I'll Let You Go (24 page)

When they got on the freeway, she became agitated—certain he was taking her back to Mrs. Woolery's.

“Were you staying at the motel, Amaryllis?” A nauseating lump grew in her throat—for she hadn't yet told him her name. “Were you staying at the St. George?”

“The babies!” she cried, broken. “Where are the babies?”

He reached out to pat her head; he was awkward with kids. “The boy and girl? They're fine, fine. Don't cry, now.”

“How do you
know
?” she snarled. A ray of hope pierced through: “Have you seen them?”

“Not personally.”

“Then how do you
know
?” She hated him again. He had hairy, muscular arms and reeked of cologne and she held him in the utmost contempt. “How do you know anything
about
them—”

He laughed, not unkindly. “Because I know the detective who made sure they were safe. A female officer,” he said, then corrected himself. “A woman. She really took to those kids. They're your brother and sister, aren't they?”

Now she was possessed of a new torment: the babies were bonding with one of their captors! They would love the policewoman and not even recognize her when she came to their rescue. “When can I see them?”

“Soon, I'd imagine. First we need to get you well and on your feet. You've had a rough go of it, haven't you? It couldn't have been wonderful sitting with Mom all that time the way you did. You're a brave little gal.”

They rode awhile in silence. He cracked a window, because the smell of her was overwhelming—like the worst, infected whores he'd found in crackhouses, or half dead in littered fields. He asked about the man—“a big, tall fellow” whom a “witness” saw carry her off into the night. Went by the name of William, he said, or Topsy … He wanted to know where the man had taken her, and if he was a friend of her mother's.

There
is
no man, she said. And where are we going?

“A place called MacLaren.”

“Is it in the Canyon?”

“It's in El Monte. What canyon?”

“Is it a house?”

“MacLaren? In a way, though it's a lot bigger. There's a school and a gymnasium—even a swimming pool. Lotsa kids your age.”

Amaryllis scanned the interior: the dash-mounted beacon on a curved, creepy metal neck … battered computer wedged between them … shotgun rack—prison! He was was taking her to prison!

The detective's insistence this MacLaren place wasn't a jail did little to ameliorate her terror. The children who lived there, he explained offhandedly, were
not prisoners
—why, there weren't even locks on the doors! He went on to say that in point of fact at MacLaren locks on doors were “against the law”—of course there were
some
locks, he clumsily amended, to prevent strangers from coming
in
, not to stop kids from going
out
, a system so designed to protect the “pop” (“short for ‘population' ”) from unhappy parents, who in very
rare
cases may wish to do their children harm—

With each botched blandishment the detective dug a deeper hole for himself and his detainee, multiplying her paranoia tenfold until the looming sight of Mac's outer wall—the highest, thickest wall Amaryllis had ever seen—delivered the final blow. The only thing stopping a leap from the moving car were the babies. They were there, at the place called MacLaren, like prisoners in a deathstar. She
knew
it. They had to be.

Then it all blurred. She was taken to the infirmary, where an RN peeled off layers of clothing and gasped, hand to startled mouth. Other nurses and staffworkers gathered to gawk. Doctors were called; wounds
were cleansed. She was examined for pelvic inflammatory disease and tested for TB, strep, syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, clap. They poured penicillin in her veins, and Demerol for pain.

Amaryllis slept for three days. In a languid flirtation with consciousness, she heard the stealthy footfalls of children arriving for daily meds. They poked their heads around the curtain to look before being chased away.

When some of her strength returned, a woman from “intake” came bedside to announce she could make two phone calls, adding that both would be “monitored.”

“Who would you like to talk to?” she asked cheerfully.

A
ll this time, Will'm lay low in Angelino Heights, the grateful guest of Fitz and his maimed pet. The peculiar trio put up in the garage of a Queen Anne Victorian on Carroll Avenue. The owner (one of Fitz's former supervisors at the DCFS) had hit a financial bump in mid-restoration; chain link surrounded the property. Fitz was on-site to ward off vandals.

The architecture was to Will'm's liking. It reminded him of Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, the dwelling built for Janey on occasion of their marriage—with its humble demi-courtyard garden, rose-entwined wattle and decorative well house with conical roof, he felt he was truly home again. There were two stories, plain and spacious, and polished, set-back porches. By light of day, he explored the Gothic-arched drawing room of this earthly paradise and made secret plans to paint a mural on a hall cupboard, the one he had begun so long ago but never finished:
Morte d'Arthur
. This time he would include Fitz and Amaryllis among the likenesses of Lancelot and Tristram, and even work in Half Dead.

At night, while Fitz smoked his chemical pipe in the garage and ranted about the Department of Children and Family Services, Will'm paced the
hortus conclusus
, square plots of lilies and macerated, streetwise sunflowers, reciting verse from
News from Nowhere
(which he need soon retrieve from its Olympic Boulevard storage bin)—

To be frank, he hadn't slept well since giving up the girl. The small face, with its rough cherub's mop, tugged, calling him to seek her out; he made resolution to reconnoiter the bakery and look in on her progress. But skid row tom-toms soon brought news of her capture by police—and Someone-Help-Me's perfidious involvement in the dragnet. Will'm was undone. Discreet by nature, he decided to gather Fitz into his confidence, bringing him up to speed on all that had transpired between him and Amaryllis, culminating with the freedom flight from Higgins to East Edgeware alley.

Fitz focused his rage upon the malignant beggar, for whom no love had been lost. “Why, that cocksucker snitch; he ought to be murdered!” At this moment, the once honorable George Fitzsimmons looked more than ever like one of those sociopathic eggheads from thirties heist films who plan bank jobs but don't dirty their hands. “He brought that cop to the
Higgins
, Will'm, don't you see?”—Fitz had heard it all from Misery House cronies—“so the weasel could've seen you that very first night you were with the girl. Now,
I
know you didn't do anything with her; nothing but love and protect her. But
they'll
accuse you of
molestation
, and God knows what else. That's their game!”

Will'm was in a daze. “But how did she leave Frenchie's? How would they let her wander away?”

“Never mind
that
—there was a
murder
, Will'm, a murder in the
motel
. The St. George! The girl's
mother
they think was killed—that's what the boys on the street tell me. And they've
got
her now, they've got the
girl
. They don't like unsolved murders on the books, Will'm. If they can jail us for walking outside a crosswalk, then they'll jail you for this, believe me! By the time they finish, she'll turn on you herself!”

Will'm grabbed him by the shirt while Half Dead lamely launched himself at the aggressor's calf. “Don't you say it, Mr. Fitz! Don't you say it, ever!”

“Oh, I don't
mean
anything, Will'm”—he reached for the giant's implacable wrists to loosen the grip—“Hell, she's a
kid
—I
know
what happens to frightened kids when the goons get hold of 'em. Before you know
it, it's the mob after Frankenstein. You'd never be able to defend yourself.”

“I need to speak with Mr. Mott,” said Will'm, entering a trance again. “To find out what happened … how could it have come to this? What was she doing back at Higgins, in the dead of night?” He began to pace and sweat, kneading his hands like a heart-shaped motor. “And that mangy bum! That child-stealer! I'll tear his head off!”

“Don't go out there half-cocked! They'll be
gunning
for you, can't you see? You'll walk right into their web! Lay low and let me make a few calls—I'll find out where they stashed her.”

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.”

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.