The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1 (39 page)

There, at springing distance, I paused. The sad misalignment of his eyes made his appeal all the more affecting. The doctor had been twisted, yes, but had it not been the rough washmaid hands of life
that had done so much of the twisting? His original plan for me had been pure, and coated though he was in grime, that kind of purity could not be polluted. His was an unsurpassable brain, even drunk on oxygen; he was a hundred horrible things and a liar was not one of them.

Success, then, was a grape at last ripe enough to pluck. Could it be that inside the flayed organs and between the isolated synapses of two dozen dead flappers, Leather had sourced the uncanny embryo of my existence, a feat no sane man could achieve? By this same power, might he reverse my sorry fate? So help me, I believed it. It had been so long since I'd believed in anything.

The paring knife was no more than an educator's baton; he set it down. It was the ideal moment to attack, but I did nothing but observe the doctor pick up a serrated bone saw and place it upon the patient's sternum. Leather knew that this, too, would be a familiar sight to his dutiful son. He'd always required access to the heart when manipulating the brain.

“S'cold,” tee-heed Church.

I gazed down at my friend. It was curious, the extent of my numbness. Hadn't I always held that Burt Churchwell deserved a chance at immortality? Middle age and infirmity did not suit such a warrior. If it succeeded, this procedure might return to him all he'd lost: fearlessness, heroism, valor. And so what if it failed? What mattered of Church's life, I told myself, had been lost in the Argonne Forest, and his technical death here would be negligible, of no more consequence than that of Mary and Gladys Leather—cheap fare, on the whole, for a shortcut across what, for me, was a journey of dispiriting length.

“Come, then,” said Leather. “Steady an old man's hand.”

And I did. There I was. At table's edge. My hand atop his. The fear was gone. How had it happened? No matter. With more tenderness than I'd assisted Bartholomew Finch from the Thirtieth Precinct, I helped this alternate, but superior, father adjust his saw for a truer entry. To my great shock, Leather began to quiver. His lips trembled. His breath snagged. This man, cold as stone, was overcome by my touch. The Excelsior, my closest thing to a heart, ticked so hard I thought it might explode. Leather and I were together again. Anything was possible. Tears ran from his eyes, even the dead one, and embarrassed, he reached up and hid his crying face with the Isolator.

Hweeeeee . . . fweeeeee . . . hweeeeee . . . fweeeeee . . .

He lifted the saw two inches so that he might apply maximal force. Though I knew what sort of spatter to expect, I did not step back, but rather licked my lips, lusting for a tide of blood upon which I might float my hope ever higher, while at the same time stomping into the mud whatever shame still remained.

The saw plunged.

Hweee—

Flesh opened in the chest, but the wrong chest. It was quite a surprise, that plosion of white skin, red meat, and greasy clothing. The cream-colored wallpaper behind Leather was atomized with a black sunflower of blood ripped straight from his waterlogged lungs. An instant later the gunshot reported in my ears and my reaction was not a self-protective dive but rather to reach for Leather and shout—

“NO!”

—for this was my personal Revelation, my chance to reach into Gød's guts, squeeze the supernova of His heart, and steal the plot printed upon His pulmonary pulsars. It was not just Cornelius
Leather gored, it was Zebulon Finch, and what bled from him was his last chance for peace.

I scrambled forward, hip knocking one of the dining tables out of position. Upon the floor knives clattered and glasses shattered and something the size of a body fell, too, but I cared not. I pushed past the spoils and fell upon my fallen savior, my torturer, my pursuer, my savior again.

“Get off him, Finch!”

Of course Detective Roseborough had read McKenzie's column. Of course he would have Lou and the Babe on my tail. Of course my uncredited message had reached him via NYPD mobile radio. The lone surprise among these predictabilities was that the bruiser had stealthed through the club without knocking down a single stack of breakables to warn us of his arrival.

