Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“We cannot get any more,” he said, sounding very French.

“Really!” The old man’s blood was up; he was on the scent. “And tell me why is that?”

“The person now doesn’t make. We have tried —but we cannot.”

“Then do you know where I might find him?”

“I have many things to do this morning—” He smiled in such a way to indicate that the old man had already seen the best of him by far.

With a thuggish toss of his head, our would-be customer beckoned the Frenchman to come out of earshot of the girl.

“If you tell me where I can find this man, I will give you a thousand dollars in cash. Now.”

To prove his point, he reached into his pocket and pulled out just that — nothing more, nothing less.

“I am not a whore,” said the waiter with a smile, “but today, you make me one!” To emphasize that he meant business, Mr. Trotter palmed the notes into the Frenchman’s hand. “He is a very gifted man, who lives at a shelter — a place for the homeless people. It sounds I know to be quite bizarre. But he is a very great pâtissier.”

“But where —”

“They call the habitation SeaShelter — it is one word. Olympic Boulevard, near where are the big Blue Buses.”

“Do you know his name?”

“It is William. I do not know more.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Anytime! Au revoir! ”

Things didn’t go as easily at “the habitation” as at the bakery. Mr. Trotter did cut strange enough a figure to warrant immediate attention; the weird visitor had to be reckoned with. The presence of the Rolls and its liveried driver elicited stares from staff and resident alike, and cluckings that weren’t all that far afield from the old man’s chuffs.

He stood in SeaShelter by the seashore’s shiny aluminum shell, prepared to shellac a SeaStaffer. A frowning African American informed him that the gentleman to whom he referred was no longer in residence and that his whereabouts were unknown and confidential (which struck the old man as contradictory). The interviewees were naturally cynical and suspicious, and this morning even more so, not being a happy group after having been told that the body of Jane Scull had been found in a squat with its throat slashed. They didn’t know what to make of this old freak, and their patience grew thin as the layers of one of William’s mille-feuilles; Mr. Trotter was making inquiries about cookies and jam and whatnot, the entire subject of which they were still mildly paranoid. The digger’s instincts told him that an offer of moneys would not go down well, and he retreated to the leather wings of the Seraph to plot his next move.

Slowly, the car wheeled away from the tiny receiving area. A quarter of a block later, his driver remarked that a gesticulating bum was flagging them down. They turned the corner and Mr. Trotter opened his window; Epitacio cautioned him to be wary.

“You tryin’ to find William?” He looked sixty years old but was probably closer to forty, with washed-out Dust Bowl features. His pants were cinched by rope, like a dancer in an Agnes de Mille ballet.

“William? Why — yes!”

“They arrested him. Took him away. Police took him away.” Before the last few words were out of his mouth, the indigent had accepted a one-hundred-dollar bill, pre-folded with the artistry of origami and slipped so silkily into the weathered hand that the old man knew enough to apply some pressure (unnecessary for, say, a doorman) so its recipient would at least know that a bill had been passed.

Not half an hour later, he was inside the Santa Monica police station—

At this point, he interrupted himself and apologized to Samson for not having called him straightaway. He waved at the barkeep for another drink. It was the speed at which things were happening that took him by surprise, he said, and filled him with a treasure hunter’s euphoria. The detective, who had been struggling to suppress his own shockingly pertinent “intelligences,” fleetingly wondered how Mr. Trotter would have gained access to the prisoner, who was no longer even in SMPD custody. Clarification was swift in coming. It seemed that a captain of the latter precinct knew the famed philanthropist from his profligate donations to various policemen’s balls, leagues and benefits (his grandchildren did after all attend school in that beachside city); some years back, Mr. Trotter had offered to build a gymnasium for the officers — a kingly gesture declined for legal reasons but the generosity of which was never forgotten by the thin blue line. After a family friend (then Patrolman Dowling) was shot in the line of duty, the paterfamilias let it be known that anonymous funds would be available through the Trotter Family Foundation in cases of pediatric emergency or catastrophic family illness, in perpetuity. More than a few of the fraternity had availed themselves. When the reason for his presence at the precinct was told, one can imagine the eagerness with which its soldiers volunteered their aid. The aforementioned captain made some inquiries and quickly ascertained an “aka William”—arrested at the SeaShelter hangar in the early-morning hours — had already been transferred to Twin Towers on the charge of murder. When Mr. Trotter relayed his “extreme interest” in the fate of the suspect, the captain took it upon himself to escort the dapper figure downtown, as his shift was anyways ending. There, in the desolate landscape behind Union Station, on the seventh floor of an off-pink edifice, Louis caught a glimpse — for that is all he said he wanted — of the man who had once been (and was still) his son-in-law. He knew immediately it was him; that was the digger’s gift. He had a sixth sense for bodies and the same for the ground in which those bodies would one day lie.

As the detective began his side of the serpentine tale — how he was the officer who happened to have been assigned months ago to the very case in which the arrestee now prominently figured, and how the arrestee was a suspect in the murder of a woman who happened to be the mother of the same girl who’d been harbored by his own grandchildren — well, as Samson began to unwrap and exhibit these astonishments, the old man listened with a preternatural interest that turned preternaturally painful; clutching his throat, he collapsed. He rallied in time to greet the paramedics, declining their offer to ferry him to St. John’s. (The world was filled with St. John’ses.) Epitacio, he said, would take him to Cedars. Within minutes, the chauffeur had alerted the emergency room to their imminent arrival; Mr. Trotter’s internist was on his way; VIP liaisons were dispatched and a deluxe room prepared. Samson wished to accompany him in the Rolls, but the old man insisted that he follow, which of course he did, though not before quietly advising Epitacio to take the quickest route to UCLA if so much as the shade of a need grew apparent.

Mr. Trotter, never one for hospitals, even those with wings graced by his name, refused to be admitted. He had no fever. His throat was sore, and gave him some trouble swallowing; he was routinely cultured for strep. Bedford Drive’s pre-eminent ENT man was enlisted to examine the tycoon, and palpated the mass (the thing that had been giving his topmost buttons their workout), declaring it to be something more than a swollen gland, though how much more he couldn’t say. It was not “pulsatile,” yet it didn’t feel like a tumor, and that was odd; they would have to rule one out. The medics weren’t happy with the headstrong patient taking his leave, but wangled a promise that he would return later in the week for an outpatient biopsy.

On Monday, the digger burrowed into “the case.” Powerhouse attorneys were hired to represent the captive, who naturally proclaimed innocence in all matters relating to the grotesque assault and death — and subsequent rape — of a prostitute and drug addict called Millicent “Geri” Kornfeld. Per Detective Dowling’s instructions, the Adirondack Park sheriffs of Essex County, New York, had already been contacted, and while those lawmen were able to dredge up a record of his detention, the defendant’s fingerprints proved more elusive; they had some more rummaging to do. As far as anyone knew, Marcus Weiner had never been enlisted in the military, so the detective’s fears might indeed be realized — there was the chance that an official identification would never be made. He remembered seeing a French movie about a man who returned to a village claiming to be someone he wasn’t; by the end no one, not even family and old lovers, knew truth from fiction.