by Bruce Wagner
But alas he found out not a thing, due to more pressing concerns with the pipe. And what if he had? What good would it have been? If Will’m stormed the palisades and spirited her out, what would he do with her? He’d played hero before and look what happened.
After almost a week of pondering, he could take no more. Early one morning, when Fitz had already quit the Queen Anne for coffee at Misery House, he lit out to Frenchie’s. As he walked, the air was cold—having been sequestered for his own good (still hearing Fitz’s admonitions), he felt like some exposed and hunted thing. He would at least find out what had happened. Could Mr. Mott have argued with the girl? And might she have been so headstrong to escape, on rebellious, childish impulse? She was a headstrong child … or could it be that Mr. Mott didn’t love her, that he never took to her? No! I’m a better judge of character than that, he thought. Then perhaps something had happened to the bakery itself, catastrophic; perhaps Will’m would discover a charred, smoky lot with only cast-iron ovens remaining.
He looked left and right like a paranoiac and, jamming fists into pockets, tucked into the wind. Never had he bowed his head before, but now the old soul was injured or at least made vulnerable by his love for the girl. He had become the Chairman of the Disembodied.
Gray day with gray sun—looking over his shoulder for black-and-whites that might haul him to gaol. Their uniformed thugs and siren-shrieks were “abominations that oe’r the Rampart cared not twopence for hill or valley, poplar or lime, thistle or vetch, convolvulus or clematis—not twopence either for tower, spire, apse or dome.”
Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small, and white, and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.
When he was close to Frenchie’s, his pace slowed and memories colluded. He saw himself fencing with Edward Burne-Jones at Oxford off Hell Quad, on Broad Street—arm in arm they strolled, in purple trousers, chanting Gregorians outside St. Thomas’s church. (Such was his love for Arthurian legend that as a student, he had literally worn chain mail.) He was a sight then in leggings and metal, with starfish spray of hair, charging along with Rossetti and Ruskin; then one day he met her and his life was changed forever. Jane Burden was his obsession, an adulterous woman who could never have had more apt a name …
“Will’m!” cried Gilles, standing in dusty apron at the bakery’s street-side door. In his reverie he’d walked straight past his destination. The wanderer turned with a baffled look. “I was beginning to worry!”
“Whatever for, man?”
“Well,” he said, “you haven’t been by.”
The big man had better bide his time; it wouldn’t do to just blurt things out.
“Oh, been languishing—miserable. This town is so sordid! Had to move: to Red House, near Hog’s Hole and hard by the route taken by Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims. Extremely medieval. Ruins of an Augustinian priory just down the road. But the work involved in fitting it up, Gilles, the work …”—he had never called the baker by first name before—“ ’twas exhausting. I’ve been but a dead man knocking at a gate.”
“Then come make yourself useful!”
Will’m followed him in.
Was it a dream—was it just a dream that he had dropped her there in the first place? Then he had a joyful thought: what if the skid-row grapevine had been wrong? Or, better yet, that George Fitzsimmons’s gathering of intelligence had originated in the smoke of his devil-pipe! His mood lightened considerably, and while he wouldn’t dare say it, his heart overflowed in anticipation of espying her there in the back room—of a sudden, he could see the flour-powdered shock of curls and himself kissing her chewed-up nails. He smiled, allowing the luxury (for it had been a terrible week) of conjuring her in a little apron, vaulting into his arms. He thought he’d been very clever to have steered her there for shelter from the elements, knowing she would find comfort at the source of her favorite confectionary treats; partaking of them would make her think of him and have faith that all would turn out well.
These ruminations happened in the wink of an eye, and though in a greater context a relatively short amount of time had passed since he’d dropped off his ward, it was a continual wonder how elastic that dimension could be. Yes, he had heard of her capture and lived with those squalid images for some days now; yet another part of him imagined the orphan already sprung full-blown into rosy-cheeked maiden and baker’s apprentice, a busy schoolgirl with eager contingent of boyish suitors—a vital and beloved member of the community, indispensable to her proud, adopted family: Frenchie’s Bakery and Fine Pastries.
