I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 18. Little Girl Lost

The orphan stopped struggling.

After a few smelly, apocalyptic moments, Jane Scull gripped Amaryllis’s shoulders and held her away, the better to scrutinize; having discerned no damage done, she kissed the girl’s crown and fussed over her, snowcapped whiteheads glistening with tears and perspiration.

But Amaryllis did not find her rank — no: Jane Scull was merely one of the tribe, the underground railway of lumbering misfits to whom the girl felt entrusted. She was certain the saints had similar helpmates, making sure this was noted with proper humility so as not to get puffed-up. Topsy and Jane were her people, rough and elemental as the earth itself, with hearts the size of moons: circus types, raucous, itinerant acrobats of superabundant poise and poignance and avoirdupois, grand grotesques shot through with cathedral light — thrones and seraphim, eccentric angels of virtue, stamina and spirit.

Jane Scull took the girl’s hand and power-walked into the night, singing an indecipherable song. They arrived at a bus shelter and she dispatched Amaryllis to its recesses. Then Jane stood alone, waiting. Whenever a car would pass, her protectress deftly pivoted, blocking the child from view. Amaryllis shivered and stared at the movie ad encased in the shelter’s foggy frame: scratched by graffiti, the pigtailed girl wore a mustache, and swastikas were carved onto her sheepdog companion’s coat. It made her think of Boulder Langon — in fact, it was Boulder Langon. But Amaryllis didn’t have the energy to fully conjure those faces, or that famous afternoon.

The bus was empty when it arrived. Jane Scull led them to the middle. She ticked off significant streets as they drove, guttural and slurred, enraptured: Pennsylvania became Ensilanee! Montrose On Nose! Verdugo Errugo! La Cañada Ahkahnahduh! San Fernando Anurnanoh! — then Avenue 26 and Figueroa and suddenly WHOOSH on the archaic Pasadena and Amaryllis too knew the exhilaration of her own magical mystery tour. It was even a revelation that buses traveled on freeways.

Close to midnight, they alit on Chinatown. Jane Scull moved quickly now and without regard to the girl she had rescued. Her gait was fluid and her strides so huge Amaryllis imagined her on Rollerblades; before long, as in her dream of Topsy, she ran after but failed to catch up. The quiet drizzle became a downpour and the child involuntarily squealed with the sensation she was again going to be left behind (but this time, no baker). Like a movie rewound, they strode — or rather Jane Scull strode while Amaryllis scrambled and faltered — past the very landmarks by which Topsy had carried her scant days ago, though by now time was a jumble. Her chest heaved like a failing engine as they passed the Central Heating and Refrigeration Plant, but this time the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels brought no saints to bear.

In the middle of Temple Street, Jane Scull turned and waited for the girl. Then she clasped her once more. “Anku!” she cried, heaving with sobs. “Anku Amuhwiss!”

She kissed Amaryllis’s cheek, then ran off.

The orphan watched this uncaged creature berserk with freedom, head bent to sky, gummy sea lion maw wide open, pelted by the filthy, exorbitant rain, dizzy, gamy and exalted. There are other circuses, she thought, whispering good-bye — for that is where she imagined her friend to be headed. Circuses and caravans, with elephants marching tail-to-trunk … Jane Scull was rapidly receding so the girl raised her voice: Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye good-bye good-bye—whole body trembling with emotion. Her organs felt sludgy and her mouth tasted like blood and metal, liverish from Mrs. Woolery’s Rx.

The fleeting thought of that horrible woman was enough to send her running back to the shadows. “I’m watching you, child!” she heard Topsy bellow. “Courage! Courage, or you’ll never see the babies again!”

Sheets of water — like in a movie — as she neared the St. George, a weak wet bird flitting past stands of boxes shrouded in plastic tarp, end-of-the-road tenants sleeping within. A hand reached out and encircled her ankle: she clawed it and ran — toward the place where she’d find the Korean — but why? What was she doing back there? … wild with grief, revisiting the raided nest to smell her vanished babies! The St. George was dark and locked for the night; rain had washed the infants’ scent away. She stole toward the cupola of St. Vibiana’s deserted diocese, soon to be demolished. Still no entry, else she would have liked to have stayed. She drifted across the street instead, again to that fated place.

The alley entrance used for their escape was glued shut. Fresh plywood had been nailed over chinks in the Higgins armor, but the girl was small enough to slip through an already damaged plank. She made her way to the lobby and stood dead still — no sound of pigeons or trespassers. In the half-light of a pleuritic moon, it looked like someone had made nominal efforts at clearing out debris. As the exhausted child climbed the stairs of the cold copper tower, her heart sank; she knew Topsy would not be in residence.

When she reached the place of their reunion, Amaryllis was not wrong. It was dank and freezing; she was dank and freezing, and determined never again to move or stir. She slumped against the wall, uncaring of her fate or anyone else’s.

As fatigue and Mrs. Woolery’s soldier-stragglers drew her to dreamless fields — to Minotaur’s maze — Jane Scull danced across the screen of her eyes and Jane Scull only: dear Jane with her big white hearing aids, spinning into Forever like an ensorcelled top.

Morning — noon. The world outside shiny and new, hung to dry in the sun. She stirs, then sleeps two more effortless hours. Awakens, feverish. Chest aches. Thirsts and shivers, clothing damp. Slowly, she walks downstairs. There are pigeons and they gladden her.

“There, look!”

She seizes, choking.

Someone-Help-Me points with a cane.

“She the one there!” he shouts, advancing. “Come here last night — try to grab her foot but she too fast! Scratch me up good!”

Peering at the child from his side of the broken slat is a handsome, world-weary man in white shirt and tie, stylish sport jacket slung over his arm. In comic contrast to his guide’s histrionics, Samson Dowling squints like a bird-watcher at some point above Amaryllis’s head, which must have seemed a goad to the vagrant, who wished the little fugitive’s apprehension to be handled in a more Most Wanted fashion.

“Wull,” he says, turning to the detective. “Get her!”

Amaryllis sprints on cue, and Someone-Help-Me pimpily gives chase. The investigator, shod in tasseled Church’s English, takes casual, graceful flight. “You! Idiot! Stop!”

He commands the bum, but the little girl, arrested by the powerful voice, can run no longer — and collapses.

Someone-Help-Me does a victory jig and the detective tells him to disappear, his tone menacing enough so the snitch is gone in the briefest time imaginable.

Detective Dowling kneels, bunching his expensive coat under the girl’s fainted head.

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.

All 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)—

I know a little garden-close

Set thick with lily and red rose,

Where I would wander if I might

From dewy morn to dewy night,

And have one with me wandering.

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.”

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 baker, 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 sufficient 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.