Roseborough's command went ignored. I tore the Isolator from Leather's face and pressed a hand to the gouge in his chest. Hot blood squeezed past my fingers. Were only the Cotton Club stocked with actual cotton, so that I might staunch this mortal wound! Failing that, I'd take one of Church's fabled Great War lemon drops, which might keep Leather alive for a few more moments, enough to tell me what I needed to know.

Leather expelled a hellacious liquid and his pale lips made fish kisses.

“Quick!” cried I. “Tell me what you know!”

“Step aside!” Roseborough, closer. “Step to the goddamn side!”

Leather's eyes showed their yellow underbellies.

“The hypnotist,” uttered he. “Phrenologist. Priestess.”

“Yes, yes, what of them?”

“MOVE, FINCH! OR I WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKING HEAD!”

“Please, doctor!” begged I. “What did they tell you?”

But Leather had his own request.

“I only ever wanted to know the end. Might you, dear boy, give me a taste?”

How many of the moribund had so far received my ministrations? What did it cost me, besides psychic upset, to drip onto his penitent tongue the sacramental wine of
la silenziosità
? But I was selfish and in that, our final moment together, cared only about my own answers.

Neither of us got what we wanted. A fist snatched my hair and wrenched back my head, and in this inverted world I saw Roseborough's boulder jaw, hastily bandaged—another fight?—and his extended arm, which ended in a revolver. The gun jutted forth; the barrel grazed my nose. Without ado, it discharged at a distance of a foot, and Cornelius Leather became a string of very small, almost invisible dots upon the vast timeline of American history.

What a mess, thought I, for the janitors to find.

Church had ended up on the floor. The bone saw had done damage. Blood poured from a gash in his chest and globs of gore stippled his naked body, and yet he chuckled. One of Leather's knives glinted and I snatched it, intent to finish what the doctor started. Hadn't I learned the routine by now? I rolled atop Church and raised the weapon, ready to slit him from gullet to groin in hopes that the secrets Leather had isolated in his recent research would be waiting just under the skin, suckling for my attention.

The giddy glaze of Church's eyes cleared like slandered clouds from an uncivil sun. His witless grin wavered. This could not be his best friend ready to murder him, could it? A fine question! Could it, Dearest Reader? Could it?

It was only the lack of time that stopped me from ripping him open. I dropped the knife and pushed away. The heels of my hands slid through brain matter and I collapsed next to one of Leather's ears. Whether the ear was still attached to his head I did not care to know. Up above, a mile away, Roseborough was shouting instructions at underlings still making their way from backstage. Soon the place would be a cyclone of activity as humans once again attempted to wipe away all traces of inhumanity, never caring that inhumanity was all to which some of us had to cling.

I put my lips to the ear. It was already cooling. I had acted too late before—recall the fate of John Quincy and Mother Mash—and so I whispered but one quick confession. I repeat it here, for you, Reader, only you, always you. Keep it, if you dare, at your bosom, so that its arctic secret might be thawed by your beating heart.

“I indicate,” said I, “that I understand you.”

PART SIX

1932–1941

Being The Thrills, Chills, Glitz, And Gloom Experienced By Your Hero In A Beautiful

Make-Believe World.

I.

M
Y CARCASS HAD SEEN
livelier
days. Pallid during the 1890s and bluish at millennium's dawn, my flesh had, at its dawdler's pace, followed the devolution of the typical People Garden partygoer, and by 1932 I was the shocking white of a fresh piece of paper. My feet and back had adopted a periwinkle hue, thanks to the pooling of old blood when I walked or reclined, and my muscles had begun to sag as if strapped to my bones by weakening elastic bands. My skeleton was becoming assertive; clothing could barely hide the handlebars of my clavicle, the shutter slats of my ribs, the bowl of my pelvis.

Now add to this the mortal offenses. Fishing-hook chasms, pistol-duel holes, meat-etiquette gouges, stomach-flap stitches, a clay-and-straw-stuffed thigh. Each of these gross infractions I had ample time to fret about as the make-up girl clapped powder upon my face and the film crew scuttled about adjusting heavy lights atop telescoping stands. The motion picture camera itself was locked onto the head of a tripod and into it was slotted a mouse-eared magazine. The hooded lens fixed me with its raven stare.