As they entered the rear, his heart sank. Instead of the girl there was a woman, whom Gilles effusively introduced as his wife. Toweling one hand with the other in preparation to greet him, Lani’s eyes grew large. She shook his hand, happy to finally meet one of her husband’s stories—his best and biggest one—made flesh. By hirsute, tweedy bulk and sheer stylish volume, Will’m could not disappoint; for those of any sensitivities, he downright astonished. She cleared her throat and nervously smoothed her clothes, as if a celebrity had just stepped in. The baker positively cooed, knowing Will’m to exceed any and all expectations.
“So this is the secret weapon!” she said. “I’ll have to admit my husband used me as a guinea pig for some of your early creations.” She was referring to the pomegranate-and-almond mille-feuilles. “He wouldn’t tell me they had been baked by someone else—not at first. And he’s been trying to duplicate them ever since! But I’ll have you know he’s been an abject failure.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” said Will’m graciously, and Gilles was gladdened he’d rallied to his defense.
“My husband tells me you also design fabric.”
“Suchwise I have been known to indulge.” The words came forth, but he felt emptied out and wickedly desolate.
“Quite the Renaissance man! I’d love to see one of your patterns,” she said diffidently. “When you have the time.”
Gilles offered coffee and sweets—a few customers came and went—Will’m mopped and moped—all the while pondering how to wangle things around to the girl.
“Tell me, Gilles, do you and the wife have children?”
“No.”
“Well then, niece or nephew?”
“We have two nieces,” offered Mrs. Mott.
“One this high?” he asked, holding an enormous hand around the height of Amaryllis’s crown.
“No—why do you ask?”
“It’s just that I was passing by some days ago and about to come in. And I thought I saw a child—I was afraid I’d give her a fright, so I stayed away. I am loud and unkempt, you know. So I kept a distance. And I was just wondering … well if she belonged to you.”
“Oh no! Heavens!” he said, looking at his wife with the realization.
“Gilles, he’s talking about the girl.”
“The girl! Yes. She appeared out of nowhere.”
“Then there was a girl,” said Will’m anxiously.
At ease now and happy to have a story of her own, Lani recapped their experience—how she had received a call from her husband alerting her to the emergency; how, in her duty as a trained court-appointed special advocate and occasional volunteer at children’s court, she had phoned the child-abuse hotline (legally required, she added); how the police had come to the bakery, then taken the girl to the precinct; how Lani held her ground so that she was allowed to stay while the child was interviewed by the social worker, who was “rather green” (just then Gilles reached over and proudly patted her hand); how Lani then accompanied both girl and CSW to yet another building until “suitable placement” was procured—
“But,” stammered Will’m, “but where is she now?”
“Now? Well … we—we don’t know,” said the bake
r, turning toward his wife. After all, she was the professional.
“With a family, I suppose,” said Lani. “Hopefully, a nice one.” This last, she smugly directed to Gilles.
“But—but why did you call the police?”
“She already said. She had to.”
“I am required—by law,” answered Lani defensively. “As a court-appointed special advo—”
“—but why didn’t you take her in yourself—”
“You can’t just ‘take in’ a child, Will’m,” said Gilles, shoring up Lani with a cocked eye. “They put you in jail for that sort of thing.”
“That’s a very long process. And besides, Gilles and I—we’re not set up for that.” Meaning (not that it was anyone’s business) that adopting a child wasn’t an option. Lani set about her chores again in contrived fashion, wishing she were someplace else.
“The girl will be all right,” said Gilles, vacantly. He ascribed their visitor’s overweening interest in the castaway’s cause to sheer eccentricity; all the man needed was to be reassured. “She’ll be fine. We did the right thing, Will’m—by the book!”
“She will not—she will not be all right. And by whose book, sir!”
Lani stopped and beheld him. She was quaking.
