“Which guy, Jerry? Who are you talking about?”
“The suicide, on Carroll Avenue — George Fitzsimmons!”
In fact, Mr. Whittle was correct; the knots were unique.† A macabre death-scene photo of the former DCFS worker, on the floor of his Victorian parlor, was shown to the frog-like Korean manager of the St. George, who quickly affirmed the deceased had indeed visited Geri Kornfeld more than once and during said visits tied a maimed dog to the sidewalk’s rusted-out newspaper rack. The attorneys of Marcus Weiner (for that is how the defendant was now addressed) obtained an order from the court to draw DNA samples from the body of Fitzsimmons, which had not yet been (and never would be) claimed.
A few expository things happened “offstage” that will never be known by the players in our drama but should be passed on for the sake of thoroughness — it is hoped that for even the less curious reader the by-product may give a parenthetical frisson. The man who had once thought of himself entirely as William Morris (and still did, to a much smaller degree) was a naïf incapable of imagining the horrors that might befall a child, while the once honorable Geo. Fitzsimmons, late, great and faded pride of the Department of Children and Family Services, was capable indeed. His eyes had seen too much. When he first met Amaryllis at the 4th Street Bridge encampment, he saw things in hers that had mercifully eluded the gentleman who hailed from Merton Abbey on the River Wandle. He saw she was on her way to being half dead, and that he might rescue her as he had his own four-legged beauty. So he befriended her mother and gave Geri money to sleep with him; and did not begrudge himself enjoyment of that act. Now, because he suspected but had no proof, and because Geo. Fitzsimmons (ever professional) must be certain, he eventually solicited the woman to let him have the daughter to himself for an hour to do what he liked. He named an amount, and after token protestation, she took the money — a princessly sum of ten one-dollar bills. He asked if she’d ever made such arrangements before, and she was reluctant to say, but was forthcoming after Fitz withheld the pipe. There was a lady, she said with playacted hesitation, to convey that while she wasn’t at all happy about what she had been forced to do to survive (to put food and crack on the table), that while she wasn’t happy, at least it was a woman—no offense to Mr. Fitzsimmons, because she could tell he would not hurt her girl. He was not a pervert, she said — then asked, Was he? She would be in the room with them anyway, she said, now flaunting her motherly instincts. That, she said, was “non-negotiable.” But the thing she was telling him before (her daughter with the woman) was the only time. And her daughter was stoned, she said she made sure of that, so as not to know what was happening or even remember if she did. What a humanitarian. He withheld the pipe some more — and when she told of the others who had had the girl, some for what Fitz determined was less than a lungful, he choked the life from her with a bedsheet of cinches he’d learned from his father, so that in this instance it can never be said that any sins were passed on. Then he surprised himself by sodomizing the body — and that was the moment he married Death. For he suddenly knew in the same way that Jane Scull had when she lay with Please-Help.-Bless that his life was done and that he was three-quarters gone; the demise of his dog made it whole.
Louis Trotter found her strolling the far side of the Saint-Cloud property near the cutting shed. When she saw him, Trinnie smiled warmly — she was losing a mother, but he was losing a friend and lover of half a century. She kissed him, and his face, an odd mask of worry and resignation, looked mildly electrified. She thought he had come to speak of Bluey, soon to be transferred to the Motion Picture and Television Hospital; shrieking by night and by day, she had entered the phase caregivers euphemistically call “fecal play.” It was nearly too much for the hired hands, and simply too much for Winter and the household to bear.
“She’ll be much better once she’s settled, Father, you’ll see. And I’ll be there all the time, looking after the garden. It’s my garden,” she said, smiling some more. “Remember?”
“That I do! That I do. Katrina — I don’t know how to say this.” She saw how troubled he was, and her concerns about Bluey were quickly supplanted by the irrational terror that something had happened to her son. As she opened her mouth in a gasp of inquiry, he said, “We found Marcus. He was arrested …”
“Arrested—” she could not catch her breath “—for—”
“For a crime he did not commit. He’s been cleared.”
“Where—where—”
“I don’t think you should see him just now—”
“Where!”
He grabbed her shoulders with a force that took even him by surprise. “Katrina — I am telling you this because I do not wish to repeat my mistake of so many years ago.”
She went pure white, and her hair was already dank with sweat; he had a vision of her as one of Edward’s Kabuki puppets.
“Oh, Father …”
She shivered in his arms like a stranded person airlifted from a great height.
He stroked her and softly spoke. “He will not leave this time. He is not … wild. He is — he is not Marcus—but — well, I’m not sure who he is. And I’m not sure he knows, either. Harry and Ruth have seen him; it was because of Ruth we were able to track him down.”
“Did he … did he mention me?” It was all she could think to ask.
“Katrina — I’m not sure how … intact he is.”
“Have you seen him?”
He shook his head adamantly. “Only Samson. Marcus didn’t remember him. Or didn’t let on.”
“Is he still in jail?”
“He’s been released. I’ve put him somewhere under guard, for his own sake. The doctors are tending him now; he has lived his life on the streets and bears the scars. Though he seems quite pleased and grateful to be free.”
She licked the sweet salt of tears from her lips and grew strangely calm. “Father,” she uttered. “I wish it were all a dream … I’m like Tull now! Suddenly, I don’t know anymore. I know how I was when I came to see you that day at work — so crazed. But now—now I’m not sure I even want him to be here—”
He took her shoulders again, but this time it was his gaze alone that held her. “You mustn’t say it, Katrina — mustn’t even think it. You will face this man, I’ll help you. Listen to me! Long ago I told you my grandson would come into a piece of intelligence and that it would be your duty to be candid. That, you were: with a dignity that absolutely floored me — took me marvelously by surprise. You will face this man with the courage you’ve shown since you faced Toulouse. You will face your husband, Katrina! And settle the books once and for all.”
At that moment — and if here we do lapse into genre, it is hoped we can be forgiven — she fainted dead away.
†It would not be the first time that a criminal, living or dead, was “tripped up” in like fashion, and will likely not be the last; though one can be sure that this history’s done with the knotty device. While admitting such an artifice to be a hardy staple of the mystery genre in days gone by, the author would hope that while there is plenty of mystery in our tale, there is less genre too.
CHAPTER 39. Thanksgivings
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,