Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

Now that aka William had “lawyered up,” Samson Dowling received a call from said legal counsel, telling him to have no further contact with the defendant. Even though it was a “friendly” notice — they knew of his special connection to the case — Samson got depressed. But he gladly told them all he knew: of his informant, whose whereabouts were unknown, and how the victim’s daughter, AWOL from MacLaren at this time, had some months ago identified the telltale ascot as having belonged to the suspect.

A meeting with his son-in-law could easily have been arranged, but the benefactor felt his place for now was behind the scenes. At his prompting, a medical team examined the prisoner; the psychopharmacologist who looked after Dodd was enlisted to provide one or two cutting-edge prescriptions cropped from the latest harvest of smartbomb antipsychotics. The old man didn’t wish the story leaked to press, so made sure that the more celebrated attorneys on the team avoided the arraignment. (He himself chose not to come.) Eulogio embarked for Redlands to pick up Harry and Ruth, who Mr. Trotter felt should be present.

Tuesday morning, the defense met with judge in chambers. They informed him the suspect had been I.D.’d by his father-in-law, who had in fact engaged their services on the defendant’s behalf; no further details relating to their unusual employer were discussed. (The judge listened with a glacial reserve broken only at the mention of the famous surname, when an eyebrow rose involuntarily with near comic effect.) Mr. Weiner, they added, had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, but a full psychiatric evaluation was not yet complete. One of the lawyers then remarked that the parents of aka William Marcus aka Marcus Weiner would be in attendance this morning and would provide definitive witness to his identity, though it had been roughly fourteen years since they’d seen their son last.

Once in court, the ascot was presented as damning evidence and a trial date was set. DNA had been collected from the victim shortly after her death; a sample from the defendant was ordered for comparison. In spite of eloquent pleas and the unusual circumstances surrounding the detainee, owing to the nature of the crime and aka William Marcus aka Marcus Weiner’s alleged flight from the facility in upstate New York, bail was firmly denied.

After the prisoner was led away, the judge asked if Ruth and Harry Weiner — their names had been written down for him at the preliminary meeting — were in court. They eagerly stood, or it should be said that Ruth eagerly stood, followed by her less spry mate. The judge asked if they knew the accused.

“He is my son,” said Ruth, voice quavering. An expensive attorney on each side held her steady. She cleared her throat and said again, “Your Honor, he is my son!”

That afternoon, Epitacio drove them to Twin Towers. Visitors waited to see loved ones, but it had been so arranged that the elderly couple would be spared the queue. Harry peered through the tinted glass of the Silver Seraph at the men with tattooed foreheads loitering across the street from jail, and remarked how they looked like prisoners themselves. He puzzled over them while Ruth remained silent. The skin of her chest was stretched so taut she feared it might split open at any moment, like papyrus — with each inhalation, her caged lungs shook as if invaded by moths.

Neither remembered much of the half hour or so that passed from the time they stepped from car to visitors’ room.

There was a metal grille between them, and he was shackled.

He sat down and they all blinked at each other.

Harry was the first to speak. “Son?”

Sitting opposite the enormous stranger, the retired baker had a momentary doubt; but then the roots of his boy, so to speak, grew toward him as in time-lapse photography — tiny green buds rapidly bloomed, stems thickened and curled themselves about the elder’s ankles, tugging him closer.

“Marcus …” said Ruth, hand rushing to mouth, unable to conceal her emotions. She was certain as only a mother could be. “Do you know who we are?”

He nodded solemnly.

Ruth suppressed another outburst.

Most of the men on the seventh floor were sedated and Marcus was no exception. But thanks to his remarkable constitution and the intervention of private shrinks, he’d managed to elude the zombified look worn by most of his cell mates.

“You,” he said, rather diffidently, “are the people from the Red Lands.”

“Redlands?” said Harry, with great enthusiasm. “Redlands, yes! Still the same house! Though the bakery’s gone — we sold it.”

“Harry!” chastised Ruth, not wishing her son to be overrun by extraneous detail — particularly that of loss, in any way, shape or form. “We ate some of your jam … you made the jam, didn’t you? The pomegranates—”

He looked them in the eye and smiled — the seed-stained smile of their precocious boy, who at Toulouse’s age could play the cello with thick, agile fingers; who took the bus to the Vagabond near MacArthur Park to see the entire oeuvre of Buñuel; who dragged them to the Huntington’s Japanese moon bridge — and exhibitions of branchy intricacies perpetrated by William Morris & Company.

“Yes!” he said, and laughed, not the laugh of a madman but of a man come home. “Yes, I made the jam. Didja like it?”

“Oh yes!” they said in chorus. It was marvelous! Better than they’d ever had! Much better than your mother’s! Always had been—

They laughed some more, and then his tremendous body undulated as he sobbed.

Not being able to reach out to him was for Ruth a fine torment. “We’re here now, Marcus!” she said. “We’re here!”

“She’s right — listen to her. You’re home now, son!”

Marcus dried his eyes, having calmed a bit after a look from one of the guards. “I don’t know you — or, suffer me, barely do — or much of what has happened for such a long time … I know that you are from the Red Lands—”

“Redlands,” corrected Harry enthusiastically, until Ruth kicked his foot.

“—that you are from the Redlands , and have been kind enough to see me … I do remember you — but there are so many memories that I don’t know what’s real and what’s conjured. I was at Oxford, no?” he asked, with faint English affectation. “But at another time than Rossetti and my friends?”

“Yes! Yes! You were at Oxford!” cried Ruth.

“You see? Things are coming back!” exulted Harry.

“The medicine will help you.”

“The medicine!” said Harry.

The keeper indicated that their time together had ended.

“We’ll see you through,” said his father.

Ruth was without words, squinting at him as he stood because she could not bear to see her boy in chains.

He smiled as they led him away, turning at the last moment to shout, “Bon appétit!”

We chose to ignore a certain gentleman who attended the arraignment (a few rows behind the Weiners) because, well, parents take precedence.

That “silhouette” was none other than Gilles Mott, whom the reader already knows to be the current owner of an establishment once held in highest esteem by that grandest of dames, Bluey Twisselmann Trotter, an establishment now prominent on her shit list. For when the erstwhile Topsy abandoned ship so did the old woman, eventually finding succor at Montana Avenue’s Le Marmiton. Fortunately for Gilles, the two establishments were not in any direct competition.

The baker and his wife were contacted by Detective Dowling on the Sunday following Marcus’s arrest, the latter occurring scant days after the remarkable sighting of Amaryllis at Saint-Cloud. Without much embroidery, he informed them of the charges being brought; but the real purpose of the call was to apprise the couple of the girl’s dire straits. Lani told him she was already aware of the AWOL, having learned about it the hard way when arriving at MacLaren for a scheduled visit. And, no, Amaryllis hadn’t been in touch.