“You say they’d put you in gaol—when it’s her they put in there! They chased her down and shackled her up like an animal! The girl was meant to be here, that’s what I told her—that you were my friends and would let no harm befall her! Now I see I’ve done the worst thing—sold my girl to the murderous police! The police, who give twopence for hill or valley or heart or soul! ‘You’ll do right well with him’—him meaning you—I told her. I swore to her as the poor thing looked straight in my eye. She’d have jumped through a hoop from a building if I’d told her—and now it looks as if she has, into deep space! See what’s done? My girl’s alone out there! And me a dead man, knocking at a gate!”
He stomped and snorted, and with that he was gone.
“Well, how do you like that?” said Gilles, setting down his mug. “So he’s the one who dropped her off! Now, how would he even know a child like that? Standing around with us playing dumb … and what did he mean ‘she’s in jail.’ We should probably call the police, Lani, no? Don’t you think? Maybe he knows her folks. Maybe he—” A lurid brainstorm darkened his face, cheapening its features. “Lani … do you think there was something funny there? ‘My girl,’ he called her. Something ‘Fritz Lang’—you know the Peter Lorre film—I mean, going on—between him and—?”
“No,” said his wife, still trembling. “No, Gilles, I do not.”
Shaken by the homeless gentleman’s tirade, she steadied herself against one of the steel mixing machines and was overcome by shame, the shame of what she already knew: that her entire life she’d taken pride in doing the right thing—“by the book.” The useless right thing.
Carroll Avenue was cushy, but the once right and honorable George Fitzsimmons knew it would not last forever; he was under the 4th Street Bridge sussing old digs when an unmarked car pulled over.
“Hi there—can we talk a moment?”
Seated beside the detective was Someone-Help-Me, who, having successfully brought hunter to quarry (he knew Fitz and Will’m were “tight”), busied himself with a grotesque celebratory lap dance solitaire, a seizure of freakish, self-satisfied gesticulations.
Samson Dowling stepped from the car and approached. Fitz put both hands on his crutch, cockily casual. The dirty dynamo got out too, sneering and twitching and muttering, and Fitz was not unhappy when Half Dead, gray rag of rat in his jaw, flew from the concrete stanchioned underslope and leapt at the traitorous fucker, knocking him backward.
“Mutant peesuhshit!” He frothed and feinted as the mongrel went for a mouthful. “Kill ’im, I will, crackhead Half Man!”
“I’ll suck your dick first.”
“You!” barked the detective at his scurvy partner. “Outta here—now. Now!”
Someone-Help-Me lurched toward the L.A. River, peppily escorted by man’s best and mangled friend; the duration of Doppler’d vocalization made it apparent the dog’s enthusiasms took more than a moment to diminish. That the detective cared not a whit about the attack (really only bluster) and seemed near the end of his tether with this varminty vermin, viz. the cocksucking snitch, endeared him to Fitz just a little. For Fitz had no great love of the Man.
Dowling cordially introduced himself, adding that he’d seen Fitz on the streets the last year or so. Something about his interrogator put him at ease, which of course made him more defensive than ever.
“It’s my understanding you know a man who goes by the name of William.”
“I do not.”
“He has a nickname—Topsy.”
“I don’t know a William and I don’t know a Topsy.”
“Are you sure? Tall fellow, British. Bearded. Seems he’d be hard to miss! Not sure how I have. Used to go to St. Vincent’s now and then, but they haven’t seen him there lately. I heard you have. Heard he was your running partner.”
“ ‘Running partner’!” he spat contemptuously, withdrawing a civility already overextended. “May I go about my business, Detective?”
“Wears strange … suits. Are you sure, Mr. Fitzsimmons?” The one-legged transient, mildly startled to be addressed in such a way, let it ride. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”
“I don’t run with nobody.”
“You have been seen in the past with someone of that description.”
“Seen? By who?” He nodded toward the river. “The scumbag snitch?”
