Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

The mind is a mysterious, plastic thing and never ceases to invent itself; it can plod faithfully along with a yeoman’s awareness or sparkle with exquisite brilliance before losing its way. It learns and relearns with startling agility but, like any Thoroughbred, likes to be put through its paces. As implausible as it may seem, had Detective Dowling not lately gone through the mental gymnastics of connecting the dots between the short-haired “consul’s daughter” recently met at the Saint-Cloud maze and the pallid little beast he had once driven from Hotel Higgins to MacLaren — if his brain had not been suchwise jarred, then his sudden and precipitous recognition of the lost soul before him might never have occurred at all — this being a roundabout way of explaining why midway into the thirty-minute interview his eyes glazed and his pulse quickened. What tipped him over? The odd, vaguely anglicized turn of phrase — remnants of an accent heard long-ago in Adirondacks interrogations? Intuition of familiar bones beneath fleshy mask before him? Or the ineffable thing of Trinnie’s voodoo upon Samson’s séanced heart … it was — it was — it was—

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“You’re Marcus Weiner.”

“Man, who?”

“You are him.”

Whether he knew or knew not, and if so by and what degree, William wasn’t ready to abandon his post.

“Marcus! It’s Samson ,” he said, pointing rather absurdly to his own chest. “Samson Dowling — Dodd’s friend. Dodd Trotter— ”

He glowered and said, “Sir, do not challenge me!”

The detective took a long breath, and retrenched. “Look: I want to help you.”

“Man, I am not desirous of your help!”

“Do you not know that your name is Marcus Weiner? That you have a family? And that you’ve been missing thirteen years? Do you not know this?”

SeaShelter, the morning after. An agitated SeaStaff bristles: can it possibly be that William, their William, eccentric lord of the kitchen and shining rehab poster boy, was actually a fugitive wanted in connection with the heinous murder of a downtown woman some months back? And that wasn’t all! Rumor had it that on top of it, he was being charged with the kidnapping and molestation of — suddenly paranoid, one of the day managers thought it prudent to pay a visit to Le Marmiton and gather up any items extant that were William-made. Only days before, the Montana Avenue bakery had bought a half-dozen jars of pomegranate preserves, along with his trademark thumbprint cookies ladled with the fruit’s special sauce; such was their popularity that all had sold out. The woman behind the counter was glad to see the representative so she could order some more. The SeaStaffer anxiously scanned the shelves for potentially poisoned goods and, as he left, made an empty promise that a delivery would soon be on its way.

Jane Scull was devastated. SeaShelter “guests,” whom she thought of as friends, now declared with aplomb that William — whose pastries and foodstuffs they’d so greedily inhaled, and who had patiently adjudicated their squabbles and poignantly attended their subliterate tales of woe, and who had transcribed in careful calligraphic hand all their wretched poetries — their William, her William, was a strangler and a child-fucker who was going to fry!

She had an important question for Please-Help.-Bless.

Upon her request, a counselor opened William’s locker so Jane could retrieve News from Nowhere , wrapped in oilcloth and tightly bound with twine; her plan was to bring it to him in the afternoon. The same staffer had been good enough to draw a map showing how to get to the jail, albeit the wrong jail, but it’s the thought that counts. She put the book in her backpack, then launched for Pico Boulevard and environs.

She walked for hours, but there was no sight of him. Maybe he was done with her and had moved on to the next case — he was, after all, or so he said, a professional informant. “Me and Gold Shield, we’s a team!” She would not mention the woman they said her William had killed, for she wished to hear no lies about that, nor would she bother to tell him it was not true about William touching the girl; she already felt ashamed for not having gone to her man right away to tell him of the blackmailer. She had let herself be raped instead. She felt so agonized and traitorous and diseased on so many fronts — no, she would not press the outrageous innocence of her William’s case, not with that devil, nor with anyone else. She knew that in jail a murderer might be well regarded but the “other” kind, the child-bothering kind was … the thing Jane wanted to know, needed to know, was: would her William be killed in jail? For that’s what he had said …

Killim! Killim! Killim—

It was more than her heart could bear! Why did the devil say such a thing? And how would he know ? She could not rely on her William being released, for the wheels of justice move slowly and the maulers of children are guilty until proven innocent. She knew nothing of the girl — could it be his daughter? — knew nothing of anything but her William. Was it possible the devil had made up a story just so they would kill him? That her William’s life was in his hands? But how, how! And there, in Tujunga, was Jilbo — Jilbo, who’d fathered her child, his hands on all the little ones … and her William in jail, this devil in her holes and Jilbo free as a dirty bird! She would talk to Gold Shield— My William is going to be killed! she would say. And that should not happen to a man when he is in jail, especially an innocent who is awaiting his trial. It is not right, it is not supposed to happen … She would find Gold Shield when she visited the prison. Jane bit her lip in recrimination; she should have asked for him on the night of the arrest. Selfishness! The police were all around and she could have talked to Gold Shield then , could have talked to any one of them … but she was busy blubbering instead; busy getting assurances from her true love that he was not a molester of children — assurances that he was not a devil — when she took this devil’s assurances whenever he liked — collecting her husband’s startled consolations: that’s how she’d spent their last moments together. As if anything her William might have done (no matter how immoral) could ever make a difference, or injure her love for him.

There he was ahead, crossing the street called Speedway, a buzzard with a brown-bagged bottle of wine. He grinned and licked his chops. He was drunk, and some German tourists watched him paw her tits.

“Ahm hun-nuh-gree , you slappy cow bitch,” he said, mimicking her impediment. “An’ horrr-neee . Wanna puts muh whole haid in there! Thinks you kin fits a whole haid? How ’bout a whole fist ? How ’bout two fists? Two-fisted love!” The crapulent fiend pulled from the bottle and cackled.

She took his hand and said, “Want. Too. Fuck.”

She nearly dragged him down the sidewalk, and he got such a kick out of her ardor that now and then he broke free, girlishly collapsing in laughter, hacking and wheezing and pointing. “The bitch in love! The bitch love me! Now howda ya like that!” Like an underworld Music Man, he almost burst into song.

She led him through the cyclone fence surrounding the depredated rooms of the Tropicana. The structure had been gutted and prep’d for rebuilding, but there were no guards or workers. Jane took Please-Help.-Bless upstairs — still bent over gleefully, he pulled from his wine — to the very same room she had shared with her William on their first night together. The mattress was gone and the space looked altogether different than it had before, and of that she was grateful.