Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“There is no way I went to school with Dodd Trotter!”

“You absolutely did,” said Dodd, almost jovially. What did any of it matter now? “And I’ve the psychic scars to prove it.”

Just then, Marcie came over. Dodd began to introduce them, but there was no need — Marcie effusively declared she’d had a crush on fat-boy since second grade. He left them to their flirtation and eased his way to the rest room.

He sat in a stall and scrolled through his BlackBerry. Frances-Leigh said his mother had called; she seemed to be reaching out to him less often, even when there was a “big” death in the news. Dodd felt a pang of guilt, and promised himself he would spend more time at Saint-Cloud. It was anyone’s guess how much longer she’d be living there.

The men at the urinals spoke some kind of Arabic. He heard his name— Doahd Trotter —stranded like an oasis amid melodiously guttural consonants. One of them laughed, shifting to English, the accent clipped and British.

“No one can remember him? But how is it possible?”

“I’m telling you,” said his friend. “I spoke to the crazy woman — Marzie. And she said no one can recall. He is the Invisible Man!”

“As long as he puts his money where his mouth is, what difference can it make? He is going to build a hell of a thing.”

“I don’t know if you want your money where that mouth is,” he said nonsensically. “You don’t know where that mouth has been!”

“He is not the Invisible Man — he is the Indivisible Man . Because he will never divide that pile of money up.”

“Oh!” laughed the other. “Ho! The Indivisible Man! The Indivisible Man! Oh! Ho!”

There was more unintelligible Semitic discourse; urinals flushed and faucets turned at sink. As they toweled their hands, Dodd heard his name mentioned once more amid the babble, and then Forbes and then “ number twenty-three.”

“ I am predicting I too will be on the list — in the privacy of my home, I will soon make number two!”

They laughed all the way out.

On Sunday afternoon, the detective drove to Broad Beach and limped around an empty lot. He felt it would be irresponsible to share what he suspected — what he knew —before the computers gave confirmation. That could take a week, maybe more.

What if he was wrong? What if he was just lovelorn and in the wake of the perceived “breakup” with Trinnie had superimposed all this foolishness onto the wrong man? That’s insane —it was Marcus, he was certain … but what if he was withholding information from the family because deep down he was angry that the ghostly rival of his affections had returned to the scene? His predicament was even worse than when he had gotten shot; at least then, his role was clear-cut. There were pills to take and wounds to swab — the healing was visible. It behooved him to convey the weird development to his client, Louis Trotter (after all, he was still on the payroll); that was the right and happy solution. He fantasized breaking the news to Trinnie, but that wasn’t his place, as martyred or heroic as it would make him feel.

Samson headed back down PCH. He called Saint-Cloud and asked to speak to Mr. Trotter. The old man wasn’t home, but a servant patched him through to the Silver Seraph. That part of the highway was dicey when it came to cell phones; they could barely hear each other.

“Samson?”

“Yes! I need to talk to you.”

“Where——you?”

“Around——bu.”

“Where?”

“Malibu — Malibu!”

“Do you——where the——Dining Car is?”

“The what?”

“The Pacific Dining Car!”

“Yes! On W——?”

“The Pacific Dining Car!”

“On Wilshire!”

“Yes!”

The detective said he would see him there, but the phone was already dead.

By the time he arrived, his employer was seated in a bar banquette. He looked like someone who’d just been in a hit-and-run. As Samson slid into the booth, the barkeep brought another martini and it was just in time, because Mr. Trotter had downed the one at hand.

“I have something to tell you,” said the old man. To fortify himself, he swallowed the contents of the glass. “I–I—well, Samson, what I mean to say is — is — is … that I found our Marcus!”

Here is the tale Louis Trotter disgorged.

He explained how, at their reconciliatory dinner with the Weiners, they had been graced with Bluey’s presence and how they partook of “sweetmeats arranged upon a tray given her six decades ago by the redoubtable Peggy Guggenheim herself.” The offerings were delicious, but what had truly captivated, to the extent of rendering Ruth Weiner strangely mute, were certain thumbprint cookies smeared with pomegranate jam. At first they had thought she was choking, but when Mrs. Weiner recovered she took another bite and then another, rolling crumbs and syrup on her palate until she literally slapped the table.

“It’s Marcus!” she cried. When asked what on earth she meant, Ruth averred that those cookies were aptly named, for whoever made them could be identified with the same precision a fingerprint afforded — there being now no question in her mind that her son, Marcus Weiner, had cooked this jam and the buttery indentations wherein each dollop rested; after a somber retasting, her husband, Harry, with as much resolve but less volubility, concurred.

At the moment of epiphany, it so happened that Trinnie was in the powder room and Toulouse was checking on Pullman, who was mistakenly thought to have cried out in pain (it was only Winter’s television). It is to Louis Trotter’s credit that the Redlands woman was so quickly heeded — with alacrity, he told them the secret must be kept from Trinnie and the boy (and anyone else); in the morning he would take immediate steps to find the delicacy’s maker. The impromptu pact helped soften the bedeviling shock of Ruth’s discovery, so that when Trinnie returned from the loo, she couldn’t put enough of a finger or thumb on what was amiss to dare wonder out loud, instead ascribing any residual awkwardness to the Weiners’ valiant efforts to be gracious after so many years of snubbing and callous disregard — in other words, true to Bluey’s admonition, Trinnie put it all on herself . Louis feared his wife might blurt something out, but she was an absolute dream, ingenuously engaging the in-laws in conversation that allowed them to forget, or at least cover over, the bizarre revelation. Perhaps she never fully absorbed the implications of Ruth’s outburst; and even if Bluey had said something, it would have sounded “off” enough to be easily quashed and ignored.

The old man had not been sleeping well since Bluey’s travails and, keeping to form, fared poorly that night. He was completely dressed by six o’clock Sunday morning and took his coffee on the terrace. The top button of his shirt — part of a $35,000 set of Lagerfeld-designed diamond-encrusted camellias — remained irksomely undone. He would have a word or two with the ladies at Brown’s, the dry cleaners, because he was having trouble closing his top buttons, especially on the last batch of shirts sent over.

When patience no longer held, Epitacio drove him to Le Marmiton, where they sat in the Silver Seraph for a full hour awaiting the doors of the bakery to open. When they did, Mr. Trotter examined the cases, but there were no thumbprints to be seen. He smiled gnomishly — a grin that frightened children but merely put adults off, at least until they know who they were dealing with — telling the girl behind the counter that he’d recently sampled a marvelous cookie which he was positive had been bought from this very establishment, smeared with the unforgettable jelly of an ancient fruit, et cetera, et cetera. She was only a part-time worker, she said. She disappeared, and voices were heard from a back room. The girl returned with a shrug, and just when the old man was about to imperiously reclaim his just desserts or go down trying, a youngish Mediterranean, with deep black tendrils and the annoyed look of someone awakened several hours before he had a right to be, entered — no, filled —the small main room.