The detective laughed. “And others. I heard the two of you shared an encampment—”
“I ain’t asshole buddies with no one.”
“—right around here, no? Look, I understand you wanting to protect your friend, but there’s been a murder. A little girl is involved.”
“Got nothin’ to tell you.”
The detective changed tack.
“You used to be a caseworker, didn’t you?”
“Who told you that?”
“You know, Mr. Fitzsimmons, you’re something of a legend over at the DCFS. They said you were one of the finest to ever pass through, and I believe it! One of the good guys—someone who cared. Life doesn’t have to be this way, George. If you want help getting off that pipe, I can take you someplace right now. Just hop in and I’ll personally see you’ve got a bed in a detox so you can kick this thing. That’s no bullshit. In six months you can be back doing your thing. Helping kids. Making a difference.”
“TPR, my friend.”
“What’s that?”
“Termination of Parental Rights. I’m done with mom and dad—some of us are, you know: Welfare and Institutions Code, Section 366.26, Senate Bill 243, confer January first, 1989. Baby, I was fully successful in all hearings, petitions and permanency plans. Who did they think they were playing with? The Department willfully demonstrated neglect, cruelty, abandonment and moral depravity—and let me tell you something else, Officer: it was demonstrated by my attorneys as such.”
“I’m going to give you my card,” said Dowling, reaching into his wallet. “If you see our friend, tell him I’d like to talk to him. It’s for his own good. Maybe he can help us clear some things up. And my offer to you still stands.”
“Look to the parent, Detective, always look to the parent,” Fitz said, shuffling after him. “If the minor has been sexually abused or there is substantial risk the minor will be sexually abused, as defined in Section 11165.1 of the Penal Code, by his or her parent or guardian or a member of his or her household or the parent or guardian has failed to adequately protect the minor from sexual abuse when the parent or guardian knew or reasonably should have known that the minor was in danger of sexual abuse”—the detective got into his car and started the engine—“and for the purposes of this subdivision ‘severe physical abuse’ means any of the following: any single act of abuse which causes physical trauma of suf
ficient severity that if left untreated would cause permanent physical disfigurement”—Fitz lit out after the Taurus as it pulled away, pulling on the crutch with all his strength—“permanent physical disability or death! any single act of sexual abuse which causes significant bleeding, deep bruising or significant external or internal swelling or more than one act of physical abuse, each of which causes bleeding, deep bruising, significant external or internal swelling, bone fracture or unconsciousness; or the willful, prolonged failure to provide—”
The car was out of sight. Fitz leaned on the crutch, panting. A broad smile came to his face and he laughed out loud. Then his brow furrowed; he would have to make sure his friend Will’m relocated—fast.
He called out: “Half? Half, baby? Darling, come …”
And limped toward the river.
CHAPTER 19
Gatherings
Tull and the Dane still went for walks in the sheltered park of La Colonne, yet without the innocence of earlier explorations. They came and went as they pleased, traipsing through wild savanna and fields of lawn sedge studded by fifty-foot purple beeches—and tramped amid the whimsical all-in-black Mourning Garden, designed by Trinnie between halfway-house stints. It was filled with bat-like devil flowers, dark-blood Queen of Night tulips and bamboo “Noir” that shot up like bayonets. Mr. Greenjeans, who seemed born to the place and surely would die there, waved jovial greetings from afar; it was from him Tull learned that his mother had recently passed nights in the tower’s bridal suite.
While Pullman grazed and loped and stretched, the master averted his eyes from the cracked pillar, unable to shake the feeling that his star-crossed parents were ensconced—she, in the kitchen preparing lunch (though all his life the boy never knew her to be in any kitchen); he, Marcus Weiner, in the library napping, the biography of a poet open on his tangle-down chest.
The sun was low and the sky bloodied. Pullman turned five today, and a small celebration awaited on Saint-Cloud, courtesy of Grandpa Lou. A melancholy Santa Ana hurried them out the open gate and up the hill toward home.