Before the film runs, let me chronicle the
mise-en-scène
.

You may credit the sensational aftermath of the Bird Hunter's death to Kip McKenzie, who parlayed his bit part in the climax into a relentlessly promoted ten-part series of articles that told the entire
tale front to back with a librettist's flair for sentiment and exaggeration. The most egregious of fabrications was McKenzie's casting of himself as hero, piecing together clues just in time to stop the killer from striking again.

I was named in the story whether I liked it or not—and I
did
like it, if you want to know the truth. Less enamored of the attention was my roommate. Leather's saw had perforated Church's left lung, leaving him with a clattering cough that soiled his every shirt with blood. Co-starring in a splashy news story came with no financial benefits and we hadn't the war chest for the operation he required. Instead he rambled about the apartment unfit for work and spitting up lung tissue.

Expectoration or accusation? I could not tell. I lived in flinching fear that Church's ether-murked memory of the Cotton Club would come rushing back. Already he'd learned from McKenzie's articles how I'd hidden from him my pursuit of the Bird Hunter, and it had confused and upset him. He'd risked all to protect me in France and still I had not trusted him?

The penance I paid was to navigate the city, night and day, to scrounge paying gigs—and in the interim keep my friend stocked with clean handkerchiefs to tidy his spritzed blood. Just such proletariat scrabbling occupied me when I received a most startling proposal. It manifested as a Western Union telegram from Hearst Metrotone, the newsreel service of the Fox Film Corporation, one of the biggest movie studios in Hollywood. The unbelievable contents were as follows:

MR. ZEBULON FINCH

NEW YORK (NEW YORK)

READING WITH GREAT INTEREST OF YOUR RECENT CIRCUMSTANCES STOP DESIRE TO PURSUE ARRANGEMENT WITH YOU TO APPEAR IN ONE-REEL FILMED PICTURE ABOUT ROLE IN MURDERS STOP CAN OFFER COMPENSATION OF $35 FOR YOUR TROUBLE STOP KINDLY CABLE RETURN LETTER AT MY EXPENSE STOP YOURS MOST SINCERELY

ED MANN

CULVER CITY (CALIFORNIA)

You know I am starry-eyed; I do not dispute it. Allow me, though, to dazzle you with a pendant of benevolence. Thirty-five dollars was a goodly sum, and every penny could go toward Church's medical care. Noble enough for you? Good. Now, Dearest Reader, let me to gibber like a little girl. Hollywood! Wanted me! For a picture show! I had to hug a lamppost so that I could bear the imposing vision of myself as a black-and-white god flickering across the colossal screen of some columnated picture palace.

Because the enterprise seemed gauche considering Church's suffering, I kept the news to myself. I cabled Ed Mann that very day, I did, picturing in my mind's eye the broad-chested stallion who might go by such a name. Further briefings followed, each one studded with specifics, the most fabulous of which was that my film was to be one of the fashionable new talkies!

I was sick with nerves on production day. At noon I reported to a gentleman's club on the Upper East Side, a solemn four-story structure that blinded me with its polished mahogany surfaces. Luckily,
a club steward presented himself, took my coat and hat, and led me into a well-carpeted smoking room, where I was greeted by the first of what would prove to be three or four dozen disappointments.

Ed Mann was an eel who looked as if owed a year's worth of sleep. He licked stray luncheon off his fingers and offered me a sticky handshake while checking a pocket watch with his other hand. My story, griped he, was the first of three scheduled for the afternoon, so there was not one second to spare. He shoved me out the door with his three-person crew in pursuit, sacking my premeditated plan to impress him with rapier wit.

