doors.

Such miracles happen, even at Mac.

Another reunion is at hand, though not as poignant.

He had what he needed — the girl’s statement about the ascot’s ownership was incriminating enough for him to now seek charges of rape and murder against John Doe aka Topsy aka William. He would visit the district attorney in the morning.

When Samson returns to Rampart Detectives, he is pulled up short by the sight of a woman sitting at the end of a bolted row of hard plastic scoop-chairs. His body knows her before his mind can properly assess; one child’s neuroperceptual difficulty is another man’s cognitive dissonance. He takes everything in — flamboyant vintage dress and absurdly glamorous hat upon fiery, fierce-bunned hair; the business end of a stiletto tap-tap-tapping on the cigarette-burned linoleum floor.

She stands, and the air rushes out of him.

†After the vagrant’s disturbing visit undid and upended all her missionary work, Lani Mott used the resources of the advocacy office at children’s court to track down one Edith Stein aka Amaryllis Kornfeld, even traveling to El Monte to visit — but to what end? What do you want with this child? asked her CASA supervisor. Because Lani hadn’t said straight out that she wished to be the girl’s advocate. That of course is what she did want, more than anything, yet couldn’t voice because of a lurid, niggardly fear that shamed her no end. She had become a Court-Appointed Special Advocate in such selfless spirit of noblesse oblige; had cheerfully undergone the sometimes-depressing training and even put on a little “graduates’ day dessert” at the house, thoughtfully catered by Gilles. Yet more than a year later, all she had to show for her altruism was one measly case: driving a sullen teenager back and forth from a fancy residential facility to Western Dental to get a retainer. She’d made grandiose excuses to her growingly contemptuous courthouse boss — a death in the family, trouble at work — turning down case after case simply because she didn’t want to travel to certain neighborhoods, where she felt she would be at physical risk. She wouldn’t even go to Leimert Park! Lani Mott had said no so many times that she’d been informed that her days as an advocate were coming to an end. A fired volunteer — now, that was pretty low. But the fact remained: Lani Mott was afraid.

An unexpected thing happened when Trinnie and Samson sat down for supper at Ivy at the Shore: she lost focus. The manic, aggrieved woman had used her brother’s office to find him — steeped in fervid self-righteousness, she had relished every step of the ambush. Yet after that first encounter, standing next to him under the fluorescent lights of Rampart, an uncanny light that made everything too real hence not real enough, after they had agreed to see each other that very night, Trinnie was all peace and love as she wended her way back to Saint-Cloud. Climbing from the bath, she felt acutely alive. She chose a simple black shift and left the house with a bounce in her step, the chill air a tonic. The top was down on the Cabriolet.

Sam Dowling was a childhood friend; well, more a friend of Dodd’s. His family had been poor (they lived south of Olympic) but, like pioneers before them, were determined to give their son a Beverly Hills education. He was one of the few kids at BV — maybe the only one — to have gotten close to her brother, and for that Trinnie was ever grateful. He wasn’t a user, either; she knew he didn’t pal around with Dodd for the perks, and there were plenty. (Not that Trinnie would have cared.) Sam was a gawky, good-hearted boy, clueless in matters of money and social status, the latter of which her brother was sorely lacking. The future detective’s democratic qualities and all-around innocent kindnesses were rewarded with lavish summer trips, three in a row to their Great Camp on Saranac Lake.

She knew a few things about him — that he’d married young and become a cop; that he’d been shot twice in the chest during a “routine traffic stop” and not been expected to live; that his marriage was the thing that didn’t survive. When he recovered, he moved to Fiji to soul-search, with Dodd fronting him money to build a small resort for scubaholics. But law enforcement was in his blood, and Fiji was too damn peaceful. He sold the hotel, repaid his friend and returned to L.A. with an eye on a detective’s shield.

He re-entered Trinnie’s life when her brother called on him to mediate in the awkward business of the stolen book and then again when her husband, Marcus Weiner, the eccentric and beloved Hollywood agent, vanished into thin air.