“I’ll need half an hour.”
“Good. Because half an hour’s all I’ve got.”
Twenty minutes later, back in the Volvo with records in hand, Lani’s body shook uncontrollably. She called Gilles on her purple Nokia and gave a mighty war whoop when he answered — then chattered like a fool all the way home. She told him she felt like Erin Brockovich.
They went to a neighborhood cucina to celebrate her empowerment. After a few drinks, she solemnly confessed her shame at having once abdicated her responsibilities to the girl, and how the jailed man, whom she considered the child’s real caretaker, had been correct in upbraiding her and that she had grown to admire and respect him immeasurably for that. There are consequences to our actions, she kept saying. There are repercussions … Emboldened by alcohol, she passionately suggested that William, for whatever reason, was being railroaded—and her husband was glad to see her back in good form and good rant, diatribing against injustices wrought upon innocents, spinning Chomskyesque conspiracies of politics and the media. He loved her more than ever.
Quiet and introspective until now, Gilles spoke up. Slowly swirling the wine in his glass, he said he had failed to give his friend the benefit of the doubt regarding any “untoward activities” with the girl — and for that, he felt bad. But something else was troubling him that he was compelled to share. Gilles said that after their Sunday call he had spoken with the detective again, who had told him that an ascot belonging to William — identified as such by Amaryllis herself — had been found stuffed in the victim’s throat. How to explain?
Lani swallowed her drink and closed her eyes like a mystic in mourning for the folly of the whole race of man. Smiling, she set the glass down and seamlessly uttered the words that finally vanquished all his remaining doubts:
“We are going to save that little girl.”
CHAPTER 38. Awakening
At the arraignment, the letter was passed to aka William’s lawyers, who forwarded it to Twin Towers. Various official eyes had been already upon it by the time it reached the prisoner’s:
Dear William,
They would not let me visit, so I am writing this to you. Lani and I feel so awful that you are in that place, and would like to help in any way we can. Lani is trying to aid Amarillys, just as you wanted us to from the very beginning. But she is in “the System” now and believe me it doesn’t make things any easier. We know there is trouble regarding a woman who passed away, but we do not know anything about it and hope you were not involved, and if you were, that perhaps the reason was that you were not in your “right mind” or maybe even that you were protecting the girl. Because we have heard terrible things about that woman. (Who I believe to be—was—Amarillys’s mother.) We will visit you as soon as is allowed. I was at the arraignment and once I learned that only a relation would be able to visit, I gave this to Detective S. Dowling (who I believe you know) to pass on. We even tried sending croissants and pastries, not so good as yours I’m afraid, but they said it was forbidden. You have all our best wishes.
Gilles and Lani,
Your “amis” at Frenchie’s
He read the missive twice more, and, after a baffled interlude, began to assemble the pieces.
Amarillys … the girl! They were speaking of the girl, his angel … — Lani and Gilles — those kind, gentle people — the Frankish baker who had given him work, honest work, and paid him an honest wage. His wife—Lani, he read again — who’d merely done what she felt was right by the child and for which aka Topsy aka William Morris Marcus (here, he pounded his fist on the wall of the cell, for he knew not even his own name) had wantonly berated her. And what had this clot of aliases done in the first place but drop the pitiful orphan off in the early-morning hours beside a trash bin and shove her toward his benefactor — what nobility!
He kicked and slapped at his cell, then sat on the bed and hung his head. He picked up the page again.
is in “the System” now …
“The System” … did he mean the girl was—the little girl is in jail. The horror of it! His friend Fitz had told him so! He remembered now: the girl had been captured in a dragnet—
He stood and read the letter some more while he paced. Amarillys, in jail … — he imagined her as a fish, flopping and expiring on the ground, and wished to tear his hair out. But the worst part, the very worst, was to read the words
(Who I believe to be—was—Amarillys’s mother.)
But how—how could it be? Phantasmagoric! The detective (and Fitz too) had been trying to tell him, but it never made any sense. Now it came together, and he felt like an amnesiac struck by a rain of blows to the head that restored an old order, an order transformed to new. All of Dowling’s queries … and those of the lawyers — were about the woman who lay dead in the St. George by his hand — the dear child’s mother! By Topsy’s hand. Suddenly, it stood to reason. He’d been seen carrying the orphan off, a block from where the murder was committed … could it be? Could it really? That he was in this place — these Towers — that he was in “the System”—for killing the mother of his adored Amaryllis? Hellish abomination! Then that would mean the woman’s death had led to the girl’s being in “the System” too …
“Guard!” he cried. “Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard!”
The detective — or the baker Gilles and his wife — or the parents from the Red Lands—someone must arrange for him to visit the child so he could tell her he hadn’t touched a hair on that woman’s head, and let her see he was whole and humble and still in the world for her! She would bury her head in his arms and cry as she used to; and then if he was very brave, he would tell her that her dear Topsy was nevermore. He would tell her who he was — or was becoming.
A man named Marcus Weiner.
As much as the author, out of sheer affection, would like to drop in on those Bel-Air denizens who, being out of earshot of Grannie Ruth’s revelation, remained unaware of the dramatic return of Marcus Weiner — namely Katrina and Toulouse — the propulsion of narrative demands that such a visit be postponed. We will concentrate instead on a triad of developments that occurred in the ten days that followed the arraignment and which significantly altered the course of California v. aka William Marcus.
The DNA extracted from the suspect failed to match that found in the vagina and anus of the deceased. This alone was not definitive proof that Mr. Marcus wasn’t the murderer: an accomplice still could have committed the rape. But the defense rightfully considered the results more than a good thing. The troublesome ascot still nettled.
Shortly after the laboratory returned its findings, Amaryllis was discharged from the Alhambra infirmary and returned to MacLaren, where she lashed out bitterly against the entire staff, not even sparing true-blue Dézhiree, who no longer recognized the girl and mourned a relative innocence lost. When a visitor from the district attorney’s office told her that she would have to appear in court to identify the ascot belonging to her friend, Amaryllis told him to eat shit and die, a command which, to his credit, was omitted from his report.