Our first location was a street corner down the block. For a Depression-era pittance, Mann had availed himself of the services of an elderly Jewess whom I was tasked with helping across the street. Mann snatched the woman's gnarled hand, pressed it to my forearm, checked his pocket watch, and scurried back to look through the camera.

“Terribly sorry,” said I, “but what relation has this to the murders?”

“You're a doer of good deeds!” shouted Mann. “We're just establishing that with filmic shorthand!”

Filmic shorthand, eh? That sounded quite elaborate! I took the invigorating deep breath due a saint such as myself and patted the hand of the poor, wrinkled crone. True, I'd be more likely to elbow this slowpoke from the sidewalk rather than help her along, but who cared—the movie mechanism had begun to wind! A burly sort lowered over my head a long pole with a microphone attached on the end while bewildering slang began to sling.

“Sound ready?”

“Ready.”

“Camera ready?”

“Ready.”

“Roll sound!”

“Sound rolling.”

“Roll camera!”

“Camera rolling.”

“Zebulon Finch, Roll One, Scene Five, Take One. Mark!”

“Scene Five?” asked I. “What of Scene One through—”

The slate board cracked! I jumped.

“And action!” cried Mann.

The camera purred like a huntress lynx. I, the prey, retracted into a defensive crouch. As luck would have it, the biddy clinging to my arm was a born ham; she clutched my cold fingers and sang, “Oh,
angel
, it is so
kind
of you to help a
sickly grandmother
like me across this
dangerous city street
!”

So that's what I did, feeling as natural as if being filmed toilet- papering my ass. But after Mann bellowed, “Cut! Print! Moving on!” I heard no complaints. I searched about, suddenly hungry for feedback, but Mann was cursing his watch and storming toward the next set-up. Which involved, if you can believe it, me ruffling the revolting hair of some lice-ridden street urchin, which was followed by a shot of me extracting a hissing cat from a tree and handing over the flailing monster to an indebted housewife. This fraudulent flimflam continued until at last, per Mann's schedule, we looped our way back to the club for a concluding interview.

Here, Reader, is where you first joined us beneath the blazing kliegs: your hero caked in women's cosmetics, costumed in a smoking jacket and cravat, and posed just so against a splendiferous hearth while the accessory of a gourd calabash pipe was wedged into my
palm. This was a Zebulon Finch whitewashed to fit the vanilla palate of the moviegoing masses—but, gee, anything for the movies!

With camera a-whir, Mann began to toss questions so soft they barely qualified as such.
Can you describe your heroic resolve in catching the Bird Hunter? It was concern for the safety of others that drove you, is that right?
Their design precluded anything but the doughiest of replies. I obliged, feeling a bit peppery, while Mann checked his damnable watch.

At length a displeasing odor permeated the room.

Mann, for the first time, paid attention. He sniff-sniffed.

“What the dickens is that? Smells like turned meat.”

The klieg lights—the heat upon my dead flesh—how embarrassing.

“Sorry, gents.” I cleared my throat. “I'm afraid that would be me.”

Mann's crack team of dunderheads misunderstood. Believing that I had caught aflame, the sound recorder produced a brass fire extinguisher and ran toward me operating the pump. His foot caught on an Oriental rug, the extinguisher went airborne, and he reached for the nearest light stand for help. It was slapstick worthy of Harold Lloyd: the light toppled and smashed to pieces against the hearth, a comical hair's breadth from my casually propped elbow.

Into the room blundered the steward followed by a pride of club elite. An argument about the damage erupted. It was during the top-volume squabble that I noticed a large glass shard from the klieg jutting from my left thigh. I sighed, for they were my best trousers. I removed the glass and held it up so that I might curse it—this was hardly the debut of which I'd dreamt—before noticing that the assemblage had suspended their row to stare.

I hid the shard behind my back like a child.

“It is nothing,” said I. “Recommence your quarrel.”

Mann's pocket watch made no further appearances. His later appointments were forgotten. A dormant newsman's instinct awakened and when the interview resumed, his questions were of higher quality. Pinned like a butterfly to an entomologist's board, I stammered a series of dodges. Don't you feel pain, Mr. Finch? Of course I feel pain, it's just, you see, my thigh, it has nerve damage from the war. But you are too young to have fought in the war. Did I say war? Well, I meant “war” as metaphor—the war with the Bird Hunter. Ah, so you admit that the Bird Hunter knew of this ability of yours?

Mann promised me a fifteen-dollar bonus when at last he ran out of film.

I nodded my appreciation but felt no elation. What had I done?

Weeks later I received my check, cashed it, and cornered Church while he was taping the handle of his fractured cane prior to heading out on a hundredth futile job hunt. From my pocket I pulled the fifty bucks. The instant steeped to an essence all that was sour between us: he flinched as if expecting a stiletto, and I flinched at his flinching. Still smarting from Ed Mann's shoot, I lied that I had come upon the cash in the park, and wasn't that the niftiest luck?

His eyes, full moon at first, slivered, leaving me feeling smarmy. Of course the honorable Burt Churchwell would never accept money he judged as unclean. His gaze, however, was not one of disdain. Glistening from his concave cheek was a puddle of tears. The display of emotion made me fidgety, seeing how I'd once again hidden from him the truth.

“I thought,” said I, “you might put it toward mending that discommodious cough.”

He wiped his nose with his sleeve.

“Shucks, Private. I got a better idea. I been talking to some real
stand-up fellas in the soup line and they're organizing soldiers to march on Washington in a couple weeks. I been meaning to tell you. Don't know why I haven't. I guess we've both been busy. But how about you and me join them?”

“A march? Whatever for?”

“They're calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force cuz of how the government owes them their service certificate bonuses. That's a lot more than fifty bucks, little buddy, and me and you are owed it too. It ain't American that we starve before they decide to pay up.”

“True, but—”

He snatched the cash.

“This'll get us there. And then we can march together, just like old times. You and me, brother. Heck,
all
of our brothers. We took down the Huns, didn't we? I think we can handle them boys in D.C. How 'bout it?”

Months of excruciating suspicion had at last generated this fresh scion of friendship. I grabbed at it and held tight to it, nodding, smiling, and basking in my friend's large, bruising embrace. Had only I recognized the symbolism of the hacking cough that ended the hug and the black spots of blood that spattered the floor.

The day before the march was a sunny, hopeful one. The local chapter of the Bonus Army had reserved a bus destined for the capital, and Church and I had agreed to rendezvous at the station for the 4:30 p.m. departure. He was picking up our pressed Marines fatigues while I'd been tasked with obtaining victuals for the road. I was en route to the market when I made the fateful mistake of lingering before a movie theater.

Ever a sucker for promotion, I was boning up on a Warner
Brothers picture called
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
when my eye strayed from the kissable lips of actress Glenda Farrell and landed upon a boxed insert touting the “Added Attractions.” Squeezed between a “Farce Comedy” and a “Cartoon Comic” was the “Talking News,” the highlights of which were fired in bullet points:

• Manhunt Continues for Kidnapped Lindbergh Baby!

• There Is a Vaccine for Yellow Fever!

• Meet the Strange Central Figure in the Bird Hunter Case!

“Merry Christmas,” gasped I.

The 2:45 matinee started in minutes, leaving plenty of time to see what Ed Mann had made of me. I slapped down thirty cents for a ticket, claimed a seat near the back for a quick getaway, and drummed my seat so impatiently that a woman summoned a colored usher to beg me to stop. One hundred years later, the projector wheezed to life; one thousand years later, the insipid comedy short faded to black. At last came the bracing fanfare of Hearst Movietone News and “the top news of the day”—
the top news!
—began.

In a snap, it was over. My screen time hadn't exceeded two minutes and yet I sat in the dark stunned while a disfigured moll called Betty Boop hijacked the entertainment. Had it really been me up there, gesturing with my pipe and insisting that I cared deeply about the welfare of my